Kevin’s reviews of other people’s books
Ruth Ware’s wildly popular novel is an exercise in internal anxiety reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe – just much longer. The first-person narrator, Laura (“Lo”) Blacklock, is a journalist for a British travel magazine. She scores a plush assignment of sailing on the maiden voyage of a small luxury cruise ship/yacht owned by a rich … More The Woman in Cabin 10, by Ruth Ware [Review]
This is the most unique vampire story I’ve ever read or seen on the screen. Without spoiling anything, the principle vampire characters, Chase and Hunter Bardock, are part of a vampire family living in an underground compound in Queens. Both have traits that make them unusual among their kind, and that bring them closer to … More The Human Cure, by Tracy Auerbach [Review]
The baseline plot of The Cerberus Affair is immediately attention-getting and quickly draws the reader into the mystery. Catherine, a beautiful but sexless single mother of an adopted son, is a former journalist. At the same time her son is getting ready to go off to university, Catherine’s world is rocked by the news of … More The Cerberus Affair, by Charlotte Valentine [review]
This book of short stories is like the fever dream of a drug-addicted surrealist artist. The Parasite story (the first) has some elements of sci-fi, but lacks characters, a coherent story, an obstacle to be overcome or a goal to be achieved, and fails to even try to explain how an insect-like parasitic organism is … More The Parasite from Proto Space (and other stories), by Brett Petersen [Review]
I read book #1 in the Jelvia series (Holding out for a Hero) and now have jumped to the most recent installment, Spider. T.E. Kessler has created a unique world in which Humans live alongside a super-human race of Jelvia. This installment delves into the common fetishes and motivations of both races through the eyes … More Spider: Jelvia: Not Human (#3), by T. E. Kessler [Review]
Adriane Brown’s novel, The Café on Dream Street, is a tortured tale of an immigrant from el Salvador, Felipe Sanchez, and his family, trying to make a life in a suburb of New York called Oakmont. The writer’s political bent is clear from the outset. The local cops are redneck anti-immigrant thugs, who terrorize the … More The Café on Dream Street, by Adriane Brown [Review]
Parabellum begins with the grisly scene after a mass shooting at a Chicago beach. The rest of the book describes – in great detail – the lives of four characters identified only as “the student,” “the ex-athlete,” “the veteran,” and “the programmer.” The absence of names for these central characters is disconcerting, but we get … More Parabellum, by Greg Hickey [Review]
Dr. Ree Ryland is not your typical mystery-action hero. She is a professor of Engineering, specializing in auto crash safety systems. But she has a black belt, and a Glock in her purse. Just in case. She is also clever, a stickler for details, and attractive. A very intriguing combination. In this story, Ree starts … More Calculated Deception, by K.T. Lee [review]
Adam Baron’s former cop turned Private I, Billy Rucker, is a deeply complex character. After book #1 in this British crime drama series, it feels that we have only scraped the surface, and there is much more to look forward to in later books. The writing is rich and engaging as the author strings us … More Shut Eye (Billy Rucker #1), by Adam Baron [REVIEW]
Author Jane Suen says this book was inspired by a road sign in Alabama reading: Murder Creek. From that, she spins out a Novella about a college student (Eve), who crosses that same highway bridge and becomes entranced by how Murder Creek got its name. Eve begins digging into both a two-hundred-year-old war battle and … More Murder Creek, by Jane Suen [REVIEW]
