The Dead House by Billy O'Callaghan

The Dead House

by Billy O'Callaghan

Available On Amazon

 

Rating (1-5) - 📘📘
Genre - Ghosts, Horror, Supernatural
Format - Hardcover
Pages - 202

*Blurb* 
This best-selling debut by an award-winning writer is both an eerie contemporary ghost story and a dread-inducing psychological thriller. Maggie is a successful young artist who has had bad luck with men. Her last put her in the hospital and, after she’s healed physically, left her needing to get out of London to heal mentally and find a place of quiet that will restore her creative spirit. On the rugged west coast of Ireland, perched on a wild cliff side, she spies the shell of a cottage that dates back to Great Famine and decides to buy it. When work on the house is done, she invites her dealer to come for the weekend to celebrate along with a couple of women friends, one of whom will become his wife. On the boozy last night, the other friend pulls out an Ouija board. What sinister thing they summon, once invited, will never go.
Ireland is a country haunted by its past. In Billy O'Callaghan's hands, its terrible beauty becomes a force of inescapable horror that reaches far back in time, before the Famine, before Christianity, to a pagan place where nature and superstition are bound in an endless knot.


*Review*
The Dead House was a dead book to me. I was quite disappointed throughout the whole book. It start off with the main character, Mike, describing Ireland in great detail. I'm not saying that explaining the land wasn't important, but I don't think it needed to take that much of the book before it really started to get interesting. Then it was only interesting for a few pages before it went back to Mike describing the land, his life, feelings and all that. It did pick back up again toward the ending only to, once more, last a few pages. The book was a slight love story, but without all the sappy romance that some books have with a slight twist of ghosts.

I would've given only a 1 book rating but instead gave 2 because I do want to give credit to the detail that the author uses to describe the scenery and feelings he has, but I think that he spent too much time doing that and not enough time on the ghost parts that could've made the story awesome.

Book Signing Event

Come support the Little Falls Public Library in Little Falls, NY at the 1st ever 

Read N' Reviews hosted Book Signing.

August 31st from 1pm - 4pm.

10% of each book sale is being donated to the library.

 

Check out the event on Facebook to stay up to date.

There will be treats to snack on as well donate by

Honey Brook Hobbies

(4 East Main street, Ilion, New York)

 Check them out on Facebook.

Crystal Eyes by N. B. Austin

Crystal Eyes -

The Civiland Series: Book 2

by N. B. Austin

Available On Amazon
Available on Book Depository 

 

Rating (1-5) - 📘📘📘📘📘
Genre - Fantasy, Fiction, Coming of Age
Format - Paperback
Pages - 261

*Blurb* 
Turmoil continues to reign in the Murrieta Territory.
Just as the Riverlands fall under control of the Keagan gang, Daniel Keagan is faced with a mysterious new threat. Meanwhile, William Keagan is ready for his journey back to the east Duresian city of New Berkeley, where he will finally reunite with his estranged father.
In the Mountainlands, Hanzah tries to locate Jeannie, Dominic, and Harrison. Far away from their home in the Tokali south, his sister Latera has discovered and freed the leader within her—but is she too late?
The second book of the Civilands series, Crystal Eyes raises the stakes in the world of the Murrieta Territory in ways that will excite, surprise, and inspire.

*Review*
Just about every book has a hero and a villain. Everyone always roots for the hero and hates the villain, right? Never before have I ever felt bad for the villain, but in Crystal Eyes, I did...well not all the villains.

The Keagan's are horrible people. Their gang is all about bettering themselves. But what if they aren't all the same? William, Daniel and Clovis are the Keagan brothers and want to control trade in the Murrieta Territory and beyond. To do this they have taken over villages and enslaved the Tokali and V'hani people. Though William and Daniel seem to actually care a bit about the people in the lands they are taking over, Clovis is heartless and will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

As much as I hate the Keagan's and what they are doing, I actually have a soft spot for William. He is going through his own personal struggles and it almost seems as if he wants to be good, to be fair to the people in the areas he's overtaken. He talks about being fair to the people. Because of this the situation with his father at the end of the book, which is awful, on top of the result of what happens really made me almost forget that he is one of the bad guys. My heart really went out to him.

In the meantime, Latera is trying to do what she can to not only free her people, but also the Tokali. Though the Keagans managed to put the two groups of people against each other, Latera is working to fix that and to be rid of the Keagans for good. Though how much can a young girl do?  And will she be taken serious by anyone? Will she be able to free her people and bring peace to the V'hani and Tokali or will the Keagans rule everything? All these questions I have and hopefully they'll be answered in the the next book Crescent Heart.


One of things I love most about the way N. B. Austin writes is that he isn't over-descriptive, yet he describes things just enough that I am able to picture the story in my head in my own way.Being able to do that makes me actually feel like I am part of the book.

 

No Plain Rebel by M.C. Frank

No Ordinary Rebel (Book 2)

by M.C. Frank

Available On Amazon
Available on Book Depository 

 

Rating (1-5) - 📘📘📘📘📘
Genre - Young Adult, Dystopian, Science Fiction
Format -Ebook


*Blurb* 
A soldier is summoned to the North Pole, days before the year changes, told to fix the great Clock for a celebration. He has no idea what to do.
A girl, hunted for the crime of being born, almost dies out on the ice. She is rescued by the last polar bear left alive.
A library waits for them both, a library built over a span of a hundred years, forgotten in the basement of an ice shack.
The world hasn't known hunger or sickness in hundreds of years. It has also forgotten love and beauty.
This is the One World.
The year is 2524.

Inspired by the short stories of Ray Bradbury, this futuristic young adult novel in three parts is set in a world where Christmas -among other things- is obsolete and a Clock is what keeps the fragile balance of peace.

Written in three parts, this is the breathtaking story of how two unlikely people change the world, and each other, one book at a time.

In No Plain Rebel, Felix finds out the truth.
Pretty soon, everything he thought he knew is crumbling around him. He’s about to lose it all. Even her.
But he must concentrate on what’s important; he must fight. It’s time. The Stadium is looming in the distance.
It’s ten heartbeats to midnight.

*Review*
This is the second book in the No Ordinary Star series and it's just as good as the first. Although Felix is no longer a tin soldier, he is still learning how things work and what they mean in the "real world". Everything he has know his entire life is just one big lie and there's no time to waste. Now he needs to work fast to get the ever important clock finished before time runs out. As the time gets closer Felix knows that he can't do this alone. Who can he ask to help him now that everything he is and does is again the law? Not returning home, building the clock, reading.....being near a female!

Once you start reading, you're not going to want to stop. My head was spinning with questions. Would the clock be finished in time for the celebration? What would happen with Felix and Astra? Do they fall in love? Will they get caught? What would happen if the clock IS finished in time?

So many questions, some will be answered and others.....I've got to hurry up and get the next book in the series. 

M.C. Frank is an author that is able to not only make me be able to visualize what I'm reading, but when the Timer was talking in the Vis, I swear I was able to actually hear him. I don't remember ever reading a book before where a character actually had a "voice" of their own.

Bad Blood by E.A. Owen

Bad Blood

by E.A. Owen

Author Requested Review

 

Rating (1-5) - 📘📘
Genre - Mystery, Romantic Suspense
Format -Paperback
Pages -176

There's not much that can be better than an author asking you to review their book. It's a huge compliment to me and makes writing a poor review that much harder.

*Blurb*
Mary calls her life a nightmare, but the pain has only begun... And Mary will not be the only victim. Mary was born into an idyllic family, her mother and father a storybook couple, but her parents were killed by a drunk driver when she was 12. She grows up to marry a man who betrays her, and her teen daughter, victimized by a family friend, gives birth to twins.

And that is only the beginning of an entire family's descent into a series of catastrophes that amount to more than can be blamed on just the ill-winds of fate, including the greatest sin imaginable, committed unwittingly and born of nothing less than true love.

Mary wonders how life can be so cruel early in the story, but when she is old she discovers both the complexity of the web of which she is a part and the terrible truth. The many characters relationships are revealed as fate brings the survivors together, some bound by blood and love and all of them bound by a curse.

This is a tale that will horrify you and pull at your heartstrings by turns. The main characters suffer in the extreme for reasons beyond their control, but they never fail to love one another.


*Review*
Although it's not on Amazon as a Young Adult book I would definitely say it is. I thought this book was going to be suspenseful with ups and downs. It was anything but that.

The book starts off good, telling you about the life of Mary and what happens to her poor daughter. That takes place during the first few chapters. The rest of the book is about a teenage boy and girl that meet, an accident and this love at first sight type of relationship they have. Nothing suspenseful or even interesting happens until your reach the end of the book.

Then ending has quite a nice twist that I didn't expect but the curse was fixed way to easily.  There needed to be more than just the kids falling in love and the accident to make this book better. If the author added some kind of weird situations, made the ending longer and the curse removal have some kind of suspense, I think this could have been really good.

The Other Woman by Sandie Jones

The Other Woman

by Sandie Jones

Available On Amazon
Available On Book Depository 

Rating (1-5) - 📘📘📘📘1/2
Genre -Suspense
Format -Paperback
Pages -


ARC- set to release August 21, 2018

*Blurb*
HE LOVES YOU: Adam adores Emily. Emily thinks Adam’s perfect, the man she thought she’d never meet.

BUT SHE LOVES YOU NOT: Lurking in the shadows is a rival, a woman who shares a deep bond with the man she loves.

AND SHE'LL STOP AT NOTHING: Emily chose Adam, but she didn’t choose his mother Pammie. There’s nothing a mother wouldn’t do for her son, and now Emily is about to find out just how far Pammie will go to get what she wants: Emily gone forever.

THE OTHER WOMAN will have you questioning her on every page, in Sandie Jones' chilling psychological thriller about a man, his new girlfriend, and the mother who will not let him go.


*Review*
First, I feel that this book must have been wrote pre-cell phone because no one is going to try and prove what another person is doing or saying without recording it as a form of proof to show people. If a person is threatening you (like Pammie was doing to Emily) so bad and making your life miserable, you're definitely going to do something about it more than just trying to "get them caught". I hated Pammie aka Pamela right off the bat. It's one thing to want to make sure that your child is in a relationship with someone that deserves them, but it's also their life not the mothers. Plus, there's really only so much you should do for your child. At the same time I was aggravated with Emily for handling things the way she did. If you're going to be marrying someone then there shouldn't be secrets. If you have an issue with someone, speak up. I don't know if I'd have been able to keep my mouth shut for as long as she did. Both Pammie and Emily needed to grow a backbone and speak what was on their minds instead of beating around the bush, then again, if they did that there wouldn't have been a book.
The book was definitely full of suspense, but the ending left me feeling a little disappointed. Everything ended to easy for all that the woman went through. I feel like all that happened should have took longer than a few pages to finish on. There should have been more of a fight or something like that.

Active August

It's was a busy July for me involving a week long family vacation to Massachusetts. I really need to remember to pre-plan things to do before going so I am not wasting time tying to schedule everything last minute.

 

I did manage to find a small book store that I instantly fell in love with. She had a beautiful collection that I would've loved to have brought home, but unfortunately I don't have an endless bank account for books. I did manage to grab these two small books for just $1 each.

There's so much going on for August as well. I recently signed up to be an Independent Consultant with Thirty-One Gifts. If you're interested click here to join my Facebook group. I am hoping to be able to incorporate it with my books over time. If you don't want to join the group,k but still interested in shopping, click here.

Since it's a new month there's lots going on in the Read N' Reviews Facebook Group too. The Author of the Month is Nick DeWolf. Check out his page on the blog here. Don't forget to join the Facebook group Q&A with Nick.
As always, the group gets to vote on a Book of the Month to read and discuss. There was a tie and I have chosen to go along with both books.

 The Dead Houseby Billy O'Callaghan

 Click here to join the read along on Facebook.

 The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy

Click here to join the read along on Facebook.