ISBN: 9781416551959
The back of this book bills it as a zany, thrilling mystery wherein our heroine, the quirky Dr. Amanda Bell Brown must find the cause for the death of a disgraced playboy evangelist’s baby. I received a copy by request through the LibraryThing Early Readers Program (where it was not disclosed that it was Christian fiction) and I requested it because fiction with minority leads is something I’m actively trying to include more of here at BookLove.
Unfortunately, I simply could not get into this book.
The story opens with a long, lamenting conversation between Bell and her BFF/kinda of love interest (except she’s married) which covers a lot of what happened in the first two books in the series and what happened between books. As a first time reader I was left with absolutely no clue what was going on, other than Bell, in an effort to make up with Rocky (the BFF who apparently put her marriage in danger before abandoning her, and who repeatedly teases her and calls her “babe” constantly) agrees to go visit a disgraced evangelist trying to make a comeback.
The second chapter opens with Bell and Rocky arriving at the location where the evangelist is filming his sermon. Bell is promptly assaulted by an old religious woman who calls Bell a hussy for being there with her pastor, and forcibly exorcises her, claiming a demon of interracial adultery is dwelling inside of her. Rocky, the charming BFF that he is, sits in his VIP seat and is amused by the antics, doing nothing at all to help.
After the sermon Rocky gets Bell backstage to meet the evangelist, Ezekiel Thunder. It’s there that Bell meets Little Zeke Thunder, Big Thunder’s 2 year old son. Bell is smitten, but launches into heartache over her own inability to have children, save for the fact that she’s been nauseated a lot lately. But she can’t have kids, she reassures herself, because she had a period since her husband left her and she has endometriosis, not to mention she has a tumor. With the subtly of a brick to the face, this “I can’t be pregnant despite obvious weight gain, morning sickness and soreness” becomes a repetitive source of angst. When Bell finally moves past the topic secondary characters constantly bring it up, accusing her of being pregnant, kicking off the whole response again.
In chapters three and four Bell insists she isn’t pregnant, then is threatened by the same person who assaulted her in the previous chapter, blatantly and maliciously manipulated by Thunder, again while her BFF Rocky just stands to the side, or defends Thunder.
It is never really explained why Rocky wants her to meet this clearly malicious, manipulative preacher. There’s eventually something about Rocky wanting her to find God again, but that should never excuse the sort of behavior Bell has been subjected to.
In chapter five Bell finally does something that made me like her, she self soothes with a peppy new haircut. But when she returns to work she discovers her parking lot filled with the vehicles of all her closest, except her husband. Despite being forewarned Bell walks into the intervention. What is traditionally a last ditch effort to get a person with substance abuse to realize the extent of their actions is bastardized in this chapter as Bell’s nearest and dearest claim the intervention is because she’s fat, because her husband (who left her) is heart broken without her and she should go back to him, and because she is clearly pregnant and too old to be so (Bell is 35). The conversation is excessively scattered and even deviates into one of Bell’s friends claiming it’s not always all about Bell, except one would assume that an intervention IS about the person being confronted.
I stopped when I read the following interaction:
“If Jazz (Bell’s husband) is the one who left me, and he’s the one who is drinking excessively, why didn’t you do the intervention with him?”
“Because all of this is your fault,” my mother said.
If I hadn’t been at a doctor’s appointment I would have flung the book across the room. I did try to skip ahead in the book to see if it picked up, only to land on a scene where a doctor tells Bell and her husband, Jazz that Bell has a grapefruit-sized tumor, several grape=sized tumors and is also pregnant with twins.
The artificial drama is staggering in this book and completely distracts from the mystery Deadly Charm is advertised as containing. There is no time or build up to allow for readers to grow attached to Bell and having every character treating her like utter crap doesn’t make her sympathetic. Furthermore the pregnancy side plot is a huge problem. The medical problems (pregnant, with tumors) reads as more unbelievable, and unneeded drama, there’s never a question in the reader’s mind whether Bell is pregnant or not, and the utter insensitivity that everyone else in the book shows for Bell’s reproductive problems is pretty insulting.
It’s a bad combination of writing flaws, so Deadly Charm ends up in the DNF pile.
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Paperback: 9780425224243, $7.99
An Ice Cold Grave is the third book in Harris’ Harper Connelly series, a dark mystery with feather-light touches of paranormal. For those who haven’t encountered it before Harper is a woman who gained the uncanny ability to sense the dead and read their last moment after being hit by lightning. After surviving a horrible, abusive childhood she and her step brother Tolliver travel around using her talent to survive.
In An Ice Cold Grave Harper and Tolliver have been called to Doraville, North Carolina where a woman, angry at the past sheriff’s handling of the disappearances of several teen boys, asks Harper to find the bodies of the boys that surely must be dead by now. Harper begins her hunt, and to her horror finds not only the six missing boys, but two others as well, all buried in what looks suspiciously like a serial killer’s dumping grounds.
Suddenly Harper finds herself not just blackmailed into staying nearby by the newly appointed sheriff, but a target of the serial killer’s outrage.
As usual Harris offers a tale that features a delicate thread of darkness. There is true horror in this book, but by the characters trying to block it out, move past it and not dwelling on it, even when it rises up and tries to claim them, it becomes secondary, and undertow rather than a flood of dark themes. The characters are Harris’ strength. They are complex, easy to sympathize with and as a reader you find yourself wanting things to work out for them.
This particular book is more scattered than the previous books, but it reflects the complexity of the serial killer nature. Despite the attention focused on Harris’ other series, this is her best. An Ice Cold Grave is satisfying, page turner that fans of dark fiction should definitely give a chance.
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Paperback: 9781933836454, $7.95
Though the plot centers around her and the book is named for her, Agnes Hahn doesn’t have a strong presence in this tale. Agnes lives a very solitary life after her Aunt Ella is placed in a home, suffering from severe Alzheimer’s, and her Aunt Gert dies. But all that is shattered when the local police arrest her for a series of gruesome murders.
Enter Jason, a reporter suffering from a broken heart and under pressure from his editor to deliver a good story or else. Agnes might be the central character, but Jason is the lead, whether he’s fighting the local cops for the big exclusive or falling for someone who might be a rare female serial killer.
While the tension sometimes falters and the characters are largely ordinary people, the mystery of Agnes Hahn is solid, a twisting tale of police procedure and psychology reflective of the genre’s forerunner, Thomas Harris.
SUCKERS + 3 Andrew Mayhem short stories + 3 Harry McGlade short stories + FREE= Awesome. (Pssst, click on the awesome to see how to actually get the awesome.)
From Brian Keene’s blog:
Below are the full details for both service-members interested in signing up and civilians interested in donating books.
WHAT IT IS:
Books For Troops is a program that supplies books free of charge to the men and women serving in the United States military in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world. The program has been honored by many, including the 509th Logistics Fuels Flight Squadron based at Whiteman A.F.B. in Missouri. It went on hiatus while my wife and I had a baby. Now it is back.
HOW IT WORKS:
If you are currently serving in the Armed Forces, and would either like free books to read, or would like free books to distribute to your fellow servicemen and women, send an email to briankeene at live.com. Please put ‘Books For Troops’ in the subject line. In the body of the email, include your rank, first and last name, and a valid military address (APO, FPO, etc.).
Please Note: You must have a valid military address to qualify. No civilian addresses will be accepted without prior approval. We apologize for that, but it is the only way to screen out fraudulent applications from non-service members.
After that, you will receive a shipment of free books approximately every two months. There is absolutely no charge for this. You do not need to return the books. All we ask is that you enjoy them, and pass them on to fellow service-members when you are done, or donate them to your base or ship library.
HOW NON-MILITARY PERSONNEL CAN HELP:
If you are an author or publisher that would like to donate books to the program, please send them to Books For Troops, c/o Brian Keene PO Box 281, Craley, PA 17312. We ask that books be in good condition. Please do not send books with missing or yellowed pages, stripped covers, photocopies, etc. Any subject is acceptable, but we especially encourage genre fiction (horror, fantasy, science-fiction, western, historical, crime, mystery, thriller, romance, and men’s adventure). We will also accept donations of stamps to help out with shipping costs.
Books For Troops is not a charitable organization (it is run by a lone author and his overworked assistant). Because we are not a charitable organization, your donation should not be considered tax deductible. Also because of this, we cannot accept cash donations, checks, or money orders.
Please email briankeene at live.com with any questions.
*I’m adding this as a page on my blog and will be donating review copies that I recieve and have read (as my income allows me to afford postage for).
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Paperback: 978-1-4092-4121-8, $11.95
E-Book: 978-0-9820427-1-7, $4.95 e-book
The Lesser of Two Evils is a perfect example of why readers shouldn’t dismiss every book with a self-published label.
Davis Briggs, sheriff of the small Texas town of Devine has a hell of a mess on his hands when children start showing up dead and a drifter and a thirteen year old psychic seem to be the only ones who can help. Jobe, not the typical hero, comes to Devine via possibly divine intervention (haha, get it?), not just because he’s laying low from his last botched bombing which killed more than just the cop it was intended for. Meanwhile, Wendy, thirteen and already having faced more reality than most people do in their lives, is trying to keep her brother alive, and be the parent while her actual parents are out of town on a job. She’s the first to sense a supernatural doom descend on the town and has to convince Davis to trust her instincts before more lives are lost. And when things start to get real bad she and Jobe must team up to take down the killer.
The Lesser of Two Evils is a well paced serial killer story with strong, unique characters. It combines science and fantasy in explaining the paranormal aspects of the plot. The antiheroes rule the show, sharing their own twisted pasts, morals and going through an emotional shift to become something else. While much of the book isn’t graphic there are spectacular murders and an unrelenting, unstoppable killer than keeps the readers swept away for all 363 pages.
An example of “the cream that rises to the top” of the self publishing world, The Lesser of Two Evils is definitely on the Buy list.
17
Jan
Have been released by The Mystery Writers of America and can be seen here.
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Bunnicula is a classic scary story for kids. When the Monroe family finds a strange bunny in a theater showing Dracula, their cat, Chester, and dog, Harold, decide to investigate the aptly named Bunnicula. As if the bunny’s strange markings and creepy red eyes weren’t enough, weird things start happening around him, like vegetables appearing completely drained of their juice. The lovably dim Harold and too-smart-for-his-own-good Chester must figure out if Bunnicula really is a bunny-creature of the night… Full Review at MonsterLibrarian.