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Olive and the Valentine's Spell
Olive and the Valentine's Spell
Helen Millman | 2022 | Children
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I have come across another decent book about the upcoming holiday named Valentine's Day. Children seem to know what this holiday is about. But if you are looking for one that overcomes a child or children's fear. "Olive and the Valentine's Spell" is a good one. Olive feels that Valentine's day means getting married and a few other things as he tells his feelings to his mom. She wants to help fight with him. Olive seems to have to get rid of all his fun stuff at five years. He thinks he got to do some grown-up things.

Will Olive overcome his fears and enjoy the holiday. Will he see this holiday like any other day and there will be no love. Then maybe love comes in many different forms. Will Olive realizes that and wants this memorable holiday to stick around.

Olive seems confused at the beginning and will let his fears run wild. Children will learn that Valentine's day is a special day for couples. But it also showed what love is and how it can be. It also teaches about overcoming your fear. A parent can help children with reading this book. This book shows that love is essential, which is why we celebrate it.
  
Shifter Woods: Growl (Esposito County Shifters #3)
Shifter Woods: Growl (Esposito County Shifters #3)
Nicola M. Cameron | 2022 | Paranormal, Romance
8
8.7 (3 Ratings)
Book Rating
its only short but packs quite the punch!
Independent reviewer for Archaeolibrarian, I was gifted my copy of this book.


This is a short, slotting into the series after book 3, I think. (I'm a little puzzled by the listings on some sites about the order!) I've not read those, and I'll come back to that shortly. I didn't think I missed anything by not reading them, though, and so I would say this can be read as a stand alone.


I liked this, a lot. It gives you an insight into Esposito County, and the people who live in it.


It;s steamy and smexy. It's dark and dangerous. It's only short but packs a punch! I loved the twist with the magic spell that was shielding Marco, and what that was doing just a tad too well!


Going back to not reading the other books. I didn't feel I missed anything, and you know I'm all about sharing my book feelings, but what I am left with is a NEED to read those books. Not because I missed anything, but because I want to read everyone else's story!


So, my KU shelf needs clearing for those books 🙂


4 solid stars


*same worded review will appear elsewhere
  
The Good Daughter
The Good Daughter
Karin Slaughter | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry, Mystery, Thriller
9
8.2 (25 Ratings)
Book Rating
spell-binding (2 more)
shocking
fascinating
Charlie and Sam grew up in Pikeville, Georgia, with anything but an idyllic childhood. When the girls were teens, they were part of a brutal assault at their family's farmhouse. The attack left their mother, "Gamma," dead and profoundly affected their father, a prominent local attorney. Years later, Charlie remains in Pikeville, a lawyer like her father, and trying to keep the past behind her. All that changes when the town witnesses violence yet again--and Charlie is right in the thick of it. Suddenly, she's forced to confront so many of the emotions she's buried for years and to fully deal with exactly what happened to her family so many years ago.

Slaughter's latest novel starts quickly out of the gate--with a brutal, graphic, and spell-binding description of the assault and attack on Charlie, Sam, and Gamma--and it never lets up from there. Seriously, this book never lets you take a breath or a break: it's just constant action and second guessing.

Told from the points of view of both Charlie and Sam, including their varying memories of the incident at the farmhouse, we are forced to see all the events and violence through the eyes of the two sisters alone. As I mentioned, this keeps you guessing--and reading. I completely put down the other novel I was reading at the time (FINAL GIRLS) to read this: I had to know how it ended.

All the characters in this book are entwined, and Slaughter does a great job of depicting the small town of Pikeville. It's a mystery at its core, sure, but it also goes deeper with commentary on race, class, and how modern society deals with mass tragedy. The characters are well-drawn: I immediately found myself intrigued by Sam, Charlie, their father (Rusty), the descriptions of Gamma, and by a slew of small-town folk, including Rusty's secretary Lenore, and Charlie's estranged husband, Ben. Slaughter is excellent with the details.

Indeed, she's great at doling out those "whoa" moments. The plot never lets down; in fact, it continues to pick up as the novel continues on. I truly gasped a couple of times and found myself going "wow"! That's not easy to do once, let alone consistently.

This is a beautiful book at times--the way the plot and characters weave together. It even makes you laugh at moments, despite some truly somber subject matter. I found myself a bit irked at times by Charlie and Sam's fighting (I've read a lot of books with sisters fighting as of late), but if that's my only nitpick, that's not bad at all.

Overall, a great mystery that keeps you guessing and surprised to the very end. Excellent, fascinating, and deep characters. Definitely worth a read.
  
TH
The Heartbeat Thief
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
<b><i>I received this book for free from Xpresso Book Tours in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.</i></b>
Strangely enough, I enjoyed <i>The Heartbeat Thief</i>. Senza is the most perfect character I've ever met – she's flawless, admired, wealthy, loved, intelligent. She knows it, but she doesn't want to flaunt it, which is what I really liked about Senza as a character. She hates going to parties and balls, and she dreads getting married off to a man that she doesn't want. I think I have a thing for characters who have an inner rebel in them.

Senza seems to have a perfect life until her grandmother dies. After that, she seems lost and obviously wants to carve her own path in life instead of letting her mother take the reins from her. Her discovery of eternal life is almost like a deal with a devil. She has to sacrifice her life to become immortal and keep her looks forever, but she has to carefully steal the heartbeats of another if she wants to keep her immortality. If she's not careful, those around her would be able to find out about her and accuse of witchcraft or something equally sinister.
<blockquote>Your spell must be fed, one heartbeat at a time. You must learn to steal them from the living. One here, one there. A person will not notice a skipped beat, and they must never know it is you who is making them skip. And you must do it, or the spell will fade and die.</blockquote>
Krafton's latest novel is a book I'm just interested in how the story will play out. Senza doesn't really come across as a selfish person in general until she decides to play with the strings of fate. As time goes by, she has to disguise herself from those around her so they don't find out what she did. Senza goes from place to place and she meets all kinds of people from all walks of life throughout the book. There's not exactly a clear plot going on here, and I almost expected a tragic ending where karma decided to finally bite back at Senza.

<i>The Heartbeat Thief</i> is a book with a unique storyline where one eventually realizes just what kind of price is really paid when death is defied. It's nicely done for a book where there's a character who doesn't have any flaws whatsoever.

<a href="https://bookwyrmingthoughts.com/review-the-heartbeat-thief-by-aj-krafton/"; target="_blank">This review was originally posted on Bookwyrming Thoughts</a>