Review: King’s Crown (Oil Kings Series Book 1) by Marie Johnston

King’s Crown by Marie Johnston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not Your Typical Age Gap Romance

I’d probably give this 4.5 ⭐️ if I could.

I was really pleasantly surprised by this book. I thought I was getting a run-of-the-mill age gap billionaire romance and what I actually got was a well thought out and sensitive romance.

Kendell is 28, divorced and living with her ex-husband to avoid having to move back home and end up having her entire life taken up with caring for her younger siblings. On the day she loses her job her husband tells her that his new college-aged girlfriend is moving in instead of letting her sign the new lease. So she is jobless and homeless when her ex-colleague tells her about a job his friend told him about that pays lots of money.

She goes on the interview that requires she take her potential employers company jet, that also has a wealthy business exec on board. They get halfway to their destination when a big snowstorm hits and they end up having to share the last hotel in Douglas, Montana for four days.

Gentry King is the CEO of King Oil. He is 49 years old and has four grown sons. He’s worked for his deceased wife’s family oil company since he was 19 and they had their first child. His mother in law has the company in a death grip and treats her family like pawns she can move around a board. Stuck in a hotel room with the gorgeous and more importantly, young, Kendell is a kind of torture because not only is she gorgeous but she’s funny, kind, bright and approachable. They spend four days playing board games and talking.

The reason I say this is a different kind of age-gap romance is that though there is a 20 year age difference, they are actually at similar stages in their lives. Kendell started raising her siblings from the age of 5 when she changed her first diaper. She takes her siblings to baseball games, to the library and pays for their school trips. She helps with homework and talks them through panic attacks. She may be 29 but she’s already lived a lifetime.

Kendell and Gentry can really talk to each other and they respect each other and the hold their respective families have on them. They fight their attraction, though not for long, not because of their ages, but because of what other people might think or do about it.

I love how real this relationship felt. Talking over the kitchen table about work and eating lunch together, holding hands on long walks and having sex in the back of a pickup truck. There was passion, but it wasn’t the glue that held the relationship together, that was their respect for each other and the fact they genuinely liked each other.

I also liked that though Gentry was ridiculously wealthy he didn’t hold the purse strings on the family coffers. He also only helped Kendell out a little bit and she wanted to find work more than anything, whether that was with him or anywhere else, preferably one that used her brain.

There was a lot to this book, from the way the family members interacted, to the business that Gentry and his sons were involved in. I loved how the two families were equally important and the way they wove together was interesting to say the least.

This was a really good book and had a nice HEA, but also left me really wanting to know about the rest of the King family and how their immediate future was going to look. I will definitely be reading the next book.

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Review: Black Sheep (Flight of The Javelin Series Book 1) by Rachel Aukes

Black Sheep by Rachel Aukes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fast Paced Space Opera

I do love a good space opera, and this is a great example of a good space opera. I listened to the audio version, narrated by Emily Woo Zeller, and enjoyed her storytelling skills as much with this book as I have with others.

Throttle is a captain of a cargo ship that has been converted into a colony vessel. She and a handful of crew, including the man she loves, an ex-pirate, take it in turns to sleep on the 15 years of the journey so far. The colonists are all in cryogenic sleep and they are all looking for a fresh start away from their star system that has been riddled with wars.

The ship is starting to fall apart as it was not designed for deep space long term journeys and eventually there is a system-wide failure. The crew decide to take the ex-pirate ship they have in the hold to try and find help, not really expecting to find any, except they find a ship, lying dead in space with no one aboard.

When they take the ship back to the colony ship to rescue all the colonists they find a hole in space and evidence of pirates having stolen the vessel. Throttle has made a promise to get those colonists to a safe new home and she is determined to keep that promise.

I loved Throttle so much. She is a paraplegic who wears leg braces to ambulate most of the time, but a wheelchair when the braces are not possible. It’s not often you have disabled characters in Sci-fi because usually, they have miraculous cures or cybernetic limbs that are better than the originals. To have a disabled main character, who also has a successful and loving relationship is fantastic for someone who is also disabled. I particularly loved how much she enjoyed floating in zero gravity because I can imagine how freeing it would be.

Apart from being disabled, Throttle is a gifted leader. She is strong, fearless and will do anything to get the job done. She’s called Throttle because of her incredible skills as a pilot. She’s also a crack shot and great at hand to hand combat, even in leg braces. The other characters were as well rounded as Throttle, but she is the main focus of the story, though there are other points of view.

The story rockets along at a cracking pace and I really enjoyed the notion of two different branches of humanity’s colonisation efforts meeting centuries after the fact and finding a divergence in law, technology and social structure, but who still have a common language.

There were a few plot twists along the way, especially toward the end, that knocked me askew. They made me very likely to read the next book in the series but didn’t leave me gnawing my nails to the quick in frustration about the way it ended.

I really enjoyed this book, especially the audio version, I will definitely be reading/listening to the next in the series.

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Review: Worth It by S M Shade and C M Owens

Worth It by S.M. Shade & C.M. Owens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Funny, Weird and Sweet

I bought this book when it first came out and never got around to reading it. I thought I would love it but didn’t want the disappointment if it didn’t live up to the hype. Now enough time has passed for the anticipation to have died back to normal proportions. I now know I’m daft for waiting so long because I could have been on the second read through by now if I’d read it when I got it!

This book was hilarious; laugh out loud, snort drink out your nose funny. The set up is simple enough, three friends go to a wedding week. One of the friends, Lydia, is the ex of the groom and he’s marrying the woman he cheated on her with. One of the friends, Kasha, is the step-sister of the groom. The other friend, Henley, is there for moral support. Neither Henley or Kasha really understand why Lydia is there, but they are there to support her.

Then Henley meets her first love and Kasha meets a guy she knew of at school and their interest in staying at the wedding increases enormously. The book is filled with hot encounters, hilarious sabotage endeavours and fantastically funny banter. The authors are incredibly creative and the situations the friends find themselves are mind-boggling. I honestly can’t comprehend how their minds work. However, when one of the authors also writes the Violent Circle Comedy Series Box Set books it’s not surprising what her brain comes up with.

The relationships between the friends is lovely. Supportive, funny and believable. The relationships between Kasha and Roman and Henley and Davis are sweet, hot and funny. I also like that the relationships between Kasha and the members of her family are explored.

I know I’m late to the game but this book is a perfect pick me up in a rubbish year and in a way I’m glad I saved it for when it was really needed! I recommend it highly, it’s a perfect Rom-com!

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Review: Touched by Fire (Demons of New Chicago Series Book 1) by Kel Carpenter

Touched by Fire by Kel Carpenter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hell on Earth

This book has an interesting premise. It’s set decades after a supernatural war that pretty much upended modern society and left the non-humans in charge. In New Chicago lives a female bounty hunter. She’s unusual in that she is human and takes down supernaturals at a rate much higher than any of her competitors.

Then one day she is a given a job that could make her a fortune. She’s to stop a coven summoning a demon and she’s to kill the entire coven. Only Piper really needs some information from the demon being summoned and so she waits a few seconds longer than she should and it all goes horribly wrong. All of a sudden Piper is on the receiving end of the might of her boss.

Piper is a really interesting character. She hates the supernatural and really hates magic. She’s strong, determined and fearless. She also has zero social skills and is all around unpleasant sometimes. She has big trust and anger issues too.

The world building is done slowly and cleverly. I sucked down each drop of information about Piper’s backstory eagerly and woven into that backstory was careful world building.

The plot was fast paced, with brief interludes as we got to know Piper and Nathalie, Piper’s unwelcome witchy sidekick. I really loved Nathalie, I know I’m going to really enjoy getting to know her more as the series progresses as she has a lot of hidden depths that have been barely touched on during this first book.

The book is intriguing and I think the budding friendship between Piper and Nathalie will be interesting to watch too as Nathalie seems determined to teach Piper how to engage with society!

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Review: Chaos Reigning (Consortium Rebellion Series Book 3) by Jessie Mihalik

Chaos Reigning by Jessie Mihalik
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Saving The Galaxy

I’d probably give this book an overall rating of 4.5 stars if I could.

This review was based on listening to the book via audible and as such has references to the narration as well as to the story.

This is the third book in the series and has the same narrator as the first two. My same comments about her narration stand for this book as for the others. Emily Woo Zeller is a competent and natural narrator, but her male voices drive me nuts. She tries to make the male voices too deep for her natural range and she just ends up sounding strangled. Apart from that mild annoyance I really enjoy her reading style.

This book follows shortly after the second book in the series and focuses on Catrina, or Cat as she prefers to be known to her friends and family. Cat is the youngest in the family and plays up to the stereotypical spoilt baby of the family role. As with her older sisters she is playing a role for the benefit of the family. Sometimes the role is so convincing she almost believes it herself. She plays the social airhead who cares more about pretty dresses than body armour but she is also sweet and kind to those around her. She is often overlooked and she sort of likes it that way.

When Cat decides that she needs to get information from one of the lower houses to find proof that they were involved in her brother’s kidnapping, her older sister Bianca steps in and asks Alex and Aoife, two friends of Locke and Ian to accompany her, with Alex posing as her date and Aoife as her bodyguard. This is the start of a series of adventures for Cat, that stretch her confidence and ability to their limits.

I really liked Cat. She’s a fun character with hidden depths. She young, lively and intelligent. She’s also brave and determined, with a definite bossy streak.

Alex is a perfect foil for Cat. He’s handsome, confident, skilled and adept at falling into any role required. He and Cat have some big fights but they are mainly about her safety, and he is sweetly supportive. They also have some very spicy scenes, which mainly come towards the end of the book.

I don’t know if there are any more of the books in this series but I will be keeping an eye out because I really would like to know what happens to all the characters and their plans for the future. It’s definitely an HEA ending, but it could easily be changed to a HFN if the author wanted to carry on with this universe.

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Review: Hunting Isla (Black Mountain Mates Series Book 1) by Grace McGinty

Hunting Isla by Grace McGinty
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Easy Entertaining Read

This was a fun bite-sized book. I really enjoyed meeting Isla and the guys and the story was told with Grace McGinty’s usual flair and taste for humour and heat.

Isla is a 17 year old girl who went into foster care after living on the streets, for several years. She has four friends, three guys who share an apartment and Cara who introduced her to them. One night Cara comes to Isla and begs her to leave, giving her a car and a suitcase with some cash. Isla trusts her friend and runs, only to find something in the back seat she wasn’t expecting.

Isla is a strong and determined young woman with a kind and compassionate side. She loves deeply and gives her loyalty completely when she does give it.

The guys, Axel, Archer and Wyatt are fantastic characters, as well, and I really enjoyed getting to know them. For a novella, this author creates and conveys characters exceedingly well, as often with this format the characters lose a little of their resonance.

The plot was fairly straight forward, though imaginative and a little different, and I really enjoyed working my way through the book to find out what happened next.

If you are looking for a great quick distraction then I recommend this book. It’s pure escapism and you will enjoy it.

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Review: Broken Loyalty (Jacky Leon Series Book 3) by K N Banet

Broken Loyalty by Kristen Banet
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I Love This Werecat

Jacky Leon is awesome. I love her. She’s definitely one of my favourite UF characters at the moment. She’s strong, fierce, loving and kind, even if she is social awkward and prefers to be alone (mostly). During the course of the last couple of books we’ve seen loner Jacky begin to reach out to her werecat family and make friends with Carey and her family.

Jacky’s family has decided that she needs to free up her time to work on her Werecat duties and have sent her two humans to work the bar for her, that came from families who have been in service to her family for generations. On top of that she’s been getting strange werecats popping in and out of her territory and not hanging about. It’s all driving her mad, but at least she’s still got time with Carey and her family, even if she’s worried about their safety with the strange werecats around.

This feels like a transition book, where Jacky starts to come to terms with her place in werecat society. She has a place within her werecat family and it is at the top of the food chain. We also see her start to bond more with her family as she begins to deal with some of her siblings who have traditionally held themselves back from her.

She starts to look at her long life and how she wants it to look like. She needs to find ways of passing the years and learn ways of staying unsuspicious to the humans as she continues to stay the same age.

Jacky and Heath are also very drawn to each other. Their attraction has been building from the start and their friendship is starting to fray under the strain.

It’s a great book that deals with guilt and vengeance, violence and affection. It’s a book of contrasts and complexity and I loved every page of it. Ms Banet can write the heck out of an Urban Fantasy book and this story demonstrates that. I cannot wait for the next book in this series, but I’m probably going to have to because it’s not the only series she’s writing. Ah well, I’ll get to do a re-read when it comes out (yay).

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