Reviews by Louise VanderVliet

B-
Eternal Demon

Most paranormals these days are a part of a series. That makes this job particularly difficult. The books you need to read that you are thrust into the middle of a series sometimes means you don't go into the story with all the background information you need. In the case of Eternal Demon, that mean ...

B-
Unbound

Anthology
Anthologies are tough. Especially when the short stories are a continuation of a series. I usually try to avoid them because the romances are usually rushed and the ones that are a part of a series can leave an uninitiated reader confused. But for once, I took a chance and it was on the anthology Un ...

B-
Magick by Moonrise

What do you get when you mix the magic and mystery of the Fey version of Camelot with Queen Mary of England and the Spanish Inquisition? Well, I had hoped a great story, but I felt that the contradictions of the enchantment of Camelot and the word at the cusp of Enlightenment became just too deep a ...

B-
The Earl is Mine

It is difficult to start a highly anticipated story without having some expectations for what the author will bring to it. While I tried not to set the bar too high or make assumptions about how much Brady-centric love Kieran Kramer would include in her second effort at reimaging the family, I was d ...

C+
Dark Secrets

Sometimes a short novella can help you to scratch just the right itch when you are looking for something to read. That was my hope with Dark Secrets by Shona Husk, and in some ways, it succeeded. However, it was not without its flaws. Haidyn Mast has the magic talent of being able ...

B-
Beauty Awakened

Sometimes writers change their voices. They are human. They go through change and of course it can affect their writing. In the case of Beauty Awakened I am going to give Showalter the benefit of the doubt that her voice isn’t changing, but that she just experimented here with a whole different ty ...

C+
Froggy Style

Every now and then there comes a book that is really hard to review. For me, this time around, I've found that book. While there are a lot of positives about Froggy Style, in the end, it just gets way too tiresome. Jean-Michel La Grenouille is the Frog Prince. As a child, he was cur ...

B-
Winterblaze

This book took me a while to pick up. I had read the previous in the Darkest London series and was holding a serious grudge against the hero. Though that eventually wore off, Winterblaze took the series into turns that I am not sure I liked, though in the end I did enjoy seeing the leads in the inst ...

B
Her Knight's Quest

There is a difference between a series and a trilogy. Series books can each stand alone. In this instance, I would say that the Warriors of the Mist is a trilogy and they are best enjoyed together. Though I recommend this book, I do it with the advice that it is read after the first in the series, M ...

A-
Shadow’s Claim

When you have a long running series, it must be easy to get into a rut in terms of plot and the way the characters come together. I think this is especially true in Paranormal Romances where you build a world and work within a defined set of rules. That is why it is so impressive that Kresley Cole c ...