Category Archives: reviews

Ever After by Kim Harrison

Holy smokes batman, how can there only be two books left. I don’t know where to start, with this installment. I love this book, and I must say I think it’s the best one yet. The question is how to write this review without putting spoilers in it – I think I’m up for the challenge.

In Ever After we see the character dynamics change. At the end of A Perfect Blood we saw the dynamics start to change and now we see the fruits of KH’s labors. The character dynamics are changing because KH’s characters are growing up. Now just because our favorite characters are growing up doesn’t mean they have lost their quirks. On the contrary their quirks are alive and well and still causing issues.

As we know from A Perfect Blood Rachel has gotten over her issues she had with Trent but she still thinks about the reasons that had her hating him before. It’s refreshing seeing Rachel and Trent becoming friends, learning they can trust each other and not completely close themselves off like they’ve done with others. We can really see that as Ivy doesn’t have that big of a role in this book. As I said character dynamics are changing.

Ever After is a transition book but not like most. Most transitions are slow and kind of boring, this one is anything but. For the most part there is a lot of action, and don’t let the title confused you, we’re not talking about an ever after we’re talking about the Ever After. It’s time for Rachel to fix that which she broke – and then some. Rachel is put to the test and while the test is trying and emotional Rachel learns what she’s made of. Now I said her test was trying and emotional, its going to be trying and emotional for the reader as well. Once KH said no ones safe and she wasn’t lying. While this might be a transition book we will love and hate characters, events and the suffering Rachel goes through. Be prepared to cry.

Fixing the Ever After is going to take strength, faith, love, trust and patients some of which Rachel has every little of. Don’t be surprised when/if Rachel blows off some steam. Some people just deserve what they have coming. I say that because a few distasteful characters show their evil ugly heads in this book. Characters that I’d really like to see get killed off. Now I say that and some of the best scenes have them in it.

As I said above be prepared to cry but also be prepared to laugh – and always route for the underdog. In this case the underdog is Rachel, and she’s going to bring a smile to your face, I’m sure.

KH really out did herself in Ever After, and don’t get me wrong she’s always had great one-liners or Jenks and his antics. This time however has more than usual. There are one-liners and whole scenes that will keep you laughing. I even had to go back and read a few to make sure I read the whole passage correctly and didn’t miss anything. There are characters who’ve never really had a one-liner and its adding to their development, in a great way.

With all this growth and development however there is one thing that is certain and would be even if KH hadn’t said the series was coming to an end. You can really see the end getting close in this book and as I stated before we have two books remaining. No one but KH knows what the future holds for Rachel and the gang, but I can tell you this – its going to be a wild ride if Ever After proves anything. So sit back relax and enjoy the ride, book 11 has to offer. Its going to seem like a short one but I promise it isn’t. And remember I’ll be with you through the next two books. Thirteen will be our lucky number, or a sad one. Until next time dream big and read often.


Review of A Perfect Blood

Okay so I finally finished reading A Perfect Blood it took a little longer than I wanted but since I had the substitutes teacher class I’m sure you understand. I finished the novel last night and I wrote the review today. I’ve finished writing out my review now I just have to type it up, send it over to PBD and post it here for you. I hope to have it up tomorrow but it maybe Thursday.


Raining in Hell

No Charleston isn’t hell, its just been two of those days. And it’s raining today. I’ll start with yesterday. It was a half day spent at a Military Medical Clinic trying to get my refill of meds. One person would have it was in so I could get and the pharmacy would say it’s not. This took hours and I went to Flyboy’s appointment and finally a little before 11 my meds were ready. The positive part was I got to have lunch with Flyboy. Though before meeting back up with him I stopped at “the club” for a hot chocolate. I ask you how can anyone mess up a hot chocolate? I’m not sure myself but this lady did twice. First she gave me a cafe latte with hazelnut, I don’t drink coffee, it smells good to me but I want to gag when I take a sip. When I take it back she tells me she thought I said that. I said “I want a non-fat sugar free hazelnut hot chocolate”. Again I’m not sure how to confuse that but okay. She remakes it and this time she has so much hazelnut that the hazelnut is all you can taste. Mind you I get this all the time from Starbucks, and even when they are out of sugar free hazelnut and they use the one with sugar the hazelnut is not over powering. I actually wondered if she put chocolate in the drink. I threw that one out.

When I got home from lunch which was good, I tried to edit, yeah the pups weren’t having that. They’d been locked up all morning and wanted attention. It wasn’t until 4 that I got a paragraph edited and after that nothing until 9. My day was shot and not much to show for it.

Today is raining like I said, and I’m not sure how much will get done, its so dreary that I don’t feel like doing anything except read a book. Which I have one I’m reading for the Dolls. It seems never ending, I’m on page 171 (I think) and there are 356 pages (I think) I know the pages numbers are close but may not be spot on. It’s not my normal read but that’s okay, at least its different in how it’s set up.

Well Jax is sitting here staring at me to play attention to him and I need breakfast, so I’ll go and see you tonight “if” I got any work done.

Before I go, there’s a story I’ve been thinking of recreating, but I have to re-read the original and the Grimm versions… I’m thinking of rewriting a Beauty and the Beast story. What do you guys think?


Migraines, Headaches & Reviews

Thursday and Friday I was working on my review of the The Help. Thursday I was looking at the negative reviews so I could get a better idea on what I’ve been trying to say in my review. It helped, and on Friday I started rewriting my review. I got pretty far and was hopeful that I’d finish it on Saturday, that so didn’t happen. Saturday morning came to me with one massive migraine from Hell. In fact it was so bad that it made me sick all day. There were a few times I could lift my head off the pillow and not have to get sick thankfully so Flyboy made me stay in bed most of the day. As you can imagine. He worked on the house, while I was in bed. One of the times I couldn’t sleep and just laid in bed I posted the illustrations so you guys could see them.

Yesterday I worked a little bit more on the review but I still had that ugly headache though it wasn’t as bad as it had been on Saturday. Today I worked on it as well, the headache is still with me but its more like an ache today than anything else, I have taken meds all three days, but they aren’t really helping. My review is like four pages journal pages not notebook pages, ;) .

This week I start two new workshops and next week as I end one workshop I’ll begin another one so a lot of things starting as October is coming to an end. Halloween is right around the corner and I’m not sure I’m in the mood for it yet. The weather is right but since I’m having so many headaches I can’t get in the mood.

Well that’s all I have for tonight, especially with the World Series on, Flyboy is a Rangers fan. We did grow up in Dallas what can I say.


Back from a long weekend

This past weekend I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to for two days I have a migraine but Flyboy did get me to do a little work around the house. Saturday we went out to a nursery to find some plants for the back yard. Flyboy and I found so many different plants that we liked that picking the right ones was difficult but we finally picked the plants for around our screened in porch and a Princess Holly to go in front of our satellite. The one downside to being at the nursery was that it didn’t help the  migraine that had started while on the way. Smells are one of my triggers, not that all smells trigger migraines for me just some, and I never know which smells will make my head pound even more.  Granted spending about an hour at the nursery probably didn’t help.

We did make it home to see the UT vs OU game, though we had to fast forward through the commercials. Yeah I know the game sucked for us Texas fans so as you can imagine Flyboy and I worked on the house a little. Though he did have me take medicine so I would sleep. Then Flyboy planted our Holly bush and we started unpacking some boxes and put up the paintings. How the house doesn’t echo as much. Thankfully. Sunday was much of the same unpacking, and of course the Cinny game, and we own. And again I had a migraine, gotta love them… not. Monday Flyboy had off since it’s a federal holiday and I didn’t have a migraine (Yea!!!) We did more to put the house together, our closet is put together finally, he made me unpack my bags now I can find most of my clothes, the ones that aren’t in boxes out in the garage. lol Okay moving on from the boring part of the weekend and on to what will be happening today and this week hopefully fingers crossed.

So the plan for this week since I found the box with my office books is to type up all of my poems so they are finally in the computer. This way I can start sending them off to contest, and maybe get my work out there through them. I’ll be starting on that tonight. My next project is to work on my review of The Help and hopefully finish it. Because its such a unique book I’m having a hard time finishing my review.

Next on my list of things to do this week is cooking… as some of you know October and Halloween are my favorite time of year and Flyboy asked me to make some homemade apple cider. So I’ve been looking for a recipe, making it this week. I’ll also be making my Witches Brew and Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies. Yes, I found my cookbooks and I can’t wait to use them in my new kitchen. Okay so I’m off to work on my poetry now, I’ll see you soon.


Articles, reviews & a bath

I wrote this months articles for the Paperback Dolls, there’s two of them. There not every long but I think you’re going to enjoy them. I sent them in tonight. I also sent in my review for Blood Work, Kim Harrison’s graphic novel. So be on the look out for those over at Paperback Dolls. Tomorrow the Doll have Ghost Story posted so stop by and check out my review and see what else the doll have going on.

This weekend I’ll be working on my review of The Help and hopefully I’ll be able to read a few more stories that I’ve been trying to read. The new Castle novel just came out and I still need to finish book two. I’ve been reading Carrie Vaughn’s short stories and I’ll be writing a review about the book as a whole. So far the book is pretty good. Plus we have so many new books coming out I can’t wait. ;)

Now why I said articles, reviews & a bath well as you know Flyboy and I have Jax, our puppy we adopted after Artemis passed away, well today he decided to jump into the pond behind our house. There were geese in the pond and he wanted to chase them, so he jumped in, got all wet and stinky and now needs a bath. Holly thankfully didn’t jump in but she did scare the geese away. Pups what to do with them. So needless to say Jax hasn’t been allowed to do much today since he’s dirty. I swear I have a two year old.


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