-
[spotify id=”spotify%3Atrack%3A5m1SWA6pLyPOplbabRixh6&view=coverart” width=”540″ height=”620″ /]Soundtrack to Innocent: The Innocent Auction by Victoria Sue
-
“Ever heard of the rule of three? he shouts as we run.
“No!”
“If you save somebody’s life three times, their life belongs to you. You saved my life today, that makes once. Save it twice more an I’m all yers.”Moira Young
-
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeInPhXR4Gk?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]
-
Hearty – Yuko Yoshida
You lie. This is how you get through life without bumps. This is Honma’s skill. One day, while attending a university group meetup, he meets a student by the name of Ikai. He takes an interest in the serious and honest Ikai and decides to make him his next plaything and initiates contact. Suspicious, Ikai sets a one-month time limit for them to go out?
I remained unconvinced.
-
Tyack & Frayne: Tinsel Fish – Harper Fox
Christmas in a Cornish seaside town, bright lights and a hot new romance to ward off the winter storms… What could be finer? But Gideon and Lee’s first festive season together is shockingly interrupted when Lee tries to rid a client’s home of a malevolent presence. The ritual goes wrong, and in its aftermath Lee is strangely altered. As well as dealing with the changes in his lover, Gideon has a sinister thread to follow, linking the haunted house with disappearances among the homeless people of Falmouth.
Can love withstand what looks like a case of possession? As the darkest night of the year comes down, Gideon finds himself locked in a battle to restore his lover’s soul.
Someday, I’ll go to London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Cornwall and all these places I have read about and make a pilgrimage to sites mentioned in books like Camlet Moat, Gretna Green or a desolate moor.
The second book of the Tyack and Frayne series had Lee attempt to do a sort of cleansing and ended up not being himself. The result was a riotous scene where he picked a fight at a restaurant and ended up being hauled away like a sack of potatoes by Gideon. That was the best and one of the very few highlights of the book for me. The rest of the book was flat and uninteresting but those into steam would be glad that Lee and Gid had a lot of smexy time together.
Another thing of note is the appearance of Gideon’s brother Ezekiel and Lee ‘s meeting with Gideon’s parents. There was also a nice follow up on the Kemp kid’s situation and Isolde had more page time but all of these were not enough to save the book. I think I couldn’t be arsed to read the rest of the series anymore but a visit to Cornwall is still in order.
Rating:
2 Stars – it’s a struggle to finish the damn book
Soundtrack: Faded from the Winter
Artist: Iron & Wine
Album: The Creek Drank the Cradle(source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18949069-tinsel-fish)
-
[spotify id=”spotify%3Atrack%3A36azM4d8dGME4vM9p8Oz0U&view=coverart” width=”540″ height=”620″ /]Soundtrack to Tyack & Frayne: Tinsel Fish by Harper Fox
-
You don’t have to be psychic to end up knowing things you were a lot happier not knowing.
Jordan Castillo Price -
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ2DrLqqtwA?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=375]
-
Mikazuki Kottouhinten no Kaban Neko – Tokoro Kemeko
Mimori, one who lacks socialization skill, is dragged by a suspicious man, Tsukimiya one day on the street as he finds himself becoming the storekeeper of an antique shop. But, why is his body reacting to the scent of incense in the shop, one that is said to be the inheritance of the Tsukimiya family?!
Ugh! This is terrible! Things were introduced and left unexplained. The couple had no chemistry and the romance was very unconvincing. I say skip this one
-
The Community: Insight – Santino Hassell
Growing up the outcast in an infamous family of psychics, Nate Black never learned how to control his empath abilities. Then after five years without contact, his estranged twin turns up dead in New York City. The claim of suicide doesn’t ring true, especially when a mysterious vision tells Nate it was murder. Now his long-hated gift is his only tool to investigate.
Hitching from his tiny Texas town, Nate is picked up by Trent, a gorgeous engineer who thrives on sarcasm and skepticism. The heat that sparks between them is instant and intense, and Nate ends up trusting Trent with his secrets—something he’s never done before. But once they arrive in the city, the secrets multiply when Nate discovers an underground supernatural community, more missing psychics, and frightening information about his own talent.
Nate is left questioning his connection with Trent. Are their feelings real, or are they being propelled by abilities Nate didn’t realize he had? His fear of his power grows, but Nate must overcome it to find his brother’s killer and trust himself with Trent’s heart.
My first Santino Hassell book sadly didn’t blow me away. For the most part, it felt like nothing was happening. What saved the book was the awesome voice acting and the dialogue. Hassell wrote some of the most natural sounding dialogues I have ever come across with and Greg Bordeaux did an outstanding job acting them out. It felt like I was listening to actual conversations between real people when Nate and Trent were talking. Chase’s emotional outburst was delivered in the most gut-wrenching clenched teeth delivery ever and with these, I would have gladly given the book 5 stars.
However, there is much left to be desired. Insight is the first book of The Community series and it introduces Nate Black from the notorious Black family, all psychics and all slightly unhinged. Nate works in a liquor store where he first met Trent. The attraction was instantaneous which would have worked had this part been explained a little more. All throughout the book, Trent was just this highly intelligent supportive friend/boyfriend figure and not much else. The chemistry between him and Nate worked for me somehow but it would have been great if Trent had been more fleshed out.
The story was part mystery, part romance and mostly paranormal thriller. Nate received visions of his brother’s death in New York and he set out to hitchhike with Trent all the way to the city. There he met the members of Theo’s band and Evolution’s staff, a club for queer psychics where he discovered The Community, an organization that supposedly takes in and assists disenfranchised psychics like his brother. Soon he noticed the suspicious and unsavory side of The Com and tried to uncover how all of these are related to Theo’s death. These parts involved a lot of talks and explanations about The Com and psychics in general and not much action so it was a bit of a drag. There were a lot of cool powers mentioned and I was over-expecting some awesome shounen anime type battles but only a few of these powers were seen in action so meh.
It was also easy to guess who’s who and what’s what so the big reveal was not as shocking as it’s suppose to be. However, Jasper wins as the creepiest supervillain of the series even though we haven’t met him in person yet and I can’t wait for the showdown between him and Chase (book 3 maybe?).
I will tag this one as a case of first book syndrome and hope that Holden’s and Chase’s books fare much better.
Rating:
2.5 Stars – far from hate but not quite a likeSoundtrack: Instant Crush
Artist: Daft Punk feat. Julian Casablancas
Album: Random Access Memory(source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30364791-insight)
