Skip to content

Tag: I love this book

I Love This Book(s)

Posted in Uncategorized

I’ve never hidden the fact that I’m a total fangirl weirdo when it comes to the stories written by Leanna Renee Hieber. I’ve posted about her Strangely Beautiful series, but she’s also written the Magic Most Foul series, The Eterna FilesThe Spectral City and the Dark Nest Chronicles

I have to admit, I haven’t read Dark Nest Chronicles yet, but that didn’t cause me any trouble reading her new series set in the same world. Time Immemorial is a trilogy of novellas that tie all of Hieber’s tales together with a hell of a concept: her starship captain, Liz Marlowe, is living numerous lives in various time periods, concurrently. As she bops between various lifetimes, interacting with characters from Hieber’s other works, Liz is accompanied by a friend who has reincarnated over and over, interacting with Liz’s parallel past-present lives.

In other words, Hieber has written a series of novellas about a kind of Clara-Oswald-Kwisatz-Haderach who ties the Hieberverse together in the space opera universe she co-created with Thom Truelove. So, gaslamp space opera?

In other, other words: you’ve never read anything like this.

the silhouette of a woman in profile against the background of a ring of blue light and black, starry space beyond. The text reads: Time Immemorial, a Dark Nest adventure, Leanna Renee Hieber with Thom Truelove

Lizzie Marlowe had as many missions as she had lives.

A masterful tale of multiple timelines; one woman, split between four lives…

Elizabeth Marlowe has always known she was different—even from others with psychic abilities. She doesn’t merely glimpse past or future lives, she lives multiple lives concurrently. She is L’Bet, a druid priestess holding out against the Roman invasion. She is Lizzie, a headstrong Victorian plumbing the depths of both science and Spiritualism. She is Beth, a Royal Air Force pilot fighting in World War II. And she is Captain Liz, a starship commander forging a path through the stars.

But being different comes with danger. Liz is determined to make it on her own, hiding her unusual ability from all but one trusted companion in each life. Yet, she is haunted by an ominous warning from her old mentor, Saire: Someday they’ll fear you. People fear what they cannot understand, and it is only a matter of time before those with psychic powers are targeted for their difference. When that happens, Liz will have to choose between her life of independence and saving the community she rejected long ago.

Return to the world of Leanna Renee Hieber’s Dark Nest trilogy with the start of a new series that spans eras and galaxies!

 

The silhoutte of a woman with her hand on her hip, in front of a purple ring of light and dark space with stars behind her. The text reads: Time Inescapable, A Dark Nest adventure, Leanna Renee Hieber and Thom Truelove

A tale of psychic powers and those who fear them; one woman, stalked by an enemy across the threads of time…

Captain Liz Marlowe has just learned of a horrific Homeworld plot to eradicate the Psychically Augmented population. Though her crew managed to rescue one survivor from the lonely desolation of space, the danger isn’t over yet. In fact, confidential documents from the Homeworld council reveal that Liz is in even more danger than she thought. For Liz has a power that may be the key to erasing the psychic population once and for all … the power of existing throughout time.

Elizabeth Marlowe is aware of living in four eras at once. And in each life—from druidic priestess to starship captain—she nurtures a special connection to the threads of power that crisscross the planet: ley lines. In times of danger she has always been able to draw on the power of these lines and hide herself within them. But recently something has soured the Earth’s beautiful music. Elizabeth is haunted by an eerie dissonance that warns of an encroaching enemy, who seems to be pursuing her throughout each life. And she cannot hide forever. Elizabeth will have to open her heart to new allies and prepare to confront her greatest enemy if there is to be any hope for the survival of her people—and herself.

 

The third installment releases in July, only on Scribd, from Bryant Street Publishing, but you can get the first two now. And if you’re more into audiobooks, good news: Leanna is a real-deal actress (which is a little weird when you know her IRL and she just randomly shows up in the Will Ferrel movie you’re watching) and you can hear her narrating all three titles, also available only on Scribd!

I Love This Book

Posted in Uncategorized

My Kindle with the cover of Take Me Home by Scarlett Parrish displayed. The cover shows a slightly out-of-focus couple kissing. The kindle is lying on a tartan background.

Ahhhh. You know that feeling when you read a book and you’re like, this book was written specifically for me?

Full disclosure: This book actually was written specifically for me. Knowing how much I crush on late-night talk show host Craig Ferguson, Scarlett Parrish set out to write me a dirty story that for weeks was simply titled Fergporn. I waited patiently as she sent me maddening updates, all the while promising that she was nearly done. But the god damn thing kept getting longer. What started out as a novella with a target of 40k words about a comedian banging his ex during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival grew and grew and grew…into an incredibly touching and tragic story about what-ifs and could-have-beens.

Please excuse the really ridiculous gushing you’re about to read here. I am not going to give you an objective review at all. I’m just going to projectile vomit my feelings at you and those feelings are achingly bittersweet and shockingly horny.

Afton Collier is a recently divorced actress who’s returned to her beloved home city, Edinburgh, to nurse her broken heart. Unfortunately, it’s also the city where her heart first got broken in a toxic relationship with Glenn Peterson, who’s moved on to become a talk show host in America. Twenty years after Glenn—”Oosh,” as Afton remembers him not so fondly from their drugs-and-sex fueled past—disappeared from her life without a word, he returns to Edinburgh to perform a one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. For reasons Afton refuses to truthfully acknowledge to herself, she invites him to stay at her in the apartment she views as a palace of her marital failures.

Now, this whole set up could easily have turned into a “and there was only one bed!” situation. It also could have fallen into the trap of “oh my god, just talk to each other!” due to the internal nature of their conflict. Instead, the abrupt, unresolved ending to their romantic relationship and their two decades of keeping tabs on each other from afar makes you fully sympathize with Afton’s inability to disclose the painful aftermath of Glenn’s departure from her life.

So, those paragraphs alone should have sold you, right?

Wait. There’s more.

Afton Collier shares her author’s proud love of Embra and its history, which winds in and out of Afton and Glenn’s personal history like a parallel love story. From memories of Oosh quoting the Burns poem for which Afton was named, to the stark reality of managing recovery in a culture proud of their alcohol consumption. The land that comforts Afton is part of what drove Glenn away; you feel the pull between her love of her homeland and her resentment toward Glenn for leaving without her.

As a first-person POV heroine, Afton wrestles not only with the abrupt end to her marriage but also the unresolved issues that have kept Glenn on her mind for years. One of these (mild spoiler ahead) is the abortion she had at age nineteen, after Glenn, then thirty, fled to America. Afton’s feelings about the pregnancy she ended are complex; though she knows she made the right choice and doesn’t regret it, she does regret that she had to make the choice at all. I’ve never seen a romance novel present abortion in such a nuanced way, where the heroine is allowed to be relieved and fully comfortable with having an abortion while still wishing the circumstances could have given her another choice.

Glenn is everything I love in a romance novel hero. Not just because I have a thing for Scottish late-night hosts, but because I have a thing for damaged men who struggle with their own vulnerability. Glenn knows what he did to Afton is unforgivable; he spends as much time apologizing to her for the past as he does putting his foot in his mouth in the present. His tendency to be “on” instead of genuine is painfully relatable, especially when it fails him.

Now, let’s discuss the sex. This is a book about a heroine who’s nearly forty and a hero who’s almost fifty. They’ve had active sex lives and aren’t shy with each other once they decide to act on their rekindled attraction. Their chemistry and banter outside the bedroom made the easy reconnection of their intimacy completely natural and a heartbreakingly sweet contrast to the emotional intimacy left unresolved for decades.

The longing and the angst and the relatable drama pulled from realistic circumstances despite the fame and notoriety of main characters working in a highly visible industry makes Take Me Home not just the best romance novel of 2020, but possibly the best I’ve read in my life.

Take Me Home by Scarlett Parrish is available in e-book on AmazonBarnes & Noble, iBooks, and Kobo.

A stone etched with the quote, "Alone amongst the mountains a man can have dignity. -Marak"