Debbie's Spurts

AAAAAAAAAaaaarrrrggghhhhhHHHH!  Cliffhanger ending.  *No review for you.

The TBR pile is just … useless.

I have a few books I don’t want to start where the previous books in series have absolutely wow’ed me. But I keep putting off starting because then they will be over. There’s a point in this pandemic where I think I might need them.

In the meantime, I did wolf through Smoke Bitten by Patricia Briggs. 

Then I tried a few lighter fare, Kindle Unlimited freebies and assorted friend recommendations that I couldn’t finish. Some were awful and some I think I just wasn’t in the mood.

One of my huge roadblocks is that I really miss FictFact.com. That’s where I really kept track of the TBR. Could see series at a glance. Had a new release calendar to alert me when new in my series came out.

Another friend just finishing a series asked for recommendations for new series; that made me mentally go through some I remembered.

Somehow I missed two new releases in Abby Cooper Psychic Eye. Probably because not my usual fair as the paranormal or psychic elements don’t play that huge a part. More chick lit and cozy mystery.

I think the two new to me Abby books might suit. Abby gives a shit about people, always tries to help. Has actual relationships with more than the lust interest. Often “help” looks more like something Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz would do — but that’s part of the fun.

Huh?

No way can this be a series end.  Okay, not exactly a cliffhanger ending.  But absolutely the start of a whole new plot twist.

This one resolved nothing and did not move story along at all.  Okay, Kincaid learned a bit of a new twist to her powers.  New characters introduced (including a potential love interest assuming she really has moved on from last beau).  Change of scenery.

This is almost like a filler episode or a bit of travel before returning to "meanwhile back at the ranch."

This series tweaked my interest because was not same-old-same-old and seemed to be building nicely.  Now it detoured and seems to have put her back in same place as end of book 2 with that head police dude even madder at her.  The end?

Paranormal romance, contemporary setting.  Very likable characters.  An author I like.

But still a DNF for me.  I think it was too easy a romance or just too clear where everything was headed.  Another day, I might have liked and finished it.

Just as I was about to resort to actually doing dishes or labeling more stuff (don't ask) -- UPS driver came with a wonderful care package.

Been forever since I read a new Heinlein.  Bought this one hardcover although usually do ebooks.

Is it just the books I looked at, or has booklikes now also lost the amazon UK purchase links?

To help with cabin fever, Big Library Read is starting early.

Yay!  Finally the program is back up offering a monthly free ebook from publisher TOR (Macmillan).  Download before 11:59 PM ET, March 20th, 2020 from here.

Like last year, they seemed to stall the program the first few months of the year.  There's also a booklikes bookclub to read these freebies at TOR Monthly free ebook book club.

Publisher page for more info on the book is here.

Soon I guess I'll be scrolling through looking for all those TOR releases I couldn't get from overdrive!

As the "official" BookLikes group has been swamped by unchecked waves of spam, I've decided to create a replacement group for us to address the issues that we'd otherwise post in the "official" group:

BookLikes Admin Issues

Since it's member-managed, it of course won't cause any issues to actually be fixed.  But let's face it, with BL admin AWOL, that's not happening anyway -- and this will at least give us a new place to discuss issues and voice grievances.

Most importantly, being a member-administered group, this will be a group where we will be able to keep out the spammers.

In light of this, it would be helpful if there were several other administrators besides me, so if you're interested, please let me know.

My hope is that we'll eventually be able to dry out the playing field that the spammers have found in the "official" group.  There hardly seems any point for any of us to remain in that group but for the few threads that remain useful to us, and ultimately it makes more sense to me to move those threads to a new group that we ourselves can control and leave the "official" group behind once and for all.  That way, we'd not only remove thread views from the spammers own statistics -- we'd also be spared seeing their threads in our notifications and at the top of our own dashboards.  I don't think this will entirely get rid of the spammers (nor does removing them from our "friends" lists, after all), but at least it will be one more way of making BL at least a bit less welcoming to them.

To get us started, I've replicated the five most important ongoing threads from the "official" group in the new group:

* Questions

* Bug Reports

* Spammer Reports

* Feature Requests

* BL Members' Non-BookLikes Blog URLs

If you want to add any further threads, feel free to do so -- just please keep it to threads that are of interest to the community as a whole.

Happy blogging all and have a great weekend!

Hope all of you and your loved ones are well -- and being sensible. I'm well and grateful I am not having to go to work or school--that I have choices. Not panicked and so far not that worse than other flu seasons (outside of the tp hoarders and public schools here refusing to close).

Back in Kentucky there were many flu seasons I thought bad enough schools should have closed. Despite the strain on parents and caregivers, I'm relieved the kids I know are home.

I got out a bit to get stuff like eggs and to just be out and about so wouldn't feel housebound. Albertsons had a cart shortage and folk started sharing. No tp like everywhere else but maybe those folk are all staying home to price gouge it on the internet. The ones that were out seemed normal although of course harried and tired; one old lady was shaky and strangers were running about getting things for her. When she was helped to checkout, the Albertsons employees had her sit down and helped her out to car.

I'm now staying home for a while with new books that dropped ( "Honor Lost" by Rachel Caine and Ann Aguirre, "Smoke Bitten" by Mercy Thompson, sadly no new one from recent widower Jim C. Hines ...), some rain that means I have a few weeds to pull, still more unpacking, housework, and plenty of needlework I should be finishing. *gasp* I might even get through my email and snail mail.

I think this series is more interesting to me in the concept than the execution.

Written well and I may unfairly have rated because I really could not get into this character or buy into the ending which had a lot of personality changes happening suddenly.

“You seem to hold a lot of contempt for the Council, Ms. Jameson-Nightengale.”

 

“Contempt? No. Distrust? Sure. Alarm? Absolutely. Occasionally wake from nightmares of an apocalyptic hellscape where the Council has taken over and turned the human population into juice boxes—”

"Dick was wearing a tie. This was bad. This was very bad. This was a huge mistake, and we should all just go home."

"The head representative in Las Cruces? Lost a human intern. Just lost him somewhere in the office. And then tried to blame alien abduction."

This reader's personal opinion, ©2020, all rights reserved, not to be quoted, clipped or used in any way by goodreads, Google Play, amazon.com or other commercial booksellers* 

My library recommended book 2 of this series to me (they did not carry this one) which looked funny and appealed to me.  New to me author.  This one was reasonably priced on kindle when I was in the mood for a rom-com read so gave it a whirl.

The plot, until the ending, appealed.  Writing was okay if a bit on the stream of consciousness side.  I was always on the fence about the main character, partly because in places she really took some friendships for granted and was even nasty to friends.  I never got the romance; it was clear she was eventually mostly into the guy because he was rich.

The ending was abrupt and spoiled the read for me.  Not a cliffhanger.  Just kind of dropped out of nowhere that *boom* the end.  And all of a sudden everything heroine went through and felt in previous chapters got inexplicably reversed.

I'm now on the fence about borrowing the next book.  It could conceivably redeem the character and the abrupt ending (and would be free to borrow).  But, even before the abrupt ending this one didn't completely hook me.

*©2020.  All rights reserved except permission is granted to author or publisher (except Penumbra Publishing) to reprint/quote in whole or in part. I may also have cross-posted on Libib, LibraryThing, and other sites including retailers like kobo and Barnes and Noble. Posting on any site does not grant that site permission to share with any third parties or indicate release of copyright.  

Ratings scale used in absence of a booklikes suggested rating scale:

★★★★★ = All Time Favorite 
★★★★½ = Extraordinary Book. Really Loved It.
★★★★☆ = Loved It.
★★★½☆ = Really Liked.
★★★☆☆ = Liked.
★★½☆☆ = Liked parts; parts only okay. Would read more by author.
★★☆☆☆ = Average.   Okay. 
★½☆☆☆ = Disliked or meh? but kept reading in hopes would improve.
★☆☆☆☆ = Loathed It. Possibly DNF and a torturous read.
½☆☆☆☆ = So vile was a DNF or should have been. Cannot imagine anyone liking.  (Might also be just an "uploaded" word spew or collection that should not be dignified by calling itself a "published book." If author is going batshit crazy in the blogosphere over reviews -- I now know why they are getting bad reviews.  Or maybe author should take remedial classes for language written in until basic concepts like using sentences sink in. Is author even old enough to sign a publishing contract or do they need a legal guardian to sign for them?)