Lori Handeland

Originally posted on Tales to Tide You Over

Sometimes when I read two books in the same series within a short time, I start to see the writing patterns and the series becomes repetitive. That’s not the case with Lori Handeland, and I’m looking forward to reading the third. Though clearly building to a bigger climax for the series, Heat of the Moment is about a different place and focuses on different people than In the Air Tonight (the first book).

Becca and Owen have a history that’s a show more mess of good times and bad. He left ten years before, in part to free her from the consequences of his upbringing, but now he’s back. The connection is as strong as ever between them despite both wishing it weren’t at first.

Unlike the first book, I felt this love story was firmly integrated into the fantasy, though the whole series still reads more urban fantasy than paranormal romance to me (not a problem, though, because it’s a great series). Like the first, it had a couple scenes of explicit sex (contemporary romance level) but mostly the story is about two people who have loved each other since childhood trying to deny the connection while being forced together by bizarre circumstance.

It’s the last bit that makes their love story tied more closely into the urban fantasy story line. Owen knew she could hear animals when they were young, though he’s since dismissed that as imagination. He also grew up with a mentally unstable mother who was in and out of a mental hospital so he’s quick to dismiss odd events as a result of mental issues rather than accept the presence of magic. Crazy is his first impression, something Becca knows all too well. This makes her reluctant to explain even when pressed.

I also felt the fear and tension better in this one as things got dark and dangerous. What starts out as a curious event soon becomes worse and the suspense is tangible. In other words, while I had some small issues despite enjoying the first book, Heat of the Moment resolves all of those issues without reducing the strength of characters and story. The blending of magic with the world is smooth in a way that’s uncomfortably plausible as well.

There is only one twist I didn’t see the grounding for, and it saddened me for reasons I can’t explain without spoilers. However, it also proved something important in the world so I’ll give the weaker seeding a pass.

This is a series I don’t want to put down. I want to know the story of the last sister, and I want to know what’s going on with the overall arc as well. It’s not perfect, but it’s right in all the right ways with characters who become real as soon as they walk out on the page, especially Reggie, Owen’s bomb-sniffing military dog.

P.S. I received this title from the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review. show less

I really tried with this book. I read, I cringed, I put it down for awhile, I picked it back up, and then I read some more. I’ve gotten about halfway through at this point, and I really think it’s about time to throw in the towel. It's amazing how a bad book can become even worse. The only impending apocalypse that "Any Given Doomsday" prophesizes is the hopeful end of Lori Handeland's writing career. Toted on the cover as a New York Times bestselling author... I think they may have to show more make that print bigger if they expect to sell more copies. Then, of course, is the problem of people actually reading it and realizing the book is so poorly written it will give you a migraine.

Let me give you just one amazing example of this literary masterpiece. Note my sarcasm. On page 104, "Jimmy stood in the doorway and surveyed what appeared to be a mass murder. I got a pretty good idea what Jonestown had looked like. Except that there were no remnants of poison Flavor-Aid, just blood on blood and then, hey, more blood." That is not made up. It's an actual excerpt from the book. The premise is a true “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” knockoff which doesn’t even attempt to hide the fact that it’s… well, just plain bad. The main character, who in 150 pages I’ve come not to care about at all, is a psychic orphan who became a police officer who… I guess she got fired? Her partner died? She has an ex-boyfriend named Jimmy who cheated on her who is half vampire. He is also a DK, which stands for Demon Killer. Yeah. Not making this up people. Even though calling him a DK is clearly… well, just plain bad… she keeps doing it. She’s called him a DK or referenced DKs at least two dozen times. It’s almost caused me to throw the book out the window. I also don’t believe this woman was a police officer at all. Read the book and you’ll see. On second thought, don’t. Spare yourself the migraine.

I’m a little shocked and severely disappointed by the reviews I’ve read on LibraryThing commenting that the book is “not that bad” and is an overall good book but “lacks character development.” Guys, seriously. That was your biggest problem with this title? How about the fact that none of the characters react realistically to these situations at all. Granted, they are dealing with monsters and the like, but that’s no excuse for creating characters who have never dealt with anything that fantastic shrugging off the situations like they were no big deal. The book also does mention sexuality way too much. That has been brought up in the reviews, but really not enough. At times, it reads like a trashy romance novel. Emphasis on the trashy. I don’t care that the main character is horny. I guess you're supposed to because it's brought up in nearly every chapter. I don’t want to read about how she can feel a man’s junk rubbing up against her thigh. Sadly, these parts aren’t even well written. As a librarian, knowing books like this exist just make me plain sad. show less

I had limited expectations for this book after reading Handeland's Nightcreature series. While I enjoyed the werewolf books, they were simple romances at their core, late night snacks rather than five-course meals. I picked up Any Given Doomsday largely on a whim. I didn't even intend to read the book that night, but then I couldn't stop. The book just moves that fast.In Doomsday Handeland stretches her wings to craft a fuller tale, consisting of two chief elements: the romance and the show more thriller. I would say she satisfies on both counts. First, in the character Elizabeth Phoenix, Handeland creates an everywoman. Naturally, Elizabeth has plenty to say about life and a funny, sarcastic way to say it, but she has one trait that's woefully missing from many paranormal and romance heroines. She's endearingly self-deprecating, down to earth and just plain sympathetic, right down to her resignation when she learns she's gotta save the world. The reader doesn't have to grind teeth to tolerate her. Elizabeth's reactions to her insane world are genuine, and we learn about the baddies as she does. The device Handeland uses here is mostly dialogue, but there are no page-long monologues that begin with, "Magic is..." We read the explanations of the world's-folkloric-monsters-come-to-life (whoa, awesome idea) in between her conversations with the two leading men in this book, who are fleshed out as flawed men rather than fantasies put to writing (not that they couldn't be fantasies, ;). The way they are developed speaks to Handeland's skill. Elizabeth's differing relationships with these men is multi-layered, and we learn about them both through Elizabeth's memories and inner dialogue and even more interestingly, the character's opinions of each other. What's the term here, a dog fight? ;P Learning about these guys is interesting, one a powerful Navajo witch and the other a monster hunter (and her ex). One's slightly ruthless gamma, the other a lost-soul type. Naturally, we want to redeem both. *leer*In fact, for the first half or so of the book, I thought I was reading something along the lines of Rachel Caine's Ill Wind or perhaps a Buffy for Adults, complete with a deceased spirit guide who can only tell the heroine so much because rules are rules, a device as much a staple of storytelling as the haunted castle or "once upon a time." We learn about her world and her past relationships, the news in 30 seconds, right from the beginning of the novel where the action starts and from there we're mostly interested in Doomsday and what Elizabeth's gonna do about it. Then the romance begins. I won't give anything away, but I will say this: Handeland's not afraid to make her character sacrifice. Elizabeth goes through a lot to shape her character into a hero we can be confident will save our unworthy arses. There are some darker moments (I did say flawed men, didn't I?) but the reader gets the impression Handeland wants us to read the next book to learn the method to her madness. I just hope that Elizabeth's fun new sex-as-a-weapon habit doesn't become Anita Blake, if you catch my meaning. It was well-written and logical in the flow of events here, but, alone, that plot device may lend itself to abuse. No way to tell until we read the next book though. This is the first book, the first battle in the war, as Elizabeth says, and I will definitely be looking out for the second. show less

I picked up this trilogy hoping it would fill the Nora Roberts magical ladies trilogy space in my heart. It did not. Which, really, who but Nora is Nora, so there's that. The thing about books like this is that you have to like the tropes they're filled with, and you have to expect the pattern to be followed from book to book. I do and I do. But I also expect the author to do it well. This sounds like I'm condemning the entire trilogy and I'm not, nor am I insulting [a: Lori show more Handeland|17060|Lori Handeland|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1436902765p2/17060.jpg], an author I've read before and enjoyed quite a bit.

The first book [b: In the Air Tonight|9577671|In the Air Tonight (Shadow Force, #3)|Stephanie Tyler|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1288223365s/9577671.jpg|14464548] is about Raye, who can see and talk to ghosts. The main plot is about witches being murdered across the country, and Raye now being specifically targeted. The romance plot is with the out of town detective who has been investigating these murders. And the entertaining subplot is about the ghosts who need to move on. Raye's father and best friend play fairly big roles, and the out of town detective has connections to some of Handeland's other characters. This felt like a big, sprawling universe. It was entertaining and fun.

The second book [b: Heat of the Moment|6612675|In the Heat of the Moment|Kim Dare|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1247485009s/6612675.jpg|6806699] (and don't think I don't love these titles) is about Becca, another small town girl, this time a veterinarian who can communicate with animals. The main plot remains that of the murdered witches. The romance plot is with her teenaged boyfriend Owen who has returned, injured, from his military job along with his MWD Reggie. (Owen left because he "wasn't good enough" for Becca and still thinks that. I eat up that sort of plot with a spoon. Loved it.) The subplot was less distinct than the first book, having more to do with the main plot as it involves Owen's mother. But there's also some darling moments with Reggie and Becca being able to understand him, which made the book fun. There were, again, plenty of secondary characters involved, some good, some bad.

The third book [b: Smoke on the Water|1915401|Smoke on the Water|Brian Daley|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1434561190s/1915401.jpg|1917429] is about the third sister, Willow. When it opens she's a patient in a mental health facility, there because she had a vision of a man killing her, branding her, then setting her body on fire (as the witch killers have been doing) and when she saw that man she killed him first. Her only friend is Mary, the mother of Owen from book 2. The first half of this book overlapped book 2 and explained a lot; I enjoyed it even if it didn't seem to move the plot forward at all. The second half had Willow meeting her sisters and almost instantly accepting everything she'd been told about witches. The romance plot was with Sebastian--her psychologist--and see below for how much I hated that. There was no subplot. There were few other characters, so it was simple to know which ones were the witch hunters.

[Note: At 25% through the book the male protagonist (the love interest)--who is a practicing psychologist and administrator of a mental health facility--has more than once referred to his patients as "cuckoo" or some variation. He also has sexual and romantic feelings that he is slowly acting upon toward the main female character who happens to be a patient in that facility and a personal patient of his. So right now all I think is that he's skeevy and ableist and I kind of hate him. Not a great way to put forward a love interest.]

The second half of this book rushed to the ending, cramming as much sex, love, and happily ever after as it could. We're talking marriages, insta-babies, and ghost-wolf love reunions. To be honest, I started wondering if this book was finished by a different author, that's how bad it was.

So while I can recommend books 1 and 2 I cannot recommend book 3 unless you are a completist and absolutely must know what happens.

[I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.] show less