Crista McHugh

I regret waiting until now to read this book (or series). The Queen B* totally blows me off with its amazingly humorous and sassy story. I like it so much, partly because the I’ve grown in love with all the characters in this book. Their own personalities and developments are incredible, with many amusing problems that everyone has to to face in high school, the place where the most dramatic thing can happen.

Alexis Wyndham has definitely grown a great length in this 3rd book. That show more doesn’t change her witty personality and her status of Queen B*, The Meanest Girl in Eastline High. I love her, mostly because her “bitchiness” is actually a wonderful combo of sassy sarcasm and desire for justice.

Although this is a funny story of high school life, the depth behind the advice others characters give Alexis in her indecisive moments are beautifully written. I also love how Alexis and Brett—the star quarterback—and their relationship has grown in such a lovely way. All of their toe-curling moments just make my heart melt.

This is a very light-hearted and loveable read that you don’t want to miss. Crista McHugh has created an excellent book. I wholeheartedly enjoy it! show less

Former slave and famed assassin The Rabbit accepts the job she can retire off. All she has to do is kill the Deizian Emperor for a power hungry Deizian governor. She's happy to do it, since the Deizians have been enslaving her people for decades. She's sent to the imperial palace as a concubine and assumes she'll kill the emperor the first night he sends for her and then be on her way. What she doesn't expect is to learn that the Emperor is a good person, one who is trying to find a way to show more free the slaves while keeping the empire stable. And, of course, she also doesn't expect to fall in love.

This had more sexytimes and romance than I expected, but I ended up liking Azhura (The Rabbit) and Titus (the Emperor) so much that I didn't mind. The undercurrent of political maneuverings was fascinating and it kept me reading. Same for the mystery of Azhura's people and what magic, if any, they may possess.

[I have no idea who this lady on the cover is. Azhura is Alpirion and frequently mentions her brown skin.] show less

This was a preview copy from Netgalley, thank you.

I have a habit (bad? Maybe) of requesting advanced readers' copies of books or such, downloading them in ebook format, and then forgetting everything their blurbs said about them. So it wasn't until I opened the epub of The Alchemy of Desire that I realized that it was from Carina Press, which I afterward discovered is a sort of PNR subdivision of ... Harlequin. Oh dear. I mean, yes, the title should be a dead giveaway that it's a romance, show more but somehow it wasn't (the man on the cover is fully clothed!) (I quite like the cover, actually), and I braced myself.

And the beginning was good. So good. It was an alternate-19th century urban fantasy set in New Orleans post-Civil War. And this was not Ken Burns's Civil War; the main issue of the war seems to have been neither slavery nor states' rights but a fight between those who can wield magic (Wielders) “the Confederacy“ and those who can't and use steampunk machinery instead (Machinists): the Union. (The Machinists' Union? Really? What local?) I loved the beginning. There was a lot of good stuff there, despite some typos I hope were corrected for a paper edition.

Then the story left New Orleans.

Damn.

There was so much scope in that setup - it was deep and rife with possibility. I didn't expect that. Finding it unexpectedly makes it even more of a shame that the possibilities were unexplored.

The two brothers at the heart of the story, Diah and Cager, are forced into going off to hunt the White Buffalo, and for this they need a guide. And the only guide willing to have them is Oni, a half-Lakota woman who is a bundle of secrets and Issues. She's not taken terribly seriously, at least by the elder and more obnoxious of the two brothers, Cager, because she's a woman and because she's a half-breed. She's an illegal, unlicensed Wielder (like Cager; Diah is an Alchemist - hence the title). She's a shapeshifter. And she has no intention of taking them to kill the White Buffalo, because the White Buffalo is sacred to her tribe. Oh, and she killed a guy who tried to rape her, and begins almost at once to fall in love with the younger brother, Diah after an initial reaction which seems paranormal but is never explained.

(The brothers' names are actually nicknames for Jebediah and Micajuh or some such, which is a stretch. I was pronouncing "Diah" as "dee-ah" in my head, because otherwise it's somewhere between "die" and, I'm sorry, "diarrhea", but if it's short for Jebediah it probably is "die". And "Cager" is just ... odd.)

From the moment the trio of the two brothers and their Sacajawea set foot on a boat to begin their journey after the White Buffalo, the Harlequin roots begin to show. There is a great deal of teasing and frustration and timely - or untimely - interruptions, and bulges and pools of wetness. Unfortunately, the latter two items are verbatim; I began to wish for Oni's sake that Depends had been invented in the 1860's sometime.

There were parts of this that were a lot of fun. As I said, the setting and storyline of the beginning was dandy. The setting up of Alchemists/Machinists and Wielders is something I wanted more about. (Pity - it seems to be a standalone.) Once the focus moved west and to the R of PNR, it quickly became less interesting to me. I shouldn't complain, because it does after all say on the tin that it is what it is, and what it is isn't bad. But if this had been a steampunk Western with an integral romance instead of a Western romance with elements of steampunk it could have been something really special. show less

I enjoyed this book much more than I originally expected to. Even though all of them were short I got the feeling of fulfillment and I loved each one for it's own reasons. I loved the heartache of Letters at Christmas by Amber Lin, the spark of humanity that Eight Tiny Flames by Crista McHugh showed me that exists (some parts of the story are true and really happened), the correction of a mistake in An Eternity of You by Sophia Garrett and how someone can finally be happy even after the loss show more of a spouse in Erin’s Gift by Nancy Fraser.

I had so many feelings while I read these stories and I can't tell you how glad I am that I did. All the authors did a great job and I don't have a sigle complain about the book. Trust me you don't want to miss this book. show less