Pauline Creeden

I picked up Cowboy Justice and was immediately transported back in time, my imagination running wild with visions of San Marcos and south Texas back during that time period. I am a sucker for a good Western vibe and this novel had it in spades. I appreciated getting to know Phineas and Charlotte before they meet one another. The rich character development made the moments they spend with one another all the sweeter. I do wish the epilogue would’ve had a little more meat to it, as I feel show more like there was a lot glossed over. I believe if more details would’ve been provided it would have lent to an even richer foundation and helped my personal adoration towards the characters.

There is definitely a slower burn to this novel, but there is also a certain charm that endeared me from the beginning. The intrigue of what would happen next paired with secrets that slowly come to light is what kept my rapt attention and made this novel quite enjoyable. I didn’t quite connect on an emotional level with these particular characters, but I did enjoy their story, and found myself rooting for them until the end. All in all, this was a quick read that kept me charmed with its imaginative details, descriptive writing and overall Texas heart.

*I have voluntarily reviewed a copy of this book which I received from the author/publisher through JustRead Tours. All views and opinions expressed are completely honest, and my own. show less

I just loved the world building within this book, it is written in such a way that you have the information to know whats happening and what everything looks like without being it being detracting from the story. Dyrfinna is a fighter not just as a warrior but with life itself and she needs to be as at the moment she has attacks coming from every angle. Her farther frustrates me so much as he is oblivious to how amazing Dyrfinna is or how well she handles everything. This book is not just show more about Dyrfinna and the highs, lows, struggles and wins she gets but also those around her which makes this book even better, I bet you to try and not be as invested in Dyrfinna coming out on top as I was when I read this book. show less

Murder on New Year’s Eve is a short fast murder mystery, cloaked with hints of romance, with good characters, and with a dog. Once you introduce a dog, you’ll always have this reader hooked. And the romance is nicely low-key. The location—a new year’s carnival with lights, countdowns and all the sounds and hurry—becomes quickly real. The mystery is intriguing enough to hold the reader’s attention through a short story, and pleasing particularly as it’s a woman’s sense of show more detail that draws in the clues.

Murder on New Year’s Eve is a fun fast read. It’s certainly enough to make me want to read more of the series—and see more of the dog please!

Disclosure: I’m not sure how I got it but I read it on New Year’s Eve, waiting for the New Year. show less

Why do I keep doing this to myself? After some of the encounters I've had with self-published authors, not to mention the dreck I've read for Netgalley and LibraryThing giveaways and because I got it free on Ammie, why do I still do it?

I'm a masochist, I guess, and/or optimistic because of the very few real successes I've come across, and a sucker for a premise that sounds promising. (Also the chalice with the palace or the flagon with the dragon.) So I keep going back to the LibraryThing show more giveaways, and keep putting my name in.

I feel like I've said this about a thousand times (well, it's probably only a few dozen): This could have been so much better. With objective editing, with a firm hand and White's Elements of Style, this could have been quite good. As it is, it had some nice elements, but, though pretty short, was a terrible slog to finish. (I was sleepless, and perversely persevered. Sorry, looks like it's going to be that kind of day.)

The story begins with a boy in a wheelchair who discovers that he can fly when he finds himself doing so to save the life of a little girl he's just met. He can't walk, but he can fly, and he begins a sort of disabled-Superman existence, wearing armor as he flits around the neighborhood stopping evil-doers. The armor is partly so his Clark Kent persona will not be known, partly to intimidate the truly stupid and cowardly bad guys he chases off, and partly in case anyone takes a shot at him – though this is one of the places I sighed over the book, because the reason knights stopped bothering with armor was that bullets went through it.

Another sigh I sighed over that armor is that he went from finding out he could fly to, within a very short span of time, flying about with an additional 80-odd pounds added to his weight, and had no problem adjusting. Right.

And still another sigh came because he started wearing the armor when he was twelve, and was still wearing it – after considerable growth and muscular development – at twenty. I guess he was sort of swimming in it at twelve; maybe he really strapped himself in.

The biggest armor-related sigh, though, was more of a groan, and it wasn't so much over his armor as his sword. Or, rather, the sword's sheath. You see, one day the main character receives a sword in the mail, a claymore. He decides to go out and fly around with it, to play with it. Someone begins shooting arrows at him (and a friend). Once the shooting stops, he decides to go pick up "a few stray arrows". "Scooping up the arrows, he stashed them in his sheath with his sword."

A few arrows.

He stashed them in his sheath.

With his sword.

Which is not the sword he usually wears with that armor, but, as I mentioned, a claymore: far larger than the blade he usually wears with the armor. There was no mention of switching out the scabbard. So the bloody sword shouldn't have fit all by itself. The sword plus "a few… arrows"? I wanted to slap someone.

I don't even know what to say about the fact that the main character can stand, and can leap, and more than hold his own in a swordfight - but he is confined to a wheelchair because he can't walk. Eventually some sort of nonsensical wisp of an explanation shows up, but it's not good enough by a long mark. Of course, once the boy figures out he can fly (there's no learning curve - he just flies) he starts leaving his wheelchair at the bottom of the staircase and levitates up to his bedroom, and then proceeds to float about getting himself ready for bed and suchlike. Hitherto, a servant had always had to carry him up, help him bathe and dress, and put him to bed. Does anyone - his grandfather, the household full of servants they start out with - notice? Nope.

I'm tired of cutting writers slack over grammatical and punctuation errors. There's no need for them. None. Especially when there are two writers involved, as here. If you can't tell that this is a bad sentence:

(from the first page) "The maid, Sarah, with her strong Scottish burr, patted him on his shoulder";

Or this:

"His eyes trained up the landmark tree"

Or that the commas are completely unnecessary in these fragments:

"sparse, blond hair"; "giant, brown eyes"; "the ugly, brown, wooden chair";

Or that this makes no sense:

"Thompton's visage stepped back";

If you're going to commit unintentional funnies like "the freedom of this new discovery [that he could fly] made his soul take flight"; or having the boy clench his fists and then three paragraphs later clench his jaw;

If you're going to set your book in 1894 and talk about "personal space" and other 20th-21st century concepts ('ll let "ok" pass, in 1894, but I growled) –

Then I have no desire to read your work, and you should be ashamed of asking me to, much less asking me to pay 2.99 for it on Amazon. (To be clear, I myself was not asked to pay for this; it was a LibraryThing Member Giveaway book, and therefore free to me.) If you can't be bothered with internal logic and worldbuilding, I can't muster up too much enthusiasm for your work. As I've said a thousand times (or maybe just a few dozen), there are literally millions of other books out there. You have to earn my time and money. If I had paid for this I would be peeved; as it is, I regret the time put into it.

Oh. Oh dear. I was going to end there, but I figured I'd better check my facts and make sure this book was indeed self-published. It's not. In fact, the publisher has a page titled "Why Shouldn't I Just Self-Publish?", which includes this statement: "We provide a team of experienced people who will help you with editing, artwork, promotion, and be there when you have a question. Because of your team, you can concentrate MORE on writing and less on editing, marketing, and all the rest of the work." Oh my God. I had originally given this two stars - it just lost a star because of that. show less