Tag: Andrew J. Peters

What I Read Last Week

Posted March 24, 2014 by Tracy in Features | 0 Comments

It was more or less a lazy week in Tracyland. We didn’t have any pressing matters to take care of so I got a lot of reading done during the week. Then the weekend came and my youngest had a promotion test where so totally rocked. 🙂 She was one of 2 that got the highest score. I’m very proud of her to say the least. I’m currently fighting with the app that joins all of the individual videos together to make one vid so when I win the fight and get it posted I’ll let you know. The rest of the weekend I hung with the kids, watched movies and just had fun. I think I read all of 70 pages the whole weekend. 🙂

I have two giveaways going right now. One ends today and the other on the 30th.

Giveaways:
1) A print copy of Marie Force’s All You Need is Love (open US residents only, sorry) – ends today at 11:59pm

2) A digital download (Kindle or Nook) of My Lady, My Lord by Katharine Ashe. Ends at 11”:59pm on 3/30/14.

Anyway, on to what I read…

I started off the week with the week with The Glaring by Andrew J. Peters. This is a short novella that is book 2 in his werecat series. The story continues to follow Jacks while he deals with being a werecat and finding out more about what that means to him. You can read my review here. 3.75 out of 5

Next up was the anthology Love Between Men edited by Shane Allison. A grouping of short stories that ran the gamut from I didn’t particularly care for them to I really liked them. You can read my review of the anthology here. 3.5 out of 5

Hope Ignites by Jaci Burton is book 2 in her Hope series and it was another good one. This one was Logan’s story and had him with an actress who was part of the crew that was filming on his land. He was positive he could stay away from her but she proved irresistible. I’ll post my review of this one tomorrow. 4 out of 5

Olivia’s Choice by Taylor Grace is a more or less contemporary fantasy if that makes sense. It takes place in current times but it’s about a race of people that don’t exist so that’s where the fantasy comes in. Olivia’s goes to Viddion a city for one of the races of Tree People called the annax where she was born to set up an exchange program. She’s been living as a human and wants nothing to do with anyone annex but she didn’t plan on falling in love. You can read my review here. 3.5 out of 5 

Last for the week was Wishing For a Highlander by Jessi Gage. This is a medieval time travel novel about Melanie who makes a wish on an artifact and next thing you know she’s in the 16th century. She winds up falling for the man who originally found her which is a good thing as they’re married right away. Of course then she’s accused of witchcraft so that makes things a bit sticky. The story was actually really good and I enjoyed almost every minute of it. 4 out of 5

 

My Book Binge reviews that posted last week:
So Right With You by Maggie Kaye
Disarm: The Complete Novel by June Gray

Happy Reading!

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Review: The Glaring – Werecat book 2 by Andrew J. Peters

Posted March 19, 2014 by Tracy in Reviews | 1 Comment

Review: The Glaring – Werecat book 2 by Andrew J. PetersReviewer: Tracy
Werecat: The Glaring by Andrew J. Peters
Series: Werecat #2
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three-half-stars
Series Rating: four-stars

Free from Benoit, the man who made him a shifter, twenty-two-year old Jacks tries to get his life in order while crashing with Farzan, the only person who knows about his werecat nature.

Then, one day, in the middle of his a grueling schedule of off-the-books jobs, a raid on a bodega pushes Jacks to transform to fend off a group of gun-wielding gangbangers.

Jacks scrambles to disguise the truth, but the incident leaves a thundering wake of questions. The police want to know what really happened to a freaked-out young thug in custody. Farzan, who has been crushing hard on Jacks since they met, begins to doubt that it’s safe to have Jacks living with him. Jacks wants to know where he belongs: with the man who took him in when no one else would or among his own kind. As he searches for answers, Jacks is confronted by a secret shifter society The Glaring. They have come to avenge the death of Jacks’ maker and to claim a powerful item that Benoit left behind.

Warning: This review contains spoilers from book 1, The Rearing.

In book one Jacks meets Benoit and becomes completely enamored with him. Benoit then turns Jacks into a Werecat and starts controlling every aspect of Jacks’ life. After Jacks is free from Benoit he moves in with his friend Farza. Jacks is practically killing himself trying to earn money to get out on his own as he feels bad about taking up space in Farzan’s basement apartment. One night, while working at Farzan’s family bodega, a group of gangbangers come in and almost kill Jacks. He manages to stay alive but now the police are interested in him because they can’t understand how two big cat incidences could have coincidentally happened at the same bodega in such a short time.

Jacks believes that he has to leave the area in order to take suspicion off of Farzan and his family but Farzan isn’t letting him go easily. Jacks also gets a visit from a man who is part of a shifter society called The Glaring – something that Jacks didn’t even know existed.

This was a nice follow up to book one. The stories are very short so we can’t get too in depth with either the characters or the story but what we got was good.

We see Jacks learning to deal with life as a werecat/human and we also see him getting closer to Farzan, which Farzan had wanted from day one. Having The Glaring step in was a bit of a surprise as Benoit never mentioned anything to Jacks about it but I thought it was an intriguing addition to the story. I’m curious to see what will happen next as Jacks heads out to get answers.

Rating: 3.75 out of 5

Andrew J. Peters

three-half-stars

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Short Story Review: Werecat: The Rearing by Andrew J. Peters

Posted June 30, 2013 by Tracy in Reviews | 0 Comments

For Jacks Dowd, a college senior who feels ungrounded from his family and life in general, an alcohol and sex-infused weekend in Montréal sounds like a pretty good escape. His Spring Break binge takes a detour when he meets Benoit, an admiring drifter with startling green eyes. A hook-up turns into a day, two days, and then a full week in Benoit’s hostel, making love and scarfing down take-out food. But at the end of the week, Benoit demands that Jacks make an impossible choice: stay with him forever, or go back to college and never see him again.

There’s something dangerous about Benoit, but Jacks has fallen for him brutally. The night before Jacks is supposed to return to college, he finds Benoit in Mont Royal Park, where they first met, to try to work things out. Benoit springs on Jacks an unfathomable secret: he’s a mythical creature, half man and half jungle panther. He traps Jacks in an abandoned cabin and performs an occult rite so they will be mated forever.

Jackson Dowd is on a weekend trip to Montreal with his friends when he wanders into a park while drunk and ends up in a ditch.  He wakes up in a cabin of sorts on the park property and is greeted by Benoit, the man who found him and took care of him.  Though Jacks is understandably leery of Benoit at first they end up spending the day together and having a great time.  In fact they never separate and end up in Ben’s hostel making love for a week.  During this time Jacks only vaguely lets his friends know where he is and that’s he hooked up with someone.
At the end of the week it’s time for Jacks to return to college (he’s a senior with just a few months til graduation) and Benoit’s not happy at all.  He sneers at Jacks’ suggesting that Benoit visit him at college and when Jacks mentions the word boyfriend he seems even more disgusted.  Benoit gives Jacks a choice:

“Come back tonight to where we met.  After the park closes.  With only what you wore the night I found you.  Do it, if you want to be with me.”

Jacks is torn but decides that he doesn’t want to lose Benoit so meets him in the park.  There Benoit ends up turning Jacks into a werecat without his consent. 
While the months pass Jacks isn’t exactly happy with his transformation or with Benoit.  They head to New York City to get lost.  When Benoit finally asks Jacks to go out hunting with him one night Jacks is happy that he’s finally being included but what occurs after sets off events that leaves Jacks wondering what he’s going to do with his life.
The story is told in alternating chapters – present day in New York first and then  flashbacks to 3 months prior and so on.  I can’t say that I was a fan of the format.  I think that the story was short and succinct enough to have laid it all out in order.  Of course during the first chapter we get the feel for Jacks’ discontent with his relationship and it does flavor the rest of the book, imho.
Jacks, to me, was a young, idealistic man who didn’t quite know what he wanted. It never actually stated what he was going to school for so I never got a sense that he was all that excited about graduating.  When he met Benoit he was so easily influenced just by a man who was paying him a modicum of attention and not sharing anything of his life with him.
Benoit, I can honestly say, was a complete bastard.  For such a short story he really showed his true colors and I didn’t like what I saw.  Neither did Jacks which made me like Jacks even more. Benoit was possessive, domineering, unaffectionate and condescending to Jacks.  The fact that he changed Jacks without informing him of what he was or giving him the choice really pissed me off.  I won’t tell you what happens but I really thought the end of the book was apropo.
This is definitely not a romance, definitely a darker read emotionally, I think I can see one happening for Jacks in future books.  I wasn’t a huge fan of the writing at first but it grew on me toward the end and I’m interested to see what happens with Jacks in future stories.  

Rating: 3 out of 5

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What I Read Last Week

Posted June 25, 2013 by Tracy in Features | 1 Comment

Howdy !

Whatcha all up to? Anything fun?

My week was pretty normal – work, home, kids, hubby – you know…normal.

So what did I read this past week? 

First for the week was a book that I’ve had for more than a while and finally picked up called A Rural Affair by Catherine Alliott. The story was based on Poppy who’s husband dies in a freak accident and though it wasn’t a close marriage at all she’s still shocked to find out he’d been having an affair for the past 4 years. The story follows Poppy as she tries to go on with her life – bumbling along – and then shoves a romance at us in the last few pages. Not a great book imho but at times entertaining. 3 out of 5 (read for Book Binge)

Next up was Tangled by Emma Chase. I know a lot of people didn’t like this book because they thought the first person POV from the “hero” (I use the term loosely) sucked. I personally loved it. I didn’t love him but I thought he had a great sense of humor though he could be an ass at times. You can read my quickie review here on Goodreads. 4 out of 5 

Next was Temptation by Lee Brazil. The story is about Lake, a male model who has a bit of a hook-up with a guy named Solomon at a party. When Solomon doesn’t call, and they always call, Lake decides to seek him out at his office. He is introduced to Sol’s partner – in all things – and they end up having a threesome. Sol and Adonis want more but Lake has severe anxiety and insecurities about being a third wheel in an already established relationship. It was a good read though Lake got to be a bit annoying at times. 🙂 3.5 out of 5 (read for Book Binge) 

Next up was Awakening by Serena Grey. This was a very short story about an 18 year old girl who is basically swept off her feet by an older guy. They share a night together and then get married. There’s more to it than that but that was the gist. I’m curious to see what’s next because you could tell the guy wasn’t in love with Sophie by any means so why get married on the spur of the moment? The series is called A Dangerous Man so there’s definitely more. I have to say was saying WTF a couple of times during the story and was kind of stunned at the end when it was done. 2.5 out of 5 

Rift by Andrea Cremer is a prequel to the Nightshade series. The story takes place in the 1400’s but involves demons and wraiths and all the paranormal stuff. It was a good read but it had honestly been so long since I’d read the first two Nightshade books that I was kind of confused about the relationship. I have to go back and read those first two books again before I pick up the last in the trilogy. 3.75 out of 5 

Anybody But Him by Claire Baxter is about Nicola who house swaps with her sister and ends up back in her hometown to help take care of her aging and eccentric parents. She runs into Blair who she had a crush on in school but was also the bane of her existence. She wants nothing to do with him until she sees that they’ve both changed over the years. I really enjoyed this one. The humor took a little getting used to at first but the story was easy to read and quite enjoyable. 4 out of 5 (read for Book Binge) 

How to Marry a Highlander by Katharine Ashe doesn’t come out til the end of July but I sat down to read it early. This was a great novella. It has Teresa approaching a destitute Scottish Earl and asking him to marry her. She saw him a year and a half earlier and hadn’t stopped thinking of him. When her parents want her to marry a stick in the mud vicar she gets desperate. She makes a deal with the Earl even though he has no plans to marry her. The relationship grows and only happens within a months time but this was oh, so good. I really liked just about everything about it and definitely recommend it. 4.5 out of 5 

Neanderthal Seeks Human by Penny Reid is the story of Janie who finds out her boyfriend cheated on her and then goes to work and gets “downsized.” She then meets Quinn Sullivan who she kind of starts dating, but kind of not and he helps her get a job at his security company. The story is odd and humorous at the same time as it’s awkward and sometimes frustrating. I really enjoyed the writing though and definitely want to read more from this author. 4 out of 5 (read for Book Binge) 

Wicked as She Wants by Delilah S. Dawson is a steampunk fantasy novel that mixes the contemporary with the historical and I really, really liked this one. The story focuses on Casper who is trying to help a princess get back to her homeland after she’s abducted. The world they live in is wonderful and it was just really good. You can read my full review here at Book Binge. 4 out of 5 

Last for the week was Werecat: The Rearing by Andrew J. Peters. This is a short story about a guy meeting a man who he thinks might be “the one” and having it go all wrong when the guy transforms him into a werecat. I’ll post my review of this one later this week. 

My Book Binge reviews that posted since last Monday:
The Secret of Mia Danvers by Robyn DeHart
Wicked as She Wants by Delilah S. Dawson 

Happy Reading!

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