Tag: Kelley Armstrong

Guest Review: Spell Bound by Kelley Armstrong

Posted September 7, 2011 by Tracy in Reviews | 0 Comments

Genres: Paranormal Romance

Tracy’s review of Spell Bound (Women of the Otherworld #12) by Kelley Armstrong

Savannah Levine is in terrible danger, and for once she’s powerless to help herself. At the heartbreaking conclusion of Waking the Witch, Savannah swore that she would give up her powers if it would prevent further pain for a young orphan. Little did she know that someone would take her up on that promise.

And now, witch-hunting assassins, necromancers, half-demons, and rogue witches all seem to be after her. The threat is not just for Savannah; every member of the Otherworld might be at risk. While most of her fellow supernaturals are circling the wagons at a gathering of the council in Miami, Savannah is caught on the road, isolated from those who can protect her and unable to use her vast spell-casting talent, the thing she counts on most. In a story that will change the shape of the Otherworld forever, Armstrong gathers Elena, Clay, Paige, Lucas, Jamie, Hope, and other beloved characters, who soon learn that the greatest threat to supernaturals just may come from within.

We start Spell Bound just one day after Waking the Witch ended. Savannah is exhausted and frustrated with how things turned out. She mentions, totally off the cuff, how she would give up her powers in order to make things right with the characters from WtW. Well, someone decides to take her up on her offer and her powers disappear. She’s now in a quandry – how does she survive without her powers? Adam tries to help her as he’s by her side and also vows that he will try his best to find out how to get her powers back. But as they are trying they find that there’s a faction of supernaturals that want Savannah on their side. This faction is lead by some not so nice people and they want to start a revolution of supernaturals that will have them outing themselves and probably taking over the world. Savannah knows this is not a great idea and works to stop them – along with many others.

But Savannah’s not doing so well without her powers and those around her are don’t like the fact that she seems to have changed. The person that Savannah thinks she is is about to change. She needs to learn to be a whole person without her powers and in the end that will make her even more powerful.

I very much enjoyed this book with Savannah trying desperately to save herself and those she loves and cares for from harm. The story seems to have a few different parts to it that all coincide but at the end, sadly there wasn’t any true conclusion. We were left hanging as to what happens. Three different issues – like I said, that all coincide – and not one of them is resolved. Yes, Savannah comes to terms with the loss of her powers and knows that she needs to deal with her life without them (as she never took the time to learn the stuff that she was taught because she had her powers) but it was a complete cliff-hanger. I gotta admit, I’m NOT a lover of cliff-hangers! I really liked the book and the writing was fabulous as usual but that really got to me and I was completely frustrated.

Will I be reading the next book in the series – definitely! I have to find out what happens with all of the stuff I read about in this book – especially with Savannah and Adam (hot baby, hot).

Rating: 4 out of 5

You can read more from Tracy at Tracy’s Place

This book is available from Dutton. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

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What I Read Last Week

Posted September 5, 2011 by Tracy in Features | 5 Comments

Happy Labor Day!

I hope you all had a great weekend and for those of you in the US I hope you’re having a nice extra day off today.  I know I am!

Saturday my mom Judith and I traveled to Holly’s house for a special blogger get together.  You see Ames was visiting from Canada and we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see her while she was here.  Rosie, Holly, Renee, Wendy, Judith, Lori, Rowena and Ames and I had a great time having lunch together (Nikki had to bow out at the last minute due to work – boo hoo) and then all of us but Rosie went over to Holly’s house to talk for hours and invade her books! lol  I know that we took a group picture but I don’t know who’s camera it was on so I’ll post it when I track them down.

Then Sunday after church we had a little fiesta and had a waterslide (at the church).  It was great fun and my little one was just going nuts on it.  Here she is practically falling out of the darned thing. lol (sorry it’s a little fuzzy since I took it with my phone)

Today we don’t have much planned.  I know I plan to do the laundry that I avoided yesterday. 🙂

On to what I read last week:

I started the week with The Salisbury Key by Harper Fox.  This was a book that I really liked but had some issues with.  I did love the writing though so I had some problems rating it at first.  You can read my review here for further thoughts. 4 out of 5

Next was A Midnight Dance by Lila DiPasqua.  This is a French historical romance based on the Cinderella fairy tale but it wasn’t like any Cinderella story I’d ever read.  It was pretty dark yet a really great romance.  The story is about a girl who was born to wealth but then lost everything.  She’s trying to keep her family from starving and decides to steal silver from a band of privateers.  The privateers are lead by the man she has been in love with for years but that doesn’t stop her.  The story turns in a different direction than what I expected but it was really good and definitely worth the read. 4.25 out of 5 (read for The Book Binge)

Elizabeth, the Enchantress by Lavinia Kent was next and this novella was just as good as the previous 3 novella’s in the series. This story had Elizabeth’s husband William returning home after 4 years.  William is clueless as to what happened after he left on his travels just a month after he married Elizabeth.  Can William make up for his mistakes and can Elizabeth forgive him?  You can read my mini review here. 4 out of 5

Good Girls Don’t by Victoria Dahl was my next read.  This is book one in the Donovan Brewery series about the 3 Donovan children.  This was Tessa’s story.  Tessa has issues but she’s not afraid to go after what she wants…which is to play with Luke Asher. But Tessa has some really huge problems to work through, inner problems with herself and those with her brothers.  Can a romance survive it?  You can read my review here for more info. 4 out of 5

Last on the list was Spell Bound by Kelley Armstrong.  This book takes up a day after the last book, Waking the Witch, left off.  Savannah has just investigated murders and being poisoned and now her powers are gone.  She’s trying to find out what happened as well and trying to figure what’s up with a group of supernaturals who want to come out and rule the world.  There’s a whole lot going on and the book was left without a conclusion but it was an enjoyable book that was well written, as usual.  4 out of 5 (read for The Book Binge)

My Book Binge reviews that posted last week:
Changeling Moon by Dani Harper
Changeling Dream by Dani Harper

Happy Reading!

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What I Read Last Week

Posted August 16, 2010 by Tracy in Features | 10 Comments

Good morning!
It’s gonna be a good week, right? Right! Now, I’m just going to keep telling myself that! lol
My oldest daughter now has to be to school about 15 minutes earlier the elementary school where my youngest attends. That means we’re ALL getting up earlier than we used to – and let me tell you, that’s SUCKS! lol It’s bad enough that I have to give up my extra hour of sleep that I was getting during the summer months but now, an hour early? *sigh* I guess I’ll get used to it and stop complaining….eventually. J
Other than school starting not a lot happened this week so I’ll get right into what I read…
First up was Lovestruck by KT Grant. Yes, this is from our very own blogger Katiebabs! This is an f/f story about a high powered hotel owner meeting a woman who works at one of her hotels. Barbara is 10 years older than Jenny but can’t seem to stay away from her. Barbara is contemplating shutting down the hotel location that Jenny works at but doesn’t bother to let Jenny know. I gotta say that Barbara was a bit much for me. Besides the sex she really acted more motherly toward Jenny, calling her Kiddo and telling her when she’d had too much to drink. She grated on me just a tad. Jenny was immature at times but I had to admire her for working as well as trying to finish a college degree. 3.5 out of 5
Next up was Wicked Enchantment by Anya Bast that I read for The Book Binge. This is book 1 in her Dark Magic series and I really liked it. I had tried to read it a couple of times before but it seems so info heavy that I kept putting it down. Once I got past the first few chapters though I got totally into it. The story revolves around a woman in the Seelie court falling in love with a man from the Unseelie Court but she meets him in an unconventional way and under false circumstances. Now that she knows who he is she doesn’t know that she can trust him. That on top of running for their lives made for some good reading. I can’t wait to read the next book in the series. 4 out of 5
After that it was Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie. I KNOW! It was very exciting to open that book, lemme tell ya. So what are my thoughts? Check back on Thursday for my review AND a giveaway!
Next up was Waking the Witch by Kelley Armstrong. This is book 11 in the Otherworld series and it was a good murder mystery. The story had Savannah, part witch/party sorcercer, taking on her first solo case. She goes to a small town to try and figure out who is killing these young girls and comes up against many roadblocks. A very good book! I read this for The Book Binge as well. 4.25 out of 5
I won a copy of Love’s Fortress by Samantha Kane over at the Kiss and Tell Girls blog – woohoo! J I love the Brothers in Arms series and this one was no different. We had Gideon who came home from the war with his face and arm burned and one of his legs amputated. Then his love/best friend Charles who helped him recover from it all. Then we have Sarah who becomes Gideon’s wife and brings the group together. Just a great story! 4.25 out of 5
My last read for the week was Scandalous by Candace Camp. This is a re-issue of her release from 1996. Priscilla answers the door one night to a naked man who asks for help and then promptly collapses. When he awakens he has no idea who he is. The story revolves around Priscilla and John (as she names him since she has to call him something) trying to find clues about who exactly kidnapped him and why. The story was really broken up into 3 sections – or at least it seemed to me. First was “John” and his quest for his memory, then there was him getting his memory back when seeing his father and all that entailed, then trying to solve a murder mystery from 30 years before. Not a bad book but it seemed quite a bit longer than it should have been, imho. I also would have liked it better if the 3 stories were intertwined a bit more. 3.25 out of 5
My Book Binge reviews that posted this week:
Happy Reading!

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Review: The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong.

Posted December 17, 2009 by Rowena in Reviews | 6 Comments


Rowena’s review of The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong.

My name is Chloe Saunders and my life will never be the same again.

All I wanted was to make friends, meet boys, and keep on being ordinary. I don’t even know what that means anymore. It all started on the day that I saw my first ghost—and the ghost saw me.

Now there are ghosts everywhere and they won’t leave me alone. To top it all off, I somehow got myself locked up in Lyle House, a “special home” for troubled teens. Yet the home isn’t what it seems. Don’t tell anyone, but I think there might be more to my housemates than meets the eye. The question is, whose side are they on? It’s up to me to figure out the dangerous secrets behind Lyle House . . . before its skeletons come back to haunt me.

I’ve seen this book around the YA blog circuit and I’ve heard a lot of good things about this series so I was curious about it. I picked this book up and dug right in. It was an interesting read and I was very much drawn into the story of Chloe Saunders and her pack of friends from Lyle House. The day that Chloe finally gets her period (she was already 15 and had just barely got it) and on the very same day, she sees her first ghost. Chloe thinks she’s growing crazy and because she freaked out at school, she was sent home and then she was sent to Lyle House where her Aunt Lauren and her father was sure she’d get better.

Chloe meets other kids that are at Lyle House, her roommate Liz, a friendly type Rae, a cutie named Simon and his foster brother, Derek and then there’s Queen Bitch, Tori. Chloe’s under the impression that she’s sick, the doctors that run the Lyle House tell her that she’s schizophrenic and the more she fights against her condition, the more she starts to believe the doctors she’s been seeing. But a friendship that starts up between Simon, Derek and Chloe reveal Chloe’s true nature to her.

She’s a necromancer. She can make the dead rise and she sees ghosts and can summon them. When Chloe finds all of this out from Derek, it takes her a while to come to terms with it but Simon needs someone to help him look for his missing Dad, Chloe steps up to the challenge and they’re thrown into an adventure that made for one very interesting read.

I thought this was a great introduction to the Young Adult side of Kelley Armstrong’s Otherworld series. Chloe came off as a normal teen who was living a not so normal life. She wasn’t perfect and she wasn’t always right but she felt real and I appreciated the efforts that Armstrong put forth to form this story. Chloe and her band of friends in this story were great additions to a pretty decent storyline that had me wanting more. I’m pretty anxious to read the next book. I’m so anxious that I’ve already used the ‘Browse Inside’ feature over at Harper Teen. They’ve got the first 10 chapters posted over there and it’s definitely whetted my appetite and I’m definitely going to be running to the store asap to get the next book in this series.

I’d definitely recommend this book to teens and others who enjoy a good paranormal tale with interesting characters and an engaging storyline. I wouldn’t necessarily say that the characters in this story were charming but they were interesting. I’m very interested in continuing this series so that’s got to say something for how good Armstrong’s writing was in this book. I’ll probably start the next book over the weekend so would I recommend this book? Definitely.

Grade: 4.25 out of 5

This book is available from Harper Teen. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

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What I’ve Been Reading This Week

Posted March 30, 2009 by Tracy in Features | 14 Comments

Happy Sunday (night)!

I kept meaning to post this earlier today but real life got in the way. My oldest has her state project due tomorrow and we were putting the finishing touches on her display board and her speech. Hopefully she’ll ace this one…I think she will.

The hubby’s b-day gathering with my family was fun. Everyone was late so we were starving by the time everyone got here. I swear I need to tell my family to arrive at least a 1/2 hour earlier than everyone else. Of course when they’re the only one’s attending… What’s a body to do?

And I just opened my email and got one from Kelley Armstrong! Holy shit if that’s not enough to put icing on the cake of a great weekend, I don’t know what is! lol She was just letting me know I’d won one of her books on DIK but dang – that’s very cool! If you didn’t get a chance to read her posts this past Thursday, Friday and Saturday you should – they were great.

I didn’t post it last week cuz there was so much going on but if you want to read my review on Bound and Determined by Shayla Black you can do so here.

Ok – so I didn’t feel like I read that much this week but when I stopped and looked at the list I guess I did. 5 were short stories so they don’t really count as 5 – just 1 novella, really. lol


So my first read of the week was Coyote’s Mate by Lora Leigh. Book 112 in the Breed series…ok, not that many but the latest. I liked the story but yet I didn’t. It hurt my heart. Truly it did. I thought that the heroine held onto her anger way too long but she finally let it go and saved herself nicely. Then the hero did something uber retarded…and frankly the way his character was written he should have friggin known better. He knew the score on soooooo many things – things other didn’t – in fact he made it his job to know. The fact that he pulled this thing and supposedly didn’t know what would happen was too unlikely for me – and I’m a damned forgiving reader. It made it just an ok read for me in the end. I still liked the series though and I’m looking forward to Cabal’s book.


Next up was The Prodigal Daughter by Jeffrey Archer for my re-read challenge. I’ll post my review on Tuesday. Oh and I’m only 2 weeks into the TBR challenge that I gave myself and I’ve fucked up already. This one has been on my shelf for so long I’m counting this as my re-read and my TBR. Yeah, I suck! lol (the book is so old I couldn’t even find a decent picture for it!)

Next were 4 short stories by Amber Kell…the Moon Pack Series – Attracting Anthony, Baiting Ben, Courting Calvin and & Denying Dare (all m/m stories). I read about these at Kris ‘n’ Good Books and since I like novellas and shorts I picked them up and read them quite quickly. While they weren’t the best shifter stories I’ve read…since out of the 4 shorts only 2 people actually shift, but they were cute. I had some issues with editing and words left out & giggling men (which is never my favorite) but other than that they were ok.


When I was buying the Moon Pack series from All Romance ebooks I got a free short called Friends with Benefits by Cat Johnson. A very short story about a couple who’ve known each other since 8th grade and just recently have become friends with benefits. However when one of them sleeps with someone else (they weren’t exclusive) then the female of the pair starts to look at her feelings about the relationship. Cute short read. Heroine a tad annoying but she was ok.


Gorgeous as Sin by Susan Johnson I read for The Book Binge. I’ll let you know when my review is posted.


Last but not least was Temptation Ridge by Robyn Carr. Good book. For the most part I really liked it. It was a little syrupy in parts but overall a good story with a lot going on…which is one of the things I love about the series. I have to admit that when I closed the book I said “awwwww” lol

I hope you all have a wonderful week!
Happy Reading!

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