The Unmasking by Adrianna Kraft

Blurb:

Whose mask will crumble first—the enigmatic professor of Celtic Studies, the undercover cop masquerading as a co-ed, or the campus stalker, biding his time to strike again?

Is anthropology professor Matt Bayfield the Blackthorn College rapist, or a potential ally? Aloof and unapproachable, Matt has academic ambitions. He can’t escape Blackthorn College soon enough, and he doesn’t want any entanglements to slow his exit.

Nancy Appleby would like nothing more than to solve the string of campus rape cases before Thanksgiving so she can go home. The last thing she wants is a relationship to complicate her life—but she’ll settle for a fling, especially when the sex sizzles.

The stalker has his own carefully crafted timetable, with a special date just for Nancy. Can Matt and Nancy force him out of his hidey-hole before it’s too late?

Review:

So halfway through The Unmasking, I had it narrowed down to one of two with maybe a long-shot third possible suspects, and this husband/wife author team still managed to surprise me with the identity of the perpetrator. That takes talent. I did find myself yelling at the book that the murders were taking place on the Pagan holidays well before anyone in the book figured it out, but if I weren’t Pagan I probably wouldn’t have noticed before the authors told me.

There was a bit much sex in this book for me, but some like it hot. That’s a matter of taste, and mine runs more toward sweet than spicy. At least it never got in the way of the plot. All together, a good read.

Length:  402 Pages

Prices:

Print:  $14.13

Digital:  $2.99

Buy Link:  http://www.amazon.com/Unmasking-Adriana-Kraft-ebook/dp/B00IDVB6KQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1402652353&sr=1-1&keywords=the+unmasking+by+adriana+kraft

Thanks for visiting. Rose & Rochelle

The Pink Institution by Selah Saterstrom

Blurb:

Beautiful and violent, spare and ominous, this wholly original novel explodes mythologies of Southern femininity.  In a multigenerational family saga that captures the rich beauty and passionate despair of the land and its inhabitants, The Pink Institution is a riveting, visceral novel written in a style that elegantly unites poetic prose with historic photographs and texts. It is also a testament to the legacy that war, violence, abuse, and poverty have wrought upon the Deep South. As we follow four generations of determined and relentless Mississippi women from their run-down, post-Civil War plantations to their modern-day trailer parks, the impoverished decay of the Deep South expresses itself through their bloodlines in a haunting reenactment of the past.

Review:

The Pink Institution by Selah Saterstrom is a modern novel about the peculiarities of the men and women in a southern family, beginning in the Deep South of Civil War Mississippi and journeying through to modern times. It has an unusual cover and unconventional layout, and that is actually the most positive aspect I found about this book. Saterstrom writes as if she has a bad taste in her mouth, so to speak; one from past experiences she has not yet swallowed. The story seems deliberately strained with an overload of sensory incertitude and mental confusion. Saterstrom has essentially no character development and her story lacks cohesiveness. The most valuable sentence in the entire book for me was her description of her grandfather after he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head: “What is difficult about looking at something like that is not that the mind resists fragmentation in general, but that it is confounded by textures which refuse the tensions one desires through edges.” Although not well-stated, I understood what she was trying to say, and at least it was somewhat thought-provoking. I cannot recommend this book as a good read—it just did not work for me.

Length:  140 Pages

Price:

Print:  $15.00

Buy Link:  http://coffeehousepress.org/shop/the-pink-institution-2/

Thanks for visiting. Rose & Rochelle

Streetwise Mercy by Stella Graves

Blurb:

Sometimes you can’t press REWIND. Is FAST FORWARD an option?

Mercy Reynolds has a problem. She has a $30,000 scholarship but has to dumpster-dive for dinner.

And she’s exasperated. She has no trust for men. None. Zip. Nada. The last guy she wants helping her is Deacon. And he just had to be hot, didn’t he?

Deacon Morgan has preconceptions about homeless people. But Mercy Reynolds doesn’t fit them. She doesn’t fit the mold of any girl he’s ever known. What happens when the girl you want to help doesn’t want you to?

Too bad they both have pasts they’d rather keep buried deeply, and feelings they’d rather bury even deeper. Too bad they can’t change those pasts.

Review:

Mercy Reynolds hasn’t been on the streets long enough to become either streetwise or tough when she meets Deacon Morgan while dumpster diving for a meal behind his parents’ upscale Italian restaurant. She blew her full-ride scholarship/ticket-out-of-hell when she killed her step-brother fending him off the night he tried to rape her. Of course she knew her mother would take his side, so she ran away from home. A younger girl, Sage, takes Mercy under her wing and is showing her the ropes, but when Deacon steps out of the restaurant, Sage breaks her leg trying to escape. Deacon assumes the girls are sisters and decides to take them home until Sage’s leg heals, and help them since his parents are out of town.

Of course Mercy balks at his help. What if he discovers who she is and that she’s a murderer? What if he calls the cops on her? She can barely hold her own as a homeless person. How would she survive in prison? As her feelings for him grow, how could she face him if he knew what she’d done? And finally, who is the girl whose initials he’s carved on the tree by the pond? The one to whom he seems so devoted?

Streetwise Mercy held my attention throughout and kept me turning the pages. I kind of had a feeling about how it would end, but there were one or two twists that caught me by surprise. It’s a pretty good read. I definitely recommend it.

Length:  196 Pages

Price:  $2.99

Buy Link:  http://www.amazon.com/Streetwise-Mercy-Stella-Graves-ebook/dp/B00J3CUDQW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1402650546&sr=1-1&keywords=Streetwise+Mercy+by+Stella+Graves

Thanks for visiting. Rose & Rochelle