ARC Review: No Holding Back by Lori Foster

No Holding Back
Author: Lori Foster
Series: The McKenzies of Ridge Trail (Book 1)
Publication: HQN; Original edition (January 26, 2021)

Description: Not needing him won’t stop her from wanting him…

Trucker Sterling (Star) Parson is no stranger to the challenges a woman faces, both in her industry and in life. But she can take care of herself. She’s never needed—or wanted—a man around…until she meets Cade McKenzie. The take-charge bar owner sets off all kinds of alarm bells for Sterling, but he also sets her heart racing.

Cade’s lived in Ridge Trail long enough to know trouble when he sees it, and the moment Sterling—Star—walks into his bar, he knows trouble’s come to call. Secrets run deep in the small town and Cade can tell Star’s got as many as he does, leaving him itching to uncover every last one. But finding common ground will mean trusting one another, further feeding an intense attraction that’s growing impossible to resist.

My Thoughts: Sterling Parsons is a trucker who has a habit of rescuing trafficked women when she finds them along her route. She was abducted herself when she was a junior in high school but managed to kill the man who was the first to buy her and escape. 

Cade McKenzie is a bar owner and bar tender in the bar Sterling uses as a refuge. He is a former Army Ranger who invalided out because of damaged knees from all the parachute jumps. He secretly works with his family to shut down trafficking since his stepmother was abducted, trafficked, and committed suicide after being rescued. His father is quite wealthy and quite determined on his vigilante course of action. Cade has a younger half-brother and half-sister who are also involved in the family business.

When Sterling gets into a situation where she is way over her head, Cade is determined to get her out of it and protect her. Her attempt to rescue trafficked women has led her to the man who originally trafficked her and who Cade's family has been investigating for quite a while.

Cade and Sterling fall in love though Sterling finds it hard to trust anyone and Cade has trust issues of his own. The love scenes were nicely hot and the action scenes tense. Fans of romantic suspense will enjoy this first of a new trilogy. My guess is Cade's brother and sister will also find love before the trilogy is finished. 

Favorite Quote:

Lord, the man was put together fine. Add in a lean jaw, a strong but straight nose, and those cool blue eyes fringed by dark lashes and she assumed he broke hearts on a daily basis.

Not her heart. She wasn't susceptible to that kind of stuff. She could take in the exceptional view and stay detached. She could.

Only...this time she had to really concentrate to make it true.

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.

Friday Memes: No Holding Back by Lori Foster

 Happy Friday everybody!

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Beginning:

Shivers racked her body as she watched him drink. Curled in the corner, waiting, dreading the inevitable--even breathing was difficult with so much fear crowing in around her. She wanted to cry but knew it wouldn't help. She wanted to let in the hysteria, but she hadn't quite accepted her fate...not yet. 

Friday 56: 

He tossed her that crooked smile and, leaning in, kissed her without drawing her close. "Use whatever you need in the bathroom. Toothbrush, lotion, shampoo and conditioner. Make yourself at home, okay? I'll fold down the bed."

This week I'm spotlighting No Holding Back by Lori Foster. This romantic suspense title begins a new series by this prolific author. Here is the description from Amazon:

Not needing him won’t stop her from wanting him…

Trucker Sterling (Star) Parson is no stranger to the challenges a woman faces, both in her industry and in life. But she can take care of herself. She’s never needed—or wanted—a man around…until she meets Cade McKenzie. The take-charge bar owner sets off all kinds of alarm bells for Sterling, but he also sets her heart racing.
Cade’s lived in Ridge Trail long enough to know trouble when he sees it, and the moment Sterling—Star—walks into his bar, he knows trouble’s come to call. Secrets run deep in the small town and Cade can tell Star’s got as many as he does, leaving him itching to uncover every last one. But finding common ground will mean trusting one another, further feeding an intense attraction that’s growing impossible to resist.

Book and Audio Review: Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold

Shards of Honor

Author: Lois McMaster Bujold
Narrator: Grover Gardner
Publication: Blackstone Audio (May 21, 2009)
Length: 239 p.; 8 hours and 41 minutes

Description: When Cordelia Naismith and her survey crew are attacked by a renegade group from Barrayar, she is taken prisoner by Aral Vorkosigan, commander of the Barrayan ship that has been taken over by an ambitious and ruthless crew member. Aral and Cordelia survive countless mishaps while their mutual admiration and even stronger feelings emerge.

My Thoughts: SHARDS OF HONOR introduces Captain Cordelia Naismith of the Betan Survey and Captain Aral Vorkosigan of the Barrayaran military. They meet when Cordelia's survey team is exploring a newly discovered planet and stumble on the Barrayarans who had found it earlier and were using it as a staging ground for an attack on Escobar. 

Cordelia is from a planet that is technologically and scientifically advanced; Aran is from a planet that was only recently rediscovered when Cetaganda decided to conquer it and which had regressed to a sort of feudal state. He's from the privileged military caste. 

They get together after his crew has destroyed her crew's base camp and traitors of his crew tried to assassinate him. Her crew, except for now deceased Lieutenant Rosemont and injured Ensign Dubauer, managed to escape into space. His crew believes he is dead.

The two have to travel about 200 kilometers to a base he knows about where she can get medical attention for Dubauer and he can attempt to retake control of his own command. She gives her word of honor to cooperate in order to get care for Dubauer. As they travel, with very limited supplies (oatmeal and blue cheese dressing) and both with various injuries, they begin to get to know each other and come to respect each other and even fall in love. 

However, they both have loyalties that are doomed to pull them apart. She needs to get back to her own people to stop Barrayar's invasion while he is oath-sworn to conduct it. She is sent back as the Captain of a ship to provide a decoy in order to let advanced Betan weapons through to Escobar and is again captured. This time she falls in with people that Aral had earlier described as the scum of the service. She is slated for rape and torture by an old enemy of Aral's until she is saved by Sargeant Bothari, a useful madman she met during her first capture.

She is front and center for the invasion and soon comes to learn some of Barrayar's secrets that must be kept close. When the invasion fails (see Betan secret weapons), she is again repatriated. But this time both Escobaran and Betan psychiatrists are convinced that she has been programmed to act as some sort of agent for Barrayar when she resists their attempts at a therapy that would reveal Barrayarn secrets.

Cordelia manages to escape Beta and find her way to Barrayar when she finds an Aral whose heart has been broken by what his emperor demanded of him and who is diligently trying to drink himself to death. They marry and are hoping for a quiet life with children when Aral is tapped for a new impossible job - regent for five-year-old Emperor Gregor after his grandfather's death. 

The writing is amazing. The characters fully realized and intriguing. The story is filled with moral dilemmas and quests for honor and grace. I have read this book many times since its publication in 1986 but this is the first time that I have listened to the story. The narration was wonderfully done by Grover Gardner.

Favorite Quote:

She leaned against a tree, suddenly weak. And just when was it that you stopped being afraid of him and started being afraid for him? And why was this new fear so much more gut-wrenching than the first? You don't seem to have come out ahead on the trade, have you?

I bought this one. You can buy your copy here.

Audiobook: Uncompromising Honor by David Weber

Uncompromising Honor
Author: David Weber
Series: Honor Harrington Book 14
Narrator: Allyson Johnson
Publication: Audible Studios (Oct. 2, 2018)
Length: 30 hours and 27 minutes

Description: HONOR'S FINISHING WHAT SHE STARTED

The Solarian League's navy counts its superdreadnoughts by the thousands. Not even its own government knows how enormous its economy truly is. And for hundreds of years, the League has borne the banner of human civilization, been the ideal to which humanity aspires in its diaspora across the galaxy.

But the bureaucrats known as the "Mandarins," who rule today's League, are not the men and women who founded it so long ago. They are corrupt, venal, accountable to no one . . . and they've decided the upstart Star Kingdom of Manticore must be destroyed.

Honor Harrington has worn the Star Kingdom's uniform for half a century and served her monarch and her people well. In the course of those years, the woman the newsies call the Salamander has grown from a tactically brilliant but politically naïve junior officer to supreme fleet command and a seat on the highest military and political councils of the Grand Alliance.

Very few people know war the way Honor Harrington does. Very few have lost as many men and women, as many friends, as much family, as she has. Yet despite that, hers has been a voice of caution. She knows the Mandarins and the Solarian League Navy are growing increasingly desperate as the truth of their technological inferiority sinks home, but she also knows the sheer size of the League. And she knows how its citizens will react if the Grand Alliance takes the war to the League, attacks its star systems, destroys its infrastructure . . . kills its civilians. Today's victory, bought on those terms, can only guarantee a future war of revenge against a resurgent Solarian League and its navy.

Honor knows the Grand Alliance must find a victory that doesn't require incursions deep into Solarian space, doesn't leave a legacy of bottomless hatred, and the strategy she supports has been working.

The League is sliding towards inglorious defeat as it steadily loses ground in the Protectorates and the Verge. As its central government teeters towards bankruptcy and even some of its core systems opt to secede in the face of the Mandarins' corruption. As the Solarian Navy finally realizes it cannot face an Alliance battle fleet and win.

But the Mandarins have embraced a desperate new strategy, and in pursuit of that strategy, the SLN has committed atrocities such as the galaxy has not known in a thousand years. The League have violated its own Eridani Edict against mass civilian casualties, violated the Deneb Accords prohibition on war crimes.

And they have finally killed too many of the people Honor Harrington loves.

Hers is the voice of caution and compromise no longer, and the galaxy is about to see something it has never imagined

The Salamander is coming for the Solarian League, and Hell is coming in her wake.

My Thoughts: This concluding volume of the Honor Harrington series was over 30 hours long and brought a number of the plot threads that were left dangling in other books to some sort of resolution. 

Admiral Henke has brought the war to Mesa which has forced the Mesan Alignment's hand in some ways. They won't be able to get all of their core supporters off the planet and so they choose to set off a number of nuclear explosions to murder those they can't take and destroy all evidence of their plans. Albert Detweiler and his wife are among those who die. He and his wife choose to suicide after he presses the button to set off all the other explosions. The timing makes it look like the explosions were done by Henke's fleet which would make it an Eridani Violation - needlessly killing civilians. And Mesan Alignment sleeper agent and famous newsy Audrey O'Hanrahan is on the scene to "prove" that the Manties were responsible for the atrocities. 

The news plays right into the hands of the Mandarins who are secretly running the Solarian League and who are facing desperate times - bankruptcy and losing star systems. They decide that they need to commit atrocities of their own if they want any chance to hang on to their own power and sent the Solarian Navy out to destroy the infrastructures of planets they think are disloyal. And if millions of people die, it certainly isn't their fault. They wouldn't need to take such steps if it wasn't for those Manties. The only problem with that strategy is that the Solarian League Navy isn't in the same class as navies of Manticore and its allies. The losses are tremendous both to the League and to the forces sent out by the Manties but the Solarian League isn't winning in any encounter.

Meanwhile in old Chicago, a small number of people in the various intelligence agencies have decided that the Manties idea of a secret organization who is intent on destabilizing things is real and they set out to prove it. 

But the Mesan Alignment wants revenge on the Manties and secretly provides new weapons to the League which will change the balance of power. They first deploy those weapons against Beowulf while there is a conference going on with the movers and shakers of the whole Alliance in attendance. The losses, including a number of the people who are key in the Alliance, are horrendous. But the way the attack was launched screams Mesan Alignmnt to those in the know. 

Honor decides to take the attack to Old Terra itself because she and her colleagues see no other way to end the violence and bloodshed. And Honor has losses of her own to make up for. Hamish and her Uncle Jacques were among the delegation lost on Beowulf.

This was a great conclusion to a fascinating series. Of course, there are multiple loose ends that didn't get tied off. Weber says that it is time for Honor to go into an honorable retirement but he does leave the door open to revisit the Honorverse with other starring characters. I hope he does. 

I bought this one. You can buy your copy here.

Book and Audio Review: The Bone Jar by S. W. Kane

The Bone Jar
Author: S W Kane
Narrator: Matthew Lloyd Davies
Series: Detective Lew Kirby (Book 1)
Publication: Thomas & Mercer (July 1, 2020)
Length: 327 p.; 9 hours and 3 minutes

Description: Two murders. An abandoned asylum. Will a mysterious former patient help untangle the dark truth?

The body of an elderly woman has been found in the bowels of a derelict asylum on the banks of the Thames. As Detective Lew Kirby and his partner begin their investigation, another body is discovered in the river nearby. How are the two murders connected?

Before long, the secrets of Blackwater Asylum begin to reveal themselves. There are rumours about underground bunkers and secret rooms, unspeakable psychological experimentation, and a dark force that haunts the ruins, trying to pull back in all those who attempt to escape. Urban explorer Connie Darke, whose sister died in a freak accident at the asylum, is determined to help Lew expose its grisly past. Meanwhile Lew discovers a devastating family secret that threatens to turn his life upside down.

As his world crumbles around him, Lew must put the pieces of the puzzle together to keep the killer from striking again. Only an eccentric former patient really knows the truth—but will he reveal it to Lew before it’s too late?

My Thoughts: This first book in the Detective Lew Kirby series has him trying to figure out who killed an elderly retired nurse and left her body in the abandoned ward she supervised in the Blackwater Asylum.

The case has Kirby looking into events that happened more than 50 years earlier. Who wanted Ena Massey dead? And, how did they get her into the abandoned asylum. Kirby interviews a former patient who has been squatting in a caretaker's cottage on the grounds long enough to have earned squatter's rights. He also interviews the developer who wants to turn the property into luxury living spaces and those he has hired to guard the grounds. 

Kirby learns that there are a number of urban explorers who have made all sorts of visits to the Blackwater Asylum over the years including one young woman whose sister died there accidentally some five years earlier. Connie Darke has wanted to find out who was with her sister ever since the accident happened. She and her sister's boyfriend Ed are trying to solve that mystery when Ed himself goes missing. 

Then there is the adjoining property that was recently inherited by an heir from Australia who also has ties to the events at Blackwater Asylum.

While juggling his investigation, Kirby is also dealing with some problem that his mother is having that he fears is early-onset dementia. 

The story is nicely twisty and told from a variety of viewpoints including Kirby, Connie Darke, and Raymond who is the former patient turned landowner. As I listened and read this one, I was impressed by the variations and accents that Matthew Lloyd Davies used. I was also glad that I could follow along or check on parts of the story in the Kindle book because I'll admit that this Minnesota gal had trouble understanding some of the accents. 

Favorite Quote:

Over the years, Raymond had developed a strong sixth sense: trespassers, unwanted visitors, urban explorers, vandals, whatever you wanted to call them--he always knew when they were here. Over the past few months, however, someone else had been visiting regularly, and he'd seen them again last night.

I bought this one. You can buy your copy here.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (Jan. 11, 2021)

 It's Monday, What Are You Reading? is now hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date.

It’s Monday!  What Are You Reading is where we gather to share what we have read this past week and what we plan to read this week.  It is a great way to network with other bloggers, see some wonderful blogs, and put new titles on your reading list.

I will be combining my YA and adult reading and purchases on this one weekly roundup.

Other Than Reading... 

What a week! I was watching TV as armed rioters tried to take over the US Capitol in order to disrupt the 2020 election. I watched TV all day in a state of disbelief. Since I was listening to A Promised Land that day, I was struck by the timeliness of the book I had chosen. 

As I'm writing this on Saturday, there are still things happening regarding the protest. I was distressed that the protestors were not arrested after they broke into the Capitol but am glad that many are being identified and arrested now. I'm sure things would have been different had the protestors been Black. I'm also glad not to have to hear anything more about Trump's tweets and calls for insurrection. Someone else compared it to Whack a Mole as accounts Trump tried to use were discovered and blocked throughout the last couple of days.

Those awful events almost totally overshadowed the elections in Georgia which tipped the Senate to the Democrats and that Covid-19 deaths exceeded 4000 a day. It also sort of buried the process to vaccinate US citizens against the virus which is proceeding much more slowly than the White House had touted. I'm still concerned about the Inauguration on Jan. 20 and hope that it will be a peaceful occasion. 

Meanwhile, I hope to spend a lot of time reading review books that will be releasing in February. I published my 4000th post on this blog last week too. 

Read Last Week

If you can't wait until the review shows up on my blog, reviews are posted to LibraryThing and Goodreads as soon as I write them (usually right after I finish reading a book.)

• Cast in Flight by Michelle Sagara (Mine; Kindle and Audible) -- The twelfth book in the Chronicles of Elantra series focuses on the Aerians but has a lot more. Really complex fantasy! My review will be posted on Jan. 26.
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama (Mine; Audible) -- I was planning to listen to a chapter a day since the whole book was 29 hours long but got so involved in the events that I just had to keep listening. I think this was more successful as an audiobook than it would have been as a print book for because of all the detail. I really like listening to Obama! My review will be posted on Feb. 10.

• Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood (Mine; Kindle and Audible) -- The first Phryne Fisher mystery was an entertaining historical mystery. I really like Phryne and bought the next three in the series. My review will be posted on Jan. 30.
• Named of the Dragon by Susanna Kearsley (Mine; Kindle and Audible) -- Another entertaining fantasy/mystery/romance. My review will be posted on Feb. 13.
• Beneath the Keep by Erika Johansen (Review; Feb. 2) -- This entertaining fantasy is a prequel to her Tearling trilogy. My review will be posted on Jan. 27.

Currently

• Finlay Donovan Is Killing It by Elle Cosimano (Review; Feb. 2)

Next Week

• Hide in Place by Emilya Naymark (Review; Feb. 9)
• The Iron Raven by Julie Kagawa (Review; Feb. 9)
• Rafael by Laurell K. Hamilton (Review; Feb. 9)

• A Lady's Formula for Love by Elizabeth Everett (Review; Feb. 9)
• Bitter Falls by Rachel Caine (Mine; Kindle and Audible)
• The Awakening by Nora Roberts (Mine; hardcover)

Reviews Posted

• Portrait of Peril by Laura Joh Rowland
• Deep Into the Dark by P. J. Tracy

• A Curious Incident by Vicki Delany
• The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry by C. M. Waggoner

Want to See What I Added to My Stack Last Week?

Bought:

• Minimum Wage Magic by Rachel Aaron (Kindle and Audible)
• The Daisy Gumm Majesty boxset by Alice Duncan (Kindle)

• Flying Too High by Kerry Greenwood (Kindle and Audible)
• The Murder on the Ballarat Train by Kerry Greenwood (Kindle)
• Death at Victoria Dock by Kerry Greenwood (Kindle and Audible)

• The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix (Kindle)
• Deal with the Devil by Kit Rocha (Kindle)
• The K Team by David Rosenfelt (Kindle and Audible)

Review:

• The Bone Maker by Sarah Beth Durst (March 9)
• Animal Instinct by David Rosenfelt (April 6)
• The Lady Has a Past by Amanda Quick (May 4)

• Bones of Hilo by Eric Redman (June 8)
• Back from the Brink by Emery Hayes (July 13)

What was your week like?

ARC Review: The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry by C. M. Waggoner

The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry
Author: C. M. Waggoner
Publication: Ace (January 12, 2021)

Description: Sparks fly in this enchanting fantasy novel from the author of Unnatural Magic when a down-and-out fire witch and a young gentlewoman join forces against a deadly conspiracy.

Dellaria Wells, petty con artist, occasional thief, and partly educated fire witch, is behind on her rent in the city of Leiscourt—again. Then she sees the “wanted” sign, seeking  Female Persons, of Martial or Magical ability, to guard a Lady of some Importance, prior to the celebration of her Marriage. Delly fast-talks her way into the job and joins a team of highly peculiar women tasked with protecting their wealthy charge from unknown assassins.

Delly quickly sets her sights on one of her companions, the confident and well-bred Winn Cynallum. The job looks like nothing but romance and easy money until things take a deadly (and undead) turn. With the help of a bird-loving necromancer, a shapeshifting schoolgirl, and an ill-tempered reanimated mouse named Buttons, Delly and Winn are determined to get the best of an adversary who wields a twisted magic and has friends in the highest of places.

My Thoughts: This story takes place in the fictional city of Leiscourt and stars a young woman named Dellaria Wells. Delly is a fire witch, a con woman, and down and out. She needs money to make her rent when she sees an ad for Female Persons of Martial or Magical Ability to guard a Lady of Some Importance.

Getting hired on seems like a way out of her current financial difficulties. She becomes part of a crew consisting of two ladies with magical talent, a body scientist and her daughter Ermintrude who turns into a pig, and a high class girl who is part troll and is also skilled in martial arts. 

Delly takes one look at the crew and decides that Winn Cynallum, the part troll girl, is her ticket to future financial security and determines to seduce her. But her courtship is interrupted by someone actually attempting to murder the lady she's supposed to be guarding. She uses her magical ability to burn the spider-like creatures who stage numerous attacks. 

The bulk of the book concerns catching the villain and bringing her to justice. She is joined by the rest of the guards since, while the villain missed killing the lady, the villain did kill Ermintrude. Delly is mostly concerned with the reward that has been offered for bringing the villain to justice. She needs the money to help her mother get off the use of the latest drug of choice - red drip. Unfortunately, in order to track down the villain they have to turn into producers of red drip themselves because the villain is an addict and involved with the production of the drug.

Despite the ample use of dialect (which I hate), I enjoyed this story which was part mystery and part romance and featured an interesting main character and the girl who falls in love with her and helps her become her best self. I liked the various kinds of magic in the story and the general world building.

Favorite Quote:

It was the sort of book that was fill of sentences that started off with a lady, took the measure of her eyes, tramped across her bosom, and stopped by a scenic viewpoint over her plump arms, before ranging town along the bank of a long rushing stream of discussion on the Moral Character of Woman, in general, until you'd forgotten the name of the lady in question and had to shove your way through dense thickets of grammatical undergrowth to find it again.

I received this one in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. You can buy your copy here.