Emily Ann Benedict

Fantastic

Reviewed: 02-20-25

A perfect little thriller. This has all the right ingredients. The reader took a couple of chapters to get used to, but once I got comfortable with his voice it was fine.

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Miserable characters make for a miserable book

Reviewed: 02-20-25

This is mostly a book about a woman who gets treated badly by everyone in her life and then decides she deserves it. There is literally a scene where she gets screamed at by another adult basically for being too nice and decides it was all her fault. There are paragraphs devoted to her telling us what great people her friends and family are, but when they are on page they are just awful. But ultimately I still had trouble feeling in bad for the FMC, because she is so self centered. She spends soooo much of the book complaining about how her best friend’s elopement robbed her of chance to shine as a maid of honor. Everyone is just icky! Did I mention the MMC made a pact with his best friend when they were 13 that they would never get married and he actually thinks as an adult that should be honored? The emotionally immaturity is off the charts.

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A good mystery, a good western, a good book

Reviewed: 02-05-25

Hits all the marks. Sometimes it’s a small town dramedy sometimes it’s a hard hitting crime thriller. And it works as both.

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I really wanted to like this one, but…

Reviewed: 08-15-24

2.5 ⭐️
There were a lot of things I liked about this book, the characters in particular. But the problem was the plot. After the first few chapters, there isn’t much of one. There are so many erotic encounter scenes it actually starts to get really repetitive. Sure, we’re in it for the romance, but when almost every scene ends up with “then he bit me and I had an org—“ it kind drains the life out of it.

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Mediocre at best

Reviewed: 06-30-24

If you familiar detective fiction, you’ll probably find this is a pretty pedestrian attempt, pot marked by historical inaccuracy (there was no continuous train from LA to Seattle in 1920) and odd dialogue (is this supposed to be the West Coast of the US or an English drawing room in 1850?). And let’s not forget the weird sound effects. Why did they need to include wet smacking sounds when the characters kissed? There are better books out there to spend your time on.

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DNF - Terrible Audio Effects and Immature Storytelling

Reviewed: 05-22-24

The point of an audio book is to listen it - so making many dialogue sections hard to hear for the sake of a “performance” quickly becomes frustrating. Then add on top things like heavy breathing when the characters are scared or random car noises and foot steps and the whole thing just becomes a mess.

Honestly though, what pushed more over the DNF ledge was the storytelling. Apparently it would hinder the plot if the reader knows what the mystery is, so the characters - who know what it is - have incredibly unrealistic dialogue sequences where they are discussing the mystery without actually saying anything.

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One of the worst books I’ve ever read.

Reviewed: 04-25-24

Honestly, I’ve loved many other KAK books. She’s a very good writer, but this book is so bad I’m mystified as to what happened.

She’s basically just rewriting the original novel with a few elements of the musical mixed in…but in 2022. It’s never explained why, in the universe of the book, Christine, Raul, and other characters existed in the 1800s and then are reincarnated into the similar roles with the same names. Everyone is just like - that’s weird. It’s not explained how Erik is a ghost, but in almost every way a living human. He eats, sleeps, has clothes he takes on and off. It’s like KAK couldn’t commit to her concept of having a real ghost.

The only thing “original” added is multiple sex scene in a formulaic erotica style (must have various positions and some kink) which is just not what you usually what you get with KAK. Let’s not forgot the repeated, cringy idea that Erik picks up his love dominance games because endless girls wanted that from him when he lived in Iran as a teenager.

Maybe KAK just needs to stay away from fan fiction.

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Just a bit too problematic

Reviewed: 04-13-24

First, the plot of all 4 books is the same - Morrigan’s generals are on the loose and one by one need to be captured.
There were definitely some things I liked about this series and the characters, but there is one aspect that I thought was going to be addressed - and not addressing it kind of ruins it for me.
It’s established in book 3 of the Wrath of the Fae Series that the Ironwood girls are raised from childhood to be killers. Their parents feed them hatred, train them to kill, then from a fairly early age rent them out as hired killers and then keep all the money. It’s even established that their parents will lock them up if they try to make their own decisions.
And this is never dealt with!! It’s just like - well, they’re all bad ass fighters, so who cares that their childhood was stolen. Their monster of a mother is repeatedly shown emotionally abusing them, but at the end of every book it’s made to seem like deep down she really loves them. It gets pretty gross.
I think this might be the end of reading Alessa Thorn for me

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Highly Enjoyable

Reviewed: 04-01-24

Just for fun, highly enjoyable fantasy romance. Better than a lot of work in this genre.
TW: violence and blood

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Entertaining Paranormal Starter Novel

Reviewed: 02-17-24

Overall, entertaining - though I would say probably more for readers who haven’t gone far into the paranormal genres. The mystery aspect is the best part of the plot, but it is very committed to explaining and normalizing as much of the paranormal world as possible. This is not an atmospheric novel.
A note on the audiobook: in audio form it frequently becomes difficult to tell if the MFC is talking to herself or someone else due to the way the dialogue is written.

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