Four broken hearts in the Emerald Isle – #Romantasy #Giveaway #Review

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Today's post is a perfect fit for the holiday...

Blurb

Calla left her life behind, haunted by a curse she cannot control. She seeks refuge in the land of a thousand hellos, Ireland, for a fresh start—a place where no one knows who or what she is.

Colm fled from Clonmara seven long years ago, but now it’s his father’s birthday, and the clan has gathered to celebrate the ould one. Each day brings back the memories that ruined him.

Saoirse dwells in the shadows of a lost love, unwilling to move on and unable to forget. The crystals say one thing, but the cold, hard truth tells another.

Ciarán walked away from the woman he loved for the fun, for the craic. He didn’t realize that one rash decision would impact the lives of so many, least of all his own.

Four broken hearts, brought together by the thread of love.

Excerpt

“Aren’t you the curious one? You know what they say…curiosity killed the cat.” She clenched her fingers, then released them. “I inherited a property outside of town from a relative I didn’t know I had.”

“Here in Ireland?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. I had so many questions. I sensed she would shut me down if I pushed too hard.

She reminded me of a hummingbird––her movements were quick yet fluid. The melodic hum of her voice awakened every nerve in my icy heart. My sweating palms made holding the steering wheel difficult. Those physical reactions were unfamiliar to me. Long ago moments flashed through my mind, happy times when love mattered. Life changed me into something else, someone I didn’t recognize.

“Abracadabra, right? It's one of those Faerie tale kinds of things. What brings you back to Ireland?” She shifted in the bucket seat. She crossed her legs, then uncrossed them.

Her every action spelled trouble.

“The ould one turned seventy last week. My father,” I said, answering her curious gaze. “Tell me, who was your relative? If you don’t mind me asking?”

My fingers itched to tame that glossy mane, to smooth the cowlick swirling the crown of her head. Her high cheekbones, elegant jawline, and pointed chin were testaments to the remarkable features of a people who once called Ireland their own—a people who prized physical strength and revered intelligence—an ancient civilization that battled for our homelands. Those memories had long since faded into the mists of time.

Review by Lisabet Sarai

Calla Sweet returns to her native Ireland to claim an inheritance from a mysterious relative. She doesn’t know what awaits her in the Emerald Isle, but she figures she has little to lose. Her former life in Canada has imploded, her promising TV career scuttled by her propensity to lose control and make wild, dire predictions that often come true. She suffers from visions and terrors, trances that fracture reality and sudden knowledge arising from unknown sources.

When a flock of wayward sheep sends her rental car careening into a treacherous bog, she is rescued by Colm O’Donnell, a fellow exile returned to Ireland for his father’s birthday. Despite her determination to remain aloof in order to protect her privacy and her sanity, she feels a powerful connection with the handsome, enigmatic Irishman.

Before she knows it, her life and her emotions are entangled with the O’Donnell family and their close friends. In particular, she’s drawn to Saoirse, proprietor of the town pub and a self-avowed witch, who mourns the disappearance of her true love, Colm’s brother Ciaran. No one has seen Ciaran for years. Calla, straddling as she does the mundane and the magical, converses with the lost brother and concludes that he’s a prisoner of the Other Folk, the Faerie beings the Irish people both revere and fear.

I’ve never visited Ireland, though it’s on my bucket list, but after reading The Scald Crow, I have incredibly vivid impressions of the Irish landscape, both natural and human-made. The novel brims with glorious description. Ms. Park also does a fantastic job capturing the cadence of the language and the social rhythms of a tightly knit village society. Clonmarra and its environs come to life as she details the sights, sounds and tastes (yes, there’s a lot mouth-watering food!) that Calla encounters in her new home.

The author also excels in capturing subtle shifts in emotion. The darkness haunting Calla feels real and compelling, even if she (and we the readers) do not really understand it. Likewise, Saoirse’s grief at the loss of her love strikes to the heart, intense and believable.

Set against these positive aspects, I have to say that I found the plot of this novel rather incoherent and some of the characters disturbingly inconsistent. In particular, Calla’s interactions with Colm seem very strange. One moment she is acting reticent and cautious, an understandable reaction given her uncertainty about her mental state as well as her much-mentioned virginity. The next moment, she is flirtatious and challenging, her dialogue full of slang and pet names. It feels as though she has a split personality, which I don’t believe was the author’s intention.

Colm behaves in an equally inconsistent manner, first hot then cold, though this is partially explicable by the magical shifts of reality he experiences in Calla’s presence. When he unexpectedly morphs into a classic romance Dom, taking control of her orgasms and acting like he’d channeling Christian Grey, I could only shake my head. This did not, in my opinion, enhance the story.

Meanwhile, it gradually becomes clear that Calla is half-Faerie, but honestly I could not figure out what that meant in terms of her powers or her personal experience. She sees people’s deaths, like the legendary Banshee; she transports Colm to illusory worlds; she has scary out-of-body experiences. How does all this relate to her heritage? Even magical worlds need rule and constraints. Hanna Park is silent about what Faeries can and cannot do, and what abilities Calla has inherited.

Finally, other readers might have different definitions, but the abrupt end of this novel felt a lot like a cliff hanger to me. Almost nothing is explained, and nothing is resolved. I found this quite unsatisfying.

In short, reading The Scald Crow was a mixed experience. I really enjoyed the world-building, but I wish the characters and plot had been equally coherent and believable.

About the Author

I began my writing career in the pre-dawn of a winter morning while my husband snored like a train. We could call my husband the catalyst. If it weren’t for him, I would never have gone to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee, feed the cat, and sit on the loveseat in front of the fire. It was there, in those moments of wondrous quiet, that I did something I had never thought possible. I opened my laptop, and while the coffee went cold, I wrote a story. My husband had no idea that these sojourns to the loveseat in front of the fire would become a daily occurrence, that writing would become an obsession, but the cat knew. She knows everything.

Author Website: https://www.hannapark.ca

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hannaparkwrites

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hanna.park.1485537

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Scald-Crow-Beyond-Faerie-Rath-ebook/dp/B0DS3TKLDM

Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/Scald-Crow-Beyond-Faerie-Novel/dp/1068997591

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/?ean=9781068997532

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ebook/the-scald-crow-2

Hanna Park will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.

What if destiny has the last word? #WomensFiction #Review #Giveaway

Blurb

A passion for books creates a lasting bond between teenage Patty Jo and David, but small-town prejudice and social differences doom their romance.

After a summer of reading and falling in love, David heads for university, foreign adventure, and a dazzling career; Patty Jo marries slick, over-confident Don Ried.

Yet plans can go horribly wrong. The victim of her violent husband, Patty Jo abandons her home and children to live on the streets of Toronto. David, a high-ranking executive in Paris, is dismayed by the superficiality of corporate success.

Forty years later, Patty Jo and David meet again. Both have defied society; both have fulfilled their dreams. And what if first love was the right one after all, and destiny has the last word?

Excerpt

Then he sees her. Way over there, sitting by the edge of the grit shoreline, chin in one hand, staring out at the lake’s far side. No sign of the louts she usually hangs around with. She’s alone. Will he go talk to her? Dare break into her peace?

Of course he will. He’s a moth drawn to her dazzling light, although he knows there’s a chance of disappointment. He’ll say something; she’ll answer like a townie, in that bold, vulgar way of townie girls. And the fascination will end. It will be over. Goodbye, good riddance to fantasy.

She doesn’t turn at his approach, probably doesn’t hear the crunch of loafers on pebbles. Obviously, she’s off in a dream, a daydream, a memory, some cosmos that doesn’t include David William Preston Buckley Jr. Without thinking, he sits beside her, crosses his legs.

“You like the lake?”

See? It’s that easy. You don’t hesitate, just plop down, say something banal. Then wonder if she’ll jump to her feet, scram.

She turns, and the bruised-looking, insolent eyes meet his. Defiantly. Unfriendly, yes, but with that touch of curiosity that doesn’t quite discourage. Then, looks away again. No words. No way to continue.

So, he’ll stay here. Stare out at the water too. Worse comes to worst, she’ll hiss an insult, townie-style, something like “get lost, chump,” and he’ll keep on sitting, puppy-love fool, bum aching on the sharp cement-drab stones. It will be a humiliation, true, but not a deadly one—a put-you-in-your-place rebuff that you get over soon enough.

Review by Lisabet Sarai

Teen-aged Patty Jo doesn’t just come from the wrong side of the tracks. Her home environment is a living hell. Forced by her abusive family to hand over her salary from the greasy spoon diner where she works after school, as well as to do all the housework in the broken-down shack they all share, she has little time or energy for dreams. Still, there’s some spark in her, a yearning for another kind of life. Books are her escape, a defense against her bleak, painful reality.

Books are the first bond between Patty Jo and her intellectual classmate David. Though they come from different worlds, David is irresistibly drawn to the slender, shy, yet defiant young woman he sees sitting by the lake. Gradually he manages to break down her barriers. Little by little, they build a love that bridges the vast social gap between them. When they are together, everything feels right and anything seems possible.

But teenage passion is as transient as it is intense. Forced by family, expectations and circumstances to part, they go their separate ways. Each one experiences pain, disappointment and loneliness. As they age, however, they make choices that bring them closer to their true selves. And when they finally meet again – forty years after the first flush of their love – they rediscover, against all odds, that same marvelous sense of connection that originally brought them together.

Words for Patty Jo is labeled as women’s fiction, not romance. I understand this decision on the part of the author. For most of the book, the protagonists are living lives apart from one another. Both Patty Jo and David are involved in other relationships. Indeed, Patty Jo is twice married and has children. This doesn’t fit the standard romance template, where the focus remains fixed on the growing bond between the hero and heroine as they struggle against internal or external obstacles.

The time span of the novel also violates romance conventions. Very few romance tales allow their protagonists to grow old.

Still, I found this an extremely romantic book as well as a splendid example of the “second chance” romance trope. The ending provides a deep feeling of satisfaction while remaining realistic and plausible.

Patty Jo is a fascinating and complicated character, in some ways not at all admirable. She’s sneaky and deceptive. She abandons her children, a horrific crime in the view of some people. Using her sexuality as a weapon, she takes advantage of others, especially men. At the same time, the reader can’t help but admire her grit and her determination to survive. You feel that she deserves happiness and despite her less-than-perfect behavior, you want her to achieve it.

David is less fully realized; perhaps one should expect this from "women’s fiction" penned by a female author. Still, his journey offers an illuminating contrast to Patty Jo’s. Affluent, intelligent and well-educated, he gradually discards the trappings of his privileged upbringing and builds a simpler, more authentic life. Unlike Patty Jo, his struggles are mostly internal, not external.

One of the most impressive aspects of this novel, for me, was the shift in the characters’ perspectives as they age. Like me, Jill Arlene Culiner has lived a long time. I think she remembers what it’s like to be a teen as well as how her decisions, wise or not, played out as the decades unrolled. The love between Patty Jo and David has evolved, as they have. It is an old person’s love – but still wondrous.

All in all, I adored this book. Patty Jo is very different from me, but I was pulled into her life and her battles. While I was reading, they felt vividly real. And when she finally reconnects with her long-ago lover, I could only rejoice.

About the Author

Writer, artist, and teller of tall tales, Jill (J.) Arlene Culiner, was born in New York and raised in Toronto. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, has lived on the Great Hungarian Plain, in a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave dwelling, and a haunted house on the English moors. She now resides in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village where she protects spiders, snakes, and weeds. She delights in hearing any nasty, funny, ridiculous, or romantic story, and when she can’t uncover gossip, she makes it up.

She has won the Tanenbaum Prize in Canadian Jewish History, the 2024 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Memoir, was shortlisted for the Foreword Magazine Prize, and twice for the Page Turner Awards.

http://www.j-arleneculiner.com

https://www.jill-culiner.com

All Links: https://linktr.ee/j.arleneculiner

Storytelling: https://soundcloud.com/j-arlene-culiner

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jculiner

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7158064.J_Arlene_Culiner

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jarlene.culiner/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JArleneCuliner

Jill Arlene Culiner will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.

Friday Friends: Pure Passion – #AmberDaulton #DarkRomance #FridayFriends

Happy Friday! Today I’d like to introduce you to another special author, my long-time friend Amber Daulton.

Amber’s books fall solidly in the romance genre, but they are distinguished by incredible, incendiary love scenes. Her characters are often conflicted about their possibilities for a relationship. Since many of her stories are dark romance or suspense, there’s frequently real danger threatening their futures. That doesn’t stop them from craving each other so fiercely that they often can’t think straight. Amber is not afraid to write explicit passion, the kind that wrings you out and leaves you limp and gasping.

Her heroines are no shrinking violets. They tend to be tough, smart and sexually self-confident. And almost of her protagonists, both male and female, are is some way scarred, emotionally, physically or both – not surprising since she has two series that center around organized crime syndicates. Certainly she forces her characters to really earn their happy endings!

I’ve featured quite a few of her novels on this blog and reviewed several. Here’s a sampling:

Trevor’s Redemption

 

The danger and lies are more than she can handle.

Shea O’Bannon feels like a fifth wheel around her romantically paired-off friends, but there’s too much slime in the dating pool for her to bother with it. Then she sees her two-timing ex, Trevor Madero, serenading the mostly female crowd at a live-music bar. God knows trouble follows him around, but her desire for him rushes back in anyway. After he rescues her from a handsy drunk, temptation takes over.

Determined to prove he never stepped out on Shea, Trevor slides back into her life—and her heart—with forever in mind. Even with the wall he keeps up to protect her, his secret criminal life weighs heavy on his soul and drives a wedge between them.

When the truth comes out and his enemies target them both, they’ll have to fight for their love, or kiss it goodbye.

Find my review here: https://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2023/12/review-tuesday-trevors-redemption-by.html

Dark Hearts Aflame

A drug lord on the run. A cartel princess in hiding. All it takes is a spark to set their world ablaze.

Bristol Rieger left his criminal life behind for a fresh start in Mexico. Flying under the radar of the government and the cartels alike, his best-laid plans go awry when a woman from his narco days discovers his whereabouts. Carmen Lozano, however, is no longer the innocent girl he remembers.

Carmen escaped the chains of her tiara and her abusive marriage to join a group of resistance fighters. The last thing she expected was the now-retired capo setting out to seduce her with his wicked touch. Embracing the blood on his hands is easy, but his secrets wear on her patience.

When their enemies close in, Bristol will have to summon his inner monster to protect her. But can that monster be tamed again?

Read my review: https://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2023/12/review-tuesday-trevors-redemption-by.html

Lost in His Spiderwebs 

 

Kidnapped by the enemy. Bought by the jefe. Will his smoldering touch thaw her frozen heart?

Rubén Lozano, the new leader of the Lozano Cartel, craves peace amidst a legacy of bloodshed and death. He never expected to find his ex-lover, Drina Cabrera, in the clutches of his vicious rivals. Her haunted eyes compel him to rescue her, but freeing her is another matter.

After five months of captivity, Drina trades one captor for another. Though she succumbs to Rubén’s masterful touch, the bittersweet memory of her daughter and the life she was stolen from is a constant wedge between them.

When Rubén’s darkest secret comes out, he will have to wash his hands in crimson. Will Drina let her king face the danger alone, or stand at his side as his cartel queen?

Coming in April! The next book in the Lozano Cartel series!

Corrupting His Wife

Kidnapping a reluctant bride is easy. Staying off her jilted fiancé's radar is tough.

As the second-in-command of the Lozano Cartel, Enrique Briceño always gets what he wants. So when Lourdes's father demands she marry another man, Enrique makes his move—abduction. Vowing to corrupt his sweet little captive in every wicked way imaginable, he doesn't expect her to fight him with fire.

Cartel princess Lourdes Villegas longs for peace. Freedom. A chance to let her artist soul breathe. Yet once again, a man is pulling her strings. In Enrique's arms, she trades one ruthless capo for another. His touch sets her ablaze, but she's already plotting her escape.

As political alliances crumble and the streets run red, Enrique must prove he's more than just another monster in Lourdes's life. Because this time, love might be the most dangerous thing of all.

Before signing off, I should mention that in addition to her writing, Amber has a business creating and selling book covers.That explains why her own covers are so compelling!

She designed one of my most popular covers, for my short romance Getaway Girl.

 

If you want to see more of her artistic talent visit https://satinrosedesigns.amberdaulton.com

A Secret Life – #Victorian #WomensHistory #MFRWHooks

For this week’s MFRW Book Hooks, I am going back to Victorian times with an excerpt from Incognito. This taboo romance novel has two plot threads. In the present, Harvard Ph.D. student Miranda Cahill is writing a thesis about Victorian erotica while struggling to understand and manage her own conflicting desires. Meanwhile, she uncovers the secret diary of an apparently proper Bostonian woman from the eighteen eighties whose clandestine carnal adventures seem to mirror Miranda’s own.

My hook is PG, but this book is explicit and explores a wide range of erotic activities – in the context of a committed romantic relationship. In fact, Barnes and Noble recently refused to carry it because the novel includes an age-play fantasy scene.

Sigh. If things follow their present trajectory, nobody will be able to buy my stories.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy my hook.

Blurb

During the day, Miranda Cahill works diligently on her doctoral thesis. At night, she has sex with strangers. Her secret life explodes when she realizes her masked partner at a kink club and the charismatic colleague courting her are in fact the same person – the one man who can teach her to accept her diverse desires, as well as to trust her heart.

The Hook

How should she begin, though? Miranda sat for a long time, pen poised over the paper, reviewing the events and emotions of the last few days. Heathcliff sat on the corner of her desk, fixing her with his typical unblinking stare.

Miranda ignored the feline, her eyes focused inward. Heathcliff’s gaze became a challenge. Still, she did not respond. Deliberately, the cat reached out a striped paw toward her wine glass. With the graceful economy of motion typical of his species, he nudged at the stem, just enough to send a torrent of Pinot Grigio spilling over the desk and diary.

“Heathcliff!” Miranda sprang from her seat to avoid being drenched with wine herself. “Bad cat!” She rushed to get a towel to sop up the moisture. “Oh, Heathcliff,” she said reproachfully, “how could you?”

The cat curled up on the corner of the desk, looking not the least chagrined. Meanwhile, the diary, though wet through, did not appear to be damaged. Miranda arranged it under the lamp, hoping that the heat from the incandescent bulb would help to dry the pages, and went out to the kitchen to wash her hands and refill her glass.

She returned to a marvel. The cream-colored pages baking in the lamplight were no longer blank. Even as she watched, writing darkened and became more distinct.

The hand was even, ornate, old-fashioned. And definitely feminine. Miranda could hardly breathe with the excitement. Someone else had confided in this diary, someone so chary of her secrets that she used disappearing ink for her confessions. As Miranda watched, the date at top of the page became clear.

June 12, 1886

I scarcely know how to commence this account of my adventures and my sins. Indeed, I do not fully understand why I feel compelled to commit these things to writing. Clearly, my purpose is not to review and relive these experiences in the future, for in twenty minutes’ time these sentences will be invisible even to me. Perhaps in the years ahead, I will trail my fingers across the empty parchment, colored like flesh, and the memories will come alive without the words, coaxed from the pages by my touch like flames bursting from cold embers.

I have a secret life, another self, and that secret has become a burden that I clutch to myself, and yet would be relieved of. So, like the Japanese who write their deepest desires on slips of rice paper and then burn them, I write of secret joys and yearnings, and send that writing into oblivion.

Let me begin again. My name is Beatrice. The world sees me as poised, prosperous, respectable, wife of one of Boston’s leading merchants and industrialists, mother of two sweet children, lady of a fine brick house on fashionable Mount Vernon Street, with Viennese crystal chandeliers, Chinese porcelain, French velvet draperies, and Italian marble fireplaces. I devote myself to the education of my dear Daniel and Louisa, the management of my household, works of charity, cultural afternoons. In sum, the many and sundry details of maintaining oneself in proper society.

Though I have borne two children, I am still considered beautiful. Indeed, with my golden locks, fair skin, sapphire eyes and rosy lips, I am often compared to an angel. How little they know, those who so describe me. For in truth, I am depraved, wanton, and lecherous, so lost that I do not even regret my fall.

My husband is a kind, intelligent, and honorable man, for whom I have the deepest regard and affection. He treats me with the utmost consideration and respect; he rarely comes to my bed and when he does, he is profuse with apologies for his unfortunate lust. Alas, he hardly knows or understands me. I understand him to a much greater extent, enough to know that I must lie still and silent under him, not move or cry out as his manhood dances inside me. Everyone knows that for proper women, the rites of the flesh are a trial that must be endured; men are subject to carnal weakness, and women’s lot is to be the passive receptacle of their spending. This is what my husband believes. Knowing he believes this takes the fire from the moment, and makes it easier for me to play my frigid, compliant role.

I know better, though.

Buy Links

Ebook

Kinky Literature: https://kinkyliterature.com/book/362-incognito-secret-lives-forbidden-loves

Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B1N7CTMQ

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B1N7CTMQ

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1147874

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/incognito-secret-lives-forbidden-loves

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61138791-incognito

Audio - Narrated by Freya Victoria

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-Forbidden-Loves/dp/B0BMWG2XQK

Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/Incognito-Audiobook/B0BMWDKQH2

Paperback (Amazon) - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D57SFNSF

Be sure to visit the other authors participating in today’s Book Hooks!

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Far out of her comfort zone – Polar Night by Lucy Felthouse #NewRelease #KU

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