Wicked? Or?

Wicked Beautiful
J.T. Geissinger
Publication date: December 1st 2015
Genres: Adult, Comedy, Romance

Life coach and best-selling author Victoria Price has it all: a successful career, fabulous friends, a fantastic penthouse in Manhattan. What she doesn’t have—and doesn’t want—is a husband. Fifteen years ago her high school flame broke her heart so badly she swore she’d never love again. Now she makes millions teaching other women how to be just like her: a ruthless bitch.

Drop-dead sexy restauranteur and infamous playboy Parker Maxwell has only three rules for the women he dates: no questions about his past, no expectations for the future, and no spending the night. When he meets Victoria, however, he’s willing to break his own rules if it means sating the explosive desire she arouses in him. What he doesn’t know is that the alluring Victoria Price used to be the mousy Isabel Diaz, the girl he deflowered and dumped long ago.

Presented with a perfect opportunity for revenge, Victoria decides the game is on. But when her connection with Parker proves more than just skin deep, she has to make a choice: continue with her plan for payback, or risk her career, her reputation, and her heart by taking a second chance on love?

Goodreads / Amazon

 

Author Bio:

J.T. Geissinger is an award winning and #1 internationally best-selling author of smart, sexy romance.

She is the recipient of the Prism Award for Best First Book, the Golden Quill Award for Best Paranormal/Urban Fantasy, and was a finalist for the prestigious RITA© Award from the Romance Writers of America. Her work has also finaled in the Booksellers’ Best, National Readers’ Choice, and Daphne du Maurier Awards.

Cat lover, wine enthusiast, and nap connoisseur, she lives in California with her husband, on whom all her heroes are based.

To receive notification of new releases, sign up for her newsletter at http://www.jtgeissinger.com

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter

 

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Innocence or Guilt: You choose

My Sister’s Grave

And

Her Final Breath

Bks 1 and 2

By

Robert Dugoni

A NetGalley Review

Is she being stalked by the killer? Or just a common or garden nutter?

Just what is this about knots? Not the Japanese type of fetish knots but hangman’s nooses and knots.

Ah, a female cop with intelligence and attitude – not so sure I like her ability with guns though – she even likes to shoot and misses it when she can’t get to the range. However, I can blame her parents for their upbringing of her and her sister, as it was a father’s hobby passed onto the kids as he took them with him whenever he went to competitions. And encouraged them. And even got them to dress up as gun-slingers of the Wild West. And her shooting name was a pun on her actual surname – ‘Crossdraw’.

I did check out Washington State, where Tracy grew up, to see what the NRA was doing, and found to my personal disgust, that Washington State University had teamed up with the 4H organisation to bring a gun club to young people. Not really the behaviour, to me, of an ethical university.

It was interesting to find out from the novels that Levi Strauss supported the anti-gun lobbyist but not Wranglers or Lee.

I explored no further.

This review is going to talk about both novels as they lead one into the other. Book one starts the story line of the sister Sarah, and book 2 completes it, with an unexpected twist at the end. Which made a really good ending and one I had not expected.

Starting with book 1 I would like to make some comments about the Innocence Project.

It has always seemed to me that the Innocence Project is direly needed in the US for 2 reasons: 1. The Death Penalty; and 2. The inability of some police officers to look past the colour of a person’s skin to determine innocence or guilt.

So in book 1 we find that someone is ‘fitted up’. Is this surprising in ‘Backwoods’ USA? They needed a ‘solve’ for the community to put the incident to rest. So am I surprised? No.

I checked into the Innocence Project and here are some statistics:

As of 2014/5:

• 333 post-conviction DNA exonerations
• Majority of exonerations are people from low socio-economic status
• 14 years was the average length of incarceration before exoneration;
• 140 real offenders were found as a result of investigations (40% of cases);
• 18 people were on death row;
• 99% were males;
• 70% were of ethnic minority groups;
• 22% of cases were closed because the evidence was missing;
• 1989-2004 overall 1579 people exonerated;
• 1973-2004 4% of those executed were probably innocent;
• 75% of wrongful convictions were through eye witness accounts;
• 50% included unreliable/improper forensics or forensic testimony;
• 25% of those innocent were coerced or threatened into giving false statements;
• 28% pled guilty to additional/or other crimes they did not commit to avoid a long sentence;

Other reasons for exoneration include:

• Government misconduct;
• Inadequate legal counsel;
• Improper use of informants.

There is still a death penalty in 31 states and in 2014 there were 35 executions with 3002 on death row.

The states which execute most people are: Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, Georgia, and Arizona, with Texas holding the current record.

So all of the above is the background to the story played in book 1. And a  very strong story-line it is considering that here we are talking about a sister trying to exonerate her own sister’s presumed killer.

Book 2 takes this is as its starting point and the case that Tracy abandoned to go home to deal with the above. It proves to be a vital element in bringing to justice a serial killer but it has already been closed with a presumed killer incarcerated. Again we see Tracy considering exonerating a killer as she ties together the current spate of killings with this closed case.

Tracy Crosswhite is the type of cop I like. She is determined, intelligent and no nonsense.

Robert Dugoni portrays her well and the stories are full of detail and well paced with nice twists and turns to keep you interested.

I look forward to this series being continued.

4 stars for both books.

 

 

 

Magical Libraries are the Flavour

Magical Libraries seem to be popping out everywhere I look.

First we have the Library of all books that I have already reviewed – The British Library on Steroids -, and then you have a complete series of books about a Lost Library of magical texts by Kate Baray – the 4th being called A Witch’s Diary -and now I find there is also a TV series about a Library under New York (but not really – more like in hyperspace), which is magic, with not only the first editions of every book ever published, but also a number of magical items. So it is a cross between all the libraries with Warehouse 51 thrown in for good measure!

Just who is copycatting whom I start to wonder here? Or have some TV producers and book editors found themselves on a bar one night and started discussing how cool it would be to have magical library? Who knows, but here we are with competing books and a TV series too.

The TV series is OK but not 5 star. I can take it or leave it, but it is a bit of fun and the characters aren’t bad. It is just too reminiscent of the Warehouse series to be really exceptional.

The most interesting of the new items is the library that was lost but is now found and which contains magical texts which very few people can read. It was un-catalogued and in multiple actual languages, and the books are magically protected so that only the ‘right’ person can read them. And for some books that also means only the right person who knows and likes other ‘right’ people… confusing ain’t it?

I read the first 4 books of the Lost Library series straight off. It now seems to have become a habit with me. If the first in a series interests me, then i read the rest. But the first has to be of 5 star quality. It is just such a shame though that if the first book is a 5 star none of the rest are. So far that has been my experience. However, i still found them 4 star and thus I am ready and waiting to read the next in the series!