Chiquita Dennie is an Author, Filmmaker, Podcast host, and Entrepreneur. Born in Memphis, TN, and currently a Los Angeles CA native. Her background in film/tv has taught and shaped her passion for writing with her debut romance novel Antonio and Sabrina Struck In Love. Since its debut, fans have embraced the unconventional love story of Sabrina Washington and Antonio De Luca an Amazon Best Seller series.
4/5 Stars 160 pages Published November 24th 2020 by Image Comics
You know how I feel about books about people with powers, and if you don’t here’s a reminder. I love them most of the time! Especially when there’s something relatable to our own world it. And that’s why I loved this book. Super relatable even now in the midst of a lockdown, the future world that Mer lives in is not only filled with some really interesting tech, but one with a virus that kills most of the people that catch it. If you can live through it, however, you’re really a changed person, quite literally. You have powers, but you’re also completely segregated from the people without. But you’re immune from catching it again.
We see some familiar things, gang violence, daily mask wearing, a girl who just lives with her cat, and it changes to something crazy and really interesting. After learning she has the virus, to almost dying in the hospital, Mer has some big changes coming to her life, and that’s not just losing her job due to her sudden illness. She’s now faced with a choice to join a gang, or just be completely isolated from everyone else. She just wants advice from her cousin, but even that’s not so simple.
This was a really good book, and I can’t wait to see what happens next. It has some action in it, including a lot of really detailed blood and gore at times, but entwined into that is a story of a woman just wanting to fit in and really find herself again. I didn’t want to put it down once I started it. I think that this was a really nice break from the novels I’ve been reading lately, or more like haven’t been reading. It was a breath of fresh air, and it gives me new motivation. If you think you’d be into something like that, I definitely recommend checking it out.
If you’d like to grab a copy, you can here through my Amazon Associates link!
And if you’d like to keep up with one of the creators you can here on Twitter!
Thanks for reading! Hope you’re doing well and staying safe.
4/5 Stars 144 pages Published November 11th 2020 by Ahoy Comics
I’m going to be honest, I haven’t read as many comics and graphic novels this year as I have in other years. No particular reason, just not as many have caught my eye lately. This one however, is very different than the usual ones I would pick up, horror or supernatural or superhuman comics. Billionaire Island is a story about what would happen if a massive corporation wanted to control the world’s population by not only creating a deadly sterilization virus, but also if they took the world’s richest people and stuck them all on a floating man made island away from the chaos. But as they’re going to find out, they can’t run and hide forever.
I really enjoyed the topic of this comic because I love apocalyptic fiction, and I love violent scenes in comics. The story was amazing and I really didn’t want to put it down once I finally got around to reading it. The characters ranged from kind of strange, chaotically neutral, and then just the diabolical richest of the rich. Sometimes I think that rich people really think like this, just without a care for anyone else in the world, and this book really takes it to the absolute extreme. Locking people up at their work station so that they don’t kill themselves, putting people that they don’t want around in a human sized hamster cage to live out the rest of their lives, and even letting a literal dog run their world. Who knew all of these things could go together so well?
And at the midst of the story, a man who’s lost everything he cares about in life, just trying to expose the billionaires for what they really are. And taking down anyone he has to in the process. He’s bad ass, and he’s ready to get his revenge. I really liked reading this story, and there isn’t really anything bad to say about it, at least in my opinion. I would say if you think you’d be into something like this, definitely grab a copy and check it out for yourself! I’d love to have one on my bookshelf.
You can grab one here, through my Amazon associates link.
And if you’d like to keep up with the creator’s on Twitter, you can here.
Zealot C. Vonzale Lewis
(Blood and Sacrifice Chronicles, #2)
Published by: Parliament House
Publication date: November 16th 2021
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Nicole Fontane thought her demons were buried deep enough.
She was wrong.
A month ago, she and her crew barely escaped an evil cult of magick users and the blood oath they orchestrated—leaving their island vulnerable to further attack.
The Better Day Church is the one place to start ridding Tulare of the evil that plagues it, but the moment Nicole sets foot inside, memories resurface of an ancient religion deeply buried in the Louisiana bayou…along with an eerily familiar altar.
Now she’s forced to relive betrayal, the fight that almost cost her her life, and her demons making themselves known once more.
Her choices are limited: Either she uses her rare form of earth magick to appease the Young family and create a new god…or end up on the altar again.
If she can’t vanquish the demons from her past once and for all, her fate is not the only one on the line.
Carla Vonzale Lewis likes her martini’s shaken…never stirred. Though she was born in Georgia, please don’t mistake her for a Georgia peach. She’s more like a prickly pear. Speaking of being born, someone asked her recently if she remembered her birth, and all she had to say was, “Yes, I do remember that handsy doctor pulling me out into the cold. Right Bastard!!!”
Despite being born in the South, she grew up in the North. California to be exact. And every once in a great while, she gets to experience all four seasons. But mostly, it’s just heat.
Her debut novel, LINEAGE, was released July 16, 2019 and she fully intends to ride that joy for the rest of her life.
When she’s not concocting her next contemporary fantasy story, she enjoys reading, binge watching shows on Netflix, and trying to convince her husband that getting a dog is a wonderful idea.
Let me just say that this was one of the most interesting, and well put together books I’ve read in a long time. I did put it off for a while when I was taking a break from reading, but I wish I didn’t. There wasn’t a single thing about this book that wasn’t intriguing, and I couldn’t get enough of it. I also wouldn’t change anything about it. Completely unique, I hope I can read more books this different in the future, because if you’ve read it, you just know that it’s going to be something that’s stuck in your head for a while after you finish it.
5/5 Stars 400 pages Published November 10th 2020 by Angry Robot
Aiden has a power. It’s not anything he deems special or exciting though, because his power is that sometimes when he sleeps, he manifests a pile of slime somewhere in a ten foot radius from his body. And once he wakes up, it falls to the ground, or into whatever it’s levitating above, and hardens, usually destroying the thing in the process. It’s messy, it’s kind of gross, and his sister hates it. But it’s his life, and that’s all he’s known since he was a kid. Then one day, everything he knows is turned upside down.
After receiving a cryptic phone call from the people who bought his deceased parents house, he learns that his father has hidden a safe behind the old furnace, in the wall, and it’s addressed to him, and not only that, but if it’s tampered with or forced open by someone else, the contents will be destroyed. So he heads to their house after a fight with his sister. But what’s in the safe changes his life forever.
This is the beginning of the longest week of Aiden’s life. He learns that he was adopted, and that the first eighteen months of his life, him and six other babies were basically science experiments until the project was forced to shut down, and they were adopted out. Six other people who can do what he does, and maybe more. And he needs to get to the bottom of it. But what he finds at the bottom, and frankly, on the way to the bottom, is really crazy and almost unbelievable if it wasn’t happening in real time. He almost gets killed many, many times, makes some interesting friends, and has the adventure of a lifetime. And I couldn’t put it down.
I would say that this is probably one of my new favourite books. When I was describing the events to people I know, it all seemed so crazy. And it really is. That’s just what I loved about it the most.. I think it’s something you just have to experience to really understand it. I highly recommend it to everyone reading this. Even if you think it wouldn’t be for you, just give it a shot. What’s the worst thing that could happen?
If you’d like to grab a copy, you can do so here, through my Amazon Associates link.
Thanks for reading! Hope you’re doing well and staying safe, and enjoying insane books like this.
Sometimes you just need a break from all the rush of the world and all the new books coming out. Sometimes you just want to sink into the kinds of books you read as a teenager. And sometimes, you just want to relax while you’re reading, and I think this was that book for me. I think the idea of weaving multiple series together is a really interesting and unique idea, and I can’t wait to check more of these books out. Overall, I really enjoyed it.
4/5 Stars 314 pages Published July 20th 2010
Insight is the story of a teenage girl who’s life is suddenly uprooted when she not only receives a mysterious tattoo after waking from a horrible nightmare, but also when she finds out that her dreams, the boy she’s been meeting in them for as long as she can remember, and that alternate dimensions are all very real things. Not completely ready for the big change, she’s forced to go on the run after the intimidating boy, not her boy but the one from her nightmares, begins hunting her down.
I really enjoyed the powers that the people in the book have, specifically Willow’s, because I think it would be really interesting to be able to know the exact emotions of the people around you. I thought that the characters were pretty realistic from their reactions to the paranormal things going on around them, like going into different dimensions like it’s not an insanely huge deal, going from living in the world that we know in real life to one where there’s complete peace, and even going into a dimension where their world is completely devoid of colour. I think all of those things were really unique and I can’t wait to see how they develop even more throughout this whole series.
My problems with this book aren’t really big problems. I just expected more action and exciting things to happen, but this is more of a foundation book for the rest of the series. Though exciting things did happen in this book, I think that even bigger events and things will happen throughout the rest of the books. Honestly I can’t wait to see what happens, because there are quite a few. It seems to be a long running series, and that’s really what I could use right now. Just beware, this story is more an explanation for things to come and I think really sets everything up, rather than having all the action here and now like a lot of the other books I read.
Like I said up there, I really enjoyed reading this book, and I think if you’re into young adult paranormal fiction books, you’re going to enjoy this one too. Maybe think about picking it up if you get the chance!
If you’d like to grab a copy, you can do so here through my Amazon Associates link.
And if you’d like to keep up with the author on Twitter, you can here!
Thanks for reading! Do you love teen fiction as much as I do? Hope you’re having a great day!
Honestly, I’ve very conflicted with this book. I love the idea of the story, but I feel like the first half of the book fell short, the characters seemed incomplete, and they kind of just spent a lot of time lashing out at each other, and that wasn’t very fun to read. But the second half, oh man. I couldn’t get enough. Once it moved out of the normal daily life kind of situations and into the supernatural deaths and immortality and powers kind of stuff, it really blossomed.
3/5 Stars 270 pages Published July 29th 2016 by BookBaby
Following a teenage boy named Daniel, the story starts off with an argument between him and his newly ex girlfriend. She’s been drugged and molested at a party, and he doesn’t believe her. This is why I initially really didn’t like the book. She’s hysterical, and he’s just mad that she slept with someone else. He doesn’t care about what really happened, why it happened, and how it happened. I almost put down the book because of that. It’s really insensitive. I think there could have been a way better version of this story without that. Anyways, he goes on to work, we learn about his sad back story with his absent parents, and why he lives with his grandma. Then he’s supposed to go on a hiking date with his best friend and two girls, but when he arrives at his friends house, they’ve already left with his cousin. He’s mad, but it’s for the best. That’s when things really start to change.
It turns out that the meeting was a trap. Supernatural beings known as Veloures, had lured his best friend out hoping to get him, but instead killed his best friend and turned him into one of them. That’s what they want to do with him. So when he goes out looking for his friend, he finds someone else, someone not human, and someone who wants to hurt him. And that’s when he meets Fantasia, instant love of his life, super beautiful goddess of a girl with healing powers. She takes him to her cave and explains everything, and gives him a choice that no one else will, become like them, or leave his life behind and run, and try to forget about everything that she’s told him, and that he’s seen.
This is why I liked the book. The supernatural beings were so different than any others I’ve read about, but the beginning of the book is just so hurtful and mean I really couldn’t get over it. I didn’t like the main character very much because of his insensitivity, and I mean, I get that he’s a teenage boy and they have their ego to worry about, but I think that was really pushing it. Like I said earlier, I think that the first half could have been rewritten in a way that it matched up more to the second half, and I would have absolutely loved it. That’s just me though. I might be a little too sensitive to topics like that. I would recommend it to people with a strong stomach who like young adult books about supernatural beings, and their afterlife. The book itself isn’t particularly gory or violent, until the last chapter of the book, but that being said, the last chapter was the most exciting and heart wrenching for me.
If you’d like to grab a copy, you can do so here, through my Amazon Associates link!
Here’s a link to the author’s Twitter, if you’d like to keep up with them!
Thanks for reading! Hope you have a great day, and you’re staying safe.
5/5 Stars 384 pages Published October 5th 2020 by Smith Publicity
If you read my last review, I read the first book in the series, Echoes of War, in like less than 24 hours. This book was no exception to that as I also finished it in the same amount of time. I just can’t get enough of the trilogy, and I can’t wait for the last book, even though it comes out next year. I really haven’t stopped thinking about them since I started them, and I’m excited to see them nicely sitting together on my bookshelf with the rest of my favourites.
Following Dani, Brody, Oliver, Mary, Miles and Hattie, along with all the other characters that we’ve grown to love (and hate) throughout these two books, it shows their lives in third person, jumping to and from each of them when needed to give the story the sides you need to see to really put it all together. I gladly started this book less than half an hour after finishing the first one. I was very thankful to have the second book ready to go, as that doesn’t happen very often with me. As you might know, I’m really bad for leaving multiple books in a series to sit for months or even years after I read one, and I want to change that.
We get to see their lives not long after the first book ended, with Dani and Mary and another character on a supply run. However, things don’t go as expected. They’re blown off the road by a group of Wardens and their insane tech, and have to be rescued by Gavin and his team, as well as Miles. Though this book isn’t as action packed as the first book in the first half, the second half is total destruction, and that’s what I love about this trilogy. The characters are everything I want from them and more, and there’s really never a dull moment, even when they’re simply training, or interacting with each other. I think my favourite might be Oliver, or maybe Hattie, aside from Dani of course.
So in the last one, we saw the armies, one military and one scavenger, come together and take back Portland, and set their eyes on Boston next, even though it’s pretty far from them, and there’s a whole other area between them. But Dani knows what she needs, especially when things take a turn for the worse, and a kidnapping takes place that forces her hand. I loved the amount of work that was written into the story, not only from Dani, but the rest of the team as well, and the life that was woven in between the annihilation that happens. It really sucked me into the story, and I knew once I picked it up that even though I was debating reading something in between the first and second books, that I wouldn’t be able to do that.
Overall, if you’re looking for something insanely exciting and action packed, as well as emotional and just really well put together, than you should pick up this trilogy next. Of course I love aliens and destruction, so this was easily one of my new favourites. But I think even if you don’t exactly love those things, and are just looking for an action packed book to pick up, I definitely think you should give these a chance.
If you’d like to grab a copy you can do so here with my link through Amazon Associates!
And if you’d like to keep up with the author, you can follow on Instagram here!
Thanks for reading! Hope you’re doing well and staying safe.
Smoke Screen K. Nilsson
(The Blue Trilogy, #2)
Publication date: October 2020
Genres: Adult, Romance, Suspense
She was a distraction. He was a mistake.
Now they’re in each others’ way.
Rookie investigator Devyn Foster knows the pain of losing family. It’s what drives her to do what she does – finding the missing and the lost and returning them to their families.
Her latest assignment is no different, finding the computer a whiz who disappeared while working on a mysterious project. Even though his case has gone cold, she won’t let his elderly parents suffer. She will find him and return him back to them.
But that was before the one-night stand that changed everything…
Private Investigator Max Carson has never let anything—or anyone—stop him from getting the job done. So when he’s hired to track down a software program that could change the world, that’s exactly what he’s going to do… until he finds himself in a dead heat with a woman who’s just as determined as he is to get the job done on her own terms.
Now Max has to deal with two problems: how to get Devyn out of the way… and out of his heart.
K. Nilsson’s love of reading began with the Bobbsey twins. When she ran across some Italian True Romance novellas stashed in the attic, the musty serials hooked her on adult fiction. Though black and white photos were dramatic enough to know what the stories were about, she taught herself to read in Italian and translated them to her friends. She’s an unapologetic reviewer of books, restaurants, and vacation destinations. An amateur photographer, K. loves taking editorial photos and documenting her travels. Her personal philosophy, sleeping is a waste of time.
5/5 Stars 309 pages Published September 24th 2013 by Katherine Tegen Books
After I finished the last apocalyptic fiction book I read, I really was just wanting more, and then scrolling through my e-reader I stumbled on this book. First of all, let me just say that I love this book cover so much more than any of the other’s I’ve seen lately. It’s just so interesting and fitting for the story inside that I just want a copy for my bookshelf to look at. And re-read, of course.
Following a young teen girl named Lynn, it tells her story through the third person viewpoint at her family’s farmhouse, they’ve lived in it for generations. Though, this isn’t just another young adult book about a girl on a farm. The world she lives in is a desolate one, running out of water and ravaged by disease in the cities. At the beginning of the book it’s just her and her mother, but that quickly changes.
In this book, she has to face a lot of hard situations. Death, is the biggest one. Also, living in a world where her mother is the only person to trust and everyone else should be shot dead is a hard mindset to work herself out of. Protecting her home’s pond is all she’s ever known, that and hunting, killing, and just basically surviving for the most part. But she’s strong, and she can do anything she puts her mind to.
After discovering a small family of a pregnant mother, an uncle, and a young girl thrust into her arms, she has to not only take care of herself, but now a small child. With help from her only trustworthy neighbour, she learns to open up to the outside world and really grow into a live that isn’t just about surviving, and I think that’s something that everyone should learn, even if it’s not as extreme as the problems in this book.
From the moment I picked it up, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to put it down. Finishing the entire thing in just two days, I couldn’t stop thinking about what was going to happen next when I wasn’t reading it. It’s one of those books where you start it and you just can’t stop. I laid in the bath for almost 3 hours reading it, and after that I read it to go to sleep, when I woke up, and then all afternoon again. It’s everything I could want and more in a book, and I really mean it when I say I want a copy for my shelf. All the questions I had about it were answered by the end of the book, and though it ended at a very nice spot, I did notice that there’s a sequel, and I’d love to check that out, if I could get my hands on it.
If you’d like to get a copy for yourself, you can do so here.
Here’s a link to the author’s Twitter, if you’d like to follow them.
Thanks for reading! I can’t get this book out of my head, and I have a feeling that you won’t be able to either if you ever check it out. If you’d like to chat about it, I’d love to in the comments! I hope you have a good day, and stay safe.
radioactive book reviews 