Category: book tour

Shawn Smucker is back with an unsettling story that asks us to consider two challenging questions: To what lengths will we go to assuage our own guilt? and Is there a limit to the things we will do for the people we love?

About These Nameless Things

Before Dan opened his door to find a wounded woman who had escaped from the tormentors in the mountain, his life had become rather quiet. He and the eight other people in the mostly abandoned town had become friends. They spent peaceful evenings around the campfire and even made vague plans to journey east one day and leave the ominous mountain behind.

But her arrival changes everything. 

Who is she? How does she know so much about Dan’s brother, who is still held captive in the mountain? Why are long-forgotten memories rising to the surface? And why does Dan feel so compelled to keep her presence in his house a secret?

My Thoughts

When I started reading These Nameless Things, I felt lost – what was the mountain? What had the members of this community endured? What and who would have tortured these people? And why?

The beginning of the story I found at times hard to follow as we are almost left in the dark (similar to how the characters appeared to be feeling). We are introduced to Dan who is living with other members of a community (for lack of better words) who have escaped something awful up in the mountains but what they experienced we do not quite find out – just that they endured torture and live in fear of returning. Dan is waiting for his brother to also find a way to escape the mountain and feels a tremendous amount of guilt that his brother is still in the mountain. All of the members of this community struggle with remembering their past and why they are waiting, but they know they must wait. Slowly, some of the members start to regain their memory and this is when I began to truly appreciate the story and how are characters are connected.

What follows is a slow unravelling of pain, guilt and the burden that these emotions carry in life. We learn how one bad decision caused a ripple affect in others lives and were torn apart. But we also see compassion, understanding and forgiveness. That sometimes we need to learn to forgive in order to move forward.

These Nameless Things is a powerful novel of pain, guilt and the power of forgiveness. Each character carried their own burden of pain, anger and guilt that centered around one awful decision. It is through forgiveness and compassion that they are able to move forward and release the pain of the past. This novel has an amazing plot, which was a bit harder to follow for the first bit but definitely worth it to keep reading and well developed characters. A definite must read novel!

You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon.

Rating: 4/5

About the Author

Shawn Smucker is the award-winning author of Light from Distant Stars, the young adult novels The Day the Angels Fell and The Edge of Over There, and the memoir Once We Were Strangers. He lives with his wife and six children in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. You can find him online at www.shawnsmucker.com.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.

All Scot and Bothered is the second book in the stunning Devil You Know series by USA Today bestselling author Kerrigan Byrne!

About All Scot and Bothered

He is first and foremost—at everything. A man who’s made his own way through ruthless cunning and sheer force of will. A strong and imposing Scot who can turn on the charm but does not suffer fools. His title: Lord Chief Justice of the High Court. His name: Cassius Gerard Ramsay. His mission: To investigate the goings-on at London’s most notorious gaming hell, owned and operated by one of the most intriguing and desirable women he’s ever met.

Cecelia Teague was an orphan facing a rather dire future—until a secret benefactor from her mother’s scandalous past swept into her life. Sent to prestigious boarding school and later to university, Cecelia believed high society was at her fingertips…Then, from out of nowhere, she became the inheritor of a gambling establishment. Now Cecelia must live two lives: one as a proper lady who finds herself undeniably drawn to Lord Ramsay and the other as a savvy gaming hell owner trying to save her business from the very same man. He has no idea she is both women…and Cecelia would like to keep it that way. But what happens when consuming passion and escalating danger threaten to reveal the truth?

My Thoughts

All Scot and Bothered has a unique plot that pulls you right in and keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Cecelia had a rough childhood – her Father seemed to hate her just for being born a girl (some of this is tied in to his own past). She was saved from this awful childhood by a beautiful woman in a beautiful dress, who knew her Mom quite well. Cecelia’s whole life changed from that moment on and she cherished and embraced every moment. She is a champion of women and those who life on the edge of society – the ones that others look down on just because of their position in society or their career path. When she inherits a gambling establishment, things really get interesting!

Lord Ramsay appears to be a tough person on the outside, he follows the rules and almost seems to be heartless. But under all of that are notes of kindness, someone looking for love that he feels he doesn’t deserve. I really loved watching his character evolve throughout the novel, slowly we see him become the man we knew he could be (even if he couldn’t see it in himself).

The plot was exciting, full of action, suspense and a side of romance. It is well written, and had me on the edge of my seat. I loved the characters as they were not your typical characters that you would find in a novel set in this time period – they are flawed, they fit outside of societal norms, all of which makes me love them that much more. This was a great read from start to finish.

You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon.

Rating: 4/5

About the Author

Kerrigan Byrne has done many things to pay the bills, from law enforcement to belly dance instructor. Now she’s finally able to have the career she’d decided upon at thirteen when she announced to her very skeptical family that she was going to “grow up to be a romance novelist.” Whether she’s writing about Celtic Druids, Victorian bad boys, or brash Irish FBI Agents, Kerrigan uses her borderline-obsessive passion for history, her extensive Celtic ancestry, and her love of Shakespeare in almost every story.

Her novels with St. Martin’s Press include THE HIGHWAYMAN and THE HUNTER.

She lives at the base of the Rocky Mountains with her handsome husband and three lovely teenage girls, but dreams of settling on the Pacific Coast.

Disclosure: I received a digital copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.

The Japanese word gaijin means “unwelcome foreigner.” It’s not profanity, but is sometimes a slur directed at non-Japanese people in Japan.

About Gaijin

Lucy is a budding journalist at Northwestern University and she’s obsessed with an exotic new student, Owen Ota, who becomes her lover and her sensei. When he disappears without explanation, she’s devastated and sets out to find him. On her three-month quest across Japan she finds only snippets of the elegant culture Owen had described. Instead she faces anti-U.S. protests, menacing street thugs and sexist treatment, and she winds up at the base of Mt. Fuji, in the terrifying Suicide Forest. Will she ever find Owen? Will she be driven back to the U.S.? Gaijin is a coming-of-age story about a woman who solves a heartbreaking mystery that alters the trajectory of her life.

My Thoughts

I had never heard the term, gaijin, before and it is used in two different ways in this story. By Owen, the mysterious boy that our story is centred around, who feels like a gaijin with his family and not really fitting in with society and family standards, and by the people that Lucy meets that describes the way they feel against the Americans (and any foreigners that live in Okinawa).

Lucy seems to be a cautious, reserved person who loves her studies. She falls hard for Owen – who seems full of life, with a kind heart and a beautiful smile. She imagines her whole life with this young man and you can imagine how devastated she was when he just up and leaves her with no explanation. Lucy struggles with this lack of closure, something that her friends and Mother does not understand. She makes a huge decision to travel as close to Japan and Owen as she could get – Okinawa. She is desperate for answers and closure.

I was not familiar with the history of Okinawa, which we are exposed to in this story. I did look up myself some of the history while reading this story as I had no idea how many American soldiers call this ‘home’ and the struggles the people have had that we are introduced into the novel. Lucy is exposed to rape, sexism, protests and anger against the Americans as she begins her career in journalism. Lucy arrives in Okinawa as a naive, innocent young woman who is determined to find Owen. She quickly grows emotionally, mentally as she is exposed to the culture and politics of Okinawa and the impact that the army has had on these people.

This was an excellent story from start to finish. While I had my suspicions of why Owen left, it was the growth of Lucy that I loved the most. She first left for superficial reasons (finding her lost love) but instead we see this great growth in her character. I loved every moment!

You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon.

Rating: 4/5

About the Author

Sarah Z. Sleeper is an ex-journalist with an MFA in creative writing. This is her first novel. Her short story, “A Few Innocuous Lines,” won an award from Writer’s Digest. Her non-fiction essay, “On Getting Vivian,” was published in The Shanghai Literary Review. Her poetry was published in A Year in Ink, San Diego Poetry Annual and Painters & Poets, and exhibited at the Bellarmine Museum. In the recent past she was an editor at New Rivers Press, and editor-in-chief of the literary journal Mason’s Road. She completed her MFA at Fairfield University in 2012. Prior to that she had a twenty-five-year career as a business writer and technology reporter and won three journalism awards and a fellowship at the National Press Foundation.

Disclosure: I received a digital copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.