{Blog Tour} The Lightning Luminary - RS McCoy (Review)

Title: The Lightning Luminary

Author: RS McCoy

Genre: Urban Paranormal Romance

Cover Designer: Kit Foster Design

Now Available

Blurb: 

Talia Stanley may look like the typical wealthy New Yorker, but she's hidden her secrets for more than a thousand years. One of the last surviving members of an ancient race called Luminaries, Talia has suppressed her ability to control lightning in exchange for safety. 

And for generations it worked. Talia's hermit lifestyle protected her from strong Luminaries that want her power. All that changed the day Mason Rathbone walked into her life. 

A good-looking artist, Mason is just the guy to get Talia out of her penthouse apartment and show her what it means to live again. But just as she starts to get comfortable, Talia gets sucked right back into her vicious past.

Review:

This book jumps right into the action and follows several characters.  The chapters are broken up between characters and have minimal overlap so you get to see different sides.  The chapters continue during the same event so you get to see the different perspectives, but also you get to learn a little bit more of what is actually going on in the story.

I love that in the book we get to see so many different perspectives from different people, but we also get a bigger picture.  The story is told through the eyes of Mason having a seizure and ending up in the hospital, Talia who is having trouble with her accountant and might need to run again, Jamie who can track luminaries, Eudora a healer luminary who is trying to save people, and Larisa who is a wife of the Hadrian who only wants a son.  The book mainly focuses on Talia and Mason as they are trying to figure out their relationship, but we do get the overall story that Talia is being hunted by Hadrian because he wants her to give him a son.  This may seem overwhelming at first with so many characters, but the story is easy to follow along.  The different perspectives really allow the reader to get a complete picture of what is going on.

I love Talia as a character I felt really connected with her.  She has lived many years and has taken the precaution of staying away from people and always protecting herself.  Talia has seen so much in her life she is avoiding love and being hurt.  I love that during the book Talia is able to take a leap of faith with Mason and try to go back out into society.  She is very educated and a smart women who is just trying to stay safe and keep the people she loves safe.  

Mason was another great character the author did an excellent job with developing.  He seems so naive when we first meet him with the seizure and waking up disoriented, but he really picks up and accepts everything that is happening to him.  He is very real and adaptive to what is going on.  Mason is much stronger then he originally appears.

I love how the story jumped right into the action.  It made the book easy to read and a want to read.  I wanted to figure out what was going on with all of the characters and what was going to happen to everyone in the end.  This book is part of a series and the ending of this book sets up a great cliffhanger so I personally want to read the next book to see what is going to happen next. 

I would suggest this as a nighttime read.  It is easy to follow along in the book so it is easy to pickup and put down while reading.  

I received a copy of this book from the author for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of this book. 

My Rating: 4/5 

Buy Links:

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon CA

Author Bio: 

Rachel McCoy is a Texan living in New Jersey. Between binge-watching MTV reality shows and baking gluten-free treats, she writes paranormal fantasy and science fiction novels.

She is the self-published author of the Sparks Saga trilogy, The Alder Tales series, and The Extraction Files. Back when she lived in the real world, Rachel earned a degree in marine biology, which contributed to her die-hard love of manta rays. 

To connect with RS McCoy (or swap recipes), visit her on her website (www.rsmccoyauthor.com) or check out her Facebook page (www.facebook.com/AuthorRSMcCoy). You can also join her newsletter to receive release updates, free stories, and bonus extras (http://eepurl.com/YItp1). 

Author Links: 

Website: http://rsmccoyauthor.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorRSMcCoy

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RSMcCoy1

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7429464.R_S_McCoy

Amazon: http://amazon.com/author/rsmccoy

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/rs-mccoy

Newsletter Sign-up: http://eepurl.com/YItp1

Letters to Strabo - David Smith (Guest Post)

David Smith -- Guest Blog

Letters to Strabo – famous interlopers

Behind every great love is an epic story waiting to be told.

My fourth novel Letters to Strabo is both a love story and a coming-of-age tale, set in the late 1970s. It takes the form of a fictional odyssey recorded with disarming honesty by my protagonist, an innocent young American writer called Finn Black. His adventures, both funny and evocative, follow closely the itinerary taken by Mark Twain on his own tour around the Mediterranean a century earlier in: The Innocents Abroad. The novel is structured around the seventeen chapters of the ancient Greek Strabo’s great work: Geographica; a book that Twain quoted from extensively in his own tale. In Finn’s words:

“I researched how famous travel writers made their first journeys for a series of articles. It fascinated me how they all took something worthwhile out of that first experience on the road, whether they later became writers, journalists or even philosophers. It opened my eyes to all sorts of new possibilities I wanted that life. I wanted to get going, to write and make my fortune. Find out what had really happened to my pa and maybe find a bit more of that mythical free love I’d been missing, too.”

I very much enjoy doing the research for my novels and in this case I was able to incorporate information about quite a few historical figures, some of them named, some of them somewhat disguised.

As I mentioned above Mark Twain plays quite a prominent role in the idea for the book. My first idea for Letters to Strabo came from the memory of a trip I made twenty years ago to Olana, the amazing Catskills home of the painter Frederic Edwin Church.

I found that Mark Twain (or Samuel Clemens to use his real name) made a visit to the Church’s just a few years after this. Both Twain and the Churches had been touring the lands described by Strabo at almost exactly the same time but had never met. 

Twain was accompanied on his visit to Olana by his family and by Grace King, the southern novelist. Her description of his two elder daughters, Susy and Clara “More entrancing characters I have never met in my life” sparked me to research deeper into the story of these remarkable young ladies. Their loves, dreams and the personal tragedies they endured gave me the inspiration for the backstory of my heroine Eve.  Further research provided me with neat links to Ernest Hemingway and Peggy Guggenheim amongst others.

Like Twain, Hemingway is an inspiration to our young writer. He visits the famous bookshop Shakespeare and Company in Paris associated with Hemingway in an earlier incarnation:

“I was given a few chores, which didn’t tax me too much. Then I used an old manual typewriter to write a long confessional to Eve about Françoise and scribbled several postcards to family and friends. Its cowling had been removed and the exposed fan works were dusty inside, but it worked perfectly well. It was kept on a lopsided old desk for anyone to use, underneath a print of Hemingway kicking a can down a dune. Apparently, hundreds before me had typed messages with that same machine or scrawled them by hand on scraps of paper. Many were stuck in a chaotic jumble on the walls and underside of the staircase. There was one note I particularly liked:

“The entire store is beautiful, but this very chair in this very nook moved me to tears. When I return to the States, I will be able to take this inspiration and feeling with me.”

 It was signed ‘Loulou’.

Well Loulou, I thought. We’re both tumbleweeds drifting on the winds of change, aren’t we? I really fancied myself as a Hemmingway disciple by then.”

Peggy Guggenheim, the famous American art collector also plays quite an important role. We first come across her in Lisbon, where Finn encounters the story of her Casablanca-esque escape from occupied Europe to the States. Later he visits her in Venice which his french girlfriend Françoise. Her plot to take advantage of the friendship that Finn and Guggenheim form is a key turning point in the story.

“From somewhere, who knows where, she’d apparently conceived the sickest notion that I’ve ever heard. She outlined it to me in clipped breathless words. She’d been told in a dream the previous night that I would be the last conquest, the last paramor of la padronna. She’d come up with a plan. There would surely be a Pollock, a Blue Pole, in it for me, or a Picasso for her. It was simple; it couldn’t go wrong.”

I hope you will enjoy meeting both the historical and fictional characters in this book, I certainly had a lot of fun working out how to weave their stories together.

Author’s bio

David Smith is a British author who has now published four works under the Troubador imprint. His first novel Searching For Amber has been described as "A powerful and notably memorable debut" with a review describing it as "masterly and confident" and another as "Extraordinary, poetic, enchanting, sublime". In addition to writing, he is currently CFO of a blue chip UK public company and lives near the South Coast in England with his wife and three teenage children.

https://www.davidsmithauthor.blog

The Courage of a Samurai: Seven Sword-Sharp Principles for Success - Lori Tsugawa Whaley (Review)

The Courage of a Samurai: Seven Sword-Sharp Principles for Success by Lori Tsugawa Whaley

Genres: Nonfiction, Personal Development
Publication date: 2015
Publisher: Aviva Publishing 
Format: paperback, 260 pages
How I got it: Firetalker PR for an honest review
Buy it: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
My rating: 4/5 

Are you concerned about the direction our society seems to be taking? Do you feel concern not only for yourself, but also for younger generations such as your children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren? Is it your desire to leave this earth a better place because of you and your contributions? 

Life is full of challenges. Tests and trials can allow a stronger you to emerge. In order to survive and grow in these difficult times, do you know how to weather the storm? Do you have a strategy in place to overcome the challenges that you face? 

Whether a person in transition, a parent, business person or all of these, what can be learned from the bushido code of the samurai? Who were the samurai and how could a people dedicated to war and violence have such an impact on a culture known for its politeness, manners and aesthetic beauty? 

The samurai warrior of ancient Japan lived by a moral and ethical code known as bushido; ‘the way of the warrior.’ This code of chivalry sculpted a culture and influenced all aspects of Japanese society. After the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, the world witnessed the characteristics of bushido: courage, Integrity, honesty, honor, benevolence, respect and ganbaru. The Courage of a Samurai presents these principles as a guide for navigating the challenges we all face personally and professionally, with examples of individuals who exemplify their meaning in today’s world. 

..............................................................................

   

My thoughts:

This book tells the about the seven principals of being a Samurai.   The seven principals are Courage, Integrity, Benevolence, Respect, Honesty, Honor, Loyalty, and Ganbaru.   Each of the seven principals is broken into a chapter and we get to see what the definition of each word is and then the author goes into examples of how these principals have been shown in the past.

I loved how the author setup this book with explaining the principals and then giving amazing examples of how they were demonstrated.  The author took a large amount of time to research the different events that she referenced and the people she studied.  We get to learn a lot about the treatment of Japanese American’s during the war and how much the Japanese American’s helped during World War II.  I love reading books that contain a lot of learning and showing examples of how people apply these principals works perfectly for this book.

We also get to learn a lot about Japanese business culture and how it stays constant with the guiding principles brought from the Samurai.  The author does a great job making references to home life as well as business culture in this book.

I didn’t know too much about Japanese culture before reading this book, but I do feel I learned a decent amount about the Japanese culture that shows from the past to the present.  The author does a great job explaining all about Japanese culture in this book.  The book flows very naturally and the topic covered are very enlightening.

I could have liked to read more about the treatment of the Japanese American’s that were held in the camps.  We got to hear more about the people that left and where successful in war, but I bet being in that contained area must have also had people showing the courage of a Samurai.  This book does make me want to research and learn about the Japanese during World War II because I don’t remember a lot of this being taught at school and want to know more about this topic now.

I received a copy of this book from Firetalker PR to provide an honest review.  This does not affect my opinion of this book. 

 ..............................................................................

About the Author

LORI TSUGAWA WHALEY is an author, professional keynote speaker and life coach. Lori is a third generation Japanese American baby boomer and a descendant of the samurai warrior; she is on a mission to empower others to reach their God-given leadership potential no matter their path, heritage, or circumstances. Lori and her husband John reside in a Japanese style home in the Pacific Northwest.

Author Links:

   

Rarity from the Hollow - Robert Eggleton (Spotlight)

Rarity From the Hollow by Robert Eggleton

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy
Buy it: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Dog Horn Publishing 
 

A Blurb About the Book

Lacy Dawn's father relives the Gulf War, her mother's teeth are rotting out, and her best friend is murdered by the meanest daddy on Earth. Life in The Hollow isn't great. But Lacy has one advantage -- she's been befriended by a semi-organic, semi-robot who works with her to cure her parents. He wants something in exchange, though. It's up to her to save the Universe.

Will Lacy Dawn's predisposition, education, and magic be enough for her to save the Universe, Earth, and, most importantly, protect her own family?

Rarity from the Hollow is adult literary science fiction filled with tragedy, comedy and satire. It is a children's story for adults, not for the prudish, faint of heart, or easily offended.

 ..............................................................................

Excerpt from Chapter 13, “Mom I’d Like to Introduce You to My Fiancé”

Scene Prologue: At this point in the story, Lacy Dawn, the protagonist, is twelve years old. An android named DotCom (his name is a recurring pun throughout the novel) installed a port in her upper spine and has directly downloaded data into her brain for the last several years. His ship is hidden in a cave in the Woods behind the family’s house in the hollow. DotCom was sent to Earth to train and recruit Lacy Dawn to save the universe from an imminent threat, but was recalled due to slow performance. In this scene, DotCom has returned to Earth and Jenny, the mother, meets him for the first time. 

*****

            …..…Jenny (the mother) walked up the hill to Roundabend. She called Lacy Dawn's name every few yards. Her muddy tennis shoes slipped and slid.

            I hear her voice. Why won't she answer me? 

            “Sounds like she’s talking to someone,” Jenny said to the Woods. 

            Nobody responded. The trees weren't supposed to since Jenny was no longer a child. Her former best friends had made no long-term commitment beyond childhood victimization. They had not agreed to help her deal with domestic violence in adulthood. She hugged the closest tree.

            I will always love you guys. 

Jenny quickened her pace, stopped, and listened for human voices. A few yards later, she stopped again.   

            Now it sounds like she’s behind me instead of in front. 

            Jenny looked to the left of the path.

            There ain't no cave Roundabend, but there it is. 

            She walked toward the entrance. The voices grew louder and she looked inside. Lacy Dawn sat on a bright orange recliner. Tears streamed down her face.  Jenny ran to her daughter through a cave that didn't exit and into a blue light that did.

            “All right, you mother f**ker!”

            “Mom!” Lacy Dawn yelled. “You didn’t say, ‘It’s me’ like you're supposed to (a traditional announcement mentioned earlier in the story)."

            DotCom (the android) sat naked in a lotus position on the floor in front of the recliner.  Jenny covered Lacy Dawn with her body and glared at him.   

            "Grrrrr," emanated from Jenny.  It was a sound similar to the one that Brownie (Lacy Dawn's dog) made the entire time the food stamp woman was at their house.  It was a sound that filled the atmosphere with hate.  No one moved.  The spaceship’s door slid shut.

            “Mommmmmy, I can’t breathe. Get up.”

            “You make one move you sonofabitch and I’ll tear your heart out,” Jenny repositioned to take her weight off Lacy Dawn.

            Stay between them.

            “Mommy, he’s my friend. More than my friend, we’re going to get married when I'm old enough -- like when I turn fourteen. He’s my boyfriend -- what you call it -- my fiancé.” 

            “You been messin’ with my little girl you pervert!” Jenny readied to pounce. 

            “MOM!  Take a chill pill! He ain’t been messing with me. He’s a good person, or whatever. Anyway, he’s not a pervert. You need to just calm down and get off me.”

            Jenny stood up. DotCom stood up. Jenny’s jaw dropped.

            He ain't got no private parts, not even a little bump.   

            “DotCom, I’d like to introduce you to my mommy, Mrs. Jenny Hickman. Mommy, I’d like to introduce you to my fiancé, DotCom.”

            Jenny sat down on the recliner. Her face was less than a foot from DotCom’s crotch and she stared straight at it. It was smooth, hairless, and odor free.  

            “Mrs. Hickman, I apologize for any inconvenience that this misunderstanding has caused. It is very nice to meet you after having heard so much. You arrived earlier than expected. I did not have time to properly prepare and receive. Again, I apologize.” 

            I will need much more training if I'm ever assigned to a more formal setting than a cave, such as to the United Nations.

            “Come on, Mommy. Give him a hug or something.”      

            Jenny's left eye twitched. 

            DotCom put on clothing that Lacy Dawn had bought him at Goodwill. It hung a little loose until he modified his body. Lacy Dawn hugged her mother…    

            …(scene of Dwayne, the father, overheard by those in the spaceship while talking to himself)… “Besides, the transmitter was part of Daddy’s treatment. There're a lot of other things that he did to help fix Daddy. DotCom is like a doctor. You can see that Daddy has gotten better every day. And no, there ain’t no transmitter in you. DotCom figured you out like a good doctor and the only things wrong are a lack of opportunity and rotten teeth that poison your body. You don’t need no transmitter. He just gave you a few shots of ego boost. I don’t know what medicine that is, but I trust him. You ain't complained since the shots started -- not even with an upset stomach.”

            "He's a doctor?" Jenny asked.

            “What's your problem anyway?” Lacy Dawn asked. “I know.  You’re prejudiced. You told me that people have much more in common than they do that's different -- even if someone is a different color or religion, or from a different state than us. You told me to try to become friends because sometimes that person may need a good friend. Now, here you are acting like a butt hole about my boyfriend. You’re prejudiced because he’s different than us.”

            “Honey, he’s not even a person – that’s about as different as a boyfriend can get,” Jenny said.

            “So?”

            Mommy's right. Maybe I need a different argument.

            A fast clicking sound, a blur of motion, and a familiar smell assaulted them.

            "What's that?" Jenny asked. 

            She moved to protect her daughter from whatever threat loomed. Brownie, who had been granted 27 / 7 access to the ship, bounded over the orange recliner, knocked DotCom to the floor, licked DotCom’s face, and rubbed his head on Jenny’s leg. He then jumped onto the recliner and lay down. His tail wagged throughout. Jenny sat down on the recliner beside Brownie and looked at Lacy Dawn.

            “But, you were crying when I first came in. That thing was hurting you.” Jenny shook her finger at DotCom to emphasize a different argument against him.

            “Mommy, I'm so happy that I couldn’t help but cry. My man just came home from an out-of-state job. I didn't talk to him for a whole year. Before he left, he told me that he wasn’t even sure if he'd be able to come home. I still don’t know what happened while he was gone. We ain't had no chance to talk. All I know is that he's home and I'm sooooo happy.”

            “Your man came home from an out-of-state job?” Jenny patted Brownie on his head, some more and some more…. 

            It's unusual for a man to promise to come back home and ever be seen again. Brownie likes him and that's a good sign. Maybe she's right about him helping Dwayne. Something sure did and it wasn’t me. It is a nice living room. They've been together for a while and I ain't seen a mark on her. That's unusual too. He ain't got no private parts and that's another good thing. Hell, if I get in the middle, she’d just run off with him anyway. I'd better play it smart. I don't want to lose my baby. 

            “What about his stupid name?” Jenny asked.

            “I’ve got a stupid name, too. All the kids at school call me hick because my last name is Hickman.”

            “My name was given to me by my manager a very long time ago. It represents a respected tradition -- the persistent marketing of that which is not necessarily the most needed. I spam…,” DotCom said. 

            They both glared at him. 

            "Dwayne is sure to be home. I don’t want him to worry. Let’s go,” Jenny said. 

            “Okay, Mommy.”

            “I love you, DotCom,” Lacy Dawn stepped out the ship’s door, which had slid open. Brownie and Jenny were right behind her. 

            “I love you too,” DotCom said.

            Lacy Dawn and Jenny held hands and walked down the path toward home. The trees didn’t smile -- at least not so Jenny would notice. On the other hand, no living thing obstructed, intruded, or interfered with the rite.   

            Jenny sang to the Woods, “My little girl’s going to marry a doctor when she grows up, marry a doctor when she grows up, when she grows up.  My little girl’s going to marry a doctor when she grows up, marry a doctor when she grows up, when she grows up….”

 ..............................................................................

About the Author

Robert Eggleton has served as a children's advocate in an impoverished state for over forty years. He is best known locally for his nonfiction: investigative reports about children’s programs, most of which were published by the West Virginia Supreme Court where he worked from 1982 through 1997; nationally distributed models of serving disadvantaged and homeless children in the community instead of in large institutions; research into foster care drift involving children bouncing from one home to the next -- never finding a permanent loving family; and statistical reports on the occurrence and correlates of child abuse and delinquency in West Virginia. Dozens of his works have been archived by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History.

Today, he is a recently retired children's psychotherapist from a mental health center in Charleston, West Virginia, where he specialized in helping victims cope with and overcome physical and sexual abuse, and other mental health concerns. Two of Eggleton's poems were published in the 1970s and another won first place in 2015 international poetry competition managed by the WSC Science Fiction & Fantasy Club/WillyCon. His debut novel, Rarity from the Hollow, was named one of five best reads in 2015 by a Codices, has been awarded Gold Medals by Awesome Indies and Readers' Favorite, and has been so well received by prominent book critics and reviewers that it is scheduled for republication by Dog Horn Publishing, a traditional small press, in 2016. Three of Eggleton's short stories have appeared in magazines: Wingspan Quarterly, Beyond Centauri, and Atomjack Science Fiction.

Author proceeds from Eggleton's Lacy Dawn Adventures project have been donated to a child abuse prevention program operated by Children’s Home Society of West Virginia. http://www.childhswv.org/ Robert continues to write adult literary science fiction with new adventures based on a protagonist that is a composite character of children that he met when delivering group therapy services. The overall theme of his stories remains victimization to empowerment.

http://www.lacydawnadventures.com

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32993259-rarity-from-the-hollow

https://www.facebook.com/Lacy-Dawn-Adventures-573354432693864/

https://twitter.com/roberteggleton1

https://plus.google.com/b/108662084126982201049/108662084126982201049/posts

https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-eggleton-909b154b?trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile_pic

Little Gray Dress - Aimee Brown (Cover Reveal)

Title: Little Gray Dress 
Author: Aimee Brown 
Genre: Romantic Comedy 
Publisher: Crooked Cat Books 
Release Date: August 2nd, 2017 
Pre-Orders Available: Early July 

Blurb:

Emi Harrison has avoided her ex-fiance, Jack Cabot, for nearly two years. Her twin brother Evan’s wedding is about to end that streak.

From bad bridesmaid’s dresses, a hyperactive sister-in-law, a mean girl with even meaner secrets, and too much to drink, nothing seems to go right for Emi, except when she’s wearing her little gray dress.

When she speed-walks into Liam Jaxon’s bar, things get more complicated. He’s gorgeous, southern, and has no past with Emi. He may be exactly what she needs to prove for the last time that she doesn’t need or want Jack!

Her favorite little gray dress has made an appearance at nearly every major event in Emi’s adult life. Will it make another grand appearance when she least expects it?

Pre-Order the Book in early July. *for a notification when the books pre-order is up, sign-up for her author newsletter.

About the Author:

Author Bio:

Aimee Brown is a writer and avid reader, often blogging her thoughts on chick lit books. Little Gray Dress is her first novel published. She’s currently studying for her Bachelor’s degree in English Writing. She spends much of her time writing her next book, doing homework, raising three teenagers, binge watching shows on Netflix and obsessively cleaning and redecorating her house. She’s fluent in sarcasm and has been known to use far too many swear words. Aimee grew up in Oregon but is now a transplant living in cold Montana with her husband of twenty years, three teenage children, and many, many pets. She would love to hear your thoughts on Little Gray Dress! If you want to chat with her she’s very active on social media. Author Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest | Sign-Up for her Newsletter Participate in the Book Tour: Aimee would love to have you as a part of this upcoming release day book tour! If you'd like to sign-up to review the book during the tour or post a feature, author q&a, author guest post, excerpt, or giveaway, click the image below to sign-up. Or --- sign-up here ---> http://authoraimeebrown.com/little-gray-dress/   

 

Daughter of Darkness - Raye Wagner (Review)

Daughter of Darkness by Raye Wagner

Genres: Young Adult Fiction, Fantasy

Publication date: May 11th 2017

Publisher: Amazon Digital Services

Format: ebook/ 90 pages

How I got it: The author for exchange for an honest review

Buy it: Amazon 

My rating: 5/5 

Who will be her light in the dark?

Dahlia knows her value… it’s less than nothing. As a daughter of the goddess Eris, discord and wanting are her only companions. While she craves love and friendship — or even just a sense of belonging — those are the very things her presence destroys.

Unless . . . 

One day, a mysterious stranger rescues her from a fight and offers her the unattainable: a safe haven with other demigods. But Dahlia fears a new residence can only be a temporary reprieve. It can’t end well — not for her or the others.

After all, it’s impossible to change who she is.

Daughter of Darkness takes place in the same world as The Sphinx series, but it is a companion story (12,000 words) and can be enjoyed independently.

.........................................................................

Review

I love the Sphinx series and Raye Wagner’s writing so I was excited to read Daughter of Darkness.

This is a companion book to the Sphinx series and is specifically about Dahlia who is the daughter of Eris.  Dahlia is in the other books of the series and does become more prevalent as the series is continuing.  I loved that the author was able to take one character and bring her to life a lot more than the series allows since it follows the Sphinx and her interactions with the Gods/Demigods.

I loved this book!! The emotions that Raye pulled through this book where by far amazing and kept my attention reading the entire time.  I felt connected to Dahlia and just wanted her to succeed.  We first meet Dahlia as she is fighting with some school mates for the 100^th time and Xan saves her.  Also, I love that we got more of Xan in this book. 

Dahlia has had a very rough upbringing and has very low self-confidence.  She doesn’t know her worth or what she is good at until she meets Xan.  If I didn’t love Xan already you will fall more for him in this book because he teaches Dahlia how to be confident in herself.   I loved his ability to show her that she is worth a lot. 

The author does a great job with pacing in this book as well as giving enough background that you know exactly what is going on.  I again love all the descriptions that we are getting for the setting and the characters.

The story is very short, but does help explain how Dahlia became the Dahlia of today.  I loved every part of this book.  I would say you could probably read this as a novel in between book 2 and 3 to get more about Dahlia and even as a standalone it would make sense as not much is brought up that isn’t directly explained in the book.  I can’t wait for the next book in this series or even another companion book!!

I would suggest this as a book to read in one sitting.  I read it in one night and just couldn’t put it down.  Also, I highly recommend this series to anyone who enjoys fantasy as well as mythology! 

......................................................................... 

About the Author

Raye Wagner grew up in Seattle, the second of eight children, and learned to escape chaos through the pages of fiction. As a youth, she read the likes of David Eddings, Leon Uris, and Jane Austen. Inspired by a fictional character, Raye pursued a career in nursing, thinking to help the world one patient at a time.
One summer afternoon, when her then young children were playing in the pool, a plot dropped into her head, and she started writing. 
She enjoys baking, puzzles, Tae Kwon Do, and the sound of waves lapping at the sand. She lives with her husband and three children in Middle Tennessee.

Origin of the Sphinx, a novella detailing the story leading up to the creation of the mythological creature, is her first publication. It is the beginning of the Sphinx series. 

Curse of the Sphinx, the first book in the series, is completed, and set to be released in August 2015.

Author Links: