Pale Demon(Rachel Morgan/The Hollows #9) -Review

Yay finally got to read on of my guilty pleasures. I must say I wasn't disappointed, which could have happened since I waited so long to read this book. I still find Rachel slightly irritating, but she was slightly less irritating in this book than I remember her from the previous books.

This review will be pretty much pointless for anyone who hasn't read the first 8 books, so I'm not going to try to make it understandable for anyone who isn't familiar with the series.

First for the likes:

1) like how much Trent was in this book. He and Jenks are my favorite.

2) barely any sexual content (I'm probably one of the few people that could do without the sexual content in this series. romance is fine, but I'm not big on reading about other people's sex lives)

3) less Ivy/Rachel drama.

4) the plot was not predictable (to me at least, but I don't pick up on things, so maybe it was predictable to others), and I liked the plot twists thrown in there (I won't tell you what. As the Doctor would say, "Spoilers.")

Dislikes:

1) Rachel is still having issues getting off her high horse (admittedly, she was able to at least slightly admit the hypocrisy of disdaining Trent even though she does things just as bad)

2) Despite the unpredictability of the plot, it did rather drag on a bit.

3) stupid witch ghost boy is still in the picture. Although I guess he couldn't just disappear. Kim Harrison could have conveniently left him out of the story. Maybe in between the last story and this one, Algaliarept could have killed him. I would have appreciated that.

If you're a fan of the series, I guess you will either love or hate this story depending on how much you like Trent. Since I would be content to read an entire series centered around him, this was good for me.

Face of Betrayal -a review

Face of Betrayal by Lis Wiehl and April Henry is a story about three girl friends who work together to try to solve the mystery of a 17 year old girl who has gone missing. While working together to solve the mystery, each woman has to deal with their own real-life problems, and keep it together long enough to find the missing girl.

Face of Betrayal was an intriguing mystery that was not steeped in a fantastical plot that was unrealistic to life. Instead, the story allowed the three main characters to develop with each passing chapter as their personal struggles clashed with their struggle to find the missing girl. It was refreshing to read a story where the main characters were not perfect heroes that never had to deal with regular short-comings and trials of the everyday woman.

Also refreshing was the fact that as a book with a main character who was a Christian, the message of the novel was not dramatically Christian. Once again, the struggles the main character who was a Christian faced were regular struggles of a Christian that made her character relatable.

*I acquired this book from Thomas Nelson on the booksneeze site*