Alyssa Cole

This book was absolutely terrible. I rolled my eyes all the way until the end because this was for a book club. And out of 25 of us only 2 liked it. Overall consensus is it’s not worth reading. In fact, so far this is being marked my worst read of 2024. I can’t possibly think a book could get worse than this…
Essentially the story is ridiculous and absurd about a cranky racist black chick who meets up with this nice new white guy in her neighborhood so they can study the history of the neighborhood for a tour she was going to be conducting. She’s ungrateful to him the whole storyline and then for some reason at the end they go shooting people up together. It’s literally one of the most stupid plots I’ve ever read.
It’s obvious the author has a huge problem with white people, and essentially any modern day issue. She literally brought in modern day issue she could think of. She’s made her main character a depressive racist who needs to get a life. She’s a romance author who tried to write a thriller. The first 250 pages are just black people this, black people that, white people are bad and taking over, oh no! Her paranoia over gentrification shows either personal trauma (probably self-inflicted) or the fact that she simply doesn’t know anything about true gentrification. For those of us who’ve actually been through it, it’s a long time coming, it’s not fast, and it’s not that noticeable.
She almost made gentrification to be comedic. The last 100 pages of the book were laughable. It was like she all of a sudden woke up and remembered she was trying to write a thriller….and it came out more like a bad Sci Fi movie with an unrealistic ending. And she had to bring in a white boy punching bag who her main character disliked for most of it until she screwed him so it was obvious she should’ve just written another romance, it’s what she knows.
And she should fire her publishing team. Her editors should never have let this one get through.
★ Don’t waste your time.… (mais)

I received this book from Scene of the Crime and the publisher for an honest review.

Kenetria (Ken) has dissociative identity disorder (DID), or multiple personalities. Ken has just emerged from being dormant for 6 years to find herself on a dock with luggage and a ferry coming towards her. Through her thoughts, she communicates with her personalities to find out what is going on and discovers that they have gotten a job as a caretaker on Kavanaugh (or Daybreak) Island. The only caveat is that they must make it through that first night.

Turns out, Ken and her headmates (her personalities) arrived a day earlier than anticipated. She doesn’t need to survive the first night but the second night. This is the night that members of the trust for the island arrive, including Ken’s ex-boyfriend and his father. When someone turns up dead, everyone assumes Ken is the murderer (she had attacked him years before).

Each chapter alternates from the POV of Ken to each of her “headmates”. Sometimes a journal entry will appear in between.

This was a tough, confusing read. There were several typos throughout the book. Normally, I can figure out the gist of what the author is writing but there were several times in this book when I had to reread the sentence because the typo changed the sentence completely. At one point, a character was thinking something was a figment of their imagination, but the author wrote “…fig mint…”.… (mais)

Book number two in the Loyal League series of Civil-War-era romances.

Marlie Lynch is a free woman who has been taken into the Lynch household as a member of the family. She’s always understood that her father was the plantation owner, though she and her mother lived far away. The old man is deceased and his heir Stephen has married and moved away, so Marlie and her older sister Sarah maintain the estate with a handful of servants … all freed slaves who are paid for their labor. Marlie’s primary contribution is the tonics and poultices she concocts from the plant knowledge passed down from her mother. With a Rebel prison camp in the neighborhood, Marlie begins to tend to the prisoners, and passing messages along to the Loyal League – Southerners who are against slavery and trying to help the Union. It’s at the prison that she meets Ewan McCall, a Union soldier with unique skills.

This is a pretty typical romance between two people of differing status, who join together with a common cause. Of course, they will have to fight against not only their mutual attraction, but the very real restrictions of the society in which they find themselves. I’m amazed they could find time for sex (or even for the desire for sex) given the dangers in which they find themselves, but if they can manage to have mutual orgasms in such a setting more power to them!

This is the second in a series, but I think it can easily be read as a standalone. I certainly didn’t feel that I was missing anything by not having read the first book.… (mais)