Well, I'm...
… probably prejudiced (blush). I tend to spend rather too much time re-reading (Editors sort of insist :-P), or looking at what I just wrote and wondering if I need therapy (the jury’s still out :-P ).
However, recently I have in fact been readin. Reading words wot I didn't actually write. Here are three of them. Well, not three words :-):
DOWN HOME – Gail Roughton
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0099WA05A
CHILDREN OF HAMELIN – Theresa Sinclair
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007RYSLSK
BEAST OF BURDEN – Angela Robbins
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AC6VEZW
Declaration of Interest: I know Ms Roughton and Ms Robbins, though I’ve never met either. Anti-Declaration: I bought and paid for copies of all three of the above without talking to any of the authors, and of my own choice and free will :-).
Without going into full review mode, DOWN HOME isn’t my usual Sci-Fi/ Fantasy side of the street. It’s a combination of Deep South flavour and mystery/ thriller type fare. But while (with apologies to Charlie Daniels) I don’t drive a pickup truck, I’m more than partial to a little fried chicken on occasion. Down Home provided it, if only metaphorically :-). I started reading it while fixing my rather sick PC, and realised a few hours later the damn machine still wasn’t fixed – but that I’d just read a pretty good book, so it wasn’t all bad :-).
CHILDREN OF HAMELIN is a little different. Actually, it's a lot different, or I found it so at least. I told someone recently I like writers who surprise me, and Ms Sinclair certainly managed that. Yes, it’s a re-telling of the Pied Piper story, but from a totally different perspective and with a remarkably strong Voice. And I was fine thinking that as I read it. Then the Lady Theresa did it to me. Having told me a tale I’d rather enjoyed, from an engaging point of view I hadn’t seen before, she switched my head-space over. She told it to me again – but from a totally different view. Books in first person aren’t uncommon. Books in two first-persons, showing the same events from the perspectives of two very different personalities, rather less so. For me, it worked. A lot :-).
And BEAST OF BURDEN. I don’t read a lot of YA (Young Adult) – but this one I read. It’s Ms Robbins first book, and it mixes Egyptian and Norse myth backgrounds. It’s YA, so there has to be a cute girl and guy who’s either cute or the one you hated not being when you were at school (depending on your gender and preferences). And yes, theyhave classic boy-girl conflicts. Heck, they fight like cat and dog. Which isn’t really that surprising, since one’s a werewolf (but there’s no Twilight here – and no vampires), and she’s a cougar, even if she’s a bit young for the role :-).
Heh. It’s OK. I’ll shut up now… and go read something else :-).