Review: Junkyard Cats

 

Title:  Junkyard Cats   

Author: Faith Hunter

Series:  Junkyard Cats #1

Synopsis: “After the Final War, after the appearance of the Bug aliens and their enforced peace, Shining Smith is still alive, still doing business from the old scrapyard bequeathed to her by her father.  But Shining is now something more than human.  And the scrapyard is no longer just a scrapyard, but a place full of secrets that she has guarded for years.

    “This life she has built, while empty, is predictable and safe.  Until the only friend left from her previous life shows up, dead, in the back of a scrapped Tesla warplane, a note to her clutched in his fingers – a note warning her of a coming attack.

    “Someone knows who she is.  Someone knows what she is guarding.  Will she be able to protect the scrapyard?  Will she even survive?  Or will she have to destroy everything she loves to keep her secrets out of the wrong hands?”

Review:  I love Faith Hunter’s books.  Most people know her through her Jane Yellowrock series, but I found her through her Rogue Mage Trilogy which is still one of my favorite series of all time.  One of the main reasons I love Faith Hunter’s books is her superb character AND world building.  With most authors you get one or the other, but with Hunter you get both!  I truly feel for the characters; and can almost see, smell, and taste the world they live in. 

    While reading Junkyard Cats I kept getting pulled away to do other things, which was torturous.  I was so into the characters and the story that I just HAD to know what was going to happen next.  Finally, when I got to the final 25% I put on my noise cancelling headphones, turned off my phone, and told everyone to leave me alone until I was done!  No one will be surprised that my favorite character was Tuffs, the alpha female cat.  I loved the development of the bond between Shining and Tuffs.  My only complaint is that Junkyard Cats is short, 106 pages on Kindle, and I wanted more. 

Publisher: Lore Seekers Press

If you like this book you may want to read:

Blood of the Earth (Soulwood #1) by Faith Hunter

Rogue Mage Trilogy by Faith Hunter

The Voodoo Killings (Kincaid Strange #1) by Kristi Charish (See BookGirlR's review here)

Review: The Return

 

Title:  The Return        

Author:  Rachel Harrison

Synopsis: “An edgy and haunting debut novel about a group of friends who reunite after one of them has returned from a mysterious two-year disappearance.

     “Julie is missing, and the missing don’t often return.  But Elise knows Julie better than anyone, and she feels in her bones that her best friend is out there, and that one day she’ll come back.  She’s right.  Two years to the day that Julie went missing, she reappears with no memory of where she’s been or what happened to her.”

Review:  I made the mistake of starting The Return at bedtime one night.  I like to read before bed to help me relax and push aside any worries of the day.  So, at 10pm (Ok, it was probably 9:30; I love bedtime.) I moisturized, grabbed a cat and my book, and climbed under the covers.  Next thing I knew it was 2am and I had read the whole book.  I was so frightened after I finished that I had to sleep with the lights on.  

Reading The Return was like driving by an accident.  Even though you kind of know what happened, and you know it’s going to be bad, you can’t help looking.  I had sort of figured out basically what was going on, but the main characters had no idea, and I couldn’t help speeding through the pages to find out what they were going to do.   I highly recommend The Return to fans of horror and the supernatural.

Publisher:  Berkley

If you like this book you may want to read:

Wonderland by Zoje Stage

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

What Has BookGirlR Been Up To?

 Hello!

  It's been awhile.  I hope you are all well.  If you follow me on Facebook, and you really should if you want the most updates, you know that my pc stopped working this summer.  I finally have my new one and after a little break I'm ready to start reviewing again.  My reading goal for every year is usually 104 books, which is 2 books per week.  But I always meet it easily, so I decided to up it this year to 156, which is 3 books per week. 

So what's been happening?  2020 was a really rough year for me.  My emotional support cat Tempest passed away on my husband's 50th birthday, July 1st.  This was at the same time that my sister almost died, and was in the hospital and had to have emergency surgery.  SuperSteve and I made the 70 mile drive to her house several times in the span of a week to help with the kids and her household.  Then a week later our remaining cat Spooky started acting very strange and had a urinary blockage.  The vet said he was grieving the loss of Tempest, just like we were, and the stress of that was responsible for the urinary blockage.  So we adopted a kitten.  River Moon Fireball MeowMeow-Fischer joined our family on 7/14/2020 and she is the best thing to happen to me in 2020.  For my nerds, she is named River after River Tam from Firefly AND River Song from Dr Who because she is beautiful, crazy, and wicked smart.  She wasn't the kitten we originally applied to adopt, but she is from the same litter, and she was obviously meant to be mine.  Even as a kitten she stepped right into the roll of emotional support cat.  When I feel panicky she is right there, usually insisting I sit down and lean back so she can lay on my chest.  With her purring aggressively on my chest it's really hard to be panicky.  We share a love that is very obviously mutual and after a very short 7 months I can no longer imagine my life without her.  Spooky also loves her.  Where Tempest merely tolerated his presence, River adores him.  They play, snuggle and have joint grooming sessions that I find absolutely adorable.  A month after all of this we had another family emergency that was sort of ongoing over the Fall as well.  

I guess we can't talk about the last 7 months without mentioning the pandemic.  At first I thought quarantine was going to be a breeze for me.  I'm an introvert, who is borderline a hermit, and I was already working from home every other week.  Last March work called and said we were all working from home indefinitely.  Stay home!  For the first couple of months I was fine.  But then it started to get to me.  I'm fine working from home, but I want to go out with my friends.  I want to eat out in a restaurant, read in a coffee shop, and do my annual wine tour around the finger lakes.  I want to meet in person with my book club and DnD group. I want to hug my Mom and SuperSteve's Mom, and all of my nieces and nephews. Like many other people I have been struggling to concentrate on anything at all really, even reading.  My anxiety has been much worse than usual.  But I have River, and I have SuperSteve.  My book club has been meeting online on our regular monthly basis and we've recently started a DnD campaign that meets every other(ish) Saturday evening.  We will be ok.  

How have you been surviving the pandemic and quarantine.  Let me know in the comments!

Here are some pictures of River and Spooky:

One week after we brought her home.  Spooky was already in love with her.  Look how teeny she was!

River Moon knows she is beautiful.

Dinnertime shenanigans.  Looks how teeny she was!

They both must be touching me as often as possible.

I love to see them snuggle.

Post panic attack.  River says no panic, only purrs.

Spooky and his murder claws.

She loves to be with me (on me) all the time, even when it's not particularly helpful.