Comic Book Tuesday #29: Wonder Woman Vol. 4: Godwatch (Rebirth) by Greg Rucka

Author: Greg Rucka
Series: Wonder Woman, Volume V #4
Audience: +16
Genre: Comic Book
Publisher: DC Comics
Release Date: November 21st 2017
My Rating: 4 cups
Source: Netgalley
Blurb (from Goodreads):

NEW YORK TIMES best-selling writer Greg Rucka continues his celebrated return to the Amazon Warrior in WONDER WOMAN VOL. 4: GODWATCH!

Since the moment Wonder Woman arrived in our world, Godwatch has been waiting. But who are they, and what do they want? Diana’s journey to the truth that she’s been seeking since WONDER WOMAN VOL. 1 continues here, with the origin of what may prove to be her greatest enemies.

Teaming with up-and-coming artist Bilquis Evely, Greg Rucka’s critically acclaimed run on one of Rebirth’s most successful titles continues here in WONDER WOMAN VOL. 4: GODWATCH! Collects WONDER WOMAN #16, #18, #20, #22 and #24.

*Disclaimer: I received an eARC of this book from Netgalley and DC Comics in exchange for an honest review. This does not influence my rating or the content of my review in any way.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by this 4th volume of Wonder Woman. If the previous volumes that I read, 1 and 3, focused on Wonder Woman, here we get the other side of the story, Cale's story, which helped me understand her a little bit more.

I still believe it would have been better to have these volumes include the issues in order, but at the same time, having this last part told from a different POV altogether kind of made me like the story more. I got a few of the answers that I hoped I'd get, while at the same time some of the gaps I had are still there, like for instance what convinced Diana to fight the inner demons that kept her mind captive. But back to this volume.

We get to see how Cale, Doctor Cyber and Cheetah became who they were. The volume starts way back in the past, with Cale's daughter being a normal little girl, and we get to see doctor Cyber as a regular human, Cheetah as Barbara Ann. I believe this was a story that deserved a bit more page time, probably a bit more story development than it got, because there were a lot of elements that could have been explored more, but as a whole I liked the story. I would have wanted to see more of Cheetah, so I'm hoping there's a comic book out there that focuses on her a lot more than this one did.

Despite these missing details, I loved seeing the struggle of Victoria Cale and her transformation from regular woman to villain, her dehumanization in a way. At her core, Cale is just a mother trying to protect her daughter and willing to do anything in order to keep her safe. There's a wonderful scene halfway through this volume that shows just that, when she takes her now teenager daughter to see some specialists that might help figure out how to cure her. I liked that, because here you have a woman willing to do anything, from creating an inanimate AI version of her best friend to subduing the two gods who cursed her daughter, while at the same time you get the mother who is trying out everything medically possible to figure out how to cure her doctor. I loved that side of the story. Based on that alone, I kind of liked the idea of the story being split across the volumes, with this last one focused on the "villain's" side of the story.

The art was a bit confusing. While still pretty, it was strikingly different than what I was used to from the previous volumes. I felt like this was more similar to the older, 80s version of Wonder Woman. It kind of set the two versions of the story apart. This kind of made me realize that while everybody else was enamored with Wonder Woman, as shown in the previous volumes through the clean, almost poster-like art used there, here you have Cale who doesn't really care one way or the other, which for me seemed translated in the art. That's how I interpreted the choice made to have this big difference. It also made me think of how the insanity of Cale translated in the art. There's a sort of disturbing quality in the art, if it makes sense, which I loved seeing. It's not that the drawings are bad, on the contrary, but the lines, the colors used, everything about it made me think of how disturbing this version of the story was.

The volume has a few loose ends, and I hope that maybe they'll be picked up in the future and resolved, but if not, I thought this was a good way to end this run. I'll definitely read future installments if they come out, but if not, I just hope we'll get some connected stories, at least so we can see Barbara Ann get some form of happy ending. All in all, a good volume that I enjoyed a lot more than I anticipated.

Release Day Blitz: Inked Memories by Carrie Ann Ryan

 

NYT bestselling author Carrie Ann Ryan's INKED MEMORIES is available TODAY. Read a sneak peek below and pick up your copy now - you don't want to miss meeting the dirtiest Montgomery yet.

 

 About INKED MEMORIES

The Montgomery Ink series by NYT Bestselling Author Carrie Ann Ryan continues when the final Denver Montgomery sibling refuses to fall for his brother’s former flame—the company’s new plumber.

Wes Montgomery watched his entire family fall in love, and now finds himself ready to settle down. Except the one person he seems to find chemistry with is not only his twin’s ex, she also works for Montgomery Inc. But when the two find themselves in one compromising situation after another, Wes realizes he’s having second thoughts about the dynamic woman who’s burst her way into his life. Sure she sets off his temper, but she also makes him hot in every other way possible.

Jillian Reid never loved her best friend like everyone thought she should, so she pushed him away so he could have his future. Now, despite fighting it, she finds herself attracted to the one man she shouldn’t. When her father’s health takes a turn for the worse, and a danger no one saw coming show its face, she’s forced to turn to Wes for help. The two of them have fought off their attraction long enough, and each cave to the desire. But this enemies-to-lovers tale might have an ending no one ever dreamed of.

Get your hands on INKED MEMORIES now!

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Get a sneak peek of INKED MEMORIES:

  Jillian tore off her shirt right beside her truck. Thankfully, she’d thought to put on her normal tank underneath like usual, even though she hadn’t planned to work that day. She needed a shower, but the fact that she’d washed her face and hands to the point of reddening her skin and was now pulling on a new shirt would at least take care of most of the damage.
Almost all of the crew was gone for the day since it had taken her much longer to do her job than probably anyone had planned. But, hell, it had been a much larger piece of crap bathroom than even Storm figured. Now, she was ready to go home, drink a beer— after her shower—and watch a Harry Potter marathon.
And didn’t that just sound like the most interesting life ever.
She sighed and honestly didn’t care all too much what others thought of that. She’d had a long day she hadn’t planned for, and she just wanted to relax her way.
After tossing her dirty shirt into the garbage bag in her truck since she knew there was no saving that particular piece of clothing, she turned and let out a silent screech. Her foot slammed into the curb, and her ankle twisted slightly. Hands out and braced for an ugly fall, everything seemed to go in slow motion as she tried not to hurt herself any worse than necessary.
Strong arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her up so her back pressed firmly into a very hard chest. Her heart raced since she still felt like she was falling even though she wasn’t, and she let out a slow breath.
“You okay?”
Of course. Of course, it was him. It couldn’t be anyone else who witnessed her clumsiness and near accident. It had to be Wes fucking Montgomery.
Where was a crevice in the earth to swallow her up and take her away from this situation when she needed one?
“Jillian?”
“I’m fine,” she grumbled. “You can take your hands off me now.”
But he didn’t.
Instead, he turned her in his hold and looked her right in the eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
She swallowed hard. Why hadn’t she noticed the brightness of his eyes before? Or the way his pupils dilated when he focused on something...namely her at the moment?
“I’m fine,” she repeated. And she was. Her ankle throbbed slightly, but it wasn’t even a sprain since she’d had enough of those to tell. She’d just tweaked it a bit in her clod-hopping way of walking.
He didn’t let go.
“Seriously, Wes. You need to stop trying to baby me, or whatever the hell you think you’re doing all the time. I’m not an idiot. I can handle myself. Why do you—?”
She didn’t even know what she was going to ask at that moment because her mind went blank at the first touch of Wes’s lips to hers. Her eyes closed of their own volition, and she leaned into him. That seemed to push him harder, and he deepened the kiss, his lips soft yet firm against hers as his tongue traced the seam of her mouth. She opened for him, tangling her tongue with his as she moaned.
The sound seemed to break them both out of whatever the hell they were doing, and they pulled apart as if struck, both left panting, their chests moving quickly up and down.
“No. Not going to happen.” She held out her hands, trying to catch her breath. “Nope. No way.”
Wes looked at her as if he hadn’t seen her before, his eyes a little wide. “It was...it was an accident.”
She didn’t even flinch at that, too numb from everything else hitting her all at once. “Fine.”
She turned on her heel, grateful she hadn’t actually hurt her ankle, and jumped into her truck before turning her engine and pulling away.
“Nope,” she muttered to herself again. “Not going to happen. I’m not going to do another Montgomery and fuck myself over. And I’m sure as hell not going to do a boss Montgomery. Nope. Nope. No. No. No.”
And if she kept repeating that to herself, she just might get the damn taste of Wes Montgomery out of her mouth.
 

See the INKED MEMORIES trailer:

 

About Carrie Ann Ryan

Carrie Ann Ryan is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of contemporary and paranormal romance. Her works include the Montgomery Ink, Redwood Pack, Talon Pack, and Gallagher Brothers series, which have sold over 2.0 million books worldwide. She started writing while in graduate school for her advanced degree in chemistry and hasn’t stopped since. Carrie Ann has written over fifty novels and novellas with more in the works. When she’s not writing about bearded tattooed men or alpha wolves that need to find their mates, she’s reading as much as she can and exploring the world of baking and gourmet cooking.

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Blog Tour Book Review: The Duke's Temptation by Raven McAllan

Author: Raven McAllan
Series: N/A
Audience: +18
Genre: Historical Romance, Erotic Romance
Publisher: Totally Bound
Release Date: October 31st 2017
My Rating: 5 Cups
Source: Neverland Blog Tours
Blurb (from Goodreads):

Tortured duke Gibb Alford has vowed never to love again...until a beautiful French knife thrower brings him to his knees.

When Gibb Alford, Duke of Menteith, saves a beautiful French knife thrower from the unwanted attentions of a fellow aristocrat he is ill-prepared for the immediate tug of attraction to the beautiful Evangeline. Widowed, he has sworn off love forever, so he can well do without this temptation.

Evangeline certainly doesn’t want the complication of being in the sights of one smoky-eyed Scottish duke. She’s a lady on a mission, with no time for love or dalliance.

However, fate and life have other plans and gradually Gibb and Evangeline become a couple.

As each struggle with the demons of their pasts, Evangeline finds life in the ton difficult. The spurned aristocrat Gibb saved her from is not prepared to give in and retire gracefully. And while Gibb fights the man, he also declares war on his own emotions. When Evangeline’s past is revealed to her, everything changes. She has a decision to make.

Fight for Gibb—or flee to a safe but unfulfilled future.

As for her duke… All is fair in love and war—right?

*Disclaimer: I received an eARC of this book from Neverland Blog Tours in exchange for an honest review. This does not influence my rating or the content of my review

It's been a while since I last read a historical romance that I loved as much as I did this one.

I had so much fun reading this book. Gibb is a tortured hero, who has vowed never to love again after his wife died. Fortunately for him, emotions have a funny way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it, and he is saved from his self-imposed solitude when he meets Evangeline. I quite liked Gibb. I loved how forward he was with his thinking, even though it is amazing how few people understood his quite reasonable ideas. I liked how he respected his staff, how he pushed them towards getting an education, and I liked how he defended Evangeline when she needed to be defended. I also liked how, towards the end of the book, he started fighting with his demons and tried to come to terms with how his late wife was like and with what she did.

Evangeline is an interesting heroine. She wasn't interested in anything other than what Gibb was willing to offer, but also nothing less than what she deserved. I liked how she stood up for herself, both when she needed to defend herself from Crowe, but also when she decided she deserved more from Gibb and had that conversation with him. I loved seeing her do that. I also loved how independent she was, how she wanted to earn her living. She's also a woman on a mission, trying to find out who her father is, and I liked that aspect of the story. In some ways, she reminded me of Elizabeth Bennet, which is one of my favorite heroines ever.

While reading this book I felt like reading a classic book. I was so immersed in the storytelling, that it took me a while to remember that this is a brand new book. Which is amazing, because it takes a special kind of author (or magician, however you want to put it) to manage to make the old English sound so new and not difficult to read or understand. I was truly amazed by McAllan's ability to write a story using words I've never heard before, without taking away from the story. It actually made the story more vibrant, more real, easier to get lost in, which I adored.

It's been a while since I last read a historical romance book, but this one reminded me why I fell in love with the genre in the first place. If you love the genre as much as I do, you must read this book. McAllan's writing took me on a wonderful journey and I cannot wait to read more of her stories.

Book Review: Cupid's Match by Lauren Palphreyman

Author: Lauren Palphreyman
Series: Cupid's Match #1
Audience: +16
Genre: YA, Fantasy, Paranormal
Publisher: Self-Published
Release Date:
My Rating: 3.5 cups
Source: Wattpad
Blurb (from Goodreads):

In a world where everyone has a perfect match, what if you were matched with the dangerous, notoriously good looking, original bad boy....Cupid himself?

***
Dear Lila,
I am contacting you on behalf of The Cupids Matchmaking Service.

You will not have heard of us but we are an organisation that work behind the scenes of society, identifying each person's perfect match.

Usually we would not contact our clients. We prefer to work in secrecy - setting up the ideal environment for the two matches to have a chance encounter.

Recently, however, we ran your details through our system and...well....in your case...

We think you'd better come in.

Please respond at your earliest convenience.

Yours Urgently,

The Cupids Matchmaking Service

I think we all know by now I love books inspired by mythology. I probably said it so many times y'all are bored and annoyed already, but it's true. I love them. I read Cupid's Match on Wattpad when I hit a bit of a reading slump phase, and it was the perfect book to get me out of it.

The story focuses on the idea that each person has a destined partner, a so-called match. The Cupids Matchmaking Services organization is basically the name given to a group of cupids that have heen around since the beginning of time. As per the company rules, no cupid can find his or her match, it is forbidden. So what happens if this rule is broken and a cupid does find his match? Enter Lila, a regular teenager that finds herself matched to the Cupid, and all hell breaks loose.

I really enjoyed the idea of love being forbidden to the very creatures whose entire existence is dependent on love. It was an interesting aspect of the story, and it was a fun, new thing to do with the myth of love. I also liked how this was explained. For me it felt like a truly selfish reason from the organization's boss to have such a rule, because it meant that this person wasn't in the business of love for selfless reasons, but for the feeling of power that comes from playing with human emotions, but also from feeling loved by humans and served by cupids. The concept of love in this book is seen from many perspectives, from what some refer to as true love, to obsession, to adulation, all the way to envy and hate. So you get the positive and negative aspects of love, and I liked reading about that.

Lila was an enjoyable character to read about. At times she was a bit difficult to like though, probably because she was a bit too naive. And she was a bit undecided with what she wanted. I did like her spunk at the beginning of the story, when she refused to believe in the idea of an appointed, already decided-on match for her. While she had courage, I would have wanted to see her keep a bit more of that initial spark during the story. She kind of got it back towards the end of the story.

Cupid was depicted in an interesting way in this story. I got the idea of him more as a rebel here than a true bad boy, to be honest. He has a brother in this story, Cal, which I found insanely funny for some reason. There were moments when you could see a glimpse of Cupid's wild streak, but I didn't truly got a feeling of him as a full on bad boy.

There were a few details that I would have wanted to be more accurate in this story, at least from a mythological perspective. But all of that aside, as I said before, I really enjoyed seeing how the whole concept of love was depicted in this story. The villain in this story is pretty psychotic if you ask me. It's not that this particular villain is full on scary, just more deranged I'd say.

The plot was pretty evenly paced. One little technical thing that kept me from reading this story faster was the way it was put into pages. I don't know how this story translates to printed page or if a true ebook version of it is the same, but at least on Wattpad it felt as if the chapters were too short. I would have wanted longer, and therefore fewer chapters, just because the sudden breaks in reading with getting past the in-between posts kind of pulled me out of the story more than I liked.

All of that aside, I quite enjoyed this story. There were a few things that were left open-ended, and I hope this will be resolved in the other stories from this series. I am planning on reading the sequels, just because I am curious to see what happens to the secondary characters from this story. All in all, a pretty enjoyable read.

Mini Reviews: The DNF Edition: Things I Want My Daughters To Know, Portrait Of A Killer, Ella, Dracula, The Strange Journey Of Mr Daldry

Hey guys! I promised I was going to find my courage to write some DNF reviews HOLD ME and today is the perfect day for it. One of the bookstagram challenges I signed up for this month has a prompt for today that's about books you didn't finish, so here we are. So without further ado, here are some books I didn't finish.

A post shared by Ruby Jo (@rubys.books) on Oct 24, 2017 at 7:32am PDT

• Things I Want My Daughters To Know by Elizabeth Noble

To be honest, this book deserves more to be in the "put aside for now" pile. The story focuses four sisters trying to recover from the death of their mother in the present time, while also telling the story of the mother and her fight with cancer and, eventually, how she simply tries to come to terms with the idea that she can't win the battle, so she decides to write a journal, if I'm not mistaken, for her daughters to read after her death. The story is compelling and it certainly isn't my first foray into the world of sad, heartbreaking books where one of the MCs dies of cancer. But at the time I picked it up, without really thinking about it consciously, really, my grandma was fighting her battle with cancer. So I didn't manage to keep my distance from the story enough for it to not become a painful reading experience, so I felt the need to put it down. It doesn't mean I didn't enjoy what little I read, it just means I needed to step back a little bit from the story. I will definitely pick it up later to read.

• Portrait of a Killer by Patricia Cornwell

I've always been attracted to books or documentaries that focus on unsolved crime mysteries, and there's no bigger mystery to me than Jack the Ripper. I expected greatness from this book, to be honest. The thing that kept me from fully enjoying the book was that I felt like I spent too much time in the author's head, with her focusing a bit too much on her own journey and thoughts during and about this investigation. It's not my first time reading nonfiction about serial killers and unsolved mysteries, but they all managed to somehow not include too much detail about the author. I would have wanted less of that, to be honest.

• Ella, Dracula by Javier García-Sánchez

This book is about Elizabeth Bathory, one of the bloodiest serial killers ever in my opinion. Which got me excited, because as a psychologist, I love delving into the minds of the darkest human creatures that have lived on this planet. I read this book way, way before I stated book blogging, so I might not remember the finer details as much, but from what I remember the story is told from a male protagonist's perspective, who knew the countess from when he was a boy and was afraid of her, and he tries to tell this story of the bloody countess. That's really all I remember. While this would seem like such an interesting story, I couldn't get past the first 30 pages or so. First of all, I don't know if this was the way the book was written as in the original language, but the translated version was a bit too flowery for my taste. There were some metaphors there that killed me, and not in a good way. But my biggest issue was with the way the author portrayed my country's ancestors. I usually can manage to distance myself from any personal thoughts while reading, so when a book bothers me, it really bothers me. I myself was... I won't say offended, because that's a too strong word, but bothered by the way the Dacians were portrayed (if you don't know, the Dacians are the ancient people who inhabited the territory that is today known as Romania; Dacia was a bit bigger than today's Romania, but that's not the point here). Why the author felt the need to even mention Dacians in a book about a Hungarian countess is beyond me, honestly, and I'm sure they get as much page space in the overall book as a dedication page, but the little that was written bothered me. I understand challenging history, since we know history is written by winners, therefore is not always accurate, but this didn't feel like that. Maybe I exaggerated, but to me it proved to be too much and I couldn't continue reading.

ETA: I feel the need to add this one phrase again, just to make sure nobody got me wrong. I wasn't offended by what was said, but mostly by how it was said in this book. I understand how, if you've read the book, or if you want to, you might misunderstand me and accuse me of something I'm not. It's not about what was implied here, but about the how. 

• The Strange Journey of Mr Daldry by Marc Levy

This book is the most painful of them all. Marc Levy is one of my favorite authors, and I was excited when this book came out, because it felt different than all his previous books. The story takes place a few years after WWII and it's about Alice, who gets her fortune told. She then moves into this apartment that has, according to her neighbor, Mr Daldry, "the best lighting he needed for his paintings". He then somehow convinces her to listen to the fortune teller, and go on a journey. That's the short version of where I got into reading the book. I started reading the book all excited, and halfway through I realized I misinterpreted just about everything about this Mr. Daldry, so much so that I was convinced I was reading about an old guy. Which made sense to me, because the way he talks, the way he acts, even his way of thinking, all made me imagine an 80 year old guy. For some reason I just couldn't connect with the characters, and for me that is just as important as the plot itself.

Okay, so this might not be as painful as I originally thought. Let's discuss. What book did you recently DNF and why?

Comic Book #28: Injustice 2 Vol 1 by Tom Taylor

Author: Tom Taylor
Series: Injustice 2 #1-6
Audience: +16
Genre: Comic Books
Publisher: DC Comics
Release Date: October 31st 2017
My Rating: 4 cups
Source: Netgalley
Blurb (from Goodreads):

From the makers of the critically acclaimed prequel comic to the smash hit fighting game Injustice: Gods Among Us comes the highly anticipated prequel to Injustice 2!

Batman has triumphed over the tyranical Superman! But now he must piece all of the world back together, and to make matters worse, he has to do it while fighting off the former dictator's supporters working to reinstate the old regime. With all the in-fighting a dark shadow appears on the horizon.

From best-selling writer Tom Taylor, scribe of the original INJUSTICE: GODS AMONG US graphic novel series, comes INJUSTICE 2! Collects issues #1-6.

*Disclaimer: I received an eARC of this book from Netgalley and DC Comics in exchange for an honest review. This does not influence my rating or the content of my review in any way.

I really enjoyed this comic book. I was a bit confused at times, because I haven't played the Injustice games, nor have I read the related comic books, but I was still able to follow the story pretty easily.

The story focuses on Batman's struggle to help rebuild the world after the destruction Superman caused, while also fighting off against a pretty strong opponent intent on helping Batman's enemies. This was the first time I've read anything related to the fight between Batman and Superman, and it was the source of my confusion, because there were a lot of gaps there that I don't know if they're from the previous Injustice series or in the game or if they'll be filled at least partially later on in Injustice 2. I liked the idea of Superman being a villain, to be honest. If I had to choose between the two, I'd pick Superman, because I grew up watching the movies many, many times, a lot more times than the original Batman movies, but I've always wondered if somehow Superman's desire to help the world, to save everybody couldn't turn into a dangerous and negative aspect of him. This is probably the reason why I loved seeing Superman depicted as a bad guy.

At the opposite side of the war you have Batman, who is trying to keep the world together, but just before he starts working on fixing everything, new enemies rise. I liked this new foe and I wonder where that will lead the story to. It was an interesting plot device, to be honest. Here you have Batman, trying to save the world, when all of the sudden, a Batman impersonator comes along to wreak havoc everywhere. The subtle hints towards the duality of Batman are also among my favorite parts of this story. I never believed Batman to be a full hero, because he's so dark and he's willing to do some pretty hard choices. Maybe it's also the fact that his hometown, Gotham, is such a dark place, that the darkness of it rubbed off on Batman. But the idea of a fully-dark, villainous Batman fighting with the original, hero version of Batman is kind of like seeing Bruce's inner struggle come to life, so I cannot wait to see how that will progress in future installments. There's also another side to this war, that I won't give too many details about, because of spoilers, but I'm also curious about how that will be explained and resolved.

I also loved the art. There were a lot of details in the panels, but not too many as to distract me from reading. The story itself is reflected in the art, and you can tell there's a big difference between Batman and Superman in the way color is used for these two characters' panels. As for good Batman vs bad Batman, there are subtle differences, but generally you get the same style, which again was amazing, because it made me think of the duality of this character.

I read this pretty easily and I was actually very sad to get to the end of it. I'm definitely planning on reading the rest of the story.