First up is NAUGHTY CINDERELLA.  Cinderella works as a prostitute to bring money into her family so her stepsisters and her stepmother can live the life they feel they deserve.  When the prince comes to the town square to announce a ball, they laugh when Cinderella says she wants to attend.  Though she found a beautiful gown, they destroy it and go to the ball without her.  She sits in a tub knowing her life will end.  Her fairy godmother appears and gives Cinderella all she needs to go to the ball including crystal slippers with the admonition to return home by midnight.  Will she?  Will she amaze the prince?  Will he marry her?

I enjoyed this tale.  It follows a lot of the CINDERELLA fairy tale with a few differences.  Her stepsisters may be beautiful on the outside, but they are ugly on the inside.  She is the most beautiful woman at the ball and the prince knows it.  As he says, “it’s in the eyes.”  When midnight comes Cinderella runs out.  She manages to make it home but just barely.  I liked the differences.  I liked how the prince could identify her.  I also liked the secret he shared on their wedding night.  I hope nothing but good comes to them.

Next is RIDING RED HOOD.  Red is running through the woods trying to outrun cannibals.  Suddenly the cannibals are attacked and killed by a beast-like creature.  The next morning Red is in her own bed.  But how did she get there?  She has no memory when her fiancée asks her as the Chief Protector.  He sends her to his detectives for questioning.  They question her story.  She gets angry especially when she learns attacks had been happening for some time.  Her fiancée and his men set out to find and kill the beast.  Red decides to find him first.  Who will find the creature?  What is the creature?  Why is Red so interested in him?

I liked this story.  It’s a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood but a lot more grown up and without the woodsman to kill the big bad wolf.  I liked Red and Kull, the creature.  There was more passion between them then between Red and her fiancée.  He was a jerk!  I was not crazy about the ending, but I liked it rather than how it could have ended with Red and her fiancée.  An interesting story.

Last is BEAUTH AND THE BEAST WITH TWO BACKS.  Belle’s father goes off with his mistress to the Beast’s castle.  There he picks a black rose for his mistress.  The Beast catches him and in exchange, Belle’s father offers her up.  Belle comes and stays while her father and his mistress leave along with their retinue.  Belle tries to keep her distance from the Beast but gradually spends more time with him and develops a friendship with him.  Her father sends word that he wants to see her before he dies.  Will the Beast let her leave?  If he does, will she come back?  If she comes back, what will she find?

I enjoyed this story.  It follows THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST more than the other stories followed their fairy tales.  I liked Belle and Beast.  They had to learn to trust each other.  I liked the trust Beast placed in Belle.  Belle learned a lot from Beast.  She finally learned not to not accept bad behavior and to stand up for herself.  It is an interesting end.  Not one I was expecting.  I wonder what does happen when the tale is finished.

Beast - Erin Bedford

Anna May comes to visit her grandmother in the nursing home. Isaac sees her and can't stop looking at her. He goes into her grandmother's room when Anna May's grandmother freaks out. Isaac leaves but Anna May runs into him later. She apologizes and asks him on a date. What caused Anna May's grandmother to freak out? Will Isaac and Anna May get together?

While I enjoyed this story, it was entirely too short to get into before it was over. Isaac and Anna May could have a fun story, but this just introduces you to them. The story is a series of vignettes with Isaac and Anna May starring in them. I hope this author expands these characters and this story.

Author: Fizza Younis

Release Date: 31st Oct, 2020

Available for Pre-Order: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08L9NTQ8K

Add to Goodreads Shelf: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55709081-somewhere-in-time

Bookbub link: https://www.bookbub.com/books/somewhere-in-time-by-fizza-younis

Synopsis

When one was dead and the other slumbered in peace...

Would the two ever meet?

Somewhere in Time is a retelling of the classic fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty. The story is set between the twentieth and the twenty-first century. With a much darker paranormal twist and no happily ever-after within sight, it follows the journey of our beloved characters; Aurora and Prince Phillip. What the future holds for them is yet to be determined, so read on to find out how their story unfolds this time around.

@Archaeolibrary, #Adult, #Paranormal, #Romance, #Mythology, #Norse, #FairyTaleRetelling 4 out of 5 (very good)

Curvy and the Canid is a wolf shifter story set in Sweden involving the Norse gods. From that alone, I wanted to read this story!

Told from multiple points of view and in the present tense, this story explains about Saskia and Einar. She is a BBW in a country where most are 'skinny-minnies' (big generalisation there from me). She is successful in her chosen career but lacks the confidence to go it alone as an artist. Einar is the Missing Duke and we find out his story too. Together, these two have to overcome a curse and prove that true love can heal all wounds.

This is only a novella and yet it packs a punch. I'm not too keen on novellas as I prefer my stories to have a bit more to them. However, I have to say, with this one, the story is all there! There is nothing missing from this tale and each character is fully developed. You get the side characters who obviously aren't as big as the main ones but they are still three-dimensional.

I loved the setting for this story and can only hope we see more of this setting in future books. Einar and Saskia make a great couple, good for each other in so many ways. With sexy times and lots of love, this was a brilliant story and I can't wait to read more.

* A copy of this book was provided to me with no requirements for a review. I voluntarily read this book, and the comments here are my honest opinion. *

Merissa
Archaeolibrarian - I Dig Good Books!

Thanks to Penguin UK - Michael Joseph and NetGalley for providing me an ARC copy of this book that I freely chose to review. This is the first time I’ve read one of Eve Chase’s novels, and I’m sure it won’t be the last one as I found it a totally immersing and wonderful experience.

The plot has something of the fairy tale (or of several fairy tales), as this is a dual-timeline story where we read about some events that took place in the early 1970s —although that part of the action (in fact, the whole book) has something timeless about it— and then others that are taking place in the present. The story is told from three different points of view, those of Rita (told in a deep third person, as readers are privy to her feelings and thoughts), a very tall nanny (they call her ‘Big Rita’) with a tragic past; Hera, one of her charges, an intelligent and troubled child (almost a teen), who is more aware of what is truly going on around her than the adults realise; and Sylvia, a recently separated woman, mother of an eighteen-year-old girl, Annie, and trying to get used to an independent lifestyle again. Both, Hera and Sylvia, tell the story in the first person, and the chapters alternate between the three narrators and the two timelines. Rita and Hera’s narratives start in the 1970s and are intrinsically linked, telling the story of the Harrington family and of a summer holiday in the family home in the Forest of Dean, intended as a therapeutic break for the mother of the family, which turns up to be anything but. Most readers will imagine that Sylvia’s story, set in the present, must be related to that of the other two women, but it is not immediately evident how. There are secrets, mysteries, adultery, murders, lost and found babies, romance, tragedy, accidents, terraria (or terrariums, like the lovely one in the cover of the book), cruelty, fire… The book is classed under Gothic fiction (and in many ways it has many of the elements we’d expect from a Victorian Gothic novel, or a fairy tale, as I said), and also as a domestic thriller, and yes, it also fits in that category, but with a lot more symbolism than is usual in that genre, a house in the forest rather than a suburban or a city home, and some characters that are larger than life.

Loss, grief, identity (how we define ourselves and how we are marked by family tradition and the stories we are told growing up), the relationship between mothers and daughters, and what makes a family a family are among the themes running through the novel, as are memory and the different ways people try to cope with trauma and painful past events.

I’ve mentioned the characters in passing, and although some of them might sound familiar when we start reading about them (Rita, the shy woman, too tall and scarred to be considered attractive, who seeks refuge in other people’s family; Hera, the young girl growing in a wealthy family with a mother who has mental health problems and a largely absent father; and Sylvia, a woman in her forties suddenly confronted with having to truly become an adult when both, her mother and her daughter need her), there is more to them than meets the eye, and they all grow and evolve during the novel, having to confront some painful truths in the process. I liked Rita and Sylvia from the beginning, even though I don’t have much in common with either of them, and felt sorry for Hera. Although the events and the story require a degree of suspension of disbelief greater than in other novels, the characters, their emotions, and their reactions are understandable and feel real within the remit of the story, and it would be difficult to read it and not feel for them.

I loved the style that offers a good mix of descriptive writing (especially vivid when dealing with the setting of the story, the forest, Devon, and the terrarium) and more symbolic and lyrical writing when dealing with the emotions and the state of mind of the characters. At times, we can almost physically share in their experiences, hear the noises in the woods, or smell the sea breeze. This is not a rushed story, and although the action and the plot move along at a reasonable pace, there is enough time to stop to contemplate and marvel at a fern, the feel of a baby’s skin, or the music from a guitar. This is not a frantic thriller but a rather precious story, and it won’t suit people looking for constant action and a fast pace. I’ve read some reviews where readers complained about feeling confused by the dual time lines and the different narrators, although I didn’t find it confusing as each chapter is clearly marked and labelled (both with mention of the time and the character whose point of view we are reading). I recommend anybody thinking about reading the book to check a sample first, to see if it is a good fit for their taste.

The ending… I’m going to avoid spoilers, as usual, but I liked the way everything comes together and fits in. Did I work out what was going on? Some of the revelations happen quite early, but some of the details don’t come to light until much later, and the author is masterful in the way she drops clues that we might miss and obscures/hides information until the right moment. I guessed some of the points, others I only realised quite close to the actual ending, but, in any case, I loved how it all came together, like in a fairy tale, only even better.

This is a novel for readers who don’t mind letting their imagination fly and who are not looking for a totally realistic novel based on fact. With wonderful characters, magnificent settings, many elements that will make readers think of fairy tales, and a Gothic feel, this is a great novel, and an author whose work I look forward to reading again in the near future.