Tag Archives: book review

Verity by Colleen Hoover (2018) – BR00267 (R2025) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
April 29 2025

Plot or Premise

A struggling writer gets hired under somewhat odd circumstances to finish a popular series by another author who has become incapacitated. She moves into the house with the author, her husband, and child, and starts to develop feelings for the husband.

What I Liked and Didn’t Like

I confess upfront that I am not a giant fan of Colleen Hoover nor romance thrillers, but the premise of an author taking over a popular series was too intriguing to resist. I tend to skip the genre as I find too often that the “thriller” part strays too close to domestic violence porn even if you know the woman will win in the end.

I wasn’t wrong about the intrigue of Lowen Ashleigh taking over a writing series from Verity Crawford. When she’s in the writer’s realm, struggling with figuring out how to advance the series and tell a “Verity-style” story, the pages sing. It’s great. When she finds what appears to be a cross between an unpublished biography and a personal journal of Verity’s, Lowen’s story starts to morph into multiple strands of wanting to fill in for Verity, the person, not just the author.

I’m not big on romance unless it’s more two people working on something in a will they or won’t they style of romantic tension, while this one is more isolation together. And while I see Lowen’s morphing into caring about Jeremy (she’s reading about him in the journal), Jeremy spends very little time with Lowen, far too little to be falling deeply in love with her. Pretty unrealistic, in my view. However, their scenes together are not terrible. I quite enjoyed their interplay at times. If it ran for another 2 books, I might see it.

However, I didn’t like three aspects of the story. There is a very traumatic event right at the start that is total coincidence. I kept waiting for it to somehow tie together, but of course, it doesn’t. Secondly, there is a plot device used throughout 80% of the novel, and it is incredibly unrealistic, so the big twist at the end isn’t much of a twist. You’ve seen it coming from the beginning. Lastly, there is an extra twist and explanation at the end, all of which brings most of what happened in the book back to a situation of relatively simple misunderstanding. It felt more like a sitcom than a strong novel, where two characters have a miscommunication, never discuss it, and both go off in weird directions, only to lead to tragedy, almost Shakespearean in terms of misconnects for bad plotting.

Disclosure

I received a free copy of this book through an Amazon promotion. I am not personally friends with the author, nor have I ever interacted with them.

The Bottom Line

Too many shaky plot devices, but a good story for the writer’s part

There’s a Hole in My Bucket by Royd Tolkien (2021) – BR00266 (R2025) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
April 28 2025

Plot or Premise

Subtitled a tale of two brothers, Royd and Mike Tolkien are the great-grandsons of J.R.R. Tolkien. That is the least interesting part of their story. The book combines an interspersed tale of Mike’s last few years of life with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or ALS (also called Lou Gehrig’s Disease or Motor Neurone Disease / MND) and Royd’s first couple of years after his death, fulfilling a bucket list that Mike created for Royd to do when Mike was gone.

What I Liked

I have no idea what I was thinking when I first started to read this just over a year ago. I heard about it in a roundabout way in a blog, and it sounded cool and funny. So, about 16 months ago, at Christmas, I downloaded it and started to read. The first story is one of the best. As Royd walks up to the podium to give the eulogy for Mike, he falls flat on his face. A big faceplant with lots of noise and kerfuffle. Except it’s a prat fall. Nobody else knew it was the first item on Mike’s bucket list — that Royd would fall as he went to deliver the eulogy and give everyone a last big smile for Mike’s funeral. And when it happened, it wiped me out. Funny, sure. Moving, absolutely. And it set a precedent for a lot of the stories. I couldn’t keep going. For whatever reason, the raw grief was too much. I set the book aside, and promised myself I would go back to it.

And then something weird happened. My brother died. And while you would think that would STOP me from ever reading the rest, it gave me a window into the story. Wondering if I would have the nerve to do the things that Mike put on Royd’s list, even things where Royd was terrified. Would I have completed a list my brother made me? I doubt it.

The pratfall? Sure. Bungee jumping or skydiving? Not a chance. A lot of the travel? Absolutely. For the rest, it would be hit and miss. Busking, singing in a musical, etc. Mike’s goal was to break Royd out of a bubble, to overcome potential shyness or risk of embarrassment, to thrust him into a limelight. The story alternates between Mike’s decline and Royd’s desire to film all of it as a documentary, with the end for Mike obvious but unknown for Royd.

What I Didn’t Like

Many of the “stunts” are a little too well-choreographed or exuberant for me. For example, when Royd goes on a plane, he has to dress like Gandalf, the whole company is involved, etc. Simpler would have seemed more impactful to me, and less about the show. And I think that is my biggest complaint in places. There are some huge moments that pass by with very little comment on the psychology and impact on Royd; he survives them, he participates in them, but there seems little reflection. Others, by contrast are small with huge reflections. And the reflection is what matters. The end for Royd is really quite disappointing. He saves a big moment for the end, and at the last minute, it doesn’t really happen. More like a postponement to do a sequel of the last act. I felt a little cheated, to be honest, and the reason for a drop in rating from 5 to 4 stars. I liked the journey, but was let down by the destination.

The Bottom Line

Starts with a thud, finishes with a whisper

What Lies Beyond the Veil by Harper L. Woods (2022) – BR00265 (R2025) – 🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
February 7 2025

Plot or Premise

A young woman chosen for sacrifice at an annual festival escapes into the woods and discovers she has powers and a destiny.

What I Liked and Didn’t Like

I will confess up front that I am not a hard-core fantasy romance lover. I’ll read Lord of the Rings, I like Game of Thrones, a bunch of other series, but I tend more toward fantasy and light romance than hard core fantasy and sex. And for the first 50% of the story, I was into the plot. She meets a strong warrior with similar powers, there’s some battle scenes, and while the warrior is a bit arrogant and graphic about his sexual desire for the lead character, it’s mostly about travelling to find a refuge for their kind.

However, just past the midpoint of this first book in a trilogy, the romance starts to become much more sexually explicit, with some very rough edges. At the risk of a small spoiler, there is a rough sexual scene that is equal parts exhibitionism and voyeurism, and yet also equally gratuitous. There’s no plot reason for the change in behaviour other than the man’s desire and misogynistic possession of the woman. It is nominally consensual but I’ve read rape scenes in books that were less disturbing or glorified. Almost a rape fantasy, totally from the man’s POV, with no real explanation of why the normally independent woman goes along.

The last 20% of the book is just plain abusive towards the main character. There’s a reason, such as it is, tied to the plot and a big twist, but it left me with no interest in continuing to read the series. I want my time back wasted on this trash. Oddly, up until the mid-book change in direction, it was decent…maybe even 4 stars? But the last half of the book was all downhill. And not reading the next two is a huge indication of my opinion…I always finish series, and based on the first third of the book, I had already acquired the next two. I’ve since deleted them from my TBR pile and moved on.

The Bottom Line

The ending is graphically sexually violent with little warning

The Final Twist by Jeffery Deaver (2021) – BR00264 (R2025) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
February 5 2025

Plot or Premise

Colter Shaw has been poking around his father’s death from years ago and the poking has finally turned up some interesting leads as well as some nasty bad guys who would rather he either stop looking or find for them a missing secret cache of something his father hid. While playing cat and mouse, he uses a safe house that his father had set up long ago but finds someone else has been using it recently — Colter’s absent brother.

What I Liked

I had seen the TV episode where Colter reunites with his brother (the show had a different purpose / intent than the book), so I expected it to happen. And while a bit of a cliché for how it happens, it’s cool to see them together, slowly jockeying around to see how they now relate years later. His brother is a bad-ass merc, which comes in handy when the two need some backup against the big bad guys. There are two sub-plots going on simultaneously — one for a big giant plan if someone can find a missing document and one for a larger plan dealing with real-estate and forced ghettoization followed by gentrification. A little more intricate than you expect to see in your average mystery novel. The action that was a little too much in the previous novel is perfectly at home in this one.

What I Didn’t Like

The story bounces around a little too much, and some links to old cases as well as old partners seem a little contrived. Not enough to detract too far, just makes for a pacing problem when the story veers away from the main plot for too long a time occasionally.

The Bottom Line

Have you met my brother?

The Goodbye Man by Jeffery Deaver (2020) – BR00263 (R2025) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
February 4 2025

Plot or Premise

Colter Shaw is looking for two kids accused of a hate crime, yet neither have a history of such behaviour. They have both been acting off though and their lives are spiralling with every cop looking for them. Shaw finds them, a simple retrieval for their parents, and then the unthinkable happens. One of them happily commits suicide rather than going home. Colter has to know why.

What I Liked

Colter goes undercover at a special actualization camp where everyone is encouraged to revisit all their negative elements from their life in order to eliminate them and to focus on positive elements instead. A brutal self-assessment to get to the final level. The first bits of it all seem entirely normal until it starts be a little more cult-like. It is disturbing how much the cult leader sounds like Donald Trump’s campaign speeches (a deliberate imitation, no doubt, with some of the mannerisms almost 1:1).

What I Didn’t Like

The great way the cult leader becomes more Trump-like also takes away from the story as some of it seems less “God-like” and more satirical or farcical. While all of the members are “broken” over the death of a loved one, there doesn’t seem to be enough in the “cult” methodology to really hold them. The final ending seems more action hero than rewardist.

The Bottom Line

Could have used more creepy cult, less action