Book Review: The Merman King's Bride by Mona Black

 

Book Description

A twist in the tale of the beast with a rugged merman and a princess who isn't sure she wants to save him... at first!

A cursed King of Faerie

A princess betrothed to a man she doesn't love

A kiss that will change everything...

The last thing Princess Selina expects to find in the lake in the woods is a handsome merman. His name is Adar and he saves her, teases her, kisses her, and tells her she could break his curse.

Because, as it turns out, he's a Fae King, cursed to remain in merman form until he finds a princess to kiss him.

But one kiss is not enough and Selina has other problems.

Such getting engaged to a prince she isn't sure she even likes, let alone loves. Marrying him and having his children is not on her list of favorite things.

And now she's falling for the merman.

He's everything she could wish for in a man. Handsome, protective, kind. Except that he is Fae. And has a fishtail.

Still, she can't stop thinking about him. Keeps going back to him. Craves his kisses.

Would gladly have his babies.

Is this a spell, or is it love? Can she break the curse and save Adar? Will there be a happy ending to their story?

All a girl can do is try. After all, true love is worth fighting for and Selina knows she has found it.

*This book is standalone novella-length NA romance fantasy. It is inspired by Little Mermaid and The Frog Prince.*

This book was previously published as "The Opal Tower".

My Review

Princess Selina is to be betrothed to Prince Iason but she doesn't love him. When she loses the gift he sent her as a betrothal gift, she must make her way back into the dangerous woods to find it but she instead finds a fae merman and he has her pendant. In order to get her pendant back, she makes a deal with this merman to kiss him in order to break the curse his brother put on him. But it doesn't work right away so she has to come back and kiss him again. 

Since the fae are not to be trusted, Selina is wary of him at first but in time she grows to really care for him and wants to help him break the curse, they just aren't sure how. In the meantime her parents and Prince Iason's parents are making plans for Selina and Iason to be engaged and married. Iason turns out not to be the nicest of guys and Selina knows for sure she doesn't want to marry him but that angers him and her parents. 

Iason shows his true colors but so does Adar- the fae King merman so Selina knows she has feelings for Adar and must save him from Iason or her people. The ending was great. I'm so happy that Selina and Adar got their happy ending and I really liked the description on how pretty the fae kingdom was. 

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.

Amazon

Favorite Picture of the Week

 

My daughter decided that the kitchen needed more cabinet space, I needed a new desk, the walls needed a new color and just needed something new. This was my old 'desk'. It was really just a table with a bench seat on top of it as a shelf. 

We had a white dresser in the corner of the kitchen for stuff that we didn't have other cabinet space for. We have very little cabinet or shelf space in this apartment so things were always cluttered. So she started buying cabinets to put together *The boxes in the back* and bought some paint.

I took some pictures of the before so you could see what it looks like now. I was making dinner when I took this picture so don't mind the dirty pans on the stove.

We had one microwave cart that we stacked too much stuff on. 

This is the kitchen now with the back wall painted a dark green and 3 new shelving units. So much more space to put stuff.

This cabinet replaced the big white dresser.

It even has lights inside it. We're still moving things and figuring out where to put everything.

I like the color of the kitchen now. And the new shelving units are so nice. We still have to declutter that shelf in between the cabinets over the sink. 

And my daughter bought me a new desk. An actual desk. I love it. We still have a few things to do like buy new curtains. The ones hanging there are about 25 years old. My daughter has a small shelf to hang on the wall where she wants to put some plants on it too. So we're not completely done but this is how it looks so far. I like how much more shelf space we have now.

Book Review: Mercy by Elizabeth Knox

 

Book Description

Death came for me, but he had other plans.

Meghan

I was never one to believe much in fate, but all of that changed when I was sharing a hospital room with Tor.

I was hit over the head by a clubwh*re rat who tried to kill me, and he was shot keeping the club kids safe. Who knew the two of us would create a bond within those hospital walls?

Certainly not me.

Tor was the President's son, and he was a couple of years younger than me. I shouldn't have flirted with him, but I did, and one thing led to another.

But, after nearly dying, I knew I wanted a life away from the club. I didn't want to put my life at risk ever again, and the club understood that.

Things got complicated when I fell for Tor, and leaving him would mean ripping my heart into shreds. I never expected him to follow me and fight for our love, but at the end of the day I couldn't go back, and he wouldn't leave.

***Mercy is the prequel to USA Today Bestselling author, Elizabeth Knox's Raiders of Valhalla MC: New Blood. It is set at the end of the original series, right as Savage ends. This is part one of a two part story between Meghan and Tor. The second story is titled Manic, and is where they will officially get their HEA.

Please note, this is intended for mature audiences only and might have some triggering subjects. 

My Review

Meghan and Tor both belong to a motorcycle club and while I like MC stories at times, this one had too many things about it that I didn't like. The biggest thing I didn't like was the fact that this motorcycle club had club wh*res. They seemed like they were treated like the clubs property and when one of the women attacks Meghan and almost kills her, she doesn't want to come back to the clubhouse. But the members and other women kind of push her to come back. 

Meghan has secrets, secrets that she tries to run away from but it doesn't work and she should have been truthful with Tor and his father is she really wanted to be with him. But instead she says nothing, which was a bad move that comes back to bite her in the butt. 

This book ends in a cliffhanger but I knew that it would from the description. This is a prequel for Manic where Tor and Meghan get their HEA. I have not read that book and after reading this one, I doubt I will. 

I didn't like Meghan. She lies by omission because she's scared of her past but that's not a good enough excuse for me. Maybe I'm not up enough on the whole MC culture but the others that I've read didn't have MC wh*res. They had girlfriends and old ladies/wives. I like that better. I don't want to read a MC story where there are club wh*res, I found that distasteful. The fact the men are ok with passing around the women don't put these guys in a good light for me either. But that's just me. 

I had good hopes for this one but it fell flat for me. 

I give this book 1 out of 5 stars.

Amazon

Happy Raturday!

 

*All pictures this week are courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

Apartment Life #383

 

This is a weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that have gone on in and around my apartment complex and in my neighborhood in the past 27 years that I've lived here and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that have happened in and around my apartment complex in the last 27 years here in a weekly blog post.

So I wanted to show you a fence. This is what the fence across the street that you can use as a reference for what it's supposed to look like in comparison to the next pictures. 

I had my camera up and noticed that this guy who lives across the street was demolishing this fence across the street. At first he was waving around a knife and then he dug a hole to bury the knife but then dug another hole and then another hole and finally buried the knife. So I started watching him because that's not suspicious at all.!

He knocked over a bunch of the bricks and the blue fence and then dug another hole behind it in front of the bush that's sitting there.

And then this dude took a break from demolishing the fence, went in his apartment, came out with 2 cups, dug yet another hole and buried what he had in the cups. 

Then he went over to this fence and tried to break this one too. 

And then he went back in his apartment, came back with something else in his hand,  he dug another hole and buried what he had in his hand. I told my daughter that I took pictures in case the police showed up looking for a murder weapon or someone's body parts? Am I paranoid? Yes. But look where I live and this guy was acting all kinds of weird. It happened last Saturday but maybe he was just high or something because nothing ever came of it. 

This is what the fence looked like after he was done with it. 

He did a number on it for whatever reason.

He had a big rock and was just smashing it all to pieces.

I think the owner is going to be mad.

The next day I went to take pictures of the destruction and found a dime bag of weed right in the spot where he had been digging one of the holes. Yes, the bag has a dime in it for some weird reason. I wonder if all the holes have weed in them. lol Or if this is just a weird coincidence.

Was he just high?

Was he burying something illegal?

Was that knife a murder weapon?

Are there more drugs buried in the holes?

Did the fence insult him and had the demolishing coming to it?

Come back next week for answers to these questions and more, on another episode of...As The Apartment Burns!

The high this week was 108F/42C

The low this week was 80F/26C

So that's it for this week's Apartment Hell  Life! Be sure to come back next week for more.

Saturday Vittles

 

My Daughter and I are trying to eat more healthy so I thought I would share some pictures on Saturday's of what we've made.

Seafood Dinner

You will need: 

6 large Scallops

1 cup cooked Linguine

romaine lettuce

1 shredded carrot

1 box of frozen Popcorn Shrimp- you can make your own if you like. 

2 TBSP Butter

1 Garlic clove- diced

Juice from 1/2 lemon

1 tsp. McCormick Cajun Seasoning

1 tsp. Old Bay seasoning

salt and pepper to taste

Butter flavor no calorie cooking spray

What to do:

Shred 1 carrot and mix in a bowl with shredded romaine lettuce. Set Aside. 

Cook the popcorn shrimp according to the package directions. I cooked mine in the air fryer. 

Spray pan with butter flavor no calorie cooking spray, season scallops with Old Bay, the cajun seasoning and salt and pepper. Cook the scallops for 5 minutes on each side. Cook the pasta in water to desired tenderness, keep a little of the pasta water for later. 

 Melt 2 TBSP of butter on medium heat until fully melted. Add 2 TBSP of the pasta water and whisk until thoroughly combined. Add the lemon juice and garlic to the pan, add the linguine and stir until well combined. 

I served this dish with my seafood salad which you can find the recipe for here. 

This dinner was about 550 calories and 50 Carbs. 

Oh and I don't think I shared this picture from last month. 

There's an ice cream shop right next door and I've never been in it. So we walked over there one day last month and my daughter treated me to a bowl of ice cream. I had coffee and chocolate ice cream. You have to splurge and treat yourself to a sweet treat every once in a while. 

Freebie Friday!

 

Welcome to another weekly Freebie Friday post, where I tell you what free samples and full sized products I received in the mail and how you can get them too. Someone asked me why I do a "Freebie Friday" each week, so I'll tell you.

A while back I listed all the free samples and wins that I had received that previous year and so many people didn't believe that I could have gotten so many free things. So I decided to prove it by taking a picture every week and sharing the sites that I found the links to the freebies at. So now you too can get great free samples coming to your mailbox each week.

  You can find links to great samples at Hey It's Free and Freebie Shark.

This week I received: 

A wooden spoon and a mesh bag from  Simple Solutions by Arm & Hammer Baking Soda where I cashed out my points and was able to pick a reward from their rewards page. You can sign up with them as well by clicking the link and answering surveys and posting about them on social media. They sometimes send you free samples as well. 

Did you receive any freebies this week?

Book Review: Bear Temptation by Novalee Swan

 

Book Description

Enter the world of Shifter Town with the first book in this captivating new series by Amazon bestselling author Novalee Swan.

A bar. A game of pool. A bet…

When grizzly shifter Bear Reid arrives in Rosewood, Tennessee, he doesn't expect to find a luscious redhead waiting tables and fending off barflies with sugar-coated threats. She's a ray of sunshine in purgatory and he wants her. Bad.

So he buys the bar.

Kelly McKenna has a head for numbers, but she takes one look at her enigmatic new boss—all malt hair and whiskey eyes—and finally understands what it means to crave. Eventually, sweet flirtation leads to a not-so-sweet game of pool. And a bet.

Winner takes all.

But there's something Kelly doesn't know about Bear. A secret that could destroy her trust and her heart forever.

Bear Temptation is the first book in Novalee Swan's Shifter Town series. It features her trademark heat and emotional intensity and is perfect for readers who love sexy shifter romance and small-town charm.

My Review

Kelly works at a bar and the owner sells the bar to Bear who wants to make it better. It's a rowdy place to work not only because of the drunks and bikers but because of the shifters as well. Bear is a bear shifter and when he spots Kelly, all of his possessive, mating instincts kick in big time. They both really like each other and they seemed to be getting close and then Kelly finds out that he doesn't plan on staying more than 6 months and she shuts the relationship down before anything can happen. She's not about to be a one night stand. 

Kelly and Bear keep working together at the bar but their working relationship is tense at best. Then something bad happens at the bar and it's Bear that Kelly turns to for comfort. Bear still wants her really bad and he tells her that he doesn't feel good about taking advantage of her after what happened but she isn't having it and let's him know that she wants him. 

Bear was great but he really needed to be more forthright about what his plans were instead of thinking that everyone would just know what he was thinking. People are not mind readers and this led to a bit of a misunderstanding between Bear and Kelly. 

I had a great time reading this book and am looking forward to reading the next one now. 

I give this book 4 out of 5 stars. 

Amazon

Old Photos

 

You guys seemed to like the last post I did where I shared some old pictures with you so I thought I would do another one. 

The little girl standing up in the back is my grandma, Mary Evans. She was my dad's mother. She's with some of her siblings and her parents, (my dad's grandparents). This picture was taken in 1905. They had several more kids after this picture was taken. The baby sitting on her mother's lap is my great Aunt Zona who is in the middle picture below. 

This was taken in 1985 and is my Great Aunt Zona and her sisters Lillian and Geneve. These are my grandma's sisters. 

These three ladies were my great aunts. (My grandpas sisters) They all died in a train accident before I was born. Look at that car behind them though. I love catching these old cars in pictures.

This picture was in one of my grandmas photo albums and there's no name on it but she added it to the album for a reason so I kept it. It makes me laugh because the guy reminds me of old mobsters pictures. 

Another of my grandmas pictures that I kept. Take a look at that car behind them though. No idea who they are. lol 

I met these two people once and went out on their boat. They were my grandmas best friends. The picture is from July 1964. Again look at that old car in the background.

The little girl sitting up front is my late husband's mother, her parents and siblings. I guess they had nothing better to do than to make babies. lol 

Another of my grandmas pictures. No idea who they are but written on the picture it says, "Me and my buddy". I'm guessing they're in the Army. Take a look at the stuff in the background. Looks like something out of an old movie. 

More of grandmas pictures. Maybe someone with some history knowledge will know where this truck is from. Army?

More of grandmas pictures. I'm guessing someone on a ship in the Navy took this picture of another ship near them. 

Looks like the person was on a ship and took this picture too. No idea but it's a neat picture. 

I found this one in my grandmas album as well. I like it because of the cars. Again it reminds me of an old movie. 

I hope you liked looking at some of the old photos I have. 

Book Review: Hunter's Moon by J.K Harper

 

Book Description

A wolf shifter fighting her heart’s desire...

Abby Kenyon belongs to Quentin Walker heart, body, and soul. But she's a wolf shifter from the pure Black Mesa Wolves Pack, and he's one big brute of a bear shifter from the mixed Silvertip Shifters clan. She can't have a bear as a mate.

 Or can she? 


A bear shifter determined to claim his mate…


Quentin Walker knows down to his bones that Abby is his mate. But she's never seen a mated wolf/bear pair and is certain it can't work. The autumn full moon mating run is Quentin's last chance to prove that only he can win the hunt for his mate's heart...

To the reader: This story is filled with heart-pounding romance, page-turning adventure, and some awesome hawt times. If you love big ole grizzly bear shifters who have a soft spot for their fated mates, the charming and funny details of a shifter-filled small town, and the beautiful power of true love to always save the day, this book is for you.

My Review

Quentin and Abby were seeing each other but even though Quentin was sure that Abby was his fated mate, Abby didn't believe it. They were two different species of shifter and she had never heard of an interspecies shifter mating. Quentin was a bear shifter while she was a wolf shifter. Abby cared about him but there was no way she would believe they were fated mates, no matter how much Quentin assured her that it was true. Abby wasn't even listening to her own animal when her wolf told her they were mates. 

Quentin goes about trying to show Abby that she will fit in his pack of bear shifters just fine but it takes a while to convince her. This was a short, sweet novella. I look forward to getting to know the other characters in this series now. 

I give this book 3 out of 5 stars. 

Amazon

Happy Raturday!

 

"Want some rat made lemonade?"

*All pictures this week courtesy of martymousehouse.com*

Apartment Life #382

 

This is a weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that have gone on in and around my apartment complex and in my neighborhood in the past 27 years that I've lived here and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that have happened in and around my apartment complex in the last 27 years here in a weekly blog post.

On Sunday last week my neighbor saw a lot of smoke coming out from an apartment 3 doors away from mine. They asked if everything was ok and they told her that yes, the kitchen caught fire but they were able to put it out with the fire extinguishers. They were sitting outside until the smoke cleared out. I don't know if they meant the kitchen or a pan in the kitchen because they don't speak a lot of English. But it's a good thing management provides a fire extinguisher in each apartment. 

---

Fires are scary. Last year when this fire happened across the street it spread really fast. And as you can see this apartment is still all boarded up. It's been a year already, you would think they would fix the apartment so they can rent it and make more money.

The black smoke damage can still be seen from the boarded up back window. But it took more than 2 years before my apartment managers fixed up the fire damaged apartment across from me when it happened almost 5 years ago. So who knows when this one will get fixed. 

---

The police tactical vehicle has been in my area a lot. I see the truck driving up and down my street all the time. At least they're around if something happens I guess.

---

My grandson started 7th grade this past Monday. He's here with my daughter. 

And this is his father. His dad is 6'8". I have a feeling my grandson is going to be tall like his dad since he's already just a hair taller than my daughter. 

---

Some Updates

My brother who I told you tried to commit suicide is out of the hospital and doing better. 

The elderly man across the street is still in the hospital but his wife said he's doing better. 

My elderly neighbor who spent a week in the hospital is home and I talked to him to see how he was doing. He told me that he has bone cancer and got sick from the cancer treatments and that's what ended him in the hospital for a week. 

Crazy guy is still out walking around yelling at the tree's and had a stick he was ninja fighting an imaginary foe the other morning. 

I took Falcor out for a walk and one of the homeless women was behind a large palm tree in front of the office. I didn't know why she was leaning over until I walked past her and realized she had her pants down around her ankles and was bent over going to the bathroom right out there in the open not caring who saw her. She said, "Hi Falcor." As we walked by and then said hello to me and didn't even try to cover herself or stand up. I was already committed to going and figured if she didn't care, why should I so I didn't make eye contact with her and said 'Mornin' and kept walking. 

The homeless people used to have a blanket set up behind the fence by the freeway where they could go behind the blanket and go to the bathroom but I've now seen this woman bare-assed out in the open not giving a damn if anyone saw her going to the bathroom at least 5 times. So if it doesn't bother her who am I to be embarrassed. Seeing this woman's bare ass hanging out behind the tree was not on my Bingo card for this week though, I'll tell ya that much. 

The high this week was 111F/43C

The low this week was 83F/28C

So that's it for this week's Apartment Hell  Life! Be sure to come back next week for more.