Monty's Book Reviews

Ivan’s Dilemma The Mila K Mysteries Book #2 K C Brennan 4 Stars Pages: 71 Published: 11 November 2020 Publisher: KCB Mysteries Keywords: Cozy Mystery, Women Sleuths   Publisher’s Blurb It’s been a month since Mila returned to Chernivtsi.  And it had been an eventful homecoming.  She was still contemplating how Pietro, whom she thought was the lost love of her life, could have been such a fraud and then killed so horribly? She was glad the school year had started, and she was able to focus on her courses and students instead.   However, with the arrival of the new dean circumstances become both good and bad for Mila.  Though Sergei Vasilovici seems to be a challenging fellow with no real connections or much of a personal history, Mila finds him an acceptable replacement for Pietro Melnik as dean, especially when he offers her a promotion.  At the same time, he is not as amiable with the students, particularly Ivan Popov.  The two are seen arguing at Ser...

The Very Worst Riding School in the World Books 1 & 2 Lucinda E Clarke 4 Stars Pages: Kindle Approx 28 (Book 1) & 50 (Book 2) Publisher: Umhlanga Press;  Published: 17 Jun. 2017   Publisher’s Blurb Who would be stupid enough to open and run a riding school when they are terrified of horses, can't ride, without insurance or capital, and with not the faintest idea of how to care for horses. Add to that, two of the four horses are not fit for the knacker's yard. Yes, that's exactly what I did - like so many of my adventures I 'fell' into this one as well with hilarious results. Review When Lucinda’s husband buys her a couple of horses it sets in motion a course of events that leads to her running, in her words, the worst riding school in the world. What follows is a laugh-out-loud tale of the ups and mostly downs of owning your own equine based teaching business in the wild African countryside. This is a really fun read as you root for Lucinda in her misguided ...

Unlucky Charm Hopps Town Series Book #2 Aidan Lucid 4 Stars Pages: 122 Published: 04 January 2022 Publisher’s Blurb Darkness Comes From The Most Unexpected Of Places! A New Threat Comes to Hopps Town Following the events of,  The Scavenger , we now find Jared a year later, on a two week break from college. He thought this would be a relaxing visit home then it happened, something so dark he felt a strange sense of deja-vu. Across town we find Reggie Danes and Zane Miller who’ve been friends for over ten years. After Zane purchases an antique pocket-watch, they suddenly find themselves being taunted by past secrets. Now they must band together to vanquish the demons which plague their lives. Can life ever return to normal? Will the darkness ever disappear? Review Set a year after the events in Aidan Lucid’s first book in the Hopps Town series ‘The Scavenger’ this continues Jared’s initiation into the supernatural world of psychic powers, ghosts and demons. ...

  Trauma Survivor’s Guide to Coping With Panic Attacks Nicole Dake 5 Stars Pages: 60 Published: 01 Oct 2021 Publisher: MillenialMom Publisher’s Blurb PTSD controlled my life - no more. I once was a survivor, now I'm a warrior. Panic attacks that result from PTSD and cPTSD can be debilitating. Research unfortunately falls short, telling those suffering from panic attacks to just "wait for them to be over." Over the years I have learned to cope, first preparing for panic attacks, and then calming down during a panic attack. I am sharing these coping skills with others who have PTSD, so they can go from being survivors to warriors too. Review A lesson in how to take a complex medical condition, that causes so much discomfort and stress to its sufferers, and distill it down to a very readable discussion on the best ways to cope. Nicole Dake has used her experience with her own cPTSD and written a no nonsense guide to minimising the frequency and effect of ...

The Wreckers: A Story of Killing Seas and Plundered Shipwrecks, from the 18th-Century to the Present Day by   Bella Bathurst 4 Stars Pages: 386 Published: 06 March 2006 Publisher: HARPERPERENNIAL Publisher’s Blurb Bella Bathurst's first book, the acclaimed The Lighthouse Stevensons,told the story of Scottish lighthouse construction by the ancestors of Robert Louis Stevenson. Now she returns to the sea to search out the darker side of those lights, detailing the secret history of shipwrecks and the predatory scavengers who live off the spoils. Even today, Britain's coastline remains a dangerous place. An island soaked by four separate seas, with shifting sand banks to the east, veiled reefs to the west, powerful currents above, and the world's busiest shipping channel below, the country's offshore waters are strewn with shipwrecks. For villagers scratching out an existence along Britain's shores, those wrecks have been more than simply an act of G...

  And Call It Peace Michael Gift 5 Stars Pages: 206 Published: November 02 2021 Publisher’s Blurb A Native American girl, running for her life, narrowly escapes being murdered by  narcotraficante  thugs just outside a small town in Arizona. Just why she was a target, she won't say; and the Sheriff's Office seem more interested in the man who saved her than the ones who attacked her. Then, when the girl disappears, it seems that man is the only one who cares enough to go looking for her. Luckily, he's no ordinary man. Review When Akerly stumbled into a confrontation between a young native American girl and a group of Mexican drug runners in the Arizona desert he had no idea just how much trouble he had gotten himself into. I loved this book, the plotting was excellent, the lead character was mysterious and the supporting cast were quirky and memorable. There were plenty of thrills and twists along the way and you’re never quite sure who are the good g...

A Passage In Time A Thief In Time Book #7 Cidney Swanson 5 Stars Pages:258 Published: 14 January 2022 Publisher: Williams Press Publisher’s Blurb DaVinci is ready for a Bahamas vacay  with her hunky Roman-soldier boyfriend Quintus, but trouble brews when Quintus Valerius hears slander against Julius Caesar and wants to go back in time to fix things.  Meanwhile, another physicist is unlocking the secrets of time travel. When a trip to 1935 unites them along with Walt Disney (and a photographer trailing Disney), things go sideways and history is damaged. Now Quintus and DaVinci must patch up their differences and race to restore things before Disneyland vanishes forever!   Review Quintus is not a happy Roman. Something has come to light that isn’t exactly kind to his hero’s reputation and he and his girlfriend DaVinci need to travel back to 1935 to get rid of the evidence. Meanwhile Robert Duval is building his own time machine in order to eradicate Dis...