Review: Blaming the Wind **

By Alessandra Harris

www.instafreebe.com gave me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Blaming the Wind is primarily the story of two couples, next-door-neighbors and good friends. Unfortunately, the novel, which is well-crafted as to plotting, grammar, spelling, and points of view, failed to hold my interest. I found my mind wandering throughout the tale of these people and their various problems. The trouble was, I did not like any of them. Each, in his or her own way, whined too much, was too self-absorbed, and showed little evidence of working to make life better. I found few uplifting moments, fewer reasons to cheer for any of the characters, and had to force myself to keep reading to the end.

One, a stay-at-home-dad, resents his wife’s success and in a way, seems to hold her responsible for his own unwillingness to find a new job, a different way of earning a living after an accident deprived him of his original career. For her part, the “successful” woman comes across as weak and indecisive and much too easily influenced by a charmer anyone with the good sense of a gnat should have spotted at ten paces. If she’d been starved for love at home, it might have made some sense, but she was not.

The other couple consists of a childless woman who wants a job almost as much as she wants a baby, but fears while she needs the first, won’t be able to cope with the second. Her outside influence, her mother, drags her down. Her husband, who likes to live well above his means, is frantically trying to hold onto his position as a sports agent so he can maintain the large house they can ill-afford.

The characters lie not only to themselves, but to each other, and to the peripheral personalities in the story, making for a typical “tangled web” that simply did not have to be if only they told each other the truth. Of course, if they had, there wouldn’t have been a story, but their numerous motivations seem thin and not strong enough to hang the plot on. Ms. Harris clearly has talent and potential as a writer, but this book doesn’t cut it.

Review:  The Day After Never ***

by Russell Blake

This is a long, Post Apocalyptic series. Its main saving grace is that it doesn’t contain zombies. The world (read: The U.S.) as we know it, has all but disappeared thanks to a pandemic and the subsequent monetary and societal collapse. Anyone who enjoys a story that reads almost like an old-fashioned Western, shoot-em-up adventures will certainly find this series of episodes captivating. The author displays a keen knowledge of  battle tactics, guns, and fighting. The books are well-written, but they are only installments in an ongoing struggle for supremacy. None of them can be considered even close to stand-alone novels as each ends with a cliff-hanger which, if the reader is concerned enough, begs one to make another purchase. When I buy a book, I like to think I’m getting a beginning, a middle, and an ending, a resolution to the plot twists and the lives of the characters, not a requirement to buy another book to see what happens next. Because I liked Book 1, Blood Honor, and felt sufficiently involved with the characters, I did continue with the series. The next book. Purgatory Road, takes the story one step farther, but still offers no resolve. So, on to Book 3, Covenant. Again, no chance of closing the book with a sense of satisfaction because it, too, ends with a question as to how—and even if—the promised or proposed treaty will work to the betterment of the community. The inevitable cliff-hanger pushes us on to Book 4, Retribution. By that point, this reader was tired of Blake’s particular Post-Apocalyptic America, and declined to carry on with the characters and their (always) perilous journeys.