L. Shelby

I was looking for a light-hearted adventure, and Serendipity's Tide fit the bill perfectly.

Apprentice engineer Batiya works on an diesel-powered liner. Her routine is disturbed when a group of foreigners is rescued from the ocean. Even worse, their mysterious pursuers—who seriously have it in for the leader, Chunru—simply won't give up. Batiya is dragged into a series of adventures with Chunru that she probably didn't expect when she signed up to go to sea.

The setting is an alternate world with different cultures, but with familiar technology from around the early 20th Century. So I'd say the flavour is exotic rather than fantastic.

The prose is a very easy read, and I only noticed one typo. There's plenty of action, which I started finding a tad relentless in the latter part of the book. Batiya is a fun and likeable character (the entire story is told from her point of view) although sometimes I found her improbably oblivious to social context. That said, I really enjoyed her verbal fencing with the snootier passengers she met.

I found this book a pleasant and refreshing change from the grimmer books that I've picked up more recently. Highly recommended.… (mais)

For a novella, this was a slow starter for me. I was wary of the setting, with its "exotic" court. The characters didn't pull me in right away either, so I stopped about a third of the way through and didn't pick it up again for months. But once I muddled through a few more pages, the two leads finally started to shine. I wasn't invested in the mystery so much as seeing the Most Astute (snerk) and his partner-in-detecting finding their rhythm and solving the mystery. I'll be looking for more from this author.

Disclaimer: I received this book for free from a member giveaway.… (mais)

Velvet Lies was a very quick read, but it was incredibly slow and hard to keep my interest focused on the book. I found myself at times needing to take breaks from it. The book never picked up the pace, and nothing was exciting in the sense of needing to know what was going to happen next.

I loved the overall idea of the novella and how the author used a 'Scooby-Doo' approach. The character discovered clue after clue, but never revealed who was responsible until the very end. I liked that I was guessing throughout the book, trying to discover who was at fault along with the main character.

This book has so many overwhelming names and titles that ended up giving me a headache. The names didn't really flow and took more thought then I would have ever wanted to have given a name. Quite a few times, I had to reread the names when I got caught up on them.

*Note: I received this book free from L. Shelby in exchange for an honest review.… (mais)

This book was great! I enjoyed the intelligent, courageous, and heroine and lots of adventure. This book also has some romance. I think the author is a very smart writer. I would not have picked this book up on Amazon just because the cover was something that, just at a glance, didn’t jump out at me. But as they say “don’t judge a book by it’s cover”, this book was great and I’m glad I got a chance to read it. * This book was given to me from the author in exchange for an honest review*… (mais)