Review: The Roche Hotel (Season One) by Mysti Parker

Title: The Roche Hotel
Author: Mysti Parker
Series: The Roche Hotel
Genre: Contemporary, Adult
Publication date: October 15th 2014
Pages: 62 (Kindle)
Source: received from author






After her husband ditches her for a blonde actress wannabe, Jane Seymour needs a job that pays the rent. The struggling Roche Hotel needs a miracle. With the former owner's wife butting her nose into the renovations and new owners who are in way over their heads, Jane may be the answer to their prayers. Sure, she can handle the Roche Hotel's quirky staff. But, can this skittish divorcee keep it all together when handsome Henry the Donut Guy makes his first delivery? This collection of serial fiction stories is a Tudorific romantic comedy that will leave you laughing out loud and hungry for more.

Goodreads

The Roche Hotel will be releases in different episodes. I am not the biggest fan of that because it means the stories are short and often you have to wait some time on the next episode.

The story was too short for my liking, especially if you consider at what pace the story moved. I believe that this story could have been much better if it was releases as a full length novel. The writing was good and the characters were interesting. They could make me laugh, most of them were just comical especially the old lady Rochester. But they were not developed well enough for me. Especially the main character, I still do not know a lot about her. Her love interest is even a bigger mystery to me. And it was kind of hard of me to understand why exactly they liked each other. Maybe that was the plan of the author all along but to me it did not appeal. Hopefully everything will get much clearer in the next episode.

I really liked the setting of this book. The hotel is a really great idea to set these novellas in. The hotel had something gloomy with the ghosts that “hunted” it and all the drama that happens there. I am pretty curious to see what will happen next in the hotel.

Overall I liked this novella. It might have been a bit too short but I still enjoyed reading it and since it was this short I could read it in one sitting. This episode was only the first and this series has a lot of potential so I hope to hope the rest of the series as well. 

El

Review: Short-Lived by Michael Pritsos

Title: Short-Lived
Author: Michael Pritsos
Genre: Adult, Crime, Novella
Publisher: Nyx Writing Syndicate
Publication date: April 5th 2014
Pages: 104 (paperback)
Source: received from author







Short-Lived is a dark novella set amidst the grittier areas of Phoenix, Arizona. Nine stories tell tales of money, power, life, and death. Short-Lived intricately weaves the lives of a drug addict, his love interest, dealers, and those struggling for power in the streets. Who will come out on top, and who will get left in the dust?

Goodreads

At the beginning of this novella I thought that it consisted of different short stories. Mainly because it was always written from the perspective of another character. But after a few chapters I saw that some similar names popped up in each chapter. The author cleverly intertwined the story of all the characters. They were all connected to each other in some way; they could be friends, enemies, family…. It was definitely interesting to see.

I really loved how the novella developed. And I was always eager to find out what would happen next. It definitely wasn’t a happy story since it featured characters that were involved with the wrong kind of people. To say that the story was interesting is probably an understatement. I was really fascinated by it. The beginning of the book already made me wonder what exactly was going on but then when we neared the ending of this book I couldn’t figure out how it could turn out in a good way for all these characters. And then the ending. Seriously it was really epic. After I had read the last page I kept seeing if I had missed a chapter. It’s kind of cruel of the author to finish the novella like he did, but I kind of get it too. It can turn out in both ways for the last characters.

I might sound really cryptic but I just don’t want to spoil it for you.  If you are looking for a short read this book is perfect. I really liked it and it is probably one of my favorite novellas that I’ve read so far. 

El