Category Archives: Entertainment

Review: Red Hill

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As if surviving a zombiepocalypse wasn’t enough, I have another zombie related post for you!

Jamie McGuire, who is probably most well known for the Beautiful Disaster series, decided one day to venture out of her comfort zone and write a zombie apocalypse novel with several different concepts featured in it. The result? Red Hill. Will this measure up to the perfection that is Travis Maddox and his ungrateful lover?

photo 2 (1)

Instead of “Red Hill”, it should be called “Red Hill with kinda green grass”.

Red Hill is a post-apocalyptic novel which follows the lives of three characters: Scarlet, Nathan and Miranda. Scarlet is a divorced mother of two who dedicates her life to her children and her work. Nathan is an unhappily married man who soldiers on through his marriage and his unfulfilling job for his daughter. Miranda is a college student with a lanky boyfriend and some serious daddy issues. The three characters events and journeys to the deftly named hill are detailed in this novel along with how they survive and… romance! OMG! I didn’t know there was such thing in a zombiepocalypse!

I could not put this book down. Seriously. I think I finished it within 24 hours of purchasing it because I loved it that much. Maybe it’s because I’ve never read a zombiepocalypse novel before and this is my first time so I had no expectations – or Jamie McGuire is just that darn brilliant – but I actually loved Red Hill. The story was so captivating and the mix of survival, mateship and romance blended in together in this novel was pretty phenom.

The one negative that I would have to attach to this novel are the characters. I found it difficult to really connect to some of the characters (with Nathan and Miranda, to an extent being the exceptions). I found Scarlet to be somewhat unrealistic as she went from a panicky single mother who works as an X-ray technician to this total survivalist badass babe who rivalled Oliver Queen when it came to long-distance aiming. She was also really annoying. I thought Nathan’s character was definitely relatable and his dedication to his daughter would’ve made me cry if I had a heart. Miranda was a hit or miss. I liked her and kind of related to her with what she was going through (spoilers!) but at the same time, I don’t understand the purpose of going in her perspective. If I read the book solely from Scarlet and Nathan’s perspectives, the story would’ve been the exact same and I wouldn’t have missed out on anything.

Let it be known that my favourite character was Joey. ♥

McGuire wrote this true to her own writing style and it made it very easy. The descriptions used in the novel were easy to follow and the language used was easy to understand so the novel was open to the casual reader and also the extreme novelist.  If there was one thing to criticise about the writing – or the storyline, not really sure where to fit this – was Scarlet and Nathan’s interactions with each other. So not to spoil it for anyone, I found it to be unrealistic and a bit how ya goin’.

Solst-o-meter
Storyline: 8.5/10
Style of writing: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

Overall, I highly recommend the purchasing of this book as it appeals to the romance reader but also to the extreme action reader. And to those who are just as obsessed with zombiepocalypses like I am. Not that I ever want it to happen.

– by The Black Widow

Review: Forbidden Sister

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With a title like this and a book cover like that, I was expecting big things from this novel. I had heard of Virginia Andrews’ novel legacy but had never read any of her stuff so I was keen to dig in.

Forbidden Sister by Virginia Andrews follows the life of Emmie Wilcox, a young impressionable teenager who was pretty much raised as an only child after her stern military-esque father kicked out her older, rebellious sister Roxy. Emmie’s interest in her sister piques when she finds out that she is a high class escort who lives in the same city. Watch out Emmie… curiosity killed the cat…

Look at that seductive book cover...

Look at that seductive book cover…

I was satisfied with the book. It was very well written and the character of Emmie was semi easy to relate to.

But…

There were an awfully large amount of rhetorical questions posed in this book. I get that a few here and there can be very effective in conveying a message across, but there just seemed to be way too many rhetorical questions used on almost every page of the novel. The language Andrews used was very strong and sophisticated and it gave me as a reader a good sense of what to feel and what was going on. Other than the over-usage of rhetorical questions, I quite liked Andrews’ style of writing and would pick up another book of hers based on the name.

The storyline in Forbidden Sister confused me. I personally didn’t understand the main point of the book; it just seemed as if things would just constantly happen to Emmie but none of those things or “events” particularly stood out as the main point of the book. Don’t even get me started on the epilogue which didn’t give me closure at all. In fact, it left me hanging for more and left me with even more questions than before. I get that one of the main points of the book was Emmie finding her sister and re-establishing that sibling bond but I felt as if that point of the story was nearly overshadowed by other events in the book.

Emmie as a character was truly original when it comes to novels of the same genre and that made me like her; while I don’t know what it’s like to grow up with a military-esque father (or maybe I do, depending on how you look at it) I felt as if I could truly empathise with her need to succeed and achieve to please her parents. Being 15 was a good six years ago for me so going back to my young teenager years, I understood what was going through her head and why. Roxy, however, was the more intriguing character in my sweet and humble opinion; having watched Secret Diary of a Call Girl, I had a fair idea of what escorts personalities were like and what they did and how they would react to certain situations… or at least how Billie Piper would. The aura of mystery Roxy carried, coupled with her no-nonsense attitude, made her the star of the book.

Solst-o-meter
Storyline: 6.5/10
Style of writing: 7/10
Overall: 7/10

Overall, I found Forbidden Sister to be a good read. It didn’t really let me down (besides the epilogue but that’s a different story) but in saying that, it didn’t wow me. It was just a good read. I really hope that is not the end of Emmie and Roxy’s story… or stories.

– by The Black Widow

To Bieb or not to Bieb, that is the question

Posted in Entertainment, Music, Opinion by

We’ve all heard about it over the last few days and rolled our eyes.

Justin Bieber has once again proved to the world why he currently holds the title for World’s Biggest Douchebag – and that’s coming from a self professed Belieber.

Despite the big love I hold for the little cutie, I have to say that he’s not doing much to uphold his reputation at the moment (unless of course you know him for the bad he’s done and not his talent, in which case he’s upholding that reputation to perfection), what with his ‘retiring’ from music so he can drink, drive, drink AND drive, and get high as a kite on Mother Nature’s prohibited greenery. The last thing this kid needed was another headline.

Even with all his sick tatts, is he even that cool? (SOURCE: Justin Bieber's Shots page)

Even with all his sick tatts, is he even that cool? (SOURCE: Justin Bieber’s Shots page)

From the very first time I heard Bieber sing I have vouched for his talent, but I will not tolerate his light hearted attitude towards the law, and neither will the world. As if it wasn’t enough that he spent his time in Australia tagging hotels and went home to add driving under the influence to his résumé, Bieber has now found himself in the spotlight for a racial slur – by which I mean a ridiculous joke told by a child to a girl to impress her.

Whilst I do not condone his behaviour of late, or his appreciation of racial based jokes, I have to admit that the whole situation has been blown a little out of proportion. To top it off, further footage was then leaked showing Bieber warming up his vocals to a song he sings, bleeping out the lyrics and replacing them with derogatory references to a particular community. Granted that Bieber was just a sweet little girl in these two videos, you would think he would know better, but I pose the question; should he really have known better? Do grown adults today not still promote the very behaviour that Bieber has exhibited in these two videos?

There is no doubt that he could have better taste in jokes, but quite frankly the situation is ridiculous. Do we not have more pressing issues to bring to the worlds attention? Surely the world hasn’t become so pathetic that we find the need to fill our news hour with the plights of fallen Hollywood stars whose stints on the red carpet are now nothing but a distant memory.

Look around Bieber, do your research. If he was as racist a person as these videos make him out to be, do you not think the likes of Usher and Kenny Hamilton (Bieber’s head of security) would have brought him back down to earth? Reality check people, there’s more to life than what you see on your television.

What you ask is the moral to this story? Haters gonna hate.

– by Melissa Tonitto

Review: Searching for Someday

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I bought this book from my local Dymocks and then left it at work and assumed I had lost it and then began to throw a tantrum because I was looking forward to reading it that much. So did Searching for Someday worth the hype of throwing a tantrum over? Let’s find out!

The first of a new saucy series by Jennifer Probst. (SOURCE: Jennifer Probst's website)

The first of a new saucy series by Jennifer Probst. (SOURCE: Jennifer Probst’s website)

Searching for Someday by Jennifer Probst is the first of a series that follows the life of Kate, who may or may not be a witch. She has this “gift” from her ancestors that she can sense when two people are meant to be together just by touching them. Intense right? So she uses her powers for good and has started a matchmaking agency with her two friends. Kate is a beautiful virgin who keeps to herself and has no time for man, until Slade Montgomery walks in – the hot divorce lawyer who wants to take Kate’s matchmaking agency to the shedhouse for being a “scam”. A matchmaker and a divorce lawyer… sounds like a total mess, doesn’t it?

The storyline was okay. I wasn’t appalled by it but at the same time I wasn’t too enthralled by it (totes rhymed!) As most love and romance novels are easily predictable, I didn’t go into this book expecting much. But this story was so predictable that I pretty much didn’t have to finish it to figure out the ending, but at least the track towards the destination was great. The intense, erotic chemistry between Kate and Slade was interesting to read and their interactions were almost always entertaining. Their first kiss after that yoga session was… oh golly.

I am clearly an avid reader of adult romance novels and am very familiar with how a written sex scene goes. If a sex scene is done well, it comes off great and can even get the reader “in the mood”. If it isn’t written well, however, it comes off as dirty and trashy and it gives adult romance novels a bad name. One thing that I cannot stand in sex scenes is the use of the “p word” for vagina. Unfortunately for Probst, she used the “p word” freely during the intimate moments of the novel and it completely ruined the scene for me. I just think that there are so many words for vagina nowadays that you can use any one of them and still be better than the “p word”. If one word is going to be a let down in the novel – and warrant an entire paragraph in a book review – then that is saying something.

As a character, Kate was passable. She had her funny moments and she was easily relatable and likeable, especially with her ADORABLE dedication to her dog Robert, but other than that, she had the “typical romance book heroine” character to her – insecure, shy, unaware of how hot she is, etc. Slade’s character was also quite the romance book stereotype of being cocky, wealthy and arrogant but had the body of Adonis. I didn’t particularly love either one of them but they were both easily likeable so that’s definitely a plus.

Solst-o-meter
Storyline: 6.5/10
Style of writing: 6.5/10
Overall: 6.5/10

Searching for Someday is a solid read if you’re looking for a hot, steamy love affair between two polar opposite characters. If this is any indication of how the rest of the series will go, we should be in for a ride.

– by The Black Widow