Charles Miske Author

The Serial Killer's Daughter by Lesley Welsh My rating: 4 of 5 stars Like reading the screenplay for a snuff film. If that's not okay with you, skip it. You've been warned. The sheer quantity of sexual violence and mind-games can be a bit overwhelming to the more sensitive reader. None of the characters experience much of a growth arc. No one really wins or loses. It's just fun fun fun until everyone is dead. There is no romantic anti-hero posturing here. Hope that's not going to be a problem for you. Why 4 stars? It is pretty well written. Gotta hand the author that. View all my reviews

Creatures of Appetite by Todd Travis My rating: 4 of 5 stars I wanted to give it a 5, really. But the main character was a bit coarse and misogynistic. Like a lotta bit. Oh, and a few other characters were too. Of course, we're talking about a bunch of cops and killers of various shades of gray here, so we can cut them a bit of slack. Overall really good editing, good story, and everything fits into place nicely. In fact the "shocker" ending to this book even fits in nicely. What does it take to out-sociopath all the sociopaths? Find out in this book, for sure. Best of all, there's no cliff-hanger. You can read this and bail on the rest and miss nothing at all. I might go on with the series, maybe not. We'll see... View all my reviews

A Time To Kill by Jeanette Raleigh My rating: 4 of 5 stars Not sure what just happened here. The snippet of chapters flitted back and forth between POV, sometimes in the middle of a fight scene or car crash or whatever. Mildly distracting to say the least. Like switching body-cams in an episode of COPS. A few were organic enough - flit to the POV of someone in an alternate dimension, a different city, yep, that's when you switch POV, and carefully at best, making sure it adds to the story somehow. Overall, after reading it, I felt like it could have been done in a few chapters as a short, maybe a treatment for a Buffy screenplay, or something similar. I don't mind having to grow into a mythology, heck, I did that in my own fiction novel, so that's not a problem. I mean the mythology being handed out in bits and pieces, hints and chunks held tantalizingly just out of reach. So that was one good thing, and why it's a 4, not a 3. The characters seemed a little bit cardb...

Crossing in Time by D.L. Orton My rating: 3 of 5 stars I don't think the description accurately portrayed this book. I won't spoil that for you, by pointing out the misses, but be mildly forewarned. The various bogey men might or might not be themselves or others, and blowing up a city to attract the attention of the people who would blow up the city in an alternate reality while adding more lists of people to blow up cities in other alternate realities and sending them all on death missions to interfere with their own alternate lives seems a bit much to keep track of. Other readers might not see this convoluted mess for what it is, and I apologize if it seems like I'm trying to say "Don't Read It" because I'm not. It's just a bit messy for me. I won't be continuing because the hints of what might come next are even more convoluted. How else can you wormhole through alternate dimensions and realities while cavorting with alternate or identical v...

Revenge Of The Cat Woman: A Short Story Set in Old Japan by Yael Eylat-Tanaka My rating: 3 of 5 stars I'm not certain what happened here. It was pretty short, and not much happened aside from depressing cultural attitudes and events that were pretty much historically correct. No one here was particularly easy to empathize with. The "Cat Woman" was pretty passive. The Cat was pretty passive. The antagonist was stated to be aggressive. It ended in a "he got his" way, but it was still unsatisfying. The ghost was merely a suggestion, perhaps a shadow of guilt. It was free, took only a few minutes to read, and was probably worth both the money and time. View all my reviews

The Chemist by Stephenie Meyer My rating: 5 of 5 stars Holy Snot! Is this the best Stephenie Meyer book ever or what? I read all the Twilights and thought they were way better than a lot of people did. I read The Host and it took me a while to get into it, but finally managed to find the groove and recognized the important step she took away from Twilight. With The Chemist it's like a total 180, and it's amazing. A super strong, super smart, super female who isn't all hung up on relationships. A doofus-jock hacker CIA assassin. A sweet sensitive school teacher in way over his head. How do they all fit together? Yes, there is a brief section where they all get together and sort through all the touchy-feelies and that lags a bit. Like a lotta bit. But finally it all works out with a bang and we're back in the groove for non-stop action. You know what though? That last Epilogue could have been kept sealed. I didn't need to add that to the characterizations. Maybe th...

The Good Samaritan by John Marrs My rating: 5 of 5 stars This was my Kindle First selection, which I put off till the 30th, it was that difficult to choose. I'm happy I did though. Our Good Samaritan is a bit more than we expect and you grow inside her head as the story progresses. Suddenly you're ripped out of it and inserted into another POV. That was jarring. Fortunately you grow into the new POV, and then flit back and forth between them. Is this a bad thing? Not once you get used to it. Until then it's tough. Who do you end up cheering for? Or do you hope they all get what they deserve for getting involved in this mess? Surprising participants drift into the "suicide and murder game" and no one seems untouched by it. A seemingly out-of-the-blue ending sweeps in to shock you, but were you paying attention? It was foreshadowed several times throughout the book. Read it. Read it and pay attention. It lags just a little bit at the first POV switch, but picks r...

Dark Retreat by Grace Hamilton My rating: 3 of 5 stars Ok. Just ok. The protagonist seemed to be running straight into trouble most of the time. She was a bit too twitchy to identify with most of the time. The male lead was just too perfect and patient, in spite of his few flaws. Dragged a bit. It's worth reading if Prepper Fiction is your cup of tea. Otherwise maybe it's not the best first Prepper Fiction book to start with. View all my reviews

The Killing Jar by R.S. McCoy My rating: 4 of 5 stars A very interesting world. Some very interesting characters. Author kept lots of info barely revealed, which was interesting. A male lead drifted along the edges of dark obsession, and it seemed like the character wasn't quite locked in. Maybe that's something that accurately represents their psyche, maybe not. It's not clear. Some motivations seemed ambiguous. Maybe I'm overthinking it. I really wanted to give it a 5, but it's not quite there. Sorry. View all my reviews

Silly Girl by Brandon Berntson My rating: 3 of 5 stars Certainly interesting, and a quick read. Little vignettes of imaginative fantasy glued together with stardust. Lost me a few times, maybe my imagination didn't drift that direction or make that same hairpin turn. Satisfactory ending, though not the one I expected, which was also interesting. Worth the quick read, and it was free the day I got it. Why 3? It felt like the scenes could have been fleshed out just a bit more with better connections between them. View all my reviews

Salem's Secret: a paranormal thriller by Jessica Lynn Barrett My rating: 3 of 5 stars Fun little very short story. The big reveal was a bit insignificant. There could have been a few more days of "Paying the price" to add suspense. The confession was a bit convenient. The solution was really too quickly achieved. I would have loved to have seen flashing lights, sirens, and handcuffs. Without spoilers, the final death could just have easily been pinned on the killer. Thriller not so much. Paranormal elements are all behind the scenes and invisible. Decent quick read with an interesting circumstance to explore. Use your imagination. View all my reviews

Released by Megan Duncan My rating: 4 of 5 stars Overall enjoyable. Decent story kept me engaged. A few small negatives: Disposable NPC's Clunky character arcs Romantic teasers Positives: Demons never explained or excused Fun action sequences If you thought you'd enjoy Pitch Black monsters in a Mad Max world, this would be a good read. View all my reviews

The Naturalist by Andrew Mayne My rating: 5 of 5 stars I didn't know quite what to think from the description, and being intrigued enough, went ahead and selected it from the list on Amazon. I normally dislike the present-tense, and was a touch irritated when it transitioned from the prelude chapter into the main story. That didn't last long though as I got to really dig into the character of Theo Cray, our non-hero hero. It was amazing all the way through to the end and I skipped some sleep to finish it quicker. The antagonist was well hidden to the end, and every bit of the story fit together for me. YMMV but I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a good mystery/thriller with a lot of dead bodies in it. View all my reviews

Voopyre by N.C. Stow My rating: 3 of 5 stars You know how your grandma tells you stories when you're a little kid? Like maybe hundreds of stories. You know how the stories would all interconnect, based on bits and pieces of each other that you already know? You'd soon come to know the settings, the characters, the situations. Eventually the stories could become so intertwined that no one new to the sequence could hear just one out of context and make any sense out of it, because all the characters or character classes are described in different stories you didn't hear. That's what this feels like. If you don't mind not knowing quite what's going on, and what every type of character represents, then this is a cute fun little romp of a story. Well worth the fifteen minutes or so of reading it, assuming you also got it for free. View all my reviews

Money: The Healthy Habits Of Money Management For Your Personal Financial Freedom by June Joseph My rating: 4 of 5 stars Do you remember several years ago there was a wildly successful book about the irrationally large number of secret, hidden, almost invisible millionaires lurking about disguised as our meek, mild-mannered neighbors? Remember that the secret was that they refused to spend even a dime on anything that might be considered even remotely superfluous and instead tucked it away whatever was left after paying off their bills early into high interest, low availability accounts? Well this is a slightly more moderate approach to managing your expenditures in an intelligent manner that allows you some small measure of fun. I'm being mildly facetious here, but not by much. If the "never spend a dime" mantra is definitely not going to work for you, this is totally worth taking a look at in this very short read. Why 4? This 30,000' view could be brought down a ...

Wilder by G.K. DeRosa My rating: 5 of 5 stars Great story. Protagonist easy to identify with. Antagonists not so much. In fact they were rather cardboard cutout. Warmed up to Vamp Bros over time. A little bit youngish with the general tone and language - suitable for tweeners if they're not squeamish at all. Speaking of which it's really clean and not too gory. The Guardian Club seemed a bit stand-offish. Want to see more Dani. Minor cliffhanger, and I might break down to get the next. View all my reviews

Stealthy Steps by Vikki Kestell My rating: 4 of 5 stars I won't dock this one points for horrible science, or overbearing "stop the storyline for a few pages" preaching, or for a few unrealistic characters. It's a decent enough story. It's odd the way most everyone is like monotone voice "oh, hey, invisible, wow, so now what?" - seriously? I'm not convinced that this totally unskilled newbie can defeat the US Gov by any description of her skillz or motives. But still, fun story. Next books? Probably not. I'm glad she ended as she did. Good enough. View all my reviews

A Rip in Time by Jeff Gunzel My rating: 3 of 5 stars As far as stories go, it was better than average. The girl who might have been the protagonist was a bit of a mystery, from her as well as us. Good job of protecting her history and abilities from us. The men were a bit caricaturish, but maybe that's just the genre, where everyone fits an archetype. The woodlands nation was Tolkien-esque, which might not be a compliment. I try not to read fantasy too much, which might be influencing my review. If I were more experienced in fantasy, I might see this from a different perspective. Wait, there are other books? This book did not convert me to become a hard-core fantasy reader, so nope. But if this is your cup of tea, totally, go for it and enjoy. View all my reviews

Gretel by Christopher Coleman My rating: 5 of 5 stars Great story. Most of the characters pretty well fleshed-out, except poor Hansel. Interesting world, maybe a bit like ours, but with a few futuristic twists (robot cars). Everyone has decent motivation, and the pace increases up to the end, drawing me into a binge read to finish the book. Fortunately it could be read as a stand-alone if you assume everything is just done-done. Reviews of Part 2 are iffy, so not sure what's next for me. Very minor editing issues, but nothing to deduct from the 5 stars. Adult themes, but nothing graphic. View all my reviews

The Twelfth Keeper by Belle Malory My rating: 5 of 5 stars I was so pleasantly surprised by this book. The story was well done and engaging. The characters were simple to empathize with and like. My only real complaint would have to be the quickness and simplicity with which the story was wrapped up. There was a lead-in to the next book, but it wasn't a cliff-hanger. You could easily read this as a stand-alone. My thoughts here on reviewers feeling left out of the world-building process. I prefer a world that leaves out the big picture and presents the little details in a natural flow. Taking time out of the story to explain the process by which cars evolved into self-driving would have been a drag on the flow. People don't naturally pause the action while thinking to themselves "I remember back about 50 years ago when the first ..." but rather in the action say "Car: take me someplace" View all my reviews

Diesel: A Short Story by Zachariah Wahrer My rating: 3 of 5 stars 15 minutes to read. Maybe I'm just slower than the other kids. A few odd choices of words (or mistakes) but nothing you can't read around if you've been reading modern self-published authors for a while. The story? Interesting enough. Characters are caricatures. Unexpected turn of events. Classy enough effort to destroy the evidence. Potential lead-in to a vigilante series. Why 3? It's just middlin'. Nothing too exciting, and in spite of my having lived this myself numerous times, I wasn't able to really identify with the protag. Just not enough time or words there I think. Like I just alluded to, this is real. It happens. I have experienced this exact same type of prejudice and bullying while riding my bike in Missouri. Apparently all the locals are super fit from drinking vast quantities of beer while ranting about having been on the football team 40 years ago. Yeah. Athletes they are. Legend...

Half a Huntress: a werewolf shifter romance story by Emma Daze My rating: 1 of 5 stars Just. Don't. Do. It. It's a trap! It's about maybe 10 pages long. Limited backstory of protagonists. Single incident. And we're then told "Buy more books to find out what happens" Talk about cliff-hanger. If I'd had a bit more time to care about anyone, it might be a consideration, but the cliches are thick and there's no compelling reason to continue. Unless you are so totally hungry for human-were love stories that you'll put up with this in order to read one. Which might happen over the next handful of books. View all my reviews

The Gratitude Revolution: How To Love Your Life and Be Inspired By The World Around You by Laura Moreno My rating: 4 of 5 stars This took a while longer to read than expected. If you spend the time on each of the sections of this book, you'll probably spend a lot of it. It's pretty comprehensive to see all the various forms and means and ways to express and feel gratitude. Start off by saying Thank You for everything that comes as a blessing in your life, even those disguised as challenges. You'll be glad you did. Several of the exercises or tasks outlined could take weeks to achieve if you give it your full attention. Some of them could become lifelong habits. Give it a shot. Minor editing issues but nothing you can't read through, some maybe not even noticed. View all my reviews

Devil in the Countryside by Cory Barclay My rating: 5 of 5 stars Rare for me to give a 5. I also don't normally like Historical Fiction quite so much. This was a very engaging book. Difficult to set down for very long. But alas, I do have a job ... This chunk of history is a sad period in our European heritage, and it seems fairly presented not to take sides. There are no real obvious exclusively good or bad characters or groups. It is a war, after all, and the victor, should there be one, will rewrite history to suit their marketing position. (in this case while battles were won and lost, ultimately it resulted in an uneasy truce as it played out over the centuries) The wrap-up could have been skipped. Writing excellently edited. There is a very interesting tidbit of activity in the wrap-up that subtly hints at a different interpretation of events in the book. Very interesting indeed. The author clearly states there is a probable sequel, and I might have to keep my eyes open fo...

THE BETTER SMOOTHIES BOOK : For Health and Weight Loss and Diet: Healthly Blender Smoothie Mixes For Good Healthy Shakes. Be a Health Drink Smoothie Pro! by Sally Primrose My rating: 5 of 5 stars 5 stars for a recipe book? Sure enough. It's concise, clear, easy to understand and the choices of smoothie are pretty yummy looking. I've been making my own smoothies for quite some time, and I loved especially the ones with a shot of protein powder. Those are my favorites for sure. I won't review the tastes of the smoothies, since that's all personal preference, but I think the author did a great job here in presenting them. View all my reviews

Dark Beginnings by Michael Robertson Jr. My rating: 3 of 5 stars It was okay enough. I finished it without much struggle or forcing myself to. There were some oddball word combinations, like thinking faster than typing kind of issues. There was a slightly annoying level of explicit foreshadowing as "what he was about to see in the next three paragraphs would change his life forever" and such. To me that's a break in the narrative that boots the reader out of the story. About the story. I think it's meant to lead you gently into the actual series of books, being a Level 0 novella. I glanced at the hint of the next book and won't be getting it. There's no compelling reason for Lance to go on his mission. It's kind of handed to him without his active participation. That being said, if you want a non-scary "ghost story" to kill an hour or two, it's pretty okay. View all my reviews

Patenting Peter by Jason Werbeloff My rating: 4 of 5 stars I liked it way too much for what it was. The ending was catchy enough to pull it all together in spite of numerous shortcomings. If this is a hint of "Defragmenting Daniel" I might push that up a few notches in the reading queue. Not keen on the world in this dystopia, nor the people in it, but if it all implodes into chaos and despair, all is not lost. View all my reviews

Survival Aptitude Test: Sound by Mike Sheriff My rating: 4 of 5 stars If you read it as a standalone and assume that the ending is just the way it is, without reading the teaser for Book 2 (available now via email for most people who can install the app) you'll be a happy camper, like I was. Our poor hero takes a beating and keeps on ticking, and I was mildly disappointed he didn't get the big payoff after all that, which of course would have really made this a standalone, right? Since there is an obvious Book 2 that shouldn't count as a spoiler. It would be illogical for a Book 2 had there been any other result. Since it was "FREE" and I am technologically skilled enough to get it without the app, I have Book 2, but haven't started it yet. Not sure if I prefer just riding along with the ending of Book 1 or not yet. View all my reviews

Princess Dracula by John Patrick Kennedy My rating: 4 of 5 stars It's a really good story once you squeeze past the intro. I'm not sure that's really relevant though. The "hint of next book" at the end seems a bit overblown, and I'm not sure if it will matter or not. I wasn't interested enough to pursue it. The whole rabbits and squirrels thing was way overemphasized. I really wanted to see her go full vamp and clean out a village. Alas... So, 4 stars? Yeah, it was a good enough story for me. YMMV. View all my reviews

Passenger 66: A Psychologically Thrilling Short Story With a Seat Grabbing Twist by Tralandice Hogan My rating: 1 of 5 stars I'm not quite sure which book was read for the higher reviews. The stilted language, unrealistic airplane events, unrealistic physics, unrealistic crash scene, and non-seat-grabbing-twist all add up to a 1-star in my book. View all my reviews

Death Becomes Her by Michael Anderle My rating: 5 of 5 stars Two. Words. Kick. Ass. This is a sweet ride of a book that begged me to keep reading it in spite of work, sleep, etc. I totally dug the protagonist and might actually get the rest of the next dozen books in the series. That would be the first time in over a year that I've gone on with a series. It's really that good. Interesting take on the vampire mythos. Can hardly wait to see if Area 51 makes a guest appearance here. And where do were's come from? View all my reviews

Lost Shadows by Nathan Gregory My rating: 5 of 5 stars You could read it as a stand-alone and miss nothing if you blow off the low-key pass-off to the next book. Clean, no romance at all. A 10-year old thinking with properly used semi-colons in sentences? Suddenly appearing in a 23 year-old body with the full intellect of 10 year-old? Minor plot inconveniences, but you can ignore them and read it as a comic book. Decent editing. All that being said, I did really enjoy the book so 5-stars. View all my reviews

The Edge of Life by Joe Hart My rating: 4 of 5 stars Excellent little story. Keeps you on your toes. Much like the protagonist, you don't really know exactly what's going on. The frantic need to eliminate seemingly random people by horribly killing them, at the risk of not restoring your slaughtered family to life while not truly believing it's possible. You can really feel it. You'll enjoy it, for sure. View all my reviews

Children of Atlas by Dustin Porta My rating: 2 of 5 stars To me it seemed very convoluted and disjointed. I started skimming ahead looking for something to like. The protagonist seemed likable enough to start, but soon the empathy failed and there turned out to be multiple protagonist lines and eventually I started hoping everyone would just die. Sorry about that. I know several people out there like this kind of story, but I'm not one of them. Written well enough, just no characters to latch onto and get the feels for [for me anyway]. View all my reviews

Princess of the Damned by Wendy Knight My rating: 5 of 5 stars Great story. A little slow to start, with mostly wooden characters, but it warmed up quite a bit by the end and was extremely satisfying. Nothing was explained with any backstory, but you didn't really want or need any. Clean paranormal romance. A bit of violence, but not over the top. Well worth the time to read. View all my reviews

Half-Breed: A Science Fiction Absurdity by Scott Michael Decker My rating: 4 of 5 stars The book is surprisingly good. Kept me reading all the way to about the end, then I got distracted. DISCLAIMER: If you don't "get" furries or the obsession with them, you may not like this book much. Not sure what furries is? Look it up. In the context of furry-human getting it on. Okay, back? So yeah. The ending kind of leaped in with a Deus Ex Machina wrap-up, but it was okay. Still left it open to several more books. View all my reviews

The Worst Kind of Monster: A Short Horror Story by Shaun Hupp My rating: 3 of 5 stars As far as books go, yes, it was written well enough, kept you guessing pretty far into the book, had a slightly unexpected ending, and was probably a good showcase of the writer's other work. If you're not comfortable enough reading a character from out of the 60's, violence against women, kids and racially motivated violence, you might not want to read this. Why only a 3? IMHO it could have been about 3x longer, explored the protagonist a little bit more, and had spent time with creating some flaw, weakness or guilt in the "Monster Killer" View all my reviews

The Man From Taured by Bryan W. Alaspa My rating: 2 of 5 stars Hmmm, where to begin. For one thing, until the story changes POV, it's pretty good. That's about 40% or so into the story. The rest of the book though was really slow. Agonizingly. I ended up skimming just to find out if everyone really does die. Sadly, no. I'm not quite sure what it is. It's not horror, or paranormal, or steampunk, or scifi, though there are brief moments of each. It might have been cool to turn each of the POV's loose and write a series of shorter books in chronological order without trying to turn each into a channeled entity or whatever. Yeah. View all my reviews

Fallen Angel: Dawn of Reckoning by J.L. Myers My rating: 4 of 5 stars I read it as a stand-alone. It's really easy to identify with the protagonist, but everyone else is cookie-cutter low-dimensional. Be that as it may, the story kept me reading and it felt too short. At the end there are a couple samples from the books this is supposedly an intro for (this is #0) but they seemed to have no direct connection aside from "book zero shows the creation of this paranormal group as a way-out-there backstory for those who might need it" and they didn't attracdt my interest at all. View all my reviews

Intermittent Fasting Lifestyle: How To Be Healthy, Lose Weight, Burn Fat, Get Lean and Build Muscle Without Life Sucking by R.J Strife My rating: 4 of 5 stars If you're totally new, or just curious about Intermittent Fasting, this is a good 30,000' view. If you're vaguely familiar with IF, this shows a couple of optional protocols to follow. If you want in-depth info, this isn't the book, though author does touch on some concepts on long-term use. If you take some of these ideas and do some of your own research, you will quickly be able to make your own decisions. A handful of relatively minor editing errors. View all my reviews