Review: The Unbalanced Equation

The Unbalanced Equation
By H.L.Mcfarlane

Macfarlane Lantern Publishing


Instagram recap:

This book starts with the sweetest anime meet-cute worthy of any nerdy girl who has been in similar situations. 

EX: My own relationship: Sailor Moon and Pride & Prejudice. 

Not only does Tom save Liz from mansplaining nerds, but he also bests them with his own knowledge, then sweeps her off her pretty little feet. Be still, my nerdy heart. 

Until orange juice wrecks the night. 

I love the drama that ensues years later and captures these two in a cluster most epic with family, friends, and each other: the bar, the fire, the close quarters, the love of single parents, the eviction, to the moving in with each other out of pure desperation…

It's glorious how a simple twist of fate can change everything, especially when fate is a toddler and she keeps spinning. 

Tom: Acts tough, but he's a mama's boy, has a soft side under his polished exterior, an Arsehole, but a lovable arsehole with a kind soul. 

Liz: Fakes being tough to avoid confrontation, pain in the arse, and stubborn but is kind, lovable, and a daddy's girl. Wants to feel deserving of love but is afraid of being hurt. 

_____________

So, I have this habit of binge-reading a book if it's REALLY good and captures me body and soul. I will HAVE to read the whole thing, or I'll be absolutely useless at work, and the boss gets pissed off at me (it's me, I'm the boss. Yes, I piss myself off.)

Of course, I did this on a Sunday when I had to be to work the next day because I have zero self-control. Yes, I'm trying to work on it; no it's not really working as I start to evolve into the bookish woman I was meant to be in high school. 

Thanks to Netgalley, I'm heading off in a different direction and trying my hand at truthful, information-packed, reviews I would like to have before reading books. In the Facebook group, Bitchy Bookworms, I've learned much about peer reviews and how to take them lightly. What is someone else cup of tea may not necessarily be mine.

I love real-life happenings, fiction but not fantasy like I'm stepping into the MC's shoes and living vicariously through her. 

That's what I found in The Unbalanced Equation, real-life happenstance, with a lot, and I mean a lot, of real-world drama and a ton of plot twists in just a few short chapters.
I loved it; it wasn't cheesy, I could follow it very well, and I got enamored with how well she wrote the book. I enjoyed the characters, the anime references, the cosplay funnies and the truth behind being a female cosplayer.
I know, I am one of them, but I only dabble, I mostly create cosplay costumes for others now since wearing wigs pisses me off. 
And don't get me started on wearing a leotard and needing to pee.

I. Get. It. 

I also felt the nerdy girl being nerdsplained part to my core. I had an argument with not only my husband, but all his friends during The Last Jedi. I had seen it twice, read the book, and did some deep digging to be able to have that argument.
I was the only woman.
I enjoyed it. 

On that note, I lift my glass of Rose' to the beautiful story this fine woman has brought forth on rainy Scottish days. As we relish in the joy that we have one sunny day in over a month. 

Yay Florida. 

Review: Overkill by Sandra Brown

My brain was furiously working on my blog post in my dreams a few nights ago. 

I flew through 150 pages without blinking. I could see everything. Brown's writing has always drawn me in and captured my mind. Not only in its movie-quality explanations but in how it lets my mind run wild by drawing images with the descriptions.
It took me 24 hours to read and then a few more to process because this was, somehow, a different kind of book for me than her others.

I spend Christmas/Thanksgiving in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so the cabin in North Carolina made me long for that peace. Zack's character reminded me of my culinary friend Kevin, who also lived on the side of a mountain, and I loved how at ease he looked. How he explained his small town intricacies, the winter months when people bid on the last snow shovel or what time was best for the all-you-could-eat pizza place. I remember those times, and reading about this character who 'ran away' into the peacefulness of the mountains made me long to be there myself.
You kind of forgive and forget when you're encompassed in such a serene place. Brown captured that for me.
That's what Zack wanted. Even though he was the opposite, he would protect that by putting on an asshole vibe.
 

It was an astounding story, and following several characters through the pages gave a nice 360 view of the story as a whole.

At the start, you see Eban, the sociopathic villain, and his two henchmen, Theo and Cal, making pretty big mistakes. One mistake is the worst of them all, and throughout the story, you get to see the impact on each person.
Every one of them.

Then you see the match between Zack and Kate based on this twist of fate, the differences, the commonplaces. What each has to offer the other in defiance of social norms.

 

I had read a few reviews for the book after I had read it because I was stuck overthinking a few things, but I have to say: Where did all the good reviewers go? The one I read that made me cringe used a lot of LOLs and complained about how spicy the book was. A true fan knows there's a high spice level in all the books she wrote that preceded Overkill. This one was surprisingly mild in comparison.
Yeesh, first-timers.

I learned the art of spice from Sandra Brown! She writes the romance scenes tastefully, so I more or less threw out that particular GoodReads review and decided to write my own.

I realized that this book took a little time to settle with me after I read it. I had a few moments of introspection about how I felt this book was so much different from Brown's last few, like Thick As Thieves or Outfox.

I think that was the point of this book.

Then as it settled in, I dreamt about it and realized that during 2020, we all kind of went into a weird survival mode. We soul searched. That's what she was doing with this book, I feel.
I saw that in this book because Zack was introspective, too; he was a different kind of male lead that she had crafted before; this one, to me, felt like he was an adult. The other male leads were always very secretive about feelings, showing weakness, etc. The bad boys were secret soft boys with a stern but candy coating.

Then there was Zack. At first, he was kind of an asshole regarding things that mattered: his privacy, his property, and his livelihood. He was protective of his ex-wife and even her parents. Then later protective over Kate.
There was an air of the older books in there, but it was completely new to me. Having a character who acted mature, a little sarcastic of course, and definitely a little frisky, but he was a new and I loved it. But he was adult protective, versus throwing everything to the wild and hoping for the best; protective.

I started reading Sandra Brown's books my last year of middle school; I was 14, while everyone else was reading Harry Potter and Holes. I was never one to jump on the bandwagon, so I picked out three books from the thrift store and wound up with my first Sandra Brown, Envy.
Homegirl from GoodReads has no idea what spicy is if Overkill was her first.

My old ass soul has brought me here, being an avid Sandra Brown reader and fan at the ripe age of 33.

So, with every fiber of my being, I have to say I LOVED every bit of this new book.
I can't wait for the next one to come out!

Until then, I'm painstakingly editing my novels, waiting for my preordered books to roll in since I've read almost everything in my to-be-read pile.