Miss-Match by Erica Lawson and A.C. Henley

Publisher:                   Affinity Press

Miss-Match reads like an experiment that did not work.  It has to be difficult enough to write a book with two authors, but especially unwieldy when one of them is dead and cannot be consulted.  The pace of this book is extremely uneven and, while it’s supposed to be funny, it often feels forced to achieve that.  The company didn’t do this book any favors either.  It’s poorly set up as far as the pages, spacing and so forth, then the editing notes were left in it in places.

Clancy Fitzgerald is twenty-nine, single and the matchmaker she’s been using has run through all of the men she has available.  The matchmaker decides to set Clancy up with a woman, without telling her.  She also doesn’t tell the other woman, Carmen Pratka, that Clancy isn’t expecting a woman.  Carmen immediately realizes that Clancy’s problem has been all along that she’s really a lesbian.  Someone just has to prove it to her and Carmen wants to do that.  What follows is a silly dance between Clancy and Carmen to create a relationship and that gets caught up in the intrigue of a religious group to try and buy up all of the gay and lesbian bars in town to put them out of business.

Erica Lawson is usually a much better author than this and her books are better produced.  Perhaps it was trying to finish someone else’s story that created the problem.  At any rate, leave this one on the shelf and try a different book.

Falling Colours by RJ Samuel

Publisher:       Self-published

Let’s start by saying this is a fun book to read.

The major character Kiran is unique.  Although she was raised in Ireland, her parents are from India, where they now live.  From her father she has inherited the ability to be a vision painter.  A person can pay Kiran to paint what he or she most desires and it will come true.  Since she is the only vision painter in Ireland, Kiran has plenty of work, but it’s not easy.  The effort is draining and she must live by the restrictions imposed by the painters in India.  The most serious of those is that she is not supposed to bring anyone back from the dead. 

Of course, that is exactly what happens when Kiran meets Ron, who is devastated by the suicide of his wife Marge.  She was a terrible woman to everyone else, but he loved her and can’t understand why she killed herself.  All he wants is a chance to talk to her again.  Kiran has no idea what she is about to unleash.  Marge comes back just as dominating as she was in life and totally tuned out to what other people need.  Ron is thrilled, their daughter Ashley is appalled and Kiran has to fix this mess.  In the process, she falls in love with Ashley and finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery.

Samuel may not have intended this book to be so funny, but Marge takes it in a direction that can’t avoid it.  Once she makes it clear that she was murdered and did not commit suicide, Marge won’t give up until the mystery is solved.  The fact that she is a ghost and really shouldn’t be appearing in front of people doesn’t impress her in the least.  She exasperates Ashley and drives Kiran to a near nervous breakdown, but nothing will stop her on her quest.

RJ Samuel has used the theme of a person caught between two cultures before, but Kiran has a comic twist that makes her fun while revealing the struggle she goes through.  The book is a slapstick mystery in the best tradition of the old 1930s movies.  It would be great to have a sequel to this book to see where Samuels could take the characters, but Kiran would have to bring Marge back again.  That might be too much for any of them to take.

Read Falling Colours.  It’s fresh; it’s different; it’s worth it.

Fearless by Erin O'Reilly

Publisher:        Affinity e-Book Press

A story that is getting more coverage in recent years is the one about the women pilots who helped with the effort to win World War II.  Although they were not supposed to go into battle, these women acted as the pilots who ferried planes to the war fronts and to repair facilities.  That occasionally brought them into as much danger as the war zones.

Fearless is about a group called the Air Transport Auxiliary.  Both men and women joined it to carry out work that would free battle-ready pilots for combat.  The story features a group of women who come from such diverse places as England, Ireland, Australia, Texas and Chile.  They also come from diverse backgrounds – rich, poor and in-between, gay and straight.  They train together, they fly together and they form a uniquely molded band dedicated to a common cause.  Two of them, Jo Laughlin and Sarah Faulkner, are particularly popular with the rest of the group, so when they disappear on a mission, everyone goes into a tailspin.  These women face danger and adventure every day.  Can they deal with the possible loss of two of their own?

The topic of the women pilots in World War II is one that has been covered in a number of books recently.  O'Reilly's book doesn't add any new knowledge to that history and unfortunately it doesn't tell a very compelling story.  Too much time is spent devoting chapters to telling the backgrounds events for each of the women.  It feels like the reader is spending chapters reading through biographies.  The details that are necessary for the later story could have been covered much quicker.  The part of the book that relates to the women's experiences flying the planes never explodes with the adventure that would seem to be inherent in this activity.  When Jo and Sarah are shot down in France, little about their adventure really seems to be dangerous until the last few minutes.  As some say in the advertising world, the book just doesn't pop.  It seems to hover right on the edge of catching fire, but misses its chance.  It's similar to eating really good food with a cold.  You know the taste is there, you just aren't receiving it.

It's difficult to know how to classify this book.  There is a small romance in it, but it's very subdued, so the book is not a romance.  There is some adventure, but not the kind that has the reader on the edge of her seat wondering what is going to happen.  It could be classified as historical fiction or possibly a character study of a group of people.  The story itself is fine, certainly for escapist reading.  There are more memorable books about the same topic however.