#Review - Honor & Shadows by Jessie Milhalik / Betwixt by Darynda Jones #SyFy #Paranormal

Series: Starlight's Shadow # 0.5
Format: E-Book, 64 pages
Release Date: November 1, 2022
Publisher: NYLA
Source: Amazon
Genre: Space Opera

Captain Octavia Zarola needs an infusion of credits—fast—if she’s going to keep her close-knit bounty hunting crew paid and fed. Tracking down an escaped embezzler on a backwater planet should be a piece of cake, but bounties are rarely as easy as they seem.

As the crew closes in on their quarry, the hunt becomes entangled with a local criminal overlord, and Tavi will have to decide what’s more important: money or honor, and how much she’s willing to risk for either one.

Jessie Milhalik's Honor and Shadows is a 10,000 prequel to the authors Starlight's Shadow series. The crew of the Starlight Shadow is down to basically supplies and looking for a bounty to collect to keep the ship running, and stocked with food. So, Captain Octavia (Tavi) Zarola, 1st Officer Elias Bruck, and engineer, Kee Ildez, set their sights on a man named Alan Hudson who has eluded capture for 2 years. When Tavi and crew arrive, Megan Gail knows that Tavi is after Alan, and agrees to help as long as the crew helps them get off planet, and away from her father who runs the town, and the mines, and has used Hudson to get rich. Even though this is a fairly short story, it is entertaining, especially when it leads directly into the first installment called Hunt the Stars. If you've read Hunt the Stars, read this novella! You won't be disappointed!

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Series: Betwixt & Between # 1
Format: EBook, 256 pages
Release Date:  February 18th 2020
Publisher: Feather & Leaf, LLC
Source: Amazon
Genre: Paranormal

Divorced, desperate, and destitute, former restaurateur Defiance "Dephne" Dayne finds out she has been bequeathed a house by a complete stranger. She is surprised, to say the least, and her curiosity gets the better of her. She leaves her beloved Phoenix and heads to one of the most infamous towns in America: Salem, Massachusetts.

She’s only there to find out why a woman she’s never met would leave her a house. A veritable castle that has seen better days. She couldn’t possibly accept it, but the lawyer assigned to the case practically begs her to take it off her hands, mostly because she’s scared of it. The house. The inanimate structure that, as far as Dephne can tell, has never hurt a fly.

Though it does come with some baggage. A pesky neighbor who wants her gone. A scruffy cat who’s a bit of a jerk. And a handyman bathed in ink who could moonlight as a supermodel for GQ.

She decides to give it three days, and not because of the model. She feels at home in Salem. Safe. But even that comes to a screeching halt when people begin knocking on her door day and night, begging for her help to locate their lost objects.

Come to find out, they think she’s a witch. And after a few mysterious mishaps, Dephne is beginning to wonder if they’re right.

Darynda Jones' Betwixt is the first installment in the authors Betwixt and Between series. Divorced, desperate, and destitute, former restaurateur Defiance "Dephne" Dayne finds that she's been bequeathed a house by a complete stranger named Ruthie Goode. She leaves her beloved Phoenix and heads to one of the most infamous towns in America: Salem, Massachusetts. She’s only there to find out why a woman she’s never met would leave her a house, and why people are all of a sudden eager to speak to her when barely a minute has passed.

The home is a Victorian that has seen better days. In fact, it needs a lot of work! It comes with a cat named Ink, and a handyman who wears a kilt and calls himself Roane. With barely a dime to her name, how can Defiance keep the home? As a twist, the house, aka Percival, well, it appears to be sentient! and it's not happy that Defiance is thinking about getting rid of the house. She decides to give it three days, and not because of the model. She feels at home in Salem. Safe. But won't stop begging for her help to locate their lost objects or missing persons.

To top things off, she learns several things. 1. Ruthie Goode is her grandmother who has been watching over her for 40 years. 2. She's something of a witch called Charmling. Charmlings were created by original witches thousands of years ago. They were a coven, and they saw the injustice women suffered at the hands of men, even in the witch realm. They sought to balance the power by creating three beings no man can defeat. They pooled their power and the power of their ancestors and funneled it into three witches to be a beacon of light. A balance of power.

Along with her best friend Annette, who decides to pick up her life and be with her friend Dephne, Defiance now has to deal with learning her own powers that have been hidden for decades. She has to deal with new people asking her strange questions. Then there's Roane who is, well, eye candy. One of the thing that Jones is very known for is the snarky commentary of her characters and that doesn't change in this book. Defiance does and says some irritating things, but when all is said and done, I'm good with the overall direction the book went in and will continue with the series. 

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