Author: cherylmahoney

I'm a book review blogger and writer. I have published four novels, The Wanderers; The Storyteller and Her Sisters; and The People the Fairies Forget; and The Lioness and the Spellspinners. All can be found on Amazon as an ebook and paperback. In my day job, I'm a Marketing Specialist. Find me on Twitter (@MarvelousTales) and GoodReads (MarvelousTales).

Launch Day: The People the Fairies Forget

On By cherylmahoneyIn Novel News4 Comments

PFF Orange Grove Cover - SmallIt’s Launch Day for my third novel, The People the Fairies Forget, another volume in my Beyond the Tales series.  But don’t worry if you haven’t read the first two–you can pick this one up first, if you’re so inclined.  🙂

Here’s where you can find it: Paperback, Kindle and Smashwords (for other ebooks)

There will be interviews and guest posts coming up in the next few weeks answering more questions about the book and the inspiration behind it.  But for the moment, in case you missed it earlier, here’s the back-of-the-book blurb to tell you a bit of what it’s all about…

Tarragon isn’t your typical fairy. He scoffs at gossamer wings and he never, ever sparkles. Plus, he’s much more interested in common folk than in anyone wearing a crown. All he wants to do is enjoy good food and good parties, but he can’t quite resist sparring with his cousin Marjoram, a typical Good Fairy if there ever was one. Against his better judgment, Tarry becomes the reluctant defender of the ordinary people Marj is trampling underfoot in her efforts to help the royalty.

That includes people like Jack, a goatherd stuck on the opposite side of a mass of thorns from his true love Emmy, a maid in Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Or Catherine, who has no desire to marry a very un-charming prince just because her shoe size matches some girl he danced with. Or Anthony, whose youngest sister Beauty got involved with a great and terrible Beast.

Tarry has to set down his supper, brush up on his magic and his arguments, and try for once to wrangle some kind of Happily Ever After out of the mess.

Movie Review: Home (Formerly, The True Meaning of Smekday)

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews, Science Fiction2 Comments

You may remember that I really loved The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex.  This left me both excited and leery of the movie version, the inexplicably renamed Home.  I finally watched this recently, an impulse pick-up at Redbox, and…it was neither as good as I hoped nor as bad as I feared, turning out to be an enjoyable movie based on a better book.

HomeThe basic premise is the same: the Boovs land on Christmas (of course), conquer Earth and relocate all the humans.  Eleven-year-old Gratuity (her friends call her Tip) sets out in her car with her cat Pig to find her mother, who was abducted.  She connects with J.Lo–or, in the movie version, Oh–a Boov being hunted by the other Boovs for accidentally summoning their dreaded enemy, the Gorg.  Tip and J.Lo/Oh travel together, bonding along the way.

Pretty much everything else has changed–namely, everything that happens along the way as they travel (apart from the bonding).  It was actually a somewhat disconcerting adaptation, because some of the small details (like naming the car Slushious) stayed precisely the same, while great big massive things (going to Paris, for example, instead of Happy Mouse Kingdom and Roswell) were completely different.  Maybe it helped me try to take this as just a different story though? Continue reading “Movie Review: Home (Formerly, The True Meaning of Smekday)” →

Feasting Around the Blogosphere

On By cherylmahoneyIn Novel News1 Comment

PFF Orange Grove Cover - SmallAs you (hopefully) know, my next novel will be published one week from today!  I always like to celebrate a new novel (and spread the word) with a blog tour, with guest posts and interviews on other blogs.  So far I’ve done a Blog Wander and a Blog Waltz 🙂 and this time, I’m calling it a Blog Banquet–because my narrator, Tarry, really loves good parties and excellent food.  So think of this as a kind of Movable Feast, with each course of the written banquet on another blog!

So you know where we’ll be going, here are the lovely bloggers who are letting me visit:

I’ll let you know each time a new post is up, so keep an eye out.  And if you’d like to join the party, it’s not too late–just let me know! 🙂

Book Reviews: My Unfair Godmother and The Four Seasons of Lucy McKenzie

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, ReviewsLeave a comment

Every so often I read a book that I don’t have quite enough to say about for a review…so today you’re getting a twofer with two mini-reviews!

My Unfair Godmother by Janette Rallison

This is a decent book that I would have liked better if I hadn’t been expecting something completely different from what I actually got. I saw the cover and title, read the plot description and thought: story about an inept (and sparkly) fairy godmother? I’m so in!

Turned out the fairy godmother was really more of a supporting character…part of her ineptness is that she’s never around to help, leaving Tansy to deal with the fallout of her wishes on her own. So really the story here is about a teenage girl coping with accidentally bringing Robin Hood and his Merry Men (more bandits than heroes) into her small town, and then with accidentally transporting herself and her family into a medieval-era Rumpelstiltskin tale. While fighting with her father, and crushing on her brother’s attractive but disapproving friend.

All of that is reasonably entertaining, but not what I was expecting! And this turned out not to be as much my type of book as I was hoping. Even though this is a fantasy, Tansy is very much a modern, real-world teenager. I have nothing against actual real-world teenagers, but there’s a certain type of book-teenager…shallow, self-absorbed, fighting with her parents and having trouble balancing priorities (say, a fight with her boyfriend vs. stopping a government conspiracy…though that’s a different book). Tansy is not by any means the worst of this type I’ve seen—she’s fairly likable on the whole—but there was still a flavor of that type in here.

There was a fair bit of whimsy and humor here too, and the inevitable romance had some nice moments. It was all a rather light froth of a book, which can be fun…although I did wish there was a bit more depth on at least one point. Tansy has some very real issues with her father, which is explored in the first few pages and made me feel sympathetic towards her…but then that never really got resolved. Storming a castle together as a family is not the same thing as having a serious heart-to-heart about how it felt when Tansy’s parents got divorced and her father moved out of the state. A demonstration of love doesn’t simply erase emotional damage.

So don’t look for a lot of depth here, and don’t look for a story about a fairy godmother (all indications to the contrary), but it’s not a bad frothy modern fantasy…with a side-trip into medieval England.  And incidentally, this turned out to be a sequel (to My Fair Godmother) which I haven’t read, but it didn’t seem to matter for following the story.

Author’s Site: http://janetterallison.com/

Other reviews:
Story Snoops
Literature Purgatory
These Paper Hearts
Anyone else?

Buy it here: My Unfair Godmother

Lucy McKenzieThe Four Seasons of Lucy McKenzie by Kirsty Murray

This was another book I liked, but not as much as I hoped too—which may be a product of reading too many time-travel books, or just of liking a different kind of time-travel.

Lucy has to spend the Christmas holiday (in Australia, so it’s summer) with her Great-Aunt Big, in a ramshackle farmhouse in a secluded valley. The dining room has gorgeous murals of the valley—one season on each wall. And at night, Lucy finds that she can walk into the paintings, to meet April and her family living in the valley.

This is a sweet story about family, and Lucy grows in confidence throughout the book in a nice way. It’s fun to read the Australian setting too, with the blistering hot January Lucy travels into for summer.

So my reservations? It was abundantly obvious to me on paragraph one who April was…but I’ve read a lot of time travel stories, so I tried to be cool with that. And Lucy figures it out (relatively) quickly. My other issue is that I like dynamic time travel (actions in the past can change the present) and this was distinctly fixed time travel (the present can’t change and everything done in the past only creates the present as it already was). Fixed time travel just feels a little pointless to me because…nothing can be changed! Especially when Aunt Big’s life is a bit sad in the present. Lucy ends up understanding more by the end, but not enough for the understanding alone to be entirely satisfying to me as a reason for the time travel.

However. All of that is pretty darn subjective, so you might not be bothered by those things at all. And even with those issues, this was a nice book, a very fast read, and ultimately there was an upbeat ending too.  And I do love the idea of walking through paintings…such a cool concept.

Author’s Site: http://kirstymurray.com/

Other reviews (from people who loved this!):
Charlotte’s Library
The Bookbag
First Impressions
Anyone else?

Buy it here: The Four Seasons of Lucy McKenzie

2015 Reading Challenges – Three-Quarters Update

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations2 Comments

We’re just starting October, so it’s time for another reading challenges update!  My laid-back reading challenges are continuing along in a laid-back way, with more re-reading and a few more checked off on the random-criteria-challenge.

On the rereading front, I finished my reread (via audiobook) of Harry Potter.  It was a lot of fun, though I do notice some cracks in the story as an adult that went right past me as a kid…still a good read though!  I reread the Uglies trilogy by Scott Westerfeld, plus Extras, the fourth book that may actually be my favorite, about the “reputation economy.”  Lost in Austen by Emma Campbell Webster was another good reread–the first time I read it, I’d only read Pride and Prejudice, so I got a lot more out of it on the second time, when I’ve read all of Austen’s novels.  I’ve just started a reread of the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace; I’ve about finished their childhood and am excited to go on to the high school years, my favorite of the series.

Then we have the random-criteria-challenge…

Goodwill Librarian Reading Challenge

I completed 29 of these in the first half of the year, and a few more these past three months:

  • A classic romance: The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer (published 1928)
  • A book with a number in the title: The Four Seasons of Lucy McKenzie by Kirsty Murray
  • A book your mom loves: Francis: The Journey and the Dream by Murray Bodo, O.F.M.
  • A memoir: Home, a Memoir of My Childhood by Julie Andrews
  • A book set in the future: Future Crime, edited by Cynthia Manson and Charles Ardai
  • A graphic novel: Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
  • A banned book: The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

That puts me at 35 down, 15 to go before the end of the year.  I started actually paying some attention to this challenge in late August, and will need to do a bit more to hit those final, more elusive ones.

Let me know if you’re curious to know more about any of these books…and I’d love to hear if you have any reading challenges going on for the year too!