**NB This review first appeared in the ARRA members newsletter in October 2014**

In Another Life by EE Montgomery is a very short story but it covers a lot of ground.  It’s a very stylised work, with glimpses of the main characters for short periods every eight years.  It begins with Eli and Mike at 24, living together and just at the start of their careers. Because each of them is so busy, their relationship suffers and the story starts when Mike leaves and Eli is devastated.   Fast forward eight years and they encounter one another again but Eli lets Mike believe he is with someone else. There is still attraction but also (especially from Eli) great pain.  A further eight years pass and Mike finds Eli drinking heavily (in celebration over a friend’s good health news) and takes him home and looks after him (yes Kat, this is a vomit book).  There is a strong connection between the characters but the story is so short it doesn’t have much chance to develop.  We cover 24 years in about 20 pages.  Eli and Mike have never stopped loving each other it seems, but there is a lot of hurt and baggage to be dealt with before they can have their HEA. For me, I think I would have appreciated the story more if I had been able to spend more time with the characters. As it was, I did feel their connection and Mike’s guilt for the decision he regrets and the pain it caused Eli. I enjoyed the secondary characters of Quinn and Jerry as well.  The story was a quick read and in a very short time the author captured my interest. I wished it were longer.

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 Coming Soon

Taken in Death by JD Robb, narrated by Susan Ericksen – B+  I love how the novellas in this series are all available as separate audiobooks.  Mostly I don’t want to buy the entire anthology so this suits me very well.  This novella doesn’t really add anything to the wider story arc (although there are some which do) but it was one of the better ones.  In a novella, the focus is always more on the crime and solving it than the romance and I adjust my expectations accordingly.  There is always a love scene (and I’m still not tired of them) and some private time with Eve and Roarke, but the main story is the crime.  This was a murder and kidnapping and Eve and the team are trying to locate seven (I think it was seven) year old twins from their mother’s evil twin.  It is a twist on the Hansel and Gretel story and is very dark.  The emotions are high from the start and the tension ratchets up as the risks increase. Susan Ericksen shines again as narrator.  She can do convincing voices for young chiildren without making them caricatures.  She has many character voices in her repertoire, as well as the usual cast, she got to try a Swedish accent this time.  It was an excellent novella and one of the best in a while.  If I wasn’t a romance reader I probably would have given it an A.

In print, it is part of the Mirror Mirror anthology but it is also available at Kobo and Amazon as a stand alone digital novella (although if you’re going to get it in print, I recommend getting the whole anthology as it represents better value for money).  The Kobo link below is for the digital novella, the Amazon link is for the audiobook.

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And:

Reviews of these books will be up soon at AudioGals.