Book Review: Sketchy by Olivia Samms

Sketchy by Olivia Samms
Publisher: Amazon Children's Publishing
Publish Date: January 1, 2013
Hardcover, 238 pages
ISBN: 9781477816509




My Review:
While dark, I found Sketchy to be a very enjoyable book. Bea was a great character, the backstory was interesting and the mystery was great. Also the promise of more books to come really has me excited.

Bea is a drug addict just coming out of rehab so right up front you know this is not a warm fuzzy book. Bea is real, she doesn't want to go to AA, she struggles with sobriety, she struggles with high school, but the one thing she doesn't seem to struggle with is who she is now. I like that. While she has to struggle not to drink or do drugs, she is comfortable in her skin. She likes to draw and she is happy to reconnect with Chris a distant friend from art camp. Chris is a great character as well. Often Bea's voice-of-reason and also some comic relief at times, he is fun and another character that is sure of himself even though his lifestyle is not one of the mainstream. I liked him for him as well. Ms. Samms did an excellent job with the characters. Another note with the characters is the parents are not absent in this book. No they are there right on top of Bea, sometimes to the point of being overbearing, but as a parent I do understand. It is refreshing to have parents present in a novel but even I will admit I was frustrated with them, but I had the benefit of knowing Bea was behaving.

The plot is great, it's driven by the mystery of figuring out who is raping and murdering girls, leaving Willa alive after being raped. The plot goes back and forth from past to present to bring us up-to-date on Bea but it really flows. I enjoyed the mystery of Bea using her talent to try and work out who is doing this. It was also interesting to watch her convince others of her talent.

Sketchy was amazing to me, it kept me interested, it felt real and I can't wait to read more of the Bea Catcher Chronicles. Bea has pulled me in and I like her and can't get enough of her. I will be interested to see what Ms. Samms shows us next.

My rating: 5.0/5.0

About the Book:
The first book in a series about 17 year old Bea Washington, an edgy, charismatic outsider and recovering addict, who discovers that with her new-found sobriety, she has a disturbing new ?skill? ? an ability to see, and draw, people's thoughts. Alarmingly, these visions are only getting stronger and increasing in frequency. As another girl in school is raped and left for dead, Bea must come to terms with her talent, learn to face her own truth, and try to help identify and stop the killer before he strikes again.

About the Author (from her website):
Raised in southern Michigan, Olivia Samms started writing stories as a young girl—she just didn’t realize that was what she was doing. She built forts in the dense woods, grew gills under the water of small, muddy lakes, and created a fictional universe with a cast of colorful characters. Olivia’s active imagination prompted her to pursue acting and musical theatre, and after receiving her degree from Cornell University, she took on the streets of New York, acting and singing in off, off-off, and off-off-off Broadway shows, regional theaters, sang in Nashville and cried  on soap operas. She now lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children. SKETCHY is her first novel.

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***I received this book from Amazon Vine for an honest review.  I was not compensated in any other way except receiving the book for free.  ***

Spring Cleaning Giveaway Hop

It's Spring Cleaning Giveaway Hop Time!  For this giveaway I will have two (2) winners, US/Canada only please because of shipping costs.  And what is up for grabs, each winner will get their choice of one of the following books which are books I have finished in the past and are just sitting around waiting for a new home or are books that I should finish by the end of the hop (please note, some are ARCs).  So have a look, enter below and then make sure you check out all the other great giveaways too!

 

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Guest Blog: Misa Ramirez (Bare Naked Lola)

Sometimes characters do little things that characterize them so perfectly.  The curmudgeonly man who rescues a dog from the pound.  The cyclist who frees a trapped goat from a barbed wire fence.  The teenager on a skateboard who stops to pick up spilled groceries for a neighbor.

When Lola Cruz was forming in my head, one thing I knew for sure was that there was a gray area in the lines she’d cross for her job.  How she got to that gray area was the interesting part.  Which led to me to the love of her life, Jack Callaghan.  He’s the catalyst for quite a bit of Lola’s character formation.  It’s because of him that she became a private investigator. 

Read on:

When I was fourteen years old, I snapped pictures of Jack Callaghan doing the horizontal salsa in the back seat of a car with Greta Pritchard. That’s when I knew for sure I’d grow up to be a private eye.”
That’s my favorite line in any of the Lola Cruz mystery books.  It so succinctly shows everyone who Lola is, and that she’s quite willing to cross a few lines in the name of…whatever it is she’s after.


Her career choice might have been inspired by newspaper man Jack Callaghan, but her drive and determination are all hers. She works for a small PI firm in Sacramento and is assigned to be the lead investigator on a missing person case.
Lola battles office politics, the reappearance of Jack Callaghan, her family’s cultural and gender expectations, and her own passion for crime-solving, never losing sight of her own values and who she is as a person. One theme that will run through each book in the series is just how far Lola is willing to go for her job. In Living the Vida Lola, one of the questions she faces is will she or won’t she get a belly button piercing or a tattoo?--all in the name of information- gathering.  In Bare-Naked Lola, the question is, will she or won’t she strip down to nothing at a nudist resort, all to catch a killer?
Other continuing themes are the cultural and gender expectations she faces. Lola is an American--born and raised in Sacramento. But she’s also Mexican and lives her family’s culture and all that embodies. How she is true to both sides of herself and is her own person makes her a three-dimensional character. I love her! I like to think that she is my alter-ego...if I were a little younger, sexier, Latina, and a detective.

I want to hear from you!  Should Lola go nude, or should she stay prude?  You’ll have to find out what she chooses by reading Bare-Naked Lola, but what do YOU think?!

~Melissa

About Sacrifice of Passion

Texas rancher, Vic Vargas, finds himself facing more than his stubbornly silent son when the chupacabra, a supposedly mythical blood‐sucking beast, starts killing his livestock—and stalking Delaney West, the town’s newly returned veterinary assistant, the sensual woman who ran from the altar and broke his heart twelve years earlier.

Reluctantly, he seeks her help to get to the bottom of the disturbing animal mutilations, only to have her break through to his sullen son...and rekindle the love he’d thought was lost forever. But her refusal to share a terrible secret sends her running straight into the lair of the chupacabra, plunging her back into her worst nightmare, and forcing them both to confront the wrongs of the past—in order to stay alive for the future they desperately want.

Get your copy of Sacrifice of Passion at

  

Also available from Melissa Bourbon Ramirez: Bare Naked Lola

Going undercover is second nature for Private Investigator Lola Cruz, but she’s out of her league when the case of a murdered Royals Courtside Dancer leads her to a local nudist resort. Parading around the sidelines of Sacramento’s professional basketball scene in a barely-there cheerleading outfit is one thing—but parading around in nothing but smile? If she has any chance of hiding this from her traditional family and on-again/off-again boyfriend Jack, she’s going to have a lot more than her duct tape bra and killer dance moves to keep under wraps….

Get your copy of Bare Naked Lola at:

 


About Melissa Bourbon Ramirez

Melissa Bourbon, who sometimes answers to her Latina-by-marriage name Misa Ramirez, gave up teaching middle and high school kids in Northern California to write full-time amidst horses and Longhorns in North Texas.  She fantasizes about spending summers writing in quaint, cozy locales, has a love/hate relationship with yoga and chocolate, is devoted to her family, and can’t believe she’s lucky enough to be living the life of her dreams.

She is the marketing director at Entangled Publishing, is the author of the Lola Cruz Mystery series with St. Martin’s Minotaur and Entangled Publishing, A Magical Dressmaking Mystery series with NAL, and is the co-author of The Tricked-out Toolbox and two romantic suspense titles.

Visit Melissa at her website | Twitter Page | Facebook Home | Goodreads | and Books on the House, a website bringing books and readers together!