Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

www.laurellkhamilton.org

Released: October 1993

Guilty Pleasures is the first book in the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series by Laurell K. Hamilton. I first read this novel and a few of its successors nearly 15 years ago, but don't quite remember why I ended up losing interest in the series. On a recent venture to my local indie bookstore, I decided to restock my shelves with the first few books in this series to try it again, and to see where my opinion of the series now stands as a professional reviewer.

In the end, I'm glad I decided to give Guilty Pleasures another try, because I truly enjoyed my time with the novel, and thought it very original.

Running Blind by Lee Child

www.leechild.com

Released: July 2000

Running Blind is the fourth novel in the "Jack Reacher" thriller/suspense series by Lee Child. At the time of this writing, there are 18 books in the series. A movie based on the series called "Jack Reacher" was also recently released, starring the 5'7" Tom Cruise as the 6'4" Jack Reacher. Let's just say this is another case in which the movie was NOT better than the book.

If you've never had the pleasure of reading any novels in Child's "Jack Reacher" series, then you're missing out on getting to know the toughest, most hard-core and bad-ass fictional character in existence.

I chose to read Running Blind this month because the title meets the criteria for the Monthly Keyword Challenge over here at Bookmark to Blog. One of the May keywords is "run," so obviously I jumped all over choosing Running Blind for the reading challenge.

The Perfume Collector by Kathleen Tessaro

www.kathleentessaro.com

Release date: May 2013

The Perfume Collector is the fifth book by Kathleen Tessaro. If you've missed out on my previous reviews for books by Kathleen Tessaro, know that you better add all this author's works to your wish list. She's an absolutely amazing and beautiful writer, and underrated compared to some other well-known "chick-lit" novelists. The Perfume Collector might be her best yet.

I've been sitting on The Perfume Collector since I finished it back in January, when it was sent to me from the publisher for review. I've been holding off on writing the review because I've been waiting for the perfect moment of inspiration - the book is so beautiful that I wanted and needed to be in the perfect mood to write about it! After having had a small amount of inspiration triggered by a certain muse, I'm thrilled to finally be writing about this elegant novel.