BLOG TOUR/BOOK REVIEW: "All The Butterflies In The World" by Rodney Jones

With her senior year looming, Tess McKinnon has two goals: hanging out with her best friend, Liz, and avoiding her judgmental, alcoholic mother. Then yummy John Bartley arrives—to tell Mrs. McKinnon that her daughter is dead. Distinctly still alive, Tess is baffled by John’s tales of 1800s time travel, rewritten lives, and love. She knows she’s never seen him before, but her feelings refuse to be denied.
When Tess and John discover an aged newspaper clipping that indicates John’s uncle was hanged for Tess’s murder in 1875, John decides to return to his time to save his uncle’s life. Not really sure she even believes in this time travel stuff, Tess checks the article after John leaves. The words have changed, and she is horrified to find that John has been hanged instead.
Armed with determination and modern ingenuity, Tess must abandon her past and risk her future for a chance to catch her own killer and find her first love for the second time.

Picking up after the first book left off (spoiler alert; sorry, I couldn't avoid this one), we find John Bartley once again trying to convince a living Tess McKinnon that he's really from the year 1875, and traveled through a time-loop to 2009.
John thinks that this time they might both live happily ever after, never going back to his time...as long as Tess doesn't call the psych ward on him!
But a trip to a local museum of their town shows him that his uncle was wrongfully hanged for Tess's murder, and he had vanished. He wants to go ball and make things right, but in order to do that he might never see Tess or 2009 again.

Just like its predecessor, All The Butterflies In The World is a fictional masterpiece. Combining historical fiction, romance, upoer-YA/NA themes and sci-fi, you won't find another book similar to this on Amazon!
What I love most about it is the emotion behind the words, the conviction the characters have. You don't feel like you're reading a fictional account of fictional characters, but rather the story of good friends for whom you hope there's a happy ending.
The biggest difference between the two books is that, What book one was solely from John's perspective, this book alternates between his POV and Tess's. It clearly displays the differences between the two characters' mindsets, and also the sweet similarities. You get to experience first-hand as Tess falls in love with John, while you live with John in the jail, before his trial.
This book has something for everyone: sci-fi fans, romance addicts and historians specializing in the 19th century. It's one of my new favorites!

5/5--a fictional masterpiece!

Purchase All The Butterflies In The World via:

Official site (has all purchase links)

BOOK REVIEW: "Never Say Die" by Bill Carson

Nick Harland has teamed up with Andy Ryan, a special forces/ MI5 operator and the pair are tasked with tracking down a rogue SAS soldier who is on the loose and creating havoc across London in revenge for his unjust imprisonment. But the destruction that he is causing is all part of an elaborate deception which is designed to mask his true intentions. Harland and Ryan are now in a race against time to find him before he carries out one of the most daring, outrageous and audacious crimes of the 21st century. 
Along with all the mayhem and tension created by the hunt for the SAS man there is a secondary story running parallel with the main one and this part of the story is unconnected to the main theme and remains so until the last chapter. Who is the mysterious unknown man found in a field in Essex with a gunshot wound to his head? The unconscious man is barely alive and is rushed to hospital where he undergoes emergency brain surgery and after a long period of recuperation he wakes from the coma. 
The police are anxious to interview him as in the field where he was found were a dozen dead bodies riddled with bullet holes. They don't get the chance to interrogate to him as he decides to abscond from hospital. The stranger has near total memory loss and has no clue who he is or why he'd been shot and the search is now on to find his past life? And he's anxious to find out why someone wanted him dead?

As an avid Doyle reader and NCIS watcher (not to mention the BBC's MI:5 starring Richard Armitage), I love mysteries set around a lot of action and suspense. Never Say Die by Bill Carson delivers a whole lot of suspense and danger within these pages.
Nick Harland is a likable character, Andy I could go either way. This is not really a character-driven story, but rather a plot-driven story. I mean that as a compliment. Rarely can you find a great spy novel driven more by plot than by the spies themselves. Carson wrote a great thriller with interesting components not usually seen together in the same book.
The reader is enthralled and intrigued by the mysterious man who has no memory. The reader is appalled yet can't help but be sympathetic to Steve Dark, the assassin gone rogue. And you certainly will wonder what on Earth one has to do with the other. A great mystery keeps you guessing and o  your toes, and Never Say Die does just that.
A great plot, well-written with enough mystery and action to keep you reading well into the night make Mr. Carson a writer you HAVE to check out!

4/5--a page-turner!

Purchase Never Say Die via:

Amazon

Goodreads