REVIEW: Blood Moon (Chroma Crossing Chronicles 1)

Blood Moon

Chroma Crossing Chronicles series

Author: S. Yurvati

Genre: Fantasy, Suspense, Paranormal Romance, Adventure

Synopsis:

Hunky pheromone-laden-man meets pretty accident-prone female—it should have been a love story with a happily ever after ending. However, when the bored deities choose Candy and Thorne for an amusing game, the gods and goddesses put forth sets of circumstances that can tear the couple apart and wound them deep within their souls.

City girl, Candy wanted to become a successful artist and maybe someday find a man who would make her feel loved and valued, a feeling she’d never known while growing up.

With her father’s sudden demise, Candy finds she’s inherited funds and a carriage house in beautiful historic Savannah. Not only can she now afford to go to the Savannah College of Art and Design, her future as an artist looks promising. But unfortunately, her step-mom and her disturbing son Todd reside in the main house.

When Candy gets her first commission for a life-sized portrait of a beautiful woman from a rather unsettling man, she soon questions what had seemed coincidental. Candy is a modest female who has always found solace in her artwork, whereas her widowed step-mom, Cherry Ann, considers physical pleasure and money as her measures of worth.

As Candy pursues her art, Cherry Ann pursues a new lover who expands her world of sexual gratifications far beyond past parameters. Cherry Ann finds her new risqué sex life to be addictive and doesn’t recognize the danger of the man she’s invited into her life.

After surviving a couple of ‘accidents’, Candy realizes someone apparently wishes her harm. When she’s chased (by the one thing she fears most) Candy accidentally, or so it seems, crosses into a new dimension. She finds herself in an unknown wilderness with a curious terrain that is void of color. The landscape looks like an old sepia photograph, hardly the Savannah spring day she’d left behind.  As Candy stumbles through the wild terrain, an intriguing hunter comes upon her. His presence makes her girlie parts beg to become ill behaved, and before she knows it, her hormones are arguing with her strict moral compass.

Recommended for readers ages 18+.

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MY REVIEW

Call me intrigued and invested!  Blood Moon by S. Yurvati is the first book in the Chroma Crossing Chronicles series.  It ends on a small cliff-hanger and is told in multiple POV.  Although, for me, this way of telling the story and the vast amount of embellishments about Savannah (its ambiance, flowers, trees history etc), slowed down the pace of the story and made it hard to connect with the main characters, I persisted.  I was never so happy that I did!

After a while, the story became a little simpler, with not so many POVs.  I got to learn more about Mark Kingslea and his marriage.  I also had a chance to see and learn more about Candy not to mention Thorne (sigh!).  These for me, were the best chapters of the book.  It was simple and to the point and advanced the plot the way the rest of the book did not.

I became obsessed by these pages and the story.  The story telling, for me, finally came alive.  Our main characters are Candy, Mark and Thorne and I was able to get a better understanding of who these characters really are and what motivates them.  I devoured these pages and cannot wait to read the next installment.

I do believe with so many secondary characters, that a glossary of who’s who and what their relationship to our heroine is would not be remiss.

Also, for me, some turn of phrases like “Mr. Frisky” and “Got to bleep her” turned me off a bit and sometimes the author weaved in and out of different POV without any indication and this sometimes caused a little confusion.

Regardless of this, this was a wonderful first installment and I’m excited to read the next book!

I received a free copy of this book.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.

EXCERPT ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Chapter One

The plethora of majestic oaks, enrobed with   Spanish moss, made this historic cemetery one of Candy’s favorite spots in Savannah. In fact, the Bonaventure Cemetery was considered one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the world and she could well believe it.  Azaleas were just beginning to bloom with the early onset of spring, adding accenting bursts of color to nature’s earthy canvas. Today should be a day to enjoy what nature offered to the eyes. It wasn’t.

Unfortunately, both the occasion and the company of fellow mourners spoiled this day. They were gathered ‘to put to rest’ her late father, Lucas Cane. She never understood why people referred to the deceased as ‘late’ since they were definitely the first to arrive to the funeral. And ‘rest’? Hardly.  Her father wasn’t taking a nap.

Early in life Candy learned it was best to be a realist, and Dad was just plain dead. She wiped a tear from her cheek knowing Dad would not want his only child to cry. His philosophy about death was that it offered a new beginning, or so he had told her when she was a child. Additionally  he’d always taught her to look for the positive. Right now Candy was positively certain she would never see her father again.

As was befitting of such a morose occasion, lots of emotional sobs and hysteria were heard, almost exclusively from Cherry Ann—also known as Candy’s father’s third wife, aka stepmom-two. The sobbing Cherry Ann was clinging tighter than Saran Wrap to her grown and ever present son, Todd. ‘Hysteria’ should have been Cherry Ann’s middle name, if it hadn’t already been ‘Greed’. Or she could have been named ‘Dramatique’. . . come to think of it, that name would be equally fitting of her personality and carried a nice ring to it. Cherry Ann would consider herself French.

Dang! How could anyone cry so prettily? Cherry Ann certainly had her nerve looking so attractive at Lucas’ funeral. Wasn’t the bereaved widow supposed to look . . . well, bereaving? Probably crocodile tears anyway, because Candy had serious doubts about any matrimonial grief seeping from Cherry Ann’s spa-cleansed-pores.

It hardly seemed fair.  When Candy cried her entire face turned red, and her nose could give Rudolf a real run for the Christmas eve gig. Then of course her eyes would swell, and regrettably Candy had to admit she resembled a tortured possum. A good reason to avoid crying every opportunity she got. No sense humiliating herself or frightening the populace. So when she cried it was in solitude.

On this day of public hysterical grieving, Cherry Ann was dressed for the part in a smart looking black St. John designer suit, a proper black hat complete with widow’s netting, opaque black stockings, and finished with black (no doubt designer) stiletto heels. She even had her nails done in black nail polish. Really? Was she Elvira Mistress of the Dark?

As stepmom-two neared, the cloying scent of high-dollar perfume enveloped her as closely as Todd did. Cherry Ann used expensive perfume to forecast her presence a full fifteen seconds before she sashayed into a room. Her generous bosom arrived next and five seconds later the rest of her body followed.

Since all strong scents assaulted Candy’s nose and caused sneezing it hardly mattered which one it was. Cherry Ann knew Candy was sensitive to perfumes, but that never deterred her use of them. Already Candy’s nose was twitching. Candy would hold off as long as possible stifling sneezing for two reasons. Firstly, Todd would hand her a tissue with that “you owe me” freaky glint in his eyes. Secondly, Cherry Ann would do that little shoulder shimmy thing that said she’d gotten her way. Again.

Admittedly, that woman could make a red carpet worthy entrance. But unlike every other person in Savannah, Cherry Ann seemed oblivious regarding last night’s rainy weather. Those five-inch spiked heels she wore kept sinking into the ground. Every time Cherry Ann tried to move another earthy protest pulled against the couture heel. Designer or not, no heel could sustain much more abuse. Secretly Candy was rooting for the soggy earth to claim victory.

If ‘fashionista’ Cherry Ann broke a heel off her exclusive designer shoes that would be catastrophic and give stepmom-two something to genuinely cry about. Who wore stilettos to a cemetery anyway? Wasn’t the death of a loved one painful enough to endure without purposely inflicting more pain?

Okay, it was unkind to think such thoughts, but it was just so tempting when it came to stepmom-two. Certainly there was no love lost between the two of them.

Sighing, Candy again thought about how her father had experienced too many bad marriages and too little love in his short life. Dad had deserved better and now it was too late for him. Candy hadn’t thought he had a heart problem, just high blood pressure, which he took his meds and exercised to control. His weight was always good as well. In fact, Lucas always kept himself fit. A fatal heart attack seemed difficult for Candy to accept.

The sullen ceremony proceeded and the words were spoken.  Finally it was time for the friends and family to depart so the ‘Rent a Coffin’ could be lowered. The small crowd was slowly wandering to their cars when it happened.

A creaking, shifting sound—then something heavy sliding, followed by an ominous cracking—the sound of wood splitting.

Crash!

Everyone turned to look back as they realized the simple wood coffin, which Cherry Ann had chosen, had slipped off the lift, out from under the ornate faux-coffin overlay.

Totally ironic considering Candy’s father had never wanted what he referred to as a “barbaric funeral”. He preferred the biblical “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” of cremation. Recycling at its finest. Dad had been very ‘green’ minded and a big advocate in repurposing with his restoration projects. However, when Candy had told Cherry Ann about his avid preference the widow had vehemently balked at the idea.

But it was when the kindly and overly informative funeral director told Cherry Ann how cremation was irreversible that the widow totally lost it. What had she expected? Dad wasn’t coming back. Period. Not as a zombie, a ghost or even with the addition of water to rehydrate his ashes.

Thus they turned the page to burial option B, as stipulated in her father’s Will. Obviously Lucas had known Cherry Ann was not going to stand for his preferences that his body be cremated. After all, why would his wife ever want to fulfill his burial request when it was all about Cherry Ann?

The widow’s level of hysteria rose (a difficult task to fathom) as the group rushed back to the gravesite. When it came to tear ducts, Cherry Ann’s were as profuse as her boobs.

As the attendees spotted the broken coffin they looked uncomfortable and confused, as if they should offer assistance in some manner. Candy spotted one gentleman as he removed his sports jacket and readied himself to jump into the grave to retrieve Dad. Except what the man saw seemed to abruptly change his mind.

Others gasped.

And there it was, the cheap wooden coffin broken open with dear-old-Dad lying stark naked, a white sheet rumpled to the side of him, and with an alarming erection, courtesy of his penile implant. Oh glory! No wonder that well-meaning gentleman balked. Imagine reaching forward and accidently grabbing hold of that!  The result would likely require years of therapy for the traumatized man and tons of porn before he got his ‘hetero-man card’ replaced.

Not only had Cherry Ann’s secret budget funeral become public, so had her husband’s private parts. Surely the angels above were getting a titillating eyeful, as were all the guests.

Dad looked proud in his death, but then it was a generous implant.

Through her sobbing and horror Cherry Ann choked out, “No, no, no. How could he do this to me? I’m going to sue the funeral home for compensation.” Sob, sob, sob and more sobbing.  Always remaining true to her nature, in the end it was always about money and Cherry Ann. Not necessarily in that order, but always together.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

S. Yurvati has always loved reading and writing. She began putting her thoughts and imaginings on paper during her childhood and continued through college years. She began writing Blood Moon back in her college days, but after graduating from CSUN with a Master’s Degree, she had to work on earning a living and had to put her writing on hold… After three decades of working in the medical world, her husband convinced her to retire and take the time to write. That led to the beginning of Chroma Crossing Chronicles and her first book: Blood Moon. The series includes: Blood Moon (Part 1 and Part 2), followed by Book 3 Dragon Tear, and Book 4 Infinity Link. S. Yurvati is currently working on the fifth and final installment of the Chroma Crossing Chronicles series.

S. Yurvati lives in Texas with the love-of-her-life husband. They have been happily married for going on 44 years. Readers can connect with her on Facebook and Goodreads. To learn more, go to https://syurvatiauthor.com/