One Last Dance by Ernesto Patino

March 10, 2026 By Leave a Comment


One Last Dance by Ernesto Patino
Publisher: Paper Angel Press
Genre: Romance, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Devastated by the tragic death of his fiancée, Marco Anissi sets out to find the woman who received his beloved Susan’s heart.

Marco Anissi comes out of a coma, days after his car slams into a light pole-the same pole he had crashed into exactly ten years ago, killing his fiancée, Susan.

Convinced that her spirit has reached out to him in a way he would understand, Marco embarks on a search to find the woman who had received Susan’s heart. He finds her in Tucson where she works as a dance teacher. Her name is Julia. He signs up for lessons, hoping to develop a relationship. Now, Marco must make a decision: tell the truth about himself and risk losing Julia with whom he’s falling in love, or remain silent and enjoy his new life with her.

Can two hearts that beat as one in life be parted by death?

Love is limitless.

There aren’t enough romance novels out there about characters with serious chronic illnesses for my tastes, so this was something I was determined to read as soon as I finished the blurb. It was interesting to get to know Julia as she coped with the health complications that can come after an organ transplant and attempted to fulfill her dreams while also accepting that there were limitations to what she was physically able to do. Figuring out the balance between the two isn’t always easy, but it sure does make for some good storytelling.

I struggled with how different the ending of this book was when compared to the beginning or middle. It almost seemed to be something written in another genre entirely, especially when I considered how out of character certain individuals behaved when compared to their choices earlier on in the storyline. While it’s difficult to go into much detail here without sharing spoilers, I can say that one of the things that surprised me the most had to do with how slowly one of the characters responded to a life-threatening diagnosis. This didn’t seem to match up with what I’d learned about him earlier, and it led to consequences that could have been easily avoided. As much as I wished to give this title a higher rating, the plot holes and sudden shift in tone and themes at the end were an obstacle for me to do so.

The subplot about how an organ transplant can change a recipient’s personality, habits, and interests caught my attention. This was something I’d heard of before, but I wasn’t aware of the many different ways this medical procedure can alter someone’s life or that the reasons for it are still being investigated. Some of my favorite scenes were the ones that dove into not only how the patient can respond to these changes but how people who once knew and loved the donor might react as well. This was a unique twist on the romance genre that piqued my interest in the author’s past, present, and future work.

One Last Dance was a thought provoking read.

Filed Under: Reviews, Romance Tagged With: , , , ,

My Only Friend, the End by Steven Owad

February 6, 2025 By Leave a Comment


My Only Friend, the End by Steven Owad
Publisher: Paper Angel Press
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Contemporary
Rating: 4 Stars
Review by Astilbe

Surviving was easy. The hard part—living alone—starts now.

For Owen Bale, life in Great Falls, Montana, is good. He has a loving wife and son, a career as a writer, and plenty of reasons to get up in the morning.

The charmed existence ends one sun-kissed day when everyone in town—maybe everyone everywhere—drops dead. Owen is left alone in a city on fire.

The options now: sit tight and wait for help or seek out survivors. One thing’s certain: if Owen doesn’t move—and move fast—the stresses of the flash extinction will swallow him whole.

He sets out in search of people—and of the cause of the devastation. Cosmic cataclysms. Pandemics. Bio-warfare. Earth has been through five mass extinctions. How do they differ from what’s happened now? Maybe God was behind the carnage. Or little green men. Whatever the answer, why was Owen spared? And if he’s alive, it stands to reason others survived, too. If all people everywhere are in fact gone, will there be any point in going on?

Staying sane and strong in a hostile landscape filled with unexpected dangers would be easier if Owen’s own inner demons weren’t along for the journey. Finding the post-civilization promised land will take every ounce of courage and self-knowledge he can muster.

Survival comes in many forms.

I can’t remember the last time I read a book that was about only one person, and I was curious to see how the author used the smallest cast possible to explore this world. Even the most introverted and shyest among us eventually need companionship, after all, so Owen was dealing with something humans aren’t well-equipped to handle in the long term. Other readers should find out for themselves how this conflict was explored, but it was a breath of fresh air to this longtime fan of the genre.

From the perspective of an invested reader, it would have been helpful to have more details about why everyone died. Obviously, I wasn’t expecting a character who had no scientific or medical background to discover everything there was to know about these mass deaths and why they affected humans in particular, but I was a little disappointed by the answer that was eventually given due to how much time was spent pursuing it. For example, was this something that was likely to happen again or was it a tragic one-time occurrence? Was it a worldwide phenomenon or did it only affect North America? Having a few more answers here would have propelled this into a five-star read for me.

One of my favorite themes involved how Owen looked after his mental health – or, in some scenes, absolutely did not look after his mental health – after everyone died off. He had already experienced a horrible tragedy in his life, so he started off from an even more emotionally difficult place after everyone around him died than someone with a happier past would have had. The raw honesty of these passages was an important part of getting to know this character and understanding what motivated him to keep going as he tried to figure out what happened to all of the dead people around him and what he was going to do next.

I’d recommend My Only Friend, the End to fans of literary and post-apocalyptic fiction alike. These two genres are rarely blended together, so this was a treat!

Filed Under: Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , ,

Haycorn Smith and the Castle Ghost by John Kachuba

June 20, 2023 By Leave a Comment


Haycorn Smith and the Castle Ghost by John Kachuba
Publisher: Paper Angel Press
Genre: Middle Grade (8 – 12 y.o.), Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Paranormal, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

A boy is in danger when he stumbles upon a crime committed by two prominent men of his town, but finds an unusual ally in the form of a castle ghost.

Twelve-year-old Haycorn may know all about ghosts of Ohio, but even he is stunned when he and his friend Budge encounter a ghost in a castle.

The boys witness a clandestine meeting there between two men involving a kick-back scheme, putting their lives, and that of Haycorn’s mother, in jeopardy.

But the ghost may have other plans for all of them.

Haunted places make the best hangout spots.

Twelve is a murky and delightful age. Haycorn and his friends were just old enough to start developing crushes, but they were also still young enough to be thrilled by imaginative play outdoors. I liked the way these characters seamlessly moved between their interests and thought the author captured this age nicely.

It would have been helpful to have more action scenes in this tale. There was plenty of attention paid to character development, but not as much to all of the adventures a kid could have on the site of an abandoned castle in the forest. Sometimes it was hard for me to stay focused on reading because of how many scenes were spent on conversations and descriptions instead of nudging the plot forward. If not for that, I would have happily chosen a higher rating.

This was a nice mixture of different sorts of storylines. It was interesting to see how the paranormal subplot interacted with the mystery one, for example, and that was one of several times that I was pleasantly surprised by how the author wove everything together. Middle grade novels in general tend to be playful about how they mix different genres together, and this one was a good example of how to do just that. Based on what I thought of my first taste of Mr. Kachuba‘s work, I will be keeping an eye out for what he comes up with next.

Haycorn Smith and the Castle Ghost was a fun summer read.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews, YA/Middle Grade/Children's Tagged With: , , , , , ,