{"id":188,"date":"2008-12-06T17:04:47","date_gmt":"2008-12-06T22:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=188"},"modified":"2025-07-31T17:26:22","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T22:26:22","slug":"zoe-winterss-kept","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/zoe-winterss-kept\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Zoe Winters’s \u201cKept\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kept<\/a><\/em>
\nby Zoe Winters
\npublished by IncuBooks<\/p>\n

\"CoverZoe is an independent publisher I \u201cmet\u201d by happenstance when I got soundly thrashed on Dear Author for suggesting that a multi-published author whose 3-book SERIES contract had been canceled after book 2 (leaving her fans out in the cold with characters they loved) actually self-publish the third book in the series (you know, since her rights had reverted back to her and she already has a fan base salivating for it). Good gravy, you\u2019d\u2019a thunk I\u2019d said the Rapture was coming tomorrow and they\u2019d all be left behind and have 666 burned into their foreheads bwahahahahaha burn in hell losers.<\/p>\n

Anyhoo, as Bob Ross would say, it was a happy accident.<\/p>\n

Kept<\/em> is a free novella you can find at her site (link above) in PDF form. You can find it at Amazon in Kindle for 80\u00a2 and you can find it on Smashwords in various formats<\/span> for those of us who bitch if we don\u2019t get it the way we want it. Somebody call me a waaaaahmbulance.<\/p>\n

And really, \u201cfree\u201d is my second-favorite four-letter f-word.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the blurb:<\/p>\n

Greta is a werecat whose tribe plans to sacrifice her during the next full moon. Her only hope for survival is Dayne, a sorcerer who once massacred most of the tribe. What\u2019s that thing they say about the enemy of your enemy?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I don\u2019t do much paranormal and I really don\u2019t like shapeshifters, but throw the word \u201csorcerer\u201d or \u201cwizard\u201d or \u201cwarlock\u201d at me and I\u2019ll take a second look. And I\u2019m glad I did.<\/p>\n

Beefs first:<\/p>\n

The story was a little choppy in moments of transition, but I\u2019ve seen that so much lately that it doesn\u2019t bother me as much as it used to and, I\u2019m guessing, readers are being taught to get used to it and, by extension, writers are doing it more.<\/p>\n

Also, the story could\u2019ve been longer with more explanation of the world. I (Random Reader who likes really really really long books) would have liked that. Let me get you some salt for that opinion.<\/p>\n

Good stuff:<\/p>\n

What glimpses of their world I got, I liked. I could tell it wasn\u2019t a half-assed world half-thunk-up on the fly, and that it had depth and detail underneath. (Repeat: wanted more.)<\/p>\n

I really enjoyed the hero\u2019s crankiness and the fact that he was \u201cold\u201d (how old we\u2019re not told, but I inferred around a century). I liked that when the hero and heroine had sex pretty nearly upfront it was because of species-specific hormone issues (i.e., cat in heat) that she usually controls with medicine, but didn\u2019t have her medicine with her.<\/p>\n

I laughed a lot through this book. The banter is witty and cute, seems natural to both of them, and gave the characters the depth that natural humor brings to people.<\/p>\n

The cover\u2019s pretty and the interior design is good. In short, it\u2019s right up there with a lot of the novellas in the anthologies by traditional publishers that are on bookstore shelves and much better than a lot of other stuff I\u2019ve read lately from the e-presses that I paid<\/em> for. I enjoyed myself.<\/p>\n

Coulda been longer. Did I say that?<\/p>\n

So. If you get it from Smashwords, leave a tip, okay?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kept by Zoe Winters published by IncuBooks Zoe is an independent publisher I \u201cmet\u201d by happenstance when I got soundly thrashed on Dear Author for suggesting that a multi-published author whose 3-book SERIES contract had been canceled after book 2 (leaving her fans out in the cold with characters they loved) actually self-publish the third […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[535,521,540,563],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-book-reviews","category-romance","category-werecreatures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17015,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions\/17015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}