Book Review 'Dangerous Deception' + Guest post by writer Cindy McDonald + GIVEAWAY!!!

Thanks to Cindy McDonald, Acorn Book Services and PICT I will GIVE AWAY one (1) e-book Deadly.com, the first of The Unbridled Series,  to one reader – OPEN WORLDWIDE. Read further below for ways to enter!

Earning entries:

You can earn one (1) entry by doing any one of the following:

* Comment on this post

* Subscribe to my blog and tell me you did by writing it in the comments

* Like my Facebook page and tell me you did under which name in the comments

* Like  Cindy’s Facebook page and tell me you did by writing it in the comments

* Follow Cindy on Twitter and paste the link in the comments

***EXTRA*** Tweeting about the giveaway, you can earn one (1) entry for each tweet with a maximum of one entry a day for 5 days = total 5 entries. Paste the link of your tweet in the comments.

Now the review of Dangerous Deception:

Synopsis:

Vic Deveaux’s glory days as a winning jockey have ended, but he refuses to accept that pile of horse hockey! When the West family asks Vic to take an easier position at their Thoroughbred farm, Westwood, he becomes enraged and teams up with two greedy stable hands in a scheme to kidnap the youngest son, Shane. Things turn ugly when Vic discovers that his new-found friends have murder on their minds. Suddenly Vic finds himself between a rock and a hard place. He has betrayed his good friend, Eric West, but will he participate in his son’s murder as well? Not content to sit at home and wait for her men to bring her brother home, Kate West convinces homicide detective, Carl Lugowski, to check out a hunch at an old abandoned mansion. Soon they’re trapped in a hornet’s nest of a notorious biker gang. Oh yeah, Vic’s deception has placed the West family in more danger than they know what to do with!

My Review

It is an absolutely, nearly running off-the-rails-so-fast-paced story that is best read in one sitting so you can keep up with all the action, what’s what and who’s who.  A lot is happening around the West family, consisting of father Eric and his sons Mike and Shane, and his daughter Kate. All get in to the action, aided by a few fascinating and unusual characters. The final resolution  of Shanes kidnapping is a little too far-fetched for my taste, but Cindy McDonald is able to bring all story lines nicely together ending it in one big sigh of relief as one would exclaim after riding a roller coaster.

When I started reading Dangerous Deception, I noticed a different writing style than I am used to. Scenes are worked out and described elaborately, leaving less room for my own imagination. It was later that I realized The Unbridled Series was originally meant for the television screen, which explained this.

Even though Dangerous Deception is the third in the series, it is a perfect stand alone. Still, as I like the development of the characters I read about, I am very curious to know what happened to them in the previous two books (and yes, I am a little envious one of you gets to read the first book for free!).

I  am honored to welcome Cindy McDonald to my blog – enjoy her post!

REACHING FOR THE STARS 

When you were growing up did you have parents that encouraged you to “reach for the stars”?  Perhaps your mom told you: “You can be anything that you want to be.” This was not necessarily the case for me. Oh, don’t get me wrong I had great parents—they were just extremely realistic. Their advice consisted of: “Do well in school, get a job, get married, have children, and the rest will work itself out.” And if you break-down that advice, it was really quite solid—but it was never enough for yours truly.

When I was a young girl I dreamed of becoming a famous movie star. Okay, now there’s a dream that definitely falls in the “unrealistic” category, but a girl can dream, right? And I am a firm believer that the Lord provides us exactly what we need. The good Lord provided me with a generous portion of talent in dance and I studied hard at many schools including, The Pittsburgh Dance Theatre School, and with The Pittsburgh Dance Alloy at Carnegie Mellon to name a few. I wasn’t able to go to New York or Hollywood to chase my dreams—my parents wouldn’t hear of it, so I got a job and got married, I also kept dancing, and in 1985 my husband encouraged me to open a dance school. Well, it wasn’t the original dream, but hey as I said the good Lord gives us what we need, and here was an opportunity to have a career in dance—hopefully a successful career.

My dance school was most successful. I began choreographing musicals on a local level and I choreographed an opera for the Pittsburgh Savoyards as well. I made my own schedule: four months off for summer, five days for Thanksgiving, and three weeks at Christmas. Not bad. My school was well-known in the tri-state area and we fared quite well in competitions.

When 2005 rolled around I turned my focus to writing. Don’t ask me why, but I started writing telescripts. The Unbridled Series started out as a television show and the Hollywood readers loved the show. I’d love to tell you that I was a huge success, but it just didn’t happen—we couldn’t sell the show to the producers. That’s right, the original dream for The Unbridled Series was for the television screen, and I’ve had reviewers mention that it would make a great TV show—that’s what I thought, too. Anyway, when Warner Brothers turned the show down, one of the readers suggested that I turn my scripts into a book series, and so I did. I had to adjust the dream.

Am I disappointed? Discouraged? No way! Sometimes the dream that we are blessed with is not exactly the dream that we had in mind, but we have to be flexible enough to make the dream work—reach for a different star. So here I am: a movie star that became a dancer, er… a dance teacher, and a television writer that became an author. The dreams have changed over time and that’s okay—I’m making it work, or maybe I’m working with it, but ya know what? I’m having a great time!

THANK YOU SO MUCH, Cindy McDonald for a lovely insight in your life through your guest post! Now peeps, go and buy her books! That is, if you don’t win a copy on my blog

Please Note: Hot Coco – the second book in The Unbridled Series – is a romantic comedy that is FREE on Amazon from Jan 10th till 14th!!!! 

Websites & Links:

You can find Cindy at these places at the interwebs: website, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Goodreads

Purchase links:

 AMAZON
 GoodReads

Partners In Crime Tours was founded in  2011. They are a Virtual Book Tour site that helps new, rising and popular crime/suspense/thriller/mystery authors promote their books in the virtual world. It is always a joy to work with Cheryl and others of PICT and if you are interested to write reviews in this genre too, please, feel free to contact Cheryl (at Cmash @ Partnersincrimetours.net) or complete the tour host submission form here. I’d be tickled if you’d mention my name.

So again:

You can earn one (1) entry by doing any one of the following:

* Comment

* Subscribe to my blog and tell me you did by writing it in the comments

* Like my Facebook page and tell me you did under which name in the comments

* Like  Cindy’s Facebook page and tell me you did by writing it in the comments

* Follow Cindy on Twitter and paste the link in the comments

***EXTRA*** Tweeting about the giveaway, you can earn one (1) entry for each tweet with a maximum of one entry a day for 5 days = total 5 entries. Paste the link of your tweet in the comments.

So you can have a total of 10 (!) entries, that will be checked. One big request: please be sincere, mkay? You can enter till Monday January 21st midnight EST.

THE WINNER WILL BE CHOSEN BY RANDOM.ORG AND NOTIFIED VIA EMAIL AND WILL HAVE 48 HOURS TO RESPOND OR ANOTHER NAME WILL BE CHOSEN

Announcement on the blog: Monday January 28th. Good luck!

Review disclaimer:

Every (e)Book received for review on the tours for Partners In Crime is given in exchange for an honest review. I keep the copies I have been given or gift them to friends.