Hello! 😀 This is my stop during the blog tour for Pretty Little Creatures by Vince Milam. This blog tour is organized by Lola’s Blog Tours. The blog tour runs from 1 till 14 December, you can view the complete tour schedule on the website of Lola’s Blog Tours: http://www.lolasblogtours.net/blog-tour-pretty-little-creatures-by-vince-milam/
So far this series contains 2 books: The Unknown Element (The Challenged World #1) and Pretty Little Creatures (The Challenged World #2) and today I’m going to review Pretty Little Creatures 🙂
Pretty Little Creatures (The Challenged World #2)
By Vince Milam
Genre: Supernatural Thriller
Age category: Adult
Release Date: September 10, 2015
Blurb:
Ebola, jihadists, blood diamonds, drug cartels, and a dark force driving events. In pursuit, an eclectic team of three very dissimilar individuals.
A reserved small town sheriff on a reluctant quest for justice. A beautiful and eccentric technology genius striving to piece together international clues to terrorism. An epicurean French priest committed to combat. Can they work together to challenge a nightmarish conspiracy without driving each other crazy?
The resurrection of the blood diamond trade in the fetid jungles of Ebola-infected West Africa draws the trio together. They are joined by a stunning CIA professional killer with a clear and final solution to any problem. Together they struggle against the leaders of the illicit diamond trade and the foul entity providing the child slave labor.
Have they won? The doggedness of the technology genius and the assuredness of the French priest uncover deeper plans—a game of misdirection and intrigue masterminded by a powerful source nested in the evil enclaves of ISIS.
The stakes rapidly rise as the trail leads them into the wild heartland of a Mexican drug cartel—a launching point to unleash a hellish scenario into the U.S. The final conflict looms as forces for good and evil muster for battle. Can three regular people prevent this terrorist attack? They need to, because failure will forevermore alter the life of every American.
You can find Pretty Little Creatures on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26887875-pretty-little-creatures
You can buy Pretty Little Creatures here:
– Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Pretty-Little-Creatures-Action-Packed-Challenged-ebook/dp/B0158ZWQ8K/
– Amazon Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/Pretty-Little-Creatures-Action-Packed-Challenged/dp/1517338662/
Pretty Little Creatures continuous Nadine, Cole and Francois story. However, this time they have to fight against Ebola, drug, bad guys and as usually the real evil but now the evil is more powerful and so are they.
I still think the same about the characters but I think Nadine relaxed a little bit with Cole so maaaaybe their relationship could work 😕. Also, I felt like Francois was in his things and problems on one side and Nadine and Cole were in a lot different thing… I felt distance between them. 😦
I found a new favorite character in this book, Celine! 😀 This doctor was very sweet and smart, I liked her a lot through the book. There are a lot new good characters who help our trio and also the bad guys like, El Cuello. I liked El Cuello a lot, I know is the bad one but he’s a gangster and book gangsters are my weakness. 😛
What I truly love about this books are that after three or four chapters narrated by the main characters’ point of view, there comes one or two chapters narrated by the antagonist’s point of view, and that made the books a lot more interesting for me. Another great thing was the way Vince described all the action scenes, I felt all the adrenaline that the characters were feeling. ❤
The thing I didn’t like was that the characters could speak English and Spanish so sometimes they used the same word but in different languages and it felt too repetitive for me, in the last five chapters I even tried to avoid this words but it was difficult. 
However, if you don’t know Spanish I’m sure you won’t have a problem with that. 😉
Pretty Little Creatures made my days while reading it 82% better 🙌
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EXCERPT
She kissed him and then moved toward her bedroom humming an old Beatles song. He sucked in a deep breath of Gulf Coast air and the poignancy struck him hard. Adios, Rockport. The sounds of young people playing drifted on the breeze and the slide of a mini-van door heralded more kids. Grills would soon fire up and folks would cast a fishing line into the Laguna Madre in hopes of catching a flounder or redfish. Children would scurry around, chased by playful dogs—both stopping at random intervals to pull a sticker burr out of their feet, one with teeth and the other with careful fingers.
In his bedroom he pulled a duffel bag down from a high shelf and started packing. He tossed the Glock .40, his sidearm as sheriff, in with clothing and boots and his Benelli twelve-gauge shotgun.
Nadine stuck her head in his room. “You know, in silhouette, the Comanche blood you claim is, I guess, pretty obvious. That private plane ride is sweet, isn’t it? Don’t worry. Really, Cole. JoBeth will help.”
He took another deep breath, not wanting to wet-blanket her obvious excitement. He leaned over to fiddle with some duffel items. But the other-worldly reality—the reality they both had tucked away to consider as seldom as possible—sprawled across this whole thing.
“She won’t be able to help with one of those, Nadine. One of those creatures. And your friends at the CIA, NSA, FBI, and any other alphabet soup acronym you work with won’t help either.” His obsidian eyes captured hers. “You do know that, don’t you?”
She broke eye contact, pursed her lips, and stared at the floor. “Well, okay. There is that.” A moment later she lifted her head and again locked eyes with him. “But we have Francois. We have our faith. That’s a reality, and a strong one.”
“We ain’t priests. Or preachers, or pastors.”
A dog barked and a man called to a friend across the street as the comforting sounds of neighborhood life drifted through the open window. One of the drawn shades lifted on the breeze. Cole Garza shook his head slowly.
“No, Nadine. No. The reality is—and you know it as well as I do—we’re fixin’ to head back into hell.”
Nadine and JoBeth faced each other across a small table in comfortable lounging chairs across the narrow aisle from Cole. He checked his own seat by reclining and causing the footrest to rise. Like a doggone La-Z-Boy. Helluva way to travel, he thought.
“I’m just fine, ma’am.”
“Now none of that. Call me JoBeth. I absolutely insist.”
He continued adjusting the seat and noticed the array of computer ports aligned along the aircraft’s bulkhead. “Alright, JoBeth. And you please call me Cole.”
JoBeth crossed her legs and draped well-manicured fingers over the ends of her armrest. “Fine. Now, first things first. Is either of you hungry? Canapés? Drinks?”
“I’m fine,” Nadine said.
“Two fingers of bourbon if that’s possible,” Cole said, still taking in the posh cabin.
“Marvelous,” JoBeth said. “I’ll have some tea.” She turned to address Mr. Sunglasses.
“Wilson, would you mind?”
Wilson moved to the forward galley. JoBeth rested an index finger to her cheek and smiled at Cole. Nadine shot him a one-eyebrow-raised look, clearly related to the bourbon order. Chill, Nadine. It’s just my style. He paid taxes. It was government booze.
JoBeth started on background, explaining Sierra Leone’s past and present. She hit the high points and kept circling back to the potential threats to the U.S., justifying the “agency’s” involvement in the mission. “They are demonstrating some level of stability, even given the Ebola crisis. Our desire is that they maintain that stability.”
So to demonstrate that sincere desire, we send our best hitman—or hitwoman, Cole thought. He nodded back to JoBeth.
“We’ve heard of the beginnings of an illicit diamond trade,” JoBeth continued. “Similar to the one that fomented their terrible civil war throughout the nineties.”
You heard by listening in on the private phone calls of people like me. Cole continued to nod at each of her points.
“We feel it our responsibility to negate such activities.”
It’s your responsibility to whack their sorry asses. He nodded a final time and said, “So, JoBeth, to level-set this whole trip, thanks for the ride, but we’re going to help our friend. Period.”
“You mean your friend Father Domaine?”
“Yeah. That guy whose phone call you listened in on.”
JoBeth merely looked at him with her usual poised smile.
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About the Author:
VINCE MILAM has lived all over the world, traipsing through the Amazon, Congo, and Papua New Guinea—all the while demonstrating bourbon has medicinal qualities. Raised in Texas, he lives in the mountainous West where he proves—annually—that God doesn’t want us driving on snow. He relishes great reads, fine trout streams, family, old friends, and—especially—writing fast-paced thrillers with a dose of humor and a spiritual twist.
The first two books in the Challenged World series rank high on the Amazon lists in both Thrillers/Terrorism and Christian/Mystery. You can visit him at http://www.vincemilam.com to learn about new releases and writer’s angst.
You can find and contact Vince here:
– Website – Facebook – Twitter – Goodreads – Amazon.
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Making Days Better 