“This book floored me. It was well-written and thought out, but so much more too.” Goodreads ReviewA chilling tale of loss, tragedy, psychic warfare, and eternal love.Amber Macklin’s world is cruelly shattered when she loses her baby girl three months after her husband’s sudden death. Her cousin, Bryce, comes to her rescue, moving her into his home for fear she will kill herself from the grief. … will kill herself from the grief. He provides solace and a shoulder to cry on, and he has loved her as more than a cousin for a long time. Amber and Bryce soon discover they are not blood relatives, which opens the door for romance as he pulls her through her darkest hours. When Mike, a college friend of Bryce’s, stops by to visit, Amber senses a deadly secret behind his nice guy persona. She has a frightening dream that Mike is trying to kill her and recurring sleepwalking episodes where she draws detailed pictures of him torturing her. Deeply troubled, Bryce uses his ability to astral travel to investigate Mike and uncover his terrifying past. Mike has had his eye on Amber for some time, and when he learns that Bryce and Amber have become lovers, he is furious. Mike abducts Amber and takes her to his rural Georgia hideaway, and Bryce must rely on his astral abilities to track her down. But will he be too late?
Tough Karma is a stand alone novel. The astral adventures continue in Dark Karma: Sword of Vengeance.
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The story starts with the loss of a child after the loss of a husband. Amber loses both, but in time falls in love with Bryce who has loved her from afar for some time. MIke is jealous, hates Bryce, wants Amber for himself. In time he kidnaps her. Will Bryce find her in time? Read the book and find out. This is not really my genre but the story and the characters were enjoyable. The dialogue was a bit off to me in some places but acceptable given the nature of the story. The tale was woven so the characters meshed well with the thread of the story. All in all a five star rating with some reservations.
So, I think this has got to be the first time traveler romance that I’ve read, and I have to say, I was intrigued! When the idea of fate and Karma came into the story, it added an interesting paranormal twist to an otherwise ordinary world.
This is the second book in the series, and although I didn’t read the first one, I have a gist of what happened before this book. When it opens, we meet Amber who is going through a tough time in her life. She decides to move in with her cousin for support, and it’s soon after this that Amber’s world begins to change. There’s something different about one of Bryce’s friends, something dangerous.
The mix of paranormal and thriller made this a definite page turner. There are things such as astral projection among other paranormal phenomenon. As already mentioned, not a type of book I come across often, but this book really opened me up to the genre.
Tough Karma is an engaging story. We have Amber, an aspiring artist who has suffered several recent tragedies. We have Bryce, Amber’s cousin, who would love nothing better than to help her get beyond those tragedies and spend his life with her. Oops, cousins, right? Except that it turns out, courtesy of a DNA test by her sister, that they’re actually not related; there’s an adoption in the past that explains that. Bryce is thrilled. So is Amber; they’ve been close all their lives, and this just lets them get that much closer.
Then there’s Bryce’s old friend Mike, who turns out to be a lot deeper and darker than Bryce knew. Unfortunately, Amber is his current target.
Add Bryce’s brother Luke, some paranormal abilities like astral travel and psychokinesis and we have a most engaging story that will keep you hooked until the end – and beyond, since there are several loose ends that need to be tied up. Stay tuned for the next installment!
Tough Karma is a fascinating look at several interrelated couples who are working their way through heartaches, frustration, and both newly-discovered and decades-old love. Several of the main characters have powers to see the present, future and past, which comes in very handy when dealing with dangerous situations. The theme of the beginning of the book revolves around self-discovery, while the end of the book is highly tense, with dangerous situations and riveting capture and escape attempts. Be prepared for a good variety of suspense and romance, with the suspense coming at a time when you really care for and are invested in the characters. All in all, an enjoyable read.
Building tension and urgency
Tough Karma: A Race Against Time by Laura Simmons is an interesting book with an unique approach to paranormal elements within. The plot and characters are engaging. Bryce and Amber’s story is as heartbreaking and horrible as it is healing and hopeful. Add in the antagonist and his vile, evil intentions and this book becomes quite gripping with suspense.
Overall, an enjoyable and interesting read with wonderful characters deserving a HEA.
I read an ARC of this book and voluntarily share my review.
This book is so good and highly recommended. It is exciting, emotional, scary, dramatic and so much more. It gets right to the heart of feelings. Pulls you in. She lost her husband and child and is having trouble so her cousin moves her in with him so he can make sure she starts to heal. He has out of body experiences. Awesome thing. He has a friend who is not what he seems and he is after her. I so loved this book. It is very well written. I received a review copy and voluntarily review it.
Title: Tough Karma: A Race Against Time
Series: Karma #1
Release Date: #AlreadyReleased
Author: Laura Simmons
Reviewer: Ingrid Stephanie Jordan
Serial: Standalone, No Cliffhanger
Genre:#PRN #TimeTravel #OBE
#5Stars
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There’s Good, Excellent, Dynamite and there is Absolutely Phenomenal!!
Question for You; Do you believe that before you were born you pick your parents and make a roadmap of your life of course with Free Will it could go either way?
Astral projection or astral travel is an out-of-body experience (OBE) where you temporarily leave your physical body and roam other planes of existence, or other dimensions.
Amber Conner Macklin has lost everything her husband, her baby, her will to live. What she does have is a man that loves her forever till the end of time. Can he save her from Herself? And a Killer?
Bryce Decker is Amber’s cousin, since day one Bryce has had to hide his feelings from her, they were related. All his life he had a OBE but now he was testing the waters because things just didn’t look right to him. Little did he know the results he would find were amazing and scary as hell.
This is one book that should have 10 Times the Five Stars I gave it. The Author takes you on a journey to the past and the present! You feel everything that these character feel, it’s as if you are there.
I enjoyed this astral travel suspense fantasy—excellent world-building and characters.
We follow the sad and tragic journey of Amber after the loss of her husband, then followed by her baby daughter. Amber wanted to give up. Her long-time friend and cousin Bryce made sure to stand by her in this difficult time.
With the revelation via a DNA test, Amber and Bryce discover they are not blood-related, allowing their blossoming relationship to progress and they become a couple. An old friend named Mike is caught up in his own fantasy, wanting and demanding a relationship only with Amber and abducts her.
With psychic assistance, Amber is saved. A new relationship comes to light, and someone disappears.
Read the book to find out who the new relationship is with and who disappears—worth the read.
I received a complimentary copy of this book to give a voluntary honest review. This review contains only my own thoughts and opinions of this book. First and foremost, thank you Laura Simmons for the opportunity and generosity.
While I really appreciate the author for letting me read her book for free and while I see what she was trying for with this story, I sadly could not find anything I liked about Tough Karma. I really did try to enjoy the book but the writing felt too off, being kind of awkwardly stilted and repetitive, and it didn’t flow naturally with the storyline. The whole plot I found strange too (with lack of a better word) and I believe said writing had a lot to do with it.
The first thing I reacted to was how fast paced the story was, jumping right into the plot with the loss of Belle. This in itself would have been no problem for me. However I was given nothing to make me feel for Amber or share her loss. It was just repetitive sentences of how sad she was and how she missed Belle over and over. There was no emotional depth to it other than being told what the characters were doing and their conversations. It kept going like this throughout the book, being rushed and missing a lot of needed depth. It almost felt like someone had read the book beforehand, highlighted the most important stuff and conversations and then removed the rest.
That fast pace did not help the character development either. I never picked up on any sort of personality from any of the characters, more than being told that the one character was this way or had this unique trait or ability. Being told that do not make me actually see or believe it. The rule “show, don’t tell” really needed to be applied to Though Karma. Especially with the dialogues. Just as the writing they were strangely stilted and awkward, as well was repetitive. I lost count on how many sentences started with “let’s see/do/find out this” or “I am so glad”. Overall the conversations were a bit too out there but at the same time stuck on a breaking the ice/stranger’s politeness level and never really got deeper than that other with some few odd (to me anyways) jokes and characters talking to themselves. It made it really out of nowhere when Amber and Bryce suddenly confessed their feelings for each other since there was no indicator that showed that they were forming or developing a romantic relationship. Once again, that was something I was told about but not shown and because of that and the lack of depth and personalities I never really felt an emotional connection between them.
The story offered me very little in terms of emotions or characterization to make me care for the main characters, which made it off-putting when Nina and Luke suddenly got a bigger part in the story. The plot barely made me care for Amber and Bryce, so why would I care for the rest of the characters? If I am to be brutally honest I could not see any difference between any of the characters and all of them made unrealistically obviously plot leading choices that no one smart enough in real life would do. There was just nothing there for me to relate to any of them.
I really hate to give a book one star, especially when the author was kind enough to give me a review copy. However I strive to be honest with my reviews and as much as I tried to I could not find any redeemable qualities or potential in Though Karma.
I thoroughly enjoyed this one! The story revolves around Amber, who suffers from a double whammy of losing not only her husband but her infant daughter in a short period of time. She’s grieving and hurting to the point that her cousin Bryce has her stay at his house to be there for her and make sure she doesn’t try hurting herself. During this time, Amber starts sleepwalking and drawing some disturbing images from her dreams, though she doesn’t recall. One that has her worried is of being tortured by Bryce’s college friend Mike. Amber discovers that Bryce has the ability to astral travel and learns that there’s more to Mike than either one suspects and a connection that takes them by surprise. There’s plenty of thrilling drama, paranormal mystery, and romance that will keep you turning the pages. I highly recommend this one!
What a story! The writer has a wonderful imagination.
I really enjoyed that the past parts of the story were written in italics, no misunderstanding what was happening here and it made it so clear.
Astral flying, wow, can people really do that or is it only in stories? So interested I think I need to research it.
Amber’s story starts off so sad, then gets happy, then gets a whole lot scary, gosh really felt for her what a lot of things to go through. Luckily, she has wonderful Bryce watching her back and taking care of her.
Interesting story, fast moving, easy to read and a page turner.