Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Robert Liparulo and the Dreamhouse Kings Series!


This week, the

Christian Fiction Blog Alliance

is introducing a double pair

House of Dark Shadows
and
Watcher In The Woods
(Books 1 and 2 in the Dreamhouse Kings Series)

Thomas Nelson (May 6, 2008)

by

Robert Liparulo



ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Robert is an award-winning author of over a thousand published articles and short stories. He is currently a contributing editor for New Man magazine. His work has appeared in Reader's Digest, Travel & Leisure, Modern Bride, Consumers Digest, Chief Executive, and The Arizona Daily Star, among other publications. In addition, he previously worked as a celebrity journalist, interviewing Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Charlton Heston, and others for magazines such as Rocky Road, Preview, and L.A. Weekly.

Robert is an avid scuba diver, swimmer, reader, traveler, and a law enforcement and military enthusiast. He lives in Colorado with his wife and four children.

Robert's first novel painted a scenario so frighteningly real that six Hollywood producers were bidding on movie rights before the novel was completed. His acclaimed debut novel, Comes A Horseman, is being made into a major motion picture by producer Mace Neufeld and his short story "Kill Zone" was featured in the anthology Thriller, edited by James Patterson.

Bob has sold the film rights to his second book, GERM. And he is writing the screenplay for a yet-to-be-written political thriller, which sold to Phoenix Pictures, for Andrew Davis (The Fugitive, The Guardian) to direct!

And his third book Deadfall. debuted to rave reviews!

ABOUT THE BOOKS

House of Dark Shadows
(Dreamhouse Kings Book 1)

Dream house...or bad dream?
When the Kings move from L.A. to a secluded small town, fifteen-year-old Xander is beyond disappointed. He and his friends loved to create amateur films . . . but the tiny town of Pinedale is the last place a movie buff and future filmmaker wants to land.

But he, David, and Toria are captivated by the many rooms in the old Victorian fixer-upper they moved into--as well as the heavy woods surrounding the house.

They soon discover there's something odd about the house. Sounds come from the wrong directions. Prints of giant, bare feet appear in the dust. And when David tries to hide in the linen closet, he winds up in locker 119 at his new school.

Then the really weird stuff kicks in: they find a hidden hallway with portals leading off to far-off places--in long-ago times. Xander is starting to wonder if this kind of travel is a teen's dream come true . . . or his worst nightmare.

MY REVIEW:

Ahhhhhhhhgh!!! You can’t do this to me! You drag me into woods so dark they absorb light only to introduce me to a house that shifts sounds around like so many shadows! Then you introduce a family with secrets and move them into this creepy house, and from the moment they arrive it is evident that NOTHING is right! Then you leave me hanging….in the House of Dark Shadows.

Xander and David King find themselves living in a house where nothing is as it seems! Nothing! In your wildest dreams you can’t imagine where these two wind up! There are portals throughout the house that lead everywhere from the local schoolhouse to events in the past that will raise the hair on the back of your neck!! The time they spend “through the portal” will leave you gasping for breath, because you will be holding it every moment until you get back to the creepy house! At first I could have strangled the kids’ dad because he seemed a little too eager to keep secrets about all of this weirdness from his wife and daughter. However, by the time I finally understood his motive…I still wanted to strangle him! But I didn’t feel so bad about that, because his kids wanted to strangle him too!!

If you want to read a good old-fashioned scary tale that will wrap your imagination in new directions, go buy this book today!! Robert Liparulo is the KING of suspenseful thrillers! Teens will eat this up and beg for more! My two teens LOVED IT!! Hey, so did I!! Talk about a cliff-hanger at the end!! You better be thankful that Robert Liparulo released the first two books in the Dreamhouse King series all at once! Buy them both or you’ll be sorry!!

Now, I’ve got to go read the next volume!! Watcher in the Woods here I come!


Watcher In The Woods
(Dreamhouse Kings Book 2)

It's not just the house that's keeping secrets.
Pretending everything's all right is harder than it sounds. But the Kings know that even if they told the truth about the bizarre things happening in their house, no one would believe them. They're hyper-focused on rescuing their lost family member before anyone finds out what's going on.

But when a stranger shows up to take their house, their options start dwindling fast. Why would he be so interested in a run-down old place? And what secret is he hiding--just as he hides the scars that crisscross his body?

The mystery gets stranger with each passing day. Will the Kings be able to find a way to harness the house's secrets and discover who is watching their every move before another gets snatched into an unknown world?

The Dreamhouse Kings Series has three contests that you will not want to miss...Dream the Scene, a weekly "Thanks For Reading Trivia contest, and the Dreamhouse Kings Street Team contest. There are also free bookplates that you can request, and a chapter of each book that you can download!

You can get all those goodies HERE.

MY REVIEW:

NO WAY!!!! NO WAY!!! NO WAY!!!!! I cannot BELIEVE Robert Liparulo can leave me hanging this way!!! I thought the first book in the Dreamhouse Kings series had a cliff-hanger ending….and now, in book two….NO WAY!!!

Suffice it to say, I am at the very height of frustration at this moment. I have just read the last page of Watcher in the Woods, and I am almost frantic to go get book three. Problem is, it won’t come out in print until next year! What am I going to do??? David and Xander are working in tandem with their Dad to find their mom. It is by far the most difficult thing two sons could be asked to do by their father. Trust becomes tantamount to everything they do or say, and yet each member in the family keeps finding ways to break that trust. They become driven to find the woman who has been so brutally taken from them after moving into this house with a host of time portals and creepy visitors.

In Book 2 of the series, Liparulo introduces two very sinister characters that just make your skin crawl! There is also a character introduced that offers a glimmer of hope, but in this book he is still trying to get to the King family from the east coast. Meanwhile, the members of the Pinedale community are beginning to question the mysterious injuries being collected by David and Xander, and it seems one of the new bad guys thinks he has the right to own the house.

The battle is on both in this world and the many other worlds represented by the King’s mysterious house to reunite the family while trying to maintain a believable front to the “real” world. But the lines between all of these time portals is beginning to blur, and Robert Liparulo leaves you hanging in the most unbelievable way!! Write faster!! Publish faster!! Don’t do this to me again! Please publish the rest of these stories yesterday!!

Please, go buy both of these books here and here today!!

1 comment:

Edgy Inspirational Author said...

LOL! Oh boy, this is a doozy of a review, or reviews I should say. Definitely a finalist. :) SO two in for you. Not bad! Stay tuned to find out whose blog gets in the mag. :) Meanwhile, keep writing those awesome and honest reviews.