Insightful Review of BROKEN on Tynga’s Reviews
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Insightful Review of BROKEN on Tynga’s Reviews

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Stéphanie Leroux of Tynga’s Reviews wrote a thoughtful, fantastic review of Broken. Clearly she grappled with the story–she took it on and chewed it over and entered into a dialogue with it. I love those kinds of reviews. I love those kinds of readers. I took many risks with this novel and it thrills me when readers are willing to meet those risks head-on.

In part, she wrote:

Although the story was definitely not what I expect, it was truly original. It shocked me multiple times, brought me to tears, and provided good entertainment…

Traci L. Slatton took a huge risk by adding eroticism to some of the love scenes but personally I think it’s a great way to balance out the horrors of war. These opposites are strange because it’s unexpected but the love story does provide a way to escape into the story without being overwhelmed by the hostility of the occupation….

I enjoyed it, it’s not your everyday paranormal read. I have nothing to compare it to, and it’s hard to define it, but I guess that’s what makes it so stunning. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read.

Find the review here, on the lively Team Tynga’s Reviews blog.

Insightful Review of BROKEN

Insightful Review of BROKEN

Great Review of Broken at Game Vortex
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Great Review of Broken at Game Vortex

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Psibabe, aka Ashley Perkins, at Game Vortex posted a thoughtful and beautiful review of my forthcoming novel BROKEN.

She wrote, in part:

Broken by Traci L. Slatton is both a story of supreme selfishness and selflessness. It centers around Alia, a beautiful fallen angel who has chosen to live life as a human in Paris right before the Nazi occupation during WWII. She willingly chose to fall when Ariel, another angel dear to her, fell from Heaven and she now spends her days enjoying the once forbidden fruits of sexual activity with humans, despite Michael the Archangel, who sometimes comes to persuade her to return to Heaven. Sex with humans is forbidden because angels are completely irresistible, and to do so takes away a part of the human’s free will, along with a portion of their “light,” leaving them with a need and desire that they can never again fulfill. It’s cruel, but Alia doesn’t care about any of that. She is merely trying to forget her angelic days and the pain she suffered when Ariel fell.

What, or rather who, she does care about is the young girl who lives next door, Cecile, who often comes to visit Alia. Cecile’s mother, Suzanne, is a Jew although they are both French citizens, and Alia, who is often beset by visions of the future, fears for Suzanne and Cecile as the Nazis approach and Jews are more and more persecuted.

Broken has some incredibly graphic sex scenes and these may take some readers aback, but they are meant to shock, as well as explain Alia’s selfishness, desperation and hopelessness after becoming a human. It took me a few chapters before the book really had its hooks into me, but Broken is incredible and, much like Immortal, had me in tears as I finished it.

I knew from our email exchange before she posted the review that she enjoyed the book even as it troubled her. I’m grateful that Psibabe expressed herself so eloquently, and that she took the time to think about what she had read. Readers like Psibabe keep me writing. They encourage me to take risks.

This is what it’s all about.

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Beautiful Review of BROKEN on Tometender.blogspot.com
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Beautiful Review of BROKEN on Tometender.blogspot.com

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So it’s my first public review of BROKEN, and it’s beautiful! It’s on one of my most favorite book review blogs, TomeTender.

Here is part of the review:

Don’t expect a normal run-of-the-mill fallen angel tale that zooms on past, settle in for a deep thinking read to savor and get lost in. Traci L. Slatton has added her own artistic touch as she paints a deeply moving and unique tale filled with dark drama as we are invited to feel Alia’s feelings, hear her thoughts and see the world through her eyes as the scenery changes with each detailed page. Ms. Slatton has taken on a dark time in history and brought it to life through her characters and her words, lavish with intense prose and emotion. 

Now this is why I write novels!

Read the whole review here, on the extraordinary TomeTender Blog.

BROKEN on Tometender
BROKEN: Available in September
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BROKEN: Available in September

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This novel is dark, gritty, and smutty. It’s also about the power of love and the fact that spirit informs everything.

An early reviewer, one of my favorite readers, got back to me yesterday, writing, “Beautiful and heart-wrenching. I cried like I did at the end of Immortal. I will write my review this week. Thanks for sharing Alia’s story with me early.” I’ll post the review when it goes live.

BROKEN

Thanks again to brilliant Italian painter ROBERTO FERRI for giving me permission to use his gorgeous painting LIBERACE DAL MALE for the cover. Thanks to talented designer Gwyn Snider for turning the image into a breath-taking cover.

Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty by Diane Keaton, A Review
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Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty by Diane Keaton, A Review

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Book by Diane Keaton, A Review

Today I slathered on several layers of Elta MD sunblock and even still, when I traipsed off to the beach, I wore a big brimmed hat. By the time I arrived at the long golden stretch of Cape Cod sand, I had wrapped my daughter’s long cotton bathing suit cover-up around my head and the hat, to prevent any errant rays of sun from reaching my face.

Not that the sun light wasn’t delicious, because it was: honeyed over and lavendered under, in that intoxicating Cape Cod way that delights painters. Pores all over my body opened to suck it in. But the sun light does things to skin, you see, crepey, wrinkly things that are to be avoided when you’re not a spring chicken anymore. And I am a 50 year old woman.

So it was with amusement and self-reflection and an understanding that has started to seep in with my alarming half-centennial mark that I read Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty by Diane Keaton. This book delves into matters of aging and having to redefine oneself as the temporal body decays around the immortal soul. That last bit, about the soul, that’s pure Traci Slatton, by the way, not Keaton.

It was surprising to me to read how critical Ms. Keaton is of her own looks. I’ve always found her beautiful. Extraordinary, really. It made me feel sort of tender toward her. I think of how critical I’ve always been of myself–looking in the mirror at my flaws instead of my grace notes–and I wasn’t a famous actress who was on display all the time.

Ms. Keaton’s reflections on, oh, eyes and hair and the polymorphous perversity embedded within the larger idea of beauty were interesting. The narrative was interwoven with memories and analysis of her family, her parents and her children, as if to know herself is always done in relationship with her loved ones. I expected more about her work, especially from a woman who never married.

There is some of that self-involvement which so many actresses, especially famous ones, seem to inhabit. It’s their all-encompassing ground of being just as fishes live in the sea. I could forgive it in this book because there’s such good reverie, and because Diane Keaton is a kind of pioneer. She holds a lamp and stands ahead of me on the scary but devoutly-to-be-desired road of getting older and older.

So yes, the book is good, not perfect, and worth reading.