Kate's Escape from the Billable Hour

                Kate’s Escape from the Billable Hour is a fun chic-lit book that is perfect to put in your beach bag. Kate is a young lawyer trying to work her way to the top. To the detriment of her health and social life, she works a huge amount of billable hours in hopes of getting a large bonus. When that doesn’t work out, she decides, on a whim, to take a trip to Barcelona in hopes of finding an exchange student she fell in love with as a teenager. The story really takes off from there into a hilarious tale of mishaps and mix-ups that eventually result in a happy, yet predictable, ending. The character of Kate is wonderfully written, lots of fun and easy to laugh at because I can see so much of myself in her. The author does an excellent job of writing believable characters and a story that has the reader cheering on Kate as she tries to find love. The editing and formatting worked perfectly on my ereader and the cover was great, very appealing to my eye. This was definitely lots of fun to read.

Pants on the Ground

                Pants on the Ground is an excellent book that tells the story of Amy and Zack, a couple of young people who meet online only to eventually discover that each have hidden personalities. Amy starts as a naïve and trusting young girl with a bad home life who falls in love with her Prince Charming, Zack. She meets him online and decides to visit him and quickly falls under his spell. Zack is not Mr. Wonderful however. He is a narcissistic sex addict who juggles numerous women at once, Amy included. As events unfold, they end up staying together in a not-so-much love story and then the fun really starts. This book is not for anyone who doesn’t like explicit sex or violence in their books. If these things don’t bother you then this is well worth reading. The author uses excellent characters to explore the different facets of the two main characters’ personalities as they go through various changes that circumstances have brought on via poor life choices. The story is fast-paced and hard to put down. It certainly makes for a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of meeting people online. The editing and formatting for this book were fine on my ereader. I’m not sure I liked the cover or found it eye-catching but the story is excellent and happily I read that a second book that will continue the story is in the works.

The Candidates: Based on a True Country

                The Candidates Based on a True Country is a tongue-in-cheek look at the presidential race ran by two rather crude characters who will stop at nothing to achieve the power of the big office. This is the second book by this author that I have read and find his very unique albeit raunchy and violent humour to be highly amusing. In this book he has taken the skeleton of a presidential race and the people involved and put his own meat and muscle onto it to make it into a wild and hilarious adventure that spoofs the entire thing. Even a character whose name had me laughing resembles, in my mind, a certain famous pop culture figure. I’m surprised he can get away with it but everything he writes, although over the top, is so very true. This is not a book for those people who get easily offended but anyone who knows Mr. Hiley’s writing is aware of this. If you have an open sense of humour then this book is very funny, even if you hate politics. I can’t say I found everything funny (poor Pepper) but I did have a good laugh and found it hilarious how the author subtly takes real-life situations and blows them all out of proportion. I read this book on my ereader and the formatting and editing were fine. The cover is also great for giving the reader an idea of what the book is about and the fact that it will be humorous. This will definitely not be the last book that I read by Matthew S. Hiley.