Bodice Ripper Reviews

Life Happens

2011-11-14T15:26:00.002-06:00

Hi All, this is my new kitty.

I'm busy practicing my evil influence on unsuspecting 7th graders (aka student teaching). I'm hoping to blog a bit over break but until then life has been rather hectic.

Keep checking, I'm still around. And still reading! :)

"Something About You" Julie James

2011-06-27T15:16:00.002-05:00

Julie James can write a mean romance novel. Even given a sort of ridiculous "big misunderstanding" this book about an Assistant US Attorney heroine and a FBI hero is an enjoyable ride. He gets to be all protective and manly and she gets to be smart and brave. If you don't normally read contemporaries, you should make an exception for Julie James. It's light and funny and just right for summer.

Contemporary Romance 2010: 4.5 of 5 motions to adopt.

Back in the Saddle

2011-06-25T13:51:00.005-05:00

I know you have been pining away for my witticisms. Pine no longer fair reader. We are talking about Guilty Pleasures today in honor of my return to bloglandia, by Laura Lee Guhrke. Our heroine is a talented artifact restorer and our Duke (really, do they all have to be dukes?) is the owner of an archeological site (English manors are wonderful things to have, I've been told).

I really enjoyed the first book I read by Ms Guhrke but have been disappointed occasionally along the way so my expectations were relatively go going in. I enjoyed how the heroine responded to the disappointment of her crush being, well crushed. I was wondering how I was going to feel about our hero after that scene but the author brings him around nicely too in a realistic way. The pacing is good, the characters are enjoyable, the sex is terrific, and the emotional culmination was lovely.

The book didn't leap out of the usual traditions of the genre to be a five, but it was a really well done 4. Very enjoyable.

Historical Romance 2004: 4 of 5 priceless Samarian vases.

Madeline Hunter "Sinful in Satin"

2011-04-02T09:27:00.003-05:00

I have a soft spot for Ms. Hunter's books from when I first read a book by her set in Medieval England where the historical period was actually an important part of the book. (Crazy I tell you!) She immediately went on my "love everything you write" list. But realistically some of her books have been better than others. I haven't been completely enamored of this series about "The Rarest Blooms."

Celia is the daughter of a famous London courtesan, educated for a life of more of the same until she ran away and found sanctuary at Daphne's house. Then her mother dies and she inherits her modest townhouse and her tenant, Jonathan. Jonathan is an Earl's by-blow and remains unsettled by the lack of acknowledgment by his father's family.

Besides her feel for the historical period, what keeps drawing me through Ms. Hunter's books are her smart interesting characters who feel very real, and seem like people you would like to have as a friend. On the other hand, in this book there are several plot points that really didn't make sense with the characterization of our super intelligent hero.

Enjoyable book, well written, lovely characters, good sex. But the conflict between who these people are drawn to be and some "move the plot along" decisions begs a lower rating.

Historical Romance 2010: 3.5 of 5 plots of intrigue.

Lynsay Sands "The Countess"

2011-03-28T18:03:00.003-05:00

I do recognize that it could be possible to read this book and think it was hysterical, and given the right comedic cast with impecabble timing it might be funny in a movie, but I just didn't like it.

Our heroine is married to a slime ball who woed her sweetly for her dowry then turned into the controlling jerk he really was. What she doesn't know is that he had his twin brother killed to assume his title and estates just before marrying her. (He's been busy) When her jerky husband dies, she puts him on ice and goes to a ball with her sisters. At said ball the not quite killed twin brother shows up, she nearly faints thinking her husband has come back from the dead and they proceed to play move the dead body all over the townhouse for the rest of the night.

If these characters had been more compelling the comedy would have been less strained but as it was I had a hard time finishing this one. I actually managed to finish Witch of Blackbird Pond in the middle and this book made that look interesting, which is saying something. Oh, don't get me wrong, I liked WofBP but it's a sort of mildly wooden YA historical fiction about Puritans and I have to guess non-history teachers might not get excited about it, but I digress.

I got to visit the CCBC yesterday. Please, please, please can't I just work there? Oh sorry, back to the romance novel.

Historical Romance 2011: 2.5 of 5 carpet wrapped drippy dead evil twins.

Happy Valentine's Day

2011-02-14T22:55:00.003-06:00

Hate Valentine's Day.

But my kids gave me all their blow pops in exchange for me allowing them to eat 5 pieces of candy each at one sitting. I'm starting to like this kind of Valentine's tradition....image stolen from awesome cartoon site xkcd

Elizabeth Hoyt "Notorious Pleasures"

2011-02-03T14:03:00.005-06:00

Meh.

Historical Romance 2011: 3 of 5 English Follies.

Sarah MacLean "Ten Ways to Be Adored When Landing A Lord"

2011-01-15T16:54:00.003-06:00

My spouse tells me title capitalization is so 1990. So I guess this should be Ten ways to be adored when landing a lord, but then I'm not submitting this to any scholarly journals for publication.

I have a bit of a reputation, among my friends. No, not that sort of reputation. A reputation for reading these books, so when we got together for my birthday, a little late, I got quite a few random romance novels. This was part of the pile and while the Harlequin were epic failures, TWTBAWLAL (I had to!) was a surprise gem.

Isabel is the daughter of the wastrel Earl and over the years she's had to take care of the manor as if she were a medieval lady of the manor trying to make it self sufficient. In addition, she seems to have taken in women with problems and hidden them from others who might be looking for them. She's finally at the end of her rope, has to sell a collection of statuary so she asks Lord Nicholas St. John to visit to appraise them. Things develop from there.

Really with this title and the completely pedestrian premise I expected very little from this book so was very pleasantly surprised. Isabel is a smart determined almost realistic character and Nicholas's arch from masterful proper lord to bewitched down to earth besotted cutie, well, it made me smile. And I can't ask for much more than that.

Historical Romance 2010: 4.5 of 5 slippery roof tiles.

M.K. Hobson "The Native Star"

2011-01-03T23:04:00.005-06:00

If I'm anything, I'm a trendsetter. I just found this amazing book that you all should read. Okay, I went over to the Book Smugglers again and searched their top rated reads. But in case you haven't done the same, I'm gonna tell you what I thought anyway.

The Native Star is probably best described as a steam punk (historical/magical) fantasy novel with just a hint of romance. Emily lives in the Sierras of California in 1876 in an alternate US where warlocks are ascending the power structures and scientists are having a hard time proving themselves useful with magic around to upstage them. Emily gets herself into a bit of a fix when a magic rock embeds itself into her palm. Luckily there is a persnickety warlock around to help her gallivant all over the country trying to find someone who might not kill her to get the rock for themselves.

It bills itself as a romance but really it's a fantasy quest novel, and a good one. I was expecting more romance so was slightly disappointed but given the right expectations, fans of fantasy and especially those looking for steam punk themes will be very pleased with this one.

Fantasy Steam Punk 2010: 4.5 of 5 flying cockatrices.

Julie Anne Long "I Kissed An Earl"

2010-12-27T22:39:00.004-06:00

Hmm. I was just reading a review for The Native Star where the reviewer said quite elegantly: "It is one of the paradoxes of reviewing books that it is actually harder to do well and fairly when there is nothing conspicuously wrong with a novel you’ve just read." Now you probably know that I'm a Julie Anne Long fan-girl, but I haven't loved every one of her books. This is Violet Redmond's book. She is Miles' little sister. She actually stows away on a ship with a hunky captain who is hunting her brother, Lyon.

And so we combine both my ridiculous love for heroines stowing away on ships and hunky captains and crews who fall in love with her because she's so darn nice and plucky with an author whose hyperbole continues to enthrall me. She writes: "He was unnervingly gentlemanly about turning his back and allowing her to slip into her night rail. He was then unnervingly matter-of-fact about stripping down to nothing as per usual and climbing into bed as though that first eyeful of his nude rugged beauty didn't club the breath from her entirely and prevent her from moving for a few solid seconds."

I was very concerned that Ms. Long would not be able to reconcile Violet's love for her brother and her love for our hero. I should not have worried.

Historical Romance 2010: 5 of 5 slave trading bastards.

Zoe Archer "Rebel"

2010-12-23T11:20:00.004-06:00

I really needed to get that ham off the top of my page. And I finished my semester finally on Tuesday! What a relief. I'll let you know when I get my self dug out from underneath the laundry I haven't done in a month.

Since it's that holiday buying time of year I was in Borders with a coupon and well, I did get one or two presents but I couldn't resist celebrating finishing my finals with a new thick book. I couldn't find the first one in the series so I picked up Rebel by Zoe Archer, book three in the Blades of the Rose series. It falls into the romance/fantasy/vaguely steampunky type genres. Although for fantasy fans, it's pretty heavy on romance. There is a quest, and there is action but the action is at a bit of a distance for the most part and the "how do we outsmart them" parts aren't particularly smart. The book really has to stand on the romance aspect.

So, I liked the characters, I liked their relationship and how they arch through their issues. The sex is a bit on the raunchy side, which is fine with me, but in the end, the quest requires this book to go about 80 pages longer than it should have. For the most part the action is good, not great, but good enough to support the character focus. The characters are fun and the tension is good. Just a bit too long.

I will definitely pick up another book in this series, I liked the world she created and the writing was good.

Romance/Fantasy/Paranormal 2010: 4 out of 5 experienced mountain women.

Happy Hanukkah

2010-12-08T08:26:00.002-06:00

I just could not resist. Way to go large retailer who shall remain nameless except that they were owned by a guy named Sam and they love to greet people. :)

Awesome.
Happy Hanukkah Friends.

Tracy Anne Warren "Wicked Delights of a Bridal Bed"

2010-12-05T10:54:00.003-06:00

Lady Mallory's fiance is killed in battle in Spain. Adam, the Earl of Gresham has loved her forever but as a penniless lord didn't feel he could court her. And when he finally made some money, she got engaged, curses. But now, he's got money, she's lost her fiance and life is good. Well, aside from the fact that Mallory is in deep morning for this nice guy she truly loved.

Actually this book started well, the description of Mallory's grief that is leading her into actual depression, and Adam's gentle attempts to bring her out of it, worked for me. But then Adam's character began to parallel classic abuser patterns in ways that made me more and more uncomfortable. He's not an alpha that struggles to temper his dominance tendencies because he loves her so much, he's a charming manipulator who reveals his dominant needs more and more as he gets more and more control over her life.

The clincher for me was, she likes it. Mostly. Yuck.

I try not to let my feminist sensibilities get in the way of my enjoyment of fantasy literature but this one saw the line and just jumped head first over it. It's not badly written and the sex is fine, but I just can't like a book where I hate the hero and have no respect for the heroine.

Historical Romance 2010: 1 out of 5 dictates from a distant duke. (Okay Earl)

Olivia Gates "To Tame A Sheikh"

2010-11-23T09:35:00.003-06:00

I will admit I am not a habitual Harlequin Desire reader and I have a bias against the shorter romance novel formats. But really, this book was terrible. It wasn't badly written if one isn't too picky about repetitive descriptions. But the reliance on all the hackneyed romance conventions, the magical sex that conveys all the protagonists never need to say to each other, the powerful sheikh and the "I've just been waiting for you to make my life meaningful" female character. These two don't have any relationship issues or personal issues to create a character arch. The heroine just needed to get the hero into bed to make him realize what he was missing.

I liked the cultural window dressing (literally mostly about clothes) but the only interesting character in the book was the brother who hates everyone because his first wife screwed him over. He was stereotypical but at least something was going on there other than unbelievable happiness, wealth and beauty. Geese.

Back to school.

Contempory Romance 2010: 1 of 5 fake jewels of state.

Spoiler Warning: Gonna Talk Politics

2010-11-02T23:17:00.003-05:00

I generally try to avoid taboo subjects like religion and politics and just stick to threesomes and throbbing members but this just makes me so sad. Here is the Wiscpolitics blog announcement:

U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Middleton, has called Republican Ron Johnson of Oshkosh to concede the race.

"The people of Wisconsin have spoken and I respect their decision," Feingold told a boisterous crowd. "I wished him well as our senator, and I also offered my help and the help of my staff in any transition." Feingold told the supporters gathered at his Middleton party, "Being your senator has been the greatest honor of my life. I've enjoyed working with you and feel we did many good things together and I thank Wisconsin for this great privilege I have received." Feingold said.
"So to all of you in the words of, who else, Bob Dylan, 'But my heart is not weary, it's light and free, I've got nothing but affection for those who have sailed with me.'"
"I hope and I intend to continue to work with all of you in the future as much as possible, so it's on to the next life, it's on to the next battle, it's on to 2012, and it is on to our next adventure. Forward!"

-- By Greg Bump

Love you, Russ.

More Pictures

2010-10-07T09:34:00.002-05:00

Why did no one tell me about Witchblade? Okay, it's a little hooky but really, kick-ass heroine and tormented dark and sexy "hero" What more does one need?

2010-09-01T15:27:00.010-05:00

When did the ideal woman go from this pin up image by Gil Elvgren to these "Best Dressed" in Vogue??

Suzanne Collins "Mockingjay"

2010-08-28T13:44:00.006-05:00

I'm going to try hard not to give away anything about Mockingjay but I'm assuming you've read the first two books so be forewarned (spoiler alert).

In case you haven't read The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, what are you waiting for?! It's a dystopian story about a young girl whose sent to represent her district in the annual Hunger Games where 24 teenagers battle to the death in the arena.

When I read The Hunger Games I was struck by the skill with which the book handled so many different ambiguities. Does she "love" Peeta or Gale, what does "love" mean as it applies to each of them? Where are the moral lines between survival and retaining your humanity? While we condemn the Capitol viewers for their interest in the Hunger Games, isn't the pace and violence and uncertainty one of the things that keeps the reader reading this book? Not only is the book brilliant but it's riveting and you can't help but fall in love with the characters making it readable on many different levels.

Catching Fire was terrific but I think most noteworthy for being, really, a very decent middle book. That's not easy to do either.

Mockingjay completely lives up to this entire series. The brilliance of the first book lies in what it didn't resolve. I worried that in a third book, where you certainly expect things to be resolved, there was no way to not be disappointed. Ms. Collins, I'm impressed. The book effectively and logically ties up a lot of issues, but dives even deeper into war and how one retains one's humanity under impossible circumstances. Wow.

And no. Not gonna tell you which boy. But I will say, both live and so in the end, she does have to choose. :)

Young Adult dystopian novel 2010: 18 of 5 decapitating lizard mutts.

Sadie Callahan "Lone Star Woman"

2010-07-19T14:26:00.004-05:00

When I admitted to my kids that I choose this book cause I liked the cover they explained that you really shouldn't judge a book by it's cover because some really good books might have lame covers. Gotta love it.

Lone Star Woman is a book about Jude, the only child of a West Texas ranching dynasty who has spent her entire life making herself ready to inherit the ranch. The only time she rebelled against her father and grandfather was when they choose a fiance for her, and even then she dated him for six months before finally breaking it off. What she somehow fails to know is that there is no way in hell that her Dad and grandfather are going to leave the running of the ranch to her because she's a woman.

Brady just had a bad divorce (shallow cheating wife whose father makes his life hell in the courts) leaving him broke and worried about his nine year old son. He inherits a spread that's all run down that borders the much larger Circle C that Jude lives on. He hires on as a ranch hand to the Circle C and eventually gets offered the general manager job that Jude has been waiting for her whole life.

The writing is a bit clunky. The characters motivations are not always understandable. And the book sort of ends abruptly with a unnecessary near death and rescue. But, if you like the Texan fantasy life and the cowboy fantasy character, it's kind of fun. Not the best book, but definitely not the worst either.

Contemporary Texan Romance 2009: 3 of 5 Stallion Teasers.

PS. Since so many romance covers feature strategically placed swords and such I have to give a shout out for the awesomeness of the "Turquoise circle marks the spot" on this one.

Marjorie Liu "The Fire King"

2010-07-17T13:57:00.003-05:00

I was digging around on Alpha Hero's and came across a recommendation for The Fire King and since I had tried a book by Ms. Liu in the past and not been excited about it, I was intrigued.

Okay for you not so into fantasy readers out there, I will admit, the book is about a three thousand year old chimera (offspring of two shape shifters of different breeds) who is awakened when his tomb is discovered. Since his kind have long died off the only person in the world who can communicate with him is a telepathic who when in the presence of a native speaker, can understand and speak any language. Okay, okay, either you can read this genre or you can't. If you can, this is a well crafted story.

Our hero is very Alpha, but humbled by something bad in his past, our heroine is a terrific blend of scared but does what needs to be done in the moment who has also been scarred by life but still retains some trust in the goodness in people (beings, whatever. :)

The story is tight with good pacing of the downtime and the action. The secondary characters are a little distracting as this is clearly a book in a continuing series and furthering the series seems to drive some of the descriptions and plot. But overall, very good fantasy romance with both a terrific hero and a great heroine.

Fantasy Paranormal Romance 2009: 4 of 5 tri-breeds.

Jessica Andersen "Night Keepers"

2010-07-11T17:22:00.005-05:00

Flylady would tell me I'm not behind, just jump in where you are...so here goes.

Night Keepers is the first in a series of books about supernatural warriors pledged to defend the world against the coming 2012 apocalypse. Striking-Jaguar, Strike to you and me, is the next King of the Night Keepers but he's only one of ten warriors left because his father made a serious mistake and most of the Night Keepers were wiped out. He is understandably reluctant to take up the royal mantel given the 13th prophecy that only with the King's sacrifice will the Night Keepers succeed. Anna is our tough-as-nails-but-only-on-the-side-of-good cop whose brother is killed by some crazy cult who keeps talking about the end of the world in 2012 (not the Night Keepers in case you haven't read this sort of book before.)

Really, in a lot of ways this book is surprisingly good. The Mayan backdrop is fascinating, the pacing is mostly not frenetic, the hero and heroine are both decent characters, the sex is well done....BUT the internal logic to this world building is quite extensive and as such I really cared whether the resolution made sense. I can say it didn't outright contradict itself but when you build up the entire book to turn on a whether the hero needs to kill the heroine to save the world, you better have a convincing alternative option. I read the resolution passage three times. Very unsatisfactory.

That said, I'll probably read the second one. I might not finish it, if the pattern is the same, but I'll try it. So while this failure was a deal breaker for this book, there is enough promise in the book that I'll give her a second chance.

Paranormal Romance 2008: 2 of 5 blood sacrifices.

Nalini Singh "Archangel's Kiss"

2010-06-16T13:07:00.003-05:00

I'm reviewing both Angel's Blood and Archangel's Kiss in this review, so inherent in my review is the recommendation to read Angel's Blood first. They are both terrific books, although I think they succeed more on the romance level than they excel at the paranormal/fantasy level.

Elena Deveraux is a hunter. Vampires are made by angels and governed by them, but when a vampire goes rogue the angels contract a hunter to either capture them or kill them. Elena gets recruited for a mysterious job and her contract is with the Archangel of New York, Raphael. Archangels are so powerful they are inherently feared and Elena knows she'll have all she can do to finish the job and stay alive.

The author does an excellent job of riding the fear/power issue with these two and the climax of the book is surprisingly enjoyable. I was fearful that with the relationship "resolved" the second book would fall into all plot, but again the author masterfully explores the characters struggle to find a balance in their relationship without resorting to simplistic "I won't be controlled" "I must protect you" struggles. On the scale of most awesome integration of sex into the story, these weren't amazing, but they were perfectly adequate in my opinion. The plot of the first book moved along better for me than the second but overall both books were really enjoyable. There are several disturbing evil/torture themes so be warned.

Well written, enjoyable characters, fun world building, really solid books all around.

Paranormal Romance 2010: 4 out of 5 deep deep Quiets.

Alice Munro "Runaway"

2010-06-13T09:16:00.004-05:00

It worked. I successfully guilted myself into finally finishing Runaway by leaving it in my "next review" spot for over six months! So obviously a review of the book has to start with the fact that it took me almost a year to finish it. But given my preference for romance and fantasy books aka happy endings, you could probably put most of the blame on me and not on the quality of the book.

Runaway is a collection of short stories. The one that stays with me most completely is the title story about a neighbor who helps a young girl run away. Then there is one near the end that includes some of the more bizarre/tragic plot twists that you typically find in today's novels by Anita Shreve etc. But the brilliance of Munro is that even when she uses a plot framework that would move the story along by itself, she still brilliantly crafts the characters.

Munro hardly ever writes happy stories. She excels at exploring the darker side of humanity. For me, there were a couple stories in the middle of this book that didn't speak to me which exacerbated my difficulty in finishing the book. But she's the kind of writer that makes it easy to blame yourself for not fully engaging with a story.

Short Story Collection 2005: Don't Believe Me?

Kimberly Killion "Highland Dragon"

2010-05-26T09:31:00.004-05:00

When your favorite reading genres are romance and fantasy how can you possibly resist a book called Highland Dragon. Can't. I had to try it, even if I was opening it with a physical wince ready to be cracked over the head by the silliness of it.

It started so well; Evil neighboring clan leader is holding off abusing his much abused wife only because she's about to give birth and he's waiting to see if its a boy. Nice neighboring clan leader comes to save her but is killed in the process, his son survives him and steals the baby girl (making sure to confirm that she's not his sister). Nice.

Flash forward eighteen years, stolen baby was left with a smaller neighboring clan to be raised, she's quite a hoyden but before our hero can come collect her to marry her she gets kidnapped and almost sold off at a slave market. Okay.

Hero-son saves her but she's pissed because if he had come a bit sooner to marry her she wouldn't have been kidnapped. Hmm.

It just goes downhill from there. Central problem: silly plot? No, unlikable characters. I really didn't like our heroine and therefore had a hard time believing the hero would either, and the plot/secondary characters just seem to writhe all around like a earthworm trying to find it's way back to my garden dirt.

Historical Romance 2009: 1 of 5 so not any dragons in this book.

Photo Note: Now that's a Highland Dragon! Go Draco!

Courtney Milan "Proof By Seduction"

2010-05-23T09:41:00.003-05:00

Why do I enjoy the repressed powerful English lord character so much? Well, let's not make this post all about me. :) I picked up this book at the grocery store not having heard anything about it, so I had low expectations, and they were all exceeded. First Ms. Milan captures that shivery first attraction feeling perfectly, then she dives into relationship exploration for these two that if not entirely realistic, it's terribly engaging and enjoyable.

Jenny is a not very typical well educated but unconnected woman who has found an independent path for herself by telling people's fortunes. Gareth is the Marquis of Blakely who takes his responsibilities very seriously but who uses his cold demeanor to keep from caring about anyone too much.

Really the book is so good. On the scale of things, it spends more time on relationship exploration than some people might like, and it has some plot, but that's definitely not the focus. If you are looking for action, this ain't your book.

Historical Romance 2010: 4.5 of 5 dung beetles.

Megan Hart "Broken"

2010-05-20T16:33:00.006-05:00

Megan Hart writes dirty books. True statement. Even my very free thinking girlfriend gets a we're-being-bad smile on her face when I hand her a new one. But Megan Hart does so much more. There's always an exploration of some subject that is just downright interesting, funeral directors in Dirty and in Broken it's the life of a paraplegic. But there's also exploration of the human psyche, often the human sexual psyche, granted, but that's inherently fascinating so count me in.

Our heroine is married to a paraplegic, she works, and on her lunch hour she shares a bench with a guy who, over the last year, has started sharing the stories of his one night stands with her. She fantasizes about being the one he's with. She loves her husband but over the years his depression and guilt over her care of him have done significant damage to their relationship.

Her bench partner is extremely promiscuous. He loves women, enjoys sex, and is giving about his sexual encounters but he feels they only see a possible mate, not a person, so he refuses to engage in a relationship with any of these women.

Which leads me to my tangent of the hour. Promiscuity. Is it possible to have a healthy self image and be promiscuous? Is this an entirely different question for men than for women. Since having children this question has become more than academic to me. Are men promiscuous simply because of evolutionary biology or (as Ms. Hart explores) can there be more to it. Can women be promiscuous simply because they enjoy the pleasures of sex and be otherwise healthy psychologically. Obviously some small percentage of women can be promiscuous and be perfectly well adjusted and certainly men are more prone to promiscuity because of their role in human evolution, but beyond that where do we go.

Thanks Ms. Hart for making me think. Always a bonus when I'm reading a dirty book.

Contemporary Erotica 2007: 4.5 of 5 one night stands.

Jennifer Crusie "Tell Me Lies"

2010-05-13T08:33:00.002-05:00

You mom's of school age kids out there will know of what I speak when I say, May Has Hit. I used to think of May as a wonderful spring month of gardening and walking. Maybe hunting for morels and eating a lot of asparagus. But slowly over the last few years the end-of-school-year nature of May has come more and more front and center. Ah, enough excuses.

Tell Me Lies is about Maddie and C.L. and the small town of Frog Point Well, really it's about Maddie. We find Maddie cleaning out her husband's car and finding black lace panties under the seat. Since he cheated on her five years ago, she naturally jumps to certain conclusions and decides she really is going to leave him this time, she's tired of being the good girl in town, and she and her husband haven't loved or liked each other in a while anyway.

C.L. is the only other guy she "dated" in high school. He comes back into town to look into her husband's books as a favor to an old friend and gets thrown into a very strange kerfuffle with Maddie and her husband. Were there funny moments in the book, definitely BUT...there were a few too many moments where Maddie had to be Too Stupid To Live in order to further the plot. The plot really takes over the book and that might have been okay except it just didn't hang together well. And my other big complaint was C.L. He was a card board cut out character par excellence. His interactions with the daughter were the most interesting parts of his character and they were so damn perfect they made me snort. A puppy? Really?

If you aren't expecting much or reading to carefully this one is amusing.

Contemporary Romance 1998: 3 of 5 bags of money.

Sherrilyn Kenyon "Born of Ice"

2010-04-27T10:25:00.005-05:00

Um, well the world building in this sci fi is decent. Captain Kell is a smuggler, running medical supplies and food stuffs to planets that need them. He's surrounded by testosterone laden important friends and testosterone laden evil enemies. Alix is the slave daughter of a small time smuggler and abusive father who gets himself executed by some of Kell's evil enemies. When the enemy notices that she looks almost exactly like Kell's former fiancee, she is put into service to spy on Kell as his new ship's engineer, or her sister and mother will be brutally killed.

So, these two fall into bed with each other and Alix feels really bad about having to betray him, and he defends her to his friends because he can tell she's a good person, until he finally finds out she's a spy. After confronting her, and hearing about her mom and sister, she calls herself worthless property and , well, I'll give you the quote:

He saw the humiliation in her eyes as she said that, and while he might be mad at her for what she had done, he didn't want her to hear those haunting voices. "You're not worthless, Alix. But right now, I have to say that I don't like you as much as I did before I found all of this out. I don't appreciate being toyed with or betrayed."

Wow. What a bad-ass.

I actually enjoyed the repartee between the male characters, call me shallow if you want. But when the secondary characters are more enjoyable and interesting than the protagonists, something ain't right. If most of the main character's soul searching were completely removed from the book, it might actually be fun.

Science Fiction Futuristic Romance 2009: 1 out of 5 "balls to the wall."

Ilona Andrews "Magic Bites"

2010-04-24T21:40:00.003-05:00

The first book in the Kate Daniels series, this book is a nice ride. The pacing of the plot is pretty much perfect, just enough action balanced with sleuthing and clues and a little emotional exploration thrown in for good measure. I fall in love with most of Patricia Briggs strong heroines, but Kate I didn't love, I more liked her a lot. Mostly because she's a bit more, well, standoffish. But with a series of books ahead of us, I'm okay with figuring her out over the longer haul.

Just a note: true to Urban Fiction/Fantasy the hero/heroine arch isn't all tied up in a frilly bow at the end. As a matter of fact there isn't much sex in the book at all.

Fantasy Paranormal Magic novel 2007: 4 out of 5 bottles of Boone's Farm Sangria.

Meredith Duran "Written On Your Skin"

2010-04-22T22:02:00.004-05:00

This book is overdue at the library and I'm a rule follower so I'm going to stay up late and write the review so I can send it on to the next lucky person on the hold list.

Phineas Granville is an English spy pretending to be an American businessman to bring down a gun smuggling ring in Hong Kong. Mina is the collateral damage, the step daughter of the ring leader. Her step father is abusive and is about to marry her off to someone that makes her skin crawl so she is looking for a way out. She throws herself at Phin and he's astounded by her idiocy but the tables turn when he's poisoned and she's in a position to save his life.

Four or five years later, she has extracted herself and her mother from her stepfather's ruin, and built an amazingly successful cosmetics business in New York. She travels to London with her mother, where her mother is kidnapped by her stepfather who had escaped from prison some time in between.

She turns to Phin for help but he wasn't much of a willing spy, and he has no intention of being dragged back through the mud again.

Nitpick #1: Nice gratitude! Until he decides that she is not an idiot, and she's telling the truth and she's actually really quite frickin' amazing, he doesn't feel very guilty about not wanting to get involved even if she did save his life.

I really, really, liked this book, but I do think overall I liked the heroine better than I liked the hero. And it's nice that the book is good enough in other respects that I get to think about the characters as if they were real people and nitpick their decisions, not because they don't make any sense whatsoever, but because they reveal selfish character flaws that I'm not excited about. In other words, this is a terrific book and if you want to know my other nit-picky issues you have to read it and then we can talk. :)

Historical Romance 2009: 5 of 5 intemperate misses.

Robin McKinley "Sunshine"

2010-04-19T10:24:00.003-05:00

Did I say to myself while reading this book, "It's just a classic fantasy quest tale: and really, the angst sections go on a bit too long and her worries about demon blood seem silly." Yes, my logical mind registered these judgments.

And did I think, the vampire thing is sooooo overdone at this point, I'm surprised Robin McKinley would go there (not knowing that this was written in 2003 but still...). Yes, I thought that. So why did this book seem to squirm back toward my hand every time I put it down, like one of Rae's charms in her glove compartment. Why did I carry it with me everywhere just in case I had an extra second? Why did I finish it and sit staring at the cover for ten minutes just luxuriating. Then when I felt the cover was inadequate to the beauty of the book (and this cover is awesome) why did I have to go back over all of their conversations, just to see what I had missed, forgotten, not entirely understood?

Because that's how Robin McKinley gets me every time. Were there problems, yes. But in this book she takes the simple fantasy quest framework and adds something very very important. First she walks us through what it might cost someone to accept their 'special' status as the world saver. Then she lingers after the successful destruction of evil to recognize what it might have cost the warriors. What does it cost someone to even face and recognize that kind of evil, what does it cost someone to learn that they are capable of destroying that evil, not because they are so above it, but because they have some affinity for it. I can leap from this fantasy to Darfur much too easily. That is the mark of an exceptional author.

Fantasy Vampire Novel 2003: 5 out of 5 black silk shirts.

Tessa Dare "The Goddess of the Hunt"

2010-04-12T11:46:00.004-05:00

It's hard to be a good book that's read after an amazing book. Hmmm. Lucy is the perpetual little sister to a group of her older brother's friends. She's been madly in love with one of them forever and decides that to finally change her status with the group and gain Toby's attention she must dally with one of them. She picks Jeremy.

This is a cute plot device but to work it has to be a sweet, honest and funny book, like a Julia Quinn.

Then we have Jeremy whose brother died when he was eight, his father was distant even before the tragedy and afterwords his mother falls apart who was the only source of love he had. This is another good basis for character development, emotionally stunted hero, but to work it has to be gut wrenching, which is hard when you've started out on the lighter Julia Quinn path.

Not that the book doesn't work at all, the first half focuses on the lighter sillier self delusions, the second half the more angsty problems of the hero. A lot of the book is very good, well written, likable characters, plot moves along at a good pace. There are just moments when it feels like the dough is stretched too thin. Why does Lucy not explain to Jeremy her tears? What in the hell is up with the Sophia character?

And to be fair, if you've read Meredith Duran, you'll understand my nitpicking when I say, I just finished Duke of Shadows before I read The Goddess of the Hunt. That is a very hard act to follow.

Historical Romance 2009: 4 out of 5 small filthy tenant boys.

Cover Fun

2010-03-04T19:06:00.003-06:00

Great link sent to me by a friend on Facebook. Enjoy!

Victoria Alexander "The Princess and the Pea"

2010-02-28T14:18:00.003-06:00

Okay, so how do you deconstruct a decent author when they write a not so decent book. The Princess and the Pea is about a Chicago heiress who goes to England to pretend to be looking for a titled husband; get a particular Earl on her hook and then humiliate him by dumping him. (His family turned down a friend of hers.) The two meet each other without being properly introduced so he thinks she is the daughter of a butcher and she thinks he is a penniless inventor of automobiles. They fall in love and he breaks it off because he can't offer her any real commitment since he has to marry to save the family estates and such.

Where did it go wrong for me? He writes her a note and instead of actually reading it, or insisting on finding him to make him explain (she is supposed to be headstrong and impetuous) she is heartbroken and angry at him. She's an intelligent woman, who takes her sense of honor seriously, and she acts like he rudely broke her heart with no rhyme or reason. It's downhill from there, he vacillates between not understanding why she wouldn't be relieved that she's rich and that solves all his responsibility problems to deciding that he will give up the title and go with her to America and screw all the tenants he was so worried about before, then he changes his mind, he really likes his estates after all.

Too long, not enough sex, although I didn't care since I didn't really like these characters and what a strange side story about the parents. Bummer.
Historical Romance 2009: 2 out of 5 missed assignations at the Tour Eiffel.

Sandra Schwab "Castle of the Wolf"

2010-02-23T21:07:00.005-06:00

This is my first 'Gothic' romance novel per se. I found it at the library and true to my usual well researched reading habits, liked the cover and title so I took it home. I wanted to like it, and in many ways I did, but it felt like a first novel that needed some editing to tighten it up. I will add the caveat again, that I've not read other Gothic books so there were moments where the 'atmosphere' seemed a bit forced but beyond that....

I really liked the addition of the fairytale tidbits, but there were too many of them. It felt like they were there because the author had the knowledge, not because it furthered the story. Judicious use of them would have worked better. Same basic complaint about how often the heroine notices his large hands. Overall, the story is good, the characters are decently drawn, the castle and black forest setting, how can you not like that, the book just needed about 50 pages less of repetitive observations.

This is an author I would keep my eye on. There is some definite promise here.

Historical Romance 2008: 3.5 of 5 gargoyles watching.

Sherry Thomas "Delicious' and "Not Quite A Husband'

2010-01-31T09:37:00.004-06:00

I really enjoyed Private Arrangements for it's non traditional twists on the historical romance and it's clever yet tortured characters; so I was eager to read her other books. I wasn't disappointed. Delicious is the story of a master cook who inspires lust with her cooking. I liked the fact that the hero was more developed in this story. Both the hero and heroine are people you wished you knew, who have lost true love and struggle to find a way to bring it back into their lives. Wonderfully written.

When I picked up Not Quite A Husband two days later I was worried I was overindulging but well, that's never stopped me before. Bryony is a woman doctor, Leo is a mathematical genius and an intrepid explorer. But Bryony is brittle and when something goes wrong in their marriage it shatters her. This is the story of their recovery. Again, two wonderful characters who are smart, fully developed and tortured. But what actually improves this book is the addition of some suspenseful plot. Normally I'm complaining about too much plot and not enough character, this book pointed out to me again that it's a balance. A bunch of character and relationship exploration (done well) is great but breaking it up with a little plot made this book rise above the first two.

Overall, Sherry Thomas is terrific. Auto buy for sure.

Historical Romance 2008 Delicious: 4.5 of 5 madeleines. Historical Romance 2009 Not Quite: 5 of 5 emergency cesareans.

Carlos Zafon "The Shadow of the Wind"

2010-01-21T13:31:00.005-06:00

I took The Shadow of the Wind out of the library about a month ago, before Nook. In an effort to contain costs associated with effortless instantaneous wireless book buying, I have imposed all sorts of artificial restrictions on myself. If I finish off that romance novel I never finished, I can buy a new nook romance. If I finish this library book I can pop for a $9.99 best seller on nook, etc. The games we play.

Anyway, this book was highly recommended by The Book Smugglers, as well as others so I was excited to be able to read it. It is, as everyone says, beautiful lyric prose that sweeps you into a world of betrayal and love. That said, I had a hard time with the lack of fleshed out characters. Fermin, the young protagonist's side kick is by far the most developed character, his extemporaneous discourses on the female form and on religious practices and institutions are wonderful and kept the book moving. But Daniel was such an observer of the story, you never felt him as a strong character. Even Julian, the mysterious author never inhabits the story in a meaningful way. This book was for me, the ultimate in telling, not showing. Arguably its some of the most beautifully elaborate telling you'll come across but in the end the whole thing dragged.

Let's talk about the women characters for a moment. First, Daniel's mother dies when he is young, leaving his father shrouded in sadness and distance. Then young Daniel falls in love with an older beautiful blind girl. This can't help but end badly but the author decides to have Daniel come upon her in bed with her lover, leaving her as acted upon, not an actor (by addressing his crush with him, etc.) Julian falls in love with Penelope at first sight, they are inexorably drawn to each other, she's no character at all except as an object of love for her governess, her father and then for Julian. Nuria Monfort gets involved in the story when she falls in love with Julian through his books. When she meets Daniel she is physically mesmerizing to him, lies to him, and while she is the most real women character, she gets stabbed brutally for her trouble supporting all these men throughout the story. Finally Daniel ends up with another woman, the love of his life and while I give the author credit for putting her in college, the only independent action she takes is to run away from her father, then she waits for Daniel to find her and rescue her (I really would not have depended on this guy; let's just say his spy skills are not impressive.)

The language of this book, translated from the Spanish, is intricate and amazing, but it didn't make up for the lack of true characters and the plodding length of the book. I'm glad I read it because I think it makes for an interesting discussion and the trope of stories within stories was enjoyable but I will probably be buying two books on my nook as reward because my effort on this one was great. :)

Historical Gothic Novel 2004: 2.5 of 5 eyelid-less eyes. (How would you sleep?)

More Nookie

2010-01-13T13:25:00.003-06:00

Who is that beautiful girl? It must be Nyx, all grown up and ready for college.

Hmm. Today I went to Barnes & Noble to see what the 'extras' are that you get if you go in with your Nook. Confetti did not descend from the ceiling when I walked in, that's for sure. I decided I didn't have enough chutzpa to walk up to the counter and demand coupons, so I read The New York Times, searched for Kristin Cashore's Graceling (no luck, only Fire) and left. Well, I did decide I'm going to force my ten year old to do a book report on Frederick Douglas but other than that, not much excitement.

Don't get me wrong, I love having an e-reader. That part I'm totally sold on, I just think the Nook was a little over hyped. But you're not going to catch me sending it back. :)

Further Nooking Review

2010-01-04T09:49:00.005-06:00

Since I don't have a Kindle I can't confirm this, but I would believe that the 'rhythm" of a Nook (i.e. the refresh rate of pages and the timing of hitting buttons so as not to send yourself overshooting the page) is probably slower than the Kindle. I also have it on good authority that said rhythm is incredibly slow if you are used to an iphone or Pre for instance. I find it slow but not annoyingly so. This seems to be the major complaint of most reviewers of the device and I think its a valid one. There is continuing hope that operating system updates will fix this issue, hasn't happened yet.

On the other hand, as a non-touch device user, I'm good with it. I am surprised how much I really do like being able to see the covers of the books on the color screen part of the Nook. I would not have guessed how much that can influence what books I want to purchase. Those evil marketing folks really do control our minds! And one of my major concerns, the cost of mass market paperbacks in the Nook has been a pleasant surprise. I was afraid that all books would be $9.99 which would increase my costs overall (thus requiring the school related justification for this purchase) but I'm finding that romance novels are typically $6.39, sometimes are $6.99 and can be as little as $2.39 etc. (unless they would have come out as trade paperbacks, like Diana Galbaldon's latest is $9.99 and Nora Roberts' new releases can be more).

Personally, being able to instantly buy books feels a lot like when I got my first credit card, very scary. Until I trust myself not to spend my entire 401K on ebooks by May, I'm buying things very slowly and concentrating on downloading samples as a way of slowing myself down, and searching for classics that are free, both for me and for the kids.

Speaking of kids. I have two major quandaries. Normally I would not let them touch a new electronic toy of mine, both for practical reasons ("For God's Sake, don't touch my nook after you have a peanut butter sandwich!!") and because once the 'seal is broken' it's very hard to enforce any limiting rules. But....we took a trip to Chicago over the holiday break and it's pretty nice to just hand them a book in the car that they are especially interested in reading regardless of cool cover or lack thereof, and to not have to turn on a video to keep them from driving me insane. My younger is now reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and the older is reading Edgar Allen Poe, both free content, which I'm not sure I could have pulled off without finding it with a modern cover, etc.

Then there is this other major problem of keeping them from switching over to Dirty by Megan Hart while they are in possession of the Nook. Hmm. If any owners out there have hit upon a way to divide up libraries by users, please let me know. I'm pretty sure I have to solve this problem soon or outlaw my Nook from minor use altogether. Perhaps I could send out a plea to developers to solve this problem? :)

Overall, if you haven't taken the plunge, wait. I think Nook and Kindle both have some improvements to make that will make your money go further soon (not to mention the rumors about apple and islate). My experience so far, yeah, it's a bit kludgy but I love it like only a new electronic gadget can be loved. :)

Come on Over to My Nook

2009-12-25T23:00:00.002-06:00

Merry merry! Hope all your holidays were safe and warm and happy. I got the one thing I requested multiple times, yes, a NOOK! So I thought I would document my struggles, um I mean joy, here for ya'll. It all started well, my physics PHD wielding husband pried the thing open (I had read enough reviews to just hand it to him without even trying myself) and I was off, looking at NYT bestseller lists and magazines I could subscribe to (we pay about $100 for the physical Wall St Journal, can I really get it for $14.99? What's up with that?)

After playing for awhile I decided to let it rest and charge all the way up. I don't want to overtax my nook. And I am not going to even comment on the double entendres, so there. After the kids got to bed I was ready to get more serious but so was my husband (really people, stay focused) so he grabbed the nook to get it configured for our wifi. After registering the nook and downloading the update to the firmware I figured I was ready to go. I am still waiting for a download of the free sample of Evermore by Alyson Noel. It's been queued for 15 minutes now, saying "Will complete shortly" the whole time. Not impressive. Yup, still waiting.

The other interesting thing, I managed to justify this purchase (only to me) on the basis that I have a lot of PDF documents to read for school. Printing them is expensive, not to mention the trees, and my laptop is rather dimly lit making it hard on my old eyes. Voila, I need a Nook. Of course if you have followed any reviews, the formatting of a PDF on the Nook is a total nightmare. It seems this is a publishing issue, not a Nook specific issue. Spouse found a program called Caliber that will convert the PDF (not scanned) to an epub document and it looks spectacular. Score one for the man. There are some bugs with the font conversion but its much better than the alternative. But again, it's limited to digital PDF (one created as a PDF or converted from Powerpoint or Word for instance) not scanned ones. And as my husband says, my Social Studies professors scan this stuff at such low resolution even he can't fix it. (Did I mention my husband is a scientist born and bred?)

So to close, I still don't have a download of my free sample of Evermore, I'm guessing that was 4o minutes at this point. I've got 30 days, right? Maybe I need to get Kindle 2 and put them head to head for the trial period. Wow, that's so not me, I have a hard time even typing it. :)

Technical Difficulties Please Stand By

2009-12-13T11:19:00.005-06:00

Here are a couple of images to tide you (me) over until Dec 17th. Yes semester will officially end Dec 17th at noon. Come hell or high water.

I got the cartoon from Brown Sharpie comics. Math comics inspired by sharpie fumes.

Julie Anne Long "Since the Surrender"

2009-12-07T11:55:00.005-06:00

If you've been following along you'll know that I am a Julie Anne Long fangirl. I have to admit it's probably revealing that I almost sent this latest book away on Paper Back Swap without remembering to review it. Ouch.

Chase Eversea and Rosalind March met during the Napoleonic War when she was the wife of his Colonel. They shared a kiss practically by accident and almost couldn't live with themselves because it was such a betrayal of their friend. Rosalind wasn't in love with her husband but she loved him as friend and father figure. The Colonel died in Waterloo, Chase did not. Now, years later, her younger sister has disappeared so she appeals to Chase for help in tracking her down. So far so good.

But two things (in my opinion) go wrong. The plot surrounding the sister seems to go nowhere for a long time, then when it does finally get revealed, it's, well, completely preposterous. Maybe if the pacing had been better I wouldn't have cared as much.

Then the other problem; the sex. Again, I think it's a pacing problem. Longing, longing, longing and they never give in. Finally in what seems the most inappropriate time and place, they get it on. Why now? If they didn't need an emotional breakthrough, or a 'safe' place and time, then why have they been waiting! It felt as if this could be made into two books, one with the sex and one without, to be sold in two different genres without any real impact on the character arch or storyline. Don't get me wrong, the scenes are fun but to have them feel so extraneous to the arch of the relationship in the end undermines their effectiveness within the book.

Is it horrible? No. The characters have the intent, intelligent, humorously self effacing internal voices that I so love about Ms. Long's characters. This story continues to flesh out the world of the Everseas so if you're committed to the series, you should read it, but overall with my high expectations it was a disappointment.

Historical Romance 2009: 2.5 of 5 bawdy angel paintings.

Sherry Thomas "Private Arrangements"

2009-12-02T17:16:00.003-06:00

Lady and Lord Tremaine have the perfect English aristocratic marriage, he lives in New York and she lives in London. But for some reason after ten years of perfect harmony, she wishes to divorce and marry another. He returns to London to respond to her divorce petition and to extract an heir before he lets her go. Yes, well.

Ms. Thomas has a wonderfully ironic writing voice which is amusing and appropriate to our intelligent, ironic heroine and to a hero that appreciates this aspect of her personality. I especially appreciated how her writing voice shifted when we moved to our heroine's mother's story. There were things I could quibble with; our heroine's mother's shift from scheming to strangely honest is abrupt and feels disjointed; but overall the characters are witty and interesting and believably tortured. The plot turns are not typical historical romance fodder which is refreshing and the sex is engaging and believable. Even the historical context of the novel, although not entirely central to the story, works.

I will be looking for more Sherry Thomas books soon.

Historical Romance 2008: 4.5 of 5 contraceptive caps.

The Benefits of the Flu

2009-11-30T16:49:00.006-06:00

Yes! I finally got a little reading done. The downside, achy delirium for two days, upside, two romance novels completed in two recovery days. Throw in a little strep throat and six year old with croup and it all makes for an eventful Thanksgiving week. Hope yours was both more fun and less exciting.

Laura Lee Guhrke is back with the girl bachelors, With Seduction In Mind. This time it's Daisy who keeps getting fired from all her jobs. She's a little impetuous. She's got red hair. She really believes in people. You know where this is going. Fine, call it a prejudice but I have a problem with the spunky red head trope. My mother has red hair, I seriously considered dyeing my kid's hair red when it started to fade to brown, I LOVE red hair. I am not a red hair hater!

Here's the real problem, I didn't like him either. Red hair impulsive girl who sees the best in everybody and recovering cocaine addict neurotic writer. Um. Look. Let's face it, romance is fantasy, anything can work if you can write the hell out of it. Ms. Guhrke gave herself a pretty tough task with this one and it just didn't work for me. What can I say. Maybe I was just annoyed it took them so long to get down to business.

Historical Romance 2009: 2 out of 5 killed off dogs.

This image has absolutely nothing to do with the book or impetuous red-heads. It is Miss Gertrude Crocker of Illinois, the treasurer of the National Woman's Party ca. 1916. Cool huh? Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman's Party, Library of Congress.

Lois McMaster Bujold "The Sharing Knife"

2009-11-05T09:10:00.003-06:00

Okay, I'll admit I have been sneaking in a bit of reading around all my school work. Shhh! Don't tell my husband. For the record, I have never done pleasure reading while he has had the kids by himself to give me time to study, I swear.

Okay, guilty admissions out of the way, I'll try to recap what I've made it through recently (from memory). Tess Dare's Goddess of the Hunt was very enjoyable and who can dislike a book with such a good title, really. I also picked up a Lois McMaster Bujold's book called Beguilement: The Sharing Knife Book 1. I saw it at my library (pictured here for Wendy Super Librarian) and like most of my reading, I picked it for the cover and the title. :) I was unfamiliar with Bujold's other books, apparently she writes mostly fantasy/sci-fi and this was an attempt at a book where romance was more central to the story. Works for me. It's just a terrific cross cultural love story between (dare I say it) a spunky heroine and a war weary hero. The world is typical "pseudo-medieval with supernatural elements" fantasy which I enjoy. But in the end it's the two main characters who pull the whole thing together.

In the second and the third books (I'm half way through number 3) the tension of "are they going to get together" is missing since they get their happy ending in book one. The question then shifts to "can they make a space for their relationship within their different societies who don't want to accept them together." So for me (have I mentioned I'm addicted to sexual tension) these two books are much slower, but I love these characters so much, it's still fun to follow them around. If you like fantasy and like some romance in your fantasy, try this one out. Highly recommend it.

Fantasy Romance 2006: 4 out of 5 sharing knives (duh!).

Beowulf Not Bad

2009-10-19T09:46:00.004-05:00

So this coming week is already (hopefully) the worst of this semester. But since last week was the second worst week of the semester I officially took Saturday off to spend with my family and recharge my brain. The end of the day I topped off with a movie, Beowulf and Grendel. It's recently come to my better half's notice that Gerard Butler seems to come up a lot in the movies on our Netflix list. Um, er, well, yes. And as I was pretty certain this movie was going to be really bad, I was unusually apologetic and embarrassed.

I'm here to tell you, this movie wasn't bad at all! Low production value, sure, but with a famous text to butcher and a lot of historical stereotypes to overcome, I was expecting the worst. Okay, so they threw in a love interest which was completely gratuitous, but overall it was entirely surprisingly decent. So hubby couldn't laugh at me too much. He even allowed me to watch Gerry host SNL. Again, I was pleasantly surprised. How about you?

2009-10-14T13:37:00.003-05:00

Oh man. Thanks Jessica. I read this, read it again, looked at the picture and was suddenly snorting Sunkist out of my nose. Not a good idea in front of your computer.

Image stolen from this brilliant website.

Judith James "Broken Wing"

2009-09-26T16:44:00.004-05:00

This book has gotten all sorts of accolades from other reviewers, for good reason. It's lovely, well written and definitely not run of the mill (without resorting to any superhuman sexual appendages). Most of us know the premise, Sarah finds her lost brother in a brothel, but unharmed because of the direct protection of a male prostitute. She offers to take him to her home in recompense for what he did for her younger brother.

The two of them eventually fall in love, but Gabriel decides he must leave to make his fortune as a pirate. She assures him this is unnecessary but he goes anyway. Bad things happen. I'm trying to not spoil the book here, but my main beef is with this section of the book. Those of you who have still not read this book, just skip ahead to the next paragraph. After he claws his way back to civilization, couldn't he have just written her a letter? If he really thought she was better off thinking he was dead, it's pretty shitty of him to go anywhere near England in my humble opinion.

It's a sign of a very good book when I have a major beef, not with how the author characterized the main character, but with the actions of that main character, showing how real this character became for me. Liked it a lot. And to those of you following the recent posts, I did finish this a while ago, before school started this fall. :)

Historical Romance 2008: 4.5 of 5 kisses right on the lips.

ARGH

2009-09-24T12:54:00.002-05:00

I've decided that since I'm currently unable to read anything for pleasure, I'm going to start reviewing the few things I can do in my 20 minutes before I fall asleep. No I'm not telling you about that, I play Nintendo before bed each night! Really.

But first, a bit of whining by yours truly, you've been forewarned. I am returning to school after twenty years to try to become a high school history teacher. Whatever you think about the goal, most of us have experienced the process, college. I'm just not sure why the first time around I completely lacked anxiety about the process. Oh, I wished I was doing better and needed a little freak-out adrenaline to get my papers written but pervasive term long anxiety was definitely missing for me. I knew friends who had it and I never understood it. It definitely resulted in better results for them than I was getting but overall I didn't think that A was worth it. Now I'm sooo that person. Yes, I'm doing better in class this time around but damn, it's exhausting.

Back to the regular programming, Brain Age I is a game that proports to improve brain function when used regularly. I really can't speak to that but it's fun, it's less guilt inducing for me than brainless video games and I really like the Sudoku module. But Brain Age II is lots more fun. This game gets a B- from me.

Introducing Minerva

2009-09-12T22:00:00.007-05:00

A little belatedly, I'd like to announce that I've taken on a partner in crime. I wanted a little help keeping the posts flowing and I knew this friend was the perfect one to bring into the Bodice Ripper world. She probably begs to differ, but she's deigned to dignify my little romance review site with some - NOT romance novel -just book reviews of her own.

I'm flattered that she would join me because since she does not share the romance bug, she says she likes the site cause I'm funny. Not that I'd let just anyone join me who compliments me, I might, but she's quite brilliant herself.

If you enjoy Minerva's reviews please let her know, so we get her hooked on blogging and she keeps them coming. And Minerva, thanks for joining me!

image is Minerva painted by Elihu Vedder, 1896

Pamela Clare 'Untamed'

2009-08-26T12:40:00.004-05:00

Visiting the library a couple of days ago I came across this book. The cover is hard not to notice and then I remembered it had been reviewed favorably so I picked it up.

It might have a lot to do with timing, I've been in a reading slump lately, not enjoying my historical romances the way I usually do. Regardless, Untamed has re-innervated my love for historical romance novels. I loved the movie The Last of the Mohicans and in atmosphere the book is right there. The MacKinnion Rangers are suitably legendary and while I usually prefer an intrepid heroine, Amalie's character is true to her upbringing and very believable without being entirely a victim. Instead of being annoyed that Connor and Joseph were so obviously going to be sequals, I found myself looking forward to their stories.

I was impressed by the author's ability to wind this love story through the realities of the French and Indian War, or any war for that matter. The uncertainty of times of war make for high emotion but not for believable development of loving relationships, and Ms. Clare manages to use both to her advantage. Although the final plot developments were a little over the top for me. Small complaint.

Historical Romance 2008: 5 of 5 Satan's arses.

*giggle* did you notice 'taut' and 'sensual' are placed right in his bellybutton *giggle*

Stieg Larsson 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'

2009-08-22T21:15:00.011-05:00

Minerva has been a muddled, useless, exhausted mess all day today, and it's entirely the fault of this book. Once she began reading, it was impossible to put it down. And even after it ended -- sometime around 3 AM -- it was impossible to go to sleep. How can anyone sleep with eyes staring, muscles clenched, and mind churning? All Minerva really wanted to do was turn the bedside lamp back on and read the whole thing again, just to make sure she understood how all the pieces fit. That's how good a thriller this is.

It starts out slowly. Indeed, for the first four chapters, it appears that "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is going to be an interesting (but not particularly thrilling) tale of a mildly swashbuckling investigative journalist, Mikael Blomqvist, who gets caught up in a labyrinth of corporate malfeasance and trickery. Three things hint otherwise: the tantalizing prologue; the grim statistics on the title pages of each section; and the gradual emergence of a thoroughly unlikely heroine, the diminutive, punked-out, utterly asocial yet brilliantly competent investigator Lisbeth Salander -- the girl with the dragon tattoo.

The book's original title is "Män som hatar kvinnor" -- Swedish for "Men Who Hate Women" -- and as the story unfolds, this central theme comes to the fore. Blomqvist, his career shattered by a libel suit, turns his investigative talents to the unsolved case of a girl who vanished -- presumably murdered -- thirty-six years earlier. Meanwhile, Salander, whose mysterious past was clearly a nightmare of violence and abuse, contends with an authority figure who seeks to further victimize her. And when Blomqvist and Salander join forces to probe into a grisly series of unsolved murders -- all women, all horribly brutalized -- well, that's when Minerva got out of bed, went downstairs, and triple-locked the front door. And that's the last word she's going to tell you about the plot.

'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is translated from the Swedish, apparently by an exceedingly competent robot. Occasionally there is the slightest slip -- as when Blomkvist asks Salander if he may "burn" a cigarette -- but for the most part, the writing is correct, in a coldly mechanical, faintly inhuman way. Perhaps the original text had the same iciness (Minerva will never know, Swedish not being a language she has any intention of learning), or perhaps it came about accidentally in translation. Either way, its chilling tone is extremely effective.

Minerva fully intends to read the next two books in the trilogy -- "The Girl Who Played with Fire" and "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest" -- but is in no particular hurry to do so. Her shattered nerves demand a soothing dose of Austen or Trollope.

Rating: 5 out of 5 sets of cold steel handcuffs.

Megan Hart 'Stranger'

2009-08-18T10:22:00.003-05:00

Can I say that I loved a book if I skipped about 80 pages in the middle. I suppose if I'm worth my salt as a reviewer I'm going to have to analyze it. I will apologize slightly for the fact that my reading choices lately have felt like catch-up with the rest of romancelandia (or the small part of it I allow myself to follow so as not to neglect my family entirely.) I apologize only because as Jessica discussed lately, it feels like I'm just following and not really adding anything new or interesting to the romance review world out there. So here I go again with the "following" thing.

I love, love, love the premise of Stranger. The heroine has decided that she doesn't want to put out the effort for a real relationship (for a lot of reasons) and so has developed the habit of paying for her dates and her sex. She has a reliable service, she's had some reliable providers from that service so why mess with a good thing. But one night she mistakes Sam for her latest 'date' and the convenience of what she's doing comes into question. If she's doing this, it doesn't just take the place of a conventional relationship, it acts in many ways to prevent her from having a conventional relationship.

I skipped the Sam chasing her part. I have to guess that there were some important moments in there since the author is definitely a character driven writer/thinker. But I came back in where they get together and with the characters' discussions of their relationship, I didn't feel like I needed to go back to fill things in. Am I a very bad, bad, reader or should I conclude that the author could tighten up the book a bit. I suppose a little of both (like on most moral dilemmas I come down in the boring middle).

I read all the rest of the book, I loved them together, I loved the author's strong actualized woman throw ins and I liked Sam a lot. Their struggle felt basically realistic and I was glad they got together in the end. :) This author can write some awesome sex and the characters really jump off the page. If I had to nitpick, I'd say the character flaws are a little simple. Interesting and thought out, but what stops this from being a work of literature (which is not usually a standard I even bring up) besides the genre rules, is slightly simplistic character flaws. Overall, awesome book if you don't mind having to hide it from your kids.

Contemporary Erotic Novel 2009: 4.5 out of 5 embalmed bodies.

CNET and Smart Bitches Rumble!

2009-08-14T22:52:00.003-05:00

Had to link to this! I will guarantee my husband will be telling me about the CNET kindle hints (even though he hasn't decided I need one, yet). Well, the Smart Bitches have said it all for us.

And although I have yet to have a use for the term, can I tell you how much I love WTFery.

What picture should I attach with this post? Oh, yes, the stern romance nurse! "CNET, you get back into bed this minute!"

Curtis Sittenfeld 'American Wife'

2009-08-13T20:28:00.012-05:00

This is Minerva's first Bodice Ripper Review, and she's more than a little nervous. All this blog stuff is new to her, and she's fairly certain she'll screw up the formatting. What's more, Heloise's trenchant brilliance is a tough act to follow. And finally, Minerva has a difficult confession to make in this particular setting .......... she really, truly does not like romance novels. Not at all.

Or does she?

Minerva has spent the past few days unabashedly wallowing in the voyeuristic pleasures of 'American Wife'. The book -- which Sittenfeld says she wrote in a frenzy of haste in order to release it during the 2008 Republican Convention -- is a fictionalized account of the life and marriage of former First Lady Laura Bush. It is simply overflowing with graphic, steamy, and occasionally sordid sex.

Graphic, sordid sex is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Laura Bush. But with this book, Sittenfeld takes on the question that troubled so many of us during the Bush years: how on earth did a modest, intelligent, thoughtful, well-read, liberal-leaning, pro-choice lady like Laura end up hitched to a guy like Dubya?

As the romance novelists knew all along, the answer apparently lies in a potent cocktail of true love and hot sex.

Each of the book's four sections is built upon actual events from Laura Bush's life, fleshed out with plenty of pure fiction, and set -- delightfully! -- in Wisconsin rather than Texas. The first section is by far the best. In it, the 17-year-old heroine (Alice Lindgren) accidentally runs a stop sign, causing the death of a classmate who is almost, but not quite, her boyfriend. In a few seconds of inattention and bad luck, the course of her life is changed forever. It's powerful stuff. Minerva is trying to avoid using the word "poignant" ..... but there it is.

The second section is also quite engaging, as Alice, now in her early 30s, is swept off her feet by the cocky, charming ne'er-do-well rich boy Charlie Blackwell. Her first encounter with his no-holds-barred family is unforgettable for many reasons, not least the limerick beginning "Nymphomaniacal Alice." Minerva would love to tell you the whole thing, but that would be a spoiler. Most of the hot sex scenes appear during this section.

From there, unfortunately, it's all downhill: alcoholism, bad behavior, evangelical Christianity, Republican politics, Karl Rove, and the war in Iraq. By the end, even though Alice has (unlike Laura) dared to publicly assert her personal views on a highly controversial issue, it feels like she is simply maundering on, alternately blaming and excusing herself for the path her life has taken. The hot sex has also dropped off considerably by this point in the book ... but Minerva supposes that's what happens when a romance novel loses its way and drags on for 30 years of marriage.

It's still a terrific read, and well worth your while. Especially that limerick.

Rating: 4 out of 5 toots of your own horn.

Joanna Bourne 'The Spymaster's Lady'

2009-08-11T12:09:00.003-05:00

Yes, yes, I loved this book. I loved Annique, the little intrepid hoyden, I loved Grey, because Gerard Butler would be perfect as him in the movie. I loved the author's ability to write french in english. I loved the tub scene, I loved the secondary characters who say the things I want to say to the hero. It's a great book.

*mild spoiler/rant alert*

Okay, here's the rub. She really didn't recognize him for a fourth of the book? I don't want to give away too much, but really. He's trying to avoid touching her but they ride on a horse together.....

Fine, fine, I'll let you go back to your starry eyed enjoyment of the book. I made my best friend from college read it, and she said, "What does he do exactly? He doesn't seem to really do anything! And why the hell does she keep leaving Henri alive, that seems very stupid if you ask me." Yes well, we don't want to have to invent new bad guys for the end of the book, do we. :)

Historical Romance 2008: 4.5 of 5 sloshing tubs.

Sarah Vowell 'The Wordy Shipmates'

2009-08-08T15:36:00.005-05:00

Not only did I find The Wordy Shipmates again but I finally finished it. I also went away to Brooklyn for the week-end to visit my best friend from college and helped my husband put together the kids school supplies, so I've been busy. :)

The Wordy Shipmates lives up to its title, it's wordy. I couldn't help it! It was too good to pass up. Seriously, Ms. Vowell managed to get me involved in the theological hair splitting of the Boston Puritans (not the Plymouth Rock Puritans, but the 'city on a hill' Puritans) She's funny and irreverent enough to keep you going through the seemingly endless pamphlet wars and the names that all start with J. She is also a good enough historian to draw out interesting strands of our modern day cultural and political inheritance from these original settlers. It helps me to like the book that I'm pretty darn sure I agree with her modern politics; in a word, liberal.

However, slightly past the half way point in the book, it lost a lot of the humor and when I expected the historical narrative to make up for it, it didn't. I did not find Anne Hutchinson's story so riveting that it could carry me through to the end. Nor were Ms. Vowell's insights so fascinating or so humourous that I couldn't put the book down. I put it down. A lot. I finished it, but more to be able to tell Kate that I finished it, than on the merits of the book itself.

I liked the book, it's an interesting read, I'm glad I know more about the pilgrims and their American legacy. However, unless you really enjoy reading history for it's own sake, you'll enjoy the first half more, and skipping the second half is not going to appreciably negatively impact your life.

4 of 5 exiled visible saints.

Pamela Clare 'Carnal Gift'

2009-08-02T15:36:00.005-05:00

Other than some exceptional books (SpyMaster's Lady, yes I finally read it), I haven't been reading much historical romance lately. But I've had this one around for a while so I picked it up. I hate to say it but Ireland is so done for me. River Dance and the 1990's revival of Celtic mysticism has burned me out. And this from a person who's attended Milwaukee's Irish Fest since High School (largest Irish Festival outside of Ireland). It's extremely difficult to write characters set into Irish history without it feeling like a well known cliche before you're even out of the gate.

This book includes enough historical details to validate the author's knowledge of the time period. The heroine grew on me, although both of these characters border on serious Mary Sue personalities. Overall the writing was decent, the sex was sparse but decent, the history was accurate, the plot was well paced and the characters were wooden.

Historical Romance 2008: 2.5 of 5 bloody sheets.

Meljean Brook 'Demon Night'

2009-07-28T17:27:00.005-05:00

I really don't like anthology books. This is based on limited experience but enough to decide that the short story form is a particular one that requires it's own expertise. I don't think you can be a novelist and just assume you can write a decent short story. That said, I read Wild Thing and was very impressed with Meljean Brook's Selah and vampire story. I would almost make the argument that she is better at a short story character arch than the novel length character arch, but I won't.

Demon Night tells Charlotte and Ethan's story. Charlotte's sister is working with vampire, demon and human blood to try to synthesize a food source for vampires that doesn't involve blood lust. Because of her proximity Charlotte comes under Ethan (the guardian)'s protection.

Ethan died (became a guardian) in the American Wild West and he has retained the drawl and the mannerisms of that time. Charlotte was an opera singer before a tragic accident took away her voice forever. It took me a little bit to warm up to this book, not the attraction between them, or to the two characters, they are terrific, but the plot was a little sticky in the first hundred pages. Looking back, however, you could say the book unfolds a bit like Ethan, slow steady and hot.

How could you not enjoy Ethan, but I also really liked Charlie. I didn't always love the idealization of Charlie that Ethan and other characters indulge in nearer to the end of the book, but Charlie herself is terrific. I had a hard time buying the barrier to their love as it's a TSTL moment for Ethan, which didn't fit with his "acts stupid but keeps a step ahead of Lilith" character.

Overall, slow start, very enjoyable meaty middle and then unravels for me a bit in the last few chapters. And I have to note that the nephilim seemed like a very convenient plot device.

Paranormal Romance 2008: 4 of 5 seraphim, nephilim, excramin.

C.L. Wilson "King of Sword and Sky"

2009-07-24T14:53:00.004-05:00

I logged on to try to get one of my 'to be reviewed' books off my desk and my google 'reading list' sent me immediately off into blog hopping land. Is it really a good thing to aggregate blogs in one place so I'm so easily distracted? Ah well, the dangers of bloglandia.

And another thing, is there any evidence out there that caffeine delivered with sugar goes straight from your stomach to blast into your brain? I'm trying a new drink, Sweet Leaf: Sweet Tea and I swear my porch is spinning. If I hadn't had normal food in the last couple of hours I might understand.

Oh, I am so distracted.

Wilson burst onto the romance/fantasy scene last year with Lord of the Fading Lands and Lady of Light and Shadows that I reviewed in December. In my opinion they were really one long book that the publisher made her split into two books. No, I have no proof of that....and they were terrific. The story continues with Rain taking Elysetta back to the Fading Lands. As with most super hyperbole stories, the level of amazingness can be hard to maintain.

I felt some of that here, but I thought Wilson did a good job of shifting the focus from the ultimate love these two feel for each other, to the struggles of the Fey as they gear up for all out war with the wizards of Eld. So, no, this book did not transport me the way the first two did but it respectably furthers the story and I'm looking forward to the next one. I will say, if the author drags this storyline out too much further I may lose interest. There is only so much delayed gratification a romance reader can take. :)

Cool Pics on Flickr - From Stanford Medicine

2009-07-21T13:52:00.004-05:00

This is not my actual head, although it is someone's actual head. But it's a pretty cool 3D medical image of what my head looks like post surgery (without hair or scalp of course :). I have one of these on each side.

If you see that red artery on the surface of the skull in front of the surgery site, that's a temporal artery (as in temple). There was another one that now goes into the 'spoon slot' in the bone piece that was removed. That's now attached to a major artery in the brain supplying blood from the 'outside' of the skull, as it were.

The three pieces of hardware are called dog bones, for obvious reasons. I have two dog bones and a snowflake. That's how I know this isn't me. :) But seeing this image is a little disturbing since I didn't think my 'spoon slot' was quite so large. Geese, I'm gonna be more careful with pencils behind my ears from now on.

Stanford has uploaded other cool 3D images here. They aren't all head surgeries either. I'm not sure about the top of this person's head. I'd like to think the image just got cut off. :)

Sharon Sala "The Warrior"

2009-07-18T16:52:00.006-05:00

This author is new to me but I see she's got lots of books out there. John Nightwalker is a Native American soldier who comes across Alicia Ponte while she's on the run from her father - an arms manufacturer. She overheard him talking about illegal arms deals and knows he'll stop at nothing to protect himself from being exposed.

There is some reincarnation/mysticism combined with pretty realistic action. The relationship between these two unfolds relatively slowly, which I liked, but the overall pace of the book does not put it squarely in the typical CIA/arms dealers/something blows up every three minutes genre. Again, I liked this about the book but if you are an action/plot junkie, this might annoy you.

Alisha is certainly on the "Oh my god I can't believe this is happening to me." side of the character spectrum but I liked her well enough to want John to get together with her. John is hard not to like, loyal, steady, deadly and hot.

I would definitely try another book from Sala.

Contemporary Romance 2009: 4 of 5 spanish conquistadors.

Be Still My Beating Heart

2009-07-09T14:53:00.005-05:00

Remember when I promised more pictures of beautiful men to up my readership. This is Colin Ames-Beaumont.

Jo Beverley "Devilish"

2009-07-08T17:10:00.003-05:00

Expectations. I used to overuse the life maxim, "All things in moderation." Now I've moved on to constantly saying "It's all about expectations." I'm such a relativist. And I don't think that's really an admirable thing, I'm a John Winthrop, not a Rogers Williams in Sarah Vowell's world. But I get ahead of myself.

Lord Rothgar is the head of the Malloren family, he's the only son of his father's first wife, who went mad and strangled her infant daughter when he was about three. His father remarried and had several more fun children whom Rothgar has enjoyed protecting and rescuing from various scrapes over the years. (See earlier Malloren novels please.) But now they are all married and producing their own children, something he has sworn not to do, so as not to pass on the insanity of his mother.

Diana is the Countess of Arrandale in Yorkshire. She decides never to marry because she will not just hand over her powerful position to some man because it's expected of her. But King George isn't so happy about a liberated woman running around the north country unchecked.

Beverly has a feel for this time period that is refreshing and entertaining in it's own right. Her plot is well paced and complicatedly realistic (but not too complicated if you know what I mean.) It's a terrifically crafted book. I just didn't love it. I felt for their romantic difficulties, I liked Rothgar and thought his character was drawn well enough to understand the deep seated fear he had of having children. I suppose I didn't love Diana, I used to love the pistol wielding stereotype busting heroine; but to petition to take her seat in the House of Lords in 1763? That's just dumb.

This one I can't knock on craft, it just didn't transport me, and I had rather high expectations. I imagine if I had read some of the back stories, maybe it would have been different. I will definitely try another Beverly in the near future.

Historical Romance 2000: 4 of 5 hermaphodidic ambassadors.

Julia Quinn "What Happens In London"

2009-07-05T07:21:00.004-05:00

Considering I was one of the few people who liked Mr Cavendish, I presume I'm pretty sure I've lost my objective abilities (such as they are) with Julia Quinn. But, I read her new book so I want it duly noted.

Really it's very good. She's honed in on what she does so well, comedy of manners. When Sir Harry muses on what Olivia would do if he started choking at his desk, while she is spying on him through the window, it's not only funny but makes you fall in love with Harry all the more. Who doesn't like tall dark handsome and a sense of humor.

Now as par for Julia Quinn, the sex is not extensive and it comes later in the relationship (oh, how novel, you mean not all the women in Regency England slept with practical strangers as long as they felt like they were THE ONE) but in this book I thought she gave a bit more time to the sexual tension and build-up which was nice.

If you haven't read Julia Quinn yet, MY GOD, what are you waiting for, and if you have and are waiting for a used copy of this one, you're going to like it. :)

I've Completely Lost My Mind

2009-07-01T11:40:00.005-05:00

Gerard Butler. What is it about Gerard Butler? Okay, right, well there is the obvious....but it can't just be the bod since there are no shortage of beautiful male bodies on the internet to look at. And look at this picture, I'm not usually partial toward frat boys!

I really loved 300. That's embarrassing in itself cause, well, it wasn't The English Patient or anything.

Now I am actually dieing to see a movie that won't be out for three weeks. People, I have two children, I don't see any movies unless they've been out for at least three years and six different friends insist I must see it. And this doesn't look like a good movie, it looks like a formulaic hackneyed Hollywood romantic comedy. And on top of it all, from the trailer I'm thinking someone told Gerard to temper his accent into an unattractive incomprehensible version of "I'm an actor trying really hard not to sound Scottish cause that's not my written character." But despite all of these hurdles, I am panting to see this movie just to see Gerard flirt, tease, and fall in love with someone on screen. Yes, I've completely lost my mind. Now leave me alone while I go watch the trailer again.

Meljean Brook 'Demon Moon'

2009-06-27T16:24:00.004-05:00

Savitri the computer guru and Colin the incredibly gorgeous vampire. This is book four in Brook's series about Guardians fighting Demons and Nosferatu. Colin is falling in love with Savitri but he has the unique vampire problem of not being able to share his blood without killing the recipient. This does not make him an ideal life partner, since when a vampire feeds they have an overwhelming desire to also have sex with their victim and if he feeds from Savitri exclusively she won't last two months.

The tension over how they are going to solve this incompatibility is terrific, Colin is terrific. The plot adds some distraction from the angst and is enjoyable in its own right. There were fewer moments when I wondered what the heck was going on than in the first book (but they still occurred). Ms. Brook is quite committed to the "show, don't tell" rule, maybe a bit too committed.

Overall a very enjoyable addition to this series.

Demonic Vampire Romance 2007: 5 of 5 ways to taint a vampire's blood.

Jane Austen "Pride and Prejudice"

2009-06-22T22:31:00.003-05:00

Is it just me or does anyone else find prejudice difficult to spell? I just so want to put that 'd' up front. But I digress. I've been totally slacking off on the blog, sorry about that. I have been reading, so hopefully I'll get a chance to trim down the TBR stack soon. (That's To Be Reviewed these days. I've given up worrying about the To Be Read pile.)

My book club decided to read Pride and Prejudice for the month of June and I was determined to finally get through it. Yes, I know, horrors! I'm admitting that it's not my favorite book on earth, nor do I have it memorized (even though my Aunt read me the first sentence when I was thirteen). I have attempted the book in the past and didn't finish it. I'm thinking now that may have been at thirteen because I do remember being totally confused over who the hell everyone was. Can we call the characters by one name please, I mean really.

So despite my desire to not love this book because like EVERYONE loves this book, I'll admit it's pretty good. Okay, it's funny and even philosophically insightful, and yes, romantic. Fine, fine, it's a great book, I liked it.

Romance Novel 1813: 5 of 5 unmarried daughters.

Candice Hern "Lady Be Bad"

2009-06-10T09:50:00.006-05:00

Grace, the widow of Bishop Marlow, may be the only woman in England whom John can not seduce. He's willing to take that chance for the thrill of a bet. Surprisingly he falls in love with Grace's inherent goodness along the way. And low and behold, Grace finds the personal strength that comes from owning her own sexuality.

This book is well written, has really very decent character development and is mildly funny. It's not earth shattering, but I'm guessing this is an author that could produce a really stellar book at some point. This one is a solid 3.5.

Historical Romance 2007: 3.5 of 5 Merry Widows.

Postscript on cover: The cover is gorgeous, so why was I even more embarrassed to be seen carrying it around?

Alyssa Brooks "Hide and Seek"

2009-05-26T13:18:00.005-05:00

Borders had a big sale recently and lured by the okay cover and cheap price tag, I picked up Hide and Seek. I was pretty sure this one was more on the erotica side than romance but a little exploration never hurt anyone. Well, that's patently untrue, but how was I to know.

This book isn't porn for women. It's just porn. The thinnest of plot lines revolves around 'smart' Elisa being followed by her college chemistry partner, Maxim Cox, to a remote cabin in the mountains. He can't understand why he's never forgotten her and she is quite certain he's a man slut who could never stick with one woman. So to teach him a lesson she decides to only have sex with him if he follows the rules of a game she makes up as she goes.

The game wasn't interesting, the characters were stupid (she's a successful lawyer until a scandal breaks and she's given some 'time off.' She decides she should join the Peace Corp to save the rain forests.) Aspen, CO, isn't even described well enough to be enjoyed. And to top it off, I think if I hadn't skimmed so much of the book I would have detected a sneakingly anti-feminist undertone. Her 'games' all revolve around sexual dominance of Maxim. But she's only truly satisfied when he takes over.

In the final scene he proposes marriage by letting it slip that he'll be disinherited if he doesn't marry in two weeks. When Elisa finds his protestations of love hard to believe, he throws her over his shoulder, fights her clothes off of her and ties her up with his belt while she's yelling "I'm not playing Maxim, get off me." She, of course, is turned on be being tied up, something Maxim knew would be true (more evidence that they are meant for each other, he's so tuned into her secret desires!). Finally he convinces her that they are perfect together by pointing out that he could have bought her a bigger ring but he bought a small diamond and donated the money to the Peace Corps in her name. And as recompense for not allowing her to save the rain forests, he gives her a foundation to help poor kids in Egypt (where his family business is). Once she understands how sweet he really is, she decides she can teach Egyptian kids ABOUT saving the rain forests.

Sorry for the spoilers, because really I've recounted pretty much the entire plot here. But if you're gonna read this book, it's not going to be for the character development and plot line. Now as far as porn goes, I've seen worse.

Porn 2007: 0 of 5 naked in the snow scenes.

Weekend Pursuits

2009-05-18T19:36:00.005-05:00

Our friends have a bit of land in south western Wisconsin where every couple of years we join them in their annual morel mushroom hunt. Even though I am a native Wisconsinite, I was unaware of the nirvana that is fresh sauteed morel mushrooms in butter and a little garlic until adulthood. My nine year old just told me that if anyone asks her what morels taste like she's going to say, "Morelly." And I also just discovered that like fire flies, they are a basically Midwestern phenomenon. It's nice to do something out in the woods that still retains some local flavor in this global world we live in.

For more pictures check out The Great Morel Home Page where a suitably phallic fungus pops up and down at you endlessly. And challenge yourself by counting how many you can find in this picture as well. My hubby took this on Saturday. Enjoy. We are!

Head to Head "Marked" vs. "Wicked Lovely"

2009-05-15T10:11:00.011-05:00

I just finished Marked by Kristen Cast/PC Cast and happened to pick up Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr right after. Being able to compare them really crystallized my opinions on both young adult books.

Marked is fun for its exploration of goddess mythology/ritual and vampirism, the messages are positive and empowering, and the main character's struggles will no doubt ring true for many readers. But in the end the book was predictable. The characters had very little that was ambivalent about them and while the book was enjoyable the plot read like a Hollywood movie where you know how it will end by the end of the first trailer.

Wicked Lovely also has a strong female center, the faeries held a bit less appeal for me and their world was less drawn out for the reader (I think this was a strength, but I can see some readers being slightly put off by this), and the male characters are slightly flat. But really they appear flat because they are juxtaposed against wonderfully searching/complicated women (except for the EVIL mother figure of course.) This book was anything but predictable. The main character's almost constant state of anxiety was much more evocative for me of a young person under extreme stress. The messages inherent in the book were also positive and empowering but conveyed much more subtly through the story. This was a terrific book.

Both of these books touched on drugs, sexual desire, and had some limited sexual descriptions, so I'm not passing them on to my nine year old. :) Marked portrays tattoos positively and Wicked Lovely portrays piercing positively, if that matters to you.

Marked YA Vampire Series 2007: 3 out of 5 earthly elements.
Wicked Lovely YA Paranormal Series 2007: 5 out of 5 wood sprites.

Madeline Hunter 'The Sins of Lord Easterbrook'

2009-05-11T08:53:00.003-05:00

Lord Easterbrook is the mysteriously retiring and eccentric older brother of the Easterbrook clan. When he sees Leona in London he is stunned, as he has never forgotten their time together in Macao, seven years ago, where her father had a trading company.

In previous books he is the quintessential powerfully inscrutable character. A wealthy and socially influential marquis who is almost completely dismissive of English society's expectations. He does not go into society except when he feels it's necessary to support his family members, which given his emotional reserve from them, is an insight into a soft heartedness that his brothers are quite surprised by.

In this book we learn Christian suffers from a prescient ability to discern people's emotions, and for some reason he can not read Leona. When he finds she is in London he is determined to have her. What is so interesting about this character is that his pursuit of her combines both sexual temptation AND support of her other interests. In other words, he courts her by being her friend and support, not just trying to fufill her sexually.

This is what I love about Hunter, when she's at her best, her characters and relationships have an extra realism to them that makes them less forgettable than other romance couples, without bursting my 'romance bubble' if you will. It goes without saying that her historical detail and feel for period enhances the books as well.

Historical Romance 2009: 5 out of 5 loose dressing gowns.

Lara Adrian "Midnight Awakening"

2009-05-06T08:49:00.004-05:00

Do you think the hardest part of writing a series is coming up with the titles? Well, maybe not. The third book in the Midnight Breed Series is my favorite so far. I've decided I like my alpha hero's more inscrutably powerful and less woman hating (due to some terrible betrayal of course). Tegan fits the bill. He's cut off emotionally after the love of his young life was brutally abused and returned to him as a minion of a rival vampire.

Elise is similarly tortured after her son was lured into turning rogue by a drug propagated by a bad vampire. Her brother-in-law had to kill her son in front of her when he attempted to attack his own mom. Not fun. She has decided to leave the safety of the enclave she lives in and start killing the human minions of this bad vampire. Unbeknown to the Warriors, Elise has joined their little war against the rogues. Tegan is not amused that this unskilled breed-mate human woman has put herself in so much danger. And then, he's strangely attracted to her too, go figure!

I expected not to like Elise even if I was already caught up in Tegan story, so the surprise for me was how much Elise developed as a character. I liked the references to her attempt to train her body in prep for this undertaking, and her poise in Berlin. It all won me over. When Tegan finally gives in to his love for her, I believed she deserved it.

I've bought into the series, and enjoyed these characters more than the average duck.

Vampire Romance Series 2007: 4.5 of 5 crescent moon marks.

Cheryl Brooks "Warrior:The Cat Star Chronicles Book II"

2009-05-04T09:09:00.008-05:00

I started this book a while ago. Got through the descriptions of Tisana, 'ye good witch who heals' but isn't really accepted by her village. Leo gets dumped on her doorstep as an alien slave of the local lord who is in bad shape. Leo recovers quickly and Tisana discovers his unusual penis which not only has a corona that drips snard, orgasm inducing semen, but is controllable with muscles that allow it to move independent of Leo's body. One little lick of snard and Tisana sees stars and passes out.

I put the book down. Really not intending to re-visit it after their second sexual encounter was so unbelievably mind blowing that the third was down right boring. This for me, is the definition of the difference between romance and porn (complete lack o' sexual tension if I had to nutshell it for you.)

A couple of weeks later, I picked up the book again and got caught up in Tisana's journey to save the local lord's children from being kidnapped. And that sums this book up neatly. It's from Tisana's point of view, which exacerbates the problem but even without this filter, Leo is a complete non-entity. He is a walking sword wielding cock machine.

Unfortunately, even if you like your romance novels with no hero, except as a stud service for your heroine, this book becomes annoying in other ways. Tisana has A LOT of internal dialog working through the 'kidnapped sons' plot over and over.

Page 137, opened at random, and Tisana says, "Of course I knew that was what I was doing...... but it made me wonder about Rafe and Leo .....On the other hand....Or Rafe may have been...."

If you can deal with this, the end of the book just sent my snort meter off the charts. Tisana was raised as 'ye good witch who heals' on a decendant planet of earth with a kinder and gentler medieval setting. She misses her home while they are ten miles away saving the kidnapped boys. Then when the plot is resolved they randomly run into a starship captain, her also Cat Star husband, and three kids and decide to join them and roam the galaxy.

I have some tolerance for modern language in 'historical/fantasy' settings, but really: Page 310. "Bending down she herded three pint-sized versions of her husband toward me. "And these guys are Larry, Moe, and Curly. They've got Zetithian names, of course, but they're as unwieldy as Carkdacund; I had to call them something for short! I wanted to name them Larry, Darryl and Darryl, but Cat wouldn't let me - thought it would be too confusing."

They're watchin Bob Newhart re-runs in space?!

Fantasy Paranormal 2008: 1 of 5 points of the corona!

Book Give-Away Redux

2009-04-29T10:09:00.003-05:00

Finally, some time spent on my blog! Sorry for the long hiatus. I went into overdrive collecting extra credit for my current class after my less than stellar performance on exam number 3. It was more of a logistical trial than anything else.

But I'm back, at least until my panic over exam number 4 sets in, and I've finally re-drawn winners for my inaugural book give-away. I know, you've been crazy with anticipation. I also went back and actually read the terms of the give-away and found I had offered TWO books, not one, to TWO Lucky Winners.

M. and Stewart - yes, it's your lucky day!

Please contact me at megower at gmail dot com and I'll send off your awesome winnings sometime this month. No, kidding, I'll try to get them out right away. :)

Jacquie D'Alessandro "Seduced at Midnight"

2009-04-29T09:19:00.005-05:00

Lady Julianne has spent her life quietly following her family's dictates and now her father says she is to marry a Duke. But when a cat burglar starts robbing and killing ladies of the ton, Julianne does the unexpected and fakes an attack on herself to gain time with Gideon, a bow street runner working on the case.

Gideon is not a profligate lord, he's a serious controlled man who takes pride in his work and who lost his young wife several years ago. It goes without saying that he's gorgeous and inexplicably drawn to Julianne, but he's quite certain she is too good for him.

I loved their initial attraction to each other. Some of the witty dialog is missing from this book as opposed to the other D'Alessandro books, but it's replaced by sexual tension and Julianne plucking up her courage and pursuing Gideon knowing this is her last chance at passion. The middle of the book gets bogged down as Gideon gets more serious about resisting her, and she continues to be a basically timid character dreading her marriage. The plot is a bit lacking. (She says with a straight face) :)

The end is sappy but I was in love with Gideon by this point, so I allowed that and the resolution to the murder mystery to distract me. I only snorted slightly at her burning her hopes and dreams. This is a nice traditionally laid out romance novel. Well written, okay plot, decent sex and sexual tension.

Historical Romance 2009: 4 out of 5 buttons off of breeches.

Charlaine Harris "Dead Until Dark"

2009-04-14T17:09:00.004-05:00

I finally finished the first in the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris. Everyone has liked them so I'm sure this won't be a huge addition to the online opinion pages to say, fun book, quirky characters, nice line walked between small town realism and vampire paranormalism, more mystery than classic romance novel.

But I can't let it go at that when Jessica has been posting notes on such interesting academic opinions about Sookie. I thought about really sitting down and thoroughly reviewing the points the papers were trying to make and composing a thoughtful response, but I'd rather go off half cocked. So much more fun.
This note: "Sookie is no more heroine or protagonist than Bella. She’s a vehicle by which men establish a hierarchy. Female characters are employed as eroticized figures of exchange for male characters." and this:
"Sookie is in [sic] center of action, but not an independent actor. She is aided by many characters..."

(*spoiler alert*)
I have only read the first book and it's clear that the professionals writing these papers were talking about the series and also the television series....but, Sookie is more 'down home' than stupid and in scene number one she heads out to the parking lot with a chain (for god's sake) and saves vampire Bill from some nefarious vampire drainers. Then in the climax to the first book she survives an attack by the mysterious murderer, with help from Bill's blood, yes, but mostly based on her grit and quick thinking, taking his own knife off his belt and stabbing him. This is an eroticized figure of exchange who is not an independent actor?

Now I'll understand if the rest of the series she becomes a tasty mind-reading doormat, but I guess it would surprise me based on the people who keep reading the books and saying they like them so much.

Vampire Paranormal Mystery 2001: 4 of 5 infusions of supercharged blood.

WINNER: Willaful you lucky Dog!

2009-04-09T13:08:00.002-05:00

So I carefully created five identical pieces of paper and put them behind my computer, mixed them up, and picked a winner of the first annual Bodice Ripper Review Book Give-Away. Yes, Willaful will be receiving a loved copy of Like No Other Lover in the mail. Assuming that s/he doesn't mind sending their physical address to me at megower at charter dot net.

Thanks for your participation. Remember, people might really win sometimes at Bodice Ripper Reviews. :)

Lara Adrian "Kiss of Crimson"

2009-04-04T13:30:00.004-05:00

Second book in the Lara Adrian The Midnight Breed books. I like this series so I'm reading the middle books less critically. This heroine is a vet, which I like, she's not a kick-ass heroine but she's not an overly sensitive one either, somewhere in the middle. That worked for me.

The hero is Dante, his viciousness worked less well for me than Lucan's or Nikolai's even, but he's beautiful and devoted to his vet so he's acceptable too.

Fun, mindless, graphically violent, graphically sexual, decent plot. My least favorite so far but an okay way to spend three hours on a plane.

Vampire Paranormal Romance 2007: 3.5 of 5 crimson snorting ravers.

PS. I noticed that I didn't mind reading about the peripheral characters who aren't paired up yet, but I was annoyed by the cameo's of the already paired ones, I guess I fall in with Ana on that one.

Julie Anne Long "The Perils of Pleasure" & A Book GIVEAWAY

2009-03-31T14:23:00.010-05:00

Is it possible I could love this book more than Like No Other Lover (which I forced my entire, non-romance-reading book club to read.) The only bittersweet part of reading this book was knowing that I had used up some of my best superlatives on her other book. Well, that and the back cover, WTH?

Madeleine Greenway is hired to orchestrate Colin Eversea's escape from the gallows. He was to be hung by the neck until dead for murdering someone in a pub who insulted his sister. He is innocent, of course, and once he's free the person who hired her tries to kill her instead of paying her, giving her an incentive to help him prove his innocence and try to recover her fee.

Julie Anne Long can write herself some damn fine characters. Her prose is slightly more restrained in this book than in Like No Other Lover and I would dare to say this plot is just a hint leaner than the other as well. Making this one of the finest books I've ever read.

And since you've probably either read about or guessed my penchant for well recounted infatuation, I'll point out that she is the master in this department as well.

Historical Romance 2008: 5 of 5 'masculine problems.'

Now about the book give-away. Because, as I mentioned above, I forced my book club to read a romance novel, and because I was feeling guilty about it and because I therefore bought a few extra copies of Like No Other Lover since the library's were mostly out.....I'm hereby spreading the joy these books have brought me and offering two (used) copies of Like No Other Lover by Julie Anne Long to two randomly selected commenters on this post. Deadline is midnight, April 7th, a week from today. Go crazy.

And in case you're interested, an excerpt:

"Could anyone have been hurt today?" he faltered. "The explosions..."
"No," she said coolly. "Not from the explosions alone, anyhow. They were low explosives, meant for loud noise and smoke only. ....set off by very strategically placed boys , paid out of my pocket, ... and all for your benefit, Mr. Eversea. I don't suppose we can discount a turned ankle or a fit of apoplexy in the crowd ...but other than that..."
"Or a trampling," Colin added with dark irony. "Can't discount a trampling."
"Your concern for the thousands of people who came out to cheer as you died horribly is touching, Mr. Eversea."
"I don't think they all came to rejoice in the event."
"I wouldn't be too certain," she said tartly.

And this for some perverse reason made him smile. She wasn't any happier to be here with him than he was to be with her. And she was so very ready to volley, and good at it. He'd wanted a conflict; she'd given it to him and he felt as though he'd spent himself in a good tennis set.

"You really don't exert yourself to charm, do you, Mrs. Greenway?" he mused easily.
"Charm, Mr. Eversea, will cost your family an additional ten pounds if and when I return you alive and whole."
"I should like to see the menu of available services , then, if you please."
He turned back to her just in time to see her smile crack like lightning. It was dazzling, genuine, a thing of natural beauty. [sic] Seconds later it occurred to him both that he was gaping and that he should probably breathe again.

Cathy Maxwell "Temptation of a Proper Governess"

2009-03-26T14:12:00.003-05:00

Uninspiring. The first half of this book was just completely un-engaging. The governess heroine agreeing to undo a stranger's pants when he finds her in his bedroom because of an inexplicable attraction after protecting her virtue against all odds and knowing what it's like to be a young woman on her own with shaky prospects. The hero refuses to marry her to save her reputation but will marry her after he finds out she is the illegitimate daughter of his nemesis. And it takes his best friend to point out that this might be a difficulty in their future wedded bliss once she finds out. Yawn.

After the expected break in trust scene, the characters began to act more like humans and a book I was really struggling to read became less painful. Not riveting or exciting, but not horrible either.

Historical Romance 2004: 2 of 5 murdered slutty dancers.

Painting: The Governess by Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin

Baby Animals and Nekked Man

2009-03-25T09:45:00.005-05:00

Thanks to Katiebabs and the NYTimes I now know there are ten rules for blogging and two secrets to gaining traffic.

I took the following from the article, I can be colloquial (thank god) and I need more pictures of cute animals and half nekked men. Cool.

This seems like a good time to admit an embarrassing secret love for the movie 300. And I'm further ashamed to admit it wasn't the half nekked men (oh that helped) but the warriors against all odds that sucked me in. What can I say?

Lara Adrian 'Veil of Midnight'

2009-03-19T12:34:00.005-05:00

As you have probably guessed from my last review, I liked Veil of Midnight, book five in the Midnight Breed Series.

I'm a total sucker for ass-kicking heroine's (see above title picture), although I seem to be more addicted to the movie versions of said, than the literary versions. Something about this genre works so well for me in the visual and works less well for me in the written. Enough about me....

Renata is another orphan who has gotten snared in the world of vampires when a nasty Gen One picks her up for a little human-hunting party. In the process she inadvertently uses her unique telepathic anti-vampire power. So the Gen One decides not to kill her, but to use her as a body guard.

Nikolai is one of the Breed warriors whose been sent to alert the Gen One in Montreal that some one is offing Gen One's lately in the vampire world. He finds out that this particular Gen One is pretty yucky, things go south and he and Renata gang up to clean things up.

With such a stereotypical character framework these two are enjoyable and distinct. Good read.

Paranormal Vampire 2008. 4.5 of 5 glimpses of the future in a small child's eyes.

Lara Adrian 'Kiss of Midnight'

2009-03-17T13:45:00.008-05:00

Let's get the obvious out of the way, this series bears a striking resemblance to JR Ward's big bad vampire brotherhood. If you can't get over that, I'll understand, but for my money, this is an enjoyable well scripted book. I'll admit that I read Veil of Midnight (book 5) first, liked it enough to find the first book, Kiss of Midnight, and now here I am.

Lucan Thorne is one of the first generation of vampire (savages from another world) and human offspring. He killed his own father, than organized the other Gen One's into an army to rid the earth of these original vampires who were wreaking havoc on the human race. Now, a couple of centuries later, he's the head of a cell of warriors who police their own kind for vampires gone rogue, those who've given into blood lust and feed on human's without care.

Gabrielle is a photographer in Boston. She has a strange ability to fend off vampire mind control. She goes to a dance club with some friends and can't understand why no one else thinks the whole thing is a little off. When she witness's a pack of rogues killing a man outside the club, she is well and truly ensnared and it just a matter of whether Lucan or the Rogues will get to her first....

I gave this book some extra credit points for the fact that I liked it after reading another one in the series. In other words, I often have trouble distiguishing among the big alpha males and the perfect warrior companions in these types of series'. So, give the author credit, these characters are at least distinct from one other couple in the warrior cell. :)

SPOILER ALERT: I will say that Lucan's 'I'm so horrified by the idea of loving you.' attitude got a little (a lot) old. And the scene where he finally drinks from her felt kind of yucky, should vampire rape concern us??

Overall, I have been disappointed by a few of the paranormal alpha male brotherhood books out there and this one I liked a lot. It seems like a good idea to read this one first, but at least book 5 was easy to read out of order.

Vampire Romance 2007: 4 of 5 vertically slitted pupils.

Patricia Briggs 'Bone Crossed'

2009-03-10T13:36:00.004-05:00

This is book four in the much touted Mercy Thompson series. Mercy is a coyote shape shifter, her boss was a fae metalworker (who sold her his auto repair garage), she was raised by werewolves, her neighbor is the Alpha for the local werewolf pack and her favorite customer is a vampire.

I'm not sure I can objectively review this book. I've been well and truly sucked into the Mercy Thompson fan club so telling you that the fourth installment in her story is really, really good, probably won't mean a lot. I can say that the plot clips along as usual and Mercy continues to be a ridiculously decent person. I do wonder when she is going to go into full system shut down with all the trouble she keeps digging up, but then I don't want the stories to end any time soon, so....

If by some chance you haven't read any of the Mercy Thompson books, and you like fantasy at all, even remotely, pick up Moon Called. You won't be disappointed.

Spoiler Alert: I like Stephen and thought Mercy was a bit hard on him with the killing innocents thing, but why are all these boys still pining for her as she and Adam solidify things?? And was Amber just a little too convenient of a character?

Fantasy Novel 2009: 4.5 of 5 animated corpses.

Julie Anne Long 'Ways to Be Wicked'

2009-03-03T13:43:00.003-06:00

Finally! The long awaited, "Next To Be Reviewed" book that you've been on tenterhooks waiting for. (Did everyone know that word is tenterhooks and not tenderhooks? Am I the only one whose been hearing and saying that wrong for the last twenty years? Man.)

So Sylvie Lamoureux is a famous ballerina in Paris. But as a child she was separated from her sisters and when she gets a clue that one of them is in London, she puts her career and lover on hold to find her. Sylvie has some setbacks on her way and ends up having to ask for asylum from ne'er-do-well man-about-town Tom Shaughnessy. He agrees to hire her as a bawdy dancer, for which Sylvie is not entirely grateful. Tom is planning a new venture, has collected several wealthy backers and finds himself strangely attracted to Sylvie despite his vow to not touch the dancers who work for him. Sylvie is biding her time until her sister returns from her honeymoon abroad and of course, is strangely attracted to Tom as well.

I liked this book, the sex was a bit slim, but the conflict was believable, and the characters likable. But I did put this book down for almost three months without any difficulty. And so I really can't with concience say I loved it.

Historical Romance 2006: 3.5 out of 5 pas-de-deux.

Shannon Drake 'The Pirate Bride'

2009-03-01T18:31:00.007-06:00

The Pirate Bride, hm. I'm just now thinking about the title of this book and realizing it has nothing to do with the story. Do authors lack control over the titles like they do over the covers?

I digress. Let me first admit that my favorite romance novels in my first blush of youth were ship board romance novels. The heroine stows away as the cabin boy and is discovered by the swashbuckling captain. Even though she's betrayed his trust, he can't stay away from her, and she slowly wins the crew over with her gentle sweet ways. I don't know how silly those books were since I have quite purposely not revisited them. But my sensibilities are a bit different now. So when I saw this book at the library it was with some trepidation and nostalgia that I picked it up.

I'll start with what I liked. The set up that gets these two together. She's captaining a pirate ship, he's captaining a merchantman. She comes upon him and his ship is clearly outclassed. Instead of getting all his men killed he proposes single combat. She agrees (disguised as a male pirate by the way) and she loses, narrowly. She gets to take half his goods, keep him prisoner for ransom and the rest of his men sail away.

He is the one who wiggles his way into the good graces of her crew. He figures out she's a woman pretty quickly, they pursue the dastardly man who killed her family, in the process she and he get washed over board in a storm, and come ashore on a deserted island. Another ship broke up in the storm and trunks and barrels keep washing up on shore making their stay quite comfortable, leaving them time to mess around.

I could have loved this book, but what I didn't like....well, there's a point in the book when you finally realize how ridiculous it is to think that after killing a notorious pirate, she took over his ship as THE CAPTAIN. I've been around sailors my whole life and I'm well aware that I don't know how to sail, much less captain a schooner. But in a romance, you could call that a technicality. What really bugged me was the convoluted escape/rescue plans. I've been reading a lot of Patricia Briggs lately and one of the things she does so well is the plots of rescue, revenge, and staying alive when someone wants to do you harm. The characters think through their actions and assess their risks realistically given the parameters of the fictional world they inhabit. I didn't feel that sort of clarity when it came to the action part of this book, and as a result of these characters making unclear/silly choices, I lost affection for them. Does that make sense?

Overall, good start, great middle, falls apart for me in the end. If you are dieing for a pirate book that doesn't involve old school rape, this might sate your appetite.

Historical Romance 2008: 2 of 5 good hearted whores.

Lynsay Sands 'Single White Vampire'

2009-02-21T23:50:00.005-06:00

I do like books with a sense of humor. And this book is funny. But (there's always a but according to my book club members. "Do you ever like the book?") the humor comes at the expense of the characters full development.

Kate is bossy in a cute little blond way, and Lucern is curmudgeony in a "why should I have to tolerate you hoi poloi" sort of way and they end up in very funny situations together (a few actually went over the top and weren't so funny). But while Lucern was changed-because-of-love in a nice, rather believable way, the humor got in the way of them actually establishing a real rapport.

As an aside, I also thought the lay out of vampirism was (too conveniently) not scary or dark at all. It was clever, and avoided all the issues of, you know, just how sexy would a man be if his body felt like cold marble. But it also lacked the power/darkness/forbidden-other lures that I fall for with the vampire thing.

Well written, cute, funny but in the end not much substance.

Vampire Contemporary Romance 2003: 3.5 of 5 black adder re-runs.

Gennita Low 'Virtually His'

2009-02-19T09:34:00.006-06:00

I love the cover of this book. Really. I never look more than once at the cover of a romance, especially the historicals I normally read. So I'm going to break my 'only post the cover of 3.5's and above' rule.

I'm in a terrible rut of picking up a book, getting 1/3 through it than picking up something else. Thus my recent hiatus from posting. I also attempted to 'organize' my books the other day and make sure everything is appropriately posted on PBS. In the process I realized just how many books I have in my TBR pile. I think it shook my psychological foundations because I've been disoriented and disheveled ever since. Of course, if you asked my husband, I don't know that he would have noticed a change!

Virtually His; interesting concept. Covert operatives who can 'remote view,' and gain intelligence to support other operations. Helen is being trained to remote view in Virtual Reality . Her monitor is the hero in the story and of course, she doesn't know his identity (a construct I enjoyed) . I liked Helen, who wouldn't, she's spunky and the golden (girl) child in a basically man's world. The monitor is suitably intensely attracted to Helen. He's been in the game for years and is surprised by his own worry for her well-being. I bought into the attraction between them.

What I didn't like. Most of the first half of the book (really most of the book) is Helen ruminating on her place in COS, the operation, who has what secret agenda, etc. Either I'm not getting the implications of most of the exposition or the author is setting us up for a LOT of tie up revelations in later books, either way, badly set up for the reader. It felt rather half baked, like maybe the author knew what she was trying to convey but wasn't doing it very well. This is very distracting, to say the least.

Another beef, so to speak. No seriously, this is a very erotic book, but an orgasm every once in a while would have been appreciated. There's a lot of action in the end of the book, and I even went with the 'have to give you a paralyzing pill so you won't find out my identity' construct although it raised the feminist hairs on the back of my neck. But having this poor heroine half-way to orgasm through 90% of the book was cruel and unusual. Geese, give the poor girl a break.

Contemporary Covert Ops Romance 2007: 3 out of 5 checkered flags.

Sick of Me Yet

2009-01-30T13:25:00.002-06:00

I had to post this picture for the sake of truth in advertising. Yes, that's my 'cute' puppy with my camera strap. I call it, "What having a puppy is Really Like."

More Pictures of Cutie Pie

2009-01-29T17:34:00.003-06:00

Oh, it just doesn't get much cuter than that. What a ham. So far her favorite toy is my youngest's toes as they run away screaming. Um, puppies and children, new complications.

Slutting for Hits

2009-01-28T11:00:00.004-06:00

YAY! A PUPPY! My mom said January in Wisconsin wasn't really the best time to get a puppy but what's better than a black lab in the snow. Nyx seems to like to blog, despite the six new toys she got today. She was named after the Greek goddess of night and darkness. Thank you Wikipedia.

Here she is seven weeks old and a day. We are so excited.

Oh, yeah, now that I'm done typing you plop down for a nap you little stinker.

Pamela Clare 'Unlawful Contact'

2009-01-25T22:48:00.004-06:00

This author writes highland romances as well? I'm not usually much for contemporaries, but I do have a soft spot for ex-military protector type hero's (are there any other contemp hero types? No, don't answer that, my TBR pile is daunting enough as it is).

Sophie is a journalist following the story of a convict who had a baby while in the big house. She's cleaned up, gotten paroled to a half-way house and is finally getting visitation rights when she breaks parole and takes off with the baby. Sophie has gotten to know this girl and smells something fishy, so when the girl's also imprisoned older brother contacts her for an interview, she agrees.

Marc Hunter actually knows Sophie, they had an encounter in high school (the one sex scene in the book I totally snorted at) that was good for both of them, and now that's he's desperate about his younger sister, he needs to use Sophie to break out of jail and find her.

The break-out scene/scenes are really amazingly believable, unlike the high school sex scene. The plot bogs down a bit in the second half but it's hard to argue too much, as it gives our couple a bit of time to get to know each other. I especially enjoyed these characters internal voices, which took Marc out of the ridiculously gorgeous, studly, wonderfully caring, self sacrificing, skilled at protection perfect man realm and put him in the ridiculously gorgeous, studly, wonderfully caring, self sacrificing, skilled at protection, perfect man who thinks badly of himself realm. Just enough of a shift for me to keep my romance novel fantasy bubble pretty much intact, thank you very much. And even if I did think, "Are you guys just going to uk like bunnies, or are you ever going to find his sister already?" the ukking was hawt. Okay, except for him bringing her vibrator into hiding with them. Whatever.

With the small exceptions of the aforementioned high school sex and the vibrator, this book was good. Really good. I liked it a lot. I'd say this was a step above most of the 'on the run, have to prove our innocence and solve the crime' contemps that I've read. I'm no expert in the field but there you have it.

Oh, and special bonus points for the bitchin' title and awesome cover.

Contemporary Intrigue Romance 2008: 4.5 of 5 soggy plan b pills.

Julie Anne Long 'The Runaway Duke'

2009-01-20T13:42:00.002-06:00

I believe this was Ms. Long's first book, it's cute, spunky and ultimately forgettable.

Rebecca Tremaine is engaged to be married to a man she doesn't love, Connor Riordan is her friend and groom, and a Duke living in hiding in her stables. He agrees to whisk her away to his aunt while he travels on to America. They encounter highwaymen, gypsies and lots of mud.

There is an annoying use of the big misunderstanding to forward the plot and of course there is the duke as a stable hand ridiculousness. I will say, you can see some of this author's promise in the book, but unless you really are hard up, you can skip this one.

Historical Romance 2004: 2.5 out of 5 gypsy stews.

Surf Lessons Extraordinaire

2009-01-18T13:48:00.005-06:00

On our recent trip to Honolulu we were able to take some surf lessons with Hawaiian Fire Surf School. They were awesome. The company was started by a couple of firefighters/paramedics who have first hand experience with the dangers to beginning surfers. So this group is all about safety, they have specially built long boards, take you to a nearly empty beach with protected beginner waves and give terrific instruction.

Now, I'll admit I did not get on a board myself, but my hubby has done some surfing on his own in California, and my two kids got out there, a five and nine year old. The day we went out the waves were pretty big but the huge benefit of this group of instructors is, they hold the back of your board and pick the wave for you. Husband had never been able to do a long upright ride before, and after about five runs he was up like a pro (well, maybe not a pro, but definite improvement was observable). My nine year old went tandem once or twice, then alone and made it look way too easy. My five year old rode with an instructor the whole time. He paddled them out, picked the perfect waves, got himself and her up and kept his hand wrapped around her upper arm the whole time. She loved it.

So other than putting in a shameless plug for this company(because they deserve it), I'm posting this cause it's related to my favorite story from our vacation and tangentially related to romance. My five year old's instructor was not effusive, or overly friendly, but was very patient with her. She was a little anxious about the whole endeavor. When they came in for a rest break she said to me, "The waves were really big, Mom, but Kevin kept me safe the whole time." Then a few minutes later she says, "I can tell Kevin really liked listening to my stories, Mom. He really liked hearing me talk." They went out again for twenty minutes and as we were loading up in the van to go home, Kevin gave her a big buss on the cheek. I thought she would melt all over the seat.

Talk about porn for women, a man who can keep you safe, help you do something challenging and fun, and who likes to hear you talk. :) Oh, and I'd like to think it doesn't matter, and maybe it doesn't to a five year old, but yeah, he was hot.

Lorraine Heath 'Just Wicked Enough'

2009-01-14T10:38:00.003-06:00

Promising. I recently visited a good friend who dragged me to a used book store where I picked up way too many books by Julie Anne Long and this one by Lorraine Heath. I chose it only because I hadn't ever seen her name before and there were several books by her on the shelf.

Just Wicked Enough is the story of Michael Tremayne who determines that his financial straits require him to auction himself off to the highest bidding wealthy American father offering a daughter to bride. He figures why lie about what the transaction is, his title of Marquis for lots of money. Mr Rose buys Michael for his daughter Kate.

Kate is the less popular sister, bookish, red haired, believes in true love. But she has been torn away from the love of her life, Wesley. She is in such a fog of despair at news of Wesley's recent marriage that she allows her parents to marry her off to the marquis without much resistance.

Michael is stoic, doesn't believe he is worthy of love, is pretty certain he can have a satisfactory marriage without it, and for some reason is willing to do almost anything to please Kate. Kate's character is relatively capricious, so much less likable. I like that the author tries to up-end a lot of typical power structures within romance novels, Kate has control of all the money, Michael is auctioned off for his beauty and title, etc. But with this endeavor comes some more detailed scrutiny of those power structures than might have otherwise been the case. I have a hard time believing in Michael's character, 'Sure I'll do whatever you want since you hold the purse strings and I'm not really resentful of you." I enjoyed reading him, he's totally perfect, who wouldn't enjoy him, but in the end I didn't like Kate that well, and I couldn't help notice how completely fantasy-like Michael was.

Historical Romance 2007: 3.5 of 5 favorite colors.

Patricia Briggs 'Cry Wolf'

2009-01-12T21:53:00.006-06:00

You may have noticed I'm quite into Patricia Briggs lately. A good friend just gave me Robin McKinley's book Chalice and the two authors remind me of each other. Not in the writing style, but in the power of the characters and storylines.

Cry Wolf is probably my least favorite Patricia Briggs book so far. I suppose any book that is related to the Mercy Thompson books but doesn't have her in it, is going to be a difficult sell. Mercy's (relatively) complicated world doesn't draw me, she does.

Anyway, Anna is an Omega wolf. She's been abused by her pack leader in Chicago and when the marrok finds out about it, the alpha of her pack is killed and she's taken back to Montana for safe keeping. Charles, the marrok's son and his enforcer, recognizes her as his mate....

I was annoyed that being an Omega is not explained, and I didn't really buy the fact that no one explained it completely to Anna, much less to me. Way too much of the book's plot relied on the fact that Anna and Charles are very taciturn. Okay, there's taciturn, and then there's taciturn.

I like Patricia Briggs, she writes a good story, I just didn't love either of these characters. There was a lot that could have been avoided if a few of the characters had talked to each other at all, so the plot didn't ring as true to me as it might have otherwise.

Fantasy Werewolf Fiction 2008: 2.5 out of 5 immortal Spanish witches.

Best Book of 2008 - Better Late Than Never

2009-01-09T22:34:00.007-06:00

I love this book. Love it, like I love chocolate Lindt balls. And I love chocolate Lindt balls almost more than I love my offspring. I'm not kidding around here people. True love is no laughing matter. It's what's between me and this book.

If I were to entertain the idea that this book had faults, I might be convinced to mention it's loquaciousness. But I prefer to think of it as a verve for life, not a slight habit of repeating itself. Oh, sure you might try to argue that the book could have been trimmed by a suitor or two, but you'd only be showing your true jealous colors.

Cynthia is on a suddenly desperate husband hunt. Miles had been transfixed then repulsed by Cynthia upon seeing her in London. It's never nice to overhear someone referring to you as the 'dour second son.' A few weeks later, his sister invites her to their estate for a country house party.

I will admit, on occasion, the author dances dangerously close to purple prose (I can not keep turgid images out of my mind when I read or use that phrase, yuk, yuk, yuk.) I loved Miles, his slow dissection of Cynthia, her motives, her strength, her inherent goodness underneath this shallow but real exterior. I loved that they give each other up, because the only thing better than reliving infatuation is empathizing with someone else's impossible love. While knowing of course that they get together in the end. Oh, sorry for the spoiler.

I love clever writing like this: "They both watched Lord Milthorpe cast the china cup a wistful glance, as if he knew he was bound to crush it eventually and was issuing a silent advance apology." And finally I loved Cynthia, she's smart, she's insiteful about people and she is transformed through the story into a better person, and not only because Miles loves her (although it helps, this is a romance novel after all).

Best Historical Romance 2008: 5.5 of 5 statuary penile projectiles.

Julie Anne Long Like No Other Lover