Book Utopia

Sexual Persuasion by Maryn Sinclair

2012-02-01T23:24:00.000-08:00

TITLE: Sexual Persuasion
AUTHOR: Maryn Sinclair
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 62k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotic romance
COST: $6.99

When Charlotte Stone first spotted Alex Andros, she didn’t know he was the lawyer for one of the most dangerous men in Boston or rumored to be his lover. She only knew the reaction she had to him – instant, chemical, dangerous. She’s prepared to take her friend’s advice and avoid him, but when her ex corners outside of the party, Alex is the one who rides in for the rescue. He wants her to come to her own conclusion about him, outside of what she’d heard, but Charlotte is reluctant, at least until her ex decides to try blackmailing her into coming back to him…

I had such high expectations for this book after the first sizzling chapter. But this is one example of things going steadily downhill.

Charlotte owns an upscale furnishing store and attends an auction with hopes of winning some art work to sell. There, she runs into her ex, a man who did various BDSM things to her while she slept the last night they were together. She tries to get away, but ends up getting rescued by the gorgeous stranger who’d been watching her since her arrival. His name is Alex Andros, and he’s the attorney to one of Boston’s top racketeers. He’s also rumored to be the man’s lover, but Charlotte finds it very hard to believe he’s gay after the way he looks at her. She brushes him off, but when her friend has to leave her to get a ride home by herself, Alex comes to the rescue again. They spend a pleasant evening having drinks, only to have Charlotte come face to face with her ex again once Alex drops her off. Charlotte barely escapes being raped, and calls Alex for help. Drawn to Charlotte already, Alex knows he has to do whatever he can to get the ex off her back.

The sexual tension in this story crackles from the very start. My first reaction was that it was too intense too soon, and I almost gave up on it, but I got too sucked in by Alex’s charisma and the chemistry between the pair to stop. I read avidly, drinking it all in even through the near-rape. It all started to fall apart for me, however, once Alex and Charlotte consummated their attraction. The sex scenes didn’t work for me nearly as well as the tension and plottier scenes, and gradually, my interest dwindled. I grew tired of hearing just how terrific Charlotte’s breasts are (they’re very large, very natural, and apparently worshiped by all men who see them), as well as the over the top dialogue and certain terminology (the author has a propensity for using the word “hole” too much during sex scenes). It would ebb when they’d return to their tense, non-sexual scenes, but not for long.

It’s also not helped at all that the big conflict in this is Alex’s absolute refusal to share anything personal about himself. Well, that’s not entirely true. I can understand that kind of reaction if what he’s refusing to share is so truly awful. But he’s ultimately hiding an affair that he had in college with a man. He already neither confirms nor denies his bisexuality to the public or Charlotte. I just never understood why it was such a big deal that this one relationship remain such a mystery except to create artificial drama.

This spiral downwards accelerates at the end, with an added twist (that wasn’t really a twist) that came out of nowhere to give Charlotte something to misunderstand and both of them something to hash out. It turned the entire last scene into something completely unbelievable, and there, the chemistry that had saved much of the story for me already, was gone completely. The last few paragraphs are unexpectedly abrupt and crass considering what’s been going on (I mean, really, she calls it making love to Alex’s face but then turns around and in the big romantic moment tells her employees she’s going upstairs to fuck?!? Um, no.), and I’m left with a sour taste in my mouth. It’s such a shame, too, because there was such genuine heat and allure in the first third of the book. It just fizzled when they actually came together.

Readability	7/10 – I had a much easier time with the tension than the sex scenes or later dialogue
Hero	6/10 – The longer it took for him to discuss what happened, the less I liked him
Heroine	5/10 – Other than her physical attributes, I never understood what the appeal was
Entertainment value	5/10 – The tension that crackled at the beginning wasn’t followed through in the sex scenes or overplayed ending
World building	6/10 – More was needed to give the villain any kind of depth or believe Alex’s reputation
TOTAL:	29/50

My first bust

2012-01-30T20:49:00.001-08:00

So one of my resolutions for this year, in order to take some of the pressure off me, was that I wouldn't waste time on reviews I didn't want to write. That means giving up on books I know from the start aren't going to work for me, as well as giving myself permission to skip writing reviews on books that just aren't worth the effort. Because I can't do much of anything without giving myself some guidelines, I decided I'd have a two-book limit for each of my three review days. If I finished both and didn't want to review, that was it.

Today is the first time that's happened.

I read two, The Professor's Assistant and Anna Doubles Down. The first is an m/m steampunk from Liquid Silver that squicked me out in the first chapter with all the references to how young one of the heroes was, and because the writing just wasn't good enough to counter that, I finished it with a sick feeling in my stomach. The second is a time travel menage from Siren that didn't sound as bad as the erotic titles from Siren usually do. The excerpt didn't completely suck, either. Well, I was wrong there. Really amateurish writing and editorial inconsistencies were just the start there.

So there isn't any full-blown review today except for those nibbles. Hopefully, this doesn't happen too often, but when it does, this is what you can expect.

Ghosts of Boyfriends Past by Vivi Andrews

2012-01-27T23:32:00.000-08:00

TITLE: Ghosts of Boyfriends Past
AUTHOR: Vivi Andrews
PUBLISHER: Samhain
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 41k)
GENRE: Paranormal romance
COST: $4.50

Witch Biz Marks is cursed. Every Valentine’s Day for the past three years, the man she was seeing died. Once she figured out what was going on, she tried swearing off men, but so far nothing has worked. So when reporter Mark Ellison shows up at her store, trying to ferret out the true story behind the so-called Black Widow of Parish Island, her immediate attraction to him sends off all kind of warning signals. She tries to push him away, but the more she pushes, the more intrigued Mark gets. Not even discovering that the ghosts of her three so-called victims live with her is enough to throw him off…

Humorous books don’t have to be laugh out loud funny to work. Sometimes, it’s enough to be charmed by the prose and turn every page with a smile on your face. That’s certainly the case for this short novel.

When her grandmother died, leaving her alone, Biz did the unthinkable. She cast a spell looking for love for herself. That was the one big no-no she was taught, and as a result, the spell turned into a curse. For the past three years, the man she was seeing has died on Valentine’s Day, leaving her terrified to get involved again. It’s also left her with three ghosts, sharing the old house that also serves as her charm store. The one thing she wants to avoid is someone else dying, so when reporter Mark Ellison shows up in her shop asking questions, her walls go up. He’s gorgeous, and she’s immediately attracted. It’s got warning bells all over it. She tries to push him away, but Mark is convinced there’s a story behind the three deaths. He’s decided he’s not going anywhere.

What I love most about this author’s work is the crispness of her prose. It’s quippy without being annoying, bantery in all the right places, and moves along at a brisk enough pace to make the book seem shorter than it actually is. While I didn’t laugh out loud during it, I did go through it with a smile and a certain joy. It’s hard not to enjoy these two characters interacting with each other, or the multitude of colorful secondary characters that pepper the cast. Everyone has a frothiness to them, even the hard-edged Gillian, Biz’s best friend.

The two leads are suitably appealing. Mark is charming and determined, while Biz has an everywoman feel about her that would spark something in most female readers. I did wonder what Mark saw in Biz specifically, whether his reactions were genuine or a product of the curse, but that’s a symptom of the story rather than a flaw in the characterization. As fun as Biz can be, too, her back and forth attitude with Mark and how she’s going to deal with him grew old halfway through the book. The story is already very quickly paced. Toss in her constantly changing feelings, and I had a sense of whiplash by the end.

Still, with such sparkling prose and light mood, this rates higher than a lot of other holiday stories I’ve read. Not all of her backlist appeals to me, but the more I read by her, the more likely I am to give them a go anyway.

Readability	8/10 – Crisp humor and brisk pacing
Hero	7/10 – Charming, but I’m never really sure just what his attraction was to her
Heroine	7/10 – Loved her humor about the whole thing, but the back and forth of her attitude toward Mark got old
Entertainment value	7/10 – It wasn’t as laugh out loud funny as I’d expected, but I did go through it with a smile on my face
World building	8/10 – The world of Parish came to sparkling life, though I would’ve liked a little bit more about the magical side of things
TOTAL:	37/50

Always a Princess by Alice Gaines

2012-01-25T23:16:00.000-08:00

TITLE: Always a Princess
AUTHOR: Alice Gaines
PUBLISHER: Carina
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 83k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $5.39

When Philip Rosemont, Viscount Wesley, spots the princess at a ball, he knows immediately she’s a fake. The question is, why is she pretending to be an Eastern European noblewoman and how quickly can he get her to himself? He doesn’t expect to find her trying to pilfer their hostess’s jewels, especially since he’s just taken it for himself, but by the time she shows up at his home the following day with the intent of blackmailing him to keep his secret, he’s already decided they’d make a fabulous team, both in thievery and elsewhere…

I had a splendid experience with a book I read by this author last year, and this second effort proved just as entertaining.

The delight starts early and swiftly. We open at a ball, where Philip, the Viscount Wesley, has spotted a woman who is clearly an imposter, pretending to be a princess from a small Eastern European country none of the simpering men surrounding her have even heard of. Philip has, however, and much to the woman’s chagrin, he’s intimately familiar with it. He quickly discovers that she’s at the party for the same reason he is – to steal jewels from their hostess. Where his motivation is sheer boredom, Eve – the imposter princess – is doing it in retaliation after having lost her position as governess when her employer’s son had her take the fall for a cameo he stole from his mother. Eve’s rationale is that since she’s already been accused of thievery, she might as well do it. So far, her plan has worked well. But then she met a man who’d actually been to the country in question, and now everything is in disarray. In an attempt to keep control of the situation, she decides to blackmail him, to force him to pay her to keep his secret that he’s really the Orchid Thief. Philip laughs at the offer. His reputation is the last thing he worries about. But he’s got a counter offer in mind, one that poses them as partners rather than adversaries.

I was laughing at this wonderful farce almost from the start. Philip is roguish and intelligent, with just enough determined swagger to keep him edgy and the right balance of manners to keep him from going over the top. His dialogue, no matter who he’s addresses, comes fast and furious, leaving no room for skimming for fear of missing something he’s said. He typifies the farcical nature of the entire story, and honestly, what a breath of fresh air it was. There isn’t nearly enough farce in romantic fiction, probably because it’s hard to do well. This succeeds. Very, very well.

Is it the most original story? Well, no, but that doesn’t matter when the dialogue and hero sparkle as much as they do. The set-up, taken outside of the context of farce, would be hard to tolerate, because a reader would be left with abundant questions on how so much could get handwaved away (Eve’s acceptance into the ton as nobility before the Rosemonts vouch for her, for one). But farce demands a stretch of that acceptance, and as long as you’re prepared to go that far, it works anyway. The chemistry between the two leaps off the page, mostly as a result of Philip, and the sex when it comes is scorching.

The complaints I have are few. First of all, Eve isn’t quite as entertaining as Philip, but then again, he tends to get the best lines so it’s easy to get eclipsed by that. I did find her ultimate secret a tad banal considering the nature of the story, and it veered dangerously close to more dramatic historical romance as a result. It felt out of place in a story that was so outrageous already. There’s also a point just over halfway through when Philip lost his shine and turned into one of the simpering men who’d been fawning over Eve at the start. It’s just when he’s begun to realize the depths of his feelings for her, and his behavior becomes uncomfortable to witness. It doesn’t last, thank goodness. If it had, it might have been hard to finish.

But what a joy it is to find a book that has me laughing and smiling as much as this one did. While humor can be quite subjective, especially in written form, I think it’s safe to say that this author’s style of it definitely works for me.

Readability	9/10 – Far-fetched, but funny with witty banter you can’t take your eyes off
Hero	9/10 – Except for a brief period where he turned into one of the simpering fools from the beginning, delightfully roguish and witty
Heroine	7/10 – Not as consistent as the hero, and her secret is a little banal in light of the farcical nature of the story
Entertainment value	8/10 – Delightful and funny, as long as you accept it as farce
World building	7/10 – Stretches credibility, but then again, that tends to be one of the requirements in farce
TOTAL:	40/50

And Hell Itself Breathes Out by A.R. Moler

2012-01-23T23:19:00.000-08:00

TITLE: And Hell Itself Breathes Out
AUTHOR: A.R. Moler
PUBLISHER: Torquere
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 74k)
GENRE: Gay paranormal erotic romance
COST: $6.99

In a bid to gain more power, two young men in an exclusive fraternity begin performing blood rituals, leading to deaths that remain unsolved by DC police and the SIS. Two authority figures, Agent John Benchley and Detective Evan Garrett, are working the cases independently until they realize they can get further working together. Then, their working relationship turns into something more…

I’m always excited about finding books that try to do more than the usual romance, but sometimes, they end up biting off more than they can chew.

In a series of short scenes, we’re introduced to a wide range of characters – the power-hungry, greedy fraternity brothers; agents in the SIS, a special branch of the federal government that deals with the odd and the occult; detectives in the DCPD. It gradually narrows down to the primary players, Agent John Benchley and Detective Evan Garrett. When they start sharing notes, things start coming together, but bodies are still stacking up.

The problem with this novel is that it can’t decide what it wants to be, and as a result, never really succeeds at any of them. There’s the paranormal angle, with the ritualistic murders; the police procedural angle, with the careful deconstruction of the cases; the romance, with the slow, steady relationship between John and Evan. It tries, it really does, but the prose isn’t nearly sophisticated enough to pull it off. The scenes are too short and static to build any sort emotional connection, and the constant headhopping and frequent editorial errors (missing prepositions, missing articles, etc.) only added to that disconnect.

Each does have strengths, though. Careful detail is given to the procedural aspect, sometimes too much. The romance sets itself apart from the norm with the gradual build-up. It was refreshing to have two strong leads not immediately jump into bed together if it wasn’t appropriate. The bloody paranormal angle is effectively gruesome (though more sensitive readers might want to be wary). I just wish it had been put together more smoothly, with a better balance so that I could genuinely care. I’ve had better luck with other stories by this author, so I know it can work. Just not in this one.

Readability	5/10 – Headhopping, proofing errors, and short jerky scenes did nothing to create any kind of flow
Hero #1	5/10 – Nice and intelligent, but it took too long for him to form any kind of personality
Hero #2	6/10 – More interesting than John, but suffers from the same lack of focus for too long
Entertainment value	3/10 – The story’s lack of focus prevented any one angle from succeeding satisfactorily
World building	7/10 – The procedural aspects were well thought if a tad boring
TOTAL:	26/50

Reckless in Moonlight by Cara Bristol

2012-01-20T22:03:00.000-08:00

TITLE: Reckless in Moonlight
AUTHOR: Cara Bristol
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 44k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotic romance
COST: $5.99

Dana Markus is in the middle of a divorce. Her husband left her for a woman barely older than their daughter, and now she finds herself wondering about her own desirability at the age of forty-five. During an evening skinnydip in her pool, she fantasizes about her neighbor’s twenty-eight-year-old son, only to have him show up in the hot, living flesh only moments later. Attraction flares from the start, but Dana isn’t looking for a relationship, and especially not one with a younger man. But their desire for each other is combustible. Is it so wrong to want some of that passion for herself for a change?

I have to admit, I’ve been curious about this author. I hadn’t read anything by her before now, because the titles I’d seen were domestic discipline in nature, and while I understand it’s purely fantasy and escapism, that’s a no-go area for me, no matter what. So when I saw this older woman/younger man story come up, I decided to take the plunge and try her. I learned something very important. Her erotic style and sense of humor don’t mesh with what I enjoy.

It’s a straightforward contemporary. Dana is forty-five and in the throes of a divorce. Her husband cheated on her and left her for a woman only two years older than their daughter, and Dana is feeling less than desirable. She fantasizes about the neighbor’s hot son, a twenty-eight year-old doctor with a body like Adonis. The night they actually get to meet face to face – in her backyard after she’s been skinnydipping – that fantasy becomes reality. Lon has been lusting after his parents’ hot neighbor for months, and now that he has got a taste of her, he wants to have a go at dating. She’s a little hung up on the age difference, but he quickly takes care of that. With lots and lots of sex.

Buying from LI is a lot like buying from EC 90% of the time. The focus tends to be on the sex in the romances, which isn’t always a bad thing. It only gets in the way when the erotic style doesn’t work for me, and unfortunately, that was the case here. Much of it has to do with terminology, and that’s a preferential thing that varies from reader to reader. What bothered me – like having cocks and pussies referred to as “weeping” – might not bother others. I did debate early on if I should keep going once I realized I was going to have issues with it, but because it’s such a recent release and because I’ve been so curious about this author for so long, I stuck it out.

It wasn’t just the erotic style that didn’t work for me. Attempts to lighten the mood with jokes and banter fell flat as well. Humor is so subjective, though. Lines like, “I plan for you and my cock to get to be best friends,” are obviously meant to be funny (within the context of the story), but just made me roll my eyes and wonder if I was reading about teenagers instead of adults. I ended up feeling rather indifferent about the whole experience, from the characters to the romance to the sex. I don’t regret buying this book, though, because my curiosity has finally been satisfied.

Readability	6/10 – Purely based on the author’s humor and erotic scenes not working for me
Hero	4/10 – So much was spent on the sex there was too little time to learn what he might actually be like when he wasn’t
Heroine	5/10 – At least she didn’t whine about the age difference for half the book
Entertainment value	3/10 – I learned the author’s erotic style and sense of humor does not mesh with what I enjoy
World building	5/10 – Everything felt skimmed over in favor of all the sex
TOTAL:	23/50

To Die For by Caitlyn Willows

2012-01-19T12:42:00.000-08:00

TITLE: To Die For
AUTHOR: Caitlyn Willows
PUBLISHER: Amber Quill
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 42k)
GENRE: Contemporary suspense erotic romance
COST: $7.00

Once a victim of domestic abuse, Zoe has moved on with her life, doing her best to rebuild with the man responsible for the damage behind bars. But now he’s out, and in a chance encounter, lets her know he’s coming after her. When Detective Frank Ludwig finds out, he swears to protect her. He’s been in love with her for six months, and damned if he’s going to let anybody hurt Zoe, even if she’s more than capable of taking care of herself…

Though this romantic suspense had a lot of potential in it, I finished it feeling like it just never quite hit the mark.

It starts off at an emotional high, as Zoe is coming off her shift where she has just saved a cop’s life by talking to him and keeping him engaged. However, in the same incident, she was also threatened. Her abusive ex-boyfriend was the criminal in question, and when he heard her voice, exploded with anger, emotions that have built since he was arrested and convicted after she’d turned him in. She arrives at a Denny’s, trying to figure out what she’s going to do next, and is dismayed to see a group of cops she works with there already. They applaud her as a hero, but when the man she’s been lusting over, Frank Ludwig, decides to join her, the whole story comes out. Frank has been in love with Zoe for months. When he hears about the danger, he refuses to see her slip through the cracks, taking her personal safety into his own hands while the department does what they can to track down her ex. Thus begins an explosive few days, as the threats escalate and the pair come to grips with their mutual attraction.

In spite of the confusing opening pages, enough becomes clear as the story progresses and Zoe opens up to Frank a little. I was intrigued about where it was going. Zoe is sympathetic and relatable to many women, insecure, plus-sized, and I liked her, even though she felt scattered. I disregarded the latter because it felt organic to her situation. I was meeting her in the middle of an emotional crisis. Of course, she’d be scattered. But what was scattered at the start became bouncing around from one extreme to another as the story progressed. It got a little tedious.

Frank proved the same. I liked him from the start, his fierce defense of Zoe, his determination to do the right thing. I was rolling onto loving him until the first time he really put his foot in his mouth. He has a tendency to stop thinking once their relationship turns sexual, and blurts out the first thing he thinks of, which is usually very much the wrong thing to say in the moment. This propensity gets worse as the story goes on, mostly because it felt like that was the only way to create any internal conflict between these two. They yo-yo like this throughout the entire book, a jerky effect that is mirrored by the stop and go nature of the suspense angle. It makes it easy to put down, even though I wanted to pick it up again moments later.

Suspense thrives on building tension, and while there is danger throughout this book, when the lulls come, the tension drops away almost entirely rather than ebb enough to relax the reader into getting sucked even harder into the next swell. I suspect it worked against me because of the extended nature of the romantic scenes within those lulls. I needed that momentum in the romance, but they went on too long for me, even as hot as these two were together.

In the end, the story was enjoyable enough for me not to regret reading it, but I ultimately feel like maybe with some tighter editing, it could have been really great.

Readability	7/10 – Minor typos and some terminology that usually turns me off, but otherwise swift and easy
Hero	6/10 – His reactions felt realistic in hindsight, but his propensity for stepping in it wore thin
Heroine	6/10 – Liked that she knew how to take care of herself, but she felt a little all over the place
Entertainment value	6/10 – The pacing was rather jerky, making it easy to put down when I hit lulls
World building	7/10 – The emotional reality of Zoe’s past was well-done, but I kept feeling like I was missing something in regards to the suspense portion
TOTAL:	32/50

Next review on Thursday

2012-01-17T23:49:00.000-08:00

As I'm against SOPA and PIPA, I'm logging off on Wednesday. I will post my review on Thursday instead.

From Afar by Ava March

2012-01-16T23:54:00.000-08:00

TITLE: From Afar
AUTHOR: Ava March
PUBLISHER: Samhain
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 73k)
GENRE: Gay historical paranormal erotic romance
COST: $3.50

For three years, Raphael has admired Aleric from afar, but one night, when Aleric gets attacked by thieves, Raphael finds himself at Aleric’s side. A bad injury has Aleric hovering on the brink of death. Incapable of imagining a world without Aleric in it, Raphael does the unthinkable. He turns him. Now he just has to hope Aleric doesn’t hate him for it, or that London’s vampire clan leader will allow either of them to survive his transgression…

I like good erotic scenes as much as the next gal, but if it’s trying to be sold as a romance, too, I need a little bit more than that. This novella is a perfect example of just not enough.

The eroticism begins almost immediately, with vampire Raphael perched in his favorite tree, watching the object of his lust and affection with a prostitute. He jerks off, then proceeds to follow Aleric home. When Aleric is jumped by thieves, Raphael intervenes to help. His aid comes too late, however, and Aleric is mortally wounded. Raphael reacts to the moment and proceeds to turn him.

To be honest, not a whole lot happens after that, except sex, a little bit of tension regarding the head of the London vampire clan, and then some more sex. So while the author’s prose affords satisfying tension within the erotic scenes, when it comes to anything else, well…there’s just not much there. Both male leads suffer from stunted characterization. They’re not unlikeable. They’re just very one-note. Raphael is consumed with his crush on Aleric, while Aleric spends too much time floundering from his vampire adolescence to have any real understanding of what he might be like. Without being able to connect to them emotionally, I can’t connect to the romance, no matter how sizzling their sex scenes might get.

As impressed as I was with the facility of slipping into the author’s human historical world, I was equally disappointed by the paranormal aspect. We get some answers about how the vampires work in her vision, but not many, and in a market where every author tends to pick and choose which mythos to use, that’s a detriment. It’s understandable why more aren’t forthcoming. Raphael is an outsider to the vampire world, and his one real source of information is a potentially deadly one to him. But choosing to gloss over real answers because of a protagonist’s lack of insight felt like a copout. It’s too easy, and left me ultimately dissatisfied.

Overall, this was an easy, hot read, but if you’re looking for any type of depth of real romance, you’re not likely to find it here.

Readability	8/10 – Smooth and easy, with just a hint of being too terse
Hero #1	6/10 – His loneliness is appealing, but so much of his characterization is zeroed in on his feelings for Aleric that he doesn’t really get to escape that for more
Hero #2	5/10 – Nice enough for the erotic sections, but not interesting enough to anchor the romance
Entertainment value	6/10 – Reading purely for the eroticism, it works, but the romance and the paranormal world-building are too shallow to rate this higher
World building	7/10 – The human world is painted well enough, but Raphael’s outsider status seems like an easy excuse to not bother answering valid questions about the vampire world
TOTAL:	32/50

Fractured by Sandra Sookoo

2012-01-13T23:18:00.001-08:00

TITLE: Fractured
AUTHOR: Sandra Sookoo
PUBLISHER: Liquid Silver Books
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 35k)
GENRE: Futuristic sci-fi erotic romance
COST: $5.25

Major Rick Keenan is on his way back to Earth from his very last mission before getting stuck in a desk job when his shuttle is trapped by a tractor beam on one of Saturn’s moons. When one of his crewmen is captured while in search of crystals they need, he sets off on a rescue, only to discover he’s been taking prisoner to be food by an alien female who needs his blood to survive. Rick agrees to trade places with his crewman, in hopes that he can broker some kind of relationship between their species, but he quickly finds out it might not go as he intends…

My son is in love with Once Upon a Time, which means I’ve been exposed to a lot of fairytales recently. When I saw this was a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, I decided to give it a go. Unfortunately, while the premise is interesting, the characters don’t live up to their potential.

All of his life, Rick has wanted to explore the stars and meet alien races. With the space program about to be dismantled, however, he’s on his very last mission. At least until he and his shuttle are trapped on one of Saturn’s moons. One of his crew goes out in search of items they need to take off again, but when he calls in a distress signal, Rick does what he has to and goes off to rescue him. He finds him prisoner of an alien female, one with fangs and bloodthirst, who needs the man for food. Rick barters a trade – his life for his crewman’s – and ends up in the unique position to try and find some sort of peace between humans and this strange alien. Marin hates humans, since they’re responsible for the Cleansing and the scattering of her species, but Rick seems different. Her lonely existence is eating her up, and though she won’t admit it, she is desperate for a change. Rick seems like the perfect opportunity for that.

The fact that the fairy tale has been reversed, with the heroine as the Beast, was a great starting point for this story, but for me, it never really got off the ground. Part of it came with some early proofing mistakes (She'd been taught that only members of her own race could make her feels thus, for instance) that jerked me out of the reading experience. It’s a peeve, it really is, but I wanted to like this so much that I stuck with it. Though the rest of the prose is certainly competent enough, the spark I needed from either one of the two leads never managed to materialize. Marin had the potential to be interesting, but her erratic moods wore on me quickly. Rick, on the other hand, bored me. His reactions throughout the beginning and most of his imprisonment were rational and realistic, but that was about it. I never really got what was so special about him, other than being told Marin was attracted to him.

Other awkward aspects that hindered the reading experience included a couple flashbacks that were meant to give some history about Rick, but jolted me out of the moment with frantic searches back in the story to determine what the year header meant in terms of the continuity. It was clumsy, and with the passages so short, felt pointless. I couldn’t help but wonder if the information they were meant to convey couldn’t have been passed along in some other way. An epilogue that happens when there isn’t really a resolution to the story yet (except for declarations) felt even odder, especially since it was divided into two sections, one taking place three months later. The first half of it was actually the real resolution of the story, which for me means it should be part of the story, not part of the epilogue. The epilogue would’ve had much more of an impact had it just been contained to the three months later segment.

One bright spot was the care taken in creating Marin’s species. I could see her clearly, and felt like I understood how her kind had reached the point it had. It would’ve been nice to see the same care taken with the rest of the world-building, but with so much of the story contained to the confinement, this isn’t so much a flaw as it is an annoyance.

I can’t recommend this book except to fans of the author or those who might fare better than I did with the two leads.

Readability	7/10 – Early errors in proofreading almost made me stop, though the rest of the prose is fairly innocuous
Hero	5/10 – Realistic reactions, though he didn’t charm me at all
Heroine	5/10 – Liked the reverse on the Beast angle, but she otherwise felt flat
Entertainment value	3/10 – Though I liked the premise and twist on the fairy tale, I never felt any chemistry between the two which made the story fall flat
World building	7/10 – Some good details, though the concentration on her as an alien species ends up meaning less time on other aspects
TOTAL:	27/50

Past Her Time by Melissa Jarvis

2012-01-11T23:32:00.000-08:00

TITLE: Past Her Time
AUTHOR: Melissa Jarvis
PUBLISHER: Siren-Bookstrand
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 81k)
GENRE: Time travel romance
COST: $5.50

As an agent for the Lineage, Alex’s job is to correct anomalies in the timeline without interfering with anything else. Being placed in 1793 Revolutionary France isn’t her favorite assignment, though. She hates the stuffiness, and the etiquette, and having to play the simpering female, but a job is a job…at least until she runs into an Englishman with an unknown connection to the man she’s supposed to save from the guillotine…

I’ll be honest. Even though I’ve had this book since its release last summer, I’ve been reluctant to try it due to its publisher. That was a trifle unfair. Though it might look like it on the surface, Siren does actually publish more than the outrageous ménages I associate with them. This certainly could’ve been published by any number of other e-pubs just as easily.

It’s a time travel romance about Alex, a woman from the 21^st century who works for an agency called the Lineage. Her job is to correct anomalies in the timeline without interfering in local events beyond what she’s instructed to. Her latest has her in Revolutionary France where her mission is to prevent a man named Fontaine from getting executed before his time. In a chance encounter, she meets Englishman Gabriel Huntington and quickly learns that he’s an associate of Fontaine’s. Since he has appeared nowhere in her brief, she keeps tabs on him, hoping to use that connection to get to Fontaine. It works too well. She soon learns Gabriel also helps to rescue people from the guillotine, which casts him in an entirely different light than she was expecting. For his part, Alex – or Alexandra, as he knows her – is different than any other woman he’s ever met, able to see through his pretenses, keeping him on his toes. Their chemistry sparks early on, but the rules of her assignment are clear. No involvement. She’s just having problems actually obeying them.

I do love a good time travel, and combined with how I was feeling guilty about shuttling this to my TBR for so long just because of its publisher, I was determined to stick this one out. It wasn’t easy in the beginning. The first chapter was good – tense, action-driven, sympathetic characters. But the first bit of exposition that occurred on Alex’s purpose, with her interaction with her partner Banderan, threw me into a tailspin. She specifically says this is their fourth assignment for the Lineage. Her partner considers her a rookie still. Yet, very soon after (in the same scene), there are allusions to a time when she broke cover and her claim it was one of only a few, the large number of broken hearts Banderan has left behind, as well as blatantly saying she’d been working with him for years. I couldn’t sort that out in my head. They’d had four assignments, and worked together for years? It could only be an editorial inconsistency, I thought, and debated giving up then. If there was such a blatant mistake that early on, it didn’t bode well for the book.

However, I decided to persevere. Eventually, I decided an assignment was a blanket term meant to apply to being placed in a specific time period, and that each anomaly they corrected within it was something else entirely. That was the only way to justify the inconsistency. That rationalization seemed to fit with what I was reading, and soon, I could let go my mistrust of the book to slip into the story.

The fact that it was action-packed helped. It wasn’t always clean – there were time and scene shifts within chapters that felt inorganic and jumpy – but it always moved the story forward. I also liked the characters enough to see it through. Neither one was anywhere near as smart as they thought they were – a couple times Alex made such stupid mistakes, it was hard to believe she’d been an agent for years – but they really did have some chemistry, and I was intensely curious about how it would get resolved.

The action and chemistry compensated for a lot of the other shortcomings. In addition to the things I mentioned earlier, the time travel isn’t handled very cleanly, and I had a lot of questions about how some things worked. This book is labeled as book 1, so I imagine a second will be out at some point that might do a better job at explaining. About Banderan, perhaps? I don’t know. Maybe. I’ll decide if I see its release whether or not it’s worth it to continue. Right now, I’m on the fence.

Readability	8/10 – Good detail and flow without being overbearing, though the lack of clarity on assignments near the beginning had me wary of editorial issues for far too long
Hero	7/10 – I liked him, but I thought his constant masks weren’t differentiated enough to be as stark as the heroine claimed
Heroine	7/10 – Not nearly as smart as she thinks she is, but still likeable for the most part
Entertainment value	7/10 – Though it took me a while to get past my misgiving at the start, there was enough action and chemistry to keep me involved for the duration
World building	7/10 – The historical detail was good – if a little coy at times – but the time travel element wasn’t as clear as it should have been
TOTAL:	36/50

In the Darkness by Charles Edward

2012-01-09T23:23:00.000-08:00

TITLE: In the Darkness
AUTHOR: Charles Edward
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 73k)
GENRE: Gay historical fantasy erotic romance
COST: $7.99

Gareth is a monster. That’s what he’s always been told. He needs to hide away at night, never be seen. But his curiosity about the outside world drives him to watch, and in watching, he falls in love with a beautiful young man named Evin. Evin is the sexual toy to a powerful young man in his village, and when Gareth sees him getting hurt, Gareth breaks all his rules and interferes. In the days after Evin sees him, refusing to acknowledge him as a monster, the two become fast friends…then more…

This book is just further proof that I’ll finish a mediocre read if it targets one of my bulletproof kinks. In this case, it’s the Beast archetype.

Gareth is that Beast. Forced to spend his days in his parents’ cellar, he is only allowed out at night to do the chores. His parents have warned him his entire life that if he gets seen, he’ll be killed as a monster. The reason for that? He’s green and very large and strong. He also learns that he has unbelievable recuperative powers, which only seems to reinforce the monster accusation. His one escape is sneaking away to watch the people in the nearby village, specifically a beautiful young man named Evin. Evin is the sexual plaything for another young man, one with a great deal more power, and one night, when Gareth witnesses Evin getting hurt, he breaks the rules he’s been given to save Evin. He’s afraid to show himself to Evin, but Evin demands it. Though Evin is at first taken aback by his appearance, he soon gets over it, and the two eventually become lovers. But Evin’s so-called “master” isn’t happy about Evin’s shift in attention, and eventually, Gareth and his peace is interrupted.

In a lot of ways, this is two different books. The first half is straight-up romance. Evin and Gareth are all lovey and sexual and the only conflict is internal. Then, halfway through the book, it shifts to an action fantasy story. There’s no smooth transition, and the writing isn’t nearly sophisticated enough to meld the two. The problems I had in the beginning with an incredibly stilted voice morphed into a lack of clarity once the action set in. Much of that is due to being thrust into a fantasy world with such little preparation. There’s new characters, new politics, new dangers, and it took a long time to get it sorted. Too long. It needed more seamless world-building in the first half to make the latter easier to process. (I was also chagrined to see the perspective slip at the very end of the story. What had been a reasonably tight 3^rd all of a sudden headhopped in a crucial scene.)

So why did I finish it if I had a problem with the voice? Because of Gareth. The Beast archetype is an exceedingly common one in romance, and is one of my bulletproof kinks. I kept on going because I cared about Gareth, in spite of not being fully invested emotionally in the story. His simple ways, coupled with his unexpected gentleness, go a long way in making up for other shortcomings.

Evin isn’t quite as fully fleshed out as Gareth, mostly because he serves as a foil for Gareth in the first half, and then spends too much time not himself in the second. I kept waiting for more, but when it finally came, it was too late for me, and I finished the story a tad disappointed.

It’s certainly not a bad story, but it’s not a great one, either. Readers who are sensitive to sexual violence should likely steer clear, as well as those who’d rather not see any het contact in their m/m.

Readability	6/10 – The stilted voice in much of the first half makes it drag, and the schism between the two halves detracts from it further
Hero #1	6/10 – Tantalizing possibilities with him though not all were realized
Hero #2	7/10 – I’m a sucker for the Beast archetype and Gareth is no exception
Entertainment value	6/10 – Hard to engage because of writing style, then because of disjointed second half
World building	6/10 – It felt like a lot of good ideas that never got the fleshing out they deserved
TOTAL:	31/50

Headstrong by Meg Maguire

2012-01-06T21:33:00.000-08:00

TITLE: Headstrong
AUTHOR: Meg Maguire
PUBLISHER: Samhain
LENGTH: Novel
GENRE: Contemporary romance
COST: $5.50

When Libby catches the latest man her father has hired to keep an eye on her, she offers him a deal – play double agent and get her father off her back, and she’ll pay him even more. For Reece Nolan, the offer is tempting. His family is in dire need of the money, but Libby is everything he’s always hated. It doesn’t help that she and his brother Colin hit it off almost from the start. But which brother will eventually win Libby – the one she wants or the one she understands?

I’ll be honest. The only reason I bothered finishing this book is because I’ve loved so many other works by this author. If this had been the first thing I’d ever read by her, I would’ve been done by the third chapter and written off trying anything else.

The plot is straightforward love triangle. Libby is a free-spirited rebel, living on a boat, certified genius who likes to stir the pot. Reece is uptight and glacial, with an eye for the straight and narrow, while his brother Colin is much like Libby. Libby meets both brothers in separate incidents – Colin when he rescues her from an annoying drunk, Reece when she catches him spying on her for her father. Soon, she’s wormed her way into their lives, and all three of them are left wondering just what is going on.

I’m not going to talk anymore about the plot. It’ll spoil everything, and the way it’s played out, it’s impossible to tell just who is going to end up with who until almost the end. Each is given time to explore their point of view, turning it into a bona fide love triangle. There’s just one major problem. I absolutely couldn’t stand Libby. At all. And without liking her, I just got angrier and angrier at how she acted with both brothers.

That’s not to say she’s not well-drawn. She’s clear as day. She manipulates, she likes creating trouble, and she has no problems keeping people on edge. While I liked her initial introduction, as soon as I saw her behavior outside of that specific incident, my opinion of her plummeted. It didn’t matter whose eyes I saw her through, whether it was Reece’s or Colin’s, and it only got worse when it was her own and I could follow her manipulative thoughts. What was probably meant to be forthright and quirky annoyed me to the bone. I loathed how she treated people, and wished more than once she would just go away.

Reece and Colin are much more sympathetic, even as different as they are. Their family is the emotional core of the story, and their presence helps a little bit to mitigate some of the damage having Libby around did for me. But it wasn’t enough. And I was definitely not satisfied with the ending. I was so frustrated with Libby’s treatment of both men that it wouldn’t have mattered which one she ended up with. They both deserved better, frankly. None of her backstory that was meant to help make me understand or like her did anything but make me roll my eyes.

I wouldn’t suggest this as an introduction to this author’s work. I’m not even sure I’d suggest it for a fan of her work. My reactions to Libby are extreme, though, so maybe others might not have the issues with her that I did.

Readability	8/10 – Technically proficient and readable, my issues lie with the characters
Hero	7/10 – I’m not going to elaborate because I don’t want to spoil the triangle
Heroine	3/10 – I’ve often had problems with Maguire’s heroines, but I genuinely disliked this one so much I almost gave up more than once
Entertainment value	2/10 – Triangles work best when all three sides are equal, and my issues with Libby were so strong I was angry more than anything else
World building	6/10 – Proficient enough to create a mood, but not as vivid as I'd expect
TOTAL:	26/50

Should We Drown in Feathered Sleep by Michael Merriam

2012-01-04T23:34:00.001-08:00

TITLE: Should We Drown in Feathered Sleep
AUTHOR: Michael Merriam
PUBLISHER: Carina Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 18k)
GENRE: Futuristic fantasy
COST: $2.69

Crippled as a teenager, Grace survives in her post-apocalyptic world as best she can, but time is beginning to weaken her defenses against those who see her as a burden. While she sleeps, she hears the mysterious loons whose magic governs human’s new way of life. Nobody else can, and the annual meeting to sacrifice one of their own to them is upon them…

One of my resolutions this year is to be pickier about which books I read, and by read, I mean actually finish and review. I started two before settling on this short novella, one that was DNF and one that left too little to talk about to waste time on a review. My hopes are that it’ll give me a lot more to be excited about this year than I was last.

This short futuristic fantasy from Carina is a solid entry into those ranks. It’s the story of Grace Kriske, a young woman in her twenties who has been stuck in a wheelchair since she was a rebellious thirteen. She’s still rebellious, hating to be waited on, but she is slowly losing her strength to beat against those odds. Sometimes, she dreams that she can hear the mysterious loons that reputedly populate a nearby lake. These same loons are the focus of an annual ritual whereby locals and traders meet up at the lakeside, conduct a lottery amongst the citizens, and send the chosen one to the loons. Supposedly, it’s to give something back to the community, but those who are chosen don’t seem to benefit from it. At the meet-up, Grace gets to see her once a year lover David, but it’s there, too, she discovers something that will change her life forever.

Because of the story’s brevity, to give away too much of the details would spoil what happens. That’s a shame, because it’s those plot twists, even in such a short space, that add to its compelling nature. What I can say is that the authorial voice is by far the strongest aspect of it. The tone is ethereal and melancholy, very much matching Grace’s mood and emotions, with haunting details that seep from every page. It sucked me in, even when I had lingering questions about what was going on and what the loons part in it all was. It definitely makes me want to seek out more of this author’s work, since a unique voice is often so hard to find.

What I wish worked better was the exposition side of the story. Some details are skimmed over or simply not given at all, and the resolution, while a natural progression from the plot, occurs too abruptly and with little emotional arc. I imagine a good number of these weaker aspects are due to the story’s short length. I don’t think it should’ve been a novel by any means, but perhaps just a thousand or two more words might have answered enough of my questions to anchor me more securely within its world. It would have enriched some of the secondary characterizations as well, giving David a bit more depth for me to understand Grace’s complex feelings for him, or to help differentiate the various elders amongst the others.

Still, it made a welcome change to read something that takes more risks than typical genre fiction. I’ve also found a new author to check out, which is always a bonus.

Readability	8/10 – An ethereal, melancholy voice only hampered by not quite enough exposition
Characterization	7/10 – Grace has the best job of this, since she’s the protagonist, but some of the more important secondary characters tend to blur
Plot	7/10 – Not as clear as it could’ve been, and the resolution was a little abrupt
Entertainment value	8/10 – I enjoyed this more for the mood and authorial voice than the story
World building	7/10 – The background wasn’t quite clear enough to provide the clearest picture of the present, but the details provided were evocative and lovely
TOTAL:	37/50

Nineteen by A.J. Mars

2012-01-02T23:35:00.001-08:00

TITLE: Nineteen
AUTHOR: A.J. Mars
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 16k)
GENRE: Gay contemporary erotic romance
COST: $3.99

A typical day of hanging with other people his age turns into a moment only imagined in fairy tales for a young man who’s only been kissed before…

After a year with few real knockouts on the reading front, I took a break from reviewing and romances to focus on real life and the holidays. I have to admit, I wondered about coming back at all. Was it worth it? Would 2012 be as disappointing as 2011 was? But when I dipped into my TBR pile and found this short novella buried from its 2010 release, I discovered I could still be surprised and enchanted enough to keep going.

Rather than a long, drawn-out plot, this tidy little offering encapsulates a single day and night in the life of nineteen-year-old Ezra. He’s hanging out with other students one hot summer day, not really doing anything, not really expecting anything, when he spies another young man named Nick. Magic happens. He doesn’t really believe it at first, because it’s the stuff of fairy tales, this clicking at first sight, but that’s what happens, and the two spend some rather amazing time together, all leading to the loss of Ezra’s virginity.

The story is told in third-person, present tense, in a breathless style that tumbles phrase over phrase so quickly, there’s little time to pause. Even if it is in 3^rd person, there’s a definite stream of consciousness to Ezra’s voice, complete with the way his youthful thoughts scatter and jump, sometimes repeating, sometimes disappearing altogether. It’s utterly enchanting at the start, and lends a unique authenticity to the narrator that prevails for the bulk of the telling. At times, it does feel a tad romanticized, but that’s likely a byproduct of the entire surreal mood of his disbelief that all of this is actually happening to him. It’s easy to go along with it, at least until closer to the end when the frenetic pacing drags on a little too long, giving the sense of same-old, same-old when it really isn’t.

While not quite as much is known about Nick, since this is so brief and he plays such a romanticized role in it, he has a certain casual charm and innocence about him that makes it very believable for Ezra to fall for him so quickly. Without that, the story wouldn’t work nearly as well, and honestly, only fails because of the lack of variation within the pacing. I also found myself wondering a little about when this might be placed. The sixties music is considered old, but if there was a time marker to designate when exactly this occurred, I missed it. Probably a victim of being caught up in Ezra’s emotions. But I did love the HFN ending, and because of this, am excited about reading again. I only wish this author had other books for me to buy.

Readability	9/10 – Fresh, unique voice, with the breathlessness of youth in the phrasing
Hero #1	7/10 – Authentic if slightly romanticized
Hero #2	7/10 – Love the casual innocence about him
Entertainment value	8/10 – The urgency of the moment carries this far, but it begins to drag with a little bit of same-old, same-old near the end
World building	6/10 – Though the moments and people feel real, there’s a sense of timelessness to it that makes it too hard to pinpoint when in contemporary times it really is
TOTAL:	37/50

The next month

2011-12-05T22:50:00.000-08:00

My reading has been sporadic the past few weeks...in case the lack of reviews didn't already tell you that. It's likely to continue, so I probably won't be around much until 2012. I thought about doing my best of lists for this year, but when I looked at what I read, my favorites aren't that many. I'm just going to highlight a few of what I consider the best throughout the next month. They deserve it.

Shapes in the Blood by Kim Knox

2011-11-18T23:07:00.000-08:00

TITLE: Shapes in the Blood
AUTHOR: Kim Knox
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 27k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: $4.99

Aila can’t believe how her luck has changed. The hottest guy at her new job has asked her out, and it looks like she’s actually going to get what she wants for a change. But when he shows up late, then drags her to a war memorial and starts talking about needing her, alarm bells begin to peal louder than her hormones. She tries to leave, but he won’t let her go easily. She has no choice but to accept the help of the strange man who suddenly shows up, telling her she’s just this demon’s latest intended victim…

I’d hoped choosing an author I’d enjoyed before would make this a good reading week for me, but unfortunately, this is probably the weakest story I’ve read by her yet.

It starts in a rush. Aila has been working for six weeks at her new job, and just that morning, garnered the attention of a gorgeous co-worker. He asked her out for that night, then ended up showing four hours late for their date. The lust she has for the man overrides her better sense, and she agrees to go out at that late hour, but when he directs her to a war memorial for some annual ritual he does, then proceeds to tell her he needs her help in doing what he’s come to do, she finally comes to her senses. She tries to leave, but he doesn’t want her to go, changing right before her eyes into something not quite human. A stranger then appears out of nowhere offering to help, and on instinct, she tosses him her car keys and lets him drive her away.

It only gets confusing from that point on. I could try explaining it all, but honestly, it took me so long to figure it out for myself—and even then, it took the bulk of the information that doesn’t get revealed until the very end—that it would be pointless for me to try. Because that’s this story’s greatest weakness. The ideas behind the world-building are ripe with potential, incredibly intriguing and different from the norm, but the way they’re conveyed is next to impossible to keep straight. Details get twisted around by dreams that might not actually be dreams, while facts about who Aila is and what the demons wants with her are vague and unnecessarily circuitous. The novella is only 27k, but it reads much longer, mostly because of the lack of clarity given to the world-building and what exactly is going on with everything.

Part of that likely stems from the thick tension that permeates the story from page one. The author excels at UST and making things steamy, but in this case, it ends up obscuring the actual story that’s being told. Too much focus is placed upon Aila’s raging hormones, all the way down to awkward dreams that play out her hidden thoughts about Matt, the stranger who helped her escape. It’s too hard to tell where manipulations end and genuine reactions begin, and while some of that is intentional, there’s just too much. It gets in the way of understanding who Matt and Aila really are, and if there is any kind of real future there outside of the too-convenient one we’re told they’ll have.

As much as I’ve enjoyed this author in the past, I can’t recommend this story at all except to romance readers who are mostly interested in hot tension rather than clear storytelling.

Readability	6/10 – Clarity gets sacrificed for oblique prose
Hero	4/10 – Hints that I should find him attractive, but the story is too muddled to give me any kind of idea of what he’s truly like
Heroine	4/10 – Um, ditto
Entertainment value	3/10 – Though the sexual tension runs rampant, it’s not nearly enough to counter the muddy storytelling
World building	5/10 – Great ideas, poor execution
TOTAL:	22/50

Counterpunch by Aleksandr Voinov

2011-11-16T23:19:00.000-08:00

TITLE: Counterpunch
AUTHOR: Aleksandr Voinov
PUBLISHER: Storm Moon Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 53k)
GENRE: Gay alternate reality erotic romance
COST: $5.99

As a free man, Brooklyn Marshall was a cop, just trying to do his job. As a slave, all he has is boxing and his fight to be the best. His crime condemned him to a life stripped of personal choice, but enduring it and accepting it are two entirely separate things. When one of his “fans” pays to spend the night with him, he puts up with it because that’s what he has to do. Nathaniel doesn’t make the same demands others have made on him, and when he starts to offer promises of hope, Brooklyn’s first instinct is not to believe him. What kind of hope does a slave have? Even one on the road to becoming the slave heavyweight champion…

NOTE: In the matter of full disclosure, I was offered a copy of this book for the purpose of a review.

As much as I love this author, I waffled on whether or not to read this book. I haven’t read either of the first two books in this series (written by another author), and I’m incredibly reluctant to enter a story after the beginning (as I often view series to be). I was willing to overlook this story based just on that, but when I was assured the book could be read as a standalone, I decided to take the chance. Lucky for me I did.

Brooklyn Marshall is on the rise to become the heavyweight boxing champion of the slave world. An ex-cop convicted of murder, he has no control over his life. He fights who his owners want him to fight. He goes on the “dates” that get arranged for him with those willing to pay for the privilege. He takes the punishment whenever the guards want to hand it out. That being said, he doesn’t like it. He remembers what it was like to be free. Regardless of how much he might think he deserves punishment for the crime he committed, he wants his freedom and self-respect more than anything else. One of those dates is with Nathaniel, a man less inclined to abuse Brooklyn than to appreciate him. One night leads to two, which leads to more. Nathaniel reveals his belief that Brooklyn should never have received the sentence he did, and Brooklyn begins to hope he just might be able to be free one day.

Voinov packs a wallop into this short novel, with story and characterization bursting at the seams. The pace is relentless, the detail graphic and brutal. He doesn’t hold back on portraying the dark underbelly of the world he’s playing in, a characteristic of his writing I adore though it might put others off. Brooklyn is whored out by his owners, as well as suffers under the hands of his guards. All of this is necessary to truly understanding the depths of Brooklyn’s world and character, but readers sensitive to dub-con and rape will likely find it difficult to accept a lot of what goes on in this. It’s not easy. Voinov’s stories rarely are. But it’s those shades of gray, even when they’re almost black, that make it all worth it.

I loved Brooklyn, from start to finish. His guilt manifests in rage he’s only allowed to unleash within the ring, but the boxing is surprisingly spare of unnecessary emotion. Between the way he approaches the fight and the fact that we’re in his perspective for the entire novel, we get a view of each match that’s more clinical and cutting than anything else. He lives in the moment, anticipating the next move and the move after that. There’s no room for anything but boxing, and here, he experiences the only freedom he can really have for himself. It doesn’t always work in his favor, though. He makes mistakes in the ring, just as people make mistakes in their everyday life, and those mistakes carry over to guide his next steps, even when he doesn’t get to take those steps of his own free will. But through it all, the layers in which he hides – for his own protection more than anything else, from the outside world and from himself – are stripped away, ultimately revealing the man Brooklyn truly is, heartbreaking in all his glory.

Because Brooklyn is such a powerful presence, other characters tend to diminish. Nathaniel is enigmatic through much of the story, and though I enjoyed his overall arc once it was eventually revealed, I questioned more than once what his appeal was to Brook outside of the obvious. His trainer at the start of the story, Les, suffers the same fate, especially when his personality seems to have a transplant when he comes back later on. While I understood intellectually what was going, it didn’t resonate emotionally. I had to remove myself from the story enough to analyze why he had such a turnaround, and that kind of distance is always damaging to a book’s overall effect.

Though this is set in a shared world, it’s not necessary at all to read the previous books to enjoy this one. It’s my understanding that it’s the slavery dynamic that binds the stories together, and that’s all. Not once did I feel like I was missing something. The world-building is rich and detailed enough to create a sense of here and now, without pandering to unnecessary explanation that often bogs down series stories. It’s superlative storytelling, but then again, that’s become what I expect from this author.

Readability	10/10 – Impossible to put down
Hero #1	9/10 – Brutal and heartbreaking
Hero #2	7/10 – A little too enigmatic to match Brook, but his arc was well done and intriguing
Entertainment value	9/10 – Bloody, bare, and bold
World building	8/10 – Brook’s sheltered POV makes too much exploration impossible, but what is there works well for a newcomer to the series
TOTAL:	43/50

For Your Eyes Only by Melissa Hosack

2011-11-11T23:12:00.000-08:00

TITLE: For Your Eyes Only
AUTHOR: Melissa Hosack
PUBLISHER: Silver Publishing
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 18k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: $3.99

Dragged out on Halloween by her best friend, Lily finds herself a wallflower again until the most gorgeous guy she’s ever seen begins talking to her. She decides to take a chance when the attraction between them sparks, but when she wakes up the next morning and discovers he’s actually a ghost, she has to decide if the fact that only she can see and touch him is all that matters…

While I’ve had my eye on Silver Publishing for a while, this was the first story I was tempted enough to buy. The blurb on the publisher’s site hinted at something a little more complex than the usual ghost story, but unfortunately, that’s not what I got.

Lily is shy, but willing to live vicariously through her best friend. She agrees to get dressed up for Halloween and go out dancing, but finds herself alone at a table, watching from the sidelines yet again. That changes when a man begins talking to her. Nathan is the most gorgeous guy she’s ever seen, and his humorous charm, telling her he’s dressed up as a ghost when he’s wearing a T-shirt and faded jeans, relaxes her enough to enjoy his company. At her friend’s urging, she gets up the nerve to invite him back to her apartment, where they spend the night having sex. In the morning, however, she discovers that his ghost description wasn’t a cute joke. He actually is one, and as soon as he gets outside a yard from her presence, he becomes incorporeal again.

The reason I bought this story was because of this sentence from the publisher’s blurb: In a complex relationship between woman and ghost, the pair must wonder how long they'll be able to keep Lily's human friends from asking too many questions about the boyfriend they never see. That hinted that it might actually tackle the ghost issue in a new way, even though I knew from the pricepoint and novella length it wouldn’t be very long. Unfortunately that never happened. Lily and Nathan meet, they go back to her place, they have sex a few times, then it cuts to a year later. Any depth it might have had was wasted in the time jump, and instead, I got very mediocre sex that was just way too coy for my tastes (using life essence for come, for instance). It’s not helped at all by the rather pedantic writing, or the fact that Lily’s characterization remains flat for most of the story.

I’d almost written it off completely when it got to the resolution, but a turn in the plot I hadn’t quite expected helped bring it up a bit. It still ends too abruptly, however, just as the complications would be interesting to work through, so while the finish might have raised my overall enjoyment of it up a tad, it wasn’t nearly enough to convince me to try other works by this author. It felt too much like a wasted opportunity when it was done.

Readability	6/10 – Too simplistic for the most part, with the sex scenes too coy for me
Hero	5/10 – Mildly charming at first, but lacks depth
Heroine	4/10 – Though I didn’t dislike her, I never really felt like she was a real character
Entertainment value	4/10 – The ending saved this from being a complete wash
World building	6/10 – Little is done to explain the paranormal aspects of this until a big information dump at the ending
TOTAL:	25/50

The Serious Moonlight by Janet Halpin

2011-11-09T23:30:00.000-08:00

TITLE: The Serious Moonlight
AUTHOR: Janet Halpin
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 18k)
GENRE: Contemporary romance
COST: $3.00

Anna accepts the invitation to her 25^th high school reunion, wondering if she’ll get to see her one regret from high school – the boy next door who was her best friend and then asked her out to prom only for her to turn him down…

Wild Rose Press has a series of unrelated books all about reunions of the class of ’85. I’ve refrained from purchasing most of them, but this one caught my eye.

When it comes to reunion stories, it’s hard to make them unique and this one is no different. Twenty-five years after the fact, divorced Anna regrets turning down her longtime friend Rick’s invitation to prom, and attends the reunion in hopes he’ll be there. She’s still friends with the same two girls who talked her out of accepting his offer in high school, but the only kiss that ever made her toes curl was his. She’s always wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t been scared of what it all meant. She gets her chance when he shows up, but his behavior isn’t clear. She can’t tell if he still harbors anger about what happened, or is willing to move on from it. Because he lives in San Diego, she’s only got reunion weekend to find out.

There aren’t many surprises here. Anna is nice enough, but fairly boring. The most interesting thing she does is have such a long childhood friendship with the scarred Rick. Rick, on the other hand, shows signs of being really interesting, though his first appearances in the story are marred by rather schizophrenic behavior as he flipflops between anger and attentive so quickly I got whiplash. Put them together, however, and there’s an easy sweetness to their story, and I found myself smiling when they finally got past their initial wariness of each other. The ending is appropriately saccharine, but it would’ve been better served by having secondary characters that didn’t make me bristle. I didn’t like either one of Anna’s friends, and couldn’t really see why they’d all continue being friends. They take up a lot of page time, too. Too much for me to really enjoy.

Still, for the romance reader looking for a taste of nostalgia and sweetness, this one isn’t that bad. The detail is a little more vivid than is usually found in these sort of short contemporaries, and the use of a slightly damaged (though still kind of stereotypical) hero lovely.

Readability	8/10 – Sweet and unassuming, with enough detail to make it real
Hero	7/10 – He seems a little too back-and-forth in the first half, but otherwise sweet
Heroine	6/10 – Her initial motivations were weak, but I warmed up to her
Entertainment value	6/10 – I was in the mood for something easy and sweet, and that’s pretty much what I got
World building	6/10 – Not a ton, but more than I usually find short contemporaries
TOTAL:	33/50

Blinded by Our Eyes by Clare London

2011-11-07T23:27:00.001-08:00

TITLE: Blinded by Our Eyes
AUTHOR: Clare London
PUBLISHER: Carina Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 45k)
GENRE: Gay mystery erotic romance
COST: $3.59

Charles walks into his gallery to find one of his up-and-coming artists murdered with his ex-lover covered in the man’s blood. Joseph is shaken by the crime, but his alibi holds up, leaving Charles and the police wonder months later just who is responsible…

I’m going to be in a minority on this book. I know a lot of people loved it, and I went into it with high hopes, but in spite of adoring the first chapter, I was bored to tears by a third of the way through.

It’s the story of London gallery owner Charles as he attempts to try and find out who exactly is responsible for killing Paolo, a sculptor he was sponsoring he had high hopes of doing well. Paolo’s body is discovered in the gallery with Joseph, Charles’s ex-lover, and when Joseph is clearly shaken and traumatized by the whole event, Charles takes him in. Weeks pass and the police are nowhere closer to getting answers. Charles begins to discover that perhaps he didn’t know the people who surround him as well as he thought he did and begins trying to ferret out who might have been responsible for the murder on his own.

Told in 1^st person from Charles’s perspective, this is a mystery first and a romance second. The love interest, Antony, doesn’t even get introduced until well into the story, leaving the feeling that the entire romantic angle was shoe-horned in so it wasn’t just a mystery. While he’s a nice foil for the oddly innocent Charles, by the time he came onto the scene, I was already struggling to stay engaged with the story. He didn’t really stand much of a chance with me at all.

That bothers me, actually. I loved the first chapter. It was vivid, gut-wrenching, and emotional. The second chapter faded a bit for me because of the odd jump at the start of it, but I still held out high hopes. The third chapter jumps to weeks later, and we discover much of what happened in the interim, as well as information that would have come out during the police interrogations in chapter two, in a long, dull conversation that had none of the sparkle and vibrancy of the author’s descriptive voice. I got increasingly annoyed by the surprise background information that was sprung on me at the end of the third chapter, and never really recovered from that.

Part of this stems from the fact that Charles is such an unreliable narrator, and while I’d like to blame the device for the reason the story doesn’t work for me, I can’t because I’ve enjoyed stories with other unreliable narrators before. It just comes down to the execution, because the descriptive prose and editing are excellent. Though it’s told in 1^st person, I felt an awful disconnect with everything going on due to the methods chosen to convey the necessary information. I’m choosing to see my negative experience with this as an anomaly. The author has a great voice, and I’ve had other good reads with her work. Just not with this one.

Readability	6/10 – Lush voice didn’t end up helping to involve me in the story, bored to tears by a third of the way in
Hero #1	7/10 – Sweet and oddly innocent in spite of his age and experience
Hero #2	4/10 – A good foil for the narrator, but came too late in the story for me to care about
Entertainment value	3/10 – Love author’s voice, but the vast jumps and odd juxtaposition of recapping against sudden surprising background information annoyed me early, then bored me
World building	7/10 – A strong feel for the art world and moments
TOTAL:	27/50

Intimate Whispers by Dee Carney

2011-11-04T23:55:00.001-07:00

TITLE: Intimate Whispers
AUTHOR: Dee Carney
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 52k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: $5.95

Sabrina Turner hears dead people, but it’s not a gift by any means. They bombard her at the worst times, driving her mad as she’s incapable of tuning them out. The only way for her to banish them for a while is by allowing another spirit to have his way with her, giving her body to him for hours until the world is silent again. Another attack leaves her in a fugue state at her local grocery store, where her neighbor Jason sees her and takes her home. When she says something to him only his dead brother would know, he’s driven to find out how and why. The truth will bring them together, but the reality of what she has to do just to survive the voice just might drive them apart…

I meant to get this done and reviewed before Halloween, but the holiday ran away from me. It would have been appropriate, given its slightly creepy tones.

Sabrina Turner hears dead people, and the only way she can get a temporary reprieve from the madness it creates in her is to have sex with one of those same spirits. She refers to it as Him, and considers him her savior. After she gives him what he wants, she gets some peace and quiet for a while. During her attacks, she loses time, forgetting where she is, who she is. It’s during one of these that her neighbor Jason finds her at the grocery store. He volunteers to take her home, but just before she shuts the door in his face, she says something only his dead brother would say. Unable to shake the questions it’s raised, he goes back to her apartment and demands answers. The only reason she gives him a hint of what she’s like is because he played the nice guy and helped her get home when he didn’t have to. They try another technique to make contact with his brother, but that doesn’t help much either. Jason is trying to forget about the whole incident when the ER contacts him and asks for his aid in getting Sabrina home. She’s had another attack. Thus sparks a series of events that will bring them closer together. The only problem is, both of them are holding back secrets, afraid of what the other might think.

I liked the premise of the book, the twist on the ghost whisperer theme with the heroine being plagued by the voices to the point of madness. The attacks are described well, coming to life even as Sabrina is driven mad by them. Much of that is helped by the author opting to occasionally show the attacks from Jason’s POV. He brings a poignancy to what is going on with Sabrina that her perspective lacks.

Sabrina’s perspective is where the book falters for me. Her characterization is solid enough, but the more I got to know her, the less I liked her. I found her attitude toward Jason bitchier than what was called for, and her behavior often callous in regards to his feelings. I understand her point about how she doesn’t have the space in her life to worry about anybody but herself, but that wasn’t enough for me to explain away how cold she was. In fact, even after she warmed up to Jason, I still found her personality a little off-putting. I didn’t start liking her more until very nearly the end.

On the other hand, Jason was a darling. He came across as caring and sincere, a little on the earnest side, and I found his self-honesty about how he’d never considered dating a black woman endearing. His chemistry with Sabrina was off the charts, too, a fact I could easily recognize even if I didn’t like her very much. He was more patient with her than I imagine most men would’ve been, and the fact that he sticks around through so much is testimony to his wonderful nature.

I did find the resolution easy and kind of obvious, but I appreciate the fact that the ending doesn’t sugarcoat other problems by giving them an easy out. Sabrina and Jason still have things to fight against when the story draws to a close, but then again, so do real life couples. This one might not be a definite keeper, but it does make me curious about the author’s other work. I like that she takes some risks and isn’t afraid of being true to human nature. It’s worth it to find out if that’s prevalent in other titles, too.

Readability	8/10 – The erotic elements work best in this, though the prose is solid throughout
Hero	8/10 – He was the heart of this, his caring nature sold me from the start
Heroine	4/10 – I understood her but for the bulk of the story, I really didn’t like her for being so bitchy
Entertainment value	7/10 – I liked it for Jason and for where it dared to go, but would’ve liked it more if I cared about Sabrina a little
World building	7/10 – Aspects of her talent were handled really well, but I wanted more into her past and why/how she had this gift in order to better understand it
TOTAL:	34/50

Kindred Hearts by G.S. Wiley

2011-11-02T23:33:00.000-07:00

TITLE: Kindred Hearts
AUTHOR: G.S. Wiley
PUBLISHER: Torquere
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 18k)
GENRE: Gay historical romance
COST: $3.99

All Alfie loves is the theater, but when his mother arrives with his ward in tow, intent on seeing the girl married, he finds his social life thrust into new circles, with surprising results…

Taking a break over Halloween, I wanted something short and easy to come back to. Luckily, I picked one that charmed me, too.

Alfie has one love – the theater. He keeps boxes at all of London’s best, alternating between them throughout the week. He has his favorites, of course, but he has no illusions about his role as anything but loving spectator. The stutter he’s plagued with makes communicating difficult at the best of times, so he’s much more comfortable watching from the shadows. When his mother arrives unannounced with his ward in tow, he braces for her visit, only to learn she’s decided the girl needs to be married and Alfie is going to see that it happens. While on a walk with his ward, they meet two men, one of which declares interest in her, the other as avid a fan of theater as Alfie is. It seems as if Alfie’s search might be over before it even really begins.

Though this is a short novella, it reads even more swiftly than other stories its length, mostly due to the utterly readable and unassuming authorial voice. The prose is clean and crisp, with just enough detail to make the setting pop and lend an air of authority to its accuracy, without bogging it down in unnecessary minutiae and distracting from the characters themselves.

But while I zipped through with barely a blink of an eye, much of the credit for that goes to the protagonist Alfie, too. He’s endearing from the very first page, a man with no sense of needs for himself except to attend the theater that he adores so much. His stutter only heightens that, adding to my already rich empathy for the character, so I was more than willing to race along in the story to discover what kind of romance he was going to have. I sincerely wondered if it was ever going to happen, though. The story focuses on him and his family for a long time, with the other romantic interest not even introduced until a third of the way into the story, a veritable eternity when the telling is this short. Markham then suffers from a vagueness, primarily because Alfie just isn’t attuned to him for a long time. Gradually, Markham develops more of a personality, but even at the end, it felt like there was a lot more left for me to learn.

And therein lies the story’s greatest weakness. While Alfie is a wonderful central character, plotting is loose and then unfortunately tied up all too conveniently. What felt like they should have been genuine problems were resolved with little conflict, turning what could have been a truly romantic (and realistic) ending into one that seemed to come a little of nowhere. Some of that probably stems from how quickly this reads, but ultimately, the secondary characters and their issues seem like an annoying distraction rather than organic to the tale.

It was worth the time it took, however. And more.

Readability	9/10 – Unassuming and utterly readable, it zips by faster than it should
Hero #1	8/10 – Absolutely endearing
Hero #2	6/10 – Liked him, but kept feeling like there was more that I wasn’t getting to see
Entertainment value	7/10 – Charming for what it was, though the resolution of the subplots were too rushed to be truly satisfying
World building	9/10 – Crisp with the right balance of detail to thrust the reader into the setting without overpowering the characters
TOTAL:	39/50

Incarnate by A.C. Ruttan

2011-10-26T23:39:00.000-07:00

TITLE: Incarnate
AUTHOR: A.C. Ruttan
PUBLISHER: Samhain
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 84k)
GENRE: Urban fantasy
COST: $5.50

As an Incarnate, Cia’s main job is to protect the portal she guards. But when her Warden gives her the job to find another Incarnate suspected of numerous murders, she takes it. Because the other Incarnate is Arthur, the husband she hasn’t seen in ten years. Finding him isn’t difficult, but finding out what is really going on, why a symbol only he would use is showing up on dead bodies, is another matter entirely…

My summary is woefully inadequate, as is, honestly, much of anything I could write. This was a densely constructed urban fantasy, playing with religious themes like angels, Heaven and Hell, and demons, that try to blend/merge with a plethora of historical references. The end result was a confusing mishmash that could’ve been so much more.

So I’m not going to even try summarizing this. There are twists and turns galore, so what I would say would get trumped within a few chapters anyway because I’m reluctant to give spoilers. But therein lies its greatest flaws. In its attempt to convey this complex world, it gets mired in too many flashbacks and too many information dumps to get the point across. The best parts were the action sequences because the story actually moves along at those points. Luckily, there were enough of those to keep me reading rather than giving up after the first third. (The fact that there are editorial inconsistencies don’t help, i.e. Arthur’s eyes changing color while he’s human when he doesn’t have souls anymore.)

Characterizations get lost in the world-building, too. Cia fares the best, but even hers is lacking. Incarnates have two souls, and frankly, her older soul is far more developed than she ever was. I couldn’t tell you much about who Cia really was, but I could write reams on Boudicca. Arthur is more interesting in demon form, mostly because when he’s human, he comes across as a block of wood. These two are supposed to be in love, but I didn’t feel it until close to the end. A whole host of supporting characters flit through the pages, but because their various roles are so muddy for most of the story, it’s hard to really care about any of them, either. The one thing that got me through to the end was simply the need to discover how it all turned out, but even then, I’m pretty sure I don’t have it straight.

I do know, however, I won’t be bothering with the second book. None of the characters were interesting enough to follow, the author’s reliance on flashbacks as a narrative device was tedious, and the lack of clarity as the story attempts to construct its world was too frustrating to overcome.

Readability	6/10 – Editorial inconsistencies and too many flashbacks made this more of a chore than it had to be
Hero	4/10 – More interesting as a demon, but still lacked much of anything to really capture me
Heroine	6/10 – Her older soul’s personality was stronger than hers
Entertainment value	4/10 – I finished because I was curious about how it played out, not because I cared
World building	7/10 – While it’s obvious a lot of care/attention has gone into it, it’s not conveyed efficiently
TOTAL:	27/50

Someplace in This World by various authors

2011-10-24T23:39:00.000-07:00

TITLE: Someplace in This World
AUTHORS: Lee Benoit, Kiernan Kelly, Syd McGinley, J.L. Merrow, G.R. Richards, J. Rocci, P.D. Singer, G.S. Wiley, Eden Winters
PUBLISHER: Torquere
LENGTH: Anthology (roughly 65k)
GENRE: Gay erotic romance
COST: $6.99

A collection of gay erotic romance stories, all centered around the theme of home…

The theme of this anthology of gay romances centers around the idea of home, defining it in ways unique to each story. Some of them work much better than others, but then again, isn’t that usually the way with anthologies?

The collection begins with “Absence of Color” by Kiernan Kelly. Michael has been grieving the loss of his partner for three years. His brother isn’t happy with how he hasn’t moved and demands that he come out and live with him and his family for a while. There, he meets a nice guy in a mall, that actually leads to a date. But Michael hasn’t dealt with the loss of his partner well at all, and the date changes in ways he’s not sure he likes. I was wary after finishing this first story. The material is very dark, and the mood depressing. It deals with abusive relationships and grief and guilt in a very heavy-handed way, and I wasn’t sure if this meant the entire anthology was going to be like this. As a starter, it almost stopped me in my tracks, because I would expect anthologies to be edited to have a definite building flow, rather than starting on such in your face drama. Perhaps it would have been better if I’d liked the story more than I did, but it was too doom and gloom for most of it. Then, during the date, both guys end up spilling lots of deep, heavy secrets to each other. On a first date. Compared to how realistically it seemed the rest of the story was being told, this seemed really far-fetched. Too far-fetched for me, actually.

Next comes “The Prodigal” by Eden Winters, the story of prostitute Mark and his journey home again. As you can tell from the subject matter, this was another grim tale, but contrary to the first, this one felt a lot more genuine, with very realistic reactions and nothing sexually inappropriate for the situation just because of who the publisher is. One of my top three in the anthology.

I had higher hopes going onto “The Magic of Moving Houses” by G.R. Richards. It’s the story of two neighboring families whose houses start disappearing in the middle of the night, leaving them to figure out what happened to them. Though I liked the general idea behind this, the execution fell flat. POV is looser in this than in any of the other stories, and the sex scene at the end is over the top. I just couldn’t buy it in the end.

Some of that was redeemed in “Comeback,” by G.S. Wiley, the story of an A-list Hollywood actor trying to get back in the game after rehab. I loved the set-up and the characters in this, as well as the vivid descriptions, but all that potential was sold short by and ending that was too rushed and simplified for the complexity of the voice and characterizations I’d already been sold. It didn’t improve with much with “Return to the Mountain” by P.D. Singer, either. I realized right away this was part of a series I hadn’t read, and spent most of the first half just trying to keep straight all the characters. Definitely a miss if one hasn’t already read the others. It’s one redeeming grace was the character of Seth, a young man I would’ve loved to have known better.

My absolute favorite story of the anthology was J. Rocci’s “Oilsmouth.” This is a steampunk offering about a mercenary named Edge, who will do anything to protect his boyfriend Kit. That’s all I’m telling about the plot, because more will spoil it. The action is swift and crisp, the characterizations gritty and compelling, and the realistic ending wonderful.

It would have been hard to top anything after this, to be honest, and none of the last three stories did. “Light the Fire” by J.L. Merrow is a surprisingly fluffy contemporary about two guys who meet at a gym. One’s in mourning and keeps refusing the other, who frankly, got very annoying very early on. Then came Lee Benoit’s “Pack Horse.” I normally love Benoit, but I found this very difficult to slog through. The setting felt muddy for too long, and I struggled to place it until some very specific references showed up. The two leads were all right, their banter almost fun in parts, but the declarations at the end came out of left field. I did enjoy the final story, Syd McGinley’s “Home Is the Hunter,” the tale of two high school sweethearts who are reunited when one comes home from Afghanistan, but its charm was very ephemeral and fleeting. When I’d finished, I had difficulty even remembering the names of the two male leads.

Overall, it’s certainly not a bad anthology, though only two were truly excellent for me. Be prepared for a lot of downer topics, though. If you’re not in the mood for them, they probably won’t work for you.

Readability	7/10 – Varies from story to story, though mostly easy
Romance	6/10 – Like most anthologies, hit or miss
Characterization	6/10 – Some were great, others not so much
Entertainment value	6/10 – Slightly better than average, but there were enough clunkers to pull this down
World building	6/10 – A couple really excellent ones pull this up better than average
TOTAL:	31/50

Breaking Free by Anya Richards

2011-10-21T23:50:00.000-07:00

TITLE: Breaking Free
AUTHOR: Anya Richards
PUBLISHER: Samhain
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 90k)
GENRE: Historical erotic romance
COST: $5.50

Widow Claire Montjoye has resigned herself to a life of solitude, since her reputation is mostly in tatters from the events of her marriage and her sexually depraved husband. Then she meets widower Xavier Westbourne and experiences desire for the first time in years. Each is drawn to the other, until Claire decides to be bold and offers to show Xavier how best to pleasure a woman. All he wants is Claire, so he’s thrilled to accept her proposal, but it quickly becomes clear their carnal arrangement won’t be enough for either of them for very long…

Sometimes, loving a hero will carry me much farther into a story than might otherwise happen. That certainly occurred with this particular novel.

Claire Montjoye married young, but her innocence didn’t last very long. Her husband had huge sexual appetites, and the more he got, the wilder he needed it the next time. Claire was but a pawn in many of his sexual games, ranging from orgies to BDSM, so when he dies, her reputation is left in tatters. Two years on, she still doesn’t like venturing out into society, even though she craves having her respectability back. On a night she arrives for the opera, she is saved from being run over by a carriage by Xavier Westbourne. Her attraction to him is immediate, but she knows nothing could ever come of it. She’ll not taint anybody else’s reputation by sullying them with her association. Xavier, on the other hand, is entranced by her. Normally very shy, he finds it easy to talk to her when they meet again, which culminates in a request to join him at the opera. There, Claire learns about how his marriage had been so unsatisfactory, how his wife didn’t enjoy physical relations, and she decides to be bold and satisfy both of their needs. He accepts, but in the background lurks a man who’s been obsessed with Claire since long before her husband’s death.

The set-up isn’t that original, though it’s a welcome twist to see the woman as the more experienced, teaching her contemporary more about the art of lovemaking. I can’t say that I actually really liked Claire that much, though. I found her behavior inconsistent, and her constant self-deprecation and loathing regarding how depraved she was and how harmful her presence was to anyone decent was really annoying. Every time it seemed like she was ready to grow beyond it, she slid two steps back to create conflict within the story.

What saved all of it was Xavier. I fell in love with him almost as soon as he was introduced. It was a combination of his chivalrous nature and his shyness that really got to me. That shyness is the bedrock of his characterization, and the way it was portrayed was masterful. His reactions were believable, consistent, and absolutely endearing, even when he lost his temper. When the prose sometimes turned a little purple for my tastes, it was Xavier that kept me going. As the story progressed, I found it increasingly difficult not to skim through scenes that were just Claire, but he rooted me back in the story every time he showed up on the page.

Another reason it got harder not to skim as the story progressed was because not enough was happening that wasn’t all about the sex. Claire was too one-note to make them very interesting by that point, and the fact that the cartoon villain had more page time (a necessary development to keep the plot going, even if his characterization was so very stereotypical and predictable) meant I had even less reason to be engaged. I wasn’t surprised to see the word count when I was done. In all honesty, it felt longer than that, which in this case, is not a compliment.

Still, I adored Xavier, and when Claire wasn’t pulling her self-loathing act, fell into their romance. That was enough to make this a slightly better than average read, because I’m sure Xavier will be one of the more romantic heroes I remember for a while.

Readability	8/10 – A little too purple in some spots for me, and the sex scenes get tedious by the end
Hero	8/10 – Shy, strong, and wonderful
Heroine	5/10 – Inconsistent and annoyingly fixated on her self-hatred
Entertainment value	7/10 – Mostly because of my love for Xavier, the cartoonish villain and a heroine I never really warmed to held this back
World building	7/10 – While the historical aspects were good, so much of what went on with this so-called terrible lifestyle she had with her
TOTAL:	35/50

Brass and Bone by Cynthia Gael

2011-10-19T20:54:00.000-07:00

TITLE: Brass and Bone
AUTHOR: Cynthia Gael
PUBLISHER: Carina Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 36k)
GENRE: Steampunk paranormal
COST: $3.59

Lady Abigail and her partner Simon are called upon an old friend of hers for a very delicate job. He needs her to take cargo across the globe on her airship, with the witch he’s captured as part of the magical lock that will seal it forever. There’s a lot of money involved, too much to resist, but Simon thinks the witch’s keeper – her ex-lover – is too cavalier and dangerous about this entire mission…

The more published steampunk I read, the more I wonder what the big deal is. Because if these are the best the genre has to offer – and it seems everybody across the internet proclaims steampunk as the next big thing by begging for more – then I really have to ask just how awful the stories are that don’t manage to get published. Because this novella I recently finished just doesn’t cut it.

It starts out well enough. Simon and his partner Abigail rob a man of a device, having been hired to steal and deliver it for a hefty sum. Things go mildly awry when Simon is poisoned by the thing, but he is treated in time to suffer no long-term damage. He finds out the next morning that they are traveling to see an old friend of hers, a man he can’t stand, because he was both the one that hired them for this particular job and is in need for more work, something he says only Abigail can do. Once they get there, they discover they are to transport something to Australia, where it will be locked away forever using the combined blood of a witch and a human. He has a witch on hand, a French woman named Cynara, but she is treated as more of a thing and prisoner than a person. He’s sending along a keeper, the man who was Cynara’s lover before he turned her over to this group of Witchfinders, and so the four set out on this around the world journey.

If this sounds interesting, don’t be fooled. It’s a muddle and turns even more tedious after they actually leave. The story is riddled with so many weaknesses, it’s difficult to pinpoint just which holds it back the most. First of all, the author chooses to write it in alternating 1^st person POVs – Simon’s (the male half of the airship pair) and Cynara’s (the female witch half of the paranormal pair). I normally love 1^st person, but I find it much more difficult to switch between two within the same story, especially from chapter to chapter. It erases the deep perspective 1^st person creates, and forces the reader to start over again with a character from scratch. Don’t get me wrong. It can be done, but it requires top notch writing and voices to truly pull it off. That doesn’t happen here. Instead, we only get one decent voice – Simon’s. When it switches to Cynara, the entire story gets thrown into confusion, largely because much of what happens in her POV is told instead of shown, and the world-building explaining the magical/paranormal aspects of the story is some of the sketchiest I’ve read in a while.

The telling vs. showing is a problem that runs throughout the entire story, though. For too much of it, it reads like a summary of a much longer work, skipping over what felt like should have been crucial events, skimping on the details on too many things. Characterizations suffer as a result. The only one who felt fully well-rounded and real to me was Simon. Cynara falls short on believable motivations or interest, her keeper Henri is too secretive to be anything but frustrating, and Abigail is put on a pedestal by Simon. The only aspects of the story that seem to get a good balance of loving detail are the steampunk gadgets. Abigail’s airship alone merits nearly 500 words of description, just so “you may visualize it when I discuss such aeronautical locations as the bridge, engine room, galley, hold and so forth.”

Here stems the roots from which my problems with most of the steampunk stories I read grow. I buy a genre book to read a story and be entertained in some fashion, not to be regaled with the author’s imagined gadgetry that seems to fit into this new world. Ultimately, I still need to experience an actual story, and I mean experience it, not told it. Too often, that feels like it gets forgotten, in favor of lavishing all this attention on the elements of a steampunk world. World-building is fantastic, but not the sole purpose.

Though it doesn’t say so on the site, this novella has to be the first in a series, because the conclusion is very open-ended, with nothing actually resolved. It’s just as dissatisfying as the rest of the story, but I won’t be bothering with any more that might come along. I’ve read enough of this author’s voice to know this style is just not for me.

Readability	6/10 – Alternating 1^st person POVs with lots of telling makes this very tedious to get through
Characterization	5/10 – Simon fares the best, but the rest of them come off as vague or caricatures
Plot	5/10 – Incomplete since it’s clearly meant to be part of a series, with little sense of flow
Entertainment value	3/10 – Started off well, but the disjointedness of the plot as well as too much tell rather than show turns this into a slog
World building	6/10 – The steampunk aspects are all right, but everything on the paranormal side leaves a lot to be desired
TOTAL:	25/50

Ready and Willing by Cara McKenna

2011-10-17T23:26:00.001-07:00

TITLE: Ready and Willing
AUTHOR: Cara McKenna
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 25k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotic romance
COST: $4.99

Abby wants a baby, but rather than go with an anonymous donor, she places an ad and picks out two men. Rob is the most gorgeous guy she’s ever seen, while Noah feels like somebody she’s known forever. There’s no strings, and having sex with both men means nobody will know who the actual father is. Except almost from the start, Abby feels a pull she wants to ignore, one that proves more and more irresistible as time goes by…

While I’m still excited about this author, I’m pretty sure my lower enjoyment of this particular novella is at least partially my own fault. See, the publisher lists a ménage as part of the warnings, and I didn’t read the blurb very carefully when I was so greedily buying up this author’s backlist. I was expecting a ménage romance, and though there’s a ménage (mfm) scene, this most definitely is not.

At thirty-two, Abby is feeling her biological clock ticking. She wants a baby. She doesn’t want an anonymous donor, however. She wants to meet the man who might be the father. After taking out an ad, she picks two men, who agree to her payments and no-strings offer. Rob is gorgeous, and the thought that she gets to have sex with him turns her on. Noah is good-looking, too, but his appeal comes from something else, from the feeling that they’ve known each other forever. The differences between the two men is stark, right from the beginning, and it doesn’t take long for Abby to realize that keeping things casual is a lot easier said than done.

So let’s get this clear. This is not a ménage romance. It’s not even really a “who will she pick” romance. It’s obvious from the beginning that the way Abby and Noah hit it off is important. Their chemistry is sweet and tangible, leaping off the page. I adored the first scene in the story where they meet up. It’s funny and charming, much like a lot of this author’s work. But unlike more traditional romances, Abby isn’t sexually exclusive to Noah. She can’t be. Her intention is to have sex with both men so nobody will know who the real father is, which means, sex with both men. It didn’t bother me since it seemed obvious that it was going to happen that way, but for some reasons, it might prove a stumbling block.

The disparity between the two is so blatant, however, that there’s not really a lot of tension. Abby doesn’t even come when she has sex with Rob. She has to get herself off afterward. Noah, on the other hand, is as into her needs as he is his own. Plus, he’s uncomfortable with the payment part of it. It all adds up to an easy choice. There’s a solid HFN as pay-off.

The one weakness in this, and it was a doozy for me, is that their sex talk is supposed to be hot and dirty. It just wasn’t for me. It felt forced and fake, like bad porn. That makes it really hard to get into the sex scenes. The erotica worked best for me when they weren’t trying to have sexy talk, when it was more organic and real. Unfortunately, that just didn’t happen often enough.

The story is told in 1^st person, present tense, a choice that might put some readers off, but honestly, I thought worked great for this style of story. It lends Abby an air of relatability, especially since the author’s voice is so distinct. My only wish is that the rest of it had been as strong.

Readability	7/10 – The dirty talk came across as more awkward than hot, but I flew through and loved all the rest of it
Hero	7/10 – Adorable and wonderful, I just needed more
Heroine	7/10 – I needed her motivations sooner than I got them, but her independent streak was fantastic
Entertainment value	6/10 – Not buying the dirty talk really held me back in enjoying this
World building	6/10 – The contemporary setting precludes much of anything here, though there was a nice setting when it hit Christmas
TOTAL:	33/50

Heart of Gold by Laurel Natale

2011-10-12T23:32:00.001-07:00

TITLE: Heart of Gold
AUTHOR: Laurel Natale
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 88k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $7.00

Matt Sutherland has one goal – to earn enough money mining gold to return East and marry the woman he loves. When he arrives in Arizona, he happens across an auction for a claim, or rather half a claim. The other half belongs to the seller’s sister, who refuses to sell. Matt decides to take a chance and ends up purchasing the claim, partnering up with Deidre Connelly. She teaches him what she knows, and they develop an easy alliance. Over time, they even develop more…

While I love finding memorable characters I actually like, if I can’t get past technical issues like headhopping, it doesn’t make a difference what kind of story they might have.

Set in old west Arizona, this is the story of two opposites who come together. Matt Sutherland is from Pennsylvania, with dreams of marrying the rich young lady he’s in love with. Deidre Connelly is an illiterate young woman with dreams of making enough money panning gold to be independent someday. Matt purchases her drunken brother’s claim, and the two become uneasy allies. Dee teaches Matt what he needs to know, and he teaches her how to read and write. He treats her with respect, something she’s not used to, and while she’s attracted to him from the start, he takes longer to accept his attraction. She’s not a lady, after all, and he’s in love with someone else. But their proximity and circumstance conspire against them.

The two leads are actually quite enjoyable. Dee is spunky and determined to fight for herself, mostly because she’s had to do it for so long, while Matt has an honorable streak a mile wide. Combined with his strong work ethic, he makes an appealing hero for a while in the beginning, at least until he starts treating Dee as less than she is just because she doesn’t match his definition of refinement. It doesn’t last, thank goodness, but it was there long enough to annoy me. I imagine I probably would be more forgiving toward him if I didn’t like Dee as much as I did.

However, liking the characters is different than liking the story, and the fact of the matter is, this is riddled with headhopping. Sometimes it’ll last in a single POV for a few pages, but there are too many sections where it will jump back and forth after only a few paragraphs. It destroys any sense of anticipation of what the other character might be feeling in tenser situations and gave me such a feeling of whiplash that I put this down constantly because I just couldn’t take it. By all rights, I probably should have stopped reading because it bothered me so much, but I liked these two. I wanted to see their happy ending. It took me way too long to get to that point, however, and wanting to see it and actually feeling it in my gut like I would a really great romance aren’t the same thing. Because I didn’t feel the HEA at all. All I got from it was a sense of closure and a certainty that this author’s style is just not for me.

Readability	5/10 – The headhopping gave me whiplash and made it all too easy to put down
Hero	6/10 – I liked his hardworking ideal, but his attitude toward Dee for the first third really annoyed me
Heroine	7/10 – I really liked her spunky, determined attitude
Entertainment value	4/10 – Not even characters I could warm up to could save my irritation with the headhopping
World building	8/10 – I don’t know if it’s all historically accurate, but it did feel authentic
TOTAL:	30/50

Bring the Heat by M.L. Rhodes

2011-10-10T23:38:00.000-07:00

TITLE: Bring the Heat
AUTHOR: M.L. Rhodes
PUBLISHER: Amber Allure
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 31k)
GENRE: Gay contemporary erotic romance
COST: $6.00

For weeks, Detective Riley Ellison has been crushing on a gorgeous guy from afar, going into a different coffee shop than his normal just for the chance to see him. When the guy surprises him by buying him a coffee and giving him his number, Riley is taken aback, but doesn’t follow through, convinced a beautiful man like that would never be interested in a reformed geek. Color them both surprised, however, when the crush turns out to be a person of interest in Riley’s most recent homicide investigation…

This is one of those authors that I see touted around the blogosphere as well loved, but after reading this second offering from here, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that she’s just not to my taste.

The story starts out promising. Riley is a geeky cop, struggling with self-image, who’s been going into a different coffee shop for the past three weeks because he’s crushing on a guy who is totally not his usual type. Meaning, completely gorgeous and out of his league. Unsafe. On the day he vows it’s the last time, the guy surprises him by paying for his coffee and giving Riley his phone number, only to disappear when Riley looks for him afterward. Riley doesn’t follow through on calling, mostly out of fear that it’s all one big game and he’ll be made a bigger fool by trusting it. When he’s out questioning people in relation to a new murder case he has, a stripper at a gay club, he’s shocked to learn his mystery man is Dane Scott, a co-worker and next on his list.

That’s when it begins going downhill for me. I’m not a fan of insta-love, and that’s pretty much what this is. Riley and Dane can’t keep their hands off each other, which is all well and good for having hot sex, but as soon as they start talking commitment and something longer the very same night, my brakes come screaming on. I just don’t believe it, especially with a guy like Riley. It’s romantic fantasy fluff, and not what I read for most of the time. It doesn’t help that Dane is completely idealized. He’s gorgeous, he’s well-off, he cooks, he says all the right things, he’s great in the sack…the list goes on. He’s too good to be true, which makes it all that much more unbelievable that Riley, a cautious guy by nature, would fall for him so hard, so fast.

Any hope that the cop/murder angle will provide some added interest gets tossed aside too soon. Most of the case is handled and resolved off the page, leaving only the explanations for what happened to read after the fact. The characters involved in it never appear on the page themselves, and there’s never any real threat to either Dane or Riley, so calling this a mystery or suspense would be a complete misnomer. The murder is simply a device to shove Riley into Dane’s life, since it’s obvious Riley won’t take that step himself. It’s not even handled gracefully afterward to lift it above its contrivance.

I can’t even say the prose elevates this. There was an editorial mistake in the second paragraph on the very first page that almost had me stopping then and there before I decided to continue on, and unfortunately, more abounded as I made my way through the story. I know for a fact this author is appreciated by a lot of readers, probably for the very same reasons I find myself turned off to her work. But at least I now know that her style of romance is just not for me.

Readability	7/10 – Some editorial mistakes kept jumping out at me, and the off-page explanations were dry and boring
Hero #1	7/10 – Nice to see a cop that’s not Mr. Macho
Hero #2	4/10 – Far too perfect to be believable
Entertainment value	6/10 – Fluffy and romantic if that’s what you’re looking for, but insta-love doesn’t really work for me most of the time
World building	5/10 – Very extraneous to the story, the cop angle was more of a device to get these two connected than anything of real interest or complications
TOTAL:	29/50

Lady's Minstrel by N.J. Walters

2011-10-05T23:55:00.000-07:00

TITLE: Lady’s Minstrel
AUTHOR: N.J. Walters
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 10k)
GENRE: Historical erotic romance
COST: $2.49

For six years, Alicia has waited for her husband to return from the Crusades. In his absence, she’s done everything she can to preserve his keep, to help it flourish, so it’s strong when he comes home. Nobody she’s asked has been able to help her, so when a minstrel arrives asking questions about her and the keep, she fears the worst—that the king is about to marry her off to somebody else…

I knew going into this that based on its length and where it was published, the focus wouldn’t necessarily be on plot or world building. But in the end, I enjoyed this for reasons entirely separate from those.

Alicia has been waiting for her husband’s return from the Crusades for six years, running the keep in his absence. She’s done a good job of it, and over time, has become loved and treasured by the people she takes care of. When a minstrel arrives, asking questions about her and the keep, she fears that the king has decided it’s time to marry her off, regardless of the fact that no word has ever come about her husband, or maybe, because of it. Unwilling to show weakness, she summons the minstrel to get the answers she wants from him. If she doesn’t like them, she’ll send him along.

The blurb at EC’s website gives away more, so I guess I can’t be accused of spoiling if I say the minstrel is actually Alicia’s husband Reys. Therein lies the emotional tug of this story. Alicia has missed and mourned him all this time, faithful to his memory, foregoing her own needs in order to save as much money as possible in case she ever had to ransom for his release. Her grief is palpable, her devotion endearing, and through it all, she remains strong and graceful, likeable in a sweet sort of way. Her reunion with Reys is predictable, but the raw emotion from both of them—Reys has been tortured and missed her just as much—compensates greatly for that expectedness. I’ll admit I teared up a little as they each stripped down and bared themselves to the other for the first time in so many years. I believed in their love, even as short as this story is, and fell for the story in spite of its other shortcomings.

Because it’s not perfect. Reys is too romanticized to be much of anything but a stereotype, even though the tragic hints of what he went through would have been wonderful if the length had allowed them to be explored. Historical detail is glossed over, with just enough there to let the reader know it’s a historical, and doesn’t shine in anyway. The prose itself is simplistic, too, and while the first sex scene is hot, the latter is lost in the anguish that preceded it.

Is it for everybody? Probably not. Sticklers for historical detail will be disappointed, and the sex doesn’t stray too far from vanilla. But I felt for these two people deeply, and rejoiced in their reunion. When it comes to short story romances, sometimes that’s all you need.

Readability	8/10 – Simple and emotional, but exactly what I needed
Hero	6/10 – The bones of an amazing hero are there, but for a story of this length, he’s too romanticized to be much more of a type
Heroine	7/10 – Shows startling grace and strength that I eagerly responded to
Entertainment value	8/10 – The emotional tug of this is what got me
World building	5/10 – Only sketchy details to paint some background, that’s not the focus on this at all
TOTAL:	34/50

The One That Counts by Chrissy Munder

2011-10-03T23:51:00.001-07:00

TITLE: The One That Counts
AUTHOR: Chrissy Munder
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 8.7k)
GENRE: Gay contemporary erotic romance
COST: $2.99

After his father’s death, Rob returns to the town where he grew up with his partner to see the family business one last time. While there, he reminisces about his first time, an experience he’s never shared before…

I’ve heard good things about Chrissy Munder, but nothing has ever really jumped out at me to try except this short. I’ve had it for a while, but after reading a different Dreamspinner book that just left me too frustrated to properly review, I needed something short if I wanted to get anything at all posted today. So I finally got around to reading this, and while I’m not convinced she’s worth autobuying, it was definitely a pleasant read.

Rob’s father has recently died, leaving behind the family business, a Laundromat, to him and his sister. He goes to see it one last time, and when his partner David surprises him with a key to get in, they enter. He’s immediately assaulted with memories, so as the conversation shifts along, he decides to share the story of his first time. It took place the summer after his first year in college, after his mother had a heart attack but before she passed along. He was working at the Laundromat part-time and already feeling the pressure about being different than he was in high school. The current object of his fascination is a stranger who keeps coming in. Eventually, Rob gets his chance to learn more about him.

While uncomplicated, there’s a certain quaint charm about this short story that turns it from something sweet but forgettable into something a little bit more. The prose is a small step above the norm, albeit a bit romanticized, with descriptions that help bring the Laundromat to life. The men are painted well, too, and I especially appreciated that they seemed more like real physical types rather than romantic heroes. Since the story is told primarily from Rob’s POV, he benefits the most in terms of characterization. His nineteen-year-old self is refreshingly awkward and earnest without being grating, and honestly, more interesting than his current incarnation. David doesn’t stand out as much, but the last chapter told from his perspective helps to round him out a little bit, again with making character choices that veer more toward realistic than romanticized.

I’m not exactly chomping at the bit to go and read this author’s backlist, but having a pleasant experience this first time out of the gate certainly helps when I consider future releases.

Readability	8/10 – Rather charming in its descriptions, with easy, natural dialogue
Hero #1	7/10 – I loved his flashback self, so real and awkward
Hero #2	6/10 – Doesn’t jump out as much as Rob, but the last portion from his POV helps tremendously
Entertainment value	7/10 – A charming, easy story with a ring of authenticity
World building	7/10 – The Laundromat jumped out, but I wasn’t aware that it took place in Michigan until the end when the reference to the UP took me by surprise
TOTAL:	35/50

Temporary Spy by Lynne Connolly

2011-09-30T23:44:00.001-07:00

TITLE: Temporary Spy
AUTHOR: Lynne Connolly
PUBLISHER: Total-e-bound
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 16k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotic romance
COST: $4.36

Beth investigates industrial espionage, but when a new job ends up coming from the man she left behind, she insists on being the one to do it. It’ll give her closure, she believes, except the moment Finn Scott sees her, he’s all over her, the chemistry they’d shared three years earlier hotter than ever. Finn has never forgotten Beth, ransacking the country for any sign of her when she disappeared after turning down his marriage proposal. But now that she’s back in his life, he has no intention of ever letting her go.

When I saw this for sale earlier this week, I got excited. I’d recently really enjoyed some of this author’s work, and while I’ve already purchased some of her backlist, I thought buying her most recent release would have me reading her at the top of her game. I was wrong. I was so disappointed in this story, it’s hard to believe it’s the same author.

The story starts in Finn’s POV as he is fending off the advances of his PA. She complains about the awful temp she has to deal with, so he agrees to talk to her at the end of the day. He doesn’t expect the temp to be the woman who disappeared out of his life three years earlier, however. The second she walks into his office, he is across the room, kissing her desperately against the door. Beth is there to help him ferret out and prove someone is stealing from him, but she gets caught up in the passion between them, and the single kiss turns into sex, sex, and more sex. She believes with everything she has that it won’t work, though, and fully intends for their relationship to be over once the job is done. Finn has other ideas.

My problems started early. We get none of the backstory between Finn and Beth before she walks into his office, and yet, he throws her against the door with such passion, there’s a distinct disconnect, like some of the story is missing or that I’ve somehow lost it from my file. In fact, we get very little of the backstory until later in the story, and what we do get comes in boring telling sections that do nothing to add any kind of sparkle to the characters. Beth’s explicit reason for leaving Finn before is kept a mystery until the very end, even though it’s painfully obvious very early on. It’s also incredibly lame, because all of the drama about why it was such a big deal is merely referenced in conversation that has zero emotional impact.

Both leads are flat, and the sex between them uninspired. Finn does start getting interesting near the end, but then the story is over and it all feels like one big wasted opportunity. Beth, on the other hand, always felt like a wet rag, and why she thought she could have this last fling with a man she’d left with no explanation, I’ll never know.

The espionage story itself is handled clumsily and then abruptly (and conveniently) resolved, leaving this short novella’s primary focus on the romance between the two leads. There’s an HEA, but honestly, I laughed out loud at it. She’s shown very little reason to change her mind, until, oh wait there’s the ending, she has to. If I hadn’t read this author before, I would have dismissed all the rest of her work out of hand after reading this one. It was just that bad. Now, however, I can only hope that this is a blip, because of the publisher perhaps, or maybe because it’s so short or written to a deadline I can’t know about or something like that. There has to be a reason why this falls so short of the level I’ve previously experienced with this author. I can only hope it’s a one-off and doesn’t reflect in the other stories I already have waiting to be read.

Readability	7/10 – Short, so it went quickly, but ultimately a little cold
Hero	4/10 – Flat for too much of the story, by the time he started getting interesting, the story was over
Heroine	4/10 – Her behavior remains unexplained for too much of the story, making her annoying rather than sympathetic in any way
Entertainment value	3/10 – The sex was unengaging, the characters flat, and the overall effect extremely disappointing
World building	5/10 – Her past is sketchy as is her involvement, though there’s more when it comes to Finn’s work
TOTAL:	23/50

Soul Survivor by Misty Evans

2011-09-28T23:15:00.000-07:00

TITLE: Soul Survivor
AUTHOR: Misty Evans
PUBLISHER: Carina
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 52k)
GENRE: Paranormal romance
COST: $4.49

Keva Moon Water’s dead body is at the center of what looks like a ritualistic murder, the bodies of five dead women surrounding her. FBI agent Rife St. Cloud knows evil when he sees it, but when Keva comes back to life right before his eyes, he’s just glad to have a living witness to this awful crime. The hospital declares Keva a miracle, but she only cares about one thing – finding out why Rife doesn’t remember the brief life they shared together a thousand years ago…

While I’m not a big fan of soul mate stories, I am a fan of reincarnation ones, as well as Native American lore. I jumped all over this when I saw it, but unfortunately, its execution left it severely lacking.

It starts out all right, with Rife St. Cloud, an FBI agent on vacation, called in to look at a crime scene by his cop grandfather. The murder scene looks to be ritualistic, with six dead women, but as he’s looking at the woman at its center, she comes back to life. She is rushed to the hospital, where the doctors and nurses are amazed at her miraculous recovery. For his part, Rife is just glad that he has a witness he can interrogate now. Keva Moon Water is a bit of an enigma, and while he has a lot of questions regarding her past, his primary concern is who would want to kill her. What he doesn’t realize is that Keva is immortal, living the past thousand years as a result of trying to save her lover’s soul. She recognizes Rife as his reincarnation, but Rife has no idea about the truth, still disbelieving even after she tells him her story.

There’s the ongoing thread of Keva’s spurned fiancé wanting to prove to her he’s worthy of her—the core of the murder plotline—but it takes forever to get to a point where that plays a strong part. With the exception of a brief scene or two, the first half is dedicated to Keva trying to show Rife the truth about his soul in clumsy, boring information dumps. It tries to break up the flow by jumping back in time with flashbacks, but those never felt like they gelled with the rest of the story. It’s all tell, tell, tell, and boring telling at that. I got so bogged down with all the backstory that is necessary to get even a fraction emotionally invested in the current events of the story that I didn’t even care about the people it was trying to sell me on. Rife felt generic and predictable, while Keva’s attitude got on my nerves. She tells their story to Rife in hopes that he’ll remember, but there’s no finesse to it. I couldn’t help but think that someone who’d lived a thousand years should’ve been better at that kind of thing by now.

The pace does pick up in the latter half, but that just meant it got me to the end faster, not that I actually enjoyed it. Of all the characters in the book, I actually thought the bad guy was the most interesting, even if he did do some truly horrific things. But that’s not nearly enough to make up for my other misgivings about the story. It could be that this author’s voice isn’t for me, which is a shame since I really liked the ideas behind the basic story. I probably won’t read another one to find out, though.

Readability	6/10 – Lots of clumsy information dumping in the first half makes this read a lot slower than it should
Hero	4/10 – Kind of generic and boring, to be honest
Heroine	5/10 – Strong, but I found her brand of bluntness a tad offputting
Entertainment value	4/10 – I was bored to tears by the middle of the story, it took a lot to finish it
World building	7/10 – I liked a lot of the ideas, blending the Native American lore with the paranormal, it was just the execution that was clumsy
TOTAL:	26/50

Hide Out by Katie Allen

2011-09-27T08:12:00.001-07:00

TITLE: Hide Out
AUTHOR: Katie Allen
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 79k)
GENRE: Gay contemporary erotic romance
COST: $6.99

Officer Pete Giordano gets the opportunity not only to escape some of the homophobia of his workplace, but to better his odds at a promotion. All he has to do is keep a witness to a major trial safe. That witness is the gorgeous Trevor, on the run since his father tried killing him after he witnessed a murder. Pete takes Trevor to the small town of Honeysuckle two hours away, where they pose as a gay couple renovating their new house. Their attraction sizzles, but neither is aware the other is gay. At least, not right away…

While I enjoyed the book preceding this one, I wasn’t so bowled over that I had to jump out and read the next. That’s why this has languished on my TBR pile for over a year. In the end, while I probably enjoyed it about the same, I did so for different reasons.

Pete is a cop not really comfortable with his sexuality. He’s never had a relationship, only hook-ups, and he’s recently been getting a little more flack at work. His captain offers him the chance to babysit a witness to a murder trial, the gorgeous Trevor. Trevor is a reluctant witness. He’d still be hiding from his father if the cops on the case hadn’t found him and dragged him back to testify. Pete decides that instead of hiding in a city that might be predictable, he’ll take Trevor to the small town of Honeysuckle. Pete recently bought a house there in dire need of renovation, and it seems like the perfect cover to keep Trevor busy and out of the way until the trial. Their attraction is mutual and sizzling, though it takes a while for them to even tell the other they’re gay. Once they initiate a physical relationship, things start hitting the fan, including a murder and a drop-in visit from old friends Rhodes and Wash.

Trevor and Pete have a warm, affable charm that comes through almost from the beginning. Though Trevor is sullen at first, there are flashes of humor in between his sniping and sarcasm, enough to keep me going until Pete is able to break down more of those walls. Pete is the real find in this. His quiet intensity shields a softer side, one that yearns for a real relationship if the idea terrifies him. I loved how protective he was without being overbearing about it, even though he tried. Trevor was having none of that, however. He rebelled whenever he could, though partially because he loved it so much when Pete went all dominant on him. The dialogue between them is fun, and their chemistry sparkles. I did grow weary of all the sex scenes, but it’s an EC book. The large number was to be expected.

What didn’t really work for me was the murder that got dropped into the middle of the story. While they worked to try and figure out what happened, I kept wondering what any of this had to do with the greater problem of Trevor’s dad and if that would end up getting conveniently resolved. By the time the ending rolled around, I understood more why the murder was a necessary plot point, but I’d been right about the ease in which the witness issue was settled. It ended up being too little too late, though. Resenting and rolling my eyes through a major plot part in the middle of the story is not conducive to falling in love with it, especially when the details and circumstances seemed to stretch the realm of belief.

One quibble I had with the editing is a problem I find in a lot of books where proofing isn’t quite as tight as it could be. Imaging is not the same as imagining. I don’t know how many times I see that mistake made, and it’s frustrating every single time. I know it’s got to be because editors and authors aren’t reading carefully. Skimming through the text, it’s easy to see how the brain would automatically turn that into the word you want to use, but that doesn’t change the fact that it jumps out at me every time I find the mistake. This author is hardly alone in this common error, but it happened more than once in this story, enough to annoy me to the point of needing to mention it.

If there’s a third book, I’m likely to pick it up even though this one didn’t knock my socks off. I keep finding just enough to keep me engrossed. Maybe with the third book, she’ll find a way to blend all her strengths into a single story and make it better than all of its predecessors.

Readability	8/10 – Minor errors, and the plot stretches credibility, but a swift, entertaining read
Hero #1	8/10 – I liked his quiet intensity, especially with the soft center he hid
Hero #2	7/10 – His petulance and behavior grates sometimes, but when he let himself relax, he was lovely
Entertainment value	7/10 – Charming with likable characters, but I would’ve enjoyed it more if the murder plot didn’t seem utterly ridiculous
World building	6/10 – Some is done with the small town atmosphere, but a lot of it feels skimmed over
TOTAL:	36/50

Full Steam Ahead by Nathalie Gray

2011-09-23T23:55:00.000-07:00

TITLE: Full Steam Ahead
AUTHOR: Nathalie Gray
PUBLISHER: eRed Sage
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 57k)
GENRE: Steampunk erotic romance
COST: $4.00

Racing sailboats is Laurel Benson-Desmarais’s life, but when she runs into a freak storm in the middle of a race, she finds herself thrown into a world she’s not sure isn’t one giant hallucination. Flying boats, acid oceans, a terrifying monster race determined to exterminate humanity…none of that hits her quite as hard as the captain who isn’t convinced she’s working with the enemy. Phineas Hamilton is driven, enigmatic, and unsure what to think of this smart-mouthed woman who shares the same coloring as their foes. But he has little choice but to trust her, and to hope the attraction flaring between them never sees the light of day…

I love Nathalie Gray. I haven’t read a story by her yet that I didn’t really enjoy. She writes tough heroines and broken heroes, with some gritty, fantastic action thrown in for good measure, and I can’t get enough of it.

This one is no exception. Laurel is in the middle of a boat race when a freak storm literally changes the world around in her. She finds herself caught by an anchor from the sky, hauled out of the sea as it eats away at her boat. After getting dragged up through the clouds, she ends up on what looks like a flying boat, with a crew dressed up in funny Victoriana-style clothing and tools and weapons she’s never seen before. The captain and crew think she’s an enemy. Apparently, her blonde hair and blue eyes match their coloring, though her size does not. When the ship comes under attack and she helps them out, however, the captain is forced to accept her, at least for the time being. There’s no place for her to go without causing a scene, though, so he agrees to let her stay on board to help keep her safe.

Laurel is resourceful, strong, and smart-mouthed, quick with a comeback and refusing to take crap from anyone. She stands up to Phineas, the captain, from the start, even not knowing what is going on around her. I loved her scrappy nature and fearlessness, especially when paired opposite his almost prim and equally fearless behavior. He’s enigmatic at best, but very sexy in spite of his recalcitrance to act on their attraction. They play beautifully off each other.

If you’re looking for a sex romp, you’re not going to find it here. Sure, there are hot scenes in the book, definitely erotic, but it takes a long time to get there. The first half is packed to the gills with action and world-building, with the romance playing second fiddle. That gave me time to get to know Phineas and Laurel better before they leapt into bed with each other, though. I appreciated that. I also think it helped to believe in their HEA, because I was more committed to both of them as people first rather than as romantic foils.

It’s not perfect – the steampunk world sometimes feels a bit too generalized to truly stand out – but Gray is turning into one of my go-to authors. I should just go to one of her titles any time I’m in a drought. I always find an entertaining, fantastic read.

Readability	9/10 – Heavy on the action, gritty and fun
Hero	8/10 – An odd dichotomy of prim and violent that strangely enough worked for me
Heroine	8/10 – Spunky and smart-mouthed, maybe too smart-mouthed
Entertainment value	9/10 – I’m a fan of Gray’s particular brand of characterizations and eroticism; this one is no exception
World building	8/10 – Some great world-building, though the prevailing sense that it could’ve been a pirate book instead of steampunk never really went away
TOTAL:	42/50

Becoming the Spoils by J.L. Merrow

2011-09-19T23:14:00.001-07:00

TITLE: Becoming the Spoils
AUTHOR: J.L. Merrow
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 7k)
GENRE: Gay paranormal erotic romance
COST: $1.49

When he decides to investigate vampires, journalist Frank finds himself in a bit of a pickle when he gets himself thrown into a basement with a hungry, but hot, vamp…

I’ve had some mixed reactions to some of this author’s work, but one thing I can usually count on is strong writing. That’s the foundation for this short but charming story about a journalist who decides he wants to investigate vampires, only to get picked up and thrown into a locked basement with one that hasn’t fed properly in a while.

Told in 1^st person, this is a quirky little tale about Frank and Victor, and how they manage to survive not only each other but their temporary imprisonment. Frank is smart alecky and fun. His voice carries the story through, the humor strong and quick. I’m hard-pressed to say much more about him, though, as this is a tale meant for a good laugh rather than anything deep and meaningful. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that, but with Victor rather lacking in the personality department, it meant the only thing I remembered about this short a few hours later was the ending.

It’s sensual when it needs to be, but even the sex plays into the humor more than eroticism. It’s also more than a little quirky as a result. I have the feeling that if it had been longer, I would’ve had much less difficulty remembering more than I did. But standing on its own like this, there’s just not enough for me to sink my teeth into.

Readability	8/10 – Quick and engaging
Hero #1	7/10 – Charming with a sense of humor
Hero #2	5/10 – Entertaining, but the focus is on the narrator
Entertainment value	6/10 – Amusing, but a few hours after I’d finished it, I couldn’t even remember exactly what it was about
World building	5/10 – Not bad for such a short story, the primary focus is on the humor and narrator, though
TOTAL:	31/50

Iodine by C.L. Hilbert

2011-09-16T22:31:00.001-07:00

TITLE: Iodine
AUTHOR: C.L. Hilbert
PUBLISHER: Drollerie Press
LENGTH: Short story/novella
GENRE: Futuristic fantasy
COST: $2.99

Wolf has one mission in life – to find Red. In a world gone wrong, where humans have been driven underground, where mutations are common and life is dark, it’s the only thing that keeps him going. Even as he realizes, she’s hunting him in return…

Though I often start with a plot summary, it’s almost pointless in this case. This is a reworking of the fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood, set in an apocalyptic future where humans are barely surviving underground. Wolf is a bounty hunter of sorts, and Red a technical genius, armed and dangerous. He’s been on the hunt for her for years, but she eludes him at every pass. Things start turning around for him, though, until he realizes that she is deliberately leading him down an unknown path, one littered with the tortured memories of their mingled pasts. He could give it up, but what’s the point? She’s become the sole reason for his existence, and he’ll die before he lets her get away for real.

I can’t give an exact word count on this to help judge the length, but it’s not long, short-story length or at most, a short novella. But there is a lot crammed into so few words – an apocalyptic world that bleeds and glows with descriptions that I could practically taste, a broken protagonist more tortured and twisted than I’ve read in a long time. It paints a future both grim and terrifying, and does so with razor-like precision. In fact, it’s the prose that is really the biggest selling point of this short. Phrasing like, …the terminal cynicism carved in the lines of his face could crush cities, and ...the silk whispered over his skin like acid through rock, soothing and searing, catching sweet kisses on his calluses, stole my breath away, keeping me enraptured with what was going on even when I had absolutely no idea what was happening. Questions upon questions tumbled together, though not all of them got answered. I didn’t care. Even when I sat staring at the ending, wondering how I was going to interpret it, I didn’t care.

But that’s the story’s primary weakness. As interesting as this reworking is, there are so many loose ends left dangling that a reader who doesn’t like them will finish feeling unfulfilled. Even the ending has the problem, because I could see it being interpreted in more than one way. This lack of definitive answers was annoying, that’s for sure, but I loved Wolf’s complexity and the author’s voice so much, I was willing to let it go. Do I wish this was longer and better explained? Oh, yes. At the same time, I wonder if I would have overloaded on the world’s darkness. It might have reached a saturation point that made it intolerable; it’s that grim. Lucky for me, the story is short enough not to outstay its welcome. This will be one I’m thinking about for a long time to come.

Readability	9/10 – Love this author’s gritty, visceral voice
Characterization	8/10 – Wolf is utterly fascinating, broken and driven, though I have an abundance of questions by the end
Plot	7/10 – It’s a simplistic chase sequence, but with enough twists to keep me guessing all the way to the end
Entertainment value	9/10 – In spite of the holes in the world building and my multitude of questions, I was absorbed by this all the way to the end
World building	7/10 – The nihilism of this futuristic world is an excellent backdrop, aided by the fantastic prose, but there are too many aspects left unexplained to really satisfy me completely
TOTAL:	40/50

Icing on the Cake by Shayla Kersten

2011-09-12T23:34:00.000-07:00

TITLE: Icing on the Cake
AUTHOR: Shayla Kersten
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 19k)
GENRE: Gay contemporary erotic romance
COST: $4.45

Slated with getting the last minute cake for his best friend’s wedding, uptight Jeff is taken aback by his visceral response to the bald and tattooed baker he’s supposed to hire. He’s thrilled when Ollie is interested in him as well, but when he discovers Ollie wants him to give up his control, he’s not so sure the exchange will be worth it…

I’m only labeling this an erotic romance because of the HFN that gets tacked onto the end of this novella. For the vast majority of the story, it’s just plain erotica. Hot erotica.

Jeff is an uptight businessman who is playing maid of honor for his best friend’s whirlwind wedding. She gets called out of town at the last minute and asks him to get the cake sorted out, citing a specific bakery she wants him to use. He goes down and is greeted by the bald, tattooed, biker-type baker, a man that throws his libido into overdrive. It’s obvious very quickly that Ollie, the baker, is interested, too, and their flirtation expands into a consensus of sex, at least until Jeff sees the dungeon set-up the man has in his bedroom. Ollie is determined to make Jeff lose control, however, and Jeff, for all his anxiety about doing so, can’t seem to walk away.

There’s not much more to describe. The men have a lot of sex, with Ollie admitting first to himself and then to Jeff that maybe it’s time for him to start think about serious dating again. Jeff is a fly-by-night kind of guy, though, and all the talk about “substantial” freaks him out. Not enough to say no to a second night, though. The novella benefits from the fact that the sex is mostly hot. It reads swiftly, and except for the occasional snort-worthy phrasing (like …his come rushed to freedom), succeeds at what it intends. If this was sold as straight erotica, it would likely rate higher, because my expectations for characters and the ending wouldn’t be quite as stringent. As it is, though, the author clearly strives for the HFN, but can’t get there for me, mostly because her two heroes are more archetypes than fully-fleshed characters and little time is spent doing much of anything but having sex.

Readability	8/10 – Hot with only a few phrasing things that made me snort
Hero #1	5/10 – Little is known about him except he’s uptight
Hero #2	5/10 – More of a type than a character, though I do have a soft spot for that type
Entertainment value	7/10 – I got lost in the heat of it which helped since the HFN is weak, reads more like erotica than a romance
World building	5/10 – The food stuff is excellent, but very little is done about everything else
TOTAL:	30/50

Cougars and Cubs by assorted authors

2011-09-09T23:38:00.000-07:00

TITLE: Cougars and Cubs
AUTHORS: Ashley Ladd, KS Augustin, Mia Watts, Catherine Chernow, Elizabeth Coldwell, Imari Jade
PUBLISHER: Total-e-bound
LENGTH: Anthology (roughly 105k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotic romance
COST: ₤6.49

A collection of six erotic novellas, each about a romance between an older woman and a younger man…

My biggest hope when I buy anthologies is to discover new talent, but that doesn’t happen all that often. It definitely didn’t happen with this one.

The anthology starts off with “Scene of the Crime” by Ashley Ladd. Forty-four year-old Robyn returns to the college she graduated from as a history professor, but that also means returning to the town where she’d first had her heart broken by a man who lied to her about being married. Now divorced, he wants to rekindle things with her, but she wants nothing to do with him. Running out on a date with him that she got ambushed on, she goes to a local bar, gets drunk, and takes home the hot young guy she played pool with. The next morning, she’s appalled to discover he’s the spitting image of her ex. He should be. He’s his son. While the writing itself in this story isn’t bad – there’s even some chemistry between the two leads – I was so put off by the idea that this professional woman would get involved with the son of a man who hurt not only her but his wife and child, I could never really accept the too-swift love that came between them. The situation was just too complex, and people were too badly hurt, for this to succeed. It needed more time and depth to be even remotely believable, not to mention give me the reader a chance to empathize with her for her predicament.

Following the weak lead-in is KS Augustin’s “Singapore Sizzle.” Sophie is an ex-socialite who’s been divorced for two years, eager to get a little fun back in her life. She accepts an invitation to a masquerade ball, and there, she meets a gorgeous man who takes her up to the penthouse suite almost immediately. She has problems with the age difference, however, and flees the next morning. He, on the other hand, isn’t so easily put off. While this one has a better flow than the first, with a slightly more sympathetic heroine, the hero lacks much depth to give this anything more than a fling feel. Of the six stories, it has the most realistic ending, though, so points there for that.

One of the stronger stories in the collection is “Melting Melinda” by Mia Watts. Mel has been best friends with Karen for a very long time, but recently, she’s become attracted to Karen’s grown son, Ethan. The trio are practically family, but what Mel doesn’t know is that Ethan has been in love with her for years. He lets her know on the vacation they all take together, but she doesn’t want her moment of insanity to ruin the best relationships in her life and runs scared. This is the romance I bought the most of the group. The relationships between the three, as well as the two secondary characters Larry and Lyla, sparkle with authenticity. I never doubted Ethan’s feelings for her for a moment, and I really liked how the fallout was handled.

Unfortunately, liking that one wasn’t nearly enough to save me from the next. “Lucky in Love” by Catherine Chernow is about fifty-year-old Maddie Summers and the hot thirty-five year-old Jake Conroy who moves in next door. She discovers they work for the same company, and though she tries to keep things professional, he’s too attracted to her not to put the moves on. This one never got off the ground for me. The authorial voice is simplistic and borderline pedantic, with short, simple sentences and stop-and-go pacing. Maddie’s inner conflict is overwrought, and the transition from strangers to more too unbelievable for me to ever accept. Definitely my least favorite of the bunch.

“Something Within Him” by Elizabeth Coldwell is the 1^st person telling of editor Kate who agrees to see someone as a potential intern as a favor for a friend. He’s cute and smart, and hiring him is a no-brainer even though the last intern she hired was a fiasco. He makes his attraction to her obvious early on, but she manages to hold him off until a trip to Amsterdam to cover a new hotel throws them together. Of all the stories in the collection, this is the one with the most sophisticated prose, with some very nice descriptions and intelligent phrasing to help counter the fantasy of the entire situation. The ending is too saccharine in relation to the realistic tone set by the rest of the story, but the author’s voice was such a pleasant change of pace and the heroine so refreshing that I was forgiving of it.

The anthology ends with Imari Jade’s “Something to Be Thankful For.” Julianne is the manager for rock star Cameron, but when he tells her he loves her and wants more, she excuses the sex that follows as a drunken mistake. He disappears after that, and she tracks him down in hopes of repairing their relationship. While I rather Julianne in this, Cameron remains an enigma. We’re told a lot about him – that he likes women and alcohol too much, and overindulges with both – but little of it meshes with what I actually see on the page. I never felt like I got to know him, and without being able to see him as an individual, I can’t invest in the romance.

Unless you’re a fan of more than a few of these authors, I’d suggest passing. Pick up the authors you like individually, or, if you don’t want have one, try Coldwell’s or Watts’. They’re the only two in this that didn’t really feel like a waste of my time.

Readability	6/10 – Relatively clean, but a couple bordered on hard for me to finish due to the voice
Romance	5/10 – Little depth in most, with resolutions too easy
Characterization	4/10 – For the most part, very flat
Entertainment value	4/10 – Unmemorable and surprisingly not very hot
World building	5/10 – Only one seems to make any real effort here
TOTAL:	24/50

Let's Misbehave by Rae Summers

2011-09-07T23:52:00.000-07:00

TITLE: Let’s Misbehave
AUTHOR: Rae Summers
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 20k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $3.00

Jazz singer Gabrielle wants to embrace her freedom, taking pleasure wherever she can in search of filling the holes left inside her at her father’s death. When she meets the uptight Sebastian at his bachelor’s party, she’s unsettled by the way he seems to read her. He, on the other hand, can’t get the free spirit out of his head, but it’s impossible for him to turn his back on everything he’s had to devote his life to, even though he feels trapped by its constrictions…

Though this is a short novella, I was utterly entranced. Color me surprised when I slipped into the Jazz Age London setting with little problem, and got lost in the emotions surrounding these two lost people.

The story is a simple one. Wild child girl meets uptight boy. Each misunderstands the other, until they take steps to see past their surface misconceptions to the truths that were hinted at in their first meeting. Love affair blooms. Differences rest in the character’s roots. Gabrielle is a Flapper who yearns for the freedom so much of her generation is striving for, determined to run from the emptiness inside her left behind at her father’s death. Sebastian is the only remaining son of a politician, forced into a life meant for his older brother before the brother was killed in the war, fighting against all his natural instincts to let his control go. They feel iconic at the same time they come to life, their emotions worn on their sleeves like a hungry desperation. They are the heart and soul of this fervent romance, and completely swept me up in everything they were experiencing.

It’s helped by a smooth authorial voice, with just enough lyricism in the descriptions to give it an easy, lovely flow. It’s not overbearing, and while I can’t be sure if it’s all completely accurate, nothing jarred as really wrong, so I was able to immerse myself into the love story unfolding before my eyes. I loved, too, that nobody’s villainized or canonized. Even characters I thought risked such treatment became fully fleshed by the end of the story.

I’ll remember these two and their driving needs for a long time, I think. I’m very curious now to find out if this author has written anything else. If she can sustain this kind of emotion for an entire novel, I imagine it would be a really magical experience indeed.

Readability	8/10 – Smooth, with an easy lyricism
Hero	8/10 – I ached for his loneliness and determination to do what he perceived was the right thing
Heroine	7/10 – I needed more of her motivations early to truly feel for what she was experiencing
Entertainment value	9/10 – As simple as the story was, I was completely and utterly entranced with it
World building	8/10 – I’m not sure how accurate everything might have been, but it felt real, with the sense of lively desperation I associate with the time period
TOTAL:	40/50

Honor Bound by Myla Jackson

2011-08-29T23:40:00.000-07:00

TITLE: Honor Bound
AUTHOR: Myla Jackson
PUBLISHER: Samhain
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 23k)
GENRE: Historical erotic romance
COST: $3.50

Escaping the Indian tribe that held her captive, Honor stumbles across two miners pleasuring each other in a stream. She’s aroused by what they’re doing, but recognizes an opportunity when she sees one. She goes to their cabin while they’re washing, intent on stealing what is necessary to survive, but their early return turns her plans on their head, especially when the men don’t seem eager to let her go…

On Mondays, I review either gay or ménage stories, which is why I pulled this one out of the stack to read next. However, while the publisher might think ménage scenes qualifies it as such, this romance definitely has a het HEA. I decided to review it anyway, if only to warn others who might be misled by the publisher’s labels, too.

Honor is running away from the Indian who has been holding her captive for nearly six weeks. A parson’s widow, she’d been on her way to San Francisco to start her life over when they were ambushed. Everybody else was left for dead, while she was secured as some kind of trophy wife. She’s tired of being manipulated and used by men, and determined to live life as she wants. She comes across two miners in a stream, Zach and Jake, who are in the midst of pleasuring each other. Rather than be appalled by what she’s witnessing, she becomes aroused, and gets herself off before realizing she can use this chance to steal supplies to help her escape. Her attempts are foiled when Zach and Jake return early, however, and Zach ties her up, unsure of what to do with her next.

You can figure out what happens from there. Lots of sex. Both men are desperate for a woman, though they have finally admitted to being attracted to each other, too. The three of them fall into bed together fairly easily, with Zach quickly becoming possessive of Honor. But while the publisher calls this a ménage, it is only in the sense that there are threesomes involved. The ending is all about Zach and Honor devoting themselves to each other, with the agreement that if she wants Jake to play with them, he can. Zach makes it very clear that she is his, though, and seems to only agree to the threesomes so he can touch Jake, not to share Honor. In my opinion, this doesn’t make it a ménage. It’s an erotic romance with threesome scenes. Readers expecting an HEA for all three of them will be sorely disappointed.

That might not be the only thing that disappoints them. While the erotic scenes are pretty good, the characters themselves are shallow caricatures, serving as placeholders for the fantasy fulfillment of the plot. It’s hardly anything new. A lot of stories do that for the sake of getting to the sex. Zach comes across as both a caveman in his behavior and a prude in his thoughts, the latter most likely a vague attempt to give him depth as he struggles with what he’s doing (having sex with Jake and moving so quickly with Honor). Honor seems to be the sort of strong heroine that many readers prefer, but honestly, as soon as sex gets involved, she throws a lot of her dreams out the window in favor of lust.

While this is the first in a series, I won’t be bothering with any of the subsequent stories. Threesomes don’t make the entire story a ménage. HEAs are about emotional commitments, and in this case, only two of them do it. I don’t trust the rest of the stories not to try and fool me again.

Readability	7/10 – Nothing offensive about it, but there’s nothing special, either
Hero	5/10 – A weird dichotomy of caveman behavior with puritanical thinking that never gelled for me
Heroine	5/10 – Wants to come across as strong, but is just fantasy fulfillment rather than a real character
Entertainment value	4/10 – The erotic scenes aren’t bad, but the story lacks any depth or believability not to mention mislabeled
World building	6/10 – Some of the grittiness of the period, but little to make it memorable
TOTAL:	27/50

The Vampire's Madam by L. Rosario

2011-08-26T23:14:00.000-07:00

TITLE: The Vampire’s Madam
AUTHOR: L. Rosario
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 8k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: $2.00

A madam of a high-end brothel in London, Janna has been infatuated with one of her regulars for the entire two-and-a-half years he’s been coming to her business. Not once in all that time has she offered to service him herself, but after she witnesses a particularly torrid night with one of her girls, she decides that she’ll allow no other girl in her employ to give him what he needs – her blood…

Finding an excellent short story in the romance genre is difficult, mostly because authors usually prove too ambitious within the story’s parameters. This one is yet another that falls woefully short.

The story takes place in Victorian London, in a high-end brothel run by the half-Welsh/half-Indian beauty, Janna. Janna has been shunned by society her entire life because of the color of her skin, and takes great pride in running one of the most successful establishments in the city. The only thing keeping her from true satisfaction is seeing the man she lusts after come into her business every Wednesday night and going off with one of her girls instead of her. After two and a half years, she gives in to the voyeuristic desire to see what’s going on and discovers that the gorgeous Hugh de Troyes is actually a vampire. She decides then and there that no other woman in her employ will see to his needs. She can give him everything he desires.

If this story had stuck to being erotica, it just might have worked. The set-up is a little trite, but the heat in the voyeuristic first third was sufficient to hint at how explosive the rest of it could be. However, it doesn’t settle for that. Instead, it attempts to be a meaningful historical/paranormal/romance on top of the erotica, and in the space of just less than eight thousand words, it just didn’t succeed. What’s meant to be romantic declarations of unending love come across as just silly. Hugh is a six-hundred year old vampire who claims to have been alone all this time, and that Janna is the one for him. Seriously. They’re making vows to spend eternity together with barely any time at all to get to know either one of them, let alone the fact that Janna really knows very little about the vampire’s current life, only what she’s gleaned from history books. History we’re told about toward the end of the story as if it actually has time to mean anything by that point. It’s one big information dump that feels irrelevant to the rest of the story except to justify expecting readers to buy into the “romance” part of it.

It didn’t work. It pulled me even further out of the story. The sex ends up mired in all this melodrama and clumsy writing, Hugh and Janna become little more than flat figures trying to fit into the niches the author has created, and the story itself is uninspiring.

Readability	7/10 – Hot when it had to be, but mostly just inoffensive
Hero	4/10 – Hints of appeal before the story derailed
Heroine	4/10 – Mostly just really horny
Entertainment value	3/10 – It can’t decide what it wants to be and ends up being schizophrenic as a result
World building	5/10 – Some details are described, but most of it’s either relayed in conversation or glossed over completely
TOTAL:	23/50

No Angel by Vivi Andrews

2011-08-24T23:27:00.000-07:00

TITLE: No Angel
AUTHOR: Vivi Andrews
PUBLISHER: Carina Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 33k)
GENRE: Paranormal romance
COST: $2.69

Sasha was born into Hollywood royalty, but being recognized isn’t exactly high on her list. The fact that her current boyfriend doesn’t seem to care is a bonus, but the way he’s stonewalling on meeting her famous mother on Christmas is not. She’s going to make one last ditch effort to convince him, even though she worries about his odd behavior the past few months. Little does she realize that Jay isn’t the goody-two-shoes she believes him to be, nor is he worried about meeting her mother. His fears are a little bit bigger than that, mainly how he’s going to tell her he’s actually half-demon and can’t spend Christmas on the mortal plane. Before he can explain it, however, he’s sucked into a vortex, and Sasha finds herself with a contract from the angels to rescue him from Hell before dawn…

I held off on buying the holiday anthologies that Carina put out last year, instead choosing to pick up a few of the individual novellas instead. Most of the time, I actually prefer this method rather than purchasing whole collections that often leave me more disappointed than not. This way, I can pick and choose what I want to read and better my odds at finding a gem. With this one, I came out a winner.

The story opens with Sasha on Christmas Eve, braving grocery store crowds to pick up a missing ingredient for the baking bonanza she has planned to surprise her boyfriend with. She’s running late because the store is a zoo, and has a less than pleasant experience when she’s recognized. See, her mother is considered Hollywood royalty, and though Sasha isn’t an actress, she’s treated in much the same way. It’s a role she’s tired of, since she can rarely be certain if someone wants to know her for her rather than her family connections. Her boyfriend is one of the few who doesn’t seem to care who she is. Jay is a good man, more low-key than the bad boys she usually dates, but Sasha is worried that his repeated refusals to spend Christmas with her family mean there’s bad news on the horizon. Especially since he told her they needed to talk. Little does she know that Jay isn’t exactly what he seems. He’s half-demon, and as such, isn’t allowed to be on the mortal plane for Christmas. In fact, he was supposed to be back in Hell months ago, but he’s ignored various summons in favor of staying with Sasha. Now, though, he knows he needs to tell her the truth, but before he can, a vortex opens in Sasha’s kitchen and sucks him straight to Hell. Sasha is then visited by an angel who lays upon her the responsibility of retrieving Jay before dawn, or losing him forever.

Comedy is always a tricky sell, because humor often translates so differently to paper. I’ve not always had the best luck when I’ve tried it out, but this time, I got lucky. Where most holiday stories tend to be saccharine sweet, this one was plucky, smart, and kickass.

The author’s voice is suitably sarcastic and sharp, befitting both of her leads, and the pacing is brisk and compelling. I could have easily read another 30k without batting an eyelash. Both the characters and the situation were that entertaining.

I especially loved the heroine. Sasha disdains the superficiality of the world she was born into, choosing to be a stuntwoman rather than an actress. She has a propensity for falling for bad boys, but her latest boyfriend, Jay, seems the antithesis of that. She met him in a library, and she often thinks that he’s actually too good for her. However, he sees past all the crap that comes with being her, and for that alone, he should be a keeper. Her reactions throughout the story reflect this front she wears like armor, when in actuality, she’s as scared and vulnerable as anybody else. It never gets in her way, however, and her consistent bravery and fast thinking made her incredibly easy to root for.

Jay’s a little harder to get a grasp on, but that’s due mostly to the duality of his nature, the fact that he’s kept so much hidden from Sasha, and the slightly sketchy world-building that doesn’t really provide all the answers I needed. My first perceptions of him are colored by Sasha’s thoughts, and it takes a while for those to smooth away to allow his real personality to shine through. When it does, he’s every inch the hero he actually wants to be, even if he’s just a little tarnished. It’s the tarnish that makes him so fascinating.

Knowing I can trust this author’s voice makes me eager to delve into her backlist. I know she’s published with Samhain at the very least. I’ll probably start there. Because when a story is this well-written, with characters that are real in spite of its supernatural setting and such excellent pacing, there’s no way I can stop at reading just one.

Readability	9/10 – Funny, intelligent, and completely absorbing
Hero	8/10 – I had less of a handle on him as his dual nature wasn’t very smoothly portrayed, but that didn’t stop me from really enjoying him
Heroine	9/10 – Sassy, confident, and ready to kick ass
Entertainment value	9/10 – This isn’t one of your saccharine holiday tales, it’s fun and spirited
World building	7/10 – With the focus so much on the paranormal world, I needed either better clarification of how it all worked or more of it
TOTAL:	42/50

Bad Company by K.A. Mitchell

2011-08-22T23:58:00.001-07:00

TITLE: Bad Company
AUTHOR: K.A. Mitchell

PUBLISHER: Samhain

LENGTH: Novel (roughly 57k)
GENRE: Gay contemporary erotic romance
COST: $4.50

Kicked out and cut off by his father, Kellan decides to hit the old man where it hurts – by pretending to be gay and cutting deep into his father’s homophobic heart and business. He goes to the one gay guy he knows, his childhood friend Nate, but the reasons for their falling out are still alive in Nate’s memory. He’s not as eager to play along with Kellan’s scheme, no matter how much he might have loved Kellan back in the day…

K.A. Mitchell is one of those authors I constantly see recommended everywhere, but have failed to get engaged in any of the blurbs or excerpts I’ve tried. When this one came out, I was sufficiently interested to give it a go, though I’ll freely admit some of that was to finally satisfy my curiosity. Sadly, I’m still not sure what the big deal is.

The plot is a simple Gay For You throwaway. This time, rich and famous Kellan has decided to get back at his homophobic father for cutting him off by doing everything he demands except with a guy instead of a woman. He ropes in his childhood friend Nate to help, though Nate has spent the last decade and more hating Kellan for a wide variety of infractions, not the least of which was outing him to the entire high school and standing idly by while Nate was badly bullied. Nate doesn’t want to help, but his liberal, idealistic side finds it hard to resist the offer Kellan makes of real proof against Kellan’s father. He agrees to help, which means Kellan living with him, for a two-month period. Needless to say, not everything goes as planned.

My problems arise almost from the start. While the dialogue is crisp and original, both lead characters were so unlikeable that I found it difficult to care about what was going on with them. Kellan is spoiled, immature, irresponsible, and obsessed with sex (when he keeps looking at the blonde at his first job as a walking blowjob, I almost stopped reading right then), while Nate is high-handed and supercilious, with such self-righteous tendencies he felt like a liberal stereotype. Guys like this might deserve happy endings, too, but that doesn’t mean I need to waste my time reading about it.

It doesn’t help that the set-up feels flimsy at best. I just don’t understand why it had to be Nate. All the people he’s met over the years, and he doesn’t know one other gay man? He claims that he owes money to most of his friends, but he’s done a lot. Somebody had to be a better choice than the childhood friend he completely screwed with. Because these two are very different men. They’ve grown up wanting different things. They live different lifestyles. What do they have in common to build a real future on except the memories of their childhood together and sex? Nothing that I could see.

The flimsiness holds all the way to the end with the wishy-washy resolution with Kellan’s father. The only reason I even made it that far was because it was such a swift and easy read. The dialogue was fresh and often funny, and the sex well-written. Characters felt real, too, which doesn’t always happen when I don’t like a story. But it’s that reality, I think, when slapped in the middle of a straight contemporary like this, that gets in the way from truly enjoying it. I just don’t like the two heroes. In a romance, I need to like at least one person in the pairing to get emotionally invested. That didn’t happen this time.

Readability	8/10 – Snappy dialogue with memorable characters
Hero #1	5/10 – Immature and selfish, real but not very likeable
Hero #2	5/10 – Uptight and self-righteous, again real but just not very likeable
Entertainment value	5/10 – While I couldn’t stop reading, I didn’t really get much emotional satisfaction from it since I just didn’t like either lead
World building	6/10 – Little is done to expound or take advantage of the various settings
TOTAL:	29/50

Trespass by Meg Maguire

2011-08-19T23:18:00.001-07:00

TITLE: Trespass
AUTHOR: Meg Maguire
PUBLISHER: Samhain
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 64k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotic romance
COST: $5.50

Hurt and on the run, Sarah stumbles onto a property in Montana, thinking she’ll spend the night in the barn before sneaking off in the morning. She’s surprised when she wakes the owner’s dogs, who in turn wake the owner. Russ rushes out with his rifle to see what the commotion is all about and discovers a young woman bleeding. As a doctor, even if he is a veterinarian, he has to see what’s wrong and take care of it, so he ushers her inside and tends to her wounds. He insists she stay on until she’s healed, during which time the two flirt and get to know each other. When Sarah tries to move on – by stealing from him and sneaking away in the middle of the night – Russ catches her. Hurt by her deception, he now has to figure out what to do with her…

Sometimes, all it takes for me to love a book is to fall in love with the hero.

Sarah Novak is on the run after being a part of a crime in Buffalo. She’s tried hitchhiking, with disastrous effects, and her latest attempt to find shelter ended up with the owner shooting buckshot into her side. It’s purely accidental she stumbles onto Russ’s property, and even more so that he turns out to be a vet. He insists on taking care of her injury as well as giving her a place to stay until she’s well enough to move on. Sarah gives him a fake name and refuses to answer questions about her past, an indulgence he grants because he both wants to trust in the best of people and he’s lonely as all hell. Their flirtation and friendship becomes something more over a couple days, but Sarah knows she has to move on. She takes measures to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night, stealing a little from Russ in order to get by, but unfortunately for her, Russ wakes up and catches her. Hurt and angered by her betrayal, he then has to decide what exactly he’s going to do with her.

I’ll state it simply. I. Loved. Russ. I was in love with him before Sarah made the disastrous choice to run out, and that only exploded in the face of his anger and roiling emotions after she betrayed him. Widowed for seven years, he’s led an incredibly isolated life in the time since. In a lot of ways, he’s moved on from his wife’s death, compartmentalizing it in such a way that he can function. But deep in his heart, he’s incredibly lonely and masks that pain with his work. Sarah gives him a glimpse of what it would be like to have someone in his life again, and for the first time in years, he begins to feel human again. Part of that is sheer lust. He doesn’t have many opportunities in the backwoods of Montana, and Sarah is a pretty girl. But they hit it off, too, enjoying each other’s company as friends before they become lovers. He finds a playfulness that counters his quiet existence and blossoms in this brief affair.

But then Sarah’s deception comes to life, and Russ feels like a complete fool. He’s angry and hurt, but his fury is as much directed at himself for giving in to the hope as it is at her for lying and stealing from him. He has to decide for himself how he’s going to deal with it, and it’s this emotional need that drives the rest of the story. His desperation is palpable, but I never felt like it was misdirected. It comes from his loneliness, and honestly, he and Sarah hit it off so well, I can’t blame him for wanting to embrace it fully. There’s a scene before he discovers the truth about Sarah where she has turned down his offer to spend the night with him in his bed, but he, after being unable to fall asleep on his own, goes out to her on the couch and asks to sleep with her there. This simple action is the quintessential example of just how cut off this man really was. I can see how some people might think him a sucker for choosing to believing in Sarah – even he calls himself one more than once – but it stems from his good heart and need to believe in the best of people. He made some bad choices. That makes him human.

While I loved Russ, I had problems with Sarah. It wasn’t at first, but as soon as it became clear what she was going to do to him, I got furious at her for hurting him like that. By that point, we don’t have any details on why exactly she’s on the run, but I think if I had known more, I would have been more sympathetic to the choices she made then, even as awful as they were. As it was, I didn’t know enough to be able to gather a fair judgment on her, and so I spent the entire middle section of the book pretty much hating the girl. It’s not helped that she turns into a mouse full of apologies when Russ hauls her back to his house. The spark that he’d liked about her in the beginning was gone, and I needed some of that to try and understand why I should care about her. It eventually returns, but honestly, it took too long to get there. It’s not helped that the reasons for her running were incredibly lame. They just made her look stupid in the long run, which only hindered the process of trying to sympathize with her.

The writing is clean and evocative, with fantastic dialogue, but I do have one quibble. The author was great about using scene breaks to denote POV shifts, but there’s a sex scene in the middle where she headhops between the two while each masturbates to thoughts of the other. I know why she did it. It’s obvious that it’s deliberate, a way to mirror their thoughts and emotions so closely. But compared to the smoothness of the rest of the story, the effect was incredibly jarring, so much so that I literally stopped and went back to re-read more than once to make sure I wasn’t being stupid about what I was seeing.

That being said, I was sucked in by Russ and the incredibly realistic interactions between him and Sarah. Their banter and actions captivated me up to the point where Sarah went off the deep end for me, while his emotions held me prisoner from that point on. I loved that they were so wonderfully flawed. Neither is particularly smart, though they’re both capable, and they react from the gut rather than the head. In a lot of ways, Russ felt like Everyman, his imperfections only highlighting just how real his emotions were.

This is the second hero and book by this author that I’ve loved this year. After this one, she’s going to my autobuy list. I seriously need to take a look at her backlist, too.

Readability	8/10 – Clean, evocative, great dialogue, with only a minor scene in the middle to really throw me
Hero	10/10 – The heart and soul of this story, decent but so lonely
Heroine	6/10 – Her really lame backstory combined with actions that just felt completely despicable – even if she did recognize they were – made it really hard for me to like her
Entertainment value	9/10 – I was so sucked into Russ’s emotions and needs that I didn’t really care how flimsy the reasons were for them to be together
World building	7/10 – The aspects of his job felt fully realized, but Sarah’s part in it felt flat in comparison
TOTAL:	40/50

Forbidden Thunder by Kathleen Lash

2011-08-17T22:18:00.000-07:00

TITLE: Forbidden Thunder
AUTHOR: Kathleen Lash
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 93k)
GENRE: Contemporary romance
COST: $6.00

When one of the company trucks gets in a precarious accident, Caila does what her trapped brother asks and calls Four Sons Towing to help them out. Little does she know that in doing so, she’s settling an old debt between their fathers, but rather than yank the livelihood away from a lot of good people, she’s able to come to an agreement with John Thunder, the man who now runs the towing company. It means putting in a lot of hours and making a lot of sacrifices, but more importantly, it means spending a lot of time with a man who drives her senses crazy…

Readers are always on the hunt for books that blow them away, so it’s always a disappointment when yet another one fails to live up to that hope. This one definitely falls into the realm of missed opportunities.

It starts off all right. Caila runs the business end of her family’s trucking company. When her brother is in a dangerous accident, he instructs her to call Four Sons Towing, even though their father strictly forbade them from doing so prior to his retirement. She displays courage and strength as she steps in to help however she can, at the same time meeting John Thunder, the son who now runs the towing company. Little does she know that a deal was made forty years earlier. In order to settle a lawsuit, Caila’s father agreed to pay $4,000,000 to John’s father in the event his company ever called the Thunders for help. There is no way the company has that kind of money to settle the debt, but Caila manages to finagle a settlement with John, preying on his sense of fairness to not put a lot of innocent people out of work. It forces the two of them to work in close proximity, during which time their attraction combusts.

The story goes on from there. And on. And on. At over 90k, it’s not a fast read, mostly because it gets bogged in really sloppy perspective and scene shifts, poor pacing, and tedious melodramatic events that end up repeating themselves in an attempt to put the principals at risk. Where John had seemed wonderfully alpha at the beginning, by a third of the way into the story he simply comes across as controlling and sullen, not appealing at all. He claims to admire her strength, but every time she displays independence in a way he doesn’t like or approve of, he goes off on her in the most condescending fashion imaginable. The romantic progression was jerky at best, with them being awful to each other and then suddenly chewing each other’s faces off. Plot points lurched out of nowhere to create drama, during which the narrative was so clumsy it was often hard to understand what exactly was going on. Then, I had to put up with what seemed like serious injuries getting ignored in favor of sexual escapades.

There was mild hope in Caila, but that got destroyed by the relationships surrounding her. Caila sacrificed a lot for her family and company, always putting her all into her work, her own needs on the back burner. I really liked that backbone in her, as did John. What creeped me out was her relationship with her brothers. They’re a very close family, but incredibly touchy-feely. This capable young woman gets pulled into their laps, gets her hair caressed, gets her face constantly touched, in ways that seem inappropriate from brothers. It’s made worse when John does the exact same thing. What was likely meant to be innocent becomes cast in a romantic, intimate light, until it got to the point where I would cringe every time another scene with a brother showed up. Which was a lot. She had four of them, after all. It’s explained away as a reaction to their traumatic childhoods, but that comes too late in the story to do any good. My feelings on them were already cemented.

I guess I’m still on the hunt. It’s too bad, because under better conditions, John is a type of hero I’d totally fall for.

Readability	6/10 – Sloppy POV, poor pacing, and repetition problems
Hero	4/10 – Intense but not in a good way, controlling and dour
Heroine	5/10 – Strong and independent, but inconsistent and her relationship with her brothers creeped me out
Entertainment value	3/10 – The prose was a mess, the relationships a little creepy, and the repetition/overkill on problems too much to believe
World building	7/10 – Well, she knows her trucking industry, that’s for sure
TOTAL:	25/50

The Darkling Thrush by Josh Lanyon

2011-08-15T23:51:00.001-07:00

TITLE: The Darkling Thrush
AUTHOR: Josh Lanyon
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 49k)
GENRE: Gay fantasy erotic romance
COST: $5.99

On an exchange program from Boston, Colin Bliss finds himself sitting behind a desk in London, trying to get over the fact that he’s had an affair with his married supervisor and has been discourteously dumped, when he’s offered the chance to find a book nobody is even sure exists. It seems like the opportunity of a lifetime, especially since he’s desperate to get away, so he takes the job, only to find his co-worker, the enigmatic Septimus Marx, on his heels the entire way…

I picked this up off the TBR pile in hopes that it would be a safe read from an author I trusted. Unfortunately, it turned out to be my least favorite work by him by a long shot.

The story starts out with Colin Bliss, a book hunter working on an exchange program in London, receiving an odd invitation to come view the book Colin had found. Colin goes, only to be offered the chance to search for a book that most believe to be a myth. His would-be employers are convinced otherwise, and he accepts. It’s a combination of a couple of things – curiosity, professional drive, and the desire to escape his workplace for a while. The affair he’d been conducting with his married boss has recently come to an end, and things are awkward at work to say the least. The search isn’t as easy as it seems to be however, especially when one of his co-workers, the enigmatic Septimus Marx, ends up on the same train to Scotland. It only gets harder once he arrives.

In some ways, this has the Lanyon stamp all over it. Told in 1^st person, the narrator has a similar physicality to previous Lanyon heroes, as well as the same idealistic nature. The prose is mostly lovely, and the mystery/action (once it gets into full swing) paced well. But there are definite differences, too, things that most decidedly pulled me out of enjoying it very much.

First of all, the beginning is mired in awkward information dumps. For a fantasy world, he needs to acquaint the reader with what he’s created, but I found these pages the hardest to slog through of the entire story. It’s confusing until much of it comes into context later on, with a lot of unfamiliar names thrown at the reader all at once. It might not be so bad if I wasn’t also trying to get a grasp on what the differences in this world were. But I was, and so ended up trying to keep all these details straight without having the right or comfortable context for it.

It’s not helped by early editorial mistakes. For instance, Colin is introduced to the Lady Margaret Lavenham, the museum procurator. She alternately gets called Lady Margaret and Lady Lavenham (in the midst of trying to keep all the other names straight), and then gets referred to as Lavinia by Anstruther, the museum’s presul. The name Lavinia is never mentioned again. I can only think that maybe the character had a name change from an earlier draft and this one was missed. Mix these kind of mistakes with the brewing and messy world-building that was going on at the same time, and it turned into a big headache.

As familiar as he was, I did like Colin and his innocence, but the romance never worked for me. Part of that is my fault. Marx is introduced (in quite a negative light and in a very menacing way) as being tall and thin with shoulder-length black hair and slashed eyebrows. I couldn’t get a picture of Snape out of my head for the entire book. Part of it, however, is the insta-love feel when they get to the ending. It was rushed and unexplained, and ultimately unbelievable. The plot and action helped to keep me engaged with the story once I finally settled into the world halfway through, but even that seemed slighted by the hurried last quarter.

In the end, I just don’t think Lanyon’s fantasy writing is my cup of tea. This needed more pages to better explore the characters and explain the world, as well as a tighter editorial hand.

Readability	7/10 – The information dump and early editorial mistakes bogged down the first third, though it picked up as the story went on
Hero #1	7/10 – Naïve and idealistic, though oddly charming
Hero #2	4/10 – Some interesting ideas behind him but never felt realized
Entertainment value	4/10 – A boggy first third and an unbelievably rushed last third makes this my least favorite Lanyon title
World building	6/10 – I liked the ideas as I finally sorted them out, but the beginning was laden with awkward info dumps and too much was left unanswered
TOTAL:	28/50