The Younger Man by Lauren Hawkeye

TITLE: The Younger Man
AUTHOR: Lauren Hawkeye
PUBLISHER: Whispers Publishing
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 10k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotica
COST: $2.95

A recent break-up after a five-year relationship has a woman deciding to seek sexual release with her co-worker, a man nine years her junior.

I suppose I could expand that summary a little, but you know what? It’s a short story, and honestly, nothing else happens. The heroine – unnamed, and the story is told in 1^st person – picks up her co-worker dressed to kill, they go out, and then they have sex. All night. And that’s it. Seriously.

Not naming either character in this is most likely meant to portray the universality of the emotions involved. The woman is feeling unwanted and unattractive, and seeks to remedy that. The man is practically perfect, which is nice enough, but there’s never any more personality presented than the prowess he displays in bed and everyplace else they have sex. There’s brief mentions of him looking like a bad boy at the very start of the story, but that never pans out. He’s too sweet, through and through, and never developed into a character in his own right. It’s all meant to show how sex is a natural thing, desire is normal, and it’s possible to heal from bad break-ups with the right experiences.

The lack of setting detail also adds to the whole sense of everywhere/everywhen. I was never sure if this was in the US, the UK, or someplace else entirely. Without characters to sink into, I need setting, and this didn’t provide that, either.

The story itself isn’t bad. It’s just boring. It’s act after act of sex with little to nothing inspiring about the prose, and no way for me to connect emotionally with either principles as characters. Archetypes, maybe. But then, I’m not reading erotica to study archetypes. There. I said it. I wouldn’t have even bought this one if it had been billed as erotica. It’s not. It’s billed as erotic romance, so I fully expected it to have a little more romantic depth than it did.

Readability	7/10 – Technically competent, but mostly uninspired
Hero	5/10 – Sweet enough, but he’s a device more than a character
Heroine	6/10 – Very everywoman
Entertainment value	3/10 – The same over and over and over again makes for a very boring read.
World building	4/10 – I have no idea where this was set. Mentions of a pub and a few other terms made me initially think England, but it’s not consistent.
TOTAL:	25/50

Interstitial by Ann Somerville

TITLE: Interstitial
AUTHOR: Ann Somerville
PUBLISHER: Samhain Publishing
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 24k)
GENRE: Gay futuristic sci-fi
COST: $3.50

Captain Sebastien van Hester is coming off a divorce from the man he still loves, so sleeping with his pilot probably isn’t the smartest thing he’s ever done, especially since Jason North has been nursing feelings for him for years. Now they have to spend three weeks together in space, and all Seb wants is to forget the one night-stand ever happened. Trouble is, they’re not the only ones in this romantic tangle. North had a friends with benefits relationship with Jatila Kan, their engineer, until he broke it off right before they left, not knowing she was in love with him. Now, all three are ready to tear into the others, hurt and angry and confused. But an enemy in space is ready to tear into them…

Reading Interstitial is like watching a tightly choreographed pilot for a new sci-fi series. Not one of those cheesy awful ones from the SciFi channel, but something Fox might take a chance with. And you know what? I’d totally watch that show if this was the script for it. This would have been more than enough to fascinate me and tune me in the following week.

Though the romantic entanglements thread through the entire story, they are not the driving force. This is not a romance. This is space opera, in the very best sense of the phrase. The main thrust of the story is our three characters battling the space monsters attacking their ship, as they fight to save the 600 lives on board in stasis. The action is taut and intricately articulated, and the terse prose serves it well by hooking the reader right into the middle of the action. The entire story is presented very cinematically, actually, with short, direct scenes and no extraneous verbiage to detract from the action. Even better, the characters act intelligently, as you would hope trained professionals in this situation would, with their pettiness and bad behavior coming through in comments alone.

Speaking of the characters, it’s a diverse bunch the author has created here. Seb is emotionally reserved and morose, Jati is sharp-witted and insightful, and North is the young man with rose-colored glasses. None are perfect. I like Jati and Seb best, if only because I find North a little too earnest for my tastes. The one thing I would wish for them is a longer story, though. There is a ton of history here, worlds of experiences, and I, as a reader, only get a brief taste of it. I’m not convinced this would have necessarily been a better book if it had been longer, since that would end up protracting the action and spoiling the effects. But I wouldn’t argue about more time spent with these characters at all.

One warning: be careful about paying attention to the time stamps in the first third of the story. It jumps back and forth rapidly, in different storylines before all three finally converge into one. With the scenes as short as they are, it’s easy to lose track, or get a sense of disjoin. Don’t let that deter you. As soon as the threat in space hits, everything coalesces into a smooth, exciting ride you won’t regret taking. Especially if you like a little romantic messiness with your sci-fi.

Readability	9/10 – Tightly paced, without a word wasted, the only drawback is the back and forth nature in the beginning that gets abandoned once the action takes place
Characterization	8/10 – Rich, interesting characters that deserve more than a short novella to fully explore them.
Plot	8/10 – The space monster isn’t hugely original, but the world is richly realized and even better, everything makes internal sense.
Entertainment value	8/10 – Taut and quick, it’s cinematically written and presented, which serves it extremely well.
World building	9/10 – Only the brevity of the story keeps this from being a perfect score, with too much rich detail to be completely satisfied.
TOTAL:	42/50

Perfect Timing by Barbara Elsborg

TITLE: Perfect Timing
AUTHOR: Barbara Elsborg
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 57k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotic romance
COST: $5.95

Daisy Leaf decides to try something new in meeting men – a murder mystery weekend at a stately hotel north of London. There’s only problem. She’s misread the information. Instead of a sixties theme, it’s an over-sixties weekend. All her hippy attire does is catch the attention of the sexy hotel manager, Jake Weston. Of course, it doesn’t help that she’s tangled up in a sheep when they first meet…

I don’t buy a lot of romantic comedy books. Humor is so subjective. What’s funny to one person isn’t to another, and it often feels like an author is trying too hard when it comes to this particular genre. My yardstick is the excerpt. In the case of Perfect Timing, I chuckled – genuinely so – so often during reading the excerpt, I knew I had to buy it.

I wasn’t disappointed. The book is zingy and charming, with both hero and heroine having the quick wit to keep up with the other. This isn’t a case of just one of the leads being stuck into humorous situations, though that certainly happens. It’s an example of two characters with a sharp sense of timing and the ability to get zingers out without batting an eyelash. Daisy is the stronger of the two, and I suspect Jake comes off as well as he does because he thrives in her presence. They play amazingly well off each other, enough so that when it came time for some of the latter sex scenes, I just wanted these two to put their clothes back on so I could hang out with them in that regard. The humor isn’t just in their banter. Some of the description and actions is even funnier than their dialogue. I was especially tickled by what a life of its own Jake’s anatomy takes on, completely separate to any of his actions.

I don’t mean to imply that the sex scenes don’t work. They do. I don’t think they’re as hot as some others I’ve read, but they certainly hold their own in expanding characterization for these two. But in spite of the plethora of them, it’s not the glue that holds the story together. That honor belongs to Daisy and Jake. While their swiftness to get to the oh my god this is love didn’t ring completely true for me, I liked and enjoyed them so much, I was willing to look past that.

If the story has fault at all, it’s in the less than believable motivations that drive Jake and Daisy. The darker elements of Daisy’s past are easier to accept, though they still seem to stretch the realm of credibility in a world that feels frighteningly real. But Jake’s reasons for keeping Daisy a secret – while well explained – don’t sit as well. He clearly doesn’t like what he’s doing, so I never understood why he stuck it out, especially to the detriment of what he thought was love. Perhaps if there had been interactions with his father and brother earlier on in the story, I might have found it more credible.

All in all, however, this was extremely funny and engaging, with two charming leads and a delightful story. If you read the excerpt and chuckle, I think it’s a safe bet you’ll find the rest of the book just as entertaining.

Readability	9/10 – Zippy and often laugh out loud funny, the only time this bogs down is during some of the sex scenes
Hero	8/10 – I’m never sold on his motivations, but I’m certainly sold on him.
Heroine	9/10 – Charming and funny, though her motivations are only slightly stronger than the heroes
Entertainment value	8/10 – I liked these two characters so much, I would have liked to see more of them outside of sex scenes.
World building	8/10 – The hotel itself is nicely realized, but history and a sense of place outside of it falls behind.
TOTAL:	42/50

Poison by Joely Skye

TITLE: Poison
AUTHOR: Joely Skye
PUBLISHER: Samhain Publishing
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 66k)
GENRE: Gay futuristic erotic romance
COST: $5.50

Alliance member Geln Marac has a mission – hang out on Rimania and gather information they can use to open trade routes between the low-tech planet and the Alliance. His attempts to stay on the periphery go out the window when he saves the life of a young man of the elite. In fact, everything seems to change completely after he meets Tobias Smator, including betrayal, temporary mindwipes, and Alliance spies going rogue. The last thing he should do is encourage Tobias’ crush on him, but Tobias just might be Geln’s last hope…

This isn’t a story for a quick, fluffy read. Densely plotted, it has a broad cast of characters in worlds different from present-day Earth that demands a reader pay attention. If you don’t, you’ll get lost. There is too much going on – and too little explained before the next twist comes – to simply skim. I’d likely call this more of a gay futuristic story than a romance, even. The romance between Tobias and Geln doesn’t come fully into play until well over halfway through the story, and when it does, it feels jarringly out of place. I suspect it’s because it takes so long to develop. While taking the time to set the plot in motion and keep the characters from just tumbling into bed is a good thing, in this case, it works against the story’s favor. It’s not that I wanted them to get involved sooner. I didn’t. But when they do come together, there are several chapters devoted to their new physical involvement that leaves the rest of the story stalled. They’re competently written; they just seem to spring up from nowhere and divert the focus.

This might be because I was more invested in the espionage aspect of the plot rather than the romantic one. As romantic heroes, I couldn’t fall for either of the two leads. Tobias is young and frightfully inexperienced, so much so that he comes across as a trifle dumb. He seems to end up on the wrong end of the bad guy’s attention too often, being knocked out more than once throughout the course of the story. It doesn’t help that so many of the other characters call him slow, either. Even Geln recognizes just how innocent and green Tobias is.

Geln, on the other hand, is a terrible spy. He’s quite histrionic in the first half of the story, and manipulative in the latter, especially when he takes advantage of Tobias’ crush for his own benefit. It’s difficult to find endearing qualities in him that would make me view him in a romantic light. I did like how gentle he was with Tobias, however. Though the romantic aspect of the story felt disconnected for me, his behavior toward Tobias during the intimate sections made me understand what Tobias could actually see in him.

As bumbling pawns in an extensive espionage scheme, both characters work. They try to take steps to fathom what exactly is going on around them – Tobias in regards to murders he wishes to solve, Geln in regards to why his AI is acting so oddly and what the other spy on Rimania is doing – but both men are buffeted by forces beyond their control. There’s a chaotic quality to the story’s pace that mirrors this, and all the way to the end, you’re left questioning just as much as Geln and Tobias. Even characters that you think you’ve figured out will surprise you. There are no easy answers, just as it’s not easy reading, but this is the story’s primary strength. Machiavellian twists keep you guessing through the very last chapter. Readers who thrive on that kind of thing will likely get the most of Tobias and Geln’s story.

Readability	8/10 – Dense plotting slows down what is normally smooth reading
Hero #1	6/10 – An idiot of a spy, his personality doesn’t really become clear until late in the story
Hero #2	6/10 – A little too young and a little too dumb for my tastes
Entertainment value	6/10 – I was more invested in the espionage than the romance
World building	7/10 – There are some interesting dynamics created in the otherworld, but not enough explanation to make it really coherent.
TOTAL:	33/50

Seduction's Bite by Madison Layle

TITLE: Seduction’s Bite
AUTHOR: Madison Layle
PUBLISHER: Cobblestone Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 34k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: $4.45

Ever since her husband and child were murdered, Cheyenne Logan has been driven to hunt vampires, determined to eradicate them completely. Her actions don’t go unnoticed. A group called The Order wants to recruit her to help them, mostly because she doesn’t discriminate between rogue vampires and those who don’t kill to survive. Vampire Kieran Duboix is assigned to seek her out, but danger surrounds both of them when one of the most dangerous vampires of them all target them…

Smart heroines aren’t as common as I would like. There’s nothing more annoying than otherwise intelligent women doing stupid things for the simple purpose of advancing the plot. One of the strongest things about this particular story is that Cheyenne doesn’t fall into this trap. For the most part, she is capable and effective at what she does, and if she makes a really dumb mistake later on in the story, I’m willing to forgive it because she’s emotionally wrought and it works with her personality. The author does such a good job with her characterization that the entire last three chapters are utterly unbelievable for me. I’m not going to spoil anyone, but suffice it to say, it didn’t work for me. My score would have been much higher if it had ended differently.

Kieran is charming and fun, and the sections where he and Cheyenne are bantering are the strongest in entire story. There’s a zippy rhythm when they get going, a tempo that works well with the action sequences. It’s when things get maudlin or emotionally heavy that it’s not quite as believable.

It also loses me slightly when the author starts headhopping. It’s smoother than I’ve seen in other stories, but still noticeable. What is also noticeable is the absence of explanation on the variances on traditional vampire mythology. These vampires breathe and have heartbeats, in spite of everybody’s assertions that they’re dead. I have no idea why. There are other differences, but those don’t get repeated nearly as often as these two. If the heroine didn’t make such a big deal about vampires being dead, I probably would have let it go. But she does, so I couldn’t.

In the end, this was a pleasant diversion, though I’m likely to remember it because of the entirely incongruous ending more than anything else.

Readability	7/10 – Headhopping holds back otherwise competent prose, with spatterings of fun dialogue
Hero	7/10 – Charming and likable
Heroine	7/10 – Capable and smart most of the time
Entertainment value	7/10 – Enjoyable and mostly diverting, even if I didn’t buy the ending for a second.
World building	7/10 – Abandoning traditional vampire mythology means a reader needs explanation as to why, which didn’t really happen
TOTAL:	35/50

Teaching Molly by Desiree Holt

TITLE: Teaching Molly
AUTHOR: Desiree Holt
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 19k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotic romance
COST: $4.45

A recent divorce, an ex-husband who convinced her she was sexually inadequate, and the ever-going gossip mill conspire against forty-five year old Molly Gerard. When she meets the attractive – and younger – Nick Trajan, she’s at a loss as to why he’s acting so interested in her. After the Fourth of July party where they meet, she agrees to go back to his place for a drink. But the doors that open to her from that point on aren’t just his. They’re the doors to her most secret desires to be a submissive…

I suspect I’m the wrong audience to give this story a fair review. I’m younger than Molly by a number of years, and I’m not as embittered as she very obviously is. My problems with the prose could likely be ignored if I was eager for the wish fulfillment fantasy the story provides. But I’m not, and the characterization isn’t nearly strong enough to convince me to buy into it anyway.

My problems began with the heroine’s obsession with how wet she gets, or rather, how wet she didn’t get when she was married. “Dry as the Sahara” is the analogy drawn, but then, when she meets the hero, the pendulum swings back in the opposite direction. All of a sudden, too much is about how aroused he makes her. …cream flooded her panties and She felt juices gather inside her pussy and Molly was so wet between her legs now she was sure the liquid had leaked out onto the couch. It goes on. And on. And on. Interspersed with all of it is her obsession with her age, and the ten-year difference between her and the hero, and I just never was able to connect with her, either on a sexual level or an emotional one. Her sexual responses were too over the top and her emotional attitude consisted of self-doubt and whining. I couldn’t relate to her in the slightest.

Added in to this were continuity issues, like the brandy snifter Nick handed her when she arrived at his home, and then the brandy snifter he handed to her again, three paragraphs later. All of this occurred in the very first chapter, a full fourth of the story. With so many hang-ups in the prose itself, I never had the chance to sink into the fantasy it presented.

Because it is a fantasy. Nick’s presented as practically perfect, there to answer all of Molly’s fears and satisfy all her desires. He’s a Dom, and it just so happens that Molly has been harboring submissive tendencies for years. She jumps into his offer with both feet and never looks back. From that point on, the story is more a primer for entering a BDSM lifestyle than it is a tale of giving a divorced woman a second chance. In that light, it almost works. Almost. Because it stops just as it’s starting to get to the meat of the story, lumping all the emotional development into the final chapter.

The dedication probably has it right. To all the Mollys who need to know that there is life after divorce and it can be truly delicious. Because everybody needs fantasies. Even if I didn't buy into this one.

Readability	6/10 – Continuity errors and too much attention to the heroine’s readiness kept me from engaging until nearly the end of the story.
Hero	4/10 – More fantasy than real, there’s no depth to explain his predilections
Heroine	4/10 – Whiny and flat
Entertainment value	4/10 – Without being able to get any kind of depth to the hero, this ends up being wish fulfillment held back by a whiny heroine and editorial issues.
World building	6/10 – The club he takes her to is nice, but the rest of it lacks any sense of place.
TOTAL:	24/50

Craving Candy by N.J. Walters

TITLE: Craving Candy
AUTHOR: N.J. Walters
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 57k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotic romance
COST: $5.95

Candy Logan’s latest project is the one that could make her career – a cookbook filled with gorgeous art, anecdotes, and recipes from local hotspot, Coffee Breaks. She’s only got one problem. Owner Lucas Squires refuses to even return her phone calls regarding publicity. Determined to corner him once and for all, she attends a party at his new opening, where she meets the most charismatic, sexual man she has ever encountered. A wild tryst in a storage room makes her head spin, but it goes even more insane when she learns that the man who is driving her crazy is the one she’s been hounding for publicity. For his part, Lucas doesn’t know what to do with this woman who makes him want to throw caution to the wind, but if all it takes is a few publicity stunts to get her to go out with him, he’s more than happy to oblige…

The very first e-book I ever bought was Erin’s Fancy by N.J. Walters. To this day, I think it’s one of the hottest e-books I’ve ever read. I went out and bought the first in the series, which I also enjoyed, then got the third when it came out. That one disappointed. I’m pretty sure that’s the biggest reason it took me so long to get around to reading this fourth installment in her Awakening Desires series.

The opening chapter gave me chills. It starts out with a gripping scene of a young Lucas witnessing his father beating his mother and taking matters into his own hands, and segues into a powerful moment showing what kind of man Lucas has actually evolved into. It was darker than this series has been before – or at least how I remember it – and I got swept into the second chapter with breathless expectation. I was already half in love with Lucas, and was eager to see where he would go.

The promise of that first chapter never paid off. We meet Candy, who seems nice enough at first, and then the story shifts into one of those strangers see each other across a crowded room and five minutes later are having sex because they want each other so bad stories. I was still with the author at this point, because I thought maybe she’d subvert such an obvious set-up into something a little different. Except…no. She didn’t. In fact, the moment Candy found out she’d just hid out in the storage room with Lucas, she went illogical. She gets furious with him and storms off. When she gets home, she’s livid and throws a temper tantrum, and even goes so far as calls Lucas her “nemesis.” Huh? She’s his publicist. He couldn’t very well be responsible for hiding his identity from her when a) she only gave him her first name, b) she’d been going by Candace and not Candy so there was no reason for him to make the connection, and c) she specifically chose not to ask his name because she wanted it to be a one-time thing. Her animosity and anger made no sense. Except to provide conflict. This happens over and over in the book, with Candy making hasty, illogical leaps of logic that only serve to make her more and more unlikable. Other than sex, I never saw what Lucas saw in her.

Despite the promise of the first chapter, the rest of the story never deviates from its rather predictable progression. There’s a subplot about Candy’s family that feels like either filler or fodder for the next book, and there’s an attempt at more conflict when she gets a job offer in New York City. The sex is more than hot, but in the end, that’s not enough to compensate for an unpleasant heroine and an unsurprising plot.

Readability	8/10 – Even when I have issues with one of the leads, it’s difficult to stop reading.
Hero	7/10 – A glorious introduction that is never quite fully realized.
Heroine	4/10 – Illogical and too quick to judge to make her likable.
Entertainment value	6/10 – Hot sex scenes can only go so far when I don’t like one of the two leads
World building	7/10 – Adequate, though nothing earth-shattering.
TOTAL:	32/50

Ring Around the Moon by Anita Birt

TITLE: Ring Around the Moon
AUTHOR: Anita Birt
PUBLISHER: Cerridwen Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 92k)
GENRE: Contemporary time travel romance
COST: $6.49

Beth Ormond was just looking for peace and quiet to gather her thoughts and plan for the future. A month in Cornwall seemed like the perfect opportunity. Until a man staggers out of the forest the night she arrives, calling her another woman’s name and claiming she’s his wife. Now Beth has to figure out who exactly Alan Tremaine is, and what that means for her and her unborn child…

The premise of this sounded incredibly promising. Most time travel stories I read have the heroine moving back in time. I think it appeals to the urge to live in a different era without losing the effects of modern sensibilities. This story suggested it was about a man being pulled to the present, and while it has been done before, it’s not nearly as common. I was excited about this story when I started. That excitement, unfortunately, didn’t last.

The headhopping started almost right away. It didn’t happen in big long sections. It occurred in very short ones, sometimes paragraph to paragraph. I would do anything for e-pubs to either have longer excerpts so I don’t get surprised by this, or some sort of label on their stories to show when it happens. Because honestly, there are some of us who absolutely hate it. Very, very few people can pull it off. I’ll tolerate it if a story is good enough, but really, I wish I didn’t have to.

But I couldn’t even tolerate it in this one. Before I get much of a chance to know either one of the main characters, Beth is acting like an idiot, overreacting at the drop of a hat, then flipflopping from tears to I must have you in the next breath, then going back to tears. She does that throughout the book. I can't remember the last time I read a heroine who seesawed so dramatically. Her logic completely escapes me, and I don’t think I can even blame it on the hormones of her pregnancy. Her mood swings make no sense except to add artificial drama. Alan doesn’t fare much better. His personality seems a little more stable, but he’s so boring that I just can’t be bothered to care.

With such huge obstacles for me to overcome, the story never really has a chance, but it’s certainly not helped by the fact that any conflict that gets introduced for these two gets resolved or dismissed within just a couple pages. The only one that sticks around for longer than that doesn’t even get resolved. The story ends with just the thought that, “Well, they’re together and they want it to work so let’s just keep our fingers crossed, okay?” And it’s not even a little conflict. It’s big. Enormous. And it’s still looming there when it says, “The End.” Maybe if I was a little more invested in the characters or romance, it might not bother me so much. But I wasn’t, so it did.

Readability	4/10 – Constant headhopping, melodramatic dialogue, histrionic behavior…it drives a reader to skim.
Hero	3/10 – Boring and flat.
Heroine	3/10 – Histrionic and completely unbelievable.
Entertainment value	2/10 – Between being bored by the characters, annoyed at all the constant flipflopping, and disbelieving of how everything just fell into place for these two, it’s lucky I finished it at all.
World building	5/10 – It’s all tell not show with this. I never felt a sense of history or place.
TOTAL:	17/50

Dangerous Ground by Josh Lanyon

TITLE: Dangerous Ground
AUTHOR: Josh Lanyon
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 30k)
GENRE: Gay suspense erotic romance
COST: $4.99

As agents for the Department of Diplomatic Security, Taylor MacAllister and Will Brandt were partners for three years before a shooting nearly killed Taylor. Its timing couldn’t have been worse. Just hours previous, Taylor had admitted his feelings for Will, only to be firmly rebuffed. Now, less than two months later, their relationship is on the line, both professional and personal. Will invites Taylor out on a camping trip in a desperate bid to reconnect, and though Taylor hates to camp, he agrees, just as desperate to salvage what they can. Except it doesn’t work. And when they find a crashed plane and the missing money from a never-solved bank robbery, their situation goes from bad to truly dangerous…

Josh Lanyon is one of my auto-buy authors. I don’t even read his blurbs or excerpts anymore, because I trust him so implicitly. Color me a little surprised then to discover that Dangerous Ground is written in third person. It made for some interesting changes while I sat down and read this story.

In one wonderful way, it’s to the story’s advantage. Lanyon is already a master at setting up scene, but here, the mountain wilds is as much of a character as the two men. Nature is both their friend and enemy throughout the course of action, and the author highlights this with his wonderfully tight details. When Taylor and Will are forced to take shelter in a broken-down mining shack, you feel every scrape over bruised skin, the claustrophobia of their situation. When they indulge in a found hot spring, you experience the soft rush of relaxation as they sink into the steaming water. It’s one of the most effective uses of setting I’ve read in recent months.

There are points, however, where the perspective isn’t as tight as what I would expect from Lanyon. The story starts out with a bang, after much of the conflict between the two has already been established and on the brink of everything collapsing for them. With no backstory yet in place, a reader is left finding hooks into the story through the characters. The very first character mentioned is Will, wiping sweat from his face, and it’s followed immediately by, Ten thousand feet up in the High Sierras, the sun was still plenty warm despite the chill spring air. He gets the first line of dialogue, too. What this introduction did was put me in Will’s place at the story’s start. I thought it was his reflection that the sun was so hot, especially since he was the one acting at the time. But not too long after this, however, it becomes clear we’re in Taylor’s perspective, and it really threw me. So much so that I went back to re-read, thinking I’d missed something. Throughout the first chapter, there were occasional lines that popped up, that without yet having a firm grasp on each man’s personality, left me questioning whose head I was really in. Because of this, and the fact that so much is left unknown at the beginning, it took me longer to sink into the story than normal. Eventually, however, even those borderline sentences disappeared.

Part of my difficulty discerning the two personalities at the start ends up being one of the most fascinating aspects of the story. Both Taylor and Will are alphas, though throughout the course of the story, those alpha tendencies get displayed in very different ways. It creates a double-edged sword. On one hand, in order to survive the action and tension of the external conflict regarding the robbery, they must be capable of acting effectively, both independently and as a team. On the other, having two alphas in a romantic relationship can often be a recipe for disaster as they compete for the same responsibilities within the pairing. Lanyon ends up creating distinct personalities that not only portray exactly why these two are such an effective team, but gives a reader hope that they can actually make it work past the ending of the book. If I didn’t quite believe Will’s sudden switch in the middle of the story to alter the direction of their relationship, that’s minor in the overall effect Lanyon achieved.

Tight pacing and real danger glue all of this together into a package that’s uniquely Lanyon. When it comes to creating men who seem like they could walk and talk in the real world as well as the page, he stands tall in a very elite group.

Readability	8/10 – In spite of sections where POV isn’t as tight as I’d expect and a rocky start, this is typical Lanyon prose – intelligent, lean, and meaningful.
Hero #1	8/10 – Not your typical alpha, though his impetuosity, humor and obvious anguish make him easier to sympathize with.
Hero #2	7/10 – His shift in desire halfway through the story seemed to come out of nowhere, but otherwise, he’s a wonderfully assured, strong silent alpha.
Entertainment value	8/10 – A tight, suspenseful read with believable characters and real emotions.
World building	10/10 – Location is its own character, and Lanyon’s details make it shine.
TOTAL:	41/50

Let Me Love You by Mary Wine

TITLE: Let Me Love You
AUTHOR: Mary Wine
PUBLISHER: Samhain Publishing
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 51k)
GENRE: Historical erotic romance
COST: $4.50

Brianna Spencer is a young woman alone in the mining town of Silver Peak. With her father missing, it’s up to her keep the bank from taking their mill away, but it also makes her prime prey for every man in town, looking to get himself a wife and a potential fortune. Every man, that is, except railroad deputy Sloan McAlister. After he rescues her from a would-be suitor, he finds it impossible to get her out of his mind. But the last thing he wants is to ruin a good woman like Brianna…at least, until she asks him to…

For me, there’s a fine line historicals have to walk. Not enough detail, and I’m left wondering where and when the story is taking place. Too much, and I’m mired in a history lesson instead of a story. History doesn’t interest me. People and relationships do. That’s really the only reason I bothered finishing this book.

I suspect the author’s voice just isn’t for me. Her attention to detail is to be commended, but it weighs down huge portions of the story especially in the beginning when I’m trying to get myself hooked into the characters. The opening scene is actually quite good, with the bad guy attempting to coerce Brianna into marrying him and Sloan stepping in to save the day. But as soon as Brianna flees, it goes downhill. It drags with details about her sewing and her cooking and her virginity. I actually walked away from the story at that point. I didn’t know enough about Brianna at that point to care about her chores.

The other aspect that worked against the story is how cliché-ridden it was. If you’ve read it in a western romance before, you’ll read it again here. There was the attempted rape, the misunderstood half-breed Kiowa, threats of white slavery, a father who’s conveniently out of the picture and then brought back in with barely a blink. Everything that came out of the bad guy’s mouth made me giggle, especially his talk of planting babies in her. What he lacked in subtlety, he made up for in cliché. Poor Sloan doesn’t fare much better – “The only thing that is going to be seen is my fist coming towards your face. That’s my woman out there in the night and no one steals from me.” And for some inexplicable reason, much of Sloan’s description gets specified as “male” – he has male reactions, male scents, male nipples, male disgruntlement, male groans, crisp male body hair…you get the idea. It was just too, too much.

The reason I stuck with it as much as I did is because I liked the characters. Brianna is strong without being a bitch about it, and Sloan has his own dark alpha appeal. Once they get past his pull/push attitude of the first half, they settle into a nice, albeit familiar, relationship. My only wish is that they had a better story to serve them. The prose kept me from enjoying their tender moments, and the dialogue kept me from fearing for the heroine’s safety. That leaves very little else for me to work with in this story.

Readability	6/10 – Slow pacing, long sections of over-description, and clichéd dialogue makes it harder to get through
Hero	7/10 – An alpha with principles, he’s best when he’s charging in the latter half of the story
Heroine	7/10 – Strong without being over the top
Entertainment value	4/10 – Too many clichés and long sections where all I get is description bore me too much to get any more than superficially invested in the story
World building	9/10 – The author goes to town on providing details about her historical world, so much so the rest of the story suffered.
TOTAL:	33/50