The next month

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 1st 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

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 readers, 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

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