Blue Galaxy by Diane Dooley

TITLE: Blue Galaxy
AUTHOR: Diane Dooley
PUBLISHER: Carina Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 22k)
GENRE: Sci-fi futuristic romance
COST: $2.69

It’s a job that will guarantee Javan Rhodes economic freedom. All he has to do is transport someone without asking any questions. When that someone turns out to be a beautiful aristocrat off to make a marriage alliance, however, his resolve to get the pay-off begins to waver…

This one’s my own fault. I need to pay better attention to red flags when they show up instead of giving the author the benefit of the doubt.

Captain Javan Rhodes is a cargo ship owner/pilot/businessman, who agrees to take on a special passenger for an exorbitant amount of money if he promises to keep his mouth shut and not ask questions. He has no problems with that until he meets the cargo in question. Her name is Sola, and she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. From the very first look, he fears he’s fallen in love with her. He has to transport her to an as yet unknown destination to satisfy a marriage alliance, but almost as soon as they’re in the air, he’s broken the agreement by pressing for details. She doesn’t give many, but she intrigues him, and when he finally does start discovering things about her, it’s a little too late to do him much good.

Within just the first thousand or so words, I got fed a line that should have made me put the story down. Javan meets Sola, and gazing on what had to be the most exquisite face in the entire universe, felt his heart twist as he fell instantly, irrevocably and most definitely in love. I stopped reading. I thought, “Seriously? Insta-love? Why wasn’t that in the blurb?” But then I thought, “He’s a hardcore space captain. He wouldn’t fall instantly in love. He’s too cynical. Maybe this is just indicative of a sense of humor or grandiose statement or something.” So I went on, putting my faith into the author. Big mistake. It might not have quite been instant love, but it came pretty darn close. He acts like an idiot around her from the start, allowing her to manipulate him in such a blatant way, I lost all respect for any sense of intelligence he might have had. It might not have been so bad if I’d had the opportunity to get to know the man and see that he wasn’t actually an idiot prior to her arrival, but I didn’t. I only got to see him after she came onto the scene, and frankly, I wish I hadn’t.

Sola is the worst heroine I’ve read in a very long time. She lies, she manipulates, she uses sex to get him to do what she wants. And when sex fails, she uses violence and death threats. Unrepentingly. I have absolutely no idea why Javan falls for her. He claims she’s funny and smart and curious, but I only saw evidence of the intelligence (and that was later in the story, long after I’d lost any sympathy for her whatsoever). She’s so flat in the first half of the story that I wondered what I was missing. Even if her actions weren’t so appallingly awful, her characterization suffers a lot from the fact that the entire story is told from Javan’s POV. This is done to maintain the suspense of who she is and what she’s doing, but ultimately, it doesn’t work because by the time I did find out, I hated her so much I didn’t care.

The prose doesn’t help it. This is not an erotic romance, but these two spend a surprising amount of time having sex…off-screen. And during that sex, important things happen and get discovered. Things we are told about rather than shown. It weakens an already floundering story, crippling the pace and stifling the suspense. Ultimately, it becomes a pedantic exercise in reading, with the only emotions getting generated those of anger and frustration. I have zero interest in following on in this world, since it’s clear from the very open ending that this isn’t it. And if for some reason it’s not meant to be continued? Then all of those hanging plot lines that were left are just more proof that it just wasn’t a very good story at all.

Readability	6/10 – Prose that’s more tell than show, with soft POV sometimes
Hero	4/10 – A gullible idiot
Heroine	1/10 – When she’s not flat and boring, her blatant and unremorseful manipulation of a man who loves her makes her the most unlikeable heroine I’ve read in a very long time
Entertainment value	2/10 – Hating the heroine with all the telling problems made this a complete waste of my time
World building	6/10 – There’s some attempt at doing something interesting but it’s never clearly explained or well delineated
TOTAL:	19/50

Dark Side of Dreaming by Ann Bruce

TITLE: Dark Side of Dreaming
AUTHOR: Ann Bruce
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 31k)
GENRE: Erotic romantic suspense
COST: $5.20

Ex-thief Cleo Moran has come out of retirement to steal a statue that once belonged to her family. The only problem is, the man she intends to rob is just as smart and savvy as she is. Foiling her burglary is simple. Letting her just walk away is not…

Don’t ask for a better blurb than that. I read this novella through twice and still don’t know what happened in big chunks of it.

It doesn’t start out badly. There’s a one-page prologue of a harrowing dream that hints at a suspenseful ride ahead. But then it turns left into Cleo’s foiled heist, and the story stumbles into forced chemistry and confusion as we meet the owner of her would-be prize, Sasha Michaels. Sasha sends her along her way, but when Cleo gets home, she’s attacked by someone who expects her to have successfully taken the statue. She fights him off, but Sasha shows up and won’t leave her alone, convinced her attacker is the same one who attacked his sister.

The story only gets more convoluted from there. The problem is, none of it really gets explained. The whole first half of the story is primarily Cleo and Sasha fighting – and losing the battle with – their attraction. We have no history on either of them, and no sense of personality, so essentially they’re just bodies going through the motions. I felt nothing for either of them, and the sex wasn’t unique or hot enough to compensate for that lack of connection. They each have reasons to want the statue, but their POVs dance around what those issues are. It’s probably meant to be suspenseful and surprising as a result. It’s not. It’s annoying and distances me even further from cardboard characters who could’ve used a dose of something interesting to keep me engaged.

The plot starts picking up about two-thirds of the way through the story, but while the pace quickens, the jumps get bigger. The author has a bad habit of mentioning characters by name in ways that assume prior knowledge, but in effect only leave me scratching my head. For instance, the attacker gets named on page 79 (out of 109), identified by name in casual conversation between Sasha and Cleo, but not once mentioned by name prior to that for the reader to go, “Aha! That’s who the bad guy is!” All it accomplished was to make me think I’d missed something, and then go back, re-read, and then do a search on the name to see if I was being foolish and/or blind. There’s even more instances of it after this, but that ends up spoiling what are meant to be surprises (but actually come across as sloppy plotting). The ending is as unsatisfying as the whole first half.

For a novella, it felt interminably long. For suspense, that’s the kiss of death for me.

Readability	4/10 – Lack of explanation, huge leaps in the plot that came out of nowhere, and flat characterizations made this a real chore
Hero	3/10 – Definitely alpha, but lacks any kind of depth to make him interesting
Heroine	4/10 – Without knowing more about who she was or why anything was important to her, she’s just a figure on a chase
Entertainment value	3/10 – Sloppy plotting and poor characterizations make this memorable for all the wrong reasons
World building	4/10 – In spite of an intriguing beginning, any sense of time and place is sacrificed for the sex
TOTAL:	18/50

Ravenous by Abigail Barnette

TITLE: Ravenous
AUTHOR: Abigail Barnette
PUBLISHER: Samhain
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 42k)
GENRE: Historical paranormal menage erotic romance
COST: $4.50

On the way to meet her betrothed in Jamaica, Annabelle is kidnapped by pirates. She wakes up to discover the captain is a vampire, and she is now the second human on board he will feed upon…

Part of me is convinced I should’ve just stopped reading after the third chapter, but I wasn’t completely buying the fact that it was actually going to end as a ménage and wanted to read it through it to the end to confirm whether or not I would need to warn other readers. (It is, by the way, though that’s hardly a reason to recommend it.)

The short novel begins with Annabelle on her way to Jamaica to marry the man her father has pretty much sold her off to. She’s not really attracted to the fair good looks of her betrothed, but she’s determined to do what she must to make the best of a bad situation. When the ship she’s on is set upon by pirates, she is knocked out, only to wake up in the captain’s chambers on the pirate ship. Galerius is dark and handsome, and oh yeah, fanged. She discovers he intends to feed from her, but too quickly, dawn arrives and she is left to her own devices. She discovers the crew is glamoured not to see her. They can’t see Galerius’s other human guest, either, the Irishman Drummond. Drummond explains they will be sharing feeding responsibilities from now on, and hints that he looks forward to the reprieve. What Annabelle learns from Galerius exceeds her wildest imagination, though.

It’s obvious in the first chapter that I needed to suspend major disbelief in order to buy into the story. It’s about a vampire pirate on the high seas, after all. But the more I read, the more the prose became mired in melodrama, too much for me to tolerate. Paragraphs like this:

She ran to the railing, gripped the wood so tightly she was sure she would leave marks from her fingernails. There was a monster on board the ship. A demon who would drink her blood, or throw her into the sea. A warlock who had put a spell on the entire crew and rendered her invisible. She could not give him the satisfaction. She would throw herself overboard. She took a breath, willed her foot to raise, to boost herself up against the wood and tumble over. But her body would not listen, and she slumped to the deck, legs shaking.

…proliferate the text. The dialogue isn’t much better, but I might have been able to overlook some of it if I cared for the leads.

I didn’t. Annabelle is a gullible twit who turns into a wanton with absolutely no provocation. There are repeated instances of this:

Galerius released her arm and stepped back, finger to his lips as though having an epiphany. “Perhaps I am driving too hard a bargain. How about this, then? The next time we are to sail across the sea, I will make it my personal mission to find your betrothed and deliver you safely to him. Do you find that fair?”

It was too easy, and very suspicious. “Do you often travel across the sea?”

“Of course. We are pirates, after all.”

“Fine, then.” Her answer was too easy, and very suspicious as well, but she refused to dwell on it. Still, he had not made a move toward her. “I agree. Proceed.”

He chuckled, and a hot blush crept up her face. “It would be easier if you took off your gown.”

“Oh.” She felt foolish and suddenly not as eager to continue with what they had begun. She had supposed she would be naked, but she had imagined it would happen in the heat of passion, as if by magic, so she would not have time to think about it. To remove her clothing now, while he watched her, would be embarrassing and…

…and this:

This sort of thing never went over well with women. And, true to her sex, Annabelle sat up, clutching the sheet to her bosom and opening her mouth to shriek.

He silenced her with a hand over her mouth. “Hush! I’m supposed to be here. Do you think the captain would just leave you unguarded? Besides, who else can see you?”

She squirmed away from him, practically spitting venom. “I do not think this was the kind of guarding he had in mind!”

“My dear lady, what are you accusing me of?” he asked, blinking in mock surprise.

“Accusing you?” Once again, confusion created the dearest little lines between her eyebrows. Drummond almost wanted to kiss them away, but he was terribly fond of living, so heeded Galerius’s orders. Annabelle shook her head and pressed one palm to her forehead. “You are a madman. You know very well that you were…touching me.”

“Touching?” he sputtered and stood, making a great display of being outraged. “I was doing nothing of the sort!”

She frowned. “I was so sure…”

Astonishing! She actually believed him! “Sweet lady, I assure you, I was merely trying to wake you. I touched your shoulder, and for that I do apologize, but you were sleeping quite soundly, and I worried for your modesty.”

Her face flamed red.

…and I could add more, but really, what’s the point? She has no depth, and I’m expected to believe that she turns from a virgin who’s only sneaked looks at dirty books she wasn’t supposed to see into a voracious wanton with an appetite for threeways with little more than sex scene after sex scene after sex scene to show for it.

None of it’s helped that Galerius suffers from the same problem. I know next to nothing about his extensive history, and see no valid reason for him to fall in love with such an idiot like Annabelle except that she’s female and he hasn’t had a female lover in a very long time. And yet, she seems to have the magical ability to convince him that not only can he love her, but he can also love Drummond (who at least seems a little more interesting than the other two combined, it’s a shame he’s saddled with them for eternity now).

Needless to say, I didn’t buy a second of it, and I definitely won’t be bothering with other titles by this particular author if this is what I can expect.

Readability	5/10 – Melodrama, melodrama, melodrama…and not the good kind; the kindest thing I have to say about the prose is that at least it’s technically clean
Menage	3/10 – There’s no real depth or reason for the feelings for the heroine, and without the third point of the triangle, the whole thing feels useless
Characterization	3/10 – Annabelle is a gullible twit, Galerius is every vampire cliché rolled into one, and Drummond is better off without either one of them
Entertainment value	2/10 – It would’ve been a waste of my time except by reading through to the end, I discovered the author is the erotic romance pseudonym of another name I recognize from my print TBR and now I can save time by not reading those
World building	4/10 – Except for the fact that it’s on a pirate ship, I had little sense of place and no sense of history
TOTAL:	17/50

Charade by Sabrina Luna

TITLE: Charade
AUTHOR: Sabrina Luna
PUBLISHER: Sugar and Spice Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 20k)
GENRE: Contemporary BDSM erotica
COST: $3.99

It’s an arrangement between a Dom and a sub, a chance for Dixie to learn what submission is all about. But when her Dom’s brother arrives for a short visit, she learns even more about what it means to submit…

For erotica to work, it needs to do one of three things (though preferably all of them) – engage the mind because the prose is beautiful, engage the senses with the erotic imagery, or engage the heart with the emotions. Most erotic fiction fails for me because it doesn’t meet any of these criteria. This short novella was no different.

There’s not much to this. Told in 1^st person from the female sub’s POV, it’s basically escapade after escapade of Dixie submitting in some fashion to her Dom, Mitchell. His brother arrives for a short visit, and gets to take part. Supposedly, he also offers insight into their relationship she wouldn’t otherwise have, then he takes off. Simple. Direct. To the point.

And it doesn’t work. The prose itself is unassuming, bordering on the amateurish side (Why on earth is there the need to refer to the hero by his full name after he’s been introduced and you’ve spent the last thirty pages only calling him by his first name? Answer: There isn’t.), and while I’ve definitely read worse in this genre, it failed to engage me either viscerally or intellectually. The characters aren’t people. They’re shells performing these parts. I know nothing about the kind of people Dixie and Mitchell are except in the very shallowest sense. Alex (the brother) isn’t much better, though the fact he actually gets to have a conversation and reactions that don’t involve either Dixie or Mitchell affords him a tad more depth. But only a tad.

These issues might not necessary be problems if it was hot, but it’s just not. Dixie acts like the things they’re doing, the lessons she’s learning from Mitchell are so very forbidden, but anybody who’s read even a couple D/s stories will find little fresh or dangerous in these scenes. She’s late for dinner once, he spanks her. He has her masturbate in public. They have anal sex. Perhaps if the characters were more fully fleshed, or if the prose itself was more sophisticated, this wouldn’t seem so humdrum, but that’s not the case. It’s boring.

And if even the sex is boring in a piece of erotica…I just can’t recommend this with any sense of good conscience. I would have got more pleasure from the nice coffee I could have bought for the cost of this.

Readability	6/10 – Unassuming and forgettable, though at least it’s relatively clean
Hero	3/10 – An enigma, but then that’s because he’s an enigma to the 1st person heroine
Heroine	4/10 – Personality-less, a vehicle for the sexual escapades
Entertainment value	3/10 – Boring and forgettable
World building	4/10 – Little attempt to give depth to anything but the sex
TOTAL:	20/50

Confederate Rose by Susan Macatee

TITLE: Confederate Rose
AUTHOR: Susan Macatee
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 61k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $6.00

Katie O’Reilly posed as a boy to join her husband in the Confederate Army, and continued the charade after he was killed. All she wanted was revenge against the Yankees for destroying so much of what she loved. On a mail run, she runs into Alex Hart, a Federal spy, and the two end up stranded in a cabin in the middle of nowhere during a snowstorm. She has no idea he’s not the reporter he claims to be. She only knows she’s attracted to him, like she hasn’t been attracted to any man since her husband died. But the war is still raging around them, and eventually they both have to get back to their opposite sides…

I have not been this bored by a book in a very long time. Not even being an American historical could garner much to keep my attention on it.

It starts out with Katie, stopping to fill her canteen from a stream. Alex Hart, a Federal spy, comes upon her, and when she thinks he’s going to rob her, she tries to pull her gun on him, only to fall into the water. He saves her, but they’re soaking wet in the middle of March, and he takes her to shelter at a nearby cabin. Her identity has already been exposed, so he acts gentlemanly, but a snowstorm strands them together for a couple weeks, during which time he nurses her back from a bad fever, and the two fall for each other. They head back to her camp, he decides to join up to get more secrets, and…it goes on forever. And forever. And the thing of it is, it’s not a long novel at all. Scenes are short, time gets jumped, and nothing gets shown. It’s all told, and it’s boring as hell to read. I’m expected to get involved with these characters, but no time is spent with them actually getting to know each other, let alone me getting much time to really know them.

Everything but the epilogue spans two years, if that gives you any hint on how little is actually explored. Each scene tries to turn the story in a new direction, from Alex’s joining up, to getting caught, to escaping, to…well, you get the idea. It’s like it wants to be this grand epic love story, but it’s only 60k. That’s not nearly enough space to give these characters or their actions any kind of depth, not on the scale the plot wants to be. Many scenes fall below a thousand words, before jumping perspective, time, and/or place. That leaves Katie a stereotype who flits from one emotion to the next with no rhyme or reason for the shifts, Alex a constant liar because his deceptions are what fuel a good part of the book, and me bored out of my mind before I got halfway through.

Frankly, I have to be blunt, and say don’t waste your time unless you’re already a fan of this author.

Readability	4/10 – Boring, shallow characterization, all show not tell
Hero	3/10 – Little believable about him, especially given how much he lies to her
Heroine	3/10 – Suffers from same problem of the rest of the book, unbelievable and boring
Entertainment value	2/10 – Tries to be epic, crammed into a short novel, which ultimately meant I was bored to tears
World building	5/10 – Though there’s an attempt to create a sense of time and place, the writing is so superficial it lacks any kind of depth
TOTAL:	17/50

Merlin's Daughter by Patricia Scott

TITLE: Merlin’s Daughter
AUTHOR: Patricia Scott
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 35k)
GENRE: Time travel romance
COST: $4.50

In a quest to prove her family is entwined with the Semples, Sara Templeton goes to England and the Semple Manor House in search of answers. There, she meets a man who looks like the one she’s been dreaming of, and when she suddenly finds herself thrust back in time, in the role of one of her ancestors, she realizes the man she knew in the present is also in the past…

Though there might be a good idea somewhere in this novella, it’s lost amidst the technical weaknesses of the prose. It starts almost from the beginning. The prologue can’t decide on a verb tense, and it jerks me out of the story almost before it’s begun. It doesn’t improve very much once it starts, either. There’s continuity problems (the hero calls the heroine by name without being told it, a guide refers to Sara’s family history when Sara never said a word about being her family, and so on), there’s information dumps (how many times did I need to learn about the silver buckle at the auction?), and spelling mistakes (i.e., cliental for clientele). With that much going wrong – not to mention the excessive passive voice – it’s very hard to get into it.

Sara arrives in England and watches a battle re-enactment, and when she notices the Parliamentarian General, is immediately drawn to him: …His eyes met hers only briefly but for a second or so they were fused together, and inexplicably her heart leapt and somersaulted inside her. She swallowed hard and felt dizzy, her hands trembling… This kind of over-the-top reaction is typical of the heroine. She’s drawn to him, and then, out of the blue, decides she doesn’t like him. It continues when she goes back in time, and the muddy characterization turns into a headache. There is no indication of any kind of romance on her part – because she’s so against him – until over halfway through, and then, it all happens on the turn of a dime. None of it’s helped with the lack of clarity on who or why or how Sara is back in time. She understands everything that was going on, like she was in a dream, and yet, she wasn’t the old Sara but the present day Sara. There’s never a proper balance struck, and it triggered another headache to muddle through.

I just can’t think of much in this that might recommend it. A good idea just isn’t enough.

Readability	4/10 – Passive voice, lack of clarity, continuity errors, spelling mistakes…there was just so much wrong with this, it took me forever to slog through
Hero	4/10 – Seems nice enough, but the characterizations in this are so flat that it’s hard to see any kind of potential
Heroine	3/10 – Personality is all over the place, with no rational explanations for some her snap judgments
Entertainment value	3/10 – It could have been a nice idea if there’d been any sort of clarity or consistency
World building	5/10 – Bare bones, mostly on the historical stuff
TOTAL:	19/50

Saddled by Delilah Devlin

TITLE: Saddled
AUTHOR: Delilah Devlin
PUBLISHER: Samhain
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 24k)
GENRE: Contemporary menage erotic romance
COST: $3.50

A bad winter storm drives distraught Kate Duvall off the road and into a creek. The two ranchers behind her pull over to rescue her. For Cale, the only way to get his best friend Bobby and this mysterious woman recovering from hypothermia is to get them back to the cabin he shares with Bobby and warm them up personally…

You know, when I buy stories like this, I’m fully aware I’m buying it for the hot factor and not for any real semblance of romance. Outside of erotica, ménages don’t really work all that great for me, mainly because it always feels like the author is taking easy roads out in trying to make it a romance. So I didn’t have high expectations when it came to this short novella, but two hot guys – one Native American, which I freely admit is a hotspot for me – and a locked cabin felt like some escapist fun.

It wasn’t. It was a chore. And it’s not even all the ménage’s fault, though that certainly didn’t help matters any. There is enough technical stuff that drove me crazy in this to give me a headache, even before I get to my issues with the story itself.

First of all, the author is a headhopper, obtrusively so. The prose jumps around enough without formal breaks to slow me down dramatically while I’m reading, and it didn’t do a thing to really make any of the characters more relatable. One thing it did do, though, was highlight another weak technical aspect – clumsy information dumps. For instance, in chapter three, Bobby ruminates on his and Cale’s past, for the reader’s edification since he’s alone at the time and doesn’t say any of this out loud. We learn all about how they hooked up then. However, less than two thousand words later at the top of chapter four, Kate proceeds to grill them about their lives, and we get to hear it all over again in dialogue. It’s repetitive, unnecessary, and slows down the story to a snail’s pace.

None of it is helped by characters that lack any real sort of personality or a romance that never works. Kate was stuck in a relationship because she liked the security of her fiance’s money primarily. Cale and Bobby are still struggling to make it on a year to year basis. I’m expected to believe an HEA – complete with heroes who admit out loud they’re trying to knock her up – based on one weekend of amazing sex? The only thing it had going for it is that she didn’t jump into the decision. She took time off. That wasn’t nearly enough, though.

I can’t even enjoy it for the sex parts. I have to admit to wincing at the double vaginal penetration scenes, and a lot of time it felt like badly staged porn, like when Kate doesn’t want to come too quickly and asks Cale to back off a little: Cale let go of her breast and shifted, coming up on his knees beside her and placing both hands over her breasts, continuing to massage her while he glanced back at Bobby. Without even the vicarious erotic thrill, that leaves very little at all to recommend this story.

Readability	6/10 – Duplicate information dumps and headhopping made this a real chore to slog through
Menage	3/10 – Even for just considering it as erotica, it just wasn’t sexy to me most of the time
Characterization	3/10 – Flat and interchangeable
Entertainment value	2/10 – The romance didn’t work, the sex didn’t work, which doesn’t leave anything else to work
World building	6/10 – I liked the locked in the cabin feel, but the focus was elsewhere for this
TOTAL:	20/50

To Hate and To Hold by Dakota Rebel

TITLE: To Hate and To Hold
AUTHOR: Dakota Rebel
PUBLISHER: Total-e-bound
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 54k)
GENRE: Gay paranormal erotic romance
COST: £2.99

Vampires Ethan Connor and Jamie McHale have fought nearly all their lives, ever since Jamie’s parents were murdered and Ethan’s took over the royal crown in their clan. Their most recent fight gets interrupted by powerful magic, magic that bonds them together as husbands. For the first few days, the absence of physical contact actually brings them excruciating pain, and the only way to fix it is to consummate their relationship. That’s kind of hard to do when you can’t stand each other…

If I had known one of the primary sources of conflict in this story was going to be, “We have to have sex or we’re going to die,” I never would have bought it. While I appreciate that this particular trope, clichéd as it is, does appeal to some people, it really doesn’t to me. To me, it’s shorthand for any type of actual relationship development, forcing characters into bed for often ridiculous reasons, creating an excuse to have sex as often as possible. If that’s in a blurb, I skip right on by 99% of the time (the only exception would be if an author I trust has done it; then I’d go as far as read the excerpt and judge it on an individual basis). However, this blurb simply said the bonding put their lives in danger, so I bought it on the basis of the humor I found in the excerpt and a chance to read some escapist fun. It wasn’t a wise choice.

The story is told in 1^st person from Jamie’s POV. Jamie is a bitter, angry young vampire, with no direction in his life. He’s a silent partner in his sister’s pub, but he spends all his time drinking, mooching off his sister, and brooding over his parents’ murder fifteen years earlier. He loathes Ethan for a variety of reasons – stealing his boyfriends, being the new prince, but most importantly, because he’s always suspected Ethan’s parents had something to do with Jamie’s parents’ deaths. Every time they get together, it ends in a physical altercation. Before the story starts, the last fight had been a year earlier, right before Ethan left town with his mortal boyfriend. It was a fight that nearly killed him. While there’s not a whole lot unique about this set-up, there’s certainly a lot of potential there for natural conflict, especially since there’s a distinct appealing humor in the prose when the story opens. Jamie’s bitter sarcasm suggests there will be an edge to this romance, but any potential is soon lost once the bond hits them in the first chapter. By the second, we know they need to have sex to rid themselves of the pain they’re in. To tell the truth, this is probably the point I should have stopped reading. I knew then that it was a plot device that usually drove me bonkers. But I held out, hoping that the humor from the first chapter would carry through into something I could enjoy. There was always the possibility that the story could go in a different direction than I expected.

Except it didn’t. From that point on, it slowly degenerates into such repetition that I was bored thoroughly out of my mind by the halfway mark. Very little happens except the same patterns of sex, then shower. There are so many scenes of Jamie waking up, then they either have sex, or argue, then go off to the shower, either together or alone, that they blur together. The story isn’t helped that nearly all the crucial plot developments happen via third parties, and many of them off-screen. It makes for passive involvement, which for me, was the death knell. The one time Jamie actually did something about his own situation, his rationale seemed so utterly unfounded that I couldn’t even get behind it. The entire last third of the book hinges on the big misunderstanding plot device, too, another cliché it’s very hard for me to overcome.

While the story isn’t helped by sloppy editing (like extra words that appear for no explicable reason, i.e. Ethan let go of my hand, and I my stomach rolled.), it’s the sheer repetition and lack of believable character development that really cripple it. Jamie and Ethan are vampires, but that seems to be token nomenclature in an attempt to make them sexy. They drink blood, but breed like humans. They sleep at night, but seem to need to breathe. There’s nothing wrong with cherry-picking attributes to try and create something new, but when some standard vampire tropes seem tossed to the wayside, there needs to be some sort of explanation. There isn’t in this, and in the end, it’s just another reason why I really can’t recommend it.

Readability	4/10 – Early humor disappears completely in sloppy editing and boring, repetitive scenes
Hero #1	4/10 – Funny to start, but personality gets lost in favor of sex
Hero #2	5/10 – More sympathetic than the narrator
Entertainment value	3/10 – Too much repetition and a preposterous set-up make for a very boring read
World building	4/10 – The vampires are never explained well (like needing to breathe) and any semblance of political exposition is lost amidst all the boring sex
TOTAL:	20/50

Vertical Climax by Tessa Rae

TITLE: Vertical Climax
AUTHOR: Tessa Rae
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 13k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotica
COST: $3.50

Out of work Broadway dancer Eve Brennan is feeling the crunch of rejection. Tendonitis has taken her off the stage, and her fiancé has just left her for a younger woman. So when a sexy young cowboy moves in down the hall, she decides to take matters into her own hands and get at least a little satisfaction in her life…

I’m frustrated. I’ll admit it. I’m tired of buying short erotic pieces that I end up laughing throughout because authors choose language that I find unsexy. I wonder sometimes if I’m the only one out there who would prefer blunt terminology, rather than a bunch of synonyms that evoke entirely wrong images. I can’t be. I just can’t.

This review won’t be long. I’m not entirely sure why I bothered finishing the story after the first chapter. The only excuses I have are that it was short, and I wondered if it could get any worse. But for edification about my personal preferences regarding smut scenes, I offer these points:

• “Cavern” is never an acceptable synonym for pussy. Especially used three different times.
• It is also not entirely flattering when used as a synonym for throat.
• Comparing a penis to a “big, euphoric popsicle” is never sexy.
• Neither is the word “slurp.”
• “Climatic” is not synonymous with “climactic.”
• I will never understand the appeal of “nether lips.”

There’s an anal sex scene in this. I made a promise to myself that if the author used the word “cavern” as a synonym for the woman’s ass (since she’d already used it as a synonym in two other places), I would quit reading. She didn’t, though Eve broke down into tears afterward because she was unable to explain her gratitude toward this man for helping her discover a whole new world of pleasure.

If a man made me cry after taking my anal virginity, I think it’s pretty much a guarantee I wouldn’t be asking him to live with me for the next week.

Readability	4/10 – Her synonyms in the smut scenes are painful to read.
Hero	4/10 – Inconsistent, and bordering on jerkhood
Heroine	4/10 – A distinct sense of trashy and desperate makes the seduction awful
Entertainment value	2/10 – Unless laughing at the inappropriate synonyms counts
World building	4/10 – There really isn’t much of anything done here except the badly written sex
TOTAL:	18/50

Delighting Miss Daisy by Abbey MacInnis

TITLE: Delighting Miss Daisy
AUTHOR: Abbey MacInnis
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 29k)
GENRE: Contemporary romance
COST: $3.00

Daisy Porter doesn’t want to see her town papered with sleazy beer flyers, especially where children can see them, but her crusade to take them down gets derailed by her unexpected attraction to the businessman behind them…

Normally, I don’t buy books in the middle of a series if I haven’t read the first books. I’m far too obsessive to read things out of order. But this particular series looked different. It looked too much like all the books were standalones, and that it was just a bunch of authors writing romances that happened to all be set in this small Texas town. That’s true, to a degree. I think my problem is, I picked the wrong one to get a flavor of it, and now I’m definitely not bothering with the rest of them.

The problems start almost immediately. The heroine’s name is Daisy Porter. When she introduces herself to Sam, the hero, on the fifth page of the story, she calls herself “Delia Porter.” Now, it’s entirely possible that her real name is Delia and Daisy is a nickname, but that’s never stated in this story. In fact, the prose refers to her as Delia several more times in the next few pages, before switching back to Daisy, and Daisy she stays until the end of the story. I realize authors often will change character names, but one of the two leads? Not catching that kind of a mistake is just lazy editing. And if it’s not a mistake, that’s even worse because there is absolutely no explanation anywhere for the Delia name. It completely jolted me out of the story and makes it entirely too clear it’s not meant to be a standalone. Then, when it starts headhopping, I just about give up hope.

I can forgive headhopping when the story or writing is good, but in this case, it’s just not. The author has a tendency to write something in exposition, and then repeat it in dialogue, like this:

Daisy grasped the wooden rail of the porch for support. Her knees felt weak. The honesty in his words hit the bull'seye of her heart, shattering it into shards. How could he know what that hurt feels like?

Daisy turned her face away, not wanting him to see more of her vulnerability. She reached for anger, used it as a shield. "How in the hell do you know of what this feels like? Don't even try to pretend that you have a clue."

And yes, that’s a direct quote, complete with misspelling. But the repetition of her thoughts in dialogue is tedious, and worse, it happens throughout the entire story. A character thinks something, then says it, thinks something, then says it. There is no sense of pacing whatsoever.

It doesn’t help that I don’t like either one of the leads. Daisy is mean and bitchy, lashing out at random intervals. Her behavior gets explained later on – by some of the most melodramatic history I’ve read in a long time – but by then, it’s too late. I already think she’s an awful person, and I really don’t care that she’s been hurt or suffered tragedy. Sam doesn’t fare much better with his complete lack of real motivations for most of his actions, but at least he’s not a jerk.

So I’m going back to my rule, no matter what. No coming into the middle of series. Ever. It never works out.

Readability	4/10 – Poor editing, clumsy dialogue, and melodramatic characters make this tedious
Hero	4/10 – Personality all over the place, and no good reason to believe he’d ever pursue a relationship with the bitch of a heroine
Heroine	2/10 – Mean-spirited and bitchy, all the tragedy in the world won’t make me like her
Entertainment value	2/10 – Drudgery to read, I only finished it because it was short.
World building	5/10 – The author attempts to incorporate all these other characters in the small Texas town, but it feels too shoehorned.
TOTAL:	17/50

Metamorphis by Gabriella Bradley

TITLE: Metamorphis
AUTHOR: Gabriella Bradley
PUBLISHER: eXtasy Books
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 14k)
GENRE: Paranormal ménage erotic romance
COST: $2.99

A car accident throws two souls in chaos, when St. Peter’s apprentice mistakenly puts them back into the wrong bodies. Wesley finds himself in the body of a beautiful young woman, while Marian now inhabits his. When Wesley shows up on his lover Tyler’s cabin doorstep in a female form, Tyler doesn’t understand why he’s attracted to this strange woman, even after she claims to be Wesley. He’s even more confused when the man he thinks is his lover arrives claiming to be Marian…

The idea of a gender-switch story where a gay man ends up in a woman’s body intrigued me, so I bought this, hoping for something entertaining if not necessarily profound. I should have taken my misgivings about the title more seriously. I thought, “Maybe it’s just a play on words and it’ll get explained in the story.” But…no, it didn’t. The author misused the word, most likely meaning “metamorphosis,” and this lack of basic vocabulary knowledge typifies her weak storytelling.

It starts out okay enough. The prose is simple but straightforward, and the scenes short. But as soon as Wesley in Marian’s body shows up at the cabin, things start getting confusing. It gets even more so when Marian in Wesley’s body shows up. The author can’t decide what pronouns to use when addressing them, and this lack of consistency makes for a very sloppy read. It doesn’t help that POV focus gets weaker as the story progresses.

This problematic presentation isn’t the only issue I had with the story. Wesley in Marian’s body has no problem letting Tyler take the virginity Marian had been saving. All he cares about is having sex. And how am I supposed to believe that gay Wesley – who has never had any interest in women whatsoever – is suddenly eager to include a woman in a relationship with the love of his life? And what was the big deal with Tyler’s ex-boyfriend being in the cabin when Wesley in Marian’s body showed up? Did he serve any purpose at all except to provide a modicum of conflict at first? Every little thing chips away more of my suspension of disbelief, until it’s almost completely gone by the time I finish.

Though the basic idea of the story held fun promise, its execution didn’t follow through on it. Next time, I’ll take my cue from a sloppy title.

Readability	4/10 – Without staying consistent in how the body-swapped genders are dealt with, it makes for a problematic read.
Ménage	3/10 – When one of the gay characters has never had any interest in women whatsoever, it makes it very hard they can work anything out.
Characterization	4/10 – Shallow and inconsistent
Entertainment value	3/10 – I like the idea, but the execution lacks any sort of finesse
World building	4/10 – Too many questions and not enough answers to have any sort of consistency
TOTAL:	18/50

The Christmas Gift by Janet Eaves

TITLE: The Christmas Gift
AUTHOR: Janet Eaves
PUBLISHER: Resplendence Publishing
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 27k)
GENRE: Contemporary romance
COST: $4.50

Widow Christina Montgomery gets the jolt of a lifetime when a man who looks almost exactly like her presumed dead husband shows up in her barn. The man has no memory, and no clue who she might be. He just has the letter he was found with when he was recently injured – a letter written by Christina’s daughter. Is this her husband come back to her? Or is it someone else? Either way, Christina realizes she’s falling in love, all over again…

I bought this story hoping for a poignant Christmas reunion story. What I got was nothing of the sort. Christina is one of those heroines I unfortunately can’t stand. She’s protected to the extent of being not just innocent but downright stupid sometimes, she’s so conservative that sex is abhorrent until of course the right man comes along, and on top of all that, it turns out she’s spent two years blocking out every bad memory of her husband, building him into a paragon of virtue. If the writing or characterization had been more deft, maybe it wouldn’t have annoyed me as much as it did. But Christina pushed every “you’ve got to be kidding” button I have.

The writing doesn’t flow well enough for me to get past my dislike for the heroine. The prologue isn’t so bad, but the first chapter is rife with streams of run-on sentences that get tedious to read. It continues throughout the story. It doesn’t help that the author has a tendency to make simple mistakes, like confusing “desert” with “dessert” and vice versa. By the time I reached the completely convenient ending, I’d had enough. The romance wasn’t enough, the sex scenes were perfunctory, and not even the mostly congenial hero could save it.

Readability	4/10 – Clumsy writing and common homonym mistakes do not make this fun or simple to read.
Hero	6/10 – Far more likeable than the heroine is, that’s for sure
Heroine	2/10 – Dim and annoying
Entertainment value	3/10 – Though I liked the hero, the dumb heroine and the farfetched details toward the end made it difficult to enjoy this
World building	6/10 – Just enough to hold the story together, but nothing exciting
TOTAL:	19/50

Uncovering Egypt by Ann Cory

TITLE: Uncovering Egypt
AUTHOR: Ann Cory
PUBLISHER: Samhain
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 13k)
GENRE: Time travel erotic romance
COST: $2.50

Egyptologist Jasmine Devi is on the dig of a lifetime, unearthing historical treasures in the great pyramid of Giza. When she stumbles upon a beautiful bracelet, she is startled to discover it has called forth King Okpara from the past, intent on protecting his dead queen’s sacred jewel. One look at Jasmine and he is convinced she is destined to be his new queen. All he has to do is convince her of that…

The beautiful cover of this short story convinced me to look at the excerpt, and then to buy it, so it’s really too bad that it’s about the only good thing this particular e-book has going for it. The story is labeled as a red hot, which in Samhain speak is hot erotic romance, but there really isn’t that much that’s sexy about this. When the bracelet affixes itself to Jasmine’s wrist, she is immediately confronted by four men who claim to be the king’s guards. They demand she come with them, and she follows them to a room in the pyramid that has what’s called a body chamber in it. Basically, it’s a mesh cage in the form of a body, with openings for the occupant’s face, chest, and groin. The guards force her to strip and get into it, at which point Okpara shows up. He is convinced she is his new queen, and sets out to seduce her. Except…guess who does the foreplay? Two of the guards start out while the king stands back. He eventually kneels for oral sex, but when it comes time for the actual act, he has them remove her from the cage and form a human cradle for her, and that’s how they have sex. He is incredibly dissociated from the act. It’s not even his touch that finally sets her off. I’m supposed to find this sexy? I don’t think so.

It doesn’t help that Jasmine is an idiot. There’s a fellow Egyptologist named Mason who is introduced in the beginning as having a thing for her. So desperate to get away from him, she sneaks off to the room which has the bracelet, which is outside of the grid they’re expected to be in. She tells nobody where she is going, and yet, when Mason shows up looking for her, she goes off on him for being stalker-y. Because he was worried and couldn’t find her? She’s supposed to be a professional, but I just can’t believe that any professional would be so irresponsible, even if she was trying to avoid someone she didn’t like.

I have problems even believing this as a romance. Okpara never feels authentic, saying things like, “Everything about you turns me on.” The explanation for why he so blithely accepts coming to the future? Oh, yeah, he’d been summoned to the future before. I guess that’s where he learned English, too. He also decides within minutes of seeing Jasmine that he loves her, and then, when some artificial danger is introduced to separate the two, instead of finally getting some real story, there’s a jump cut to, “Oh, look, they live happily ever after.” It’s a completely copout and cheats the reader, but then again, the whole story did that so I guess it shouldn’t be that much of a surprise.

Readability	5/10 – Clean, but poorly constructed story structure
Hero	3/10 – Everything about him was told not shown
Heroine	3/10 – Annoying and dumb
Entertainment value	2/10 – This doesn’t work on any level
World building	4/10 – It starts out well, but any semblance of place/time in dialogue or setting after she finds the bracelet is gone
TOTAL:	17/50