Handcuffs and Lies by Bronwyn Green

TITLE: Handcuffs and Lies
AUTHOR: Bronwyn Green
PUBLISHER: Resplendence Publishing
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 17k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotic romance
COST: $3.50

Three years after her brother’s death, Dr. Tori Spinelli is still having nightmares about it, but she trudges on, day after day, until another kid dies in her ER from Ecstasy, provided by the same druglord who killed her cop brother. Desperation for justice drives her to her brother’s ex-partner, and the man she swore she would never see again…

It’s so hard to tell from blurbs sometimes, whether the focus is going to be on sex or plot. I don’t have a preference either way – both kinds of stories serve their purpose when I’m in the mood for them – but I often judge a book by how long it is, as well as by the excerpt, to try and determine which way it’s going to fall. I misjudged this one. The blurb leaned one way, the excerpt leaned another, and I guessed wrong. It doesn’t help that the length it professed to be – 19k – is inaccurate by over 2k. That came from padding at the end that was all advertising (much like Samhain does, and I’ll go on the record here for saying how much I hate that misleads me as to how long a story will be). I know enough not to trust page counts; there is no standard amongst publishers as to margins, spacing, etc., so it’s impossible to judge how long a story truly will be. I rely on word counts. Is it really that much to ask that they be accurate to the story?

Anyway, it’s hardly this author’s fault their publisher falls into the same trap Samhain does. However, that still doesn’t mean the story doesn’t suffer from skipping right over any depth to get to the happy ending.

The strong opening, with Tori trying to save a kid in her ER and then going to Michael to get his help, promises more than the rest of the story delivers. Just as I started getting wrapped up in the potential danger – she interrupts an undercover drug bust and risks the bad guys coming after her, forcing Michael to take her into protective custody – everything gets rushed into fast forward, throwing them into bed and lurching the action unconvincingly toward its anti-climactic resolution. I couldn’t even really get too invested in the romantic aspect. Tori and Michael had a single one-night stand the night before her brother’s funeral, a night neither one of them remember. Any real depth into what kind of chemistry or relationship they could have is never explored, culminating in a very flat romantic subplot.

I want to see this author write something long. Her prose is certainly clean enough to engage a reader for lengthy works, and she definitely knows how to write a taut, realistic scene (the hospital scenes are by far the best in the book, though the scene of Tori and Michael in the bedroom is a close second). Though I liked the first novella of hers that I read, the second didn’t work as well. I think she needs to put her talent to something longer to truly shine.

Readability	8/10 – Quick, clean, and unassuming
Hero	5/10 – Appealing but flat
Heroine	6/10 – More well rounded than the hero, though still not very rich
Entertainment value	5/10 – The suspense aspect of the plot is only a convenient device, and the dearth of background detail flattens the romance
World building	7/10 – The medical world felt crisp and real, the rest not so much
TOTAL:	31/50

Always and Forever by Pamela Labud

TITLE: Always and Forever
AUTHOR: Pamela Labud
PUBLISHER: Resplendence Publishing
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 77k)
GENRE: Historical time travel romance
COST: $6.50

Crippled after a duel to protect his sister’s honor, Robert Houghton finds himself in a sickbed with little hope for the future…until a cursed ghost whisks him away to satisfy the bidding of a Scottish lass in need of help. Jenna MacReynold is in desperate need of aid. She’s just fled the malevolent grasp of her would-be husband, a man who only wants to wed her in order to get to her untainted younger sister. She needs a man she can claim as a temporary husband so she can both get help from a neighboring clan and hold the evil Murton Carrick off. She just doesn’t expect to be so attracted to the man she ends up with…

Throughout this entire novel, I could never shake the prevailing sense of missed opportunity. I loved the blurb I read, and the romantic promise of these two desperate characters filled me with great expectation. However, while I liked both the possibilities behind the plot and the two leads, it never really lived up to the story I wanted it to be.

The problem for me started quite early. Though I generally liked the characters I was introduced to, the incredibly awkward information dumps about their histories and situations made for some very clunky reading. There was a ton of telling, not showing, in order to establish motivations and needs, and I found myself cringing when another passage would come along to convey needed backstory. It did a tremendous disservice to the characters that were being set up. Robert has a determined spirit, one that shines through in spite of his disability in his present time, while Jenna is plucky and strong without losing her femininity. Much of this comes through later on in the story, in the way they act and react to their increasingly awful situation, but I wanted it from the start and didn’t really feel like I got it.

The depiction of Scottish life in the thirteenth century was strong and vivid, with solid details to paint the world in which Robert and Jenna grow close. I sank into that portrayal much more easily than I did in Robert’s nineteenth century England, though that’s primarily due to the fact that Robert is mostly bedbound for all the time he’s there in the beginning. But in the end, a strong sense of place isn’t quite enough to compensate for the awkward information dissemination throughout the story. These enjoyable characters deserved a smoother presentation than what I read.

Readability	6/10 – Awkward information dumps hold back the promise of this idea
Hero	7/10 – I liked his spirit and determination, though I’ll admit I liked him more in the past than I did in his present
Heroine	7/10 – Plucky and strong
Entertainment value	6/10 – Though I liked the characters and the idea, the execution failed to live up to its promise
World building	8/10 – Some solid details that brought Scotland to life
TOTAL:	34/50

The Resurrection of Josephine by Melinda Barron

TITLE: The Resurrection of Josephine
AUTHOR: Melinda Barron
PUBLISHER: Resplendence Publishing
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 19k)
GENRE: Paranormal ménage erotic romance
COST: $3.50

An evil spectral presence at a funeral nearly kills medium Martin Vandreen, but he escapes, determined to find out what it could be. When lovers Rumer and Noah break into his home to enlist his help, he learns the presence is an awful witch who has been finding human hosts for centuries. Now bound to the cemetery, she’s about to be freed, unless Martin, Rumer, and Noah can stop her…

I have the worst luck with ménage erotic romances. I admit I have certain parameters that I try to match up; for instance, I’m not interested in anything involving family members sharing, like a group of brothers with one woman. And all that needing a third to complete them is usually rubbish. So even though I look at them when they come out, I invariably buy very few ménages. Yet, even those few I buy end up being a waste of money.

I liked the premise of this novella. I’d read the author before and I hadn’t been hugely impressed, but I thought, It’s been a year and a half, maybe I just had bad luck the first time. The excerpt seemed like it might be tense and interesting, too. Martin undergoes a very unpleasant experience at the cemetery, and he seemed to have a sense of humor about the whole thing, so I gave it a go. The first chapter is fine enough, even the second chapter. But then Rumer and Noah show up, and everything goes downhill from there. Not in the conflict. I can buy the fact that Rumer finds it necessary to break into Martin’s home and ask for his help getting rid of the witch Josephine. No, the part where I start to lose it is when Rumer and Noah decide to spend the night to supposedly protect Martin from Josephine, and because there’s no guest room, they’ll just sleep in his bed. In their underwear, of course. It’s just ludicrous, and only becomes more so from there.

The next morning, Martin wakes with a hard-on, and two people who want to have sex with him. At that point, the dialogue takes a turn for the worse: "Why don't we all play together," Noah said. "I'm hard, too, and I know my baby's wet. Mutual masturbation might help us forget the horrible way we met last night." I thought there might be a respite when it shifted back to the ghost plot, but after a brief encounter, Martin decides what he needs to feel better is – guess what – sex. It might have been more palatable if the sex scenes worked for me, but these didn’t either. Under no circumstances will I ever find the word “anus” erotic. Especially when it comes so close on the heels of “nether opening.” It just got to be too much, because as soon as that engagement with the scene breaks down, it’s next to impossible to get back, especially when the things that bothered me in it are still prevalent.

Unless you’re a fan of the author, or don’t mind terminology like “nether opening” in your sex scenes, I can’t say that I’d recommend it.

Readability	6/10 – Starts out all right, but the dialogue made me laugh, which only made the overwritten sex scenes even funnier.
Ménage	4/10 – Not hot, and starts out with one of the silliest reasons to put three people naked in a bed together that I’ve read in a while
Characterization	5/10 – Individually, could probably hold their own, but any attempts to make them well-rounded fail as soon as talk turns to sex and emotions
Entertainment value	3/10 – The idea is promising, but I lost any sense of credibility for it as soon it tried to turn amorous
World building	6/10 – Hints of some nice atmosphere, but it gets lost in the erotic elements
TOTAL:	24/50

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

Circle Star by Tatiana March

TITLE: Circle Star
AUTHOR: Tatiana March
PUBLISHER: Resplendence Publishing
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 75k)
GENRE: Historical western romance
COST: $6.50

When Susanna Talbot discovers her father has died, she returns to the ranch upon which she was raised – to discover the only way she can inherit is if she marries Connor McGregor, the boy who disappeared from their lives thirteen years earlier. The boy who professed to want to marry her until she threatened to have him kicked off the ranch he’d come to love. Nobody has seen him in all that time. Now she has three months to find him, or risk losing everything…

It’s not an original plot. The have to get married to satisfy the condition of a will device has been overused to the extreme. But the blurb didn’t make me cringe, and there was a lovely calm glow about the cover that sucked me in, so I read the excerpt. It’s actually the prologue of the book and captures time when the hero and heroine are teenagers, when he is becoming aware of her as a girl and not just the boss’ daughter. It held a distinct charm and nostalgia that appealed to the warm fuzzies in me, so I bought this in spite of the unoriginality of the idea. In retrospect, I’m glad I took the chance.

It’s not perfect. But for as long as the story remains focused on Susanna and Connor, it’s certainly engaging. Susanna isn’t a wilting flower, in spite of being sent to Philadelphia at thirteen to “become a lady,” and Connor is appropriately damaged and alpha. Both have been pining for the other for most of the time they’ve been apart, though neither is keen to admit it. Susanna is willing to do whatever is necessary to ensure she doesn’t lose her home and livelihood, and I have to admit that her plan to get Connor back to the Circle Star – while extreme and maybe not in Connor’s best interest – made me appreciate both her determination and spirit. The frustrations of keeping these two apart worked double time for me; more than once, I just wanted to grab both of them and shake them out of their obstinacy. Not in a bad way. In a heavily invested in seeing these two happy way. When it finally happened, I had a huge smile on my face.

But then things start shifting. Halfway through the story, Susanna’s best friend from Philadelphia arrives for a visit. Claire is spunky and entertaining in her own right, but as the resolution comes in sight for Susanna and Connor’s misunderstandings, Claire takes more and more of the stage. Her scenes are what drive the last third of the story, and while I liked her – and more importantly, liked the romance she was given – it ultimately meant losing time with the two characters I’d spent the first 2/3’s of the story falling in love with. It was towards the end, too, that the story starts taking more saccharine turns. Even scenes between Susanna and Connor don’t hold the same bittersweet edge they’d carried earlier. I think it’s probably to counter the drama inflicted upon mostly Claire, but it felt out of character for me and wasn’t what had invested me in the story in the first place.

Though there are very minor editing issues throughout the story that niggled slightly, and the author’s propensity for confusing loose with lose is something that should have been caught, it didn’t end up detracting from my enjoyment of the story. I just wish there might have been a different way of sustaining the conflict, rather than introducing a new character halfway through and creating drama for her rather than the ones I started out with.

Readability	8/10 – In spite of minor editing errors and a jump of story focus 2/3’s of the way through, I devoured this.
Hero	7/10 – As damaged and alpha as they come
Heroine	7/10 – Smart and spunky
Entertainment value	7/10 – This would have been higher, as many of the scores, if the story hadn’t shifted focus away from the characters I wanted to care about most.
World building	8/10 – Though there’s nothing extraordinary in the prose, upon reflection afterward I realized just how immersed I’d been in its reality
TOTAL:	37/50