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Anyway, it's not Friday, but here are last week's questions:
1. Is your hair naturally curly, wavy, or straight? Long or short?
Wavy, with LOTS of volume. It's also very heavy, and there's a lot of it. It's short, with the front part a bit longer, "to frame my face".
2. How has your hair changed over your lifetime?
I wore it loooong (almost to my waist) until 2 years ago, when I got sick to death of spending hours untangling it and drying it. I went to the hairstylist and told the guy "Do what you want, I just want it short". He actually spent a couple of minutes just staring at all the hair, telling me how this was every stylist's dream! First thing he did, before he started "styling", was cut most of the hair whole, and give it to me. I made a falsie with it, which I sometimes wear when I want a different look. As for colours, it's now at my natural brown, but it's been blond, red and black.
3. How do your normally wear your hair?
I never do anything with it (unless I have a wedding, or some type of formal party). I only towel-dry it a bit after washing it and then let it dry naturally. I either leave it loose or wear a couple of barrettes to keep it away from my face.
4. If you could change your hair this minute, what would it look like?
I've always wanted straight, straight hair, with absolutely no waves and almost no volume. That's what I get it to look like for special occasions. I don't mind the color, I actually like my natural color best.
5. Ever had a hair disaster? What happened?
One word: perm! I was 14, and the stylist managed to convince me that she had a new product that would give me permanent ringlets. It didn't, my hair just looked frizzy and I wore a ponytail for a couple of years straight.
The next book I read was Susan Elizabeth Phillips' Breathing Room.
Lorenzo (Ren) Gage is a devilishly handsome movie star, best known for his villainous roles onscreen and his playboy antics off. Isabel Favor is a tightly wound self-help guru and author of The Four Cornerstones of a Favorable Life whose own perfect life has recently come crashing down around her. Both have come to Italy to escape the endless rehashes of their latest misfortunes in the public eye, and the equally endless drone of self-criticism.I've seen this book blasted so often in message boards, that I approached it with trepidation. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that it was a keeper for me. My grade is an A+, and it's one of the best books I've read this year, and one my fave SEPs so far.Ren and Isabel meet under what can only be described as unusual circumstances, leaving each of them thinking, thankfully, they'll never see the other again. Imagine their surprise when Isabel turns up on Ren's doorstep, her much anticipated rental villa belonging to none other than her ill-advised one-night stand. As might be anticipated, their fiery antagonism soon breeds sparks of a different kind.
Meanwhile, at the villa, all is not as it seems, and the two lovers find themselves playing amateur detectives, trying to untangle the strange behavior of the townspeople and of Ren's hired caretaker. As if things weren't complicated enough, Ren's ex-wife, Tracy, suddenly appears on the scene pregnant and with several kids in tow, ushering in a subplot centering on the nature of marriage in the real world.
I haven't heard of anyone online that actually liked Isabel, but I did, very much. Yes, she was a bit irritating, with her guru-speak and her praying everywhere and her insistence on always doing the right thing, but she meant well, and I appreciated how hard she worked, faced with horrible circumstances, to stay true to her convictions. Best of all, she wasn't at all judgemental of other people.
And BTW, about the praying and the fact that she called God "She": I was ok with that, even though I'm an agnostic who's not fond of organized religion. I think the fact that she emphasized spirituality and not religion per se, and the fact that her beliefs weren't exactly mainstream was what made it all palatable to me.
Another complaint I've heard is about SEP preaching at us. I don't know, maybe she did, a bit, but I think the preaching was mostly part of Isabel's characterization. And remember, when she got too preachy, Ren was always there to bring her back to Earth. Oh, I loved Ren! Cultured, bad boy Ren, wounded but not even knowing the wound still hurt.
I just adored Isabel and Ren together, the way thy bantered and how Ren teased Isabel and how he starts feeling attracted to her "goodness" despite himself. The book shone when showing us the characters falling in love with each other, something I always enjoy. SEP made me believe they were in love and perfect for each other.
I also liked the secondary characters and their "marriage in trouble" story. The 4 kids bothered me a bit (brats, the lot of them, except maybe for poor Steffie!), but the scenes where Tracy and Harry come clean about how they really feel about each other more than made up for this.
I loved the Tuscan setting, almost a character in itself, and I even enjoyed the "mystery" subplot, which I'm not going to spoil for you. SEP's timing was perfect with it. It stayed in the background most of the first part of the book, and we had only enough hints to make me intrigued about what was going on. When it came a bit more to the forefront, near the end, it never overpowered the romance (always a danger), but created a backdrop for it.
[Incidentally, e-mail me if you can think of other titles with a mystery subplot. Not a suspense subplot, with a villain after the protagonists, but one where they have to solve a mystery, one which is important to them but isn't life or death. Something like All Night Long, for instance.]
The ending, even the epilogue... awww!! I mean this in the best of senses, and keep in mind I have a low tolerance for schmaltz.
All in all, I really do think SEP is getting better and better. I'll have to see if I like First Lady better than most people do. I'm hopefull!
I get mixed results with this. I did that with Forbidden Garden, for instance, and I'm glad I read it. The one I tackled this weekend, though, wasn't that good. I'm glad I'm read it too, but only because I can now add it to my Trade List instead of having it clutter my bookshelves.
The book was Sweethearts of the Twilight Lanes, by Luanne Jones
As the doyenne of Simply Southern Magazine, Tess Redding is the soul of southern hospitality -- or at least to the world around Mount Circe, Georgia. But when bad boy Flynn Garvey roars back into town, Tess's plans to leave Mount Circe are suddenly in danger of burning hotter than Atlanta after Sherman. Once upon a time the smooth-talking rebel broke her young heart, now Tess is just determined to have nothing to do with the mouth-watering, trouble-on-two-legs charmer.My grade for it was a C-, and I think I've learnt my lesson. No more Southern Fiction for me, I just don't like it.But then Tess and her best pals, the Sweethearts, begin to receive anonymous blackmail notes that threaten to expose their youthful follies. Having her old exploits with Flynn revealed is the last thing Tess's sweeter-than-molasses image needs, and he is the only one who can help her. So all that's left for Tess to do is put on her best pair of pumps, march right on up to the man...and fall in love all over again.
For most of the book, I just couldn't relate to the characters and their problems. Who were this people? Do people like this really exist in this world? I didn't care what happened to them, and in fact, I think I didn't even like them, Tess, with her Southern Living magazine, Wylene with her beauty pageant school and her daughters named Jolene and Brentelle, after her husband Joe Brent... Everything was a turn-off, even the way they spoke.
The book got a bit better near the end, when the Flynn - Tess relationship finally got off the ground, and when they started to put their secrets to rights, but it was too little, too late. It saved the book from being a D, but it's not enough for me to recommend it.
First, I reread Harry Potter #4, HP and the Goblet of Fire, to prepare for the release of #5 (I don't know when I'll be able to get it, but so far I've been resisting the temptation to read spoilers).
Well, what can I say that hasn't been said a thousand times before? It was excellent, and I liked it just as much as I did when I first read it. It's imaginative, intriguing, exciting, dark, and very definitely not just a children's book.
There were quite a few details I didn't remember well, especially about the dénouement, so I'm very glad I read it. I can't wait! (and Hermione, you can't imagine how much I envy you!!)
I was a bit taken aback by this, because the guy obviously wasn't an English speaker (his accent was pretty atrocious, if I may be unkind). So why did he speak to me in English? Uh-oh, he must have noticed I was reading a book in that language (of course I was reading! What do normal people do on buses?). And I say "uh-oh" because I was reading a romance, and I'd spent most of my trip reading a sex scene. The poor man must have got an eyeful!
When writer Michael Collins arrives at the home of celebrity Renaissance Man and millionaire Gordon Randolph to start the man's biography, he can't help but notice that his wife Linda seems to be both hateful toward her husband and terrified of something she can't name.This was a good read, but not one of Michaels' best. A B for me.As he starts doing his research into Randolph's background he finds some disturbing but enigmatic results. Then Linda, whom her husband claims is insane, runs away and keeps running, with a bizarre old witch as her only solid ally. But Linda has a counter-claim about Randolph, that implies something far darker and more horrifying than mere insanity.
The supernatural plot was a bit too nebulous, basically. It was never too clear exactly what was going on. This is something that Michaels has got better at with time. Also, the final scene was a bit anticlimatic and felt too rushed.
The best thing about TDOTOS was the way Michaels paced it, gradually introducing enough clues so that the reader started realizing something was very wrong, and then what it might be. Michael's awareness of what was going on proceeded at a similar pace, and Linda's personality was revealed gradually too. At the beginning she seemed to be in a very fragile mental state, so it was great to see her show she wasn't crazy and behave like the strong woman she was.
So far I've found:
- To the Ends of the Earth, by Elizabeth Lowell: this one was first published in 1983, and it's pretty much vintage Lowell. It feels very, very dated. I remember it had a nice grovel scene at the the end, and that's why I was keeping it. To be honest, I don't think I could bear to read the book again in order to get to the grovel scene, so into my TL it goes.
- The Bride Fair, by Cheryl Reavis: I don't seem to be able to connect to Reavis' characters. This book was interesting, but I never cared about the characters and what was happening to them. I also remember being bothered by the brattish children.
- A Place to Call Home, by Deborah Smith: I know many people love this one, but I didn't really like it. I kinda liked the first part, IIRC, but the second half was bo-ring! I'm not really a fan of Southern fiction (understatement of the year!)
She raced across the pasture, vaulted a fence, and landed, stunned and breathless, on top of the most handsome man she had ever seen. The bemused stranger stayed to capture the fancy of the brood of orphaned children in her charge, then stole Lauren Hill's heart with a searing kiss as he left. Lauren couldn't tell him she was a widowed countess fallen on hard times. She tried to forget him--until she saw him again at a London ball. The man who haunted her dreams was a duke, out of her class...and he was pledged to another woman.I tried, I swear! I read some 150 pages before I chucked it, but I just couldn't go on. I'd already set it down about 50 pages before, but I had convinced myself I had to finish it, but enough! I have too many more books waiting for me. Plus, there's another trader I know wants this one, and she always trades me for books on my Wish List, so I don't feel as guilty as I'd normally feel!The ton is ablaze with talk of the ravishing Bavarian countess. Stunned, Alexander Christian, Duke of Sutherland, recognizes Lauren as the country girl who's captured his heart. Duty has forced him to pledge himself to another, to take his proper place in society and in Parliament. He wants one night with his blue-eyed enchantress, but will he be able to walk away from her again, or will he risk it all to be with the woman who fires his blood and makes him think of a . . . Wicked Angel.
What made me hate this so much? Well, again, I found a book that pushed all my hot buttons. Many of the problems I had would have been bearable alone, but the accumulation was too much. Case in point, the virgin widow. I'd rather not have to read about this character, but I've been known to like some (see, My Lady's Pleasure, or Wicked Widow). Here, it irritated me to no end.
Oh, and I hated Lauren. She's so good! Stupid kind of good, of course, the type of woman who gives up her inheritance because she doesn't deserve it, when she really does need it. And of course, she keeps sacrificing herself "for the children". Literally, at one point she's thinking about how her uncle had practically sold her into marriage the first time, and she thinks how "she had done it for Rosewood and for the children". These children, BTW, are orphans.
Look, I admire people who are kind and good, but there is a fine line between being good and being a perpetual victim and martyr, and Lauren goes way across this line. And the worst part is that all this is just bad characterization on the part of the author, she wants her readers to love Lauren, so she has to make her just perfect. It's overkill, basically.
Apart from all this, everything felt so clichéd! (Lauren's parents, of course, had died in a carriage accident. Just one example.) The only original-ish element was having the hero be engaged to someone else, and this was something I hated. To me, a guy who's engaged and still thinks nothing of pursuing another woman is the worst kind of skunk. And the operative words here are "thinks nothing", ok?
A mess. Just that, a mess.
Fern Sproull, a young, swaggering opinionated ruffian, dressing and behaving like a cowboy, is determined Hen Randolph will hang for killing her cousin. She's equally determined that a fancy lawyer named Madison Randolph isn't going to get his brother off. Fern has spent the last eight years of her life outriding, out shooting, and out cussing every man in her path, and she's not about to let the man who murdered her cousin get off just because he's one of the Texas Randolphs. But how is she going to know what tricks Madison gets up to unless she follows him around?This one was not even remotely as good as Rose. I'd give it a C at best, and I'm actually grading up because I like the author's writing style, which immediately sucks me into the story and keeps me reading even when I'm wanting to tear my hair out because of some plot point. I'm also giving the book extra points because I find the setting very interesting. It's not the stereotypical "Western" setting, full of saloons and gunfighters, and the author manages to create a vivid world in which his characters live. I also liked the main plotline: I was intrigued by Fern's cousin murder, and I liked that the mystery subplot didn't overshadow the romance.Madison Randolph, the brother who abandoned his younger orphaned siblings to go to Harvard during the Civil War, has come to Abilene, Kansas to defend his brother against a murder charge. There's not much love lost between Madison and his family, but he's certain Hen isn't a murderer and he doesn't mean to let him hang. The fact that an obnoxious female who dresses like a man and acts even worse intends to stop him only encourages him to prove he's the very best at what he does. The suave, sophisticated Madison is appalled, first to discover that under all that dirt and bluster is a woman, and secondly, that he's intrigued by her. But Madison soon discovers the female isn't so obnoxious after all and that the ties of blood can never be broken.
The problem was the characters, most especially the heroine, and their motivations. Fern was "feisty", and not in a good way. She was the foot-stomping, hair-tossing, cross-dressing kind of feisty; stubborn, quick to make completely unjustified judgements, and a doormat for users like her father. In a word, I thought she was stupid. I hated her, can you tell?
Though Madison was much better (at least he was usually a reasonable guy), half the time, I hadn't the slightest idea of why these people were behaving in a certain way. That was my main problem; they did things with no rhyme or reason. In Rose, even if I didn't like some of the characters' issues and motivations, at least I more or less knew where they were coming from and it made sense!
The book completely disintegrated near the end, with Fern starting with the "I'm not worthy, boo-hoo!" routine, a painfully clichéd misunderstanding immediately after, and Fern showing, yet again, that she was TSTL in the final action scene.
I certainly hope the series doesn't continue in this vein!
Tess Norton knows that Dash Black is way out of her league. She just looks after his houseplants, for heaven's sake. But she can't resist a sizzling fling with the sexy media king before she settles for Mr. Ordinary someday.I like Leigh's voice and style. She feels modern, and her heroines are more real and modern than most. This was something I liked in this book, though I had a couple of problems with it. A B-.Dash has never experienced a woman like Tess in his life. Hot…sweet…sinful, she occupies his bed — and his mind — day after day. She's a welcome distraction in theNew York frenzy that he calls home. For Tess, he knows he's just a man to do. Not a man to marry. But sometimes sex and romance can get all mixed up when you least expect it.…
What I liked:
- Likeable, modern characters: a genuinely nice hero and a heroine who was pretty strong and driven
- Characters who had interesting occupations (Tess, for instance, owned a plant-care business)
- Very hot love scenes
- The whole book had a romantic, Cinderellaish feel
- Character-driven romance, the best kind. No villain to kidnap the heroine here.
What I didn't like:
- A heroine who at times felt much too star-struck by the hero... which meant a relationship that felt a bit unequal (the flip side of the Cinderella thing I mentioned
- Name dropping. An awful lot of it. The hero had dated (and slept with) Julia (Roberts, of course) and Sandy (Bullock, who did you think), and the author went on (and on!) about the famous characters at the parties Dash and Tess attended.
- The kind-of villain was out of Central Casting: the Rich Bitch, who badmouthed Tess to a potential investor, because.... just because.
- The rush to marriage. These two had a future, but I didn't really think they were at the getting married stage just yet. Why, oh why do romance novels have to finish in marriage?
Why her family had elected to spend an entire season in boring Bath, Georgiana Bellewether couldn't fathom. Nothing to stimulate her inquisitive mind ever happened here -until the night Lady Culpepper's emeralds were stolen! Now, if only she could keep her mind on the case and her hands off the enigmatic man in black - the beguiling Lord Ashdowne...!Well, I still loved it. An A. It was one of the funniest books I've ever read, and one of the most refreshing.As the newly made, ever-responsible Marquis of Ashdowne, Johnathon Saxton bemoaned the lack of excitement now marking his days. But when quixotic, exotic Georgiana Bellewether literally stumbled into his arms, he knew he'd caught himself an armful. The woman was a disaster in the making!
Georgiana was an excellent character. She reminded me a bit of Phoebe, from SEP's It Had to be You, in that they were both brilliant women who looked like ditzy sexbombs. Georgiana, however, actually was a bit ditzy. Ditzy and brilliant, I didn't think someone could write that successfully.
The main focus of the book was Georgiana and Ashdowne's relationship, which was a riot. I loved the way Ashdowne started realizing that she wasn't exactly what she seemed. I LOLed at his horror when he noticed her thought processes were beginning to make sense to him. ;-)
This was a very sensual book. There actually was only one real sex scene, and it wasn't too graphic, but Simmons succeeded in creating beautiful sensual tension. And that scene in the Baths, whew!! *fanning myself*
I remember I was a bit doubtful about buying this book at first because of the thief angle. Thief protagonists are usually a turn-off for me. Maybe I'm a bit rigid, but stealing because you need the excitement, even if it's from "nasty people who can afford it", is wrong, IMHO. Yeah, I know, it's fiction, but I usually can't get over this. Stealing because of desperation, or for revenge, or for a million other reasons, I can accept easily. But frivolous, irresponsible reasons make me want to shake that particular character. I can't figure out why it wasn't a real problem here. Maybe because it was only part of Ashdowne's past? Because we never actually saw him stealing? Because Georgiana didn't condone it? Probably a mix of the three.
When twenty-two-year-old Haskell Malone accidentally discovers damning proof that the dead was hero whose name she bears is not her father, she is shattered. The revelation only confirms the dark fear that has haunted her since childhood. In fact, what little she knows about her birth and her mother's subsequent death, is a fragile web of evasions and lies.A good one, a B+ for me. As I posted a little while ago, I tend to group Michaels' books into several categories. This particular one would be straight suspense, with nary a sign of the supernatural. I like the creepy ghost stories best of all, but this is still Barbara Michaels after all, so it was still an excellent read.Determined to expose the truth at any cost, Haskell takes a job at Chicago's famed Oriental Institute in the city where her mother once lived and loved. But as she searched the shadows of the past, she finds that the truth can sometimes be deadly.
As in every one of the author's books, the atmosphere was incredible. The huge, creepy mansion, the strange characters, the young heroine... very gothic. I also found the mystery very engaging. The best part was the heroine. The book was written in 1st person POV, which only succeeds if the narrator is interesting. Haskell was.
I just love Michaels' voice, whether she's writing under that name or as Elizabeth Peters. Her sense of humour shines through, and it's a kind of humour I find beautifully effective. It's never forced, it just springs naturally from the situations described.
Impetuous Lady Jacinda Knight is the daughter of a scandalous woman--and Society predicts she'll follow in her mother's footsteps. Then one night, in flight from an arranged and loveless marriage, Jacinda finds herself alone on a dangerous street face-to-face with Billy Blade, the notorious leader of a band of thieves. His stolen kisses awaken in her a longing for a man she can never possess.I enjoyed LOD. Analysing it, I can think of quite a few flaws and things that bugged the hell out of me, but the fact remains that, on the whole, it left a positive impression.A handsome outlaw running from a secret past, Billy Blade has never met a woman like Jacinda--her fiery innocence and blossoming sensuality set his rebel's heart ablaze. Having turned his back on the privilege and power of his tyrannical father's house years before, he vows to return to reclaim his title, Earl of Rackford--to win the love of the ravishing beauty who has stolen his heart.
Jacinda was 18 and she behaved 18. We should get this fact out of the way right now: she wasn't fully mature at all, and had a long way to go. Thing is, I'm not opposed to reading about young heroines per se, the problem is that they are so often paired with heros much older and more mature than them. When this happens, 99% of the times the relationship ends up not being among equals, and feels almost like daddy-little girl. Creepy stuff.
Here, however, Jacinda and Billy were equals. Billy was just a big boy. He had been forced to behave grown up in a rush when he started living on the streets of London at age 13, but inside, I didn't feel he was that much more mature than Jacinda.
Their relationship was very fun to read about. They genuinely liked each other and enjoyed each other's company. Plus, Foley created such great sensual tension that I almost didn't realize that Jacinda and Billy didn't really consumate their relationship until near the end of the book. And that's something that could have been better. They only have sex when everything in their relationship's already settled, so it was frankly a little boring to read.
The problems and flaws I mentioned before were several. First of all, the disgusting ending. Spoiler ahead: His father was a Monster, and I didn't buy his repentance at all. And actually, he doesn't even really repent, just gives a lame excuse: "my daddy used to beat me up, so I knew what I was doing to you was nothing you couldn't bear, since I bore it myself". I'm sorry, but I hated that Billy forgave him, and I really didn't see the need for that dramatic overwrought deathbed scene.
Another problem was seeing Jacinda's brothers, who I'd enjoyed as heroes in their respective books, behaving like dominating pricks. I'm sure overprotective brothers are considered oh-so-cute by some people, but I couldn't like their behaviour. To me, it didn't imply that they cared for their sister, but that they didn't respect her.
Hmm, maybe I could borrow my uncle's laptop and take it with me? I can't very well tell him what I really want it for, but I'm sure I can come up with a good excuse before Friday!
I thought it might be a good idea to give a category a chance at random, just to see if I managed to hit a winner. So, I grabbed my friend's list of books and just stabbed at it, then asked her to loan me that one.
I'm sad to say I did not hit a winner. In fact, I tossed it at page 30.
The book was Accidental Roommate, by Charlotte Maclay, and it managed to find all my hot buttons and punch them for all it was worth.
Hannah Jansen lives with her father and helps him run the local hardware store in her excruciatingly small town. And at 28, Hannah is sick to death of being wholesome and dependable. A break in the big city is just what she needs. When her hotel mixes up her reservations and puts her in the same room as rancher Holt Janson, Hannah considers her options. Now fate has given her an honest-to-goodness sex symbol for a roommate!Ok, so I start the book... uh-huh, a 28 year old virgin. Lovely. Wonder if she'll have a real reason to be a virgin at that age. Maybe she wants to save it for her husband? Maybe she's religious? Even though I don't feel that way, at least it will be plausible! Nope, doesn't seem like it. She lives in a small town and, even though she's quite attractive, she never had an opportunity to have sex. Right, ok. Strike # 1 against the book.
So she's at her hotel room and when she comes out of the bathroom she finds a man in the room. Short tussle (in which the author doesn't make her look like too much of an idiot, good for her!) and they explain. H. Jansen and H. Janson. I guess it's possible that the hotel concierges would make such a mistake and give them the same room.
Downstairs it is, to ask the concierge to fix the mistake. Oh, no! The hotel is full! The whole town is full! Conventions, you know. There's no way Holt will be able to get another room, so what could be more natural than that they share a room? Okay, okay, okay! Here's where you lost me. Holt, darling, can't you stay at a motel? A 2-star hotel? I refuse to believe a whole huge city could be full. Such a contrived situation, "only in romance novels", right? Strike # 2.
Strike # 3: Holt's a cowboy. He wears cowboy boots. He wears a Stetson. He thinks of Hannah in horsey terms "She's such a high-strung filly" and stuff like that. Sorry, but yuck! And yes, I know, this is just a personal problem I have, not a real, objective problem with the book. Still, it's one of my hot buttons.
Strike # 4 comes right before I almost throw the book into the trash (before I remember I have to return it), and it's when Holt asks Hannah to stay out of the room from 10 to 12 PM the next day, because he wants some time with the lady he fucks whenever he's in town. Jerk.
That's it for me, thank you very much. I think I'll keep my current system and only pick and choose among categories. No more blind buys (or loans!)
George Randolph, the oldest brother and patriarch of the family, needs someone to wash, cook, and clean for the brothers on their Texas ranch. Rose Thornton accepts that job. She arrives at the homestead to find six men ranging in ages from six to twenty-four years old. The house looks like it hasn't been cleaned in years, the clothes practically stand up and beg to be washed, and everything in the kitchen is black with soot and grease. She soon discovers she's in the midst of a truly dysfunctional family. The brothers don't seem to like anybody, and that includes each other. They don't much like Rose, either. Once they learn her father was an officer in the Union Army, they vote to send her back to town.I liked it, it was a B. I did find some problems, but it wasn't that I was dissatisfied with what made it a Western, just that certain things in the story didn't completely work for me. I'll very definitely read the rest of the series, since I really liked the characters (call me snobbish, but on the whole, I don't like to read about uneducated characters), the feel of the book and the type of story (i.e. not a lot of emphasis on gunfights) and the author's voice.George Randolph was an officer in the Confederate army. He feels responsible for his family, but wants to rejoin the army, the only time when his life was ordered and predictable. Rose sets out to convince George that he's not only a father figure to his brothers, he really wants a family of his own. With her. At the same time seeks ways to repair the fragile bonds that hold this family together.
I was surprised to see how fast I was sucked into the story. It was very definitely not fast-paced and a big part of the book is Rose doing housework, plus, her getting settled at the ranch, the development of the brothers' relationship between themselves and with Rose, George's plans for the ranch. Pretty mundane stuff, boring, almost, and yet, I wasn't bored for a second.
Nice writing style or just me being weird and enjoying reading about housework? Reading about it, I said! I detest it in real life, but, for some strange reason, I love reading about heroines completely transforming a place from pigstyle to palace. And Rose is so incredibly capable! She knows how to do everything, and doesn't make those idiotic blunders some authors have their heroines make in order to make them "adorable". The author doesn't seem to feel that an educated heroine has to be incapable of hard work, and I love it.
I loved all that, most especially the family dynamics, and how Rose managed to help them actually become a family. Nothing easy about it, they had to work for it, and even by the end of the book, there were still problems, though they were well on their way to actually becoming the family George wanted to have.
Problems? Sure. The love story wasn't really too compelling. I was more interested in the family relationships than in George & Rose... in fact, when they get married and are coming back to the ranch, I was more anxious to read about how the brothers reacted to the news than about their wedding night. That says it all, I think.
Also, I just didn't "get" George's issues. Why on Earth is he so convinced he's going to be like his father? "Oh, I can't marry Rose because something in my nature will make me make her unhappy! I will feel compelled to stray, no matter how much I want her now!" Idiot. That sounds like an excuse for doing whatever he wants to do, without feeling guilty (because he just can't help it!, and I found it exasperating.
The stadium was completely full... 65.000 people. We had to get there about 2 hours early to get a good place. Luckily, there was a "preliminar" game between the youth teams of Nacional and Peñarol, which ended Nacional 5 - Peñarol 0, so we weren't too bored ;-)
When the teams entered the pitch it was really incredible, especially because every Nacional fan had brought a roll of toilet paper to throw when the Peñarol players entered (simbolizing that they were so scared they were crapping in their pants, or something like that). It must have been thought up by TP makers!
The first 25 minutes were all Nacional. Abreu scored on the 18th minutes (inspiring chants of "los clavó, el Loco los clavó!") with a beautiful header and then 3 minutes later he started a counter-attack, running the entire pitch with the ball and giving it to Peralta, who dribbled past a couple of Peñarol defenders and scored again.
On minute 26, penalty for Peñarol. Bengoechea took it, and it was record vs record. Nacional keeper Munua was trying for the record of the most minutes without receiving goals, and if Bengoechea scored, he would have the record of the Peñarol player who scored the most goals against Nacional. He scored :-( It seems we fans were really looking forward to Munua getting a new record, since someone the mood after that was more appropriate for a team that was receiving a thrashing than for one ahead by one goal.
For the rest of the first half, Nacional looked a bit depressed, and Munua had to save a couple of Peñarol attempts. They looked better in the second half, dominating the game and scoring (Abreu again!) on the 30th minute. The remaining 15 minutes were just celebration.
With this game, both Abreu and Peralta have scored in every Clásico they've played. This was probably "el Loco"'s last match in Nacional this season, since the AUF is very likely to suspend his abilitation next week, and he said goodbye to a standing ovation from over 30.000 fans.
There are only 3 games left and Nacional is 9 points ahead of Peñarol, who are # 2 in the standings. Just one more point and we're the Champions. Now I'm wondering if I should go to Punta del Este next weekend, as I was planning or just stay here, go to the stadium and (hopefully) celebrate the championship and then Sunday night play "comments chat" with Hermione and Guada.
For a long time I used to go only to the stands near the official's seats. These are the most expensive, but also the safest (and when I say the most expensive, it's actually very cheap by international standards: my ticket for this, one of the most important games in the season, was about US$ 2).
The popular stands, named Amsterdam and Colombes after the cities in which the Uruguayan National Team won their 2 olympic gold medals in football, are considered a bit dangerous. This is where the barras bravas (hard-core fans) sit, and also where most fights start. Not that this happens often. In the 6 years I've been going to the Amsterdam, I've only seen one "riot". That was in the last Nacional - Peñarol last year. It was a good 50m from where I was sitting, and absolutely nothing happened to me. My sister, though, had her arm splattered with blood from a guy who'd scraped his elbow running away from the fight. I ended up pouring half my beer on her arm to help "sterilize" it!
At work, we're all Nacional fans and we've been preparing ourselves. The office "DJ" spent the whole day playing Nacional fan songs :-)
From the moment she arrived on King's Island, Joanne McMullen knew that her sister's grief over losing her child had driven her dangerously close to madness. Mary just had a third miscarriage, and the loss of her baby is affecting her mentally - she's clinging to the idea of a child out in the woods, who is crying for her and begging for her help But when Joanne heard the same child's voice that her sister had heard wailing in the woods, she knew something terrible was happening!Wonderful! I'd grade it an A-. Like Wait For What Will Come, I really don't know why it didn't make more of an impression on me when I first read it. I barely remembered it, and some of the things I remembered were actually wrong (for instance, I was convinced that at one point they actually found a real child, crying in the middle of the forest. This never happens. I can't think where I'm taking that scene from).Jo teams up with her brother in law Ran, and the handsome (but woman-wary) doctor Will Graham, to find out what the crying is. But when the ghostly apparition of a beautiful, sad woman appears, Jo begins to dig into the past of Ran's family, and discovers a web of lies, murder, and terror centering on a lost child...
Geek that I am, I'm always trying to classify authors' books in my mind. Michaels has her "custom dramas", her straight suspense (which have only a suspicion of the supernatural) and finally, a category which I simply call "the ones I like best". In this final category, the characters (usually at least 4) see enough manifestations of the ghost, or whatever supernatural element, that they are persuaded that however unlikely, it is real. The ghost is some kind of reflection of a past event, and the characters have to make an effort to find out what it was that happened... lots of research, in libraries, collections of family papers, etc. TCC belongs in this category, together with other favourites as Ammie Come Home, The Walker in Shadows and House of Many Shadows.
I think what I love best about these books is seeing the diverse group of people working all together against the unknow. Another book that I felt struck a similar chord was a Nora Roberts: Face the Fire. Probably the reason why I liked it more than most people.
As for TCC itself, it was particularly successful in being chilling and a great gothic. I especially liked the final spine-tingling, climactic scene. The solution was a complete surprise to me, and made a lot of sense. The atmosphere, with a fog-bound island and the old house, definitely helped. Jo, the protagonist, was a very likeable character: sensible, smart and compassionate. Some of the other characters could have been better drawn (like Will, her romantic interest) but most were very well done.
Heather Devaney was devastated when Flynn Rammage callously rejected her offer of love. She quit her job at his company and moved without leaving her new address. Eight months later, Flynn has exorcised the demons that had been driving him at the time, and realizes exactly what he threw away. He's changed his mind, and he's decided he wants to take Heather up on her offer. However, when he finds her and proposes, Heather can't be sure if he's not really in the market for just a wife to take care of his young son.It was ok, but nothing special. I'd grade it a B. The only remarkable thing about it was a hero who grovels like mad, an element I really like. He was a bit too alpha, but he did have to work for Heather to forgive him, so that's fine.
Flynn's four-year-old son is a biggish part of the story, and he was ok-done. Children in romance novels are usually terribly annoying to me, but JAK does kids pretty well.
And I should mention the external conflict. In a word: lame. It played zero part in the story and only provided a small, tense moment near the end. What for? Absolutely nothing. It's like the author had already written the book and her editor had said "Oh, but in this particular line we need a suspense subplot!". It feels that tacked-on. However, what saved it was that it was so irrelevant. It simply wasn't long enough to annoy me.Emily is a mere soldier's widow, a soldier's daughter. What could she possibly offer the Duke of Avon, a man with who's disfigurement isn't the leg that doesn't work properly, but the soul that's been so terribly hurt? Dominic Maitland knows the true worth of Emily isn't in a title or wealth, but in a heart that's his heart's desire.This book was boring. It was torture to go through it, and I finally had to resort to skimming the last 30 pages in order to finish it. This was a 300 page book, but it took me almost a week to read it.
It was extremely frustrating, full of little misunderstandings, those where a character will say one thing and the other will think she means something else and get offended, again, and again, and again. It's a valid device, and when used sparingly, it's not something that will make me dislike a book, but here it was ridiculous. The author relied to much on this.
I also didn't like how there was an almost soap-operaish feeling to the story. Conflict after conflict... you think they're settled ("I love you" - "Me too") and off they go again, thinking the other pities them of married them for duty. Very tiresome.
It didn't help that I wasn't too enamoured of the characters, either. Emily ended up being a watering pot and a ninny, nothing like the brave soldier she was supposed to be, and Dominic felt unnecessarily tortured and wounded, determined to be a martyr. And he spent half of the book on his back, beaten up and/or wounded.
There were also certain details, like how he kept visiting his mistress when he was already crazy about Emily (to be fair, they weren't really involved at the time), which I didn't like. There was a particular scene which was a huge turn-off: he goes to his mistress' house with the express intention of breaking things off with her, but he has sex with her before he tells her. That was yucky in so many ways!!
To conclude, I've liked some of Gayle Wilson's books, but this one didn't work at all for me. Even elements I've liked in other books of hers, like the wounded war hero, felt overwrought here. A D+.
I read my first e-book last week. I'm not too sure if I could technically call it an "e-book", since it was just a .pdf file and I had to read it on my computer, but well, it was a non-paper book, so it counts. It was a pretty good experience. I still prefer regular books as a format, but I think I'd probably adapt very quickly to some kind of portable e-book reader. I'll have to start saving!
The book was Seducing Mr. Heywood, by Jo Manning. I was a bit doubtful about reading it, since I thought the author behaved very badly online at one point, but luckily, I think I was able to simply forget that and appreciate the book on its own merits.The thrice-widowed Lady Sophia Rowley arrives in Yorkshire after the death of her last husband, the Baron Rowley, to claim her two young sons only to find that the local vicar, Charles Heywood, has been named the children's legal guardian. The first meeting between Charles and Sophia turns out to be quite memorable for both parties when, stunned by Sophia's beauty, Charles trips and falls; splashes his glass of sherry all over Sophia; and tears her gown, exposing one of Sophia's finest attributes.When I saw that the heroine in this book was a woman who'd had lovers and cheated on her husband, who'd abandoned her children... a real, honest-to-god imperfect woman, I was elated. I was ready to love the book to pieces.Once her initial anger at Charles fades, Sophia, who is still smarting from the conge given to her by her latest London lover, decides to seduce the extremely handsome Charles as a means of whiling away the time while she is stuck in the country, but the more time Sophia spends with Charles, the harder it is to determine who exactly is seducing whom.
Authors always cop out, and the supposed "bad girl" heroines end up being virgins, who've done whatever "bad thing" they've done only to save their fathers / siblings / orphaned nephews or some such rot. Not Sophia. She had been victimized by her fathir at first, yes, but she'd really spent the last 10 years apart from her children, enjoying herself by taking lovers.. and she did enjoy herself. It was very refreshing.
I loved to see her paired with Charles; she was the rake, he the almost virgin who got seduced. And Charles was so nice and good and non-judgemental that even being an agnostic and anti-clericalist, I was perfectly ok with having a vicar as a hero.
So far so good, likeable hero and heroine, beautiful, exciting potential conflict, a pretty setting... but no, the author couldn't leave good enough alone and had to start throwing external conflicts at them. First her horribly evil father with his friend in tow, and a plot to kill her children, then a putrid sore throat epidemic, followed by Charles quest to find Sophia's old governess... they kept piling on. Maybe one of all these distractions would have been ok, but with all this going on we practically didn't have space to see Sophia and Charles interact. Their potentially interesting relationship ended up in the background most of the time.
Plus, I wasn't completely happy with the author's style. I don't know how to explain it very well, but it felt a bit amateurish at times.
The actual story would be a C for me, but I'll grade the book a B, simply because of how much I enjoyed the novelty of a heroine who really did deserve her bad rep.