DNF roundup

TITLE: Squeeze Play
AUTHOR: Kate Angell

This was a case of lack of connection -both with the story and with the author's writing style.
Risk Kincaid is a top baseball player. Since he was in high school, he and Jacy Grayson have had something going. He's her rebound lover. Whenever she breaks up with her latest boyfriend, Risks comes back to their home town and they have a few torrid days. But this time, Risk wants more (or at least, that's what the back cover says; I didn't get far enough to really see that).

The basic plot appealed to me, but the first thing that happened was that I had trouble clicking with the author's writing. It's sort of breezy and glib, maybe too much so. And then it turns out Jacy has been lying to Risk -he's not her rebound lover at all, because she has made up all those lovers. Oh, yes, for the past 13 years, she's been living for Risk's sporadic visits. How pathetic is that? I was thinking I didn't really want to keep reading, when a single paragraph made up my mind of me. Jacy's friend, Stevie, weighs 136 pounds, but in the next sentence, Angell describes her obesity with relish... her non-existent cheeckbones, the ways her thighs rub together. Give. Me. A. Break.

MY GRADE: DNF.



TITLE: Gobsmacked
AUTHOR: LB Gregg

In the first scene, our narrator confronts his cheating newly ex boyfriend as he's sitting in church, beating him up with a Bible. I actually thought that was quite a cool scene - way to start with a bang! But then he discovers that the cheating scum has also been systematically cheating him of his money. And that was when the author started to lose me. I just couldn't make heads or tails of the narrator's actions. The writing also started to feel awkward and the narrator's voice annoying. I gave up at the point where he hides evidence at the house of his crush (a policeman, no less). I just couldn't be bothered to go on.

MY GRADE: DNF.


TITLE: The Trickster
AUTHOR: Kathleen Nance

I just wasn't in the mood for this one. I've read and enjoyed a couple of other books in this series, and The Trickster was much in the same vein, but it just wasn't doing it for me.

I read only the first bit, in which the hero returns after abandoning the heroine years earlier, without any warning or explanation. Wacky hijinks ensue (he gets attacked by an ostrich or emu, IIRC?), and she ends up agreeing to hire him in her farm. What drove me crazy was that the guy just wouldn't give a straight answer to any of the heroine's questions, just as he didn't all those years earlier. He frustrated me as much as he did her, and I just gave up.

I've seen very good reviews of this book, so I suspect it gets better after the rocky beginning. Who knows, maybe I'll try again at some point.

MY GRADE: DNF.