Rosario's Reading Journal

One Week in December, by Sebastian Faulks

2012-01-29T08:47:00.001Z

TITLE: One Week in December
AUTHOR: Sebastian Faulks

COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 392
PUBLISHER: Vintage

SETTING: Contemporary London
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None

London: the week before Christmas, 2007. Over seven days we follow the lives of seven major characters: a hedge fund manager trying to bring off the biggest trade of his career; a professional footballer recently arrived from Poland; a young lawyer with little work and too much time to speculate; a student who has been led astray by Islamist theory; a hack book reviewer; a schoolboy hooked on reality TV and genetically altered pot; and a Tube train driver whose Circle Line train joins these and countless other lives together in a daily loop.

With daring skill and savage humor, A Week in December explores the complex patterns and crossings of modern urban life; as the novel moves to its gripping climax, its characters are forced, one by one, to confront the true nature of the world they—and we all—inhabit.

I randomly picked this one up at the library, not really knowing what to expect. What with all my constant review reading and book chatter online, that's a pretty rare experience these days, and I enjoyed the change. That's possibly because I really enjoyed the book as well.

The setup is pretty straightforward. It's mid-December 2007, and people are just going about their lives. And for a week, we follow a group of characters who are doing exactly that.

It's a diverse and interesting group. There's Jenni Fortune, a Tube driver, involved in a legal case arising from someone jumping in front of her train a couple of years earlier. There's Gabriel Northwood, a barrister also involved in the case. There's John Veals, a hedge fund manager engaging in machiavellian manouvers. There's his son. There's Ralph Tranter, an unscrupulous book reviewer who delights in tearing books to pieces (do I detect some getting even there on Faulks' part?). There's Hassan al-Rashid, a would-be suicide bomber and his father, Knocker, a successful industrialist. There's a Polish football player just starting out in a Premier League team. And these are only the "main" characters.

Over the one week we spend with them, their lives cross and connect in more or less unexpected ways.

I was interested in all of them and their stories (with the exception of Veals, the hedge fund manager). But what was even more intriguing was the way in which Faulks used their stories to explore the idea of the increasing artificiality of modern life, and how the virtual is sometimes becoming more real than 'real' life. Some of it is a bit obvious but still interesting (like Jenni's engagement in a Second Life-type site, or Finn's obsession with a reality show so jaw-dropping it will probably become real at some point). Some is obvious in boring ways (John Veals' financial dealings, but that's probably a function of me reading this in 2011, when the utter lunacy of such stuff is not a particularly novel idea. Still, I dreaded reading his sections. Mind-numbingly boring detail, and I'm an economist, I'm supposed to be interested in this stuff). Most of it is really revealing, though, and I enjoyed thinking about it.

I was listening to the latest Guardian books podcast last weekend, and they were discussing the fact that there is no British equivalent to the Great American Novel, that sort of state-of-the-nation statement. Well, I beg to disagree. One Week In December is a damn good stab at just that.

MY GRADE: A B+.

Life From Scratch, by Melissa Ford

2012-01-27T06:00:00.000Z

TITLE: Life From Scratch
AUTHOR: Melissa Ford

COPYRIGHT: 2010
PAGES: 208
PUBLISHER: Bell Bridge Books

SETTING: Contemporary US (New York)
TYPE: Chick Lit
SERIES: None

Her life's a mess. And so is her kitchen. Divorced, heartbroken and living in a lonely New York apartment with a tiny kitchen, Rachel Goldman realizes she doesn't even know how to cook the simplest meal for herself. Can learning to fry an egg help her understand where her life went wrong? She dives into the culinary basics. Then she launches a blog to vent her misery about life, love and her goal of an unburnt casserole.To her amazement, the blog's a hit. She becomes a minor celebrity. Next, a sexy Spaniard enters her life. Will her souffles stop falling? Will she finally forget about the husband she still loves? And how can she explain to her readers that she still hasn't learned how to cook up a happy life from scratch?

A few months earlier, Rachel Goldman took the wrenching decision of leaving her husband. Adam no longer was the man she had married. For the past years, he'd been so focused on his work that he didn't even see Rachel, and she couldn't stand being married but not really having a husband any longer.

Since she'd made a big change in her life already, Rachel decided to go one more step further and take a year off her job as graphic designer. That's how, as the book starts, she's engaged in learning to cook (reversing the influence of her hyper-successful mother, who believes that real women don't cook; they go out or order really nice takeaway), and blogging about it.

And it's that new past-time that leads her to new things in her life, from dating a sexy Spaniard to exploring the possibility of a new career and yes, finding herself.

I hesitated before writing those last two words, because though accurate, they might make the book sound like self-indulgent nonsense. It's not. Rachel is a really enjoyable character, not completely put together yet, after her divorce, but working on it, and doing a good job (temporary setbacks notwithstanding).

There were quite a few things I really liked here. First, there's a really nice portrayal of female friendship. Rachel and her friend Arianna have a really nice relationship, supportive and warm. And Arianna isn't just there to give Rachel someone to call and bare her feelings to: she's clearly got her own life and her own story, and we do get to see some of it here.

I also liked the whole cooking and blogging thing. It's not gimmicky like the project from Julie and Julia. Rachel is properly learning from scratch, as the per the title, and in the blog she shares her discoveries, her joy at discovering the creativity and satisfaction in cooking a good meal, as well as what's going on in her life. There are snippets of her blog entries at the beginning of each chapter, and I really liked reading them. I didn't think they were as absolutely amazing as others seem to in the book (always a danger, when you have a character writing something that's supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread), but they were fun, and I also liked the sense of a blogging community. It seemed different from the online romance community that I know and love, but still quite nice.

Finally, though this is chick lit, there is romance and there is a happy ending. I'm not going to say much about it, to avoid spoilers, but it was surprising, and yet a really good, satisfying ending.

MY GRADE: A solid, enjoyable B.

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, by Philip Pullman

2012-01-25T06:00:00.000Z

TITLE: The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
AUTHOR: Philip Pullman

COPYRIGHT: 2010
PAGES: 245
PUBLISHER: Canongate

SETTING: Israel
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None

Upon its hardcover publication, renowned author Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ provoked heated debates and stirred a frenzy of controversy throughout the clerical and literary worlds alike with its bold retelling of the life of Jesus Christ.

In this remarkable piece of fiction, famously atheistic author Philip Pullman challenges the events of the Gospels and puts forward his own compelling and plausible version of the life of Jesus. Written with unstinting authority, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ is a pithy, erudite, subtle, and powerful book by a beloved author, a text to be read and reread, studied and unpacked, much like the Good Book itself.

Days after finishing it, I'm still not quite sure what to make of this one. Unfortunately, I had to miss my book club's discussion of it -that might have helped. Basically, this is Pullman's version of the life of Jesus, an alternate explanation of what might have actually happened and still be recorded in the Bible as it is today. This includes Jesus Christ being actually a pair of twins: Jesus, who goes around preaching the coming of the Kingdom of God, and his brother Christ, who follows him, recording his deeds and words and putting his own spin on them.

This is not like, say, The Red Tent (http://www.amazon.com/Red-Tent-Anita-Diamant/dp/0312195516), taking something from the Bible and providing us with more insight into the characters and why they do what they do. It kind of moves a little bit in that direction, but it's still very much a "this happened, and then this happened, and X told Y to do this and Y did it" type of thing, of the kind where you constantly go "hang on! Why on Earth did X agree to do it?". I found it very distancing, and found it hard to really care about what was going on.

I did think, however, that it was a clever book, and I enjoyed its exploration of what the truth is, and whether a more apt fiction can be more truthful than reality. Still, I think I probably would have appreciated it more if I was a bit more familiar with the New Testament, but alas, my religious instruction ended as soon as I was old enough to decide such things on my own. My knowledge of the Bible is a child's, plus whatever I've managed to absorb as a grown-up without really trying. This meant I probably caught only a fraction of the clever twists.

It feels a bit churlish, but given that in this blog I rate books purely for my enjoyment of them, and that my main reaction to this one was: "so what?", it's not a great grade.

MY GRADE: A C.

His, Unexpectedly, by Susan Fox

2012-01-23T06:00:00.001Z

TITLE: His, Unexpectedly
AUTHOR: Susan Fox

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 320
PUBLISHER: Brava

SETTING: Contemporary US and Canada
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: 3rd in the Wild Ride to Love series

Shying away from commitment, Jenna Fallon has only one rule in life: to ignore the rules. So when her car breaks down en route to Vancouver and she's forced to hitch a ride with a sexy stranger, she's thrilled to discover they share the same no-holds-barred views...As a globe-trotting marine biologist, Mark Chambers is used to changing locations - and women. Yet as he and Jenna make their way up the Pacific coast, camping, skinny dipping, and having scorching hot sex, Mark's not so sure he wants to say goodbye. But is Jenna brave enough to meet the challenge of a man who may be perfect for her?

This series, by Susan Fox/Lyons, has been one of my best discoveries this past year. The link is three sisters travelling home to their youngest sister's wedding and finding love in the process, in planes, trains and automobiles. Fun premise, but the wonderful thing about the books is that Fox takes full advantage of the prolonged proximity inherent in a road romance, and gives us heroes and heroines who actually talk to each other. By the end of each book, I was completely convinced that the couple in question would make it and that they were perfect for each other.

The other brilliant thing about this particular book in the series is that it features a heroine unlike any other I've read in romance novels. Jenna is a true free spirit, and not a ditz. As the book starts, she's just spent a few months on one of the many projects she's been interested in over the years -in this case, volunteering in a project to count peregrine falcons- and is on the way home. But then her beloved ancient car breaks down, and she lacks the money to fix it. Of course, she could phone home and borrow some money, but that would generate yet another 'I-told-you-so' from her family. Fortunately, she just happens to meet a man heading the same way in a camper van, and ends up hitching a ride.

That man is marine biologist Dr. Mark Chambers, and at first sight, he couldn't be more different from Jenna. He grew up with a hippy mother who raised him in a really crappy commune. It wasn't the kind of commune where children are raised by a whole village; it was one where the adults selfishly concentrated on their own pleasure and the children weren't raised at all. Not a very safe or happy environment, so when Mark's mother died and he went back to his very strict, traditional grandparents, he relished the structure in the new life, and has become very much like them, rigid and inflexible. His first impression of Jenna is that she's just like his mother, and he's therefore not particularly well-disposed towards her.

But the great thing about this book is that it's soon quite clear that while Jenna and Mark are superficially opposites, they actually share very similar outlooks and want lives for themselves that aren't at all incompatible. They discover this organically, through long conversations, and each encourages the other to have a good, critical look at their preconceptions. Both change during this book, but in healthy way, which means that they are still in essence the same person at the end, only better.

I especially appreciated that Fox doesn't take sides here. Not one way of being is pushed as being better than the other. With Jenna, for instance, it was clear that Fox wasn't saying that there's any thing wrong with being unconventional. Jenna is not made into a cookie-cutter heroine, even at the end. Her big issue is commitment-phobia, and the more extreme elements of this can be traced to a traumatic relationship in her youth, but this doesn't mean falling in love with Mark means she's "cured" and now wants a white picket fence and a 9-to-5 job. Nope, Jenna is still as much of a free spirit at the end as she was at the beginning, she's just learnt that committing to something doesn't have to mean loss of freedom, as long as you choose a person to commit to who wants the same kind of life that you do. She's still Jenna, and Mark is still Mark, even as he learns to appreciate life more and to accept other people.

In addition to a fantastic romance, His, Unexpectedly also provides excellent family drama. Jenna's relationship with her family is quite a fraught one. There's a great deal of both love and pain, there, showing perfectly well that those you love are the ones that can hurt you the most. This family of overachievers needs to appreciate their daughter, who feels that whatever she does, her judgment is questioned and any mistake (unavoidable, for an adventurous person such as Jenna) is seen as a character flaw. They need to learn that what Jenna does is also valuable, and this is what her relationship with Mark gives to Jenna, that self-knowledge. It was especially satisfying that we've seen over the entire series that Jenna is not the only one to feel that way, and matters come to a real head in this book.

This is a deceptively deep, meaty book, as it's also very fun and sexy at the same time. The big emotions kind of sneak up on you, and it made me choke up much more than supposedly "tragic" books do.

MY GRADE: An A-.

PS - Having just finished my review, I went to have a look at the one at AAR, and the reviewer mentions that the big flaw for her was the structure, with alternating chapters being written in 1st person, from Jenna's POV, and 3rd person, from Mark's. So I probably should mention this, in case anyone has got any hang-ups about it. It's not something that bothered me in the least -actually, I quite liked it, myself!

When Beauty Tamed the Beast, by Eloisa James

2012-01-21T08:01:00.001Z

TITLE: When Beauty Tamed the Beast
AUTHOR: Eloisa James

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 384
PUBLISHER: Avon

SETTING: Early 19th century England and Wales
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

Miss Linnet Berry Thrynne is a Beauty... Naturally, she's betrothed to a Beast.

Piers Yelverton, Earl of Marchant, lives in a castle in Wales where, it is rumored, his bad temper flays everyone he crosses. And rumor also has it that a wound has left the earl immune to the charms of any woman.

Linnet is not just any woman.

She is more than merely lovely: her wit and charm brought a prince to his knees. She estimates the earl will fall madly in love—in just two weeks.

Yet Linnet has no idea of the danger posed to her own heart by a man who may never love her in return.

After a ridiculous misunderstanding involving a prince, some innocent kisses and an ill-fitting dress that makes her look pregnant, Linnet Thrynne is ruined. She might still be a virgin, but no one will believe it. All seems lost until Linnet's aunt comes up with a way to actually take advantage of the misunderstanding: the Duke of Windebank's eldest son is rumoured to be impotent, so a bride with heir included would be a bonus. And that is how Linnet finds herself bundled off to a remote castle in Wales, which Piers, the Duke's heir, has set up a sort of teaching hospital.

Piers is a brilliant doctor, doesn't suffer fools gladly and his natural grumpiness isn't improved by the constant pain from his leg, which forces him to rely on a cane. Does this sound familiar at all? I don't tend to watch much TV, but House MD has been the exception since my brother forced me to watch the first episode (I'm still catching up and hovering somewhere round the end of season 2, so there might be some references here that I missed). Anyway, Piers isn't impressed with his father's meddling, and no matter how attractive his "fiancee" is, he won't give his father what he wants (the two share quite a painful history). But Linnet is unlike any other beautiful woman he's met before, and she gives as good as she gets, which he finds extremely appealing...

This was fun. I thought things kind of collapsed in the last third or so, but I enjoyed the first parts quite a bit. I especially had fun with the whole House thing. It's taken to just the right point... a grumpy but brilliant doctor, with a bad leg and an extremely sarcastic tongue, but that's it. It's inspiration, not an extra episode of House set in the 19th century.

I also liked how James mixed this inspiration with Beauty and the Beast. In that context, the setting that is more fantasy historical than proper historical romance was perfect. It feels "period", but James doesn't particularly concern herself with historical plausibility (I mean, having an Earl and a marriageable miss constantly disappear off for naked swimming lessons? Really?). But it was all so vivid and fun that I didn't care.

Now, the romance I had some doubts about. I enjoyed the banter, but on reflection, I realise I just didn't find the relationship particularly romantic. There was something about the way they constantly traded insults that went a teeny bit too far for me to find it romantic, I guess, even though I recognised this was just right for these clever, cerebral and unsentimental people. Well, clever and cerebral except for Piers' stubborn refusal to grab what he wants just to spite his father. That was extremely out of character, and got very tedious.

And things weren't much better in the believable romance front with the secondary romance between Piers' estranged parents. Basically, there was so much painful history there that I felt it wasn't developed enough, and would have needed either more page time or to be cut completely. I think I've had similar reactions to previous Eloisa James books as well: I feel somehow distanced from her characters and enjoy the books more for the comedy of manners than for the romance. Fortunately, I enjoy this aspect quite a lot.

What I didn't much enjoy was the ending. I didn't think it really went with the rest of the book. Suddenly it's all melodrama and Peril of Death, and it left me scratching my head.

Still, an entertaining read, if not a particularly memorable one.

MY GRADE: A B, mostly on the strength of the humour and Ms. James' writing, which is beautiful.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, by Katherine Howe

2012-01-19T06:00:00.000Z

TITLE: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
AUTHOR: Katherine Howe

COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 384
PUBLISHER: Voice

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None

"Have you not considered the distinct possibility that the accused were simply guilty of witchcraft?"

Connie Goodwin thinks her academic advisor is teasing her; she has mastered the scholarship surrounding the Salem witch trials of 1692 and knows the question he poses is preposterous. She never suspects that answering it will alter everything she knows about the past, her family, and the professor himself.

Sent by her mother to prepare her long-deceased grandmother's home for sale, Connie Goodwin finds a decrepit dwelling filled with venerable oddities, including a collection of ancient bottles filled with peculiar liquids and powders. On her first night there, Connie chances on a crumbling bit of paper, bearing the words "Deliverance Dane," that has been carefully hidden inside a key tucked between the pages of a 300-year-old family Bible.

Combing the local church registry for traces of this mysterious name, Connie strikes up an acquaintance with Sam, a steeplejack engaged in the church s preservation. Together they piece together Deliverance's tragic story and learn of her precious book of spells and recipes for healing potions. When a series of sinister events threaten Sam's life, Connie's search for the book is transformed from scholarly pursuit to a matter of life and death -- and love.

I'm forever on the lookout for books that remind me of Barbara Michaels', but I stumbled upon this one completely by accident. I'm very glad I did. Although flawed, it was tremendously enjoyable and dealt with a historical period I didn't know all that much about and found fascinating.

Connie Goodwin has just passed the interrogation that's officially made her a doctoral candidate. All she needs now is a dissertation topic, something that interests her and that relies on original sources. Little does she know, when her mother asks her to clear out her late grandmother's house, that the perfect source material will be right there.

The house, in the small town of Marblehead, near Salem, is a bit of a hovel, and the job of sorting out valuables before the house can be sold seems monumental. But Connie is naturally drawn to the old books first, and it's there that she finds her first reference to "Deliverance Dane". Tugging at that first loose thread soon leads her to suspect that the mysterious Deliverance might have been a previously unknown woman involved in the Salem witch trials, and that she might have owned a book of spells that could still be out there. And since no book of spells from the time has ever been found, the potential is huge for a dissertation topic that will really get her well and truly started in her career.

With the help of a young man who befriends her, Connie begins the painstaking investigative work that she hopes will lead her to Deliverance Dane's book. But it's not all plain sailing: her dissertation supervisor is showing an unhealthily intense interest in her search, and after a while, Connie can't help but suspect that there is more to Deliverance's book than women writing out old wives' cures and playing at being witches.

I absolutely love the setup of having someone in the present investigating a story from the past, with the action moving between the two periods, but so very few authors do it well and get the balance right. Howe is one of those few. The action takes place mostly in the present, with the sparse sections set at the times of Deliverance and her descendents exactly enough to enrich the investigation and mirror and illustrate some of the developments in Connie's story.

I also loved that Connie had to do proper detective work to uncover what had gone on in Deliverance's time. The last few books I read with this setup (by Rachel Hore, whose ideas I like but whose execution I often find a bit disappointing) had the present-day protagonist just stumbling on stuff, and then doing nothing more strenuous than reading a diary. Connie isn't so lucky. She has to follow up on all sorts of sources, and since the book is set in 1991, this doesn't mean just going online and running a few searches. She needs to actually visit a variety of places and consult a whole lot of potential documents, from church archives to probate records, and when she does find something, she needs to interpret and decode what ambiguous records might mean and imply.

The only problem there was that, much as I liked the detective work, I think Howe underestimates her readers slightly, and unfortunately, Connie comes off as a bit of an idiot sometimes for not making the obvious connections. She's a doctoral candidate specialising in colonial history, for goodness sake, would it really take her so long to make the connection between an "Almanack" someone was really upset had been given away and the spellbook she was specifically reading that material to try to find? Plus, she's a little bit too trusting with her supervisor sometimes.

I was also a bit nonplussed by the direction in which Howe took her story, with certain things being a lot more real than I'd expected (hope I'm not being too obvious when I'm trying to be cryptic!). It wasn't that I didn't like it, really, more that I was expecting something different, both from what I'd heard about the book and from the sections I'd read. It was... interesting, I guess, but I thought if Howe had kept in the direction I was expecting, she might have had something even more fascinating.

Something I really ended up liking, though were the relationships in the book. There are a few false steps in the characterisations at the beginning, with people sounding a bit off (like, Connie is telling her new friend Sam about witches' brooms, and tells him that "a medieval witch on her way to a sabbath would strip off all her clothes". And Howe tells us that Sam "blanched" at that. Really? Really? The idea of a woman stripping off makes this actually quite lovely guy, untraditional enough to wear a nose ring, blanch?). It's minor stuff, but it was a bit distracting. However, Howe soon hits her stride, and things feel much more natural. I liked Connie and Sam's romance, but I think my favourite was the way Howe develops the concept of mother-daughter relationships, both through the way Connie and her initially stereotypically flaky New-Ager mum start to understand each other better, and through what we see in the historical sections.

All in all, the strengths were enough to make the weaknesses seem relatively unimportant, and I would recommend this.

MY GRADE: A B+.

Snapped, by Laura Griffin

2012-01-17T06:00:00.001Z

TITLE: Snapped
AUTHOR: Laura Griffin

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 432
PUBLISHER: Pocket Star

SETTING: Contemporary
TYPE: Romantic Suspense
SERIES: Book 4 in the Tracers series

SOPHIE BARRETT THINKS SHE'S LUCKY TO BE ALIVE. SHE MAY BE DEAD WRONG.

On a sweltering summer afternoon, Sophie Barrett walks into a nightmare. A sniper has opened fire on a college campus. When the carnage is over, three people-plus the shooter-are dead and dozens more are injured. Sophie escapes virtually unscathed. Yet as details emerge from the investigation, she becomes convinced that this wasn't the random, senseless act it appeared to be. No one wants to believe her-not the cops, not her colleagues at the Delphi Center crime lab, and definitely not Jonah Macon, the homicide detective who's already saved her life once.

Jonah has all kinds of reasons for hoping Sophie is mistaken. Involving himself with a key witness could derail an already messy investigation, not to mention jeopardize his career. But Sophie is as determined and fearless as she is sexy. If he can't resist her, he can at least swear to protect her. Because if Sophie is right, she's made herself the target of a killer without a conscience. And the real terror is only just beginning...

Sophie Barrett is a receptionist at the Delphi Crime Centre lab, but she wants to get ready for bigger and better things. Thus her midday visit to the local university, where she plans to enroll in some courses. She never makes it, though, since someone starts shooting in the university quad. It soon becomes clear that it's a sniper, shooting from up high. Still, in time, the cops get to him, and he kills himself. And when the autopsy shows a brain tumor, that's basically case closed for the police.

Not for Sophie, though, because she saw something that makes her feel sure that the shooter-driven-crazy-by-tumor-kills-random-strangers explanation is not the right one. Unfortunately, the police don't seem to believe her, not even Jonah Macon, the police detective she knows already and thought liked her.

The suspense plot starts out really fantastic. I was intrigued by it, really wanted to know what had happened. The clues came out in a natural way, and I enjoyed the way the cops conducted the investigation. There were quite a few other cops, apart from Jonah (I suspect their books will come out at some point soon), and all played key parts in the investigation.

Unfortunately, when the ending approached, this all got a lot less interesting. I didn't find the resolution particularly credible (in fact, I found the whole idea of it faintly ridiculous and the reasons for this fantastic plot pretty pedestrian). It ended up being a bit disappointing.

The romance was a bit boring as well. There seems to be a lot of history between Sophie and Jonah, which means that Griffin doesn't really develop their relationship much at the beginning. It just is, instantly. I think a lot of this development would have happened in the book I read, Unforgivable. Problem is, I just didn't remember this. I read it a year ago, and whatever happened between Sophie and Jonah, it wasn't interesting or intriguing enough to stick in my mind. Same thing for something bad that happens to Sophie in that book and that influences her character and behaviour a lot: that one at least I very vaguely remember, but I wanted a bit more, and Griffin didn't really catch us up.

Anyway, whatever development there is in the relationship here, it just didn't interest me much. It's a very tepid romance, and not one I believed in particularly. Not surprising, since I didn't find the characters individually too interesting, either.

MY GRADE: A C+, but almost a B-, due to the good suspense plot at the beginning.

New York To Dallas, by JD Robb

2012-01-15T06:00:00.001Z

TITLE: New York To Dallas
AUTHOR: JD Robb

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 416
PUBLISHER: Putnam

SETTING: 2060s New York
TYPE: Romantic suspense / Police procedural
SERIES: 34th full-length novel in the In Death series

The new novel from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author, which takes readers deeper into the mind of Eve Dallas than ever before.

The number-one New York Times-bestselling author J. D. Robb presents an intense and terrifying new case for New York homicide cop Eve Dallas, one that will take her all the way to the city that gave her her name-and plunge her into the nightmares of her childhood.

When a monster named Isaac McQueen-taken down by Eve back in her uniform days-escapes from Rikers, he has two things in mind. One is to pick up where he left off, abducting young victims and leaving them scarred in both mind and body. The other is to get revenge on the woman who stopped him all those years ago.

This new installment in the In Death series comes with a title that breaks the pattern of the previous ones, but with a plot that doesn't. It provides quite a lot more than recent books on the personal front, but it's still very much an In Death book.

Back in Eve's rookie days, when she was still a beat cop, she accidentally stumbled upon the lair of Isaac McQueen, a pedophile who liked to "collect" young girls. A routine round of door-knocking after a purse-snatching on the street below led to McQueen's apprehension. Eve's perceptiveness in realising something was not quite right when she knocked on McQueen's door, as well as her success in capturing him, brought her to Feeney's notice in Homicide, and the rest is history.

It's not history to McQueen, though, and when he breaks out of prison, determined to recreate his collection, he plans to also get his revenge on the cop who got him. Not only will he kill Eve, he will mess with her head by forcing her to face him in Dallas, the city that looms so large in her childhood memories.

With this series, it often feels like there are two separate aspects. There's the police procedural aspect and there's the personal, relationship stuff. The best books marry the two well and make each as strong as the other, while the merely good concentrate on one of the two elements. This one is of the former type.

The case is really well done. It's stomach-turning, but the way Eve and her team approach the investigation is solidly enjoyable, and McQueen himself might be vile, but he's vile in an interesting way.

But it's the way that the investigation and the case itself affect Eve that is even more fascinating. If you've been following this series, you'll guess that a case such as this one will prove particularly difficult for Eve to handle, given her past. And when you add the fact that she's had to do this in Dallas, and that this is because McQueen knows of her past, it's especially bad for her. There is quite a big revelation here, and while not particularly shocking (I guess the change in titles had me looking for a big shock somewhere), it was very, very good.

And lest I sound like a sadist, gloating at how Eve suffers, it's the way she and Roarke deal with all this that makes it great. They might not have been married for that long, despite the tens of books, but they're miles from where they were when Eve's past first started to emerge. They are a unit now, and the trust and caring make things bearable that wouldn't have been otherwise.

MY GRADE: A solid B+.

Blue-Eyed Devil, by Lisa Kleypas

2012-01-13T07:32:00.001Z

TITLE: Blue-Eyed Devil
AUTHOR: Lisa Kleypas

COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: St. Martin's

SETTING: Contemporary
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: Follows Sugar Daddy

His name is Hardy Cates. He’s a self-made millionaire who comes from the wrong side of the tracks. He’s made enemies in the rough-and-tumble ride to the top of Houston’s oil industry. He’s got hot blood in his veins. And vengeance on his mind.

She’s Haven Travis. Despite her family’s money, she refuses to set out on the path they’ve chosen for her. But when Haven marries a man her family disapproves of, her life is set on a new and dangerous course.

Two years have gone by. Now Haven has come home. This time, she is determined to guard her heart. And Hardy Cates, a family enemy, is the last person she needs darkening her door—or setting her soul on fire.

This was the most disappointing book I read during my holidays. I'd had a few smallish issues with Sugar Daddy, but mostly, I'd enjoyed it quite a bit. And I'd been very intrigued by Hardy, and looked forward to his story. However, while very readable, Blue-Eyed Devil made me want to bang it against the wall too many times.

Haven Travis and Hardy Cates meet on the day of Haven's brother's wedding. Haven is there with her boyfriend, Nick, but can't help but notice the very magnetic Hardy as soon as he comes in. Due to a misunderstanding, they find themselves in a darkened room and share a passionate kiss, with Haven mistaking Hardy for her boyfriend for much of it (obviously, she wonders why this kiss is turning her on much more than usual, duh!).

Haven does realise who she's kissing after a while, though, and is soon devastated to hear that Hardy is gatecrashing the wedding, and is a former friend of her sister-in-law, who tried to steal her away from her now-husband. Obviously, Haven thinks, Hardy was trying to get revenge on her brother when he kissed her.

The shock makes her even more committed to marrying her boyfriend, even though her family disapproves and her father threatens to cut her off if she does. The ensuing isolation from her family means that when her husband starts being abusive towards her, Haven doesn't feel she has anyone to turn to, and endures the situation for years, while Nick methodically destroys her self-esteem and her entire life.

But finally, Haven gets out of it, and before too long, Hardy is back in her life, determined not to accept no for an answer.

I had many, many issues with BED. The main one is probably how unconvincing I found Haven as a character. The book is narrated from her 1st-person point of view, and we are with her as she goes through her abusive relationship, with a husband who first tears her self-esteem to pieces with constant criticism and verbal abuse and then moves on to physical violence. I got the feeling Kleypas had done her research about abusers and what a believable MO would be and had built Haven and Nick's relationship accordingly. And I still didn't buy it for a minute. I think it was that it felt too step-by-step, more some sort of "typical" abuse story than the story of this particular character. This meant that I never completely understood why Haven would not have done something earlier. Kleypas had set it up to show why, Haven was telling me exactly why, in perfect therapy-speak, and I wasn't buying it. I think this is a section of the story that would have worked a lot better as a flashback, with it being hidden from the reader at the beginning, to create some tension about why Haven was not comfortable with Hardy.

I also felt very frustrated and disbelieving of Haven's tolerance of the situation she finds herself in when she gets her first job after that, working for her brother's company. Basically, her line manager is the female equivalent of her abusive husband. And Haven knows it immediately. By then, she has began to recover from her earlier experiences and done quite a bit of therapy, so when it starts, she doesn't blame herself, or anything. She realises pretty quickly that the woman is gaslighting her, critisising her constantly for nothing, putting her down, doing things like hiding files and then telling Haven off for being disorganised when they turn up in weird places, telling her to come to a meeting at 1.30 and then swearing she said 1 when Haven turns up half an hour late, that kind of thing. And Haven just goes with it. Haven talks about it with her therapist, but doesn't complain to her brother, doesn't stand up to the woman. Someone else has to do it for her. I wanted to smack Haven and tell her to stop being a doormat. Why on earth doesn't she just quit? She doesn't need the money, she doesn't need to put up with this. And don't tell me she doesn't want to be a spoilt rich girl who doesn't earn anything she gets, because that's exactly who she is here. Other than those two years with Nick, she's perfectly happy to be handed everything. Plus, I also couldn't believe the evil boss' behaviour. Haven was her own boss' sister, after all. Wouldn't such a person be more likely to assume Haven would complain, and suck up to her instead?

But it wasn't only Haven I had trouble with. I also found Hardy completely uninteresting here. He's at the same time arrogant and high-handed and sexist, and too, too perfect in understanding of Haven and her issues (except for one small misstep which I thought was well done). There was nothing interesting at all. He was an amazing character in Sugar Daddy, but I didn't recognise that character at all in BED. His behaviour in Sugar Daddy, right at the end, made me think that his book was going to be about whether the right woman would make Hardy chose her over his overwhelming ambition. This was presented as the big issue with him. But in BED... what ambition? This was a complete non-issue, and his big rivalry with the Travises was over with a whimper. The book was about something completely different, and I found this a lot less interesting.

What made me go from disinterest to outright dislike, though, was a tiny bit which was just glossed over by Kleypas and stopped me in my tracks. At one point Hardy talks about his brother and says the man is taking after his father, who we know (and he's just mentioned) has a history of sexual assault, and that he had to bail him out earlier and pay off a girl's family to keep them from pressing charges. And that's not supposed to be an issue at all, as far as Kleypas is concerned. This utter asshole, who enables his brother in continuing to be able to commit more rapes is still the hero of this book. Unbelievable.

The book also felt very old-fashioned in many ways. Haven's lack of experience was yet another way in which she was completely unbelievable. It was similar with Liberty... well, at least Liberty had been allowed to have a couple of relationships, but they had all been crap until she met the hero, and she, like Haven, was convinced she was awful in bed. Amazing that these books were written in 2007 and 2008, it felt like a holdover from the dark times in romance when even contemporary heroines had to be virgins, whether that was realistic or not.

Additionally, I really disliked what I guess I might describe as the book's sensibility. This was the first book I've ever seen where someone's been described as a "good old boy" and it's a positive. Showing my biases here, but ick! In BED, this kind of man, high-handed and arrogant, convinced he knows what's best for the little woman in his life, is the best kind of man there is, and I absolutely hated it. There was a bit of a whiff of it in Sugar Daddy, which was one of the problems I mentioned I had with it, but it's terribly overt here. It made me want to stop reading every time I came across a particularly bad bit, whether it was something snide about those icky metrosexuals or Hardy showing off his relationship with Haven in front of Nick by patting her bottom (yes, he really did that).

With all those really big problems, should I even mention the really bizarre lecture in the middle of the book about something called rigs-to-reef (some sort of thing where oil companies, instead of bringing in old oil rigs, chop the tops off and leave the in the ocean, for fish to colonise). It had nothing to do with anything, and yet we got a big info-dump about how some environmentalists are against it, but it actually helps fish, and it's not at all about oil companies saving costs. I don't know enough about this to make a judgment, and a lecture in the middle of a romance novel is not going to convince me.

There's a third book in the series, but I don't think I'm going to read it, even hoping it's more like Sugar Daddy than this one. I had a look on amazon and it starts with a scene between the heroine and her boyfriend, who happens to be a vegan. Given the glorification here and in Sugar Daddy of unreconstructed machismo, I just know Kleypas' treatment of his veganism is going to enrage me. Tell me, those of you who've read it, is it used to prove that he's less of a man that the manly, steak-eating Jack Travis? I bet it is.

MY GRADE: A D. I really didn't like this.

Holiday reading

2012-01-12T20:58:00.002Z

I'm back! A had a fantastic holiday, and even the 36-hour trip back to Liverpool (including an 8-hour wait in Sao Paulo and a 5-hour one in London) didn't manage to put a dent in my relaxation.

My main plan, in addition to seeing family and friends, was to not do all that much, just lie about and read some good books. I definitely managed that. The first couple of weeks I was in Montevideo, out every evening with different old friends and running around doing errands for my mum, who's having some knee issues (this included doing her Christmas shopping two days before Christmas -lovely!). I did some reading, but not as much as I would have liked. But the last two weeks and a bit, we all decamped to my parents' place in Punta del Este, and I mostly sat by the pool with my Kindle. Bliss!

And the best bit is, quite a few of the books I read were great. I'd been hoarding some by authors I knew I'd enjoy, and even most of the ones I only suspected I'd like were good. In fact, half of the 23 books I finished were either A- or B+ books, which is way better than usual for me.

I'll be reviewing all of these in the next few weeks, but highlights included the much talked-about A Lady Awakened, by Cecilia Grant, Practice Makes Perfect, by Julie James (which I'd been hoarding, since it was the last Julie James book I had left), and His, Unexpectedly, by Susan Fox, one of my favourite discoveries from the last year.

I also really enjoyed The Name of the Star, by Maureen Johnson, a paranormal, Jack the Ripper-themed YA (definitely not my usual fare), Lead Me On, by Victoria Dahl (loved the very flawed heroine), the good-though-imperfect The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, by Katherine Howe and Unclaimed, by Courtney Milan, who's fast becoming one of my favourite authors.

There really weren't many books I didn't like. There was only one D (Blue-Eyed Devil, by Lisa Kleypas, which annoyed the hell out of me), and 3 in the C range (including my first by Caitlin Crews, who I really expected to like and one by Wen Spencer, whose Ukiah Oregon books I've enjoyed). I also had one DNF, which I won't mention just yet, since I stopped reading after the very first scene turned me off massively, but might end up giving it another shot.

Finally, looking back at what I read, I realise it was a very romancey month for me. I've been reading more and more non-fiction and stuff outside of the genre, but a full 70% of what I read while on holiday was traditional romance. And even the books that weren't fully within the romance genre, most had strong romance threads (e.g. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson, or Life From Scratch, by Melissa Ford, both of which I enjoyed).

On Hiatus

2011-12-08T06:00:00.001Z

Back in January :-D

Sugar Daddy, by Lisa Kleypas

2011-12-05T06:00:00.002Z

TITLE: Sugar Daddy
AUTHOR: Lisa Kleypas

COPYRIGHT: 2007
PAGES: 432
PUBLISHER: St. Martin's

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Women's Fiction
SERIES: Followed by Blue-Eyed Devil

Liberty Jones has dreams and determination that will take her far away from Welcome, Texas—if she can keep her wild heart from ruling her mind. Hardy Cates sees Liberty as completely off-limits. His own ambitions are bigger than Welcome, and Liberty is a complication he doesn’t need. But something magical and potent draws them to each other, in a dangerous attraction that is stronger than both of them.

When Hardy leaves town to pursue his plans, Liberty finds herself alone with a young sister to raise. Soon Liberty is under the spell of a billionaire tycoon—a Sugar Daddy, one might say. But the relationship goes deeper than people think, and Liberty begins to discover secrets about her own family’s past.

Yep, it's taken me this long to get to this book. Much as I like Lisa Kleypas' historicals, she's not one of the very select group of authors I'd automatically follow in whichever new direction they take. I have nothing against the idea of her writing a contemporary, but the descriptions I heard of the book didn't really appeal. It was basically the fact that the book followed Liberty Jones' life since childhood in a trailer park to Houston high society which gave me pause. It made me think of the really crap glitz and glamour books I used to read growing up, such as Judith Krantz.

I'm glad I did pick this up in the end, though, because although there's a little dollop of Krantz here, this is something different, and much, much better.

We meet Liberty Jones at 11, when she and her mother move into a Texas trailer park. Liberty's dad, who was of Mexican origin, died when she was very young, and she barely remembers him. As the book progresses, we follow Liberty's life as she grows up to womanhood: her friendship with other people in the trailer park, her relationship with her mother and the little sister born when Liberty's in her teens, and most of all, her friendship with Hardy Cates.

Hardy, a couple of years older than Liberty, is the sexy wild boy of the trailer park, but always treats Liberty kindly. As they both grow up, though, those friendly feelings turn into something else. Liberty is ready to take things to the next stage, but Hardy, although he returns her feelings, refuses to. He is a very ambitious young man, determined not to follow his family's steps and get out of town as soon as he possibly can. Loving Liberty would make it impossible to leave, so he just keeps her at arms' length and goes away as soon as he can.

Not soon after that, things take a turn to the worse in Liberty's life, but she's a fighter, and a few years later, beauty degree in hand, she moves to Houston where she manages to get a job in one of the city's best salons. That's where she meets Churchill Travis, a wealthy older man, who becomes her friend. All the other girls in the salon mistakenly believe Churchill is Liberty's sugar daddy, especially when he offers her a job as a live-in assistant, and at first, so does Churchill's sexy oldest son, Gage.

And that is where I'm going to leave the description. In fact, I've probably gone into a bit too much detail already.

I knew going in, from the comments I'd read (which actually led me to pick up the book in the end), that there was a very strong romance here, and that rare beast in romance novels, a very well done love triangle. I liked all that very much, as expected. Liberty's relationship with Gage is very satisfying, and when Hardy shows up after many years (what? No spoiler, it's quite obvious from the start that he'll come back at some point!), Kleypas deals with it in a way I've not ever seen in romance, one which generates some lovely angst.

What I didn't expect is that I'd like Liberty's coming of age story quite as well as I did. I feared I might see it as an obstacle, something to get through before I got to the romance, but I was completely absorbed. Sugar Daddy is narrated by Liberty in the first person, and she's someone I enjoyed spending time with. She's strong and down-to-earth, comfortable in herself but not without some insecurities. She's not perfect: I found her a bit too blithely accepting about some things, like the very conservative nature of the world she moves into, but on the whole, I liked her.

Just as Liberty is not perfect, neither is the book as a whole. The big problem I had with it was that when Liberty moves to Houston and starts having contact with the city's high society, first through her work in the city's top salon and then through her friendship with Churchill, there is a bit too much breathless gushing about the lifestyles of the rich and famous. It's the little dollop of Krantz I mentioned earlier.

Liberty doesn't really change, she doesn't become someone who aspires to that lifestyle, so it felt very weird when the narrator goes into raptures about the Chihuly candelabra in someone's new mansion, and how Liberty spoke to movie producers, or about the luxurious accessories in Gage's private jet. I guess it might have read better when the book first came out, in 2007, but in late 2011, I couldn't hold back the sneers.

I also didn't appreciate a revelation near the end, which I thought took something away from Liberty's success, after struggling with her very difficult circumstances. I would have much preferred it if she'd attained success all on her own, rather than because of those lucky breaks which end up not being down to luck at all. Oh, well.

MY GRADE: A B.

Lover Avenged, by JR Ward

2011-12-03T06:00:00.000Z

TITLE: Lover Avenged
AUTHOR: JR Ward

COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 544
PUBLISHER: NAL

SETTING: Alternate version of present-day USA
TYPE: Paranormal fiction / romance
SERIES: Book 7 in the Black Dagger Brotherhood

J. R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood novels have introduced readers to a "different, creative, dark, violent, and flat-out amazing" world. Now, as the vampire warriors defend their race against their slayers, one male's loyalty to the Brotherhood will be tested-and his dangerous mixed blood revealed...

Caldwell, New York, has long been the battleground for the vampires and their enemies, the Lessening Society. It's also where Rehvenge has staked out his turf as a drug lord and owner of a notorious night club that caters to the rich and heavily armed. His shadowy reputation is exactly why he's approached to kill Wrath, the Blind King and leader of the Brotherhood.

Rehvenge has always kept his distance from the Brotherhood-even though his sister is married to a member, for he harbors a deadly secret that could make him a huge liability in their war against the lessers. As plots within and outside of the Brotherhood threaten to reveal the truth about Rehvenge, he turns to the only source of light in his darkening world, Ehlena, a vampire untouched by the corruption that has its hold on him-and the only thing standing between him and eternal destruction.

Much was said when this book was released about how this, the first in the series to be published in hardcover, marked a move into urban fiction, rather than romance. I don't know if this was the exact point, as the series had been long moving in the direction of emphasising the other storylines and making the romance one less prominent. I don't even know if it's urban fiction we're talking about. To me, this is more like a soap opera, with lots of storylines going on at the same time and one (the romance) becoming slightly more prominent than the rest in each book.

And I must say, I quite like this, at least in Ward's books. It then doesn't matter so much if the main romance isn't that good, because there's always something else to look forward to. This was exactly the case in Lover Avenged.

I'm not even going to try to explain who all the characters are here, there's no point. Their stories have been developing over several books, so if you haven't read Ward before, you really shouldn't be starting here, anyway.

The main romance in this book features Rehvenge, which wasn't really much of a draw to me. I've never found him a particularly intriguing character, partly because the idea of sympaths never drew much of a reaction from me other than "meh". Also, a drug dealer and pimp? I find that repulsive, not exciting.

The basic plot is that Rehv is being blackmailed by his half-sister, who unlike him, is all sympath and all evil. She demands not only money, but some very skin-crawling and violent sex. This all takes a toll on Rehv's body (he is also, of course, doped to the gills to tamp down on his sympath tendencies), and that's where he meets Ehlena, a nurse at Havers' clinic.

Ehlena is all that is good an pure to Rehv, and he feels he's not good enough. Ehlena, despite herself, is attracted to him as well. But there's his big, dark secret to deal with.

On the plus side, despite my fears that Ehlena would be a blank canvas whose only characteristic is purity and goodness, she turned out to be pretty cool and strong in her own right. The romance didn't really capture my interest, though, and I never came to care about Rehv all that much.

And that's exactly why I really appreciated having the main romance be only a small part of the whole. I only had to read about Rehv and Ehlena every now and then. Most of the book was taken up by other storylines. Some of them were even really good, and I enjoyed them.

As far as I'm concerned, the one that takes the prize is the John Matthew / Xhex storyline. I hated a certain development (there's this promiscuousness=manliness message I'm getting that I don't like), but I'm hugely interested in them and really care about what happens (especially given that ending!). Also, I was afraid that Ward would start defanging Xhex, making her less threatening in time for her book, but she did nothing of the sort. If anything, she's scarier than ever here.

I also quite liked the developements in the lesser camp. They'd become a bit boring in previous books, lacking any real threat, but a certain hated character from previous books enters the picture, and things change massively. It's all really gory and violent (which I didn't particularly enjoy reading), but it creates interesting possibilities.

And there were plenty of other plot threads floating about. Wrath experiences some disturbing changes, and has some interesting experiences on the other side, meeting someone whose books I'm really interested in reading when the time comes. There's also Tohr starting to recover, and a pretty puzzling character called Lassiter. I've no idea what to make of him. And finally, there's quite a bit of Blay & Qhuinn, which I liked, especially the hints that another guy called Sexton might come into the picture and create a bit of conflict.

So, a book I enjoyed well enough, even feeling quite cool about the main romance. I have very high hopes for the next one, as in addition to John and Xhex, I get the feeling we're going to get a lot more of Blay and Qhuinn.

MY GRADE: A B.

Garden Spells, by Sarah Addison Allen

2011-12-01T06:00:00.000Z

TITLE: Garden Spells
AUTHOR: Sarah Addison Allen

COPYRIGHT: 2007
PAGES: 291
PUBLISHER: Hodder & Stoughton

SETTING: Contemporary
TYPE: Women's Fiction
SERIES: None

The Waverleys have always been a curious family, endowed with peculiar gifts that make them outsiders even in their hometown of Bascom, North Carolina. Even their garden has a reputation, famous for its feisty apple tree that bears prophetic fruit, and its edible flowers, imbued with special powers.

A successful caterer, Claire Waverley prepares dishes made with her mystical plants—from the nasturtiums that aid in keeping secrets and the pansies that make children thoughtful, to the snapdragons intended to discourage the attentions of her amorous neighbor. Meanwhile, her elderly cousin, Evanelle, is known for distributing unexpected gifts whose uses become uncannily clear. They are the last of the Waverleys—except for Claire’s rebellious sister, Sydney, who fled Bascom the moment she could, abandoning Claire, as their own mother had years before.

When Sydney suddenly returns home with a young daughter of her own, Claire’s quiet life is turned upside down—along with the protective boundary she has so carefully constructed around her heart. Together again in the house they grew up in, Sydney takes stock of all she left behind, as Claire struggles to heal the wounds of the past. And soon the sisters realize they must deal with their common legacy—if they are ever to feel at home in Bascom—or with each other.

Sidney Waverley got out of the tiny Southern town of Bascom as soon as she possibly could. She felt suffocated, both by the town and by her family's position in it. Bascom, you see, is a town where there are rigid expectations about what the members of a particular family will do and be like. It's a bit more quirky than what you would imagine (the rules are not of the "All Waverley women marry young and produce children" type, but more along the lines of "all the X women are amazing in bed and hold their husbands in thrall"), but that doesn't mean that it's any less strict and smothering.

After a few years of insecurity and a very bad relationship, however, Sidney decides to return to the family home, her young daughter in tow. Her sister, Claire, is not particularly happy to see her. Claire is older than Sidney, and to her, the structure that Bascom provided has always been a comfort. That's because her mother, much like Sidney, had ran away really young and Claire's first few years were spent living with no security at all. Claire has stayed at home and continued the family business, becoming a caterer.

Garden Spells contains two romances, one for each sister, and very nice they are, too. However, the meat of the book is really the relationship between the two women. There's a lot of pain and resentment, there, but there's also much love still, and it was really nice to see it rekindle.

The book is also about the life of the town itself, and I really enjoyed that aspect of it as well. Bascom is a place full of magic, but one where no one even blinks at it. Claire can change people's emotions with her cooking, by using particular ingredients, while a cousin has a talent for inexplicably giving people objects which inevitably come extremely useful a while later. Everyone accepts this, it's the way things are. The tone of the whole thing reminded me of the Latin American magical realism novels I grew up reading.

It's a charming book, heart-warming in a good way, and I'll definitely be reading more from this author.

MY GRADE: A B.

Wicked All Day, by Liz Carlyle

2011-11-29T06:00:00.000Z

TITLE: Wicked All Day
AUTHOR: Liz Carlyle

COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 421
PUBLISHER: Pocket

SETTING: 19th century England
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: Related to several of Carlyle's early books (see review for details)

New York Times bestselling author Liz Carlyle continues her enthralling historical series with the story of an impetuous, illegitimate beauty and the forbidding nobleman who protects her—while fighting an obsession to possess her...

Miss Zoë Armstrong is beautiful, charming, rich—and utterly unmarriageable. So, while she may be the ton's most sparkling diamond, her choice of husbands looks more like a list of London's most unsavory fortune hunters. Since a true-love marriage seems impossible, Zoë has accepted—no, embraced—her role as society’s most incomparable flirt and mischief-maker . . . until in one reckless, vulnerable moment, her future is shattered.

Stuart Rowland, the brooding Marquess of Mercer, has been part of Zoë’s extended family since she was a child. As dark and cynical as Zoë is lively, Mercer has always known they would be the worst possible match . . . until his scapegrace brother Robert does the unthinkable, and winds up betrothed to Zoë. Now, secluded on Mercer’s vast estate to escape a looming scandal and the ton’s prying eyes, Zoë and Mercer may find that a dark obsession has become a tempestuous passion that can no longer be denied...

Wicked All Day brings together the children from two of my favourite Carlyle books, and the result is some lovely, lovely angst!

We met Zoë Armstrong in the fantastic My False Heart, Carlyle's debut which landed her straight on my autobuy list. Zoë was the hero's young illegitmate daughter, massively spoilt, as her father was fulfiling her every wish out of guilt. The Zoë we meet at the beginning of this book has grown up in a loving family, but being society doesn't take female bastards very well, no matter how much they're loved by their father's wife and how much money and status their parents have. As a result, Zoë disdains society completely, and has become reckless, quite the risk-taker. If society will automatically think badly of her, then she'll give them something to resent her for!

We met Stuart, the Marquess of Mercer in the wonderful A Woman Scorned, where he and his brother, Robin, were the heroine's young sons. Stuart inherited the title very young, and has become a serious, responsible man, while Robin has taken on the role of the charming scoundrel. He and Zoë are so similar that they have become great friends, and quite close.

And then one night everything comes to a head. Zoë's bad behaviour has made her dad issue an unwise ultimatum. Upset about it, Zoë runs to her best friend. Robin is quite drunk, and the two end up being caught in a very compromising position, and summarily engaged.

Being such good friends, you would think that this would be no tragedy. But Robin soon realises that his feelings for his mistress are much deeper than he had thought, and Zoë that her previously antagonistic relationship with Stuart (her future brother-in-law, no less!) hid an attraction that they suddenly can't hide.

Did I say angst? Oh, yes! Stuart and Zoë's relationship borders on obsession. Once they realise that the attraction is there, they can barely keep their hands off each other, no matter how much they both care for Robin and don't want to hurt him. It's so well done that I really couldn't blame them for it, whenever they were together you could cut the sexual tension with a knife. And Carlyle also succeeded in showing us that it wasn't just lust going on there, these two were perfectly matched and needed the other to temper their more extreme traits.

This is a fully character-driven romance, and there's enough tension here that I couldn't stop turning the pages. This is vintage Carlyle, and one to reread.

MY GRADE: A strong B+.

Hero, by Perry Moore

2011-11-27T06:00:00.000Z

TITLE: Hero
AUTHOR: Perry Moore

COPYRIGHT: 2007
PAGES: 428
PUBLISHER: Corgi

SETTING: Alternate version of present-day US
TYPE: Superhero / gay / YA
SERIES: None

The last thing in the world Thom Creed wants is to add to his father’s pain, so he keeps secrets. Like that he has special powers. And that he’s been asked to join the League – the very organization of superheroes that spurned his dad. But the most painful secret of all is one Thom can barely face himself: he’s gay.

But becoming a member of the League opens up a new world to Thom. There, he connects with a misfit group of aspiring heroes, including Scarlett, who can control fire but not her anger; Typhoid Larry, who can make anyone sick with his touch; and Ruth, a wise old broad who can see the future. Like Thom, these heroes have things to hide; but they will have to learn to trust one another when they uncover a deadly conspiracy within the League.

To survive, Thom will face challenges he never imagined. To find happiness, he’ll have to come to terms with his father’s past and discover the kind of hero he really wants to be.

Thom's father used to be one of the world's most famous superheroes, until tragedy struck, thousands of people died, and everyone started hating him. Now he wants nothing to do with the superhero scene. Thom, however, has recently discovered he has superpowers himself, and when he's given a chance to try out to join the superheroes, he knows it would really hurt his father if he found out. And that's not Thom's only secret, he's also gay, which in this world is a bad, bad thing.

I liked the idea of this. No, actually, I loved the idea of this. The execution, though, not so much. It felt off, somehow. It's difficult to put my finger on exactly what it was, but there was something about the writing style that kept making my attention wander and which made it difficult for me to get what was going on. Too often I couldn't understand why characters were reacting in a certain way. Someone would get angry and I, for the life of me, couldn't see why. So I'd go back to see if I'd missed something, if another character had said something offensive, and wouldn't find anything.

Still, there were enough things I liked when I wasn't puzzled that I kept turning the pages, mostly enjoying myself. Thom's fellow wannabe superheroes are a truly fascinating bunch, and I really liked the bit of romance that was introduced.

And then, things kind of disintegrated as we approached the conclusion. It became harder and harder to understand what was going on (and seriously, I'm a reasonably intelligent person who can normally cope just fine with complex plots), and some quite jarring violence suddenly appeared on the page. It made the book end on a low note.

MY GRADE: A C+.

Craving The Forbidden, by India Grey

2011-11-25T06:00:00.000Z

TITLE: Craving The Forbidden
AUTHOR: India Grey

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 192
PUBLISHER: Harlequin Presents

SETTING: Contemporary UK
TYPE: Category romance
SERIES: Followed by In Bed With a Stranger

The wrong Fitzroy brother?

Ticket-dodging in a first-class train carriage is not how bubbly Sophie Greenham envisaged meeting Kit Fitzroy, wealthy aristocrat, fearless army hero and brother of her friend Jasper. The smouldering heat between her and Kit is an unwelcome shock—especially as Sophie is masquerading as Jasper's girlfriend all holiday!

Although Kit's bravery is legendary, he's dreading the return to his magnificent ancestral manor. But Sophie's vibrancy dispels the shadows in his tortured soul, consuming Kit with a potent desire for the one woman he's forbidden to touch...

Oh, how I love my Kindle. As I settled back on my comfy sofa for an evening of reading, I checked my favourite blogs on my phone, and happened upon a review of the latest India Grey at Dear Author. It struck me as exactly what I felt like reading, so Kindle on, clicked to the book, clicked to buy, and I was reading it within a minute. Well, I did stop to ask Jane a question before I started reading it properly... more on this later.

The plot of Craving The Forbidden, is not a particularly original one, but it's one that really appeals to me. It's almost exactly the same as an old Harlequin Presents that I used to reread every year ages ago: the heroine is asked by a male friend to pretend to be his girlfriend on a visit home. There she meets her friend's older brother, and there's a very obvious mutual attraction. However, the heroine can't give her friend away by telling the truth about their relationship, so that leaves the older brother thinking the worst.

The heroine in this case is Sophie Greenham, a not-very-successful actress who's asked by her aristocratic gay friend, Jasper, to accompany him to the old family pile in Northumberland for his father's birthday. Jasper is not out to his very traditional father, nor to his intimidating older brother, Kit, an officer currently serving in Afghanistan.

Kit's first sight of Sophie comes at the perfect time. He's just attended a funeral service for one of his men in London and is settled on the train to Edinburgh on a journey he isn't particularly looking forward to. It might be his father's birthday, but they have never got along. Growing up, his father seemed to dislike him, showing a marked preference for his very charming younger brother, Jasper. So understandably, Kit is not in a great mood. Until, that is, a whirlwind of a young woman bursts into his train carriage and sits across the table from him.

Sophie makes Kit feel like smiling, and he can't seem to get rid of the feeling (or the strong attraction he feels for her) even when they arrive at Alnburgh and he realises this is Jasper's girlfriend that he's lusting after.

There aren't any real surprises here. I quite enjoyed the book, but my enjoyment was more because I so loved the setup, than because the execution was anything more than adequate. There were some things I really liked, like the family tensions surrounding Kit (which are explained by a revelation later in the book), which make him a bit of an outsider even though he's the eldest and independently wealthy. There were others that didn't work quite so well, though, like the fact that Sophie really did seem pretty flightly and unfocused, and even at the end of the book, I didn't know what the hell she planned to do with her life.

I must say, as well, that I got a bit distracted by details. There were random, pretty unimportant ones, like: is it likely that a train from London to Edinburgh would stop at a tiny village like Alnburgh? Others annoyed me more. For instance, Grey takes pains to show that Sophie is a honest person who wouldn't dream of cheating a train company of a fare. See, on the train to Alnburgh, she falls asleep in first class and Kit pays her fare when the inspector comes round, without her knowing. She gets off the train in a rush, having woken up at the last minute, and is almost immediately struck with guilt at not having paid. Later on, Grey makes a point of showing us that she buys two tickets when she only needs one, to compensate. But then we have Kit, whose main reason to be in Alnburgh is that he needs to convince his father to be sensible and put the estate in his name, otherwise when he dies, the inheritance tax would be high enough that Alnburgh Castle would have to be sold and turned into a hotel, or a conference centre for businessmen to do those awful bonding exercises. And no one worries about the morality of that massive tax avoidance, which to me, although technically legal (apparently, if this happens 7 years before the death takes place it's ok), is very morally dubious. So cheating a private company of a relatively small sum (even with the massively overpriced train tickets we have in this country) = wrong. But cheating the State of a huge sum (which will go to pay for things like hospitals) = no problem at all. Yeah, well, I might be overanalysing this.

Now, going back to something I said earlier: I mentioned at the beginning of this review that I had to stop to ask Jane a question. That was because on opening the book, the first thing I saw just after the title page was: "The epic romance of Kit and Sophie begins with Craving the Forbidden, and concludes with” In Bed With a Stranger coming out in December. I couldn't find anything about this on Grey's out-of-date website, but Jane assured me that this had a proper HEA ending, which it does. In fact, I wouldn't really have noticed anything missing if I hadn't seen that bit at the beginning. There is, however, another book coming out which continues their story. Much as I did enjoy this, I don't think I'll be reading that one. From what Jane has said, Kit is redeployed to Afghanistan, which doesn't particularly tempt me to read this, and also, there's this evil upper class woman who turns up in Craving who doesn't do all that much, and I suspect she'll have a bigger role to play in the next one.

MY GRADE: A B-.

Through The Language Glass, by Guy Deutscher

2011-11-23T06:00:00.000Z

TITLE: Through The Language Glass: How Words Colour Your World
AUTHOR: Guy Deutscher

COPYRIGHT: 2010
PAGES: 249
PUBLISHER: William Heinemann

SETTING: N/A
TYPE: Non fiction
SERIES: None

A masterpiece of linguistics scholarship, at once erudite and entertaining, confronts the thorny question of how—and whether—culture shapes language and language, culture

Linguistics has long shied away from claiming any link between a language and the culture of its speakers: too much simplistic (even bigoted) chatter about the romance of Italian and the goose-stepping orderliness of German has made serious thinkers wary of the entire subject. But now, acclaimed linguist Guy Deutscher has dared to reopen the issue. Can culture influence language—and vice versa? Can different languages lead their speakers to different thoughts? Could our experience of the world depend on whether our language has a word for "blue"?

Challenging the consensus that the fundaments of language are hard-wired in our genes and thus universal, Deutscher argues that the answer to all these questions is—yes. In thrilling fashion, he takes us from Homer to Darwin, from Yale to the Amazon, from how to name the rainbow to why Russian water—a "she"—becomes a "he" once you dip a tea bag into her, demonstrating that language does in fact reflect culture in ways that are anything but trivial.

Mind-blowing. That's the best description for this book. Anyone who's got even a mild interest in linguistics has probably heard all that rubbish about how language determines what a culture is able to think about: how cultures who don't have a future tense are incapable of thinking about the future, and so on. Deutscher thinks this is rubbish as well (and gleefully demolishes these claims), but his point is that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Yes, we're perfectly able to think (and talk!) about the future even if we don't have a future tense, but what he sees as the big difference between languages is what they force their speakers to include. A very simple example he uses: if he says in English that he spent last evening with his neighbour, he can easily keep to himself whether it was a female or male neighbour. But if I was telling my mum the same thing in Spanish, I'd have to necessarily disclose that fact, when I used either "vecino" or "vecina"!

Is it possible that having to convey particular bits of information every single time we speak changes our perception of the world in any way? You'll have to read to find out, and I strongly recommend that you do. In addition to being mind-blowing and very clearly evidence-based, which I appreciated, it's a very entertaining book. Deutscher transmits his enthusiasm for his subject matter beautifully, and you can't help but share his excitement as you read.

MY GRADE: A B+.

Talk Me Down, by Victoria Dahl

2011-11-21T06:00:00.000Z

TITLE: Talk Me Down
AUTHOR: Victoria Dahl

COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: HQN

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: 1st in Tumble Creek trilogy

Molly Jennings has one naughty little secret: her job as a bestselling erotic fiction author. Until her inspiration runs dry—thanks to a creepy ex—and it's time to skip town and move back to tiny Tumble Creek, Colorado.

One look at former high school hunk chief of police Ben Lawson and Molly is back in business. The town gossip is buzzing at her door and, worse still, a stalker seems to be watching her every move. Thankfully, her very own lawman has taken to coming over, often. The only problem now is that Molly may have to let the cat out of the bag about her chosen profession, and straitlaced Ben will definitely not approve...

I had a bit of a weird time with Talk Me Down. I read the first couple of chapters and wasn't really feeling it. Not that I thougth it bad, I just didn't find it interesting, so much so that I ended up putting the book down for a couple of weeks. I must have read at least 4 or 5 books in that period. I was even tempted to call it a DNF and be done with it. And then I picked it up again, forced myself to read a couple more pages, and was completely hooked. I finished it in a couple of sittings. Not only that, I really, really enjoyed it!

Molly Jennings has lived away from the small and isolated mountain town of Tumble Creek for years, but after a bad relationship with an ex who doesn't seem to get the message that he is an ex, she's decided to come back.

One of the first people she runs into is her former crush, Ben Lawson. Ben is now the town's police chief, and as attractive as he was when Molly was a teen, so before long, the crush is back with a vengeance. Best of all, it turns out it's not (and never was) one-sided.

Molly and Ben waste no time putting that mutual crush to good use, but "let's have hot sex" swiftly turns into something more, as pesky feelings start to develop on both sides. So what's the problem, you ask? Well, the problem is that Molly has a secret, a Big Secret, in fact. See, she's a very popular erotic romance author, and her first published novel is very obviously based on her and Ben. Molly knows Ben has got a well-earned phobia of being the subject of scandal (his dad was caught up in a sexual scandal when Ben was a boy), so she suspects that her career will be a deal-breaker for him. So she keeps her job a secret, which generates its own trust issues...

Big Secret plots are hard to do well in a contemporary. So Molly's an erotic romance writer? For heaven's sake, this is the 21st century! If anyone has an issue with that then it's their own problem! And yet, this worked perfectly. The combination of the content of Molly's first story, the nature of Tumble Creek (Dahl is not one to romanticise what a small town is like), Ben's job and his history, and even Molly's feelings of inadequacy compared to her brother, all came together in the perfect storm that made me understand Molly's reluctance completely.

I loved the tension this situation added in Molly and Ben's relationship, as without it, things would have been too easy. Hot as hell, but too easy. Because these two are perfect together, and they know it.

Ben's a sweetie, no tough alpha even though he is the police chief. I loved how completely delighted he was in Molly, especially how he appreciated her indulging her naughty side. And that she had a very well-developed naughty side was one of the things I enjoyed the most about Molly. She knows and trusts Ben enough to really let it out, and how!

So 10 points for the romance from me! The rest was slightly more mixed. There's a bit of a suspense plot that I didn't think was particularly interesting, or even necessary. And the secondary characters were mixed as well. I found Brenda frankly a bit offensive. She has a thing for Ben, but she's fat and ugly, so she's also sullen and resentful with Molly. Oh, come on. On the other hand, Cameron Kasten, Molly's ex, is a fantastic character. He's manipulative and charismatic, and no one other than Molly seems to be able to resist falling under his spell, including the men Molly tries to date, who end up convinced that Molly should stop being a silly girl and go back to their best new buddy Cameron. Reading his interactions with Molly made me want to scream and cry with frustration, exactly like she felt.

After writing the review up to here, I had a look at some reviews, and it seems a fair few people absolutely hated Molly. Me, I adored her, and it was some of things other people didn't like about her that I liked most. I guess you're going to have to give Talk Me Down a shot and see which side of the fence you fall!

MY GRADE: A B+.

The Object of Love, by Sharon Cullars

2011-11-19T06:00:00.000Z

TITLE: The Object of Love
AUTHOR: Sharon Cullars

COPYRIGHT: 2007
PAGES: 320
PUBLISHER: Brava

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

In Sharon Cullars' dazzling new novel, two unlikely lovers give in to explosive desire. But guilt and long-buried secrets could destroy their future before it begins...

It's been five years since Lacey Burnham saw Sean Logan, and in that time her son Calvin's best friend has turned from a surly youth into a handsome, self-assured young man. Crushed with grief over Cal's sudden death, Lacey offers Sean a place to stay while he's in town--an innocent proposal that quickly becomes anything but. Lacey is stunned and confused by the yearning he ignites with a single kiss...

Beautiful, warmhearted Lacey Burnham was a haven of comfort in Sean's troubled youth. Now, against every shred of logic she possesses, Lacey is falling hard for Sean and for a heady carnal bliss she's never experienced before. But the ghosts of the past are waiting. And sooner or later, every shadow must face the light of day...

Lacey Burnham has endured more loss than she would have thought possible to live through. Her husband died some years earlier, and now she's lost her 21-year-old son, Calvin, in a crash caused by his own recklessness. The story starts at Calvin's funeral, where his former best friend, Sean Logan, offers Lacey his support.

Lacey hasn't seen Sean for several years, since he and Calvin fell out, but she was always very fond of him. Sean, for his part, has also long had warm feelings for Lacey. Well, scorching hot, really, not warm. He only intends to offer her support when he speaks to her after the funeral, but before long, that has turned into something more. And Calvin's ghost is NOT happy about it.

This is only the second book I've read by Sharon Cullars, but she seems to write the most amazing edgy, scary paranormals. As in the fantastic Again, the sense of threat is palpable, and the ghost a very human one. Calvin's actions arise not out of evilness, but out of love for his mother and possessiveness. He doesn't mean to hurt her, but what he wants for her is not necessarily what's best. As Calvin found out what he could do from the realm where he was, things escalated and I felt more and more creeped out, all the way to a really good, climactic ending.

The other thing that I find really different about Cullars is that she makes me truly question whether her main characters are actually good for each other. In Again, the answer was yes, but I wasn't so sure with this one, and this meant it didn't 100% work as a romance. I just had a niggling feeling that I would have preferred this story as erotic fiction, if it had been simply about Lacey's healing and coming back to love through a beautiful, positive sexual relationship. It's not that I didn't want a romance with the premise of this book. I very much did, but I simply wasn't completely and fully convinced by it. It wasn't the age difference so much as that I felt Lacey and Sean were in different places in their lives, and their interactions didn't spell out "relationship among equals". I think I was fine with how Sean felt about Lacey, but I kind of got the feeling that Lacey had much more of a problem with seeing him as young and less mature than herself.

Still, even if it ultimately didn't succeed completely, it failed in a really good way. I see in Cullars' website that she has two other novels that sound just as unique as these two, and I'm looking forward to reading them.

MY GRADE: A B.

The Last Hundred Days, by Patrick McGuinness

2011-11-17T06:00:00.001Z

TITLE: The Last Hundred Days
AUTHOR: Patrick McGuinness

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 377
PUBLISHER: Seren

SETTING: Late 1980s Romania
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None

The socialist state is in crisis, the shops are empty and old Bucharest vanishes daily under the onslaught of Ceaucescu's demolition gangs. Paranoia is pervasive and secret service men lurk in the shadows. In The Last 100 Days, Patrick McGuinness creates an absorbing sense of time and place as the city struggles to survive this intense moment in history. He evokes a world of extremity and ravaged beauty from the viewpoint of an outsider uncomfortably, and often dangerously, close to the eye of the storm as the regime of 1980s Romania crumbles to a bloody end.

I read this one for my bookclub in September; we have a tradition of choosing something off the Man Booker longlist the month it's announced. It was a bit of a problem to get hold of it, as I take it it was a surprise nominee, and most bookstores seemed to have ran out!

The narrator is a young man who moves to Romania in the late 80s. He's been mysteriously hired to work in a university there, even though he never actually interviewed for the job. Before long, he's well in the thick of things, involved with people as dissimilar as a foreign professor who's up to his neck in the black market, the beautiful daughter of a man high up in the Party, an intellectual who used to be high up in the Party himself before he was defenestrated, and an idealistic doctor. And though he doesn't know it, December 1989 and the Romanian revolution are rapidly approaching.

The book took a while to get going, but once it did, it was fascinating. I knew only the basics about Romania, so most here was completely new and mindblowing to me. One of the first books that we read in the book club was The File, in which the author gets access to his Stasi file from the time he lived in East Germany and finds out who amongst the people around him were informing on him. That book was supposed to reflect what it was like to live under constant surveillance, in a police state, but compared to this, it was dry and forgettable, telling rather than showing. The Last Hundred Days made me really feel what it must have been like, definitely a case of fiction feeling truer than non-fiction, sometimes. The fact that our narrator was actually an observer, a foreigner who didn't really face anything worse than deportation, made no difference. In fact, I think it probably made it more understandable to me.

The Last Hundred Days was also beautifully written. McGuinness is a poet, and it shows. I'm not talking about overblown "lyrical" language, the writing is actually clean and relatively spare, it's just that he has a knack for choosing words and imagery that feel fresh and absolutely perfect.

MY GRADE: A B+.

My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult

2011-11-15T06:00:00.001Z

TITLE: My Sister's Keeper
AUTHOR: Jodi Picoult

COPYRIGHT: 2004
PAGES: 448
PUBLISHER: Washington Square Press

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None

Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate - a life and a role that she has never questioned… until now.

Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister - and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable… a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves. My Sister's Keeper examines what it means to be a good parent, a good sister, a good person. Is it morally correct to do whatever it takes to save a child's life… even if that means infringing upon the rights of another? Is it worth trying to discover who you really are, if that quest makes you like yourself less?

Thirteen-year-old Anna is a designer baby. The fertilised egg that would become her was carefully selected, not for blue eyes or high intelligence, but because it was a perfect match for her older sister, Kate, who was suffering from a very aggressive form of leukemia. Anna's first donation to her sister was the blood from her umbilical cord, and since then, she's given blood, bone marrow, platelets and undergone all sorts of "minor" interventions to keep her sister alive.

Now Kate's kidneys are failing, and Anna is supposed to donate one of her own to her sister. No one has asked her, just as no one has ever asked her if she was willing to donate any of the other bits and pieces harvested from her over the years. It's just assumed she will. But before that can happen, she goes to a lawyer and asks him to sue for medical emancipation from her parents.

My experience of reading My Sister's Keeper was very much like that of reading Dorothy Koomson's The Ice Cream Girls. I had quite a few objective problems with it, but the main reason for my dislike of it was that I really, really didn't want to think about the issues it presented. Issues is the right word here, this is very much an "issues" book. Unfortunately, these were issues I had an almost violent repulsion against. Picoult's characters are stuck in an extremely difficult situation, one in which there are no easy answers, and one from which they can't escape, and reading this made me feel claustrophobic. I did NOT want to think about this. Just, no. I know there are plenty of people out there who have no choice about it, who have to live with situations as hard as this one, so what kind of self-centred idiot am I? I'm just reading it, imagine having to actually live it? But still, that was my instinctive reaction to it, and if I hadn't been reading this for my book club, I wouldn't have finished. Well, actually, I wouldn't have even started it.

All that said, I'm still able to analyse the book objectively, and there were a few things that I had trouble with, and would have had trouble with even if I hadn't been resenting having to read this. First is the characters' voices. The way the book is structured is that you constantly flip between shortish sections narrated from different characters' point of view. There's each of the parents, Anna, her brother Jesse, and even Anna's lawyer, Campbell, and Julia, the woman who is appointed by the court as her guardian ad litem (her role is to recommend to the court what's in Anna's best interest). All these felt much too similar. Anna's and Jesse's felt downright off. I didn't believe them for a minute. There was this tendency that all six of them had to go into these really fake-sounding philosophical musings. I guess if it had been just one character, they wouldn't have sounded fake, but just part of the character. Having all six do exactly the same thing was too much.

I was also a bit doubtful about the relationship between Campbell and Julia. These two have a history, dating back from when they were teenagers in secondary school, when Campbell was a privileged rich boy, fascinated by scholarship student Julia, a pink-haired rebel. Things ended badly when he just suddenly blew her off. On one hand, I guess it provides some much needed hope and levity, but if a romance writer tried to pull what she did with the revelation about just why Campbell had left Julia all those years earlier, the book would have turned into a wall-banger.

Also, for all that there were moments of genuine emotion, I kept getting the feeling that Picoult was very transparently trying to manipulate her readers' feelings. The ending, especially, pissed me off. I guess I saw it as an author trying to shock her readers, rather than necessarily doing what the story needed. To me, it was a mockery of what the book was about all along, which was difficult decisions and having to live with their consequences. It also makes the twist that came a bit earlier, when we find out what really is behind Anna's actions, make absolutely no sense, because suddenly this is not an issue anymore. Sorry, this is cryptic, but I'm trying to avoid a spoiler.

MY GRADE: A C-, just because for all my dislike, it was a very readable book, and I basically tore through it.

In Too Deep, by Portia da Costa

2011-11-13T06:00:00.000Z

TITLE: In Too Deep
AUTHOR: Portia da Costa

COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 233
PUBLISHER: Black Lace

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Erotic romance
SERIES: None

Librarian Gwendolyne Price starts finding indecent proposals and sexy stories in her suggestion box. Shocked that they seem to be tailored specifically to her own deepest sexual fantasies, she begins a tantalizing relationship with a man she's never met. Soon enough, erotic letters and toe-curlingly sensual emails don't suffice; she has to meet her mysterious correspondent in the flesh.

On a perfectly normal day at work, librarian Gwen receives a wonderfully smutty letter. Signed "Nemesis", the letter goes into all sorts of naughtiness, and despite herself, Gwen feels flattered and turned on, rather than creeped out and stalked (and it's a testament to da Costa's talent that I was right behind her on that). The letters keep coming, and before she knows it, she's drawn into her anonymous admirer's sexy games.

At the same time, Gwen begins a wild affair with a handsome celebrity professor who's temporarily working at her library. Daniel Brewster is both hot and seemingly shy, and the combination inspires the normally unadventurous Gwen to be atypically forward.

So before long, from a very boring life and being in the middle of a bad divorce, Gwen is involved in two different erotic adventures, and wondering if the sexy professor and her anonymous correspondent might not be one and the same.

I had a bit of a strange experience with this one. It's exactly my sort of book. Gwen is amazing, Daniel is dreamy, and I loved the plot with the letter writer. It's my type of erotic romance, too: pretty vanilla in terms of what actually happens, but steamy in its intensity. While I was reading it, I enjoyed it immensely.

For some reason, however, the story didn't completely engage me, and it took me days and days to read, when I normally would tear through a book like this in one or two sittings. When I put it down, I didn't feel much of a compulsion to pick it up. No idea why... there's nothing wrong with it at all. It might be a case of me not being in the right mood, so I'll have to give it another go at some point. In the meantime...

MY GRADE: A B-.

A lovely historical, irrationality and Belgians

2011-11-11T06:00:00.000Z

TITLE: Bound By Your Touch
AUTHOR: Meredith Duran

This was one that slipped through the cracks... I read it quite a long time ago, wrote down a few notes and then forgot about it. So, no full review, which is a shame, because what I do remember is that I really enjoyed it.

Anyway, the basic setup is bluestocking heroine, devoted to absent-minded Egyptologist meets wastrel, good-for-nothing rake, determined to get back at his father for his cruel treatment of his sister. There's a fake artifact that's the McGuffin, but the story itself is about the romance and the characters dealing with family issues (the heroine, Lydia, also has a very fraught relationship with her sister, who stole her suitor years earlier).

It sounds like a very typical historical romance setup, but it's so much more than that. I can't quite articulate the ways in which that is so, not after so many months, but I just remember (and my notes confirm this) finding these two real and complex, and really caring about them. I also remember thinking that the setting was really great, it's unobtrusive, but provides a lot of texture.

MY GRADE: A B+.

TITLE: The Upside of Irrationality
AUTHOR: Dan Ariely

Another one read for work. Ariely's previous book, Predictably Irrational was an excellent introduction to behavioural economics (which, in a nutshell, studies how we behave "irrationally" in predictable ways, and the implications of this for economics). The Upside of Irrationality continues to look at human irrationality, but with the premise that by being aware of our own instincts and biases, we can either rise above them or use them in order to improve our lives.

This was quite an inspiring and interesting read. All the other behavioural economics books I've read so far either concentrate on policy implications or warn about the dangers of the findings, so it was refreshing to read a more optimistic and personal take on things. Of course, that means that the book was not particularly helpful for work, but I didn't mind!

MY GRADE: B+

TITLE: A Tall Man in a Low Land: Some Time Among the Belgians
AUTHOR: Harry Pearson

I don't know that much about Belgium. Most people I know don't, either. I guess, as Pearson himself states in his book, it's just considered a pretty boring place. I actually have been there on a couple of overnight trips for work and liked it well enough, but that's just not enough to begin to know a place. Even after my visits, Belgium to me was Hercule Poirot, moules frites, Hergé and beer that's delicious but also so strong it'll knock you on your butt.

But that was before I read this book. Pearson's meticulous exploration of all sorts of places and people in Belgium gave me the background I was missing. He goes for the funny and quirky and disturbing, but there's also enough about the normal feel of the place to make me want to go back and experience it myself. It's not a particularly gripping book, but I liked the dry humour in the writing and enjoyed the read.

MY GRADE: A B-.

Travels in Blood and Honey, by Elizabeth Gowing

2011-11-09T06:00:00.001Z

TITLE: Travels in Blood and Honey: Becoming a Beekeper in Kosovo
AUTHOR: Elizabeth Gowing

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 248
PUBLISHER: Signal Books

SETTING: Contemporary Kosovo
TYPE: Non Fiction
SERIES: None

Kosovo: the name conjures up blood: ethnic cleansing and war. This book reveals another side to the newest country in the world a land of generous families, strong tastes and lush landscapes: a land of honey.

Elizabeth Gowing is rushed to Kosovo, on a blind date with the place , when her partner is suddenly offered the position of adviser to Prime Minister Agim Çeku. Knowing nothing of the language or politics, she is thrown into a world of unpronounceable nouns, unfamiliar foods and bewilderingly hospitable people. On her first birthday in Kosovo she is given a beehive as a gift, and starts on a beekeeping apprenticeship with an unknown family; through their friendship and history she begins to understand her new home.

In 2006, Elizabeth Gowing's husband is offered a job advising the Prime Minister of Kosovo, and they move there together. On her first birthday there, her husband gives her a beehive as a present, and this gives her a way into the country's inner life. Over the next couple of years, her beekeeping allows her to meet people she wouldn't otherwise have known, and to begin to understand and love this country she's now living in.

I picked this one up a few months ago, after hearing the author being interviewed on a Radio 4 programme called Excess Baggage (you can hear it here). I was intrigued by what she described,and I also liked the warmth and humour with which she spoke, and hoped this would be reflected in the book as well.

Well, it was. I knew very little about Kosovo before I started reading this, so of course, there was the fascination of learning about something completely unfamiliar. But what made this a fantastically enjoyable book was Gowing's voice, her appreciation of what's around her and her fondness for the people she becomes close to. Her love for her new home shines through, but at the same time, there are definitely things she doesn't like about it, and we hear about both.

I also liked that there's plenty of self-awareness here, too. Gowing is aware of the danger of being a rich Western expat only skimming the surface of Kosovar culture and focusing on the exoticism, and she tries very hard not to fall into that trap. I felt she didn't. She comes across as someone who's genuinely interested and curious and who does her best to integrate as much as she can. She doesn't present herself as some sort of expert on Kosovo, the tone of the book is more about her wanting to share with us just how amazing this place is, a bit like her efforts with several projects she got immersed in in Kosovo, like promoting the Ethnological Museum.

I'm very glad I remembered the book's title after the programme and decided to seek it out. And as a bonus, I've now got a nice pile of delicious-sounding recipes to try. I see myself going through quite a lot of honey in the next few months!

MY GRADE: A very strong B+.

Seducing an Angel, by Mary Balogh

2011-11-07T06:00:00.000Z

TITLE: Seducing an Angel
AUTHOR: Mary Balogh

COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 325
PUBLISHER: Delacorte

SETTING: Early 19th century England
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: #4 in the Huxtables series

Meet the Huxtables—three headstrong sisters and their dashing brother—each searching for love that’s always a shocking indiscretion away. . . . In her magnificent new novel, New York Times bestselling author Mary Balogh sweeps us into a world of scandal and intrigue—glittering Regency England—and introduces the youngest Huxtable: Stephen, the only son. Here Stephen will risk his reputation and his heart as he enters a scandalous liaison with the infamous beauty intent on seduction. But when passion turns the tables on them both, who can say who has seduced whom?

He must be wealthy, wellborn, and want her more than he wants any other woman. Those are the conditions that must be met by the man Cassandra Belmont chooses for her lover. Marriage is out of the question for the destitute widow who stands accused of murdering her husband and must now barter her beauty in order to survive. With seduction in mind, she sets her sights on Stephen Huxtable, the irresistibly attractive Earl of Merton and London’s most eligible bachelor. But Stephen’s first intriguing glimpse of the mysterious, alluring Lady Paget convinces him that he has found the ideal woman to share his bed. There is only one caveat. This relationship fueled by mutual pleasure must be on his terms.

As the two warily circle each other in a sensual dance of attack and retreat, a single night of passion alters all the rules. Cassandra, whose reputation is already in tatters, is now in danger of losing the one thing she vowed never to give. And Stephen, who wants Cassandra more than he has ever wanted any woman, won’t rest until she has surrendered everything—not as his mistress—but as his lover and wife...

It's a double standard of mine, I suppose, but while I don't particularly care for the rakish hero / innocent virgin combination, I love bad, jaded heroine / sweet, decent hero pairings. Seducing an Angel certainly had one. Cassandra, Lady Paget is no mere "fast" woman, she's actually rumoured to be an axe murderer. Yep, I've certainly never seen that before in a historical romance!

Cassandra was left in an untenable situation when her husband died. She's got very little money left, no family that can support her and a household she feels responsible for. The only asset she has left is her own beautiful self. She refuses to even consider marrying again, after the disaster that was her first marriage (not that the offers are thick on the ground, anyway, with all the rumours flying about accusing her of having killed her husband), so the only option left is to find a rich lover. She wants someone who'll be easy prey, and the Earl of Merton seems like the perfect candidate.

Stephen Huxtable, the Earl of Merton, is certainly young, inexperienced and angelic looking, but he's no easy prey. While he's attracted to Cassandra from the moment they meet, and there's no reason to say no to her offer to be his mistress, he refuses to just fall into the stereotypical role of the rich man who uses his mistress only for impersonal sex. Stephen is intrigued by her and wants a much more intimate connection than she's offering.

Anyone who says beta heroes are boring and wimpy should read this book. Stephen is the ultimate beta hero. He's good and honourable and wonderfully nice. He treats Cassandra with respect and wants to help her. But he's also no pushover. When he thinks something is not right, he doesn't let anyone, not even this woman he's come to love, push him into it. And when he wants something, such as Cassandra in his life, he will get it.

It was a conflict I really enjoyed, especially in the first half. There's Cassandra, determined that her relationship with Stephen will be limited to sex, and Stephen determined that it will be much more. I'm sure some readers will find Cassandra unlikeable and prickly. Well, she sometimes is all that. She's not automatically happy and grateful when a wonderful man falls in love with her and wants to get married. And yet, I liked her all the more for that, because she certainly had reasons to be as she was.

The first half was an A, and I couldn't stop reading, but things became a bit predictable in the second half (if Balogh has any faults, is that she does like her "I'm not good enough for him" plots), and ended with a way too drawn-out ending. Still, this is one to enjoy.

MY GRADE: A B+.

Senseless, by Mary Burton

2011-11-05T06:00:00.001Z

TITLE: Senseless
AUTHOR: Mary Burton

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 412
PUBLISHER: Zebra

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romantic Suspense
SERIES: Followed by Merciless

Every serial killer knows...

The vicious burns scarring the victims' flesh reveal the agony of their last moments. Each woman was branded with a star, then stabbed through the heart. With every death, a vengeful killer finds a brief, blissful moment of calm. But soon it's time for the bloodshed to start again.

The perfect time...

Ten years ago, Eva Rayburn and her sorority sisters were celebrating the end of the school year. That party turned into a nightmare Eva can't forget. Now she's trying to start over in her Virginia hometown, but a new nightmare has begun. Every victim is linked to her. And Detective Deacon Garrison isn't sure whether this mysterious woman needs investigating - or protecting.

To make his mark

Only Eva's death will bring peace. Only her tortured screams will silence the rage that has been building for ten long years. Because what started that night at the sorority can never be stopped - not until the last victim has been marked for death.

The marketers got me with this one. I was waiting in line at the library when I spotted this book on a display case. The UK cover (above) looks very much like those of Karen Rose's books (see here), so at first I thought it was one of hers. And then I noticed it wasn't, but it had a prominent sticker on the cover reading: "A Perfect Thrill for Fans of KAREN ROSE, or your money back". I do like Karen Rose, so I grabbed it.

Anyway, onto the book itself. During her first year in university, Eva Raybourn experienced a horrible nightmare. She was raped and then branded with her own pendant by her attacker. She remembers nothing after that until she and the rapist were dragged out of the burning remains of the house where she lived with her sorority sisters. Her attacker was dead, not in the fire, but hit with a fireplace poker. Unfortunately for Eva, he was a spoiled rich boy, and his father was determined to protect his reputation. The man pressured and threatened, getting the police to charge her, Eva's friends to say she and the rapist had been lovers and Eva herself to resign herself to her fate. She was sent to jail for 10 years.

Now newly out of prison, Eva wants nothing more than to rebuild her life and forget about the past. It's always difficult for an ex-con, but she's managed to find a few jobs. One of them is at a homeless shelter, and that is where trouble finds her again. When she arrives to work one night, she finds the place on fire. All the residents manage to get out ok, but the police find a dead body just outside the house. And when it turns out the woman is one of Eva's former sorority sisters, and one who testified against her, and that she's been branded with the same shape as Eva was, it's clear someone's determined to revive the past.

I quite liked the first half of the book. Burton set up a story that interested me, and which did, in fact, remind me of what I like about Karen Rose's books. I wanted to know what had actually happened and I liked Eva. She had been the victim of a massive unjustice, but while that can often feel frustrating (why didn't she just do X??? I too often find myself asking), in this case, I could really understand what led everyone to behave as they did.

I also liked the way Burton was setting up the potential romance. Deacon Garrison is the detective investigating the case, and the connections between the murder and Eva's old case soon lead him to her. I liked that there was no insta-lusting, just a bit of a sense of connection, and that Garrison knows almost from the beginning that Eva had been railroaded.

But, unfortunately, the second half pretty much disintegrated. The romance ended up feeling completely out of the blue and perfunctory. It would have been better if there had been no sex at all here, just a realisation after all was finished that these two might like to get to know each other a bit better. And the mystery just got much too over-the-top. I guess we were still kind of in Karen Rose territory, but a bit like the last two Vartanian books, where I really disliked the mystery. Plus, the killer made no sense at all. The fact that this was a mad, psycho killer wasn't enough to provide a satisfying motivation, especially since there were a few too many psychos running around the pages. Oh, and no total closure, either. The main killer was found, but there was someone else helping them, and at the end, we're told... oh, we'll find them at some point. It felt like a bit "to be continued..." sign right there.

Disappointing.

MY GRADE: A C+.

Heart of Steel, by Meljean Brook

2011-11-03T06:00:00.000Z

TITLE: Heart of Steel
AUTHOR: Meljean Brook

COPYRIGHT: 2011 (out last Tuesday)
PAGES: 320
PUBLISHER: Berkley

SETTING: Alternate reality Europe and North Africa
TYPE: Steampunk romance
SERIES: 2nd full-length novel in the Iron Seas series

Return to the gritty, alluring world of steampunk with the New York Times bestselling author of The Iron Duke.

Growing up in the dangerous world of the Iron Seas, the mercenary captain of the airship Lady Corsair, Yasmeen, has learned to keep her heart hard as steel. Ruthless and cunning, her only loyalty is to her ship and her crew-until one man comes along and changes everything...

Treasure hunter Archimedes Fox isn't interested in the Lady Corsair-just the captain and the valuable da Vinci sketch she stole from him. When it attracts a dangerous amount of attention, Yasmeen and Archimedes journey to Horde-occupied Morocco- and straight into enemy hands.

NOTE: If you haven't read the previous books, you might want to read this page the author has put together explaining what this world is like.

Captain Yasmeen commands one of the most notorious airships around, the Lady Corsair. She's been a magnetic presence in two earlier stories in the series, the magnificent Here There Be Monsters and The Iron Duke. In the latter, we saw just how important maintaining discipline in her ship is, when she tossed adventurer Archimedes Fox overboard, into the canals of zombie-infested Venice. Archimedes had made the mistake of pulling a gun on Yasmeen when trying to convince her to fly him where he wanted to go, and any captain worth their salt knows that you do not ever allow anyone to attempt to usurp your authority.

But Archimedes has survived his latest run-in with zombies (as Yasmeen suspected he would, when she sent him into water, which zombies refuse to go into). Bad stuff happens right after they meet again, though, and both are soon immersed in breathless adventure, going after some priceless treasures that will allow Archimedes to be free from a quite dangerous creditor and Yasmeen to restart her life.

When Meljean Brook sent me my review copy, she warned me that Heart of Steel was very different from the previous Iron Seas books, a fast-paced adventure story, rather than the intense romantic mystery that was The Iron Duke and the almost cabin-romance that was Here There Be Monsters. Now, breakneck action is not normally my preferred kind of reading, but this is one of my favourite authors we're talking about, and I had no doubt I'd enjoy her take on it.

And yup, I totally did. It looks like, properly done, I really do enjoy adventure stories. And the bonus of having an adventure set in this particular world, is that we get to do quite a bit of exploring of what's going on all over Europe and North Africa. We even go into Horde-dominated areas and meet some interesting people, including a young budding inventor whom I really hope we'll meet again in the future. It's fantastic worldbuilding, as always. It's also exciting and most of all, fun.

For all that travelling and escaping from extremely hairy situations, Brook does not stint in the romance department. These are two extremely different people. They both have had some difficulties in their past (and who hasn't, in this world?), but have turned out diametrically opposite in their romantic outlook.

Archimedes starts out already half in love with Yasmeen, or rather, determined to fall in love with her, as he puts it. He goes after her full tilt, whereas she, although willing enough to have some good times between the sheets, is much more of a cool customer, and has some well-earned trust issues. But he wins her over, and how! He does it not by being overbearing and macho, but by showing her that he respects and admires the hell out of her. That thing about not challenging the authority of the captain? It doesn't threaten Archimedes' masculinity to defer to Yasmeen in front of others. He knows that they are equals, and he knows she knows that as well. I loved him, and I loved Yasmeen. I especially appreciated that Brook didn't defang her.

My only (quite slight) problem with the story was that the conclusion didn't deliver the big bang that I was hoping for. After all the danger they've faced and especially, after all that Archimedes has gone through, trying to pay his debts, there was something there in the conclusion that I found a bit disappointing... a bit of a "you're kidding me!" kind of moment.

Still, that's a minor thing, considering I loved every other moment of the book. I can't wait to see more bits of this world. Brook has just posted a map of how things look like, and I'm especially looking forward to visiting the Far Maghreb, where I'm from!

MY GRADE: A B+

The Shop of Shades and Secrets, by Colleen Gleason

2011-11-01T06:00:00.001Z

TITLE: The Shop of Shades and Secrets
AUTHOR: Colleen Gleason

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 354
PUBLISHER: Self-published

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: Followed by The Cards Of Life And Death.

When Fiona Murphy inherits a small antiques shop from an old man she met only once, she's filled with surprise, confusion and delight – and a little bit of terror at having a new responsibility in a life she prefers to be free and easy.

As she takes over ownership of the quaint shop, odd things begin to happen. Lights come on and off by themselves, even when they are unplugged...and there is a chilly breeze accompanied by the scent of roses even when the windows are closed.

H. Gideon Nath, III, is the stiff and oh-so-proper attorney who helps settle Fiona's inheritance, and despite her quirkiness and fascination with all things New Age, he finds himself attracted to her against his better judgment.

After she finds an unpleasant surprise in one of the shop's closets, scares off an intruder in the store, and uses her skill at palmistry to read Gideon's future--of which she appears to play a part--Fiona begins to realize that her free and easy life is about to change...whether she wants it to or not.

I can't remember what took me to Colleen Gleason's website, but while there, the one-line description for The Shop of Shades and Secrets caught my eye: "Like Dharma & Greg...with ghosts!" Ohhhh, I thought, and clicked right over to amazon, where I found that a) it was only 86p (must have been on sale, it's now £2.90), and b) the longer description also included: "If you love Dharma & Greg or miss finding new novels by Mary Stewart, Barbara Michaels, and Antoinette Stockenberg...". I do, I do, I miss all those authors!!, I thought. Click, bought!

And I'm very happy I did. I'm not going to summarise the plot. There's no point, the one I quote above is exactly right (not a huge surprise, since this is a self-published book, so I expect it was written by the author herself, not a marketing department!)

What I am going to say, is that the story delivered exactly what I was looking for, a type of book you don't see at all these days. It's a bit like a cozy mystery in setting and feel, but with a subtle ghost story delivering some nice chills and a strong focus on the romance (and with no fade-to-black on the love scenes, yay!).

Much as I liked the mystery surrounding the shop and the quite creepy ghost story, I think the romance was my favourite. I just loved Gideon and Fiona relationship. Fiona is a non-annoying free-spirit character. She does her own thing and is confident about who she is, but she doesn't go all judgmental with the much more conservative Gideon. She does encourage the artistic side he keeps hidden, but there's no message here that there's something wrong with someone preferring a bit of structure in their lives.

Gideon is also an interesting character. He grew up with his lawyer grandfather after his own father's life became a complete disaster, due to the man's self-indulgence. His grandfather gave his life structure and security, and he has grown up into someone who distrusts anything that feels like self-indulgence. He is a talented artist himself, but he keeps this part of his life hidden, and refuses to indulge in it indiscriminately. But again, like Fiona, he's not an overly judgmental person. He soon realises Fiona is no flake, and respects her. He tells himself he disapproves of her, but in reality, he loves the more quirky side of her, and what's really going on is that he fears being with Fiona might crack his strict discipline. I loved seeing him thaw and understanding that it's not all or nothing in life.

The only thing that keeps this book from a keeper grade is that there's a development near the end that I didn't particularly like, not because of the way people reacted (in fact, everyone involved reacted in ways that made sense for their characters, and I was very happy that Gleason didn't make a particular person a villain), but because it didn't really fit in with the feel and tone of the book.

Still, minor annoyance. On the whole, this was a success, and I'm glad I bought it. There's a related book, about Fiona's brother, and I've now bought that one as well. I really hope these books sell well, and Gleason keeps writing in this genre.

MY GRADE: A B+.

The Sleeping Beauty, by Mercedes Lackey

2011-10-30T06:00:00.000Z

TITLE: The Sleeping Beauty
AUTHOR: Mercedes Lackey

COPYRIGHT:2010
PAGES: 416
PUBLISHER: Luna

SETTING: Alternate world
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: 5th book in the Five Hundred Kingdoms series

Godmother Lily serves the Kingdom of Eltaria, which may be the most imperiled of all the Five Hundred Kingdoms. It has the misfortune of being small, rich, and surrounded with enemies. Governing it has been a constant juggling trick.

But now The Tradition has decided to land the blow of making the King a widower, and his daughter the Fairest In The Land. This can only mean bad things for the King, the Princess Rosa, and above all, the Kingdom itself.

I've been reading Lackey's Five Hundred Kingdoms series since the first one, the amazing The Fairy Godmother. While I've enjoyed the three books that came out since, I haven't absolutely loved them. A couple of them have felt a bit YAish, and I've sometimes found the actual story a bit meh, even as I was still loving the world-building. The Sleeping Beauty brings the series back up to the level where it started. I adored it and couldn't put it down.

The premise of the series, for those of you who haven't read any of the books yet, is a world which is influenced by something called The Tradition. The Tradition is a sort of mindless, unthinking force which tries to shape events into traditional stories. So, for instance, if a king with a beautiful daughter is widowed, evil sorceresses will feel the need to descend in force and try to seduce him into marriage, and he will feel somehow compelled to actually marry one of them, thus giving the young princess an evil stepmother.

The Tradition, however, is not an absolute compulsion, and people who understand how it works can manipulate it and undermine it, forcing it into paths less harmful to everyone involved. This is the role of Godmothers, who protect the Kingdoms assigned to them.

Godmother Lily protects the very rich and very small Kingdom of Eltaria, a full time job if there ever was one. Eltaria is seen as a valuable prize by all of its neighbours, and for centuries, its kings have spent most of their time defending it. As the story starts, the King is widowed, and in order to protect him and his young daughter, Rosamunde, Lily agrees with the King that she'll pose as his evil sorceress wife. She'll be a little bit mean to Princess Rosa, thus satisfying the Tradition without doing lasting damage.

But things still require constant vigilance, as a few years later, with Rosa all grown up, it becomes clear that the Tradition is still trying to force her into some quite harmful traditional paths.

I had a blast while reading this. It a mashup of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, with a big chunk of Norse mythology mixed in. There are seven horrid dwarves, an evil Huntsman clearly working for a mysterious someone, and a young man called Siegfried, who is desperately trying to find a way to avoid having to wake up a shieldmaiden called Brunhilde, who's also his aunt, asleep in a ring of fire (which, he's heard, will trigger all sorts of tragedy and Doom). There's also a traditional tournament, with a huge number of princes vying for Princess Rosa's hand.

If this sounds all very vague, it's on purpose. The fun of this is seeing where Lackey takes the story, and how everything fits in, with bits of different stories tied together that I would never have imagined. It's magnificent, extremely clever world-building, as always, and I lost count of the times when I was expecting a certain thing and Lackey just took the action in a completely unexpected (usually quite subversive) direction.

But the reason I actually crossed the line into loving this book is that we also get a proper story and a lovely romance. Even though at one point it looks like Lackey will try to set up a bit of a triangle (when at the beginning, both Siegfried and the slightly rakish Leopold happen upon Rosa asleep at the same time, and fight for the right to wake her), it's clear from the start that Siegfried is the one we should be rooting for.

And root for thim I did. I absolutely loved him. He's the perfect beta hero in a huge warrior package: kind, considerate and extremely clever, as well as big and burly and a consummate swordsman. I especially enjoyed how Lackey played with some characteristics that are typically presented as feminine in romance, such as the fact that he befriends animals, and that unicorns looooove him (well, he comes from a kingdom where all the women he meets are his aunts, after all, so no wonder he's quite virginal). He likes Rosa from the start, and the romance develops very nicely.

Rosa herself is great as well. She didn't shine for me quite as much as Siegfried did, but she's sensible and capable (including capable of participating quite actively in her own rescues), and just as nice as Siegfried. Their romance is not heavy on the lusting, but it's plenty heartwarming and sweet, not in a saccharine way, but in a way that made me smile throughout the entire book.

If you haven't tried this series yet, you're missing out.

MY GRADE: An A-.

The Bellini Bride, by Michelle Reid

2011-10-28T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: The Bellini Bride
AUTHOR: Michelle Reid

COPYRIGHT: 2001
PAGES: 192
PUBLISHER: Harlequin Presents

SETTING: Contemporary
TYPE: Category romance
SERIES: None

Marco Bellini thinks he has it all: success, wealth...and Antonia -his beautiful, sensual mistress. Then his father becomes ill, and Marco feels bound to marry and produce an heir to the famous Bellini fortune.

But who should Marco choose as a bride? Antonia isn't suitable, but she's the only woman he wants in his life and his bed. Dare he take his mistress to be his lawful wedded wife?

I bought this one because of the review at Dear Author. It sounded interesting, an HP that played with the conventions of the line, and it sounded like it acknowledged the bits I've always found troublesome.

Antonia has been Marco Bellini's mistress for a few years, since he saw a nude portrait of her and went after her. She loves him, but at the same time, she's well aware that although he has feelings for her, he very much sees her as mistress material, not the person he will marry.

And you know what? That's exactly right, and Marco knows it. She's got a scandalous past (there's that famous nude portrait, and everyone knows about her relationship with its painter), so his family will never accept her, and most of all, Marco himself sees her as not quite on his level. It's a double standard, but there you go. Marco, whatever else he may be, is much more self-aware and honest about himself than most HP heroes.

And this is just the situation at the beginning of the book. Before long, everything blows up. With Antonia not willing to let the status quo go on, Marco must realise what exactly losing her would mean. Marco and Antonia end up revealing to each other much more about the real people under the glossy facade than had come to light in the years they'd been together.

The Bellini Bride was all I hoped it would be. It has the level of delicious angst of a true HP, and it superficially even has all the conventions, but Reid doesn't just regurgitate them, she builds something completely new with them. I liked it, I really did.

That said, I must admit to a small disappointment. I don't think it's a spoiler to reveal that Antonia's past is not quite the scandalous one everyone (including Marco) thinks they know. But, I wondered as I finished, what if it had? I think that would have made for an even better book.

MY GRADE: A B+.

Hotter Than Wildfire, by Lisa Marie Rice

2011-10-26T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Hotter Than Wildfire
AUTHOR: Lisa Marie Rice

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: Avon Red

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romantic suspense
SERIES: 2nd in the Protectors series, follows Into The Crossfire

The world knows her only as Eve...

Though her songs have sold millions she is an enigma, a bewitching mystery. But to former Delta Force operator Harry Bolt, she is an angel whose sultry, smoky voice brought him back to life after the nightmare of Afghanistan. Nothing else matters.

And now a scared, helpless beauty has walked through the door of his San Diego private security firm, running from something secret, something deadly . . . and Harry knows immediately that this is the woman who saved him. He is the last hope for this intoxicating siren without a past—not even in his hottest dreams did he imagine that the lady Eve could be so tempting, so achingly desirable. But though she burns to lose herself in Harry's powerful arms, Eve is wary of trusting this tough, haunted ex-soldier who promises to protect her. Surrender could mean sweet ecstasy or certain doom. Can she open her heart, even if it means risking her life?

The premise of the Protectors series is that the heroes are a group of friends whose really awful childhoods have led them to dedicate their lives to protecting women from violence. They own a high-end security company together, and the profits from that subsidise the project they really care about: the Lost Ones Fund. Basically, the fund helps women in need get away from the people who threaten them and stay away safely, providing them with the practicalities, such as new documents, financial help and advice.

As with many refuges for abused women, knowledge of the fund is spread only by word of mouth, and that's exactly how Ellen Palmer finds out about it. Ellen is on the run after being a bit too good an accountant and discovering that her very scary boss, who's also been showing a creepy personal interest in her, is a very dangerous man and up to his neck in illegal business. Ellen runs for her life and hides out in a nightclub, where she's not able to resist the temptation to sing. And she's got such an amazing voice that it doesn't take her long to be noticed and offered a deal, leading to the creation of the mysterious "Eve", the singer everyone is dying to find out about.

Unfortunately, Ellen's voice is so distinctive that her former boss recognises it, forcing her to make use of the card one of her fellow nightclub employees once passed on to her, with the details of the Lost Ones Fund.

And it's not just the bad guy who recognises her voice, so does our hero, Harry Bolt, as soon as she comes into his office. Harry suffered really bad injuries in Afghanistan, and it was only the voice of a certain mysterious singer that kept him alive...

I feel I always write the same thing with LMR books, but here goes: if you've tried this author and didn't like her, don't bother with this one. It's got the same things that would have bothered you in previous books. There is one exception to this rule, and that's if you read the couple of books with the amoral heroes and this was what you didn't like. Harry and his friends are honorable, good men, so you'll be fine with this book. The over-the-top sex scenes and the hero's almost-creepy obsession with and adoration of the heroine, however, are all here. Me, I love this about LMR's books, and so that was a Very Good Thing and I really, really enjoyed this.

What this one also has is a heroine who's more proactive than many of the previous ones. Sure, Ellen's in a really bad situation and needs help, but she's not one to sit around wringing her hands. She's already rescued herself once, and is smart enough to realise when she's in over her head and needs help. She's also smart enough to ask for that help.

The suspense wasn't the greatest I've read from this author. It's something I've felt is underappreciated about LMR, but she's often got suspense plot which feel more original and different than the usual Romantic Suspense fare, and her villains are quite interesting, which makes spending time in their point of view pretty good. It wasn't bad here, but she's done better.

MY GRADE: A B+.

Pigeon English, by Stephen Kelman

2011-10-24T06:00:00.001+01:00

TITLE: Pigeon English
AUTHOR: Stephen Kelman

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 288
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury

SETTING: Contemporary London
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None

Pigeon English tells the story of 11-year-old Harrison Opoku who, with his mother and sister, is newly arrived from Ghana on a rough London estate.

When a local boy is knifed to death and a police appeal for witnesses draws only silence, Harrison decides to start a murder investigation of his own.

Readers of this blog in the UK will probably have seen the controversy surrounding this year's Man Booker Prize, with some criticising the judging panel for apparently choosing "readability" over quality. Well, as far as I'm concerned, they can go hang. This year's longlist looked fantastic. I've already read 3 and have a few more in my TBR pile. All 3 I read were excellent reads, but so far, Pigeon English has been the best. It was this month's book at my book club, but I already had it out from the library.

The book's narrator is Harrison Opoku, a recent immigrant from Ghana. Harri is 11, and is living with his mum and older sister, Lydia, in a council estate in London. His father and baby sister stayed behind until his mum can make enough money to bring them as well, a shame, since Harri would much rather have baby Agnes with them than that odious Lydia.

As the book starts, one of the older boys from the estate has just been stabbed to death. Harri liked the boy: he was nice and very good at football. The police appeals for witnesses to come forward and offers a reward, but no one comes forward. And that's when Harrison has his bright idea, and with his friend Dean (who has a vast store of knowledge acquired by watching all sorts of police TV shows), they decide to investigate the murder.

Objectively, the stuff going on around Harri is pretty grim. Gangs of young boys terrorise the estate, his sister is clearly in over her head is something quite bad and his mum owes money to his auntie's boyfriend, whose baseball bat called "The Persuader" gives a clue to what he does. Interestingly, though, it's not as harrowing a book to read as this might indicate. I guess it's because seeing it all through Harri's eyes makes all the difference. He's exuberant and good tempered, curious about everthing around him. He does not quite understand the implications of everything he's seeing -I think part of it is that everything in this country is new to him, the good and the bad, so he cannot fully differentiate between what he's just never experienced before, because this is a different country, and what he hasn't experienced before because he didn't live amongst gang members. But even when Harri doesn't quite get it, we, as readers, do.

Harri's narration makes this a surprisingly funny book. This is probably also part of what makes it bearable and readable, those truly hilarious moments. I think my favourite is when Harri and Dean make a list of traits that distinguish a potential suspect for their investigation, and the last item on their list is Religious Hysteria. It doesn't even sound that funny out of context, but as you're reading, you can't help but laugh.

One of my favourite things about Pigeon English is the use of language. Harri has a very distinctive voice. It's not just the use of Ghanaian slang (hutious for scary, asweh as an interjection, kind of "I swear!" - I remember those because I looked them up the first time I saw them), but also the use of, say, "only" and "even" in ways that feel quite novel and make Harri uniquely Harri. I don't know any Ghanaians, so I obviously can't really say how authentic this sounds, but a lot of things about how Harri speaks reminded me of a Nigerian friend of mine, like the use of terms and expressions that sound a bit formal and old-fashioned, but are clearly used quite colloquially by the characters (e.g. "easing oneself" for weeing... Harri loves to go for a wee right after his mum has cleaned the toilet because he loves feeling like God as he eases himself on a cloud, as he puts it :-D)

We had a really interesting discussion at the book club, and one of the most fascinating bits was about how Kelman depicts Harri as a quite recent immigrant. I mentioned something above already about how he seems to accept all the different things, the good and the bad, with some equanimity. He's integrated pretty quickly, both in good and bad ways, but there were quite a few other very telling details, where Kelman shows that while Harri's miming what's going on around him, he doesn't fully "get" things. One example of that that was mentioned was when he draws Adidas stripes on his cheap trainers and then is disappointed when everyone at school laughs at him. This whole issue was something I hadn't noticed as I was reading, but it made perfect sense when it was pointed out. Maybe because as a relatively recent immigrant myself (4 years last September!), I've probably had a few Harri moments myself and never even noticed.

The only bad thing about the book was the talking pigeon. Well, he doesn't really talk, but almost. See, there's this particular pigeon that Harri likes and considers his friend. He leaves food out for him, that sort of thing. And there are a few passages (not many, and not long) narrated from that pigeon's point of view. It did not work at all. I agree with the person in my book club who said it was the only thing in a wonderfully genuine book that smacked of literary pretentiousness. I can (kind of) see what Kelman was trying to do with it, but still, no. Fortunately, it's not a dominating element, and this is a book that can be enjoyed without the pigeon idiocy leaving a bad taste in the mouth, but I reckon that must have been one of the reasons it did not win the Booker. I can just see the judges discussing who should win and debating whether they could go as far as to award the prize to a book with a talking pigeon.

MY GRADE: An A-.

At Last Comes Love, by Mary Balogh

2011-10-22T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: At Last Comes Love
AUTHOR: Mary Balogh

COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 416
PUBLISHER: Dell

SETTING: 19th century England
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: 3rd in the Huxtable quintet

Step into a world of scandal, intrigue, and enthralling passion as New York Times bestselling author Mary Balogh sweeps us into the lives of an extraordinary family: the Huxtables. Margaret, the eldest, embarks on the most risqué adventure of her life and agrees to marry the most notorious man in London.…

Only desperation could bring Duncan Pennethorne, the infamous Earl of Sheringford, back home after the spectacular scandal that had shocked even the jaded ton. Forced to wed in fifteen days or be cut off without a penny, Duncan chooses the one woman in London in frantic need of a husband. A lie to an old flame forces Margaret Huxtable to accept the irresistible stranger’s offer. But once she discovers who he really is, it’s too late—she’s already betrothed to the wickedly sensual rakehell. Quickly she issues an ultimatum: If Duncan wants her, he must woo her. And as passion slowly ignites, two people marrying for all the wrong reasons are discovering the joys of seduction—and awaiting the exquisite pleasure of what comes after…

Scandalous is a favourite word of romance novel marketers, often even inserted in titles of books where there is no scandal to be seen. But to call Duncan Pennethorne scandalous is no exaggeration. He earned that description 5 years earlier, when he dumped his fiancee right before the wedding and ran off to the continent with her sister-in-law (and no, this wasn't even a widowed sister-in-law, she was very much married).

Just returned to England, Duncan is now the Earl of Sheringford and he's got that very typical romance novel dilemma: his grandfather is threatening to cut him off completely unless he gets married to someone respectable, and he's only got a matter of days to find such a bride.

Margaret is the eldest of the Huxtables. The family grew up in genteel poverty until her brother, Stephen, turned out to be the heir to a title (see my review of First Comes Marriage for more detail). With their parents dead, the responsibility for bringing up her siblings fell mostly on Margaret, and so when her fiancé went off to war and insisted they get married beforehand, she felt she had to refuse and stay with her family. The fiancé insisted he'd wait for her, blah, blah, blah, but ended up marrying someone else before his return.

Years later, Margaret is pretty much an old maid, and when her former fiancé shows up in society, her pride doesn't allow her to admit she's alone. So she invents a secret fiancé... not as stupid as it sounds, since there's this nice but very staid man who's proposed a few times, and Margaret just thinks to herself that she'll accept next time he does. However, her plans go belly-up when the guy comes to her with the news that he's fallen madly in love and proposed to someone else.

Can you guess what happens next? Man in urgent need of a wife, woman in urgent need of a secret fiancé... yep, marriage of convenience. After a chance encounter, Duncan proposes and Margaret accepts, and the engagement is announced, all before she realises just how scandalous Duncan's past is.

At Last Comes Love provides exactly what a marriage-of-convenience story should: the wonder of two strangers forced to spend time with each other and realising that they truly like the person they've almost accidentally ended up with, and that a relationship which promised contentment at best, might actually deliver love.

Margaret had come across in the previous 2 books as a the good and self-sacrificing type, possibly a bit boring. But there were indications even then that there was a real person underneath, one with real feelings, and human enough that, though she didn't regret having made the decisions she did, she somewhat resented not having been able to choose her own happiness. And in a way, Duncan is in a very similar situation. As you might have imagined, there's a lot more to the big scandal in his past than meets the eye, and he and Margaret have a surprising amount in common. I loved seeing them look beyond appearances and discover this, and I also loved seeing them finally get the happiness they deserve.

MY GRADE: A B+.

Compromised, by Kate Noble

2011-10-20T06:29:00.001+01:00

TITLE: Compromised
AUTHOR: Kate Noble

COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 368
PUBLISHER: Berkley

SETTING: 19th century England
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

Miss Gail Alton was not having a good day. Or a good year. First, she's strong-armed into attending the Season as a foil to her beautiful sister Evangeline. Then, while riding her mare in the park, she gets toppled by a stuffy, self-important, too-handsome-by-half "gentleman" who has the audacity to blame her for their fall into the chilly lake! Little does Gail know that the very same man will soon be found in a compromising position with her sister...

Forced into asking for Evangeline's hand in marriage, Maximillian, Viscount Fontaine, can't take his mind off the irksome girl who threw him from his horse and who can match wits with him at every turn. He's determined to follow through with his best intentions, yet he can't deny that Gail makes him want to cast propriety aside-and whisk away the sister of his soon-to-be bride...

Kate Noble has been billed as a new Julia Quinn, and say what you will about wallpaper historicals, sometimes JQ just hits the spot for me. I was hoping for charming and funny, including a sweet romance which, nonetheless, had plenty of emotion. But although I do see where the comparison is coming from, Compromised felt a bit amateurish to me and didn't completely satisfy.

The plot is reminiscent of Quinn's wonderful The Viscount Who Loved Me: Max, Viscount Fontaine is newly engaged to Gail Alton's younger sister, after they were accidentally caught in compromising circumstances. Max doesn't mind, as he developed a crush on little sister Evangeline as soon as he met her.

Max isn't pleased to discover that he'd already ran into Evangeline's older sister, in quite an embarrassing encounter. Max and Gail's relationship is adversarial, to say the least, but as Max gets to know Evangeline better and realises they really don't have much in common, he's also realising that not only does he like Gail, he's got a sneaking suspicion that she would suit him much better than Evangeline...

I liked this well enough. Max and Gail are well suited to each other, and I enjoyed how they became good friends before other feelings developed. It's a difficult situation they're in, especially because Gail does love her sister and -shocker!- Evangeline is quite a lovely person as well. She might be petite and delicate and pretty, but she's a real person, who loves her sister right back, rather than a cardboard bitch it would have been easy to hate.

All good, but just... not great. I can´t really pinpoint what didn't work, simply that it all felt a bit meh. Gail and Max, especially. I found it hard to get too excited about them. They're fine, but that's it. Fine, but nothing special.

MY GRADE: A B-.

Feed, by Mira Grant

2011-10-17T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Feed
AUTHOR: Mira Grant

COPYRIGHT:2010
PAGES: 574
PUBLISHER: Orbit

SETTING: 2040s US
TYPE: Fiction - Thriller/Horror
SERIES: Book 1 in the Newsflesh Trilogy

EVERYONE HAS SOMEONE ON THE WALL

Shaun and Georgia are orphans of the Rising, the cataclysmic event which left the world reeling in the aftermath of the zombie uprising. Adopted by the Masons and raised in the strange world of the post-Rising media, they've spent their lives chasing the next big story, the one that will allow them to break into the big leagues once and for all. Now, in Senator Peter Ryman's run for the Presidency of the United States, they've finally found it.

All they have to do is survive until the election.

In a world filled with the constant threat of both the living and the living dead, it will be all that Shaun and Georgia can do to keep themselves in one piece. Accompanied by the rest of their blogging team, Senator Ryman's staff, and a whole lot of caffeine, they might succeed…or they might finally answer the big question of their post-Rising world: When will you rise?

In 2014, it looked like there was nowhere to go but up. Scientists had managed to cure the common cold and cancer. But on that year, the viruses engineered to do that combined, and the results were catastrophic. For people infected with the combined virus (and this quickly came to include everyone on the planet), death triggered a process called amplification. The result: the dead person would "rise", becoming a mindless being bent on feeding on other humans and on spreading the now live version of the virus rampant through their body. Yep, zombies.

It is now some 25 years after the Rising and society exists in an uneasy balance. Zombies haven't been defeated so much as contained (it's not even theoretically possible to defeat this particular threat, when any unattended death will end up in the deceased turning zombie in a matter of minutes).

Georgia Mason and her brother Shaun have grown up in this world, having been born after the Rising. They are bloggers, in a world where the traditional media's failure to properly report the Rising, causing much unnecessary death, has lost it a great measure of trust. News blogging has grown to fill the void. It's a competitive, very structured world, where bloggers are divided into objective, factual Newsies, devoted to the truth; thrill-seeking Irwins, focused on the action and danger of reporting in what's effectively a war-zone; and Fictionals, who concentrate on writing fiction reflecting the world they live in. Ratings are everything, with blogs competing against each other for visitors and attention.

As the book starts, George, a Newsie, and Shaun, an Irwin, together with the Fictional in their team, Buffy Messonier, are selected to cover the campaign of a presidential hopeful, Peter Ryman. Ryman is the first presidential candidate to have grown up after the Rising, so he'll the first to accept a blogging team embedded in his campaign, allowing them access that has previously only been granted to traditional media outlets.

George and her team start out determined to be objective and detached, but at the same time, they soon come to like Ryman and believe he's the real deal (which doesn't compromise their determination to be truthful and not betray their readers -they all take this very seriously). But as the campaign advances and Ryman's candidacy looks more and more possible, tragic "accidents" start happening around it, and it's soon clear that someone is willing to stop at nothing to derail the campaign.

Now, the plot here is serviceable enough, a conspiracy story with a denouement that did not particularly surprise me, but which was quite readable and entertaining, nonetheless. Similarly, the characters were interesting and I liked their interactions (even if I found George and Shaun's closeness a bit strange), but they weren't the most amazing characters I've ever read.

The reason to read this is for the fantastic, amazing and mindblowing world-building. Can great world-building be enough to save a book that's otherwise bad? Probably not. But it can certainly elevate one that's otherwise average into excellence, and that's exactly what happened here.

What's great about it is how detailed it is, how Grant has really clearly thought hard about things. She's not only come up with a really coherent explanation for how the zombies originated and how they behave, she has also gone all the way in understanding how society might change due to their presence. This is not set in a world where people are and interact just like today, only with better technology, since it's the future. No, society has changed massively. For instance, there's the constant and neverending care and vigilance that need to be sustained in order to prevent an outbreak. There's the fact that this is a world where a gathering of a large number of people, all in the same physica space, is seen by many as an accident waiting to happen. There's the powers that government agencies have taken on, arguing that they're needed to keep the country safe.

It wasn't a surprise that I loved the deep level of world-building, but I was actually amazed that the techniques Grant used to explain to us what this world was like didn't annoy me. The world-building was just not seamlessly integrated, like, say, Meljean Brook's in the Iron Seas books, where you only find out thinks organically. You get quite a few infodump-type sections here. There are some sections which are excerpts from our characters' blogs which were fine, but the main narration, from George's point of view, read as if she was explaining her world to people just like us, from before the Rising. These sections were very good infodumps, chock-full of fascinating stuff and written beautifully, in George's very individual voice, but I still should have found that a bit annoying. I just... didn't. I loved it all.

Even if you're not particularly interested in zombies, this is one to read.

MY GRADE: B+

PS: How cool is it that the zombies are the George Romero type, so much so that he has become a national hero? Yep, that's who Georgia (and half the kids in her generation) was named after! And I guess we've got Shaun of the Dead, as well.

PS - 2: The cover is fantastic, too. The RSS feed symbol, but written in blood combines horror and blogging perfectly, and so does the title.

Attachments, by Rainbow Rowell

2011-10-14T06:53:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Attachments
AUTHOR: Rainbow Rowell

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 336
PUBLISHER: Orion

SETTING: 1999 US
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: No

It's 1999 and for the staff of one newspaper office, the internet is still a novelty. By day, two young women, Beth and Jennifer, spend their hours emailing each other, discussing in hilarious detail every aspect of their lives, from love troubles to family dramas. And by night, Lincoln, a shy, lonely IT guy spends his hours reading every exchange.

At first their emails offer a welcome diversion, but as Lincoln unwittingly becomes drawn into their lives, the more he reads, the more he finds himself falling for one of them. By the time Lincoln realizes just how head-over-heels he really is, it's way too late to introduce himself. What would he say to her? 'Hi, I'm the guy who reads your e-mail - and also, I think I love you'. After a series of close encounters, Lincoln decides it's time to muster the courage to follow his heart . . . and find out whether there really is such a thing as love before first-sight.

1999. Most companies are still leery of allowing their employees access to that scary world, the internet and email. The publishers of the Courier, a small-town Nebraska paper, are especially terrified of their own employees, and so they hire Lincoln to take care of IT security.

Lincoln thought his job would involve such exciting stuff as building firewalls and fighting off hackers, but it turns out to be basically sitting round until 1 AM, spending some 10 minutes a night reading emails flagged up by the system as inappropriate and sending out template warnings. The job pays well, but it's boring and Lincoln feels like a bit of a creep for reading other people's emails. Especially because he's particularly relishing reading the often-flagged email exchanges between two female employees, so much so that he hasn't actually got round to sending them a warning.

The story is told in alternating chapters. Sections narrated in the third person, but showing Lincoln's point of view, are followed by the email exchanges between Jennifer, an editor, and Beth, a movie reviewer. They gossip, they whine and they share quite a lot about their lives, including the fact that Beth, in spite of her 8-year relationship with her emotionally unavailable musician boyfriend, Chris, has developed a crush on a mysterious Cute Guy she's seen round the office. A Cute Guy who, all the details indicate, is none other than Lincoln himself, who himself has been crushing on the sweet, funny woman Beth has proved to be in her own emails.

Attachments was a fun, charming and sweet romance, one I just couldn't stop reading. The chapters are pretty short, which unfortunately meant that I naively kept telling myself I'd read only one more, resulting in a couple of unexpectedly late nights.

Lincoln is a character whose description practically screams "loser". He's 28 and has moved back with his mom (who makes his dinner every day -and by the way, every single one of those dishes sounded amazing!). He's also still almost in mourning for his one significant relationship, which was with his high-school girlfriend (she broke up with him in the first year of uni). His only social interactions when the book starts are with his fellow dungeons and dragons-playing friends.

But for all this, Rowell manages to create a character who's not a loser at all. Instead, Lincoln comes across as shy, sweet and quite endearing. He's a genuinely good guy, but one who hasn't been able to resist the temptation to do something quite dodgy, and now he's in a bit of an untenable situation. He likes Beth, he knows she likes him, but how could it work out, when he's been reading her private emails? If they do get together and he confesses, she will break up with him, but if he doesn't, then they'll always have that secret between them.

Attachments is actually right on the line between romance and chick lit, only with the hero in the place of the heroine, having to be the one who grows up and finds his way. I'd call it lad lit, but the lad lit I've read has a completely different feel to it, this is definitely chick lit! We do get to know Beth quite well as well, but since it's only through her emails, there's a bit more of a distance there.

The emails, by the way, were hilarious. I have to say, most of the time they felt more like instant messages than email, but I had no trouble letting that go. You really get a feeling for who these women are, and I loved the portrayal of female friendship.

I also loved the setting. The book's written as a historical, albeit one that's set only 12 years ago, in an era I remember well, when I was just getting into the working world myself. It was funny how this felt very different from reading a contemporary actually written in 1999. I guess it's the way Rowell chooses to pinpoint the things that really bring that time back to us now (e.g. the Y2K hysteria), when a contemporary author has no idea which things will stay in people's memories (and she's probably had advice from critique partners to not include anything that will date the book -stupid advice!!). I did find the lack of worries about the "death of newspapers" a bit poignant -I guess I kind of felt about this as I would feel about a romance novel set in 1911, knowing the war is coming, and soon.

Attachments has had fantastic word of mouth (that's what made me pick it up), and this lovely book deserves all that buzz. It's landed Rowell on my autobuy list.

MY GRADE: A very strong B+.

A Visit From The Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan

2011-10-13T06:30:00.000+01:00

TITLE: A Visit From The Goon Squad
AUTHOR: Jennifer Egan

COPYRIGHT: 2010
PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: Corsair

SETTING: Contemporary, variety of locations
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None

Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. With music pulsing on every page, A Visit from the Goon Squad is a startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption.

Yet another book read for my book club, and yet another one that I loved, and would never have picked up otherwise. Yay for book clubs!

A Visit From The Goon Squad seems to be more a collection of related stories than a novel. I can't decide which it is, actually, as these stories are not independent, and there's an overall theme that emerges as we move back and forth in time, and all over the world, picking up the stories of characters whom we'd met in previous chapters, sometimes in the centre of things, more often just on the edge of vision.

This was a structure that quite divided my book club. Some people hated it. They felt cheated when they finished a chapter and knew that they wouldn't find out more about that character, other than by way of them being part of the supporting cast in another character's story. Me, I never felt cheated. Every single chapter, I felt Egan closed it at the perfect point, a point where I was still interested in the character, but where I'd had enough to make the story perfectly satisfying.

It's not just the structure that's different and interesting, Egan is also quite innovative with her narrative choices. There are plenty of traditionally narrated chapters (albeit each with their own very individual voices), but there are also some quite wild ones, such as one that is basically a powerpoint presentation. The latter actually turned out to be one of my favourites, doubtful as I was before I started it. It tells a proper story, complete with feelings and great characterisation. Just that chapter is worth the price of the book.

Other favourites included the chapter about the PR agent who has lately almost accidentally become specialised in rehabilitating brutal dictators (loved the fuzzy hat detail), the final, futuristic episode which felt eerily possible, or the celebrity interview with jaw-dropping footnotes.

I should also say, the reason why I would probably never have picked this up on my own is that all I'd read about it indicated that this was a book where the music business was a big part of the plot. I have absolutely no interest in the music business, and just as little patience for the self-indulgent characters that seem to populate it. But while several of the characters are involved, centrally or peripherally, in that business, this is not what the book is about, and all the characters are interesting enough that I wanted to read about them. I especially appreciated the several moments of complete truth that we got, the sort of writing that forces you to acknowledge feelings that are not particularly pretty, but which really are there. For instance, I'm thinking of Bennie's collection of shameful moments that he can't help thinking about again, and can't keep picking at, like a scab.

MY GRADE: B+

Naked Once More, by Elizabeth Peters

2011-10-08T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Naked Once More
AUTHOR: Elizabeth Peters

COPYRIGHT: 1989
PAGES: 360
PUBLISHER: Warner

SETTING: 1980s US
TYPE: Mystery
SERIES: 4th in the Jacqueline Kirby series

She may be a bestselling author, but ex-librarian Jacqueline Kirby's views on the publishing biz aren't fit to print. In fact, she's thinking of trading celebrity for serenity and a house far away from fiendish editors and demented fans when her agent whispers the only words that could ever make her stay: Naked in the Ice.

Seven years ago, this blockbuster skyrocketed Kathleen Darcy to instant fame. Now the author's heirs and looking for a writer to pen the sequel. It's an opportunity no novelist in her right mind would pass up, and there's no doubting Jacqueline's sanity...until she starts digging through the missing woman's papersand her past. Until she gets mixed up with Kathleen enigmatic lover. Until a series of nasty accidents convince her much too late that someone wants to bring Jacqueline's storyand her lifeto a premature end.

Reread of an old favourite, although, to be fair, pretty much all of Elizabeth Peters / Barbara Michaels' books are old faves of mine. This one is the last book in the Jacqueline Kirby series, featuring the adventures of the fantastically self-assured former librarian.

Since the last book, which took place in a romance novel convention (and which shouldn't be read by romance readers unless they can take a bit of fun being poked at the genre, especially its 1980s excesses -remember the author photos where they dressed up as the book's heroine?), Jacqueline has become a successful author herself. But fun as writing her own characters may be, when the possibility of writing a sequel of Naked in the Ice comes up, Jaqueline jumps at it.

Naked in the Ice was the blockbuster to end all blockbusters, a Clan of the Cave Bear-type epic historical romance. It brought its author, Katherine Darcy, fame and fortune. But not long after it came out, Katherine mysteriously disappeared. Her car was found abandoned, what looked like a suicide note left behind, and Katherine's body never turned up. Seven years have passed since then, and now that the courts have finally declared her dead, her family is in quite an unseemly rush to cash in and get someone to write a sequel.

The competition for the chance to do so is fierce (literally: the other authors in the running are willing to go to some bizarre lengths to get the prize), but Jacqueline manages to get selected, and moves to the small town that was Katherine's home to be close to Katherine's archives while she writes. But Jacqueline is quite the amateur detective, and she was already interested in the mystery of Katherine's disappearance even before she finds some tantalising clues in her letters, pointing at someone wanting her dead...

This is vintage Elizabeth Peters. There's the fun plot, the humour that shines through every sentence and the varied and extremely entertaining secondary characters. I enjoyed all of it. The plot might be a little far-fetched, but it's intriguing, and makes for interesting twists and turns, with some good red herrings, and a fun ending, which is a bit of an homage to Agatha Christie. Peters' writing is fantastic, especially when she's describing those secondary characters. She's a bit brutal sometimes, when she's skwering someone particularly unlikeable, but that's because we're seeing them from Jacqueline's point of view, and she's one unsentimental woman.

This was particularly enjoyable because Jacqueline is a bit of a mysterious character throughout most of the series. The first two books, at least, are quite unusual in that while she's very much the protagonist, we never see her point of view. Both books are narrated by other characters, who are all a bit in awe of the beautiful, clever and very prickly Jaqueline. I'm not quite sure about Die For Love, because I haven't reread it in a while, but in Naked Once More we finally get into Jacqueline's head. And it's quite good, because she's much more human that way. We don't see much of her vulnerabilities in the first two books, but we do see here that she has a few of them. But of course, she doesn't change personality just because of this. She's still unsentimental and doesn't suffer fools gladly, which is something I love about her.

MY GRADE: A B+

Silk Is for Seduction, by Loretta Chase

2011-10-06T06:43:00.002+01:00

TITLE: Silk Is for Seduction
AUTHOR: Loretta Chase

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 384
PUBLISHER: Avon

SETTING: 19th century Paris and England
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: First in the Dressmakers series

From the Design Book of Marcelline Noirot:The allure of the perfect gown should be twofold:ladies would die to wear it . . .and gentlemen would kill to remove it!

Brilliant and ambitious dressmaker Marcelline Noirot is London's rising star. And who better to benefit from her talent than the worst-dressed lady in the ton, the Duke of Clevedon's intended bride? Winning the future duchess's patronage means prestige and fortune for Marcelline and her sisters. To get to the lady, though, Marcelline must win over Clevedon, whose standards are as high as his morals are . . . not.

The prize seems well worth the risk—but this time Marcelline's met her match. Clevedon can design a seduction as irresistible as her dresses; and what begins as a flicker of desire between two of the most passionately stubborn charmers in London soon ignites into a delicious inferno . . . and a blazing scandal.

And now both their futures hang by an exquisite thread of silk...

Marcelline Noirot and her two sisters run the absolute best dressmakers in London. Unfortunately, they're having a little bit of trouble becoming established, since the ladies of the ton are too conservative and risk-averse to go somewhere other than where everyone else is going. Although there are a few ladies who have been persuaded to patronise Maison Noirot, none of them are high-born enough to convince the rest to follow them.

But the Noirots have a plan. The rumour about town is that the Duke of Clevendon has finally been persuaded to come back from the continent and propose to Lady Clara, the young woman he's been informally promised to for years. And duke with deep pockets + beautiful, high-born bride, well-known for dressing dowdily = the perfect opportunity for an ambitious dressmaker.

The Noirots are too cunning for directness, and the oblique approach they come up with involves Marcelline travelling to Paris, running into Clevendon and attracting his attention. Which, since Marcelline is a genius at being alluring and irresistible, she does. But it turns out she's captured Clevendon's attention a bit too well, and he's captured hers just as much.

This out of the way first: this clever, clever plan of theirs, which is presented as proof of how fantastically cunning the Noirots are, and how adept at getting their own way? Not as clever as Chase tells us it is. I'd describe it as pretty stupid, in fact. Whatever made them think that manouvering a duke into interacting socially with a tradesperson and acknowledging her as an attractive, sexy woman would convince him to encourage his future, virginal bride to patronise her, I don't know. Of course, it works here, but I very much doubt it would have in any version of real life.

But you know what? I didn't care. Even as I told myself that, I was so completely charmed by this book and captivated by the romance that I loved every second of it. It's a frothy confection of a story, but one that has quite a bit of angst and heart to it, as well.

Marcelline is a total goddess, and I loved her to pieces. She's confident and comfortable in herself, and knows perfectly well what she can expect from Clevendon and what she can't. And yet, there's something about him that makes her do things she knows perfectly well she shouldn't do. Clevendon might have a nobleman's arrogance and the power to ignore social consequences, but Marcelline is aware of the consequences his actions might have. She doesn't completely forget about her purposes in meeting Clevendon in the first place just because she's attracted to him, and Chase successfully establishes why that should be, why Maison Noirot means so much to the sisters.

Clevendon is, in many ways, a much more thoughtless character than Marcelline, but as I mentioned above, this perfectly reflects who he is. He's never had to think about what Marcelline must obsessively consider. This means that it's a thin line he walks between crazy in love with Marcelline and selfishly going after what he wants, with no thought to what this might mean to this woman he's so captivated by.

Readers should know before going in that for much of the book, Clevendon still intends to marry Lady Clara, even as he tirelessly pursues Marcelline. I'm pretty uptight about infidelity in my romances, but I wasn't particularly bothered by this. I saw it more as a situation where someone had been brought up with the idea that "this is what one does", and has never actually stopped to think that he doesn't actually have to do it.

The first sections of the story take place in Paris, where we have an intense focus on Clevendon and Marcelline. The focus widens when they return to London, but any loss of intensity in the relationship is more than compensated by the fantastic secondary characters. I especially appreciated that Lady Clara was no one-note horrible character, whom Clevendon could dump without a second thought. She was real and she was lovely, it was just that those two wouldn't suit. I really would love to see more of her in future books.

My favourite of the secondary characters, however, was Lucie, Marcelline's young daughter. Yep, a child character. I loved her much in the way I love JAK's dust-bunnies in her Jayne Castle books unreservedly, but feeling somewhat embarrassed about it. But seriously, how could I not love a little girl who solemnly announces she has changed her name to Errol, and then cooly proceeds to charm the adults around her? And also, Princess Errol of Albania, indeed!

MY GRADE: A B+.

I'll Catch You, by Farrah Rochon

2011-09-23T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: I'll Catch You
AUTHOR: Farrah Rochon

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 219
PUBLISHER: Kimani Romance

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Category romance
SERIES: 2nd in the New York Sabers series (follows Huddle With Me Tonight)

HE'S THROUGH PLAYING THE FIELD...OR IS HE?

Cedric Reeves has just been sidelined, and the bad-boy pro footballer suddenly finds himself without an agent or a prayer of getting back in the game. What he needs is someone pulling for him...someone like gorgeous go-getter Payton Mosely.

A media-hounded celebrity like Cedric is just what the ambitious up-and-comer Payton needs to jump-start her career. That's why she's waging a no-holds-barred campaign to land the Saber running back as her first client. But how's the NFL sports agent supposed to keep things strictly professional when Cedric pursues her with a passion no sane woman can resists? Could this sexy bad boy be good for her after all?

When Payton Mosely beloved father died, she realised she needed to change her life. Her father was a dedicated high school football coach, so she left her job as an extremely successful contract lawyer and decided she's become a sports agent. It's hard to break into that boys' club when you're a woman, but Payton has a plan.

Cedric Reeves, the New York Sabers' running back has been let loose by his agent after one too many scandalous stories and being dropped by his big sponsor. There's even talk that the Sabers might be reluctant to renew his contract at the end of the season. He's the perfect first client for Payton: the big agents are reluctant to take on such a troublemaker and have been telling him no, so he should be open to her overtures, and at the same time, if she manages to turn around such a troubled career, Payton knows she'll have more than enough interest from other clients.

Cedric is dismissive of Payton at first, but when she manages to get a few minutes of his time and wows him with her knowledge of the game and her determination, his attitude changes fast. But as they work together and the fantastic results start coming in fast, his attraction to her grows just as fast as his admiration for her skills as a negotiator.

This was a fun, fast read. I really loved the characters. Payton was fantastic. She might be right at the beginning of her career as a sports agent, but she knows exactly what she's doing. She's soon got Cedric's image sorted out (that felt a bit too easy, by the way. It's like: "ok, these people are always around when you get into trouble" "But these are my friends from back in the day, I don't want to sell out!" "They're parasites, they're not good for you, it's not selling out, it's moving on" "Ok" And problem sorted! It wasn't a huge issue for me, and I accepted it because it's a short book and there's plenty of other stuff to work through, but it wasn't as believable as the rest). Anyway, Peyton has also got the experience negotiating tough deals from her previous job and knows the game inside out, so she's extremely competent. And I loved that Cedric soon realises that. He's utterly and completely in awe of how good she is.

He's also extremely appreciative. Cedric might be a professional football player, but he's not one of the top stars. To his previous agent, with whom he'd been since he (illegally) paid Cedric a stipend while he was in University, he was just one of many clients. The man did as little for him as he could get away with, especially when Cedric started to be a bit of a troublemaker. Cedric should have found new representation long before the man dropped him, but to be honest, he isn't the brightest person when it comes to business (when he decides to sign with Payton, he basically gives her a blank check. He decides he trusts her, so he signs her contract without reading it and then keeps doing that with every deal she gets him. I guess it was the right decision, since Payton can be trusted, but it sounds like he was just as trusting with his previous agent...). Anyway, having Payton squarely in his corner, working hard to get his really excellent deals, blows Cedric mind. It also makes the decision of whether to go after her as a woman even harder. Their feelings for each other develop quite quickly, soon he needs her and is half in love with her, but he also needs her just as much as his agent, and he doesn't want to screw that up. In fact, neither of them do. But working together so intensely gives them a bit too many opportunities to give in to temptation.

I guess many of you reading this will want to know how well Rochon does the football bits of the book, whether she knows her stuff. The answer, I'm afraid, is I don't know. If this was proper football (sorry, kidding, kidding, couldn't resist!!), I could tell you, but I know practically nothing about American football. However, if I had to put money on it, my $$ would be on Rochon knowing what she's talking about. I felt there was a genuine love of the game showing in her writing, so I'd be surprised if she's making it up. I'd love to hear what people think, though!

MY GRADE: A B+.

The Lantern, by Deborah Lawrenson

2011-09-21T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: The Lantern
AUTHOR: Deborah Lawrenson

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 344
PUBLISHER: Orion

SETTING: Contemporary Southern France
TYPE: Gothic romance
SERIES: None

When Eve falls for the secretive, charming Dom, their whirlwind relationship leads them to purchase Les Genevriers, an abandoned house in a rural hamlet in the south of France. As the beautiful Provence summer turns to autumn, Eve finds it impossible to ignore the mysteries that haunt both her lover and the run-down old house, in particular the mysterious disappearance of his beautiful first wife, Rachel.

Whilst Eve tries to untangle the secrets surrounding Rachel's last recorded days, Les Genevriers itself seems to come alive. As strange events begin to occur with frightening regularity, Eve's voice becomes intertwined with that of Benedicte Lincel, a girl who lived in the house decades before. As the tangled skeins of the house's history begin to unravel, the tension grows between Dom and Eve. In a page-turning race, Eve must fight to discover the fates of both Benedicte and Rachel, before Les Genevriers' dark history has a chance to repeat itself.

Lazy day again, and the description above is pretty good, so I'm not going to bother with my own (this review is long enough, anyway!). Go ahead and read it, I'll wait.

Done? Well, if you read even that short summary, you problably don't need me to tell you that The Lantern owes much to Rebecca ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_(novel) ). There's a whirlwind relationship with a man the heroine doesn't know all that much about before they marry (in this case, begin living together). There's the very distinctive house in an area unfamiliar to the heroine, where she doesn't have any sort of support network. There's the big mystery involving the first wife, something that's clearly still having an effect on the man. And once you start reading, the similarities keep piling up. We've got a heroine whose real name we never find out (Eve is just a nickname Dom has come up with). The action even starts with Eve and Dom in some sort of exile, with Eve making dire remarks about knowing that your man has done a bad, bad thing, and then goes back and tells the story that brought them there.

Similarities or not, this was not a problem for me. The author freely acknowledges the inspiration, and then makes the story completely her own, taking it in a completely different direction. It's an homage, rather than a rewriting. There's the story of the previous residents of the house, but not only that, the relationship between Eve and Dom is quite different. Plus, it helps that there is no Mrs. Danvers, I guess!

So all that said, how did the story work? The answer is that I kind of liked it, on the whole, but there's a big central issue that was very close to making the book a complete failure. It's the fact that the conflict in Eve and Dom's relationship is based on non-communication. You see, Dom refuses to say anything at all about his former wife, Rachel, and asks Eve not to ask him any questions about her. Eve accepts this, grudgingly, but then can't resist digging around for answers.

My main issue was that the whole thing went too far beyond what would be reasonable without any woman insisting that Dom explained himself. We therefore had a situation where I was thinking badly of both characters:

With Dom, I was thinking that I could imagine no possible secret that excused being so damned mysterious, especially when he had to be aware that the woman he supposedly loved felt the need to know. I mean, there's this scene when he just starts crying and then refuses to say why. After something like that, there are two options: a) your girlfriend doesn't give a shit about you, and therefore doesn't feel the need to know what's wrong, or b) your girlfriend loves you, and is therefore being torn apart by not understanding what's happening to you. Given that, Dom's insistence on keeping quiet seems cruel, because he knows a) is not the case. To be fair, when we finally find out what Dom's big secret was, it is properly traumatic, and something big enough that it seems credible it would have screwed up with Dom in a major way. Enough to justify his actions during the book? There was much disagreement about that during the book club discussion.

As for Eve, her behaviour also bothered me. She basically takes the worst possible option. She could have insisted Dom tell her the truth, especially when it became clear it was something that still had a huge effect on him. She could have agreed to trust him and not ask questions, as he requested, even if it hurt her to do so. What she does, instead, is to tell Dom she trusts him, but at the same time go behind his back and research his former wife. I can understand perfectly well her need to know, but that's the worst of both worlds.

Lawrenson takes this to the point where she was walking the line between me continuing reading and throwing the book against the wall. It was frustrating, but for me, Lawrenson didn't quite cross the line, and the rest of what I liked about the book just about compensated for it. Your mileage may vary, however.

Yet another problem was that, while I love books with storylines happening in the present day and in the past, the successful ones tend to be the ones where whatever happened in the past mirrors and illuminates in some way the current storyline. I didn't feel that really happened in The Lantern. Eve and Dom's story is interspersed with the story of Benedicte, an old lady who used to live in the same house, who tells the story of her family and their lives. There's some fascinating stuff there. Her sister, Marthe, is blind, and overcomes incredible odds to become one of the most celebrated perfumieres in the world. There's also a horrible, evil brother, Pierre, and their stories are suitably dramatic. I kind of wished as I was reading that we were focusing on Marthe, rather than the more boring Benedicte, but in all, it was all fascinating.

Problem was, the story of Benedicte and her family felt very disconnected to our narrator's. The only element they seemed to have in common was the fact that Eve and Dom are living in what used to be Benedicte's house. Plus, Eve never seems all that interesting in finding out what happened back then -she never even really cottons on that something interesting might have happened! Yes, she starts doing some research, but that feels very throwaway... oh, this was the childhood home of someone famous, I'll read up a bit on her". It didn't even feel like she was interested enough to write the book about it that she was supposed to be writing.

Looks like I'm in a bit of a bitchy day today. Paragraphs and paragraphs describing what was wrong with the book, but I actually did enjoy it. I was quite absorbed by the story and the characters. I cared about them and wanted to know what was going on. I love modern gothics, and that's what I got here, with the hint of hauntings going on. Benedicte is haunted by the people in her past, and by the thought that she could, should have prevented some of the tragedies that happened, while Eve is haunted by Dom's previous wife, and even possibly by the house's former inhabitants. It's always just a hint, never a proper plot point, but I liked it.

But the best thing about it was the writing, and how Lawrenson used it to create the setting and mood of the story. The descriptions were lyrical and quite beautiful, using all five senses. It's a fantastic setting, and not only could could I picture it perfectly, I could smell it. This was quite appropriate in a book where perfume is quite a large part of the story. There were a few times when the description slowed down the narrative a bit, but it was worth it for the beautiful images it created.

To finish, I want to mention what, in this book where hauntings have a prominent place, ended up haunting me. It might be a bit spoilerish, so I'll white it out.[[[Days after finishing this, I can't forget the young girl who comes with Marthe to Les Genevieres and therefore shares Marthe's tragic end. I hated that it felt like she was completely disregarded. I found her fate the most tragic of all, for some reason. I couldn't stop thinking about this young girl, partially sighted at a time when it would have been even more of a struggle than it is today, who's managed to get to a point where the possibility of a career seems to open up before her. How proud and happy she must have been about it! And then, when doing something that must have seemed to her just completely unremarkable and not at all dangerous, accompanying her mentor to her childhood home, she's suddenly raped and killed. And for the author narrating the story, she merits nothing more than a passing reference. Maybe I'm being unfair, and the reaction I had was exactly what the author was after, but it really didn't feel that way.]]]

MY GRADE: A B-.

In Too Deep, by Jayne Ann Krentz

2011-09-19T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: In Too Deep
AUTHOR: Jayne Ann Krentz

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: Putnam

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Paranormal romance
SERIES: Book 1 of the Looking Glass Trilogy, but also part of the Arcane Society series.

Scargill Cove is the perfect place for Fallon Jones, confirmed recluse and investigator of the paranormal. It's a hot spot, a convergence point for unusually strong currents of energy, which might explain why the town attracts misfits and drifters like moths to a flame. Now someone else has been drawn to the Cove-Isabella Valdez, on the run from some very dangerous men.

When she starts work as Fallon's assistant, Isabella impresses him by organizing his pathologically chaotic office-and doesn't bat an eye at the psychic aspect of his job. She's a kindred spirit, a sanctuary from a world that considers his talents a form of madness. But after a routine case unearths an antique clock infused with dark energy, Fallon and Isabella are dragged into the secret history of Scargill Cove and forced to fight for their lives, as they unravel a cutthroat conspiracy with roots in the Jones family business . . . and Isabella's family tree.

I kind of suspect that with Fallon Jones, JAK was trying to pull a Rothgar (am I showing my age here?). You know, that character who keeps showing up in the previous books in the series and whose story readers are desperate to read. She didn't quite succeed. I mean, I was slightly intrigued by him, and when I saw that his book was coming out went "Oh, that's cool", but that's about it. And it's a good thing I didn't get too excited, because this wasn't such a great book.

Fallon Jones is the eccentric head of Jones & Jones, the Arcane Society's detective agency. Fallon's talent is chaos theory, which, in JAK's world, makes him excellent at discerning the connections between seemingly unrelated events (I'm no expert in chaos theory, but the small bit of work I've done on complex systems makes me suspect this is not quite right). This talent of his makes people think he's paranoid and a conspiracy theory nut, but you know how it goes, right? It's not paranoia if someone's really out to get you, and by extension, you're not a conspiracy theory nut if there really is a conspiracy. And Fallon's obsession, the shadowy criminal organisation called Nightshade, really exists and really is out to get, not just him, but the whole Arcane Society.

Fallon has moved J&J out to Scargill Cove, a small town on the coast of California, and almost without noticing, he has acquired a partner, Isabella Valdez. Isabella has her own talents and her own secrets, some of which have made her a target for some baddies. She's on the run, but when she gets to Scargill Cove she feels she can stop for a while. She applies for the post of Fallon's assistant, but sorting out his office takes no time at all, and becoming a fellow investigator seems like the natural next step, whether Fallon is enthusiastic about the idea or not.

The romance had really excellent bones. These two are perfect for each other. Isabella is, if anything, even better than Fallon at conspiracy theory. She sees the world as he sees it, and with her, he need not feel like a nut, because it all makes perfect sense when they talk. Being with Isabella also calms Fallon down, helps him think more clearly, and she needs him just as much.

That said, the actual romance felt a bit meh, which was a bit strange, considerig that they are so well-suited to each other. I didn't really perceive that much chemistry between them, I guess, and then there's the issue that the plot keeps getting in the way. It's typical of the direction JAK's been taking lately, with loads of stuff about the Arcane Society and Nightshade's machinations, and I'm BORED of all that. It's even more frustrating because there's some interesting stuff here, as well. The secret that the town's entire population is keeping, for instance, is really cool. Or at least, it would have been if it hadn't been to do with Nightshade and the Arcane Society.

Can we have something new, please?

MY GRADE: A C+. And this is a grade that is more about my boredom with the repetition than about the intrinsic quality of the book.

The Grim Reaper, Conspiracies and Jellyfish

2011-09-17T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: First Grave On The Right
AUTHOR: Darynda Jones

Our heroine, Charley Davidson, is the Grim Reaper. Yes, really. Her job is to help people cross over to the other side. Most manage it fine, but some hang around and she needs to send them on their way. Charley's also a PI, and both jobs go together fine: dead people tend to have some really useful info (like who killed them, even), and investigative skills come useful when she needs to find out more about the circumstances of someone's death.

In the bit I managed to get through, there are a group of lawyers who have just been killed and need Charley's help, in both her capacities. There's also a spirit that's seemingly haunting her, and it looks like it's this tragic and handsome young man she met once when they were both very young.

I actually really liked the setup and was quite intrigued by both the mystery and the emerging romance, but I just couldn't bear Charley. She's like a MaryJanice Davidson heroine on speed. Wisecracks all over the place, no matter how inappropriate the time or place. She came across as stupid, not sassy and snarky and clever, and after about a third of the book I couldn't stand her anymore.

MY GRADE: DNF.

TITLE: Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History
AUTHOR: David Aaronovitch

This was my book club's choice a couple of months ago. It's non fiction, and the author examines several conspiracy theories, trying to understand what it is about them that makes people believe some very dodgy things.

I expected a little bit more analysis than I got, but on the other hand, there's quite a lot of narration and debunking of conspiracy theories (some well-known ones, like the JFK assassination or the theory that 9/11 was an inside job, but also a couple of British ones which I knew nothing about), which was still interesting. And to be fair, what analysis there was was pretty good. The writing is quite snappy and readable, with a focus on entertaining the reader, rather than being scholarly and exhaustive. There is, however, a bit of psychobabble, which can get slightly tedious.

On the whole, I enjoyed it, but that might be because conspiracy theories are not my thing (well, not anymore... I remember being completely, 100% convinced by the JFK movie as a teen!). I've worked for the government for the last 10 years (two different governments, in fact), and the idea that we would be able to coordinate and arrange the stuff we've supposed to have done is laughable!

MY GRADE: A B.

TITLE: Happyslapped by a Jellyfish
AUTHOR: Karl Pilkington

Picked this up on a whim at the library, having watched An Idiot Abroad and found it hilarious (albeit in a "this is so wrong it's good" kind of way). This is basically a collection of essays (if you can call them that) about Karl Pilkington's holidays -extracts of his diaries, basically.

It's easy: if you liked An Idiot Abroad you'll probably get a kick out of this, because Karl Pilkington writes exactly as he speaks (and if it was a ghostwriter that did it, then well done, it's spot on). It's ungrammatical, unsophisticated, and extremely funny. He's so deadpan and outrageous at the same time that this had quite a few laugh-out-loud moments, and a few unexpected bits of truth.

And by the way, fantastic title!

MY GRADE: A B-.

Don't Tempt Me, by Loretta Chase

2011-09-15T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Don't Tempt Me
AUTHOR: Loretta Chase

COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 384
PUBLISHER: Avon

SETTING: 19th century England
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

Spunky English girl overcomes impossible odds and outsmarts heathen villains. That’s the headline when Zoe Lexham returns to England. After twelve years in the exotic east, she’s shockingly adept in the sensual arts. She knows everything a young lady shouldn’t and nothing she ought to know. She’s a walking scandal, with no hope of a future...unless someone can civilize her.

Lucien de Grey, the Duke of Marchmont, is no knight in shining armor. He’s sarcastic, cynical, easily bored, and dangerous to women. He charms, seduces, and leaves them--with parting gifts of expensive jewelry to dry their tears. But good looks and charm, combined with money and rank, make him welcome everywhere. The most popular bachelor in the Beau Monde can easily save Zoe’s risqué reputation . . . if the wayward beauty doesn’t lead him into temptation, and a passion that could ruin them both.

When she was 12, Zoe Lexham was stolen from her family during a trip to Egypt and ended up in a harem (sounds almost like a Bertrice Small story, doesn't it?). The story starts years later, when she's managed to escape and make her way back to England. The joyful reunion does have plenty of joy, but it's not all roses, as her sisters are overwhelmed by the scandal caused by her return (society, high and low, finds the idea of the Harem Girl scandalous and titillating).

But if her return is a bolt out of the blue for her family, it's almost a bigger shock to Lucien, the Duke of Marchmont. Lucien is a friend of the family, having been Lord Lexham's ward for a while after a string of tragic losses left him on his own. As a very young man, he was very attached to little Zoe, if in a typical teenage boy "what a pest this girl is" way. When she disappeared in Egypt, Lucien was hit extremely hard by her loss. It was loss too many for him, not helped by the insinuations that Zoe's disappearance must have been somewhat her fault, as she was known for running away constantly, even being nicknamed "The Bolter".

In the years since Zoe's disappearance, Lucien has become a cold, disdainful man, every inch the superior Duke, but Zoe's return shakes his very foundations. After spending so many of her formative years in the harem, Zoe just does not behave like other English girls her age (she doesn't understand that one does not talk about pleasuring men in public, say), and Lucien finds her quite disconcerting. He also finds her quite attractive...

I loved this book, mainly because I adored what Chase did with the characters. Zoe's portrayal is especially fantastic. It's a difficult one to do well, the whole issue of her not knowing society's rules. It could have been played for laughs, which might have made Zoe look like an utter twit. Chase's treatment is much more thoughtful. She has to balance Zoe's years in the harem with the fact that she did spend the first 12 years of her life in England, so she does have at least some knowledge of what's appropriate and what isn't in Society. The moments of genuine ignorance of this were not that many, and all felt believable.

It's more that Zoe, having lived for so long and for such character-forming years outside of Society, can now see many of the strict rules for what they are: silly and arbitrary. And here Chase makes another good choice: she could have written a character who, because she sees the rules as silly and arbitrary, refuses to abide by them. She didn't. Zoe is intelligent enough to realise that silly or not, breaking those rules has consequences, so she has to be careful and can't do exactly what she likes just anywhere. Things like torturing Lucien are fine, she can be herself with him, but if she does something scandalous, say, at a party, the consequences could be pretty bad. She acknowledges that what happened to her has had an impact on the people around her, too. But also, that happy or not about her reappearance, this will have some impact on her sisters. Yes, they are horrible, horrible people, but some of what they say has a germ of truth in it.

The review at Dear Author makes the point that with Zoe, innocence is not the same as naivete, and that's very true. That's especially prominent in how Chase deals with her virginity (she was the concubine of an impotent man). For once, I didn't feel like the author was using this plot point to reassure readers that the heroine is still "good" (which infuriates me). There was a much more interesting point to it, and that's the contrast between Zoe's physical "innocence" and the fact that she's not naive at all, which is something that drives Lucien mad.

Lucien is a bit less interesting than Zoe, but that's just because Zoe is so fascinating. He's plenty interesting himself. One of my favourite types of hero is the cold, arrogant extremely self-possessed man who is completely shaken by the heroine. That's exactly what happens here. He just can't seem to behave in the proper way he's used to when Zoe is around. But that loss of self-possession wasn't just funny and sweet to see, it was also poignant. This is a man who's had so much loss in his life, that he can't quite believe he's actually got someone back. He also has a great difficulty in adjusting his view of the past. zoe had become just one more of those people who had left him, and this has coloured his view of the world. But now it's clear she didn't leave him, she was taken, and that shakes everything.

It's a great book, very much a Loretta Chase. The only reason it's not an A is because I found the very ugly, almost vicious, portrayal of other women, especially Zoe's sisters, quite jarring. It didn't seem to go with the tone of the rest of the book. Still, other than that, it's fantastic.

MY GRADE: A B+.

The Rose Garden, by Susanna Kearsley

2011-09-13T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: The Rose Garden
AUTHOR: Susanna Kearsley

COPYRIGHT: 2011 (already out in the UK, out in October in the US)
PAGES: 480
PUBLISHER: Allison & Busby

SETTING: Contemporary and 18th century Cornwall
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

When Eva’s film star sister Katrina dies, she leaves California and returns to Cornwall, where they spent their childhood summers, to scatter Katrina’s ashes and in doing so return her to the place where she belongs.

But Eva must also confront the ghosts from her own past, as well as those from a time long before her own. For the house where she so often stayed as a child is home not only to her old friends the Halletts, but also to the people who had lived there in the eighteenth century. When Eva finally accepts that she is able to slip between centuries and see and talk to the inhabitants from hundreds of years ago, she soon finds herself falling for Daniel Butler, a man who lived – and died – long before she herself was born.

Eva begins to question her place in the present, and in laying her sister to rest, comes to realise that she too must decide where she really belongs, choosing between the life she knows and the past she feels so drawn towards.

I can't believe I haven't posted this review yet! I read The Rose Garden when it first came out months ago, and by the way, I loved the fact that for once, the geo restrictions worked in my favour and I was able to purchase it even earlier in e-format here in England. So anyway, I wrote up some notes about it as soon as I finished, and then never got round to actually tidying up and fleshing them up into a proper review. So here goes!

The Rose Garden was a bit of a surprise, and I must confess, at first I thought it wasn't a good surprise. You see, this is a time travel romance, and I hate time travel romance. This was definitely not what I was expecting. I knew there was going to be some sort of wrinkle in the time-space continuum, but I thought it was going to be more like Mariana, where the heroine has dreams of a previous life and follows the action that way, or The Winter Sea, where the heroine experiences a strange kind of ancestral memory and somehow starts including the life of an ancestor in the novel she's writing. But nope, this is proper time travel, with the heroine jumping back and forth from her life in present-day England to 300 years earlier. And you know what? I loved it!

Starting from the beginning, then: Eva has just lost her beloved sister, Katrina. When she goes to Cornwall to scatter her ashes in the place where they spent so many happy days in their youth, she makes contact again with the Halletts, good friends from back in the day. Feeling a bit at a loss after Katrina's death, Eva accepts their invitation to stay at their home, Trelowarth, for a few weeks.

For the first time in a while, Eva feels more at peace. She makes friends, rekindles old acquaintances and gets involved in the rose garden of the title, the business ran by the Halletts. But then things start going a bit weird, culminating with the realisation that she's jumped back in time. She's still in Trelowarth, but almost 300 years earlier.

And she's not alone there, the house is occupied by the handsome sea captain Daniel Butler and his Irish friend, Fergal, both of whom, Eva soon realises, are Jacobite supporters and up to their necks in plotting and planning and (this being Cornwall) smuggling. The authorities are quite suspicious of their activities and keep a close eye on them, so Eva has quite a few difficulties with the fact that she keeps popping back and forth in between the 21st and 18th centuries, period-appropriate clothing included! And as the relationship between her and Daniel deepens, she needs to decide where her home is.

As always with Kearsley, the book is rich in atmosphere and location. I wanted to go to Cornwall really badly as I was reading. It was also peopled with wonderful, memorable characters. Eva and Daniel are lovely, and so is their romance, and I especially enjoyed Fergal's charm and the true friendship that develops between him and Eva. Her relationships with the Halletts and the people in town are warm and well-developed as well.

I also really loved the sense of history. I have a limited knowledge of the Jacobites and the plots they were involved in, so it was all new to me. I do know how things ended, though, and so does Eva, which added an extra element here. Because if someone from the future suddenly showed up in my life, I would want nothing better than to know what happens in the future, what changes and how. And Daniel is quite interested in Eva's life, but he seems to be more into the fascinating objects she accidentally brings with her than in future events. Not that Eva is anxious to tell him. She's probably seen Back to the Future as well, and knows you need to be very careful not to alter events, so she's intentially vague, all the while angsting about the fact that she knows things don't end well for Daniel's cause. The way Kearsley deals with this is brilliant, though.

What's also brilliant is the resolution. I don't want to give anything away, but there's a wonderful surprise which ties several ends together, and which made me go "of course!" and wonder how I hadn't seen this coming. I also loved the answer to the eternal question in time travel of which of the two lovebirds is going to have to abandon their own time. Very well done.

The only bit that didn't completely satisfy was the ease with which Daniel accepted the idea that Eva had come from the future. I mean, if I suddenly came face to face with a time traveller from the future, it would take a lot more to convince me, even if they have all sorts of futuristic objects and even though the concept of time-travel is a familiar one to us these days. Back then they wouldn't have even considered the idea, and all sorts of supernatural and quite worrying explanations would have come to mind much more easily. Yes, there's the hint that Daniel isn't exactly new to strange occurrences, but still, it was much too easy.

Oh, well, that's a pretty minor issue, all in all, it's a fantastic read.

MY GRADE: A B+.

The Cupid Effect, by Dorothy Koomson

2011-09-10T06:00:00.003+01:00

TITLE: The Cupid Effect
AUTHOR: Dorothy Koomson

COPYRIGHT: 2003
PAGES: 342
PUBLISHER: Sphere

SETTING: Contemporary England
TYPE: Chick Lit
SERIES: None

There’s something magical about Ceri D’Altroy . . .

After leaving London to follow her heart’s desire to become a psychology lecturer, Ceri D’Altroy vows to leave her matchmaking ways behind her for good. Unfortunately, all she seems to do is inspire the new people she meets to change their lives.

There’s Ed, who’s decided to declare his love to a woman who is way out of his league; Mel and Claudine, two long-term friends who are now tempted to start an illicit affair; and Gwen, the chain-smoking head of department who has a deep, dark secret she only wants to share with her new employee.

No-one who comes into contact with Ceri is ever the same again. Could this unsuspecting young woman be modern-day Cupid?

Ceri D'Altroy has a perfectly good life in London. Her professional life is stable and successful and she's financially secure. Her personal life, however, is not up to the same standard. Not just her love-life (although that's not going too well, either): Ceri is the sort of person people tend to confide in, but in her case, they do so to a ridiculous extent. She's tired of being everyone's Agony Aunt, while not having anyone who really cares about her problems.

She needs a change. Ceri's dream has always been to become a psychology lecturer, and so she decides to give up on her life in London and go back to Leeds, where she went to university, to pursue that dream. Yes, it means she'll have to go back to being a lodger, when she's used to having her own flat, but it's a chance to have a clean start. No more Agony Aunt Ceri, she's going to mind her own business. But as you might suspect, it's not as easy as that.

This is Koomson's first book, but it doesn't really show. Her writing is assured and her plotting smooth. The one thing that makes The Cupid Effect's place in her bibliography clear is the tone. Koomson's books have got progressively more heart-wrenching and angsty, so in comparison to My Best Friend's Girl and Good Night, Beautiful, this is positively light-hearted. The level of angst is more akin to the fabulous The Chocolate Run: i.e. more chick lit with a heart than women's fiction that leaves you flattened.

Ceri is a lovely character, very much an Emma figure, whose efforts to help her friends often result in chaos. It was a lot of fun to see her deal with all the new people in her life and come to terms with herself. The book doesn't have a dominating central plot, and can sometimes feel a bit meandering, but I enjoyed Ceri so much that I was quite content to go along for the ride.

The cover I link to above is the edition I've got, but the one to the right seems to be the most recent one. I quite like both (much better than this ugly one, which seems to want to hide the fact the heroine is black) but this one probably reflects the amount of romance in the book better. Ceri does get her happy ending and her romance, but it's not the focus of the book. It didn't disappoint me, but I think it would be best to come into the book not expecting a romance novel proper.

MY GRADE: A B+.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb, by Jane Rogers

2011-09-08T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: The Testament of Jessie Lamb
AUTHOR: Jane Rogers

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 240
PUBLISHER: Sandstone Press

SETTING: Contemporary NW England (somewhere outside Manchester, I think)
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None

Women are dying in their millions. Some blame scientists, some see the hand of God, some see human arrogance reaping the punishment it deserves. Jessie Lamb is an ordinary girl living in extraordinary times: as her world collapses, her idealism and courage drive her towards the ultimate act of heroism. If the human race is to survive, it’s up to her.But is Jessie heroic? Or is she, as her father fears, impressionable, innocent, incapable of understanding where her actions will lead? Set just a month or two in the future, in a world irreparably altered by an act of biological terrorism, The Testament of Jessie Lamb explores a young woman’s determination to make her life count for something, as the certainties of her childhood are ripped apart.

This month my book club decided to read something out of the Man Booker prize longlist. The book chosen was Patrick McGuinness' The Last Hundred Days (and I'm halfway through it as I write this), but the one that caught my attention when I read the summaries was the one that seemed to be the most unlikely choice for the Booker.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb is set in the near future, in a world still reeling from a bioterrorist attack that unleashed Maternal Death Syndrome (MDS) on humanity. Everyone is infected with a deadly virus that is activated when a woman is pregnant. There is no cure, and the millions of women who happened to be pregnant when the attack happened have all died.

Our protagonist and narrator is 16-year-old Jessie. As the book starts, she's been imprisoned by her father, who's determined to prevent her from doing something -we're not told what until later. Her diary entries written during her captivity frame the story of what brought her to that point, and what happened afterwards.

At the beginning, TTOJL reminded me a bit of another book featuring a teenager in the midst of an unfolding apocalypse, Life As We Knew It. Like the narrator of that book, Jessie is often too consumed in her private worries to do more than cursorily mention some of the Big Stuff going on around the world. And yet, even through her uninterested reports, we get an excellent idea of what's happening, in fact, what must be happening behind some of those headlines, even when Jessie herself doesn't even consider that.

Gradually, though, circumstances make Jessie more and more engaged in what's going on. The end of the world as we know it and the possibility that there might be no more children born ever again has unleashed a wave of activism and protest groups amongst the young, representing every possible interest and viewpoint. And Jessie and her friends are in the thick of it.

Soon comparisons to Life As We Knew It flew out the window and the book started acquiring tinges of Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Scientists have developed a way to impregnate young volunteers (the younger the better) with vaccinated embryos and then keep their bodies artificially alive through the pregnancy, even as their brains turn to mush.

My first instinct with Jessie was to be exactly like her parents and dismiss her fascination with the Sleeping Beauties (as the volunteers are called) as pure teenage melodrama, the typical fantasy of "I will die in an extremely heroic way and then they'll be sorry". I rolled my eyes when she first came up with her plan. But after a while, I had no choice but to start taking her and her decisions more seriously. Stroppy teenager or not, she does have a point about the adults around her being hypocritical, talking eloquently about the need for people to sacrifice for the future of humankind, but that's only as long as it doesn't have a personal cost to them. Talk, talk, talk, without actually doing anything, that's what grown-ups are to Jessie and her cohort, and damned if they are not proved right.

The genius of this book is that Jessie doesn't change from emo teen into inspiring, corageous heroine. She's still irritating and immature, even when her actions are inspiring, corageous and mature. I was still rolling my eyes and not particularly liking her as she made the most extraordinary and brave decisions.

This is not really an "issue" book and the focus is on Jessie, but as her story unfolds, Rogers provides a thoughtful treatment of quite thorny subjects. We all bring prejudices to our reading, and I was well aware of mine bristling. The Sleeping Beauties shouldn't have to do it, why are women always the victims, and yes, I instinctively aligned myself with the FLAME activists in the book in opposing the self-sacrifices. They argued that if MDS was killing men, "they" would have sorted out a solution already, and young women shouldn't have to be sacrificing themselves. And yet, young men have forever been the ones to volunteer for wars in which it was pretty clear a good number of them would be simply cannon fodder, so it's not that easy. Are these girls old enough to make this decision by themselves, even if they seem to be making it for the right reasons? What if they're deluding themselves? And actually, what are the right reasons? No conclusions, I'm afraid, but I liked that Rogers made me question these things, and by setting up a story that looked deceptively simple.

MY GRADE: A B+.

Demon Marked, by Meljean Brook

2011-09-06T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Demon Marked (excerpt)
AUTHOR: Meljean Brook

COPYRIGHT: 2011 (comes out today)
PAGES: 336
PUBLISHER: Berkley Sensation

SETTING: Contemporary US and London
TYPE: Paranormal romance
SERIES: 7th full length novel int he Guardians series

Nicholas St. Croix is familiar with the evil of demons. After his father’s death, a demon took over his mother’s body and raised him. Six years ago, his “mother” was responsible for the disappearance of the woman he loved, and Nicholas swore he’d find her—even if he had to go to Hell and back. Except she finds him first—and with one tormented kiss, he knows she too is a demon. Now he is determined to take his revenge…

Ash is a half-demon with no memory of her past or how she got to Hell. All she knows is that Nicholas St. Croix holds the key to her identity. And though he’s clearly drawn to her, Nicholas makes no secret of his distrust of her. Yet one kiss at a time, he breaks down her defenses as they battle an array of demons and Guardians. But is Ash’s greatest enemy the man at her side?

Ash has no idea who (or what) she is. She has practically no memories from before the day she was dumped in a psychiatric hospital by a scary woman with mad eyes, who warned her not to kill anyone or interfere with their free will. In the three years since, she's discovered only a few things about herself: she doesn't feel anything (lacks affect and empathy, as her psychiatrist puts it), she doesn't need to sleep or eat, her senses are much stronger than those of people around her, and her eyes sometimes glow red. Her memories are very vague... a person with a terrifying voice calling her Ash-something-or-other and an explosion of pain, plus a vague sense of familiarity about some things.

Ash is determined to find out more about herself and after escaping the hospital, her research leads her to Nicholas St. Croix. Ash looks exactly like his former girlfriend, who disappeared into thin air after, according to Nicholas, being shot by his mother, Madelyn.

When Nicholas meets Ash he immediately knows she's a demon. He knows he should kill her straight away, as his Guardian contact advises, but the possibility of using her to further his life's mission is too tempting. Because Nicholas lives for revenge. When he was a young boy a demon took his mother's place and proceeded to make his and his father's lives hell. His father was finally driven to suicide, and Nicholas came really close to it. He's now bent on finding that demon again and forcing it to reveal what happened to his mother. Ash clearly has some sort of link to it, so even if her behaviour is disconcerting for a demon and she makes him come perilously close to laughter, when he should be hating her, they'll need to stick together.

So, this is going to be yet another gushing review of a Meljean Brook novel (in a way, I guess it wasn't so bad to have been disappointed by The Blushing Bounder -that might give me a bit more credibility regarding this author!). I loved it. Once I'd started it, I could barely put it down.

It's a book with two quite different halves, which can sometimes be a bit problematic, but worked perfectly here. Much as I enjoyed the second half, which brings us back into the heart of the Guardians' world and has more action, the first half was my favourite, for the intensity of the romance.

It's a bit of a road/cabin romance in this half, with Ash and Nicholas forced to spend time in close proximity and to get to know each other. Nicholas starts out very clear about the evil of demons, and the impossibility that any one of them could do anything that is not designed to make humans' lives hell. So Ash completely throws him. He just can't figure out what the twist is, why she's doing what she does and what's in it for her.

Ash is completely disarming, and very fun to read. Her role in this part of the book is a really cool twist on the wide-eyed innocent, first as a result of having no real emotions other than curiosity, and when she starts to feel again, as a result of having no inhibitions and, having entered a bargain, with Nicholas, it not being possible for her to lie. She soon becomes a bit of a mischief-maker, as well, so she delights in keeping Stone-Cold St. Croix permanently off-balance.

Nicholas changes massively in this relatively short time, but it was believable. His interactions with Ash were so intense that it made sense that he would be forced to reevaluate what was an almost irrational hatred, and the feelings that emerge are all the stronger for that.

And then the big action starts, which doesn't sideline the romance at all, because the romance is what brings even more significance to what's going on. It is, as always with Brook, a plot full of fantastic twists and turns. At one point I was surprised to think that the way out of the pickle Ash was in seemed quite clear. That didn't seem right for a Guardians book, and sure enough, not long after that, there was a twist that changed things, and moved this to a "how on earth are they going to get out of that?" situation. I loved it.

Now, what a lot of long-time readers of the Guardians are going to be wondering is yes, but what about Michael? All I will say is that this late in the series I was expecting to see some big developments in the bigger picture, and I got just that. I did find it a teeny bit disappointing that the a-ha moment, when what needed to happen became clear, felt a bit deus ex machina, when I would have preferred a more organic realisation, but it was not a big problem. It worked, and now I can't wait to see how things are resolved.

Part of me is gutted that the series is coming close to an end, but it's all just so exciting and I want to know that ending so badly that I don't mind!

MY GRADE: An A-.

Wild & Steamy anthology, by Meljean Brook, Jill Myles and Carolyn Crane

2011-08-31T07:05:00.003+01:00

TITLE: Wild & Steamy anthology
AUTHORS: Meljean Brook, Jill Myles and Carolyn Crane

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PUBLISHER: Self-published

One of my favourite reads last year was Meljean Brook's Here There Be Monsters, the short story that kicked off the Iron Seas series. I adored it. I never wanted it to end and felt it was the perfect short story. When I found out Brook had self-published another story in the series, in an anthology with two other authors, it took me about half a second to power up my Kindle and click buy.

The Blushing Bounder, by Meljean Brook

A Tale of the Iron Seas - While the search for a killer puts Constable Newberry's life in danger, he faces a danger of another kind: to his heart, by the woman forced to marry him. What will it take for this prudish bounder to convince his wife to stay?

The Blushing Bounder is a prequel to The Iron Duke, and features Mina's Constable, Edward Newberry. Constable Newberry and his newlywed wife are both recently come from America, where many Brits escaped to when the Horde invaded. America remained free from the Horde's invasion and developed into a place with mores akin to those in a Trad Regency, whereas the Horde's domination radically changed the social structures in England.

Back in America, Constable Newberry and Temperance became friends, even though she was much more highly-born than he. Temperance became sick with consumption, and decided to use her inheritance to pay for a sanatorium where to spend her last years. But before she could do this, her supposed friend forced her into a compromising situation and she ended up married to the horrid man and living in London, condemned to spend the last years of her life in a grimy place where people don't blink at having gruesome appliances grafted onto themselves.

But obviously, not all is as it seems...

It pains me to say so, loving this series so much, but The Blushing Bounder wasn't as great at it could...no, should have been. In fact, I finished it feeling slightly disappointed.

It was a setup I really liked, ripe from some fantastic emotional development and the sort of tingling chemistry I've becomed used to with Meljean Brook. What I got was quite a short story (about 50 pages, if we assume some 250 words per page) with really intriguing world-building, but with a plot which felt like it hadn't been properly fleshed out. It all felt very sketchy, and things just happened, without us being actually shown the character's change in attitude.

A couple of examples: first, Temperance's feelings for her husband. She goes from thinking of him as horrid to realising she loves him. I do get it that she always did love him, and just resented his actions, but it all felt too abrupt, it would have been much more satisfying if things had been slightly more gradual.

Second, the resolution to Temperance's health issues. This might be a bit of a spoiler, so skip this paragraph if you don't want to know. In the end, the momentous decision to finally get Temperance infected with the bugs felt a bit too easy. Yes, she and Edward had been under a mistaken impression about the consequences of doing so (that was quite funny, actually) and now knew the truth, but in this and previous books, I got the feeling there's a lot more to the Bounders' distaste for Horde technology. Witness Temperance instinctive revulsion when she notices the sewing enhancements grafted to Miss Locksmith's limbs. But that lifelong prejudice is abandoned in a second. It's "oh, you don't turn into a zombie? Brilliant, let's do this!"

As for Edward, there's just too little of his point of view. His feelings would have been even more interesting than Temperance's. He's done something unethical out of desperation to save his beloved's life, and he feels guilty, even though he'd do it again in a flash. Sounds fantastic, but we see almost nothing of it. What we see is really well done, especially the bits we see from the POV of Temperance, who is not seeing what's right under her nose, but I needed more. Also, why the crypticness and the lack of communication with his wife? In Here There Be Monsters there also was a misunderstanding about the hero's intentions, but it felt natural then. I could find absolutely no reason why Edward could not explain to Temperance why he'd done what he'd done.

All this sketchiness made me not really feel the romance. I liked the characters more than fine, but I just didn't know them very well. That's the most disappointing thing of all: what I like most about Meljean Brook's work is that she really goes deep with her characterisation. Her characters are complex and subtle and you get to know them inside out. Edward and Temperance.... weren't and we didn't.

I would love to have seen what the author could have done if she'd made the story a bit longer and (much as I liked seeing Mina again) if she'd cut the pointless detective bit, which added nothing to the story and just took up space that should have been devoted to the main characters.

MY GRADE: A B-.

Vixen, by Jill Myles

Miko's denied her were-fox nature for far too long and turned her back on her vixen heritage. But when she meets two very sexy cat-shifters, she has to decide if she truly wants to give up on her frisky side, or embrace it. Because the were-fox in her doesn't want to choose between both men... it wants them both.

No additional summary needed from me, this describes the story well enough.

This was my first time reading Jill Myles, and there were enough good things here that I might give her another try in a longer format. I liked the idea of the struggle Miko's facing between her animal nature and what she wants as a human (although really, given the sexual freedom she was exposed to as she was growing up, how come she never even thought of the possibility of polyamory?). The writing flows well, Myles does nice sexual tension and the two heroes were suitably sexy and completely smitten by Miko.

That said, the story didn't really work all that well, and felt underdeveloped. It's only slightly longer than The Blushing Bounder and although the worldbuilding is simpler and there's less stuff going on, I still would have needed a bit more before I could believe these people were really as into each other as they're supposed to be. The men might know each other really well, but Miko doesn't really know them and they don't know her. Thankfully, Myles doesn't have them declaring undying love for each other, but I didn't feel they were ready to commit to a proper relationship, either.

Also, Miko jumps with both feet into TSTL territory, and she does so TWICE in this very short story. That annoyed me.

MY GRADE: A C+.

Kitten-Tiger and the Monk, by Carolyn Crane

A Disillusionists Novella - Sophia Sidway, Midcity's most dangerous memory revisionist, seeks out the mysterious Monk in the wasteland beneath the Tangle turnpike, hoping for redemption…but it turns out that the Monk is not all that pious, and the turnpike is no turnpike at all.

Urban fantasy is not really my thing, but the concept of this series is one that piqued my interest anyway with the previous, full-length books. It was good to read this as a sample.

Sophia has the power of messing with people's minds, removing recent memories and replacing them with something else. This makes extremely dangerous. She's made use of her power often in the last few years, and she's sick of herself. That's why she's in search of the Monk, a man who has a power just as scary as her own. He can "reset" people, and Sophia wants him to do exactly that to her.

To contact The Monk, however, Sophia is sent to Robert, the last man she wants to see. Years earlier they were in love and she betrayed him in order to protect her family. But she wants rid of her power bad enough to face the guilt and the fact that she still has feelings for Robert.

I find myself in the same place as the previous times I've read urban fantasy. I admired quite a few things about the story: the worldbuilding is intrincate (but not bewildering, even though I haven't read Crane before) and the setting atmospheric, the characters are well-drawn (it helps that this story is quite a bit longer than the previous two), the romance was believable and angsty. It still didn't really draw me in. I finished this story having liked it well enough, but not particularly tempted to read the series, and I don't really know why.

MY GRADE: A B-.

Round Ireland With a Fridge, by Tony Hawks

2011-08-26T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Round Ireland With a Fridge
AUTHOR: Tony Hawks

COPYRIGHT: 2001
PAGES: 272
PUBLISHER: St. Martin's

SETTING: Contemporary Ireland
TYPE: Non Fiction
SERIES: None

Whilst in Ireland for an International Song Competition, Tony Hawks was amazed to see a hitch-hiker, trying to thumb a lift, but with a fridge. This seemed amazingly optimistic - his Irish friends, however, thought nothing of it at all. "I had clearly arrived in a country", writes Tony, "where the qualification for ‘eccentric’ involved a great deal more than that to which I had become used". Years pass... but the fridge incident haunts our author.

Until one night, heavy with drink, he finds himself arguing about Ireland with a friend. It is, he insists, a "magical place", so magical in fact, that a man could even get a lift with a fridge. The next morning there is a note by the bed. "I hereby bet Tony Hawks the sum of One Hundred Pounds that he cannot hitch hike around the circumference of Ireland with a fridge within one calendar month." The document was signed. The bet was made. This book is the story of Tony’s adventures through that incredible month. The people he meets, the difficulties, the triumphs. The fridge.

Very short summary if you don't fancy reading the summary: the author is a comedian who makes a drunken bet with a friend that he can hitchhike round Ireland with a fridge.

The result was, at least to me, meh. It was ok enough, but I think if I hadn't been reading it for my book club, I might not have kept reading. It's not bad, it just didn't click with me, especially the humour. It's not that the humour is offensive or anything like that, it's just a bit childish. YMMV, though, as a fair few of my fellow book clubbers thought it was hilarious. The perfect example of what didn't appeal to me was Hawks' "witty" comment when the owner of a B&B he's staying at tells him her dream is to get a Michelin star. He comes back with the supremely clever (paraphrasing here) 'I've never understood the need to get your establishment endorsed by Michelin. After all, no one cares if your food takes corners well.' *groan* But if you smiled, go get this book.

All this said, I did think the book improved as it went along. After a while the places, people and situation he stumbles into get more interesting. The people are quirkier and you start getting a feel of what Ireland is like (or was like at the time, anyway, before all the Celtic Tiger stuff happened). The last half or so I actually read quite quickly.

As an aside, I know it's pedantic of me, but couldn't help feeling he was cheating by making sure his quest was covered in a popular, national radio show. Pretty much every morning he'd telephone in to something called "The Gerry Ryan show", where the host would interview him and then tell his listeners to be on the lookout for a man with a fridge on the road between X and Y. Yes, he did a couple of times get a lift from people who hadn't heard of him and just happened to stop for a hitchhiker with a fridge, but most people who stopped (and offered free meals and accomodation) had heard of what he was doing. I think if I was his friend I would have felt a bit sore about paying that bet!

MY GRADE: A B-.

A Lot Like Love, by Julie James

2011-08-24T07:01:00.000+01:00

TITLE: A Lot Like Love
AUTHOR: Julie James

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 304
PUBLISHER: Berkley Sensation

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: There'll be a sequel in April 2012: About That Night

Jordan Rhodes is invited to all of Chicago's best parties, but there's only one the FBI wants to crash. To get her brother out of jail, she agrees to take Agent McCall as her date. But when the mission gets botched, requiring their "relationship" to continue, it starts to feel less like an investigation-and a lot like something else.

Trying to get evidence of money laundering that will convict a local crime boss, the FBI need access to a very exclusive wine tasting evening in order to plant the bugs they need in the right place. Fortunately, one of the guests is heiress Jordan Rhodes.

Jordan's beloved brother has been in jail for a few months, after the prosecutor decided to make an example out of him for some relatively harmless bad behaviour, and she's worried about him. He puts on a brave face whenever she visits, but she knows he's had a few run-ins with other inmates. So when the cops offer to let him out if she cooperates with their plans and takes one of them along to the wine tasting as her guest, she goes along with the plan.

But things don't go exactly as expected. The harmless-looking agent who was supposed to pose as her new guy comes down with a bug at the last minute, and the only one who can jump in is the very aggressively good-looking and macho Nick McCall, who just rubs her wrong. And then it turns out that the target of the investigation has a bit of a crush on Jordan (yep, even crime bosses crush on girls), and has decided to dig some dirt of her new boyfriend. Nick is now being followed, and it wouldn't look right if he had no more contact with Jordan, right?

Julie James is fast becoming an autobuy author, with her smart, competent heroines and the men who adore that about them. A Lot Like Love has that in spades. Just as in James' previous book, we have a hero who's quite macho, but who relishes the fact that the woman he loves is independent and strong in her own right. Both Nick and Jack, from Something About You (to be reviewed soon), are well aware that some people might see the women they are with (a heiress to billions and a high-powered prosecutor) as out of their league, but they're self-assured enough that they don't care. I loved that about them.

And it was not just the abstract dynamics of the relationship that I loved about ALLL. Jordan and Nick were great together, with fantastic banter and chemistry. The writing flowed beautifully. The secondary characters were well-done and made me want to read more about them (Jordan's brother), without it feeling like James was sequel-baiting. There were some very funny scenes, which balanced out the more serious tone of the suspense plot. And that suspense plot was actually quite good. The villain was very believable: he wasn't doing what he was doing because he was evil and wanted to do evil things, as we often get in romantic suspense. In fact, this wasn't really romantic suspense. The suspense was just there to force these two together and to provide a bit of tension at the end, but it was never the focus.

My only complaint is that the book felt a bit short. It was almost as if it was wrapping up before it had completely got going, and this meant that I didn't feel like I saw Nick falling in love, it was more like one minute he was scoffing at the very idea of him falling in love with anyone, and the next, he was admitting to himself, and without much struggle, that he had done just that. Still, a very enjoyable read.

MY GRADE: A B.

A loo book, an unsympathetic detective and predicting the future

2011-08-20T08:01:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Answer Me This!
AUTHOR: Helen Zaltzman & Olly Mann

Helen Zaltzman and Olly Mann present a weekly podcast that's fast become one my absolute favourites. The idea sounds a bit dull: people send them questions and they answer them. But nope, it's the farthest thing from dull you could possibly imagine. Helen and Olly (and Martin the Soundman, musn't forget him) are hilarious, and the most unpromising questions have a way of turning into comedy gold.

The book is basically a spinoff of the show, questions and answers divided by theme. It's not as fantastic as the podcast, but then again, I didn't expect it to be. To be honest, the main reason I bought it was because this free podcast has given me many hours of fun and I thought the people responsible for it deserved some of my money. Still, it was pretty good fun. I expected to dip in and out, reading one or two at a time, but ended up going "oh, just one more" again and again. And yes, I did read most of it on the loo -I felt I had to!

MY GRADE: A B+.

TITLE: Moonlight Mile
AUTHOR: Dennis Lehane

The writing was fine and the plot that was being set up sounded interesting. The problem was I was being asked to sympathise and root for a narrator whose last couple of cases as an investigator had involved: a) helping a rich family make sure that their asshole son got away with paralysing a young woman, b) helping a company continue to fake pollution tests, by completely ruining the life of an employee who was gathering evidence to turn whistleblower. Sure, the narrator hadn't liked doing this, even felt guilty about it, but he'd still done it, because he needed the money. Call me moralistic, call me an unsophisticated reader, but I'm out of there. I've no interest in spending any more time with him.

MY GRADE: DNF.

TITLE: Future Babble
AUTHOR: Dan Gardner

No description needed, Future Babble's subtitle says it all: Why Expert Predictions Fail and Why We Believe Them Anyway. This is another slightly work-related read for me, as although I'm not usually involved in doing much forecasting myself, I do often need to make use of predictions and have always felt a bit queasy about it.

Like Gardner's previous book (Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear), Future Babble provided much food for thought. Most of it wasn't particularly surprising, like the characterisation of experts as foxes and hedgehogs, and how we tend to prefer the more confident hedgehogs, who are more often wrong. There was one thing, however, that I'm really going to have to look into a bit more. That's Gardner's discussion of scenario analysis. We tend to use that quite a lot in my work, and I have always assumed it to be a good way of dealing with the difficulty of predicting certain things, but Gardner makes some excellent points regarding the problems it might also bring in.

It's a very readable book, entertaining as well as interesting, packed full of examples illustrating the different points. My only issue in this area was the repetition of one particular example pretty much in every chapter. By the end of the book, I felt that if I heard about Paul Ehrlich one more time I would scream.

MY GRADE: A B+

Surrender of a Siren, by Tessa Dare

2011-08-18T06:40:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Surrender of a Siren
AUTHOR: Tessa Dare

COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: Ballantine
PUBLISHER: 400

SETTING: England, the high seas and Caribbean island
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: Follows Goddess of the Hunt

Desperate to escape a loveless marriage and society’s constraints, pampered heiress Sophia Hathaway jilts her groom, packs up her paints and sketchbook, and assumes a new identity, posing as a governess to secure passage on the Aphrodite. She wants a life of her own: unsheltered, unconventional, uninhibited. But it’s one thing to sketch her most wanton fantasies, and quite another to face the dangerously handsome libertine who would steal both her virtue and her gold.

To any well-bred lady, Benedict “Gray” Grayson is trouble in snug-fitting boots. A conscienceless scoundrel who sails the seas for pleasure and profit, Gray lives for conquest–until Sophia’s perception and artistry stir his heart. Suddenly he’ll brave sharks, fire, storm, and sea just to keep her at his side. She’s beautiful, refined, and ripe for seduction. Could this counterfeit governess be a rogue’s redemption? Or will the runaway heiress’s secrets destroy their only chance at love?

Sophia Hathaway was first introduced in Goddess of the Hunt, the perfect society beauty Lucy's beloved Toby was determined to marry. If you've read Goddess, you know how that all turned out (and if you don't, go read it, it's a fantastic book!).

But Sophia is not as prim, proper and perfect as everyone seems to want to believe. In fact, she'd like nothing better than to be completely improper, and to do this, she decides to escape the strictures of her life in London society and run away to the West Indies (at least until she turns 21 and gets her inheritance free and clear). Disguised as an impoverished governess she manages to get herself on board the Aphrodite, in spite of misgivings of the ship's owners.

Benedict "Gray" Grayson is a former privateer determined to go straight and become absolutely and completely respectable. He owns the Aphrodite with his half-brother, who's the captain, and although he knows it's not a particularly good idea to let the very tempting "Jane" on his ship, but can't resist saying yes. Surely his promise to his brother that he won't touch her will be enough.

What we've got here is a heroine trying as hard as she can to shed all respectability, and a hero trying just as hard to do the opposite. I'm not particularly well-disposed to this sort of heroine, as they often feel just a wee bit too modern. With Sophia, though, I bought the whole thing: the dissatisfaction with being placed on a pedestal by men, the frustration at the bafflement and incomprehension elicited by any abortive attempt to climb down off that pedestal, and the conviction that she will just explode if she can't let even a little bit of the real Sophia out.

And the real Sophia is as obsessed with the idea of sex as your average spotty teenager. It's not that she's this innocent who's magically turned into the perfect virginal sex kitty by meeting the right man. She's just generally horny. She's technically a virgin, but only because of the time and place in which she was born. Now she is on a ship with a handsome man she really fancies, and who has no idea she's a virginal, gently-reared young lady (and therefore untouchable), so Sophia sees this as the perfect opportunity to gain a bit of practical experience. Gray might be determined to resist, but Sophia is just as determined that he won't be able to.

What results is scorching sexual tension, and a couple who have tonnes of chemistry, sexual and otherwise. Both these two are characters who feel fresh and real, and more self-aware than most (Sophia, for instance, knows perfectly well that her actions have been a bit silly and melodramatic, but she's human, and she did what felt necessary at the time).

I also really liked the piratey, adventures-on-the-high-seas feel of the story. I'm not one who's been missing old-school pirate romances (I avoided them like the plague even back when they were common), but this is nothing like that, and it was loads of fun.

The only reason this wasn't an A is because things kind of derail at the end (and even that wasn't that bad).

MY GRADE: A B+.

Sex Drive, by Susan Lyons

2011-08-15T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Sex Drive
AUTHOR: Susan Lyons

COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 320
PUBLISHER: Aphrodisia

SETTING: Onboard a flight, Hawaii and Canada
TYPE: Contemporary romance
SERIES: First in a series

Prof. Theresa Fallon’s ex-husband gave her good reason to swear off men. But when, on the flight from Sydney to Vancouver, she’s seated beside one of Australia’s ten sexiest bachelors, she has reason to question that decision. It’s a long flight, but thriller writer Damien Black has ways of making the hours fly by! From there, it’s not all that big a step to enjoying a stopover together in romantic Honolulu. For the cynical Theresa and the far-too-experienced Damien, this journey is a special one. To their mutual surprise, they’re on a wild ride to love!

I started this series with the second book, Love, Unexpectedly, and I loved it so much that I immediately bought the other two that are now out. The concept of the series is "Planes, trains, automobiles and a cruise ship", each of the books involving a journey.

Just as her sister in Love, Unexpectedly, Theresa Fallon is making her way to her baby sister's wedding in Vancouver. Theresa is a university professor in Australia, though, so in her case, the journey involves a flight. But because this is a romance novel, that flight is not the sardine-in-a-tin experience most of us will have experienced (and which made me doubt whether the "planes" entry in the series could actually be romantic!). Oh, no, frequent flier Theresa is upgraded to business class, and her seatmate is sexy author Damien Black. And even though Theresa is supposed to be the boring, serious one amongst her sisters, but with Damian, she very definitely is not!

I really, really like Susan Fox/Lyons brand of 100% character-driven romance. Her characters actually talk and get to know each other. So much so that even though this is one of those normally ridiculous plots where characters fall in love after knowing each other for a day, it didn't feel ridiculous at all. That was simply because of the quality of the conversation. They talk about themselves and their history, but they also talk about their worldviews and what's important to them, their aspirations and dreams. Which is probably why I was never bored for a moment in a book that's basically just talking and sex.

And speaking of the sex: Sex Drive is supposed to be erotic romance, but to me it felt like plain, "normal" romance, albeit with quite a few sex scenes (which is why I've categorised it as such above). It's obviously hard to draw the line, but both using my personal definition (erotic romance is when the relationship is developed mainly through the sex) and the one I see used pretty much all over (that to qualify as erotic romance you need to have something "kinky"), this fell square on the "just romance" side. The heat level was sort of like a vintage Linda Howard!

Now, I am NOT complaining about this. In fact, if anything, I thought there was a bit too much sex here. The first few scenes did serve to develop the relationship, but after a while, there didn't really seem to be all that much at stake in them, so, well-written as they were, after a while I found them a slight bit tedious and hoped they'd soon get back to the talking.

I also thought that the almost immediate sexy developments didn't really square with the person Theresa was supposed to be. But then again, I suppose that was the whole point: that with Damien, the previously stuffy and conservative professor wasn't quite as stuffy or conservative. Hmmm, looks like I'm making up my mind as I write this! Yeah, I'm fine with this.

So, interesting characters, a fun plot and a very believable romance = another winner!

MY GRADE: A B+.

The Shining Skull, by Kate Ellis

2011-08-13T12:08:00.001+01:00

TITLE: The Shining Skull
AUTHOR: Kate Ellis

COPYRIGHT: 2007
PAGES: 274
PUBLISHER: Piatkus

SETTING: Contemporary England
TYPE: Mystery
SERIES: 11th in the Wesley Peterson series

Little Marcus Fallbrook was kidnapped in 1976 and when he never returned home, his grieving family assumed the worst. Then, thirty years later, teenage singing star Leah Wakefield disappears and DI Wesley Peterson has reason to suspect that the same kidnapper is responsible. And another abductor is at work in the area - a man who tricks blonde women into a bogus taxi and cuts off their hair. Has Leah fallen prey to the man the newspapers call 'The Barber' or has she suffered a more sinister fate?

But then Marcus Fallbrook returns from the dead. And when DNA evidence confirms his identity, the investigation takes a new twist. Meanwhile, archaeologist, Neil Watson's gruesome task of exhuming the dead from a local churchyard yields a mystery of its own when a coffin is found to contain one corpse too many - a corpse that may be linked to a strange religious sect dating back to Regency times. Wesley has his hands full elsewhere - slowly, Marcus Fallbrook begins to recover memories that Wesley hopes will lead him to cunning and dangerous murderer. But he is about to discover that the past can be a very dangerous place indeed.

I came across Kate Ellis' books in my last rummage through my library's shelves. They sounded great, kind of cozy, and depending on the series, with either an archeological or supernatural element as well.

The one I chose first, for the simple reason that it was the earliest available in one of the series, was The Shining Skull. A little boy who was kidnapped in the 70s suddenly turns up again, all grown up, claiming a recent knock on the head sparked off memories of his pre-kidnapping life. Within days, a young popstar is kidnapped, in a way that suggests it might have been done by the person behind the 1970s case. Policeman Wesley Peterson feels a bit out of his depth and it doesn't help that he's also busy trying to catch a weirdo who impersonates taxi drivers to drive women to an isolated location and cut off their hair.

While this is going on, archeologist Neil Watson is working at a local church, helping move the graveyard. His interest is engaged when one of the coffins accidentally opens, and they find two bodies inside, in case that seems to have connections to a mysterious 18th century sect.

Good stuff, I thought, and started reading. Unfortunately, this was a case of great premise and ideas, so-so execution. The book read quickly enough, but the characterisation... oh, dear. Cartoonish characters, no subtlety, all telling instead of showing, and to cap it all, a viciousness when describing some women characters (especially the young woman who's kidnapped) that made me feel quite queasy.

As for the plot, I love mysteries where there are all sorts of seemingly completely unrelated elements that are then brought together in the conclusion. When done well, that can be really, really satisfying. Here it wasn't a complete disaster, but it wasn't great, either. A few threads were cleverly tied together, but with others, I just went "really?". The 18th century sect bit was interesting enough, and it was clever how the big revelation about what had happened to a particular person reflected what had happened in the present-day case, but much more could have been done with it.

Oh, well, at least I tried a new author. Now to decide whether to bother reading the other book I got out as well, the first in the other series.

MY GRADE: A C-.

First Comes Marriage, by Mary Balogh

2011-08-01T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: First Comes Marriage
AUTHOR: Mary Balogh

COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 416
PUBLISHER: Dell

SETTING: Early 19th century England
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: First in Huxtable quintet

Against the scandal and seduction of Regency England, New York Times bestselling author Mary Balogh introduces an extraordinary family—the fiery, sensual Huxtables. Vanessa is the second daughter, proud and daring, a young widow who has her own reason for pursuing the most eligible bachelor in London. One that has nothing to do with love. Or does it?

The arrival of Elliott Wallace, the irresistibly eligible Viscount Lyngate, has thrown the country village of Throckbridge into a tizzy. Desperate to rescue her eldest sister from a loveless union, Vanessa Huxtable Dew offers herself instead. In need of a wife, Elliott takes the audacious widow up on her unconventional proposal while he pursues an urgent mission of his own. But a strange thing happens on the way to the wedding night. Two strangers with absolutely nothing in common can’t keep their hands off each other. Now, as intrigue swirls around a past secret—one with a stunning connection to the Huxtables—Elliott and Vanessa are uncovering the glorious pleasures of the marriage bed…and discovering that when it comes to wedded bliss, love can’t be far behind.

First Come Marriage begins the Huxtable series, in which a young man from an impoverished but genteel country family unexpectedly inherits an earldom. I've already reviewed the second in the series, but the first one slipped through the cracks. Great excuse for a reread!

Vanessa, a young widow, lives in the tiny village of Throckbridge, as do her two sisters, Margaret and Katherine, and her 17-year-old brother, Stephen. Nothing much happens in Throckbridge, so when a handsome nobleman arrives, speculation about what he might be doing there sweeps the village.

The nobleman is Elliott, Viscount Lyngate, and he's some big news for the Huxtables. A distant cousin of theirs has just died, and this means Stephen has inherited the man's title. He's now the Earl of Merton, and Elliott, due to his connections to the previous Earl's family, is now Stephen's guardian. His task now is to take the unsophisticated country boy and train him to take over his duties. This will require taking Stephen with him to London, but when his sisters make it very clear that he's not going on his own, Elliott sees no choice but to bring the entire family with him.

The easiest way to do this without any improprieties would be for Elliott to marry to one of the sisters, and since he needs a wife anyway, and is a cold, love-doesn't-exist type, that's exactly what he decides to do. The natural choice is the eldest, Margaret. However, Vanessa is NOT going to have that. You see, Elliott didn't make the best of first impressions in the village. The night he arrived, before he revealed what he was there to do, Elliott attended the local assembly. In a scene that owes much to Pride and Prejudice, he came across as disdainful and supercilious. Vanessa doesn't want to condemn her sister to a marriage to someone that cold and horrible, and since she already has had a love match herself, even if it did end quite tragically, she decides to (very forcefully) volunteer for the role.

First Come Marriage is, then, a story about two people falling in love while in a marriage of convenience. It's about Vanessa seeing beyond Elliott's cold facade to the vulnerable man he really is. The way their relation develops is fantastic, as Vanessa doesn't let herself be cowed bye Elliott, but neither is she petulant or aggressive about what she sees as his shortcomings. In the end, Elliott doesn't magically turn into a sunny, charming sort of guy, but there's no doubt at all that he loves Vanessa deeply.

Vanessa does take some convincing, though. It takes quite a lot of work for her to believe that Elliott can love her even though she's (to her own eyes) not pretty. And this is not one of those stupid "oh, no, my breasts are too big and my lips are too full, how could any man love me?" things. I found Vanessa's insecurity about her looks believable and it didn't annoy me at all. After all, she had parents who, with all the good intentions in the world, kept harping on it, and I had no trouble at all seeing how that would have happened. And the fact of the matter is that Vanessa isn't as beautiful as her sisters. Elliot isn't attracted to her at the beginning, it takes a while for him to develop an attraction to her (a very strong one, too), and that is based on who she is, rather on how she looks, which I found even more romantic.

An excellent start to a most excellent series.

MY GRADE: A B+.

The Duke of Shadows, by Meredith Duran

2011-07-30T06:00:00.001+01:00

TITLE: The Duke of Shadows
AUTHOR: Meredith Duran

COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 384
PUBLISHER: Pocket Star

SETTING: Victorian India and England
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: None

In a debut romance as passionate and sweeping as the British Empire, Meredith Duran paints a powerful picture of an aristocrat torn between two worlds, an heiress who dares to risk everything...and the love born in fire and darkness that nearly destroys them.

From exotic sandstone palaces...

Sick of tragedy, done with rebellion, Emmaline Martin vows to settle quietly into British Indian society. But when the pillars of privilege topple, her fiancé's betrayal leaves Emma no choice. She must turn for help to the one man whom she should not trust, but cannot resist: Julian Sinclair, the dangerous and dazzling heir to the Duke of Auburn.

To the marble halls of London...

In London, they toast Sinclair with champagne. In India, they call him a traitor. Cynical and impatient with both worlds, Julian has never imagined that the place he might belong is in the embrace of a woman with a reluctant laugh and haunted eyes. But in a time of terrible darkness, he and Emma will discover that love itself can be perilous -- and that a single decision can alter one's life forever.

Destiny follows wherever you run.

A lifetime of grief later, in a cold London spring, Emma and Julian must finally confront the truth: no matter how hard one tries to deny it, some pasts cannot be disowned...and some passions never die.

Meredith Duran's debut, The Duke of Shadows starts in India, where newly-arrived Emmaline Martin realises that her longtime fiance is an absolute dog, and becomes fascinated by his cousin Julian. Julian is part Indian, so any interaction with him is regarded as scandalous by Anglo-Indian society, but Emma has always have a bit of the rebel in her, and she comes to know him better, which only makes her doubts about her fiance stronger.

Before anything can really develop, though, the Indian mutiny breaks out, and the she and Julian escape only by the skin of their teeth. Unfortunately, they become separated and Julian believes Emma is dead. Emma, meanwhile, witnesses some very horrible things on the way to safety, and becomes convinced that Julian has abandoned her.

Years later, they meet in London. Julian has been mourning Emma all those years, and is ecstatic to see her. Emma, however, is not so happy to see Julian, and wants nothing to do with him.

This is a difficult review to write. I really, really admired The Duke of Shadows. The writing is amazing. It's beautiful in a poetic, but understated way. It's not lush and rich (like, say, a Judith Ivory -which I love as well, by the way), but reminded me more of Laura Kinsale's style. Every word perfectly chosen, not everything spelled out, painting a picture but leaving a space for the reader to make an effort, as well.

The characters were as complex and subtle, as the writing promised. Emma is an artist who actually feels like an artist, and her reactions to her recent past and to Julian are not obvious. Pulling through the difficulties has allowed her to become a strong and independent woman, but this is done in a way that felt right for the time and for who she was. And Julian is fantastic as well. He's got his own issues, especially with his mixed heritage and the way this means society isn't particularly accepting of him, but it's really Emma who's the tortured character here, so Julian is more a healing presence, even if to do so he must challenge Emma and not leave her in peace.

So far so fantastic, so why did I find this review hard to write? Simply because while I admired the book, I found it hard to love it. As I was reading it, I felt I should be enjoying it more than I was. I'd go "wow" at a particularly wonderful turn of phrase and marvel at the way the characters were being drawn, but at the same time, I just couldn't really *feel* what I knew I should be feeling. Emma was the most problematic, while I could understand her intellectually, I never completely emotionally got her reactions and why she felt certain things. It was as if there was a veil between her character and me, and it made for a less satisfying read than I would have wished.

I'm wondering, though, if this might be a case of just not being in the right mood for a particular book. Reading this hasn't put me off in the slightest from trying Duran again, and I think I might even try to reread this at some point.

MY GRADE: A B.

Dark of Night, by Suzanne Brockmann

2011-07-28T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Dark of Night
AUTHOR: Suzanne Brockmann

COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 432
PUBLISHER: Ballantine

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Action Romance
SERIES: 14th in the Troubleshooters series

Badly shaken after the loss of one of their own, the men and women of Troubleshooters Inc. go up against their most deadly opponents yet —- the clandestine organization called The Agency. Blackmail, extortion, murder: The Agency's black-ops sector will apparently stop at nothing to achieve their objective. But this time they've gone too far and hit too close to home.

Led by former Navy SEAL Lawrence Decker, a team of investigators —- from FBI agent Jules Cassidy and former CIA operative Dave Malkoff, to Troubleshooters Sophia Ghaffari, Tess Bailey, and even receptionist Tracy Shapiro —- band together to uncover the truth, and bring the killers to justice.

But the stakes are raised even higher when Decker barely escapes an attempt on his life. It soon becomes clear that the hunters have become the hunted —- and the Troubleshooters are no longer just solving a crime -— they're fighting for survival.

Boy, was this book controversial when it came out! Back then, even saying who the people involved in the main and secondary romances were was spoilerish. I guess all fans of the series will know by now, but if you're the one person who is both reading the series and knows nothing about this book, stop reading now (and you might as well stop reading now as well if you haven't read previous books in the series, as my review will not make any sense to you).

Plot? Does it even matter? There's bad stuff going on, and our protagonists, a mix of Troubleshooters operatives, Navy SEALs, FBI, CIA, what have you, are on a mission to save the world from it. There, that's it. It was really cool and exciting and well done, but if you're anything like me (i.e. a romance reader at heart), what made you desperate to read the book was that it was where Sophia and Deck would get their HEAs.

The huge scandal was, however, that though they both did get a HEA, they didn't get it with each other. And a huge number of readers, who had been eagerly awaiting seeing them end up together, felt betrayed and raised a huge stink.

Not me, though. I absolutely loved it. I always thought there was no way Deck and Sophia's relationship could be a healthy one, with all that baggage they had. When Dave came into the picture I wished he could be the one to end up with Sophia, but like everyone else, I also assumed it would be Decker. I just sighed in disappointment. I was so happy when I realised Brockmann had done the unthinkable!

Unfortunately, the actual romance between Sophia and Dave in this book was quite meh. I mean, I loved Dave's amazement that Sophia actually wants to be with him (oh, the angst, when he thinks he's just a second choice and the joy, when he realises he's not!), but other than that, I couldn't manage to get too excited about it.

Fortunately, that was more than compensated by the amazing, wonderful romance between Deck and Tracy (yes, Tracy! Unbelievable). It's sweet and tender and scorching hot at the same time. I don't want to go into too many details, but I completely bought that Tracy was the only person who'd ever really *got* Decker. There's a scene where he says he feels safe with her, and that melted me into a gooey puddle. Ahhh!

MY GRADE: A B+.

Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand, by Carla Kelly

2011-07-26T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand
AUTHOR: Carla Kelly

COPYRIGHT: 1994
PAGES: 244
PUBLISHER: Signet Regency

SETTING: Early 19th century England
TYPE: Regency Romance
SERIES: None

Young widow Roxanna Drew was fair game in the sport of cads. But the one man she could trust, the one that set her heart afire, had been betrayed once before by a woman... and he didn't intend to submit to love's desires once again.

I'm not a big Regency Romance fan and don't often read it, but Carla Kelly is one of the few exceptions. While I don't think she can do no wrong, I've enjoyed many of her books. Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand is one I'd been hoarding, since it's so many people's favourite.

Roxanna Drew is a widow who has come under pressure by her smarmy brother-in-law to become his mistress. Unfortunately, her late husband was a minister and didn't leave her and her daughters very well off, so she has been relying on said brother-in-law's financial help. Rather than give in to the pressure, however, Roxanna uses the little money she's got to rent a run-down little house, the best she can afford.

That house happens to belong to a former military man, Fletcher, Lord Winn. He shows up one night, and not knowing that the house has been rented out, is surprised to find a young widow and her two girls occupying it. He likes them very much, though, and for the following weeks, helps them out as much as possible, growing fonder and fonder of them all as time goes by.

Then, when the villainous brother-in-law decides to take his villany even further, and threatens to take Roxanna's daughters away (arguing that she's making them live in dangerously unhealthy conditions), Fletch offers Roxanna a marriage of convenience. And of course, a marriage of convenience between two people who like each other very much is not going to remain purely of convenience for long!

Roxanna and Fletch are an absolutely delightful couple, and lovely each in their own right. They both have a bit of a history. Roxanna is a very rare widow in Romance-land, in that she loved her late husband very much and had a perfectly satisfying sex life with him. In fact, she very much misses both her husband AND the love-making, and is very enthusiastic about renewing her sex life with Fletch, to his utter happiness. Fletch has a much more unhappy history, with a former wife who cheated on him with everything that moved. He divorced her when he discovered it, and he's been villified for it by Society. They suit each other perfectly, and it was lovely to read about these two nice, honourable people getting the happiness they deserved.

In addition to Roxanna and Fletch's relationship, we also get to see Fletch falling in love with Roxanna's daughers, and they with him, which was really heart-warming.

A good one, one of my favourite Kellys.

MY GRADE: A B+.

The Sharing Knife Vol. 3: Passage, by Lois McMaster Bujold

2011-07-24T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: The Sharing Knife Vol. 3: Passage
AUTHOR: Lois McMaster Bujold

COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 448
PUBLISHER: Eos

SETTING: Fantasy world
TYPE: Fantasy romance
SERIES: Part of the Sharing Knife series, follows vols. 1 and 2

Young Fawn Bluefield and soldier-sorcerer Dag Redwing Hickory have survived magical dangers and found, in each other, love and loyalty. But even their strength and passion cannot overcome the bigotry of their own kin, and so, leaving behind all they have known, the couple sets off to find fresh solutions to the perilous split between their peoples.

But they will not journey alone. Along the way they acquire comrades, starting with Fawn's irrepressible brother Whit, whose future on the Bluefield family farm seems as hopeless as Fawn's once did. Planning to seek passage on a riverboat heading to the sea, Dag and Fawn find themselves allied with a young flatboat captain searching for her father and fiancé, who mysteriously vanished on the river nearly a year earlier. They travel downstream, hoping to find word of the missing men, and inadvertently pick up more followers: a pair of novice Lakewalker patrollers running away from an honest mistake with catastrophic consequences; a shrewd backwoods hunter stranded in a wreck of boats and hopes; and a farmer boy Dag unintentionally beguiles, leaving Dag with more questions than answers about his growing magery.

As the ill-assorted crew is tested and tempered on its journey to where great rivers join, Fawn and Dag will discover surprising new abilities both Lakewalker and farmer, a growing understanding of the bonds between themselves and their kinfolk, and a new world of hazards both human and uncanny.

The first installment of this series gave us the necessary background about the farmers, the second concentrated on the Lakewalkers. By the end of book 2, Dag and Fawn have realised that the way things stand between the two communities, they won't be able to make a good life in either. In this third book (which is very definitely a continuation of the bigger story, so do not start here, it doesn't stand alone), they set off on a journey, trying to find a third way. And along the way, they and the companions they pick up on the way without really meaning to, will start to find some indications that there might be a way forward.

While I'd say that if you liked the first two you'll definitely enjoy this one, the feel of it is a bit different. Things had been getting a bit hopeless in the previous two books, more difficult for Fawn and Dag as a couple. But Dag is now a new man. His very radical decision to leave his fellow Lakewalkers behind seems to have refreshed him, basically because he has found a mission.

Dag has decided to single-handedly improve Lakewalker/farmer relations. Fawn seems bemused by all this, and a bit doubtful, but these two have reached a sort of "warm-glow" stage in their relationship, and she supports him. This volume, as you might have deduced, is very much about Dag, with Fawn playing a supporting role. And actually, I didn't mind at all, as I'm sure she'll get her chance later to take centre stage.

I also didn't mind because it's a fascinating mission that Dag has undertaken, and one that only a person as honourable and good as he is could have come up with. I absolutely loved his determination to actually speak of things, his idea that it's ignorance that fuels the misunderstandings, and that if Lakewalkers weren't so damned mysterious about what they can do, there would be a lot more clarity and they'd all get along much better. This shocks his fellow Lakewalkers speechless, and the farmers, faced with this very open and transparent Lakewalker who actually wants to talk about what he does, are almost as shocked. It doesn't always go perfectly, but it's a good effort.

The journey is full of interesting supporting characters and perilous adventures, and satisfied me completely. I want to read Volume 4 now, but half of me doesn't want this series to end.

MY GRADE: B+.

Restoring Grace, by Katie Fforde

2011-07-22T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Restoring Grace
AUTHOR: Katie Fforde

COPYRIGHT: 2006
PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: St. Martin's

SETTING: Contemporary England
TYPE: Chick lit
SERIES: No

Ellie Summers’ life starts unravelling. A couple of months ago, she was quite happy living with her boyfriend Rick in their little cottage, producing paintings of local peoples’ homes. But now, finding herself pregnant – and Rick less than thrilled about imminent parenthood – things seem rather more complicated.

Grace Soudley’s life has been coming apart for more than a couple of months. Abandoned by her husband, her only real security is the wonderful old house she was left by her godmother. But unless Grace can find a large sum of money to sort out the dry rot, Luckenham House will disintegrate around her.

When Ellie and Grace meet, the two very different women find they can help each other out. Ellie needs a place to stay; Grace needs a lodger. Both need a friend. But then Grace’s step-daughter Demi arrives on the scene, followed by the disconcertingly engaging Flynn Cormack – who seems determined to help. And when Grace discovers some beautiful painted panels hidden behind the tattered dining-room curtains, the whole business of restoration starts to get serious...

Both Grace and Ellie are in difficult moments in her lives. Grace is newly divorced and stuck with a lovely old house that is unfortunately practically falling down around her ears. Keeping it up is difficult on the money she makes as a wine writer, so she takes in a lodger. Ellie has just been dumped by her boyfriend when she became pregnant, and Grace's place is perfect for her.

What I liked:

Reading a Katie Fforde book is like slipping into a warm bath. Her books might not be particularly exciting, but they're warm and comforting, and I quite like the way she combines an old-fashioned English feel with more modern plots and characters.

I also liked how Grace and Ellie gradually become good friends, and then in effect, family, as they support each other in dealing with challenges such as a needy teenager, family pressures and the intriguing men who come into their lives.

Finally, the final, almost Poirot-esque scene was fun.

What I disliked:

I can't honestly say I disliked anything, but there's that "unexciting" thing. I liked this, but didn't love it.

MY GRADE: A B.

Summers at Castle Auburn, by Sharon Shinn

2011-07-20T08:20:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Summers at Castle Auburn
AUTHOR: Sharon Shinn

COPYRIGHT: 2001
PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: Ace

SETTING: Fantasy world
TYPE: Fantasy romance
SERIES: None, stands alone

Coriel, the illegitimate daughter of a high-ranking aristocrat, spends most of her life learning herbal medicine from her grandmother, but she spends her summers with her half-sister, Elisandra, at the royal castle where Prince Bryan resides. Corie has always been secretly in love with Bryan, but she is slowly realizing that he is a spoiled, selfish, dangerous man—and that Elisandra dreads her upcoming marriage to the prince. Corie hopes that the prince’s cousin Kent will save Elisandra, while she wonders if the taciturn guard Roderick might play a bigger part in her own life.

Corie is a young woman brought up in two different worlds. The illegitimate daughter of a nobleman, she spends most of her year with her herbalist grandmother and her summers in her father's world, a world of aristocrats and palace intrigue.

The story starts when Corie is 14, and she gets an inkling of what her father's world is really like. She accompanies her uncle on a hunt for aliora, magical fairy-like creatures which are hunted by humans and held as slaves by the aristocracy. She also begins to see a different side to her long-time crush, Prince Bryant.

The years pass, these first glimpses of the real world solidify, and Corie needs to decide what her life is going to be.

Summers in Castle Auburn seems to be the Shinn book everyone loves. Me, not so much. It's probably my least favourite of her books so far, and it's a testament to how good those are that I can say that while also saying that I did mostly enjoy SACA.

On the plus side, it's set in a beautifully imagined and put together world, full of interesting characters and events. There's some nice romances (actually, a few romances), which while not the focus, are quite satisfying. And there's also the issue of the plight of the aliora, which is a very important part of the book, and which serves to highlight Corie's increasing growth and maturity. As a young girl, she basically sees nothing wrong in how the world she lives in works. She loves the aliora, and loves having them there in her world. After all, the ones she's aware of are well-treated and admired. It's only as she grows up that she starts to understand what's really going on and why it's wrong, and that coincides her growing up and her view of the people around her becoming clearer.

It's harder for me to pinpoint what the negatives were, why the story didn't satisfy me as much as other books by this author. I think part of it was that it felt a bit YA-ish, when I'm used to properly grown-up books from Shinn. Maybe it was that the story starts when Corie is 14. She does grow up and most of the book happens when she's of age, but the YA-ish feel remained for me. There's also the fact that palace intrigue and plotting are not my favourite plot points.

MY GRADE: A B.

Private Arrangements, by Sherry Thomas

2011-07-18T08:04:00.001+01:00

TITLE: Private Arrangements
AUTHOR: Sherry Thomas

COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 384
PUBLISHER: Bantam

SETTING: Late Victorian England
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: No

To all of London society, Lord and Lady Tremaine had the ideal arrangement: a marriage based on civility, courteousness, freedom—and living on separate continents.

But once upon a time, things were quite different for the Tremaines…When Gigi Rowland first laid eyes on Camden Saybrook, Lord Tremaine, the attraction was immediate and overwhelming: she simply had to have him. But what began in a spark of passion ended in betrayal the morning after their wedding—and Gigi wants to be free to marry again. Now Camden has returned from America with an outrageous demand—an heir—in exchange for Gigi’s freedom.

Gigi's decision will have consequences she never imagined, as secrets are exposed, desire is rekindled—and one of London’s most admired couples must either fall in love all over again…or let each other go forever.

Gigi Rowland fell for Camden, Lord Tramaine the moment she saw him. It was obvious they were perfect for each other. He had a title and needed money, she had money and needed a title. On top of it, there was a sizzling attraction there, and they liked each other and got along well. So what if Cam was promised to someone else and felt he had to keep that promise? Gigi didn't hesitate to play dirty to give both of them what they really wanted. Unfortunately, Cam found out and didn't take it well. This happened right after the wedding, and meant that they have been separated for the 10 years since their wedding night.

But now, after years of leading their own separate lives, Gigi wants to marry again and seeks a divorce. Cam says yes, but only if Gigi gives him an heir within a year.

This was a fantastic book. It's a beautiful romance, with complex, flawed characters who I loved, but who also often exasperated me. It's also about getting over wounded pride and about how after going for too long in a particular direction you realise was the wrong one, it seems impossible to go back and take the right one.

I loved Gigi and her sneaky ways. Is it really wrong to manipulate and play dirty when the result is that both the manipulator and the manipulated get what they want, even if one of them didn't think he should want it? I've always (slightly guiltily) enjoyed romances with heroes in the manipulator role, but had no idea whether I'd like it when the heroine was in the role, since I don't think I've ever read a romance like that. Well, I did. i loved it. I wanted Gigi to get her man and I cheered for her, even while shaking my head at her obliviousness about what was at Cam's core, and at her complete lack of understanding of his over-developed sense of honour and pride.

Because that was also a big thing here, how these two grow and change from quite immature young people. The book jumps between their courtship, 10 years earlier, and the present-day drama, and so you can see the old Gigi and Cam side by side with the new. Thomas gets it perfectly right. They are still the same people, really, but they have changed in ways that felt organic.

I also especially appreciated that Thomas avoids one of my most hated plot points. With romances, when I hear there's a long separation involved, I always fear that the author will have the hero spending those years fucking everything that moves (because he's manly, and clearly we romance readers think restraint isn't manly and only want to read about heroes who reek of testosterone), while the heroine keeps herself pure and virginal for him (because we romance readers clearly think any woman who doesn't do that is a complete slag, and we don't want to read about those hussies). To put it mildly, the double standard bothers me. That does not happen here. As far as Gigi and Cam are both concerned, the behaviour of the other has basically put a stop to their marriage, and they both really build separate lives. And that involves romance with other people, for both of them. Not ideal romance, but MUCH better than having the old double standard in action!

Plenty of other good stuff here as well. The setting is wonderfully done, and there's a lovely romance involving Gigi's mother, who's had to come to terms to the fact that her ambition to bag a duke for her daughter has gone badly wrong. Guess who she falls in love with?

MY GRADE: A B+.

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

2011-07-16T11:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
AUTHOR: Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

COPYRIGHT: 1990
PAGES: 383
PUBLISHER: Corgi

SETTING: Contemporary England
TYPE: Humour
SERIES: None

According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.

So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon-both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle-are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture.

And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist...

The Apocalypse is on its way, with the Four Horsemen already riding. The Anti-Christ has been born and there's a demon and an angel competing to find him, aided by a book of prophecies written by a 17th century witch who died a horrible death. And while I read about all this, I couldn't help laughing hysterically all the way through.

Good Omens is funny and absurd and very, very clever. Its humour hit me just right, which is a bit strange, considering I've tried both Gaiman and Pratchett separately and couldn't finish their books (sacrilege, I know!). Just as a for instance, the demon Crowley's crowning evil and greatest glory is the design of that most horrible and terrifying motorway, the M25, and of of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Famine, carries out his duty by selling diet food and junk food. And ahhh, Agnes' predictions...

With books like this one there's always the risk that they are just a clever idea and sound great as a concept, but then the joke can't carry an entire book. This is emphatically not the case with Good Omens. There's an actual story here and all the different fantastic details the authors keep coming up with enrich it. There's loads of different plotlines, all of which come together in the most amazing and satisfying ways.

Loved it, loved it, loved it. If you want to read a proper review of it, read the one written by the Book Smugglers. It's the one that made me pick it up in the first place!

MY GRADE: An A.

Chasing Fire, by Nora Roberts

2011-07-13T07:22:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Chasing Fire
AUTHOR: Nora Roberts

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 480
PUBLISHER: Putnam

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: No, stand-alone

The number-one New York Times-bestselling author delves into the world of elite firefighters who thrive on danger and adrenaline-men and women who wouldn't know how to live life if it wasn't on the edge.

There's little as thrilling as firefighting-at least to Rowan Tripp. The Missoula smoke jumpers are in Rowan's blood: her father is a legend. She's been fighting fires since her eighteenth birthday. At this point, returning to the wilds of Montana for the season feels like coming home-even with reminders of the partner she lost last season still lingering.

Fortunately, this year's rookie crop is one of the strongest ever-and Gulliver Curry's one of the best. He's also a walking contradiction, a hotshot firefighter with a big vocabulary and a winter job at a kids' arcade.

Everything is thrown off balance when a dark presence lashes out against Rowan, looking to blame someone for last year's tragedy. Rowan knows she can't complicate things with Gull-any distractions in the air or on the ground could mean the end-but if she doesn't find someone she can lean on, she may not make it through the summer...

Rowan Tripp is an experienced smoke jumper, a firefighter who parachutes into wildfires. Wildfire seasons are always busy for her, but none have been as eventful as this one is proving to be. First, there's the new recruit, Gulliver Curry, who's making her question her rule to never get involved with a teammate.

But there's also something going on that's as scary as a potential relationship with Gull, but not quite as potentially rewarding. At the end of the previous season, Rowan's jump partner made a mistake while operating his parachute and died. His girlfriend Dolly, one of the team's cooks, blamed Rowan. She left her job after trying to attack Rowan, but now she's back and determined to make trouble. And soon that trouble involves murders, sabotage and arson.

Each new Nora Roberts single title is a guaranteed treat. I know even before I start them that I'm going to be able to fall into them and enjoy every minute I'm reading and resent every minute I'm not. Yes, some are better than others, but in the past years, I've enjoyed each and every single one of them.

Chasing Fire was therefore not a surprise. I got exactly what I was expecting, and since what I was expecting was a strong heroine, a lovely hero, a satisfying, healthy relationship, well-drawn secondary characters and a lot of information about a fascinating occupation or setting I knew nothing about, that's a good thing.

Rowan's a vintage Nora Roberts heroine, in that as a group, these women are noted for being hard workers. They tend to love what they do and dive into it with all they have, even if they exhaust themselves. Still, I have to say, Rowan makes them all look like sluggish wimps. I was just amazed that any human being could not only put up with such backbreaking, stressful, dangerous and exhausting work, but positively thrive while doing it. I ended feeling a bit tired myself, and that was just from reading about her job!

Rowan's tough and can be a bit prickly, but she's also perfectly happy to embrace the pleasures of life. And the main one in this book is Gull. Gull (strange name notwithstanding... I mean, what sort of name is Gulliver Curry?) is lovely, dreamy enough that he runs the risk of being a bit too perfect. He's got money, but he still does this work, which I think I've established is pretty difficult and takes a lot out of anyone doing it. He absolutely gets Rowan and loves exactly what many men would find problematic. I loved that. He has absolutely no problem with Rowan being not only the more experienced of the two with their job, but also the person in charge in quite a few of their missions. He does not feel threatened about it. He's actually attracted to Rowan's extreme competence.

The stuff going on around Rowan and Gull was also, for the most part, really good and satisfying. The smoke jumping is really interesting, and there's also some excellent secondary characters. I especially enjoyed the romance between Rowan's father, Lucas, and a really lovely woman who's pretty much Rowan's opposite on the outside, but just as strong on the inside. Ella reminded me a bit of Dr. Mira, in the In Death books.

I also appreciated what Roberts did with another secondary character, one that in most other authors' books would have really annoyed me. Dolly Brakeman is slutty and evil, and completely demonised in the book. The reason she'd annoy me is that with many authors, Dolly would be contrasted with the almost-virginal, virtuous heroine, and her sex life would be presented as evidence of her moral corruption. The thing is, Rowan's sex life has been pretty varied as well. Maybe not quite as much as Dolly's, but in those other authors' books, she could probably serve as the slutty one. And that's what I liked: Dolly's evil not because she sleeps around, but because she uses people, and those two issues are never confused.

The only area where the book falls down a bit is in the suspense. It did keep my interest, for the most part, but I found it a bit too obvious. I zeroed in on a particular suspect right at the beginning (and I mean really, really early, as soon as anything happened), and I was right. This person's motivations, explained at the end, also struck me as slightly iffy.

Still, this didn't detract all that much from this solidly enjoyable book.

MY GRADE: A B+.

Marked, by Joely Skye

2011-07-10T06:56:00.001+01:00

TITLE: Marked
AUTHOR: Joely Skye

COPYRIGHT: 2008
PAGES: 208
PUBLISHER: Samhain

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Paranormal romance (werewolves)
SERIES: Yes, part of a series

Marked as prey, Alec refuses to fall for a werewolf. Until he's forced to turn to Liam for protection. Alec Ryerson carries a scar over his heart and scars on his psyche, ugly reminders of a nightmare that still doesn't seem quite real. Even a year later, he stays inside on full-moon nights and avoids most peopleuntil he meets the strange and beautiful Liam.

Liam feels an undeniable pull toward Alec. However Liam is a werewolf; Alec is a human who clearly has trepidations about a relationship. Then Liam discovers he is not the first werewolf Alec has encountered. Alec has been marked for death by the murderous "quad," a group of twisted werewolves who prey on humans. Now the quad's sights are set on recruiting Liam's eight-year-old brother into their murderous pack.

Liam will do everything in his power to protect both his brother and Alec from the wolves, even if it means Calling in favors and killing those with whom he once ran. Because Alec, like it or not, is Liam's chosen mate.

I downloaded this one when it was available for free for the Kindle, about a month ago. I don't often read free stories. I've said it before, but lately my limiting scarce resource is time, not money. I'd rather spend my scarce reading time on something I really want to read, even if I have to pay for it, rather than on something where the only reason for me to read it is that it's free. With Marked, however, the plot appealed to me, and since I've also heard good things about the author, I went for it.

In Skye's world, there are good werewolves and bad werewolves. Unfortunately for Alec, the first werewolves he ever ran into were the bad kind, the kind who like to capture humans, mark them as their property and keep them as pets. Alec managed to escape them, though, and since then, he's been running scared. He has a feeling that they won't let him get away from them so easily, and since he can't very well go to the authorities (the only reason he himself knows he's not crazy and imagining things is the very physical mark the werewolves left on him) and needs to protect himself, he's feeling a bit paranoid.

He's got reasons to be, because even though Alec doesn't know it at the beginning, there's another werewolf in his life. After losing his previous job, Alec is working at a library, and one of the little boys there is crazy about him. The boy insists Alec meets his older brother, and that older brother turns out to be Liam, with whom Alec had a hookup that went a bit wrong some time earlier.

The reason things went weird in their first encounter was that Liam is a werewolf himself, and he was so attracted to Alec that he was very close to not being able to contain himself him. But now that Alec has come into his life again, Liam is determined to get somewhere with him. But then he begins to realise that Alec might have a huge problem with him being a werewolf...

It's an interesting setup, and I liked the execution ok. Both heroes are well-written and there's chemistry between them. I also liked the little boy, who was a little sweetheart, and enjoyed how Liam basically brings Alec into his pack, his community, and how he's welcomed there.

However, I guess me saying that I liked this "ok" is a clue that I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about it. I wasn't really completely engaged. I just found it all a bit forgettable, I'm afraid. And when the action subplot with the bad werewolves kicks up near the end, I was bored.

MY GRADE: A B-.

A few DNFs

2011-07-07T06:00:00.002+01:00

TITLE: Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke's Heart
AUTHOR: Sarah Maclean

The positive online buzz about this one made me look beyond the cringe-inducing title and give it a try. I quite liked the idea of a heroine with a very scandalous background paired with a really proper, straightlaced duke. If done well, this could have been fantastic.

Unfortunately, it wasn't done well. Or at least, not to my liking. The heroine was a stereotype of what an Italian is supposed to be, to the point of being offensive. She was pretty idiotic, too. The hero was almost as bad, mean and judgmental in the sections I read. Not to mention the clunky, nonsensical setup. I've no interest in continuing.

MY GRADE: DNF.

TITLE: A Fine Balance
AUTHOR: Rohinton Mistry

This multi award-winning novel follows the story of four very different people ("a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village", as the back of the book describes them), who happen to be thrown together in 1975 India.

By the time I stopped reading (about a quarter of the way through, although considering that this one was about twice as long as most "normal" novels on my kindle, it was quite a long way), we'd found out about the widow's past and were halfway through the life-histories of the two tailors. I loved the glimpse of recent Indian history, I found the characters interesting and I wanted to know what happened, but I just wasn't enjoying what, for lack of a better term, I guess I could call the shifting scale of the book.

An example of what I mean by that: I had just spent pages and pages getting to know the father of one of the characters: I knew all about his own parents, his life history since he was born, his training in his profession and his defiance of his rigid place in the caste system, his hopes, his dreams, everything. And then he decides to defy the powers that be in his village and within a couple of paragraphs, bam! they've tortured him to death. That sort of shift from lovingly detailed description to "and then this and this and this happened" glossing over happened way too often.

So, just not my cup of tea. I might have finished it if it had been shorter, but it's a brick of a book, and I refuse to spend that much time with something I'm not enjoying.

MY GRADE: DNF.

TITLE: Poser
AUTHOR: Claire Dederer

Poser is subtitled My Life In 23 Yoga Poses. I guess I was expecting a bit more yoga than I got, at least in the first 50 or so pages. This would not necessarily be a problem, if I'd liked the author's voice and found her life interesting. I didn't. I thought the writing was pretentious -much too much faux deep musings and "poetic" wording which I just found silly. And what she was actually writing about didn't interest me. There's a lot about her feeling pressured to be the perfect mother and how stressful that is, etc. Just not my cup of tea. I didn't care to know what happened, so I stopped reading.

MY GRADE: DNF.

The Backup Plan, by Sherryl Woods

2011-07-05T08:20:00.001+01:00

TITLE: The Backup Plan
AUTHOR: Sherryl Woods

COPYRIGHT: 2005
PAGES: 384
PUBLISHER: Mira

SETTING: Contemporary US (Charleston)
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: Starts a trilogy

It's finally time for Dinah Davis to go home. The world-weary correspondent wants to settle down with the sweet guy she left behind in South Carolina's Low Country. Instead, she's confronted by his black-sheep brother, and—despite her longing for serenity—sparks fly.

How can she possibly trade her perfectly safe backup plan for a risk-taking guy like Cordell Beaufort after all the dangers she's already faced? But to Dinah's dismay—backup plan or not—her heart has its own ideas.

Dinah Davis defied her Southern Belle upbringing to become one of the US's top war correspondents. She was at the top of her game when a horrible attack in Afghanistan killed the man she loved right in front of her, and left her terrified of the work she used to love. Her work suffers (obviously) and faced with the knowledge that the network's pushing for her to take a leave of absence, Dinah decides to quit and go home to Charleston.

Why go back to Charleston? Well, for a reason that made me wonder whether I wanted to keep reading the book. Dinah tells herself that she's going back to her old boyfriend, Bobby. Dinah and Bobby broke up when she went off to university. She wanted adventure and to explore the world, Bobby didn't. However, before Dinah left, they made one of those "only in a rom-com" deals: if they were both unattached by the time they turned 30, they'd get married. Dinah loved Bobby back then, but wasn't in love with him. Still, that sounds good enough to her now, so off she goes. Problem is, she just can't find Bobby, mostly because his big brother, Cordell, won't tell her where he is.

There's no way Cord is going to help Dinah find his brother. Cord has been crazy about Dinah for years. He even tried to break them up when they were teens, and he's still ready to play dirty in order to have Dinah for himself. But it turns out that the main obstacle he faces is not Bobby, but the fact that Dinah is not all right, and it's going to take hard work on all sides for her to get over what happened to her in Afghanistan.

The Backup Plan was a bit of a mixed bag. I liked a lot of it, but I had one pretty big problem, and her name was Dinah. She was just unconvincing. Try as I might, I found it really hard to believe that this woman had actually been a war correspondent. I guess my assumption is that to do a job like that, pretty much by definition, you need to be adventurous and able not to sweat the small stuff. And after a few years of doing it (and right at the top of the field, too), you've probably seen it all.

Dinah didn't seem like that sort of person at all. I guess the non-adventurousness part of it is fair enough, because she does have PTSD. Some of her reactions, however, were old ladyish and missish in the extreme. She would react with purse-lipped disapproval to things as scandalous as her friend Maggie participating in a charity auction and bidding for a date with Cord a few months earlier. Really? That shocks her? She also seems to have had any journalistic instincts surgically removed. After she runs into Cord again, all she does for days and days is make assumptions about who he is and what he does. Of course, just by looking at him, she knows he's still undependable and a good-for-nothing layabout, and why, oh, why, does he not tell her where Bobby is? Yep, the award-winning journalist doesn't think of even googling the man for days and runs around getting herself all flustered when Cord just won't do what she asks. See what I mean about her making an unconvincing journalist?

The whole thing with Bobby didn't help, either, as it was just stupid. Unnecessary, as well. Woods didn't need it at all to set up the conflicts in the book. She's got a perfectly good reason why Dinah would be resistant to Cord (I wouldn't trust a guy who lied about me sleeping with other guys, so that my boyfriend would break up with me, either). She's got Dinah's PTSD for her to get over. Why all the faffing about with Bobby?

Oh, dear, it sounds from the above like I hated this book! I didn't, really. Yes, Dinah often annoyed the bloody hell out of me, but there's quite a lot of things to love here, as well. Cord is one of those things. He's supposed to be this bad boy, and he certainly looks the part, but he's actually one of the most nurturing heroes I've read in a while. I also found it quite thrilling (in a guilty pleasure kind of way) that he was so determined to have Dinah that he was willing to play a bit dirty. Not too dirty, mind you, but why should he tell Bobby Dinah's in town before he has a good try at winning her over?

I also liked that Dinah's psychological issues, which are very real and are having a big effect on her, is not cured by luuurve. She actually needs to seek professional help, and even then, there's no magic cure. It takes time and hard work before she's even a little bit better. That was really good.

There's a bit of a secondary storyline featuring Dinah's parents, whose longtime marriage is getting stale. I loved the way they finally start communicating throughout this story, and the way they work to make their relationship exciting again.

MY GRADE: A B-.

What I Did For a Duke, by Julie Anne Long

2011-06-22T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: What I Did For a Duke
AUTHOR: Julie Anne Long

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 384
PUBLISHER: Avon

SETTING: Regency England
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: 5th book in the Pennyroyal Green series

For years, he’s been an object of fear, fascination…and fantasy. But of all the wicked rumors that forever dog the formidable Alexander Moncrieffe, Duke of Falconbridge, the ton knows one thing for certain: only fools dare cross him. And when Ian Eversea does just that, Moncrieffe knows the perfect revenge: he’ll seduce Ian’s innocent sister, Genevieve—the only member of the powerful and wealthy Eversea family as yet untouched by scandal. First he’ll capture her heart…and then he’ll break it.

But everything about Genevieve is unexpected: the passion simmering beneath her cool control, the sharp wit tempered by a gentleness that coaxes out his deepest secrets… And though Genevieve has heard the whispers about the duke’s dark past, and knows she trifles with him at her peril, one incendiary kiss tempts her deeper into a world of extraordinary sensuality. Until Genevieve is faced with a fateful choice…is there anything she won't do for a duke?

I tried Julie Anne Long a few years ago, but it wasn't a success. I gave The Secret to Seduction a C and filed Julie Anne Long under my "authors I don't get" mental file. But when the entire online romance community absolutely loved her latest, I decided to give her another shot.

Alexander Moncrieffe, the Duke of Falconbridge, is a powerful man. When he finds Ian Eversea in bed with his fiancee, it's obvious to him that revenge is in order. And in typical thick-headed romance novel hero fashion, he decides the most appropriate revenge is to seduce Eversea's sister, Genevieve, and ruin her. Lovely.

I can see why people liked this book. I'd normally rather not have a large age difference between hero and heroine, but even though Alex is quite a bit older than Genevieve, I really appreciated how Long wrote the dynamics between the two of them. Even though Alex is more experienced and powerful, this is not an issue at all when it comes to the actual relationship between them. They're equals, and Genevieve comes out ahead as often as Alex does, and it's clear that he's just as disconcerted by their chemistry as she is.

And there is quite a lot of chemistry here. There's really fun banter, and it's always quite clear why these two are so gone over each other.

I also liked the novelty of having the heroine be the one who's perfectly sure she can separate passion and love. Genevieve is convinced she's in love with a young man her own age, and is heartbroken when he tells her he's proposing to someone else. She's willing to use Alex to make him jealous, and even to actually give in to the attraction they share, but she's still in love with the other man, she insists.

But even though there were things I liked about WIDFAD, I found too many things problematic for it to have been an unqualified success.

The first, I'm afraid, was the whole revenge issue. For starters, Alex didn't seem particularly upset about what had happened with his fiancee. Yes, we're told he was hurt, that he thought he might have loved the young woman, but I'm afraid I didn't believe that for a minute. Which made it a bit strange that he was willing to go to the lengths he was planning to go to with Genevieve. And then, of course, there's the morality of taking revenge on an innocent. Yes, he doesn't actually ruin Genevieve in the end, and she finds out what's going on soon enough and it's out in the open between them, but Alex never acknowledges that what he was planning was wrong. I was left with the feeling that if he hadn't fallen for his planned victim, if it had been anyone else but Genevieve, he would have gone through with it. That didn't make me like him much, to be honest, and left me with no respect for his character. I'd much, much rather read about someone who actually goes through with such a revenge, even though they know it's wrong than about someone who doesn't do it, but never even realises why it might be morally problematic.

The other problem I had with the book was that it was the worst kind of wallpaper historical. I'm not a pedant who goes nuts if an author has the wrong sort of wineglass for the period, or crap like that, but the total disregard for accuracy here was really annoying. It's not about two unmarried people (one of whom is a young virgin from an aristocratic family) having sex. I've no problem acknowledging that could happen, but it would have been a big deal. What bothered me and left me open-mouthed with disbelief was the lack of thought given by Alex and Genevieve to any consequences of their having sex. All Genevieve considers is "do I want to have sex with this man?", and Moncrieffe doesn't seem to think it's a big deal at all. He wants her, so he'll have her. Does he have a problem with the fact that she's unmarried and a virgin? Nope. With the fact that he's a guest in her father's house, and that he actually really likes and respects him? Nope, he's perfectly happy to sleep with the man's daughter. To me, that shows a complete lack of honour, and didn't make me like him any better.

I also did not like the constant sequel baiting and the breathless tone with which the author went on and on about the Eversea males' antics. They all sounded like complete tossers, even the married ones, and I've no interest whatsoever in reading about them, especially that thoughtless idiot, Ian.

MY GRADE: A C. I guess Long is not for me.

What The Dog Saw, by Malcolm Gladwell

2011-06-20T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: What The Dog Saw
AUTHOR: Malcolm Gladwell

COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 410
PUBLISHER: Allen Lane

SETTING: N/A
TYPE: Collection of essays
SERIES: No

Malcolm Gladwell is a master of playful yet profound insight. In "What the Dog Saw" his adventurous curiosity is at full stretch, as he takes everyday subjects and shows us surprising new ways of looking at them.

What can hair dye tell us about the history of the 20th century? Why are there dozens of varieties of mustard but only one of ketchup? What didn't the inventor of the birth-control pill know about women's health? Why may a problem like homelessness be easier to solve than to manage? Who do we hire when we can't tell who's right for the job? What's the difference between choking and panicking? What can pit bulls teach us about crime? And are smart people actually rather overrated? Gladwell introduces us to obsessives, pioneers and minor geniuses, diagnoses some of our greatest and most overlooked problems and explores the confounding mysteries of our characters, personalities and intelligence.

"What the Dog Saw" is Malcolm Gladwell at his best. Whether it's criminal profiling or dog training, Gladwell gives us a completely new perspective and a glimpse into other people's heads.

What The Dog Saw is a collection of articles in The New Yorker. It looks like most of them are still available for free online, but since I got the book from the library, I didn't mind that at all. And I liked sometimes having a little note at the end updating us on how things had turned out in the years after the article had been published.
http://www.gladwell.com/archive.html

I enjoyed it. Gladwell has a knack for finding subjects that feel new and fresh. For most of them, it was the first time I've ever even wondered about them (seriously, have any of you wondered why we take the Pill in batches of 21, and what that might have to do with their inventor's religion?) For others, it feels like no one has approached them in quite that way before.

A note on the writing, though: Gladwell's got a very idiosyncratic writing voice. I can easily imagine people hating it. It would probably be sensible to read one of the articles online, I would say, to see how you feel about it. Me, I can tolerate it in small doses. I only read one or two of the essays in a row; more than that, and Gladwell's writing starts to grate on me.

Anyway, if you want to sample the writing, the article I found most interesting was one that showed how sometimes the most efficient way of managing a problem is not necessarily the fairest one. As a government economist, who often gets quite involved in the policymaking process (albeit in an advisory role), it really was food for thought.

Also, writers will probably be especially interested in the article that deals with plagiarism and copying.

MY GRADE: A B.

Love, Unexpectedly, by Susan Fox

2011-06-18T07:56:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Love, Unexpectedly
AUTHOR: Susan Fox

COPYRIGHT: 2010
PAGES: 320
PUBLISHER: Brava

SETTING: Contemporary Canada
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: Second in a series about the Fallon sisters. The first one (Sex Drive) was written under the author's Susan Lyons pseudonym

At thirty-one, Kat Fallon's luck with men shows no sign of improving. But when she asks her best friend Nav Bharani to be her date at her younger sister's wedding in Vancouver, she has no idea that she's about to get on board the most surprising ride of her life...Nav has been secretly in love with Kat ever since he moved in next door.

When she reveals that she loves taking train rides, especially the meeting-strangers part, Nav devises a plan to win Kat's heart. On every leg of her trip to Vancouver, he shows up disguised as a different sexy stranger.

Stunned by Nav's daring, Kat finds herself succumbing to his inventive transformations. But what starts out as an innocent adventure soon becomes much more for Kat as she is forced to choose between her long-held fantasies of the perfect mate - and the prospect of something far more real...

Nav Bahrani has lived next door to Kat Fallon since he moved to the city, a few years earlier. He fell completely in lust with her the very moment he saw her, and as the years went by and they became best friends, the lust turned into love. Nav has always wanted a relationship with Kat, but she, as he puts it, stuck him in the best friend category and has never allowed him out.

Nav's chance to shake things up comes when Kat invites him as her date to her sister's wedding. Kat loves travelling by train, especially the long journey to Vancouver, and Nav is supposed to fly and meet her at their destination. But Nav sees this as the perfect opportunity to get Kat to see him in a different light. One of the things Kat loves best about train travel is meeting interesting strangers, so why not, Nav thinks, turn himself into one of those strangers?

The idea of this series, I see in the author's website, is "Planes, trains, automobiles and a cruise ship", and this second book in the series is the "trains" installment. I love this idea, and I loved starting with this particular book, because while plane travel has lost most of its luster (too many crap Ryanair and Iberia flights in the last few years, probably), trains (especially long-distance ones) still have a definite air of romance to them. Part of that might be because there are no trains in Uruguay, where I'm from (it's a tiny country with no jungles or mountain or any other type of difficult terrain, so we just use coaches). Growing up reading books like Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express created this very glamorous image in my head. And even after moving to England and experiencing the charms of the trains here, I still have a bit of it left.

Apart from this, having the action set on a train meant that there was a lot of conversation between Nav and Kat. It was really good conversation, too, because the hidden identity thingy meant that these two people who had been good friends forever were actually saying things they had never said to each other before. I especially liked that the issues they discuss are not at all simplistic. For instance, Nav is allergic to people who are all about appearances, due to having grown up in a wealthy family and amongst people who were all surface, no substance. But Fox doesn't leave it at that. Kat and Nav discuss this, and he begins to see he might be seeing superficiality in every single instance of someone caring about what something looks like, when this might not always be the case. He even acknowledges he might be wrong about some things and Kat might be right!

I mention the secret identity thing in the previous paragraph, and I know this is a trope many people will be a bit doubtful about... I know I was, myself. However, I thought it was really well done. I wouldn't have bought a Clark Kent/Superman thing, with Kat suddenly not recognising Nav at all just because he's changed his clothes and shaved off his beard. Fox doesn't try this at all. Nav never intends to deceive Kat about who he really is, and he doesn't. The "new" identities of his are about both of them deciding to play the game and have a sort of relationship outside their normal relationship (even if, in Kat's case, she tells herself it's just during the trip, and they'll forget all about it when they get home. Yeah, right!).

Something else I was slightly doubtful about was the structure. The book is narrated in alternating viewpoints in alternating chapters. Kat's are first person POV, while Nav's are third person. It does work surprisingly well, though, so I was sold.

In fact, everything about this book worked for me. All the above, plus so many other things:
- The steamy, steamy love scenes, steamy because they were all about how these two felt, not merely what they were doing. Very emotionally affecting.
- The Canada setting. This is one book with a strong sense of place, which I always appreciate
- the Indo Canadian hero
- Kat's relationship with her family, especially that with her three sisters. These four clearly love each other to pieces, even while they can (and do!) push each other's buttons. I loved it.

Read it, it's a good one!

MY GRADE: An A-.

Dragon Bound, by Thea Harrison

2011-05-03T06:00:00.000+01:00

TITLE: Dragon Bound
AUTHOR: Thea Harrison

COPYRIGHT: 2011 (it comes out today)
PAGES: 311
PUBLISHER: Berkley

SETTING: Alternate reality
TYPE: Paranormal romance
SERIES: 1st in the Elder Races series

REASON FOR READING: There's been twitter buzz about Dragon Bound for months. I was lucky enough to win it in

a giveaway at Dear Author, so I could read it a bit early.

A FIERY TEMPER IS NOT EASILY EXTINGUISHED

Half-human and half-wyr, Pia Giovanni spent her life keeping a low profile among the wyrkind and avoiding the continuing conflict between them and their Dark Fae enemies. But after being blackmailed into stealing a coin from the hoard of a dragon, Pia finds herself targeted by one of the most powerful–and passionate—of the Elder Races.

As the most feared and respected of the wyrkind, Dragos Cuelebre cannot believe someone had the audacity to steal from him, much less succeed. And when he catches the thief, Dragos spares her life, claiming her as his own to further explore the desire they’ve ignited in one another.

Pia Giovanni is a dead woman walking. Her scummy ex boyfriend has blackmailed it into stealing something from a dragon's treasure trove, and everyone knows you don't cross Wyr dragon-shifter Dragos Cuelebre and come out of it alive. Pia's late mother brought her up to be ready to run at any minute, so she puts in practice some of the plans she's got in place and escapes. Still, even though she's doing her best, she's pretty sure Dragos will find her anything. Which he does.

Contrary to what she expects (and kind of contrary to what Dragos expects, actually), no rending of limbs happens. There's something about Pia that makes Dragos want to keep her close. He doesn't quite understand what it is, but he'll follow his instincts. Unfortunately, though, another powerful magical being is after Dragos, and Pia is in the way...

Wow, is Harrison really a debut author? That's surprising, Dragon Bound felt like the work of a seasoned author. It's an exciting, fun romance, with really intriguing world building and a writing style so smooth that the pages practically turned themselves.

I really enjoyed the romance and the characters, especially because while at first it looks like this might be a hugely lopsided relationship, with a heroine that's pitifully weak next to the all powerful hero, that's not really what we get. At all. Pia is clever and resourceful. She doesn't allow Dragos to steamroll over her. In fact, she calls the shots, more often than not, and she does that without any irritating feistiness. Instead of stomping her foot, she tells Dragos exactly why she needs this or the other, and when there are good reasons why she can't get it, she's sensible and decides what she can live without.

And as for Dragos... Dragos was a huge surprise. The first we hear about him is a somewhat overblown section about him having come into existence practically with the Big Bang and much is made about how his age means that he's very definitely not human in his outlook. I was expecting someone like Raphael in Nalini Singh's Guild Hunters series, whom I could easily believe was ancient. And Dragos did seem a bit that way at the beginning, when Pia is completely, 100% convinced that she's signed her own death sentence by what she did, and Dragos will take ruthless revenge.

But the Dragos we get is nothing like that. Yes, some of his instincts are a bit closer to the surface than a normal human's would be, but that seemed to me a lot more about his being a shifter than about his being as old as time. He didn't read ancient or inhuman at all. In fact, he's got quite the silly, absurd sense of humour, which was a bit of a shocker! There's this scene the first time Pia rides on him when he's in dragon form, and he jokes "Thank you for flying Cuelebre Airlines". The very terrifying Raphael would never have done something like this! I guess having a character who's supposed to be ancient and inhuman but who nevertheless reads merely oldish and perfectly relatable means that the characterisation is somewhat flawed. But you know what? I didn't care, because I found the romance easier to buy. I'd much rather Harrison had just not made Dragos so over-the-top old than she had changed the exasperating yet adorable character she ended up creating.

Dragon Bound sets up the next novels in the series, but in a way that felt relevant to the series. It's a fun world, and I look forward to reading more novels set in it!

MY GRADE: A very strong B+.