The Duke of Shadows, by Meredith Duran

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.

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Dark of Night, by Suzanne Brockmann

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+.

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Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand, by Carla Kelly

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+.

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

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+.

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Restoring Grace, by Katie Fforde

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.

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Summers at Castle Auburn, by Sharon Shinn

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.

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Private Arrangements, by Sherry Thomas

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+.

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

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.

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Chasing Fire, by Nora Roberts

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+.

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Marked, by Joely Skye

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-.

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A few DNFs

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.

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The Backup Plan, by Sherryl Woods

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-.

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What I Did For a Duke, by Julie Anne Long

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.

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What The Dog Saw, by Malcolm Gladwell

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.

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Love, Unexpectedly, by Susan Fox

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-.

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Dragon Bound, by Thea Harrison

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+.

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Room, by Emma Donoghue

TITLE: Room
AUTHOR: Emma Donoghue

COPYRIGHT: 2010
PAGES: 336
PUBLISHER: Picador

SETTING: Contemporary (I think US, but it's a bit vague)
TYPE: Fiction
SERIES: None

WARNING: Spoilers ahead! I tried to write my review without revealing much, but it would have sounded too cryptic and there are some things I definitely wanted to say that would require some spoilers. So read at your own risk. Then again, I'm not going to reveal anything I didn't know when I started it. I got some spoilers from discussions in the literary podcasts I listen to, not to mention the back cover blurb (which I quote below). I don't think those spoilers diminished my enjoyment at all...

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

My first thought when I heard about this book was what I guess most people must have thought. A book inspired on the Joseph Fritzl case, about a woman who is kidnapped and stuck in a room for years, used as a sex slave by her captor and who bears a child inside that room? It sounded like a pretty exploitative, trashy idea. However, as I mention above, I listen to quite a few literary podcasts, and when the book was first long-listed and then subsequently short-listed for the Man Booker prize, there was much talk about it. By the time I came to read it, therefore, I'd heard enough reviews to know that the execution was anything but exploitative.

What I didn't know was whether I'd enjoy it, as I've had mixed luck with last year's Booker nominees that I've read. I loved Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap, but was very disappointed by the winner, The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson. I needn't have worried: Room was just as good as The Slap, probably even better.

It is narrated by 5-year-old Jack, who was born in Room and has never been out. He lives there with his beloved Ma and they do all sorts of fun activities together that fill out their day, from playing parrot, repeating and learning the words said on their TV to setting up an obstacle course in the room and running around it. The only boring and not-so-nice bit is when Old Nick comes visit, because Jack has to go sleep in the wardrobe while Old Nick makes the bed creak. It's a good life, but clearly Ma doesn't think so, because she has a plan to change everything.

This is a book that very much hinges on the narrator. The reason it works so well is because Jack's voice is unique, heartbreaking and perfectly believable. Donoghue manages to show us the horror of the situation and what is really going on, all through the perception of someone who doesn't find those things at all horrible and doesn't understand that others would and do. This makes it all even more chilling and sinister. And the narration makes the scene where Jack executes Ma's plan one of the most nail-biting things I've ever read. It's difficult to read, because when Jack is scared to death, as he is then, his thoughts become more than a little disjointed, but very, very effective.

Jack's is also a very consistent voice. His life changes massively during the book, but he is still always very much Jack. Strangely, the proof of the perfect construction of the narration is in the one instance Donaghue fails at it. There were 2 paragraphs where I went "This is not Jack", where the author gives in to the temptation of philosophising about the world herself, about how people don't have time to enjoy their life, and blah, blah, blah. They were 2 pretty crappy paragraphs, but they were only 2 paragraphs. It's a measure of how brilliant the rest of the book was that I was so immersed in Jack's world that I was jolted out of the story by them.

Room is very much Jack's world, but I didn't find it to be a claustrophobic novel, possibly because it was populated by really outstanding characters. Ma, even only seen through the eyes of a 5 year old, is fully developed, and a truly amazing woman, as well. I'm not the natural audience for stories of fantastic motherhood, but Ma moved me. Her efforts to make sure Jack develops normally even though he's stuck in a tiny room were truly heroic and I found her situation almost unbearable to read.

And now come the real spoilers!!

I really liked that Donoghue trusted that the very simple thing of Jack and Ma adapting to a new world would be enough to provide all the tension in the second half of the novel. I kept fearing she would introduce a villain out of some misguided idea that there needed to be more conflict -I don't know, maybe a social worker who'd try to take Jack away from Ma, or that Old Nick would escape and try to get back at Ma. She didn't, though. It wasn't needed, and this was a much better book because of it.

MY GRADE: An A-

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The Perfect Play, by Jaci Burton

TITLE: The Perfect Play
AUTHOR: Jaci Burton

COPYRIGHT: 2011
PAGES: 336
PUBLISHER: Berkley

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: Followed by Changing The Game

REASON FOR READING: Well, the cover helped. I don't usually do mantitty, but this is outstanding mantitty!

The last thing event planner Tara Lincoln needs is the jet-set lifestyle of a football pro like Mick Riley; even though their steamy and passionate one-night stand proved that Mick is an all-star-both on the field and in the bedroom.

Tara played the game of love once and lost big, and she doesn't intend to put herself out there again, especially with a certified heartbreaker. But when Mick sets his mind to win, nothing will stop him. And he has the perfect play in mind to catch this sultry vixen.

My not finishing The Perfect Play is all about me having gone on a shopping spree and picked up a boatload of ebooks I really, really want to read => the opportunity cost of any book I'm not enjoying all that much has just risen quite a bit. I'm not getting as much time to read as I would like to lately, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to be ruthless.

TPP is all about fantasy and wish fulfilment. Tara Lincoln is a regular girl, single mum of a teenager. She owns an events planning business, and in one of her parties, which she's organised for her city's professional football team, she attracts the attention of the top player, Mick Riley. Mick pursues her quite hard, and they end up spending the night together. As far as Tara's concerned, that's it. Surely she's too ordinary for the great big star to be interested in? Not to mention that teenage son, a single mum is clearly not what a millionaire athlete would go for. But Mick is really gone over her, and determined to change her mind.

I read about a third of the book. It's not bad. It wasn't that I couldn't bear to keep reading. It was just that I was bored and slightly annoyed with it, and didn't see the point.

The boredom probably came from the wish fulfilment element. Mick is so perfect that I never got a real sense of who he was. He's a big-time athlete, but he's perfectly nice and kind, without an arrogant bone in his body. He has invested his money wisely and doesn't piss it away on partying. He trains hard and doesn't drink much at all. He does the celebrity round of movie premieres and parties, accompanied by beautiful models and actresses, but only because his agent arranges it all for publicity (and the publicity is not because he loves fame -oh, no, it's because higher profile for him --> higher ticket sales --> good for the team). He doesn't bat an eyelid when presented with the fact that Tara has a teenage son. In short: perfect. And mind you, I'm not someone who goes crazy over the bad boy heroes. In fact, I prefer a nice beta over an alpha, anytime. But Mick just didn't really do it for me. I liked him, he seemed lovely, he just never felt like a real individual for me, more a collection of lovely traits.

The annoyance was because of a number of small things. The first was the constant harping on how Tara is sooo unlike all those materialistic, plastic women Mick usually dates. Seriously, for the first few chapters, especially, it seemed like every single thought Mick had about Tara started with "Unlike all those other women...". Hon, it doesn't really say much about you that you dated all these women you disliked so much, does it?

In addition to this, I didn't particularly like Tara. I don't really know why, since she's pretty inoffensive, but she rubbed me wrong. I also didn't think she was particularly well written: she's a mass of insecurities, and yet, in bed she's assertive and confident and says exactly what she wants. It just didn't compute, I couldn't really buy that it was the same woman we were talking about. And speaking of the sex, there was way, way, WAY too much of it. Burton can clearly write some steamy love scenes, but there were so many of them that they bored me, and it was all I could do not to skim.

MY GRADE: So, it's a DNF, but as I said above, it's not a bad book, and I expect many people will like it just fine.

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Wild at Heart, by Jane Graves

TITLE: Wild at Heart
AUTHOR: Jane Graves

COPYRIGHT: 2002
PAGES: 326
PUBLISHER: Ballantine

SETTING: Contemporary US
TYPE: Romantic suspense
SERIES: Follows I Got You, Babe.

YOU CAN RUN FROM THE PAST...

When private investigator Valerie Parker tails a cheating wife late one night, it’s business as usual—until the woman is murdered and the man she’s with becomes the prime suspect. Val gets an even bigger shock when she discovers the suspect’s identity: He’s Alex DeMarco, an old flame she swore she’d never speak to again. But then Val’s own life is threatened, and before she can blink she’s on the run, side by side with the unbelievably gorgeous man who once shattered her dreams and broke her heart . . . all in the same day.

... BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM LOVE

As a cop, Alex knows better than to ignore his instincts, but for some reason he offersthe woman on the prowl a ride home anyway. When she turns up dead and he comes face-to-face with Val Parker, his problems are only beginning. As they work together to clear his name and to protect Val’s life, Alex finds himself drawn once again to the wild, impetuous woman from his past—even as the shocking secret behind the murder threatens to tear them apart forever.

Valerie Parker always wanted to be a cop. She entered the police academy and thought she was doing well, until she was dismissed for not having the right temperament for it (something to do with her unwillingness to follow orders and her determination to always do things her way). To add insult to injury, it was made clear to her that the opinions of one of her instructors, Alex DeMarco, were instrumental in her dismissal. This was quite a surprise to Valerie, as the night before Alex had come by her house, and not only did he not mention what was going to happen the next morning, the asshole actually slept with her.

A few years later, Valerie has become a PI and is following a millionaire's cheating wife, trying to get evidence of her affairs. She follows the woman to a low-rent dive, where she makes a move on a man -none other than Alex DeMarco. Valerie follows them to the woman's house, and so is right there to see the woman being found murdered and Alex become the main suspect. But much as she dislikes the man, Valerie can't deny there's something fishy about the whole set-up, and before she knows it, she and Alex are both on the run from the police, fighting to clear Alex's name by finding the real culprit.

I was kind of 50-50 after reading the opening. On one hand, I really dislike having one of the protagonists wrongly accused of a crime. I don't know why I have such a strong reaction to it, but the whole idea of people having to prove their innocence while being hindered by a corrupt or incompetent police force makes me feel frustrated and pissed off -not a nice way to feel for an entire book. This was slightly less frustrating than it could have been, but it did stretch my credulity that Alex, a cop himself, and a very good one, would be so vulnerable when it was so obvious there was something suspicious about the whole thing.

On the other hand, however, I very much liked the set-up for Valerie and Alex's relationship. Alex behaved very badly all those years earlier, and he knows it. He feels awful about what he did and very much regrets it, and he can fully understand why Valerie felt so betrayed, even as he still stands by his opinion that she wasn't right for the police. To Graves' credit, Alex's behaviour isn't justified to the reader and he doesn't justify it to himself. And possibly because of this, I was able to accept him as the hero. I did want Valerie to make him suffer, and it was good that she didn't just fold and give in to her attraction to him, but I did want them to be together at the end.

That said, I didn't care about these two as much as I would have liked to. Their relationship is exciting at the beginning, but then there are long stretches where the focus shifts to the action and all the running around trying to clear Alex's name. They also get stuck in a small town and get involved in the life of the locals, which again, was nice enough, but it all stole momentum from the romance.

MY GRADE: B-. A qualified recommendation sounds about right.

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Postmortem, by Patricia Cornwell

TITLE: Postmortem
AUTHOR: Patricia Cornwell

COPYRIGHT: 1990
PAGES: 448
PUBLISHER: Pocket Star

SETTING: Late 1980s US
TYPE: Mystery
SERIES: 1st in the Kay Scarpetta series

With this novel, bestselling author Patricia Cornwell created one of crime fiction’s most compelling heroines: gutsy medical examiner Kay Scarpetta. Cornwell’s gift for combining cutting edge criminology with nerve-shattering suspense makes this book a true modern classic.

Under cover of night in Richmond, Virginia, a human monster strikes, leaving a gruesome trail of stranglings that has paralyzed the city. Medical examiner Kay Scarpetta suspects the worst: a deliberate campaign by a brilliant serial killer whose signature offers precious few clues. With an unerring eye, she calls on the latest advances in forensic research to unmask the madman. But this investigation will test Kay like no other, because it’s being sabotaged from within—and someone wants her dead.

I've heard Patricia Cornwell's Scarpetta series (and Postmortem in particular) mentioned so often that I had to read it myself. It's been credited with having either originated or pushed over the tipping point several trends, from having female central investigative characters in quite graphic police procedurals (usually with a serial killer targetting women involved), to the inclusion of very detailed forensic ans scientific elements into mysteries. There are tons of books (not to mention TV series) like that out these days. In fact, as I write this review I'm in the middle of Karen Rose's new one, a romantic suspense novel starring -you guessed it!- a female medical examiner.

The plot doesn't sound particularly revolutionary these days: a serial killer is stalking the city of Richmond, in Virginia, raping, torturing and strangling young women. Dr. Kay Scarpetta is the city's medical examiner, and is determined to do her utmost to help the police catch the killer. To do this, Kay will not only have to pull some huge feats of forensic investigation, but also deal with chauvinistic police and politicians who seem determined to put obstacles in their way.

At about the time I was reading this a couple of months ago, Jane from Dear Author posted an article on the issues authors face when older books are republished, and how some are editing them to update things like the tech references. I posted a comment about how I hated the idea of authors doing this, and how I actually like to have the dated elements there, as they give you a sense of place. I read older books as historicals, in a way.

Postmortem illustrates this perfectly. To read this, you have to place yourself firmly in the late 80s (copyright is 1990, but it would have been written earlier). The most obvious reason you have to do so is because of the technology. For instance, at one point someone comments on this newfangled technique, DNA analysis, and how difficult it would be to get a jury to understand it and accept it as evidence. There's also a big plot point resting on how Scarpetta's computer database's security works which is mindblowing these days. And then there's Scarpetta's 10-year-old niece who's a computer genius and can do all sorts of stuff Kay can't even dream about - to me, this was was very reminiscent of that film that must have come out at about the same time as the book, featuring teenagers hacking into the Pentagon and almost starting a nuclear war with the USSR.

So the tech is an issue, but much more importantly, you need to place yourself in the late 80s to be able to read some of the attitudes in this book without flinching. Everyone smokes, and they do so everywhere. Scarpetta rings someone who she knows is black and is shocked and convinced she got a wrong number when this person doesn't "talk black". Then there's a gay character who's treated with an open disdain which, fortunately, just wouldn't be acceptable today. Kay even thinks:

I suppose if I'd wondered about his proclivities when he interviewed for the job several months ago I might have been less enthusiastic about hiring him. It was something I didn't like to admit.

But it was all too easy to stereotype because I saw the worst example of every sort in this place. There were the transvestites with their falsies and padded hips, and the gays who flew into jealous rages and murdered their lovers, and the chicken hawks who cruised parks and video arcades and got carved up by homophobic rednecks. There were the prisoners with their obscene tattoos and histories of sodomizing anything on two legs inside the cell blocks, and there were the profligate purveyors in bathhouses and bars who didn't care who else got AIDS.

I'm not saying, btw, that Cornwell herself is homophobic -in fact, going by an interview I heard on the radio recently, she's either gay or bisexual herself. She's simply reflecting the attitudes of the time. So how do you edit stuff like this in order to update a book without having to rewrite the whole thing? And why would a reader even want the author to do this, when it would simply get rid of the entire sense of place of the story?

Anyway, after that tangent, back to the book itself. So, how did it work as a mystery? Well, I guess I probably would have thought it absolutely fantastic if I'd read it when it came out and I'd never read anything like it before, but reading it today, it was just pretty solid but not spectacular. I liked that the police and Kay are very competent and that it's good old-fashioned investigative work (aided by Kay's breakthroughs in the lab) that gets them the man. A couple of other issues, though, I wondered about. It was a bit weird, for instance, that the medical examiner would be so involved in the investigative area. Also, I found it disappointing that Cornwell doesn't seem to be that interested in who the killer is and why he's doing this. It's all about what he does, and the way he's caught is by looking at who would have the chance to do this, rather than who would be the kind of person who would.

Weaved into the mystery, there's quite a lot about Kay and her relationships with the people around her. She's very much a woman in a man's world, and even though this was written at a point where in theory there shouldn't have been a problem with this, she does have to struggle with people's unspoken assumptions and judgements. It's not easy, and I appreciated how Cornwell showed us this. Kay is also taking care of her niece, and her relationship with the girl and with her mother (Kay's sister) is an interesting one (even though the girl reads a bit unrealistic -too precocious in some ways, too naive in others).

The one I found most fascinating, however, was Detective Marino, who's the policeman investigating the murders. He seems like the worst kind of cop at the beginning, an old-time macho slob, who makes homophobic comments and is probably a bit dumb. For quite a long time I was convinced that the big conflict in the book was going to be that he would completely mishandle the investigation because he'd just refuse to look at actual evidence and simply go with his prejudices, and Kay would have to step in and do the investigating for him. It wasn't like that at all. Marino is actually a really, really good detective, and most of the crap that comes out of his mouth is just intended to get a rise out of Kay. I don't know what's really going on between them, but I'm definitely going to be reading the next few books to find out!

MY GRADE: A B+.

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