Just because...

...he's too cute not to share.




This is Benito, my friend Paula's new baby. I'm in love *g*

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Off The Record, by Matthew Haldeman-Time

TITLE: Off The Record
AUTHOR: Matthew Haldeman-Time

COPYRIGHT: 2006
PAGES: Calculating from the number of pages in my ebook reader, I'd say it would be equivalent to some 250 mmpb pages.
PUBLISHER: Available from Lulu.com

SETTING: Contemporary Hollywood
TYPE: Romance
SERIES: No.

REASON FOR READING: Because Stephanie Vaughan recommended it. Actually, it was stronger than that. She sent me a copy as a gift and told me I should read it *g* And hey, if the author who's written my favourite m/m romances tells me a particular m/m romance is good, I'm reading it!

Because of his infamous birth (and famous parentage), Jordan Jennings' every move made the headlines, and he soon learned that the only way to keep the media out of his life was not to have a life at all. Charged with keeping his family's secrets, as well as his own, he put aside his own desires for the sake of family pride. With the chance of love on the horizon, will Jordan have to sacrifice his family's reputation in order to have a life of his own? Patrick Wright was a fearless reporter headed straight to the top. He was a man who knew what he wanted and always went after it. With money, success, and a very healthy social life, Patrick had no idea that anything was missing until he met Jordan, someone he suddenly couldn’t do without. But when careers hang in the balance and Patrick is faced with losing everything he's worked so hard to achieve, will his love for Jordan conquer all?

THE PLOT: Jordan Jennings is Hollywood royalty, the only son of the actress famous for being America's sweetheart. The identity of his father is show-bizz's best-kept secret, and he's determined to keep it this way, as well as to uphold his family's legacy. Because of this, he's always been very reluctant to engage in a real romantic life of his own, especially because he's gay and fears the tabloid press would have a field day with it. When he meets reporter Patrick Wright, however, Jordan can't resist any longer.

MY THOUGHTS: So good! I have to thank Steph, because without her suggestion, I probably would never have found this lovely romance. It's scorching hot, but at the same time, sweet and tender.

Problems out of the way first: part of my brain kept insisting that the motivation behind Jordan having been completely chaste for so long was, at best, iffy. Legacy? What legacy? I would say his mom's sweet girl reputation was already shot to hell when became a single mom and having her son live a discreet gay lifestyle would hardly have any effect. I mean, this is Hollywood in the 21st century!

But .. as that doubtful part of my brain kept protesting, the rest of me was melting. Jordan's past made seeing him slowly (very, veeeeery slowly) coming alive sexually incredibly steamy. The sexual tension was tremendously thick, and the relationship develops slowly, almost tortuously, with each sexual milestone showing corresponding progress in the romantic relationship. Seriously, I almost had a heart attack when he and Patrick kiss for the first time. And I loved that their developing relationship is as illuminating and new to Patrick as it is to Jordan.

I did think there were a few too many love scenes in the middle-to-late section, which don't add as much to the relationship growth as the first few did, but the author really has a way with them, and he never lost my interest.

The conflict between Jordan and Patrick was really well done. A man with a secret every tabloid would pay millions to find out and an ambitious reporter: you can guess where a problem might arise. But the author dealt with it in a way that didn't feel predictable in the least, and sadistic as I am, I loved the way Patrick really had to work at regaining Jordan's trust. That last part was awesome. I especially liked how imperfect and human Patrick was; a very flawed character. He is an ambitious man, and this is something Jordan understands quite well... and he loves him anyway.

MY GRADE: A very strong B+.

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Pug Hill, by Allison Pace

TITLE:Pug Hill
AUTHOR: Allison Pace

COPYRIGHT: 2006
PAGES: 312
PUBLISHER: Berkley

SETTING: Contemporary New York
TYPE: Chick Lit
SERIES: No

REASON FOR READING: I really liked Pace's If Andy Warhol Had a Girlfriend.

For Hope McNeill, pugs are love, unconditional friendship, happiness, and freedom. She doesn't have one of her own (busy life, tiny apartment), but she does have Pug Hill in Central Park, where pugs (and their owners) from all over New York convene. She also has a crush on one of her co-workers, a flailing romantic relationship, and an unspeakable fear of public speaking. Then Hope's father calls with an assignment: to make a speech at her parents' anniversary party. Frantic, she signs up for a public speaking class, but can't help wondering-will it transform her into an eloquent orator? Maybe some fears are so big that even all the pugs in the world might not be enough to assuage them.

MY THOUGHTS: This is one of those books where not much really happens, but which are still pleasant enough to read.

Hope MacNeil is in her early 30s and not particularly satisfied with her life. She's got a pretty good job as an art restorer (which I would have liked to see a lot more of), but as a whole, her life is meh. She does have a boyfriend, but she can't seem to figure out why she's still with him, as they are not really very compatible. She loves pugs, but can't have one because her apartment's too tiny. She has an irrational fear of public speaking. Just a normal young woman, nothing Earth-shattering here.

When her parents ask her to make a speech at their wedding anniversary celebration, Hope decides (after much panicking) to sign up for a public speaking class. And well, that's about all that happens. Going to this class triggers in her some insight into her life and helps her grow a bit, so by the end of the book, the outlook is hopeful.

I'm afraid my description makes the book sound a bit pointless, but that's not the feeling you get from it. Hope was a character I could relate to, maybe because of the commonness and small scale of her concerns. She's got a good voice, and her perceptive commentary on her life and the people around her is interesting.

MY GRADE: I'll go with a B-, but it's perilously close to a C+.

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By British Authors

I've been reading a lot of British authors lately, as obviously, it's quite easy to find their books in my local library.


TITLE: The Murder Room
AUTHOR: PD James

I'm not exactly sure why I keep reading PD James, as lately I've been finding her voice a bit annoying and judgmental and her detective, Adam Dalgliesh, bores me. I think I might keep reading because her plots do feel fresh and interesting and intrincate, or because her rendition of contemporary Britain feels real (and completely different to that I see in chick lit).

The Murder Room of the title is in a small museum devoted to England in the interwar years of 1919 -1939, an exhibit featuring the most notorious murders of that era. The museum is in danger of closing because one the trustees is determined not to sign the new lease, and without his agreement, there's no way of continuing. When the man dies, and in exactly the same manner illustrated in one of the cases included in the Murder Room, Dalgliesh and his team are called in to investigate. But when more murders are committed, and all following the methodology of one of the Murder Room cases, they begin to fear motives are not are straightforward as they seemed.

This starts out quite well. The Dupayne museum is vintage James: a specialized, idiosyncratic and somewhat isolated professional setting, and the characters populating it are painstakingly drawn and do come alive. As for the plot, I couldn't wait to see what was going on and discover whether this was an insane serial killer or just someone with a very rational motive trying to cover up his motives.

However, by the end it had all pretty much disintegrated. The pace was slooooow, and the solution to the case was unbelievable and didn't fit very well. And there was still the matter with James' voice that I mentioned above, which is that it feels old-fashioned in some areas, and in a bad way. I don't want to give away the ending, but when she reveals the oh-so-shocking things that had been going on at the museum, I groaned. That stopped being shocking 20 years ago. Plus, all the angsty-angst in Adam's personal life? I couldn't care less.

MY GRADE: A C+.

---

TITLE: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
AUTHOR: Douglas Adams

When I saw THGTTU on the bookshelf, I couldn't resist a reread. I discovered it in high school, when it was assigned to us in English class, and I loved it. It was so much more entertaining than the rest of the stuff we were reading!

This time around, I enjoyed it quite a bit, but wasn't quite so wowed. I loved the imaginativeness of it all, the way so much was completely insane (my favourite part remains the moment when the secret to the universe and everything else is revealed). And it's funny. Really, really funny, in that absurd, very British way I love so much. But... this is a book that doesn't really have a "heart". The characters didn't really engage me, and I didn't particularly care about what might happen to them. When I put it down, nothing really pulled me to pick it up again NOW! to see what happened next. Plus, a very unsatisfying ending, which is something I didn't remember at all.

MY GRADE: A B-.

---

TITLE: A Long Way Down
AUTHOR: Nick Hornby

This is a surprisingly funny story, considering it's about four strangers who meet on the roof of a building, all preparing to jump off. After sharing their reasons for wanting to kill themselves, the urge to do it right then isn't quite so strong anymore, and they postpone their jump. They go down, and when the night is over, they find that they've somehow become a kind of group (although most of them would vigorously deny this).

The story is narrated in a way that I feared might be gimmicky: the point of view shifts among each of the wannabe jumpers, each of whom takes the story forward in first-person. It turned out to be wonderfully effective. Hornby managed to provide each character's view on things without any reiterative overlap, and each had a very characteristic and individual voice, which added to the story. These are not perfect characters, and I quite disliked them all at several points in the story (well, except for Maureen, a middle-aged woman whose whole life revolves around her disabled son. She I kept wanting to hug, for always being so decent without going all self-righteous about it). But they're interesting and engaging and I cared about them.

In the end, there are no perfect, waves-a-magic-wand-and-all-is-now-fine endings, but Hornby left me in a hopeful mood.

MY GRADE: A B+.

---

TITLE: Pompeii
AUTHOR: Robert Harris

Turns out Harris isn't just a British author, he's a local author: born in Nottingham. But his book, as the title indicates, is not local in the least.

It's the year AD 79 in Southern Italy, and the aquarius, aqueduct engineer Marcus Attilius Primus is scrambling to fix the increasingly strange problems in the water supply. As he finds the supposed source of the problem near Pompeii and develops ominous suspicions about what the fate of his disappeared predecessor might have been, only we readers know what is about to happen: Mount Vesubius will erupt in mere hours.

Saying this is a page-turner is an understatement. It's a long book, but I read it in a couple of days. Yes, Harris' characters aren't as three-dimensional as they might be, but his setting is. He makes the time and place come alive, providing a fascinating and well-integrated level of detail, and this makes the suspense well, suspenseful.

And if his depiction of the days before the eruption was great, his descriptions of the actual eruption were just fantastic. I did know a little bit about what happened (enough that part of me kept thinking "what does it matter, anyway, if it's all going to be destroyed?", LOL!), but I didn't know the details. I didn't know just how drawn out everything had been, and Harris makes excellent use of this.

MY GRADE: A B+.

---

TITLE: A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian
AUTHOR: Marina Lewycka

Definitely the best title I've seen in a long, long time. I saw the book in the library shelf and couldn't resist picking it up, just to see what it was about.

Nadezhda's father, an old Ukranian immigrant, has seemingly gone ga-ga and wants to marry Valentina, a 30-something woman from the old country. It's clear to Nadezhda and her sister Vera that bombshell Valentina is out to get as much money as she can out of their father, and they're determined to save him from the consequences of his action, even if it sometimes seems that their biggest adversary is not Valentina, but their father himself.

Don't go into this one expecting a comedy. There is a lot of humour in Lewycka's narration, but I felt this book was more tragic than anything else. I don't know, maybe it was just that this one struck a bit closer to home than expected, because my late grandfather had his own Valentina, and we had to deal with many of the same issues of old-age that are found in the book. I can tell you it all rang very true to me, especially the heart-break of seeing someone you grew up seeing as strong and decisive turned into a pathetic figure, easily dominated (and even abused) by someone he would have seen through in a minute 20 years earlier.

Still, I liked the book and thought it was touching and insightful.

MY GRADE: A B.

---

TITLE: The Undercover Economist
AUTHOR: Tim Harford

Being an economist myself, I'm clearly not the audience for this book. Even so, I very much enjoyed it. I freely acknowledge that none of the analysis was particularly deep, as there is a lot to cover, so if you've studied some economics it will all be familiar territory. However, if you haven't, I'm willing to bet that you'll find it illuminating. It's the perfect book for those of you who might be interested in how an economist sees the world. It's written in a clear, engaging style, full of very relevant references to things we see around us every day (although these references will probably work best for Brits).

Best chapters: those which covered issues of information economics and the fundaments of game theory. Least interesting: those on globalization and on the rise of China. There was oversimplification here, rather than the understandable and necessary simplification of the other chapters.

MY GRADE: A B+.

---

TITLE: The Book, the Film, the T-Shirt
AUTHOR: Matt Beaumont

I started this one with high hopes, and initially I quite liked Beaumont's unremmittingly acid humour. Narrated just like Hornby's, by alternating the points of view of several of the characters (many, many more than the four Hornby uses), the story covers the disastrous filming of a tyre ad. At first the characters' nasty antics were entertaining, but when I was about half-way through, I realized that if the author were to suddenly kill every single character in his book, I would be ecstatic. They were all so nasty/stupid/deluded that every minute spent with them was an unpleasant experience. Why continue reading such a book?

MY GRADE: This was a DNF.

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Never Deceive a Duke, by Liz Carlyle

TITLE: Never Deceive a Duke
AUTHOR: Liz Carlyle

COPYRIGHT: 2007
PAGES: 397
PUBLISHER: Pocket

SETTING: Victorian England
TYPE: Straight Romance
SERIES: Second in the Neville trilogy. Follows Never Lie To A Lady.

REASON FOR READING: Carlyle's been on my autobuy list since her debut, My False Heart.

They call her the porcelain princess...

With her fragile beauty and regal bearing, the Duchess of Warneham knows how to keep her admirers at a distance. Twice wed and twice widowed, Antonia has vowed never again to marry; never again to surrender her freedom. But when her husband's death is deemed suspicious, and his long-lost heir returns to seize control of the dukedom, she finds that fate has placed her future in yet another man's hands -- but not just any man.

They call him a cold-hearted bastard...

Deep in London's docklands, Gareth Lloyd runs Neville Shipping with an iron fist. Unrecognizable as the starving orphan who was abandoned by his family and sent an ocean away from home, Gareth has put his troubled past behind him. That is, until the Duke of Warneham is murdered, and Gareth turns out to be the dynasty's last living heir. Wrenched from his solitude, Gareth neither wants nor needs the honors and obligations of nobility -- especially the Duke's all-too-tempting widow.... Or does he?

THE PLOT: Gareth Lloyd is a self-made man, a partner in a succesful shipping company. He never though he'd inherit the title from his relative, the Duke of Warneham. In fact, after the brutal way in which he was treated by him as a young boy, he would never have wanted to have anything to do with it. But Gareth's the only heir left when the old man dies, and so he needs to take up his responsibilities, both to the duchy and to the Dowager Duchess, of whom he has nothing but bad memories.

It turns out, however, that the Dowager Duchess isn't the old woman he remembers, but the Duke's latest wife, Antonia. The young and fragile Antonia was the old man's last try to keep Gareth from getting the title, by having another heir that might displace him, and Gareth is inexplicable drawn to her, even as he suspects there might be some truth to the suspicions that she might not be exactly in her right mind.

MY THOUGHTS: I did like the first full-length entry in this series, but I didn't find it as absorbing as I usually find Carlyle's books. But with NDAD, she's back. While there were certain things about Gareth and Antonia's relationship that gave me some pause, I couldn't stop reading.

This is probably Carlyle's angstiest book to date. Talk about tortured characters! It was clear from the first moment we met Gareth in the first book that this was one man with Issues, but the extent of them was surprising to me. I'm not going to reveal them here, because you get the full emotional impact by seeing them unfold throughout the book, but suffice it to say that some of the flashback scenes which open each chapter had me in tears.

Unfortunately, this is all so huge that it kind of overwhelms something else that I found fascinating: Gareth's coming to terms with his Jewish heritage. Not only does he have to deal with people's reactions to it (including servants who have a huge problem working for "someone like him"), but there was a very interesting duality in him about who he was, something exacerbated by his upbringing. Wonderful stuff, and I wish we'd got more of it.

Antonia isn't quite as well drawn as Gareth, but she gives him a run for his money in the tortured department. I'm not usually much of a fan of the vulnerable, fragile waif heroine, but I couldn't help but feel Antonia's pain, and feel happy when she found what she so clearly needed in Gareth.

And here we come to the element in their romance that caused me some qualms: the need. For these two, being together isn't just something that makes their lives better, it's what changes their lives from misery to happiness and contentment. They need each other. Antonia needs to lean on Gareth and Gareth needs Antonia to lean on him. And when I say need, I mean need. Being together keeps them sane. A bit unhealthy, you might say (and I would agree), but then, after what happened in their lives, I can't expect them to to be healthy people, especially before the age of counselling and therapy. In the end, I was just happy that they found a relationship that worked for them, and seeing them do so was immensely satisfying.

MY GRADE: A B+.

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A Bit of Bryson

Bill Bryson's one of my favourite authors. I love his travel books, his language books, his collections of essays... everything. His sense of humour kills me, every single time. When I found a few of his books that I hadn't read in my library, I was ecstatic. Turns out they weren't exactly the best I've ever read from him, but they were enjoyable.

TITLE:The Life and Times of Thunderbolt Kid
AUTHOR: Bill Bryson

This is a (hopefully!) somewhat fictionalised account of Bryson's experiences growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, in the 1950s and 60s. It's as much about himself and his family as about what middle America was like at the time, a place that seemed particularly foreign to my late 20th century Uruguayan eyes.

What makes this so great to read is that Bryson's wry, self-deprecating humour is at its best here. His commentary is perceptive and subtle, but it's also funny as hell. And the best thing was, even through his most ridiculous stories, his affection for his subject matter shines through, whether he's writing about his parents or the era itself.

Best part of the book? I just loved to see the young Stephen Katz, who would become Bryson's unforgettable companion in A Walk in the Woods :-)

GRADE: A B+.

---

TITLE: African Diary
AUTHOR: Bill Bryson

This slim book chronicles Bryson's visit to several CARE projects in Kenya and is itself a charity project, as all profits from its sales go to CARE. For what it is, it's perfect. It showcases CARE's projects without sounding like a pamphlet, and is interesting to read. Also, I thought Bryson struck just the right tone here: there's plenty of his trademark humour, but it never feels as if he's treating the tragedy he's seeing lightly. All in all, an enjoyable read, although slim is an understatement.

GRADE: A B.

---

TITLE: Troublesome Words
AUTHOR: Bill Bryson

As I mention above, I love Bryson's language books. Made in America is one of my all-time favourite books, and I very much enjoyed The Mother Tongue. Troublesome Words is a bit different in format, being basically a list of potentially problematic words, expressions and grammatical issues, and it's not nearly as useful and entertaining. That is, I did find many of the grammatical explanations useful and interesting, but most of the vocabulary "problems" seemed very obvious to me. Maybe it's because most of his "difficult" words have Latin roots, and my knowledge of Spanish and French gives me a bit of a head start in that respect.

Also, it all felt a bit dry. There's some humour here, but the humour is not the point. Not a book I'd reread, unlike the rest of his backlist.

GRADE: A B-

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A bunch of C books

I've fallen a lot behind with my reviews, so I refuse to spend a lot of time writting about C books. So here we go, a quick round-up.

TITLE:The Lightkeeper's Woman
AUTHOR: Mary Burton

This Harlequin Historical has a unique setting and the storyline intrigued me (plus that cover... ohhhh!). It's set in an isolated lighthouse off a small North Carolina fishing village in the late 19th century, and it's a reunion story.

A few years earlier Alanna, the daughter of a shipping magnate, had fallen in love with Caleb, one of her father's ship captains. Evil dad engineered a separation in such a way that each believes the other one comitted a huge betrayal. But now they meet when Alanna seeks him out in the lighthouse he's taken over, determined to give him a box left to him by her father (yeah, very flimsy reason). Isolated surroundings, forced proximity (there's a huge storm), you can guess what happens.

It could have been a nice story, but though I loved the atmospheric setting, I found it hard to remain interested in Alanna and Caleb. Part of the problem is that I didn't really see much of an obstacle to their relationship, so the time it took for them to finally get together felt more like the author trying to prolong the story than anything else.

GRADE: A C.

---

TITLE: Hunted
AUTHOR: Amelia Elias

Hunted is the first in the author's Guardian League's series. Diego Leonides is a 1000-year-old vampire from Spain (his last name sounded more Greek than Spanish to me, but what do I know). One night he's hit by a car driven by Sian Lazuro, a former policewoman on the run from a mobster who wants to kill her for testifying at his trial. She's injured as well, and Diego (who's only slightly hurt, being a vampire) brings her to his home to recover.

Enter a meddling all-powerful vampire who does some hocus-pocus, and Diego and Sian are now bondmates, something Sian refuses to accept. Not that it's easy for Diego, but his strong attraction to Sian has him soon very happy the other vampire did his meddling. And that's it, really. It's all about Diego trying to convince Sian to accept the bond and Sian resisting and running away. There's also some evil vampires floating around, and the obligatory final confrontation.

All in all, it's a competently done book, but not one that excited me. There was nothing particularly interesting or original in the worldbuilding, and though Diego was a nice enough guy, he and Sian together didn't make a particularly compelling couple. This just struck me as yet another vampires, vampires! mates, mates! paranormal without much to distinguish it from the crowd.

Oh, and BTW, I feel like a broken record, but authors, an English-Spanish dictionary will NOT give you even passable translations. In this book I was treated to such ridiculousness as "Tú es muy hermosa" and the best, "No sé cómo viví sin tú. Te amo, mi gatita, y yo siempre voluntad". For those who feel as puzzled as I did when I read that last part, "yo siempre voluntad" is meant to mean "and I always will". Heh!

GRADE: A C+

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TITLE: Best Gay Love Stories 2005
AUTHOR: editor: Nick Street

This collection of short stories from Alyson Publications has a bit of everything. There's hot and there's subtle, there's sordid and there's romantic, there's happy and there's sad. However, too many of the stories didn't strike me as "love stories" at all, not even of the tragic variety. Even not taking that into account and just taking them at face value, there were only a few I enjoyed. And damn it, I returned the book to the library already and I can't find a list of the stories online, so I can't quote any particular titles or authors. All I can say is that my favourite was a very sad but ultimately sweet and hopeful one, one in which a man meets a woman on a train an reminisces about his late partner with her. In the end, they become friends and she introduces to someone else. I'll try to look for the title if I ever see the book again.

GRADE: A C.

---

TITLE: The Rogue's Return
AUTHOR: Margaret Moore

When I wrote about Moore's The Dark Duke a few years ago, I spent half my review ranting about the horrible, horrible character of the hero's brother and how it had really bugged me that Moore seemed to be excusing his execrable behaviour. I closed with "the guy seduced a woman, got her pregnant and abandoned her to go crazy alone, while her child died (and that's just one of the very few little pecadillos we find out about), and we're supposed to feel sorry for him?? Thank god he wasn't the hero here, and hell will freeze over before I read the book in which he is!".

Well, hell has frozen over, apparently, because this is his book. My only excuse is that I didn't realize until I was halfway through it and Moore's excuses for Elliot's past rang a distant bell (obviously, The Dark Duke wasn't a particularly memorable book, either).

The plot? Basically that they meet when Grace finds Elliot unconscious at the side of the road. She lives in a gossipy small town, so bringing him home is scandalous, and she hides him. He falls in love with her innocence and realize how he's so corrupt for such an angel, and decides to reform, yadda, yadda, yadda. Nothing new (or interesting) here, and a romance which was particularly unbelievable and chemistry-free.

GRADE: A C-.

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TITLE: Bad For Each Other
AUTHOR: Kate Hathaway

Another reunion story, complete with secret baby. Mollie and Charlie were childhood sweethearts, but they broke up when Mollie became pregnant and one of Charlie's family lied to her and told her he didn't want the baby. Some years later Mollie approaches Charlie (who's now a country music star) because their son is sick needs a bone marrow transplant. Charlie is shocked at the news that he has a son, and insists they get married. Will they be able to make this marriage of convenience real?

My main problem with the book was that, to borrow one of Mrs. Giggles terms, Mollie was the brown cow to end all brown cow heroines. Such a tedious, annoying, sanctimonious woman! Not that Charlie (or "Kick", quite a huh? nickname) was that interesting a hero, but what he saw in her I just couldn't understand. Not much chemistry in the romance, not much going on in the story otherwise.

GRADE: A C-.

---

TITLE: The Secret to Seduction
AUTHOR: Julie Anne Long

Such a disappointment! I was really looking forward to this one, both because I'd heard so many good things about the author and because her voice in her blog is charming and funny. From what I've seen now that I've looked at a few reviews again, I should have probably started with other books (maybe the ones rated keepers by Mrs. G?), because this one was an unoriginal debauched rake / innocent vicar's daughter story with nothing to really raise it above average. The only individual thing it had was the plot about Sabrina's origin, and even that felt tacked on to me, probably because I haven't read the two previous books in the series.

The hero is Rhys Gillray, nicknamed the Libertine, both because of his sexual habits and his erotic poetry (scandalous!). The heroine is Sabrina Fairleigh, a vicar's daughter who's visiting his house as a guest of one of her friends. She makes some imprudent remarks about how she pities those who are at the mercy of their passions, and Rhys reacts just as you would expect of a rake, deciding to prove to her that she isn't above being overcome by her own passions. And of course, they're discovered in a compromising position and have to get married, and Rhys tries to stay away from his wife but finds he can't, and so on.

In a word: boring. Or in two: boring and tepid. Long tells us how Rhys and Sabrina are so hot for each other, but I just didn't feel it, especially not on Rhys' part. If you're going to tell me that such an experienced guy like Rhys will be so overcome that he'll get in a situation like the one he does, you'd better make me believe that he's out of his head with desire. But nope, I never really felt that he found her more than mildly attractive. And also, Sabrina seems to be completely out of her league with Rhys. She tries to stand up for herself at certain points, but he can handle her quite easily. Poor girl.

The original bit I mentioned only rears its head nearer the end, when we discover the link between Rhys' past and Sabrina's, and the story became a bit more interesting there. It wasn't completely successful, because understanding things depended a bit too much on having read the first two books, but at least there was some real emotion here.

GRADE: A C.

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TITLE: Court Appointed
AUTHOR: Annmarie McKenna

This one's about Jackson Benedict, a federal judge who has started receiving threats from a stalker and Trey London, the FBI agent assigned to protect him. The two had been ogling each other for some time already, and this is the opportunity for them to do something about it. Which they do, over and over and over again. Yep, you guessed it, I thought this one had way too much sex. I liked Jackson and Trey, both individually and together, but after a while I got tired of reading sex scenes that were adding nothing to the story or their character development.

Best thing in the story: the contrast between Jackson's family, basically a father who's managed to convince himself that no son of his could possibly be gay and that this must be just a phase, and the lovingness of Trey's. I loved the scene when Trey takes Jackson to meet them.

The worst: the resolution of the suspense subplot. Oh, my, that was just ridiculous and stupid!

GRADE: A C+.

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Demon Night, by Meljean Brook

TITLE: Demon Night (excerpt at Sybil's)
AUTHOR: Meljean Brook

COPYRIGHT: 2008 (comes out today!)
PAGES: 448
PUBLISHER: Berkley

SETTING: Contemporary US West Coast.
TYPE: Paranormal romance
SERIES: # 5 in the Guardians series (you can see the reading order here).

REASON FOR READING: Ditto what I said about Nalini Singh's latest: this is one of my favourite ongoing series.

Explore the seductive corners of the dark, as a forbidden attraction tempts danger under the canopy of the demon night...

Charlie Newcomb worked hard to get her life back together. But all that is shaken when she's set upon by three vampires desperate to transform her beauty into something evil. Because Charlie is the vital link to something they want-and need. It's Charlie's flesh and blood sister, a medical scientist whose knowledge could be invaluable to the predators.

But to get to her, they must first get to Charlie, now under the intimate protection of Ethan McCabe. As her Guardian, Ethan is attracted to her vulnerabilities-as well as her strengths. The closer he gets, the more protecting her becomes not just his duty, but his desire. But will it be enough to save Charlie when the demon night falls?

THE PLOT: Well, the story is about one of the Guardians, Drifter, who's charged with protecting a woman and has to convince her to become a vampire. Sorry, sorry, just kidding! *g* It's just that the Harriet Klausner thing was too hilarious!

Ok, seriously now, a very basic outline of the setup, because the summary quoted above is really just fine: vampires have been attacking and forcefully changing the people close to the scientists working at a certain research lab. Drifter (real name: Ethan, one of the Guardians), who made a huge impression on me when he first showed up in Demon Moon (IIRC), is given the task of keeping an eye on Charlie Newcomb, sister of one of those scientists.

MY THOUGHTS: I was lucky enough to get this as an ARC, and I read it as my first book of the year. Well, 2008 really started with a bang! Demon Night clearly shows how Meljean Brook keeps growing as an author. It's got all the elements I loved in her earlier books (the complex, fully-realized characters, the heart-stopping romance, the fascinating world and plot), but this time there wasn't even one second when I was confused in the slightest about what was going on. The plotting is still intrincate, but not overintrincate, if this makes any sense. And although you do appreciate everything more if you've read the whole series, I'd even say things were clear enough here that a reader could conceivably start here and not be lost.

Ethan was a lovely hero. At the risk of having Wendy and Sybil come after me with rotten tomatos, I confess not to be the biggest fan of Westerns. Cowboys, sheriffs, outlaws... eh. Boring, and usually not attractive in the least. But for some strange reason, I actually really liked how Ethan's past and personality gave the novel an almost-Western-in-the-present-day feel. I even found his Western-flavoured way of speaking unbearably sexy.

And on a less shallow note, what I found most amazing about this character was the complexity in what he feels and needs from Charlie. It was excellent how Brook managed to convey things like first his ambivalence about getting involved with someone like Charlie (remember this is a Guardian we're talking about, so he had some insights about Charlie's internal make-up that a regular man wouldn't have had), and then his need to be needed by her, but not in a "mine, mine, mine" way.

This ties in to a very intriguing issue which is explored in their relationship, which is that of what kinds of needing and wanting are healthy and which are not. It's an issue that's given the space and attention it deserves, and the conclusions are entirely satisfying. It's not just Ethan who has to deal with this. Charlie is a woman who in the past gave in to the neediness and weakness in her and as a result, pretty much destroyed her whole life. As the book starts, things are starting to come together again for her, after a lot of hard work, both internal and external. When she and Ethan get involved, Charlie must get over her very understandable reluctance to do anything that even looks like neediness again.

Charlie's a phenomenal heroine. She's not actually my favourite MB heroine, but that's because this is the author who wrote Lilith, and no one can beat Lilith! I thought she was fantastic, and admired her enormous strength. It's quite different from the more evident brand of kickassery that, say, Lilith and Savi displayed, but once I got to really understand her, it was just as impressive. And I most loved that, that there was so much more to her than was evident at first sight, and that as a reader I had a very similar reaction to Ethan's. She was very definitely not perfect and very, very flawed, but that's what made her all the stronger.

What goes on outside of the Ethan/ Charlie romance, is fantastic, too. As I said above, the plot is interesting and easily graspable, and the secondary characters are great. Characters from previous books play important roles (these are not just drop-ins to show how deliriously and smugly happy they are, as too many romance authors are so keen on), and the new ones are great, too. I was especially interested in Charlie's sister, Jane. Their relationship was a very believable rendering of sisterly love, with no idealization. I was also intrigued by Jane's own romance. The other day I was chatting with a friend about opening lines and she mentioned one from (I think) a Marcela Serrano book which went something like this: "Aunt Clara fell in love how all intelligent women do: like an utter idiot". That would SO be Jane here. I hope we see more of her later on in the series.

MY GRADE: A, A, A!

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Mine to Possess, by Nalini Singh

TITLE: Mine to Possess (excerpt 1, excerpt 2)
AUTHOR: Nalini Singh

COPYRIGHT: 2008 (comes out next Tuesday, February 5th)
PAGES: 352
PUBLISHER: Berkley

SETTING: Near future alternate-reality version of the US
TYPE: Paranormal romance
SERIES: Book 4 in the Psy/Changeling series. I'm not going to go into details about the universe set-up in my review, so if you want to know more, read the first few paragraph of my post about Slave to Sensation, the first book in the series.

REASON FOR READING: This is one of my favourite ongoing series.

Nalini Singh pulls away another dark layer of sheer desire, revealing passions unknown, in her latest novel about the world of the Psy. A ghost returns from a leopard changeling’s past, making him question everything—even his base animal instincts…

Clay Bennett is a powerful DarkRiver sentinel, but he grew up in the slums with his human mother, never knowing his changeling father. As a young boy without the bonds of Pack, he tried to stifle his animal nature. He failed...and committed the most extreme act of violence, killing a man and losing his best friend, Talin, in the bloody aftermath. Everything good in him died the day he was told that she, too, was dead.

Talin McKade barely survived a childhood drenched in bloodshed and terror. Now a new nightmare is stalking her life--the street children she works to protect are disappearing and turning up dead. Determined to keep them safe, she unlocks the darkest secret in her heart and returns to ask the help of the strongest man she knows...

Clay lost Talin once. He will not let her go again, his hunger to possess her, a clawing need born of the leopard within. As they race to save the innocent, Clay and Talin must face the violent truths of their past...or lose everything that ever mattered.

THE PLOT Clay Bennet was one of the most intriguing secondary characters in the previous books in the series, a DarkRiver leopard whose beast was very close to the surface, probably closer than anyone else's. At the beginning of MTP, Clay is shocked to discover that his childhood best friend, Tallin, is not dead, as he had been told. And he feels even more surprised -and betrayed- when he realizes it was her decision to stay away from him all these years.

It wasn't an easy decision for Tallin to abandon Clay, but she believed it was crucial for her survival. After the shattering violence of their last encounter, a violence not directed at her, but which still almost pushed her over the edge, Tallin decided to stay away. There had been more than enough fear and violence in her childhood already.

But now someone is kidnapping and killing the street children who are her responsibility, and she sees no other choice but to ask Clay for his help...

MY THOUGHTS: Ahhh! Reading Nalini Singh's books is always a treat, and this was no exception. With MTP we continue to go deeper into this world she's created and discover aspects we hadn't seen before. So far in the series we'd basically concentrated on the Psy and the changelings, but here we start to catch a glimpse of the human world and how all three races interact (and mix), especially how humans fare in a world where the other two races are so clearly more powerful than them.

But Tallin and Clay are so much more than simply a human and a changeling. What makes this story so compelling is that each of them is completely individual, while still being shaped and influenced by their nature. And the intimacy between them, that was amazing. This closeness is something that has been between them forever, since they met as children, but I never felt that Singh substituted showing us why and how these two fall in love with an easy way out. They are mates, and they were very close as children, but they still need to fall in love as adults, and we do get to see that.

Nowhere is this more clear than in what it takes for Clay to get over the betrayal of what he feels Tallin has "done to him". He needs to go a long way to see that as much as he thought he knew her completely, he didn't wholly understand her. It takes him a lot of time and insight into the character of Tallin the woman to understand why she felt staying away from him was so crucial to her survival.

To my mind, their relationship was all the stronger because there were things about the other that each had trouble accepting. For instance, Clay's beast is nearer the surface than we've seen before and Tallin's initially not at all comfortable with this. Or another one: take Tallin's sexual past. The obvious, easy way out would have been for Clay to immediately understand and nurture, but no, his first reaction is to see it as another betrayal, as Tallin having, in a sense, made his sacrifice be for nothing. The thing is, they overcome all these things, and this made their happy ending all the sweeter.

As always in the books in this series (I feel as if I'm repeating myself here!), hero and heroine fall in love before a backdrop where some very fascinating things are happening. They don't upstage the romance in the least, but they are intriguing in their own right. As I've said before, this world of Singh's is not a static one, it's clearly evolving, and we're starting to get some indications as to the direction in which things are going. The characters from the earlier books play very relevant roles (this is clearly a universe, that Singh has created), and while we get more than enough closure for this particular story, it's clear that things are nowhere near done yet!

MY GRADE: An A-. It's a pleasure to report that this series is still going strong :-)

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Blue Skies, by Robyn Carr

TITLE: Blue Skies
AUTHOR: Robyn Carr

COPYRIGHT: 2004
PAGES: 377
PUBLISHER: Mira

SETTING: Contemporary Las Vegas, mostly
TYPE: Straight romance
SERIES: No

REASON FOR READING: I've been hearing good things about Carr (about her Virgin River series, mostly), and I wanted to give her a try. Blue Skies was the only one of her books that my library had.

Nikki Burgess has survived a terrible marriage and an even worse divorce. And she's just about given up hope of every finding love and happiness. But when her ex-husband suddenly dies, she gets custody of her kids again and a chance to start over and do it right.

Dixie McPherson, on the other hand, has had way too much love. She has eleven tennis bracelets, dozens of trinkets, piles of sexy lingerie and a tarnished reputation when all she ever wanted was true love, a partner and a family.

Carlisle Bartlett is loyal, generous, kindhearted and the funniest guy slinging drinks in the back of an airplane. But he has an ugly little secret. The only kind of love he's used to comes with bruises.

They are three people who could seriously use a break. A fresh start. A shot of success and a chance to shine. Maybe a little romance—the kind that sticks. And some adventure wouldn't hurt. So when they're presented with the challenge of joining a team starting a new airline in Las Vegas, they don't hesitate. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, these three friends are going in search of their own blue skies.

THE PLOT: The book follows three friends, coworkers in the airline industry, as they get a new start in Las Vegas, where a new airline is getting off the ground. Nikki is a pilot who's all but given up on being a woman. Her friend Dixie, a flight attendant, has been looking for love and marriage all her life, but all she's found is men who lie to her and quickly leave her. Her colleague, Carlisle, is in an abusive relationship with his partner. The opening of New Century Air, in Vegas, is an opportunity for them to start again.

MY THOUGHTS: In a nutshell? Interesting story, but the authorial voice was much too intrusive.

Mainly, I thought Carr was too in love with her subject matter. Her infatuation with everyone and everything related to the air travel industry brought her book into preach-fest territory. And although her subject matter is interesting, and I appreciate reading a story by an author who clearly knows her stuff, the level of unnecessary detail about EXACTLY what starting a new airline involves bogged the story down a lot. We don't really need to know the details of exactly which manuals they need to write and exactly how many meetings they need to have and exactly with whom. After a certain point, this kind of thing doesn't add to the flavour of the book, it just bores.

Also on the authorial voice front, I felt there was too much tell rather than show. Carr's got a way of including a lot of omniscient narration that kept taking me out of the story.

As for the romances, I thought I was getting three, from what I read in the back cover and from the initial set-up, but I really got two. Poor Carlisle did get his HEA ending, but he got really shortchanged in terms of the development of a romance. There was absolutely none, and I wish there had, because it could have been very interesting. Nikki's romance was pretty boring, as her love interest never really came alive. The only one I really liked was Dixie's. That was really sweet. She falls in love with this ordinary-looking, unexciting, shy, totally nice guy, who is completely in love with her, but can't believe someone so beautiful can be interested in him. Awwwww!

Even though her romance didn't much interest me, I really liked Nikki. I feared at the beginning she would be a mess of neuroses and self-esteem issues, but I was pleasantly surprised. Yeah, she's not that confident in her personal life, but it's not something exageratedly bad. And in the workplace? The woman kicks butt and takes no shit from anyone. Every time someone tried to screw with her and she just calmly and firmly set them straight, I practically cheered.

Though... I had some problems with the ethics of two things Nikki did. The first was this guy Rocky, who's a kind of running joke through the book (well, not really, he shows up only three times, but still). This guy keeps pretending to be someone impressive to pick up women, and the first time, he's sitting next to Nikki in a plane and tells her that he's there undercover as an air marshal. Well, she gets him arrested for it! Huh? Arrested? He's not seriously impersonating an air marshal, in the sense of... I don't know, strutting around the cockpit giving orders, or something. He's just being smarmy. And she thinks it's just right that he gets arrested? It wasn't very funny at all.

And then there was the thing with Bob Riddle, which might be a bit of a spoiler. Riddle is her boss at the new airline, who it soon becomes clear, is wholly incompetent. Nikki gets the goods on him near the end of the book, more than enough to get his ass fired, but rather than exposing him, she just engineers his hiring by another company. So the book ends with this guy making three times as much as Nikki and the poor people at his new airline bearing the damage. So wrong! And not least because one of the things I was looking forward towards the most in the whole book was seeing Riddle get his comeuppance, maybe by being publicly humiliated!

And speaking of Riddle, he didn't really work very well as the "villain" of the piece, which is what I suspect he was supposed to be. He was just so incredibly bumbling that there was never any sense of threat from him.

MY GRADE: A B-.

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The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits, Mike Ashley, ed

TITLE: The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits
AUTHOR: edited by Mike Ashley

COPYRIGHT: 2005
PAGES: 564
PUBLISHER: Robinson

SETTING: Varies wildly. From Ancient times to 1912, and the settings range from Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa to North America. I think the only ones not represented are Latin America and Antarctica (and doesn't that say a lot about how important we are to the world?)
TYPE: Historical mysteries.
SERIES: Some of the stories are.

REASON FOR READING: I saw it in the library and it looked interesting.

MY THOUGHTS: Just as the locales and the time periods vary wildly, so does the quality of the stories.

At the beginning, I got worried because I noticed that in every single one of the stories the crime-solving seemed unbelievable and forced, especially the introduction of the detectives. Say, someone was asked to solve a crime because they were foreigners and therefore either impartial (His Master's Servant, by Philip Boast) or trained in logic (The Judgement of the Gods, by Rob Reginald). Hmmm, really? In all of these the setting was fascinating and well done, but I wasn't that impressed by the stories themselves.

Things got better when I got to Ancient Rome. I loved Cupid's Arrow, by Marilyn Todd. This story is part of an ongoing series about Claudia Seferius, a former prostitute who married a rich old man and is now herself very rich and a widow. Claudia is a fantastic character, and the references to past events, as well as a relationship with an aristocratic "policeman" (sorry, can't remember the term used for him here, but that's what he was), with whom she seems to have quite a bit of history, left me wild to read the rest of her books.

I also liked The Spiteful Shadow, by Peter Tremayne. It's set in Celtic Ireland, and features Sister Fidelma, who I understand has had quite a few other adventures. It was a neat little mystery, with a young woman who hears voices and is accused of having murdered someone because those voices told her to.

Which other stories were good? I liked The Witching Hour, by Martin Edwards, about a trial for witchcraft and a clerk determined to prove the accused's innocence. And I also enjoyed The Abolitionist, by Lynda S. Robinson, set in Virginia at the eve of the American Civil War. It's about the murder of the son of a socially prominent family, a man who's an abolitionist and insists on confronting slave owners about the evil of their ways. This was one of the very few stories in which I felt a true sense of tragedy, and the ending was fantastic.

And that was it, the rest were either bad or mediocre. For some, the setting compensated for mysteries that were not quite good enough, like The Serpent's Back, exploring the underbelly of 18th century Edinburgh, or Botanist at Bay, in Australia at the time Botany Bay was a penal colony.

A few I couldn't finish. For instance, The Dutchman and the Wrongful Heir, by Maan Meyers. In this case, the fascinating setting, in 17th century New Amsterdam (now New York), right after it passed from Dutch to English control, didn't compensate for a majorly boring story. Also Footprints, by Jeffery Farnol, which I abandoned as unreadable after a couple of pages in which I cringed every time the main character opened his mouth because the dialect was just painful to read.

Quite a lot of stories I didn't like at all, like If Serpents Envious, by Clayton Emery. This one's set in Colonial America and concerns two slaves accused of murdering their master. Every single character in the story was evil and unpleasant and horrible, except for the detective.

And there were a few bad stories right after this one, so maybe I should conclude that historical American settings don't do much for me. The Uninvited Guest, by Edward Hoch and Benjamin's Trap, by Richard Moquist were mysteries so humdrum that I felt I'd completely wasted the time I spent reading them. As for the story by Melville Davisson Post featuring Uncle Abner, I intensely disliked the judgemental bent of the detective. The Abolitionist is the only exception. I also disliked The Gentleman on the Titanic, by John Lutz, where the intrigues and counterintrigues of British and German agents become mind-numbingly boring.

Something I noticed and that I don't like at all is having real historical characters as detectives. Mary Reed and Eric Mayer use Herodotus, Cherith Baldry has Geoffrey Chaucer, Sarah Hoyt features Henry the Navigator (a Portuguese prince) and Benjamin Franklin detects in Richard Moquist's story. And in each of those stories, having this particular historical figure as the detective added absolutely nothing. It was just a gimmick, and gimmicks piss me off.

How about having a real historical figure in the story, but not as the detective? Well, I can like it or not, depends on the story and on whether it adds something. In Jean Davidson's Death in the Desert, we had the Queen of Sheba, and that was key to constructing the background of the story. In The Jester and the Mathematician, by Alan R. Gordon, OTOH, having mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci there was pointless, and it made the story feel silly.

MY GRADE: A C+, but I appreciated discovering a few authors I'll be reading again.

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Never Lie to a Lady, by Liz Carlyle

TITLE: Never Lie to a Lady
AUTHOR: Liz Carlyle

COPYRIGHT: 2007
PAGES: 432
PUBLISHER: Pocket

SETTING: Victorian England
TYPE: Straight romance
SERIES: First in Carlyle's latest trilogy (what is it called? The Never trilogy? The Neville trilogy?). Though there's a short story in the School for Heiresses anthology which introduces the characters.

REASON FOR READING: Autobuy author.

In her dazzling new historical trilogy, New York Times bestselling author Liz Carlyle plunges readers into the steamy underworld of nineteenth-century London. Among the swirling glitter of English high society, a scandalous rogue gets more than he bargained for in the lady of his desires.

Lord Nash is a creature of the night -- his wealth and title provide but a tenuous entrée into polite society. Notorious for his sophisticated manners and a dark, dashing elegance, rumors abound of the men he has bankrupted and the women he's left heartbroken. But when Nash leaves his lair for a rare foray into the ton, he faces a lure of temptation all his own -- an extraordinary moment of passion with a mysterious lady in the moonlight -- and an obsession that will lead him into a hellish world of smugglers, spies, and intrigue. And as for his damsel in disguise, the witty and beautiful Miss Xanthia Neville, he soon learns, is as unattainable as she is tempting. And now Nash must decide if she is also dangerous...

THE PLOT: Xanthia Neville and her brother own a very succesful shipping business, which they started when they were living in the West Indies. Xanthia has been involved in it from the beginning, and she isn't about to let those strict English rules about ladies not working keep her away. She's not particularly interested in marriage, anyway, so what does she care?

When she meets the Marquess of Nash in a ball and an unexpectedly steamy encounter takes place between them in a balcony, Xanthia is tempted, but makes herself strong and determines to keep away from him. But she'll soon have the perfect excuse to come close to him, when she's asked to help her country. She's to befriend Nash and investigate whether he's involved (on behalf of his mother's motherland) in some operations in Greece which threaten British interests in the region.

Sounds strange, but the reasoning on the part of the powers that be (which include our old friends Max Rohan and George Kemble, from many past Carlyle novels) is that as the owner of a shipping company, she can dangle the possibility of using her ships in front of him, and see if he'll take it. Makes sense, I suppose.

So anyway, now that she can tell herself she has a reason to be near Nash, Xanthia keeps close and she's quickly convinced that the man is innocent of any wrongdoing. And of course, their relationship soon turns into more than she would have expected.

MY THOUGHTS: I liked many things about NLTAL, but it just didn't have the absorbing quality Carlyle's books usually have for me. I suspect it might have been because I started reading it on the plane on the way here to England (the original flight from Uruguay... yes, it's been months since I read it and I'm only now getting to the review) and finished it while worried about my luggage, not the circumstances most conducive to being able to sink into a book. Maybe if I'd tried it again it would be better, because thinking back about particular elements of the book, none of my memories are negative.

Xanthia is a very interesting heroine... a woman for whom her business and her role in running it is intimately tied to her image of herself. This might have been hard to accept in a historical heroine, but Carlyle pulls it off, by helping us understand the way her past shaped this aspect of her personality. Now, whether it's believable or not that a woman would have been able to do this at the time, with as little trouble as Xanthia seemed to have had... doubtful. I was willing to suspend disbelief, but really, doubtful.

She's also someone who actually has a sexual past, no less! I thought her relationship with her former lover, Gareth (hero of the second book in the series) was very intriguing, and I enjoyed the kinda-triangle when Gareth first became aware of Nash's and Xanthia's involvement. Strange, really, since jealous exes usually make me groan.

I enjoyed Nash, too. What I found most interesting there was that when we first see him, he seems to be just like any other romance hero... a nobleman, a rake, etc., etc. But he's still very much an outsider, and not just because of his ancestry. This gave him much in common with Xanthia, and I thought it was a solid foundation for their relationship.

The actual suspense plot, with Xanthia's investigation and Kemble and Max running around? Meh. Not too interesting, but not bad, either. Still, this is one to read for the romance, not the plot.

MY GRADE: A B.

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Chill Factor, by Sandra Brown

TITLE: Chill Factor (excerpt)
AUTHOR: Sandra Brown

COPYRIGHT: 2005
PAGES: 389
PUBLISHER: Hodder & Stoughton in the UK

SETTING: Contemporary North Carolina
TYPE: Romantic Suspense
SERIES: None

REASON FOR READING: Because I haven't read SB in ages. She used to be among my faves back when I started reading romance, but she lost me when she started heading more into suspense and neglecting the romance. I was curious to see how I'd like her these days.

Suspense abounds in this gripping new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown, in which a successful magazine editor is trapped in her remote cabin with a man believed to be a serial killer.

Cleary, North Carolina, is a sleepy mountain town -- the kind of place where criminal activity is usually limited to parking violations. Not so, lately. Four women have disappeared from Cleary over the past two years. And there's always a blue ribbon left near the spot where each of the women was last seen. There are no bodies, no other clues, and no suspicion as to who their abductor might be. And now, another woman has disappeared without a trace.

It is to this backdrop that Lilly Martin returns to close the sale of her mountain cabin, marking the end of her turbulent eight-year marriage to Dutch Burton, Cleary's chief of police. Dutch's reluctance to let her go isn't Lilly's only obstacle. As she's trying to outrun a snowstorm, her car skids on the icy road and strikes a man who emerges from the woods on foot. She recognizes the injured man as Ben Tierney, whom she'd met the previous summer. They're forced to wait out the storm in the cabin, but as the hours of their confinement mount, Lilly begins to wonder if the greatest danger to her safety isn't the blizzard outside, but the mysterious man right beside her.

Is Ben Tierney the feared abductor? Or is he who he claims to be...her rescuer from harm and from the tragedy that haunts her?

THE PLOT: The summary quoted above is quite good, it really gives you a good idea of the setup and feel of the book. So if it's ok with you guys, I'll just skip doing one for this one.

MY THOUGHTS: The good: How Brown kept me second-guessing myself through a lot of the book. Is he or isn't he a serial killer? Should Lilly trust him or shouldn't she? For a long time, I just didn't know. And Lilly was a good heroine, someone whose reactions felt sensible to me. No silly "I know this man is innocent because he's got kind eyes" nonsense from our Lilly. When in the slightest doubt, she's careful, just like anyone with two braincells to rub together would, and applies the better safe than sorry rule.

The meh: The romance. I didn't feel much of a connection there. I didn't feel like I knew a great deal about the man she ends up with, so I found it hard to get excited about a relationship between them. Actually, I didn't feel I knew a great deal about Lilly, either. I knew more about certain nasty secondary characters than about her. Which brings me to...

The bad: A big (and I mean BIG) part of the book is spent with the townspeople trying to get to Lilly and Ben, and such a disgusting bunch of repulsive bigots, most of them were! I hated every paragraph I had to spend with them and even the characters which were portrayed sympathetically (like that sanctimonious FBI agent) annoyed me. This just didn't make for a book I enjoyed reading.

MY GRADE: A C+.

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Death by gimmick

Here are my reviews of two Harlequin Blaze titles I read on my ebook reader on my way to and from Portugal. They're quite different in tone and plot, and each have their strong and weak points, but what struck me the most was how overpoweringly gimmicky they felt.

TITLE: Underneath It All
AUTHOR: Lori Borrill

COPYRIGHT: 2007
PAGES: 256
PUBLISHER: Harlequin Blaze

SETTING: Contemporary
TYPE: Series Romance
SERIES: Part of the "Million Dollar Secrets" continuity

REASON FOR READING: The review at AAR made it sound interesting.

TV producer Nicole Reavis intends to use her millions to sort out a top secret personal hiccup. In the meantime, her show must go on. And Nicole has to entice mega-rich Devon Bradshaw to appear as one of Atlanta's sexiest eligible bachelors. But will he bite?

Devon's biting if it means spending more time with beautiful blue-eyed Nicole. But when he discovers that, underneath it all, they've got more in common than six-figure finances and shocking family revelations, he's determined to find out everything about her.

MY THOUGHTS: The central plot is quite simple: Nicole and Devon meet, are very attracted to each other and start dating. Devon falls quite hard from the very beginning and instantly recognizes Nicole as the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with, but she refuses to even consider something serious. She's dealing with recently finding out she's adopted, and doesn't feel it's the right time for such big decisions.

This, what was at the heart of the book, was nice enough. I love plots about the hero falling hard right from the beginning and knowing she's the one, while she thinks she's just having a fling, and Devon was quite adorable. However, I did have some problems with things like Nicole's motivation for backing off so completely when it becomes clear Devon wants much more, because her reasoning felt a bit iffy. I never really saw the how her adoption was related to her current relationship with Devon.

Also I'm usually the one who's asking for more sexually assertive heroines, but here, Nicole made me a bit uncomfortable. Hey, it's great that she's comfortable with her sexuality and goes after Devon in that sense, but I had a few "whoa there!" moments, when she does things that would probably be more believable between two people with some familiarity and comfortableness with each other.

But ok, those were minor blips. What really kept throwing me out of the book was all the external stuff that was happening around them and felt very badly integrated. As I mention above, this is part of a continuity series. Nicole and a group of coworkers have won the lottery, but they're having trouble with the woman who used to work with them and is demanding a share of the money, because she used to play the lottery with them (or something like that). There's quite a bit of space devoted to this (they meet about it and discuss whether they should settle out of court and have endless debates about it), none of which adds anything at all to this particular story. This is what I mean by gimmicky. The book even ends on a scene from the "villainess" of that subplot's point of view, a truly WTF? note.

And there's also other stuff... like Devon and Nicole first meeting when she bids on him in a bachelor auction (again, adds nothing to the story. I could practically see the author thinking "I need a sexy, provocative beginning"). The only external plot I was mildly interested in was what's going on in Devon's business with the embezzlement and his doubts about whether he should quit or not. This felt much more germane to the story , I thought.

MY GRADE: Without the gimmicks, I'd probably go for a B-/B grade, but this ended up not being a particularly satisfying reading experience, so a C+.

---

TITLE: Ghosts and Roses
AUTHOR: Kelley St. John

COPYRIGHT: 2007
PAGES: 256
PUBLISHER: Harlequin Blaze

SETTING: Contemporary New Orleans
TYPE: Series Romance
SERIES: Second in the awfully titled "The Sexth Sense", which starts with Kiss and Dwell. You can see the rest of the titles here.

REASON FOR READING: Same as the previous one: the AAR review.

He's never touched her but he's made love to her.

He doesn't know her, but he has to find her…

Before a killer does.

Gage Vicknair has been dreaming-incredible erotic visions-about a mysterious brown-eyed beauty.

Makayla Sparks has been dreaming about a strong, sexy man who keeps her safe-- and very, very satisfied.

When a spirit from beyond tells Gage he needs to rescue a stranger named Makayla, he never expects that stranger to be the same sensuous woman he's enjoyed so thoroughly in his nightly fantasies. But Makayla is very real-and she's living a nightmare. A vengeful murderer is determined to get her. And Gage is equally determined to save her.

Because the only way he and Makayla can have the love they've dreamed of is if they're still around to live it…

MY THOUGHTS: Another gimmicky one. And hey, you could say we have two gimmicks for the price of one! We've got the family of mediums, all of whom have unbearably "unique" names, who help spirits cross over in a way that's full of absurdly elaborate rules (this on the side of the hero), and we've got the group of four friends who survived childhood abuse together (this on the side of the heroine). Although I might be being a bit unfair, because this last one wasn't so gimmicky-feeling. I suppose I was just feeling overwhelmed by it all.

Anyway, what happens here is that Gage's latest assignment, the latest ghost he needs to help cross over, is one of these four women, Lillian. She was murdered and needs to warn the other three women that they are in danger, even though they think the guy who abused them as children is safely in jail. To help Lillian cross over, Gage must make sure these women are safe, which means not just warn them, but make sure the man threatening them is captured.

Gage is very surprised when he finds the first of Lillian friends, Makayla, and realizes she's the woman he's been having erotic dreams about for some time. And it turns out she's been having the exact same dreams, the only thing she can remember, because Makayla has amnesia, a reaction to having been attacked by the villain already.

My reaction here was very similar to how I felt about Underneath It All. There's a nice romance at the center of the novel, with a sweet hero and a nice, caring relationship, but what's around it detracts from it. The worst part is that it could be interesting stuff, but it's just not very well done. My main problem was that the abuse plot and the "sexy, sexy, sexy!" plot didn't really go very well together. Each was good on its own, but the former was extremely dark and traumatic, so juxtaposing it with the other stuff "cheapened" it.

I was also very frustrated by the way they go about trying to discover what's going on and getting the villain, because it's so totally bumbling. There were some very obvious steps that no one thougth of taking, and what they did do felt fake. The author doesn't seem to be very familiar with how googling something would work, for instance. At one point they're googling to try to find out what's going on with the girls former abuser, whether he's still in jail, and they google his name and come up with only one match (even though there was a big trial all those years ago, when they sent him to jail). And the guy's name is something not particularly uncommon or strange: Wayne Romero. Yeah, right. (Quick cursory search: 481,000 matches, and 688 if I put it in quote marks). It was all so glaringly OBVIOUS, too, that these people came across as incredibly dim for not realizing the truth much sooner. And the dénouement... *groan*.

What I found most distracting, though, was all the sequel-baiting for the next books in the series and the constant references to the completely irrelevant plot of the first book. This element, plus the silly rules of the Vicknair family tradition, with their assignments popping up and written like email memos, and so on, was quite preposterous.

MY GRADE: Another C+.

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Two Sara Cravens, and the difference between nostalgia and dated

I can't not read, not even when I'm studying like crazy for my exams. I usually start really early in the morning and by 6 my brain can't absorb one more fact, one more mathematical proof. What it wants is to read some romance, but nothing too long or complex. So I just went to the library and grabbed some Harlequin Presents (Mills & Boon Modern Romance, here).

The first batch I grabbed included a Sara Craven (because I remembered Jane saying she'd liked her books), and I really liked it. It was exactly the kind of book I used to read as a teen, only better. Yay, I thought, I've found another HP author I like! Susan Napier isn't alone anymore! So the next time I went by the library I looked for all the Sara Cravens I could find, and that night I started the next one. And it was terrible *sigh*. It was also just like those books I read as a teen, only worse. Much, much worse.

TITLE:The Count's Blackmail Bargain
AUTHOR: Sara Craven

COPYRIGHT: 2005
PAGES: 187
PUBLISHER: Mills and Boon (Modern Romance line)

SETTING: Contemporary Italy
TYPE: Series Romance
SERIES: No, I don't believe it is

For handsome Italian count Alessio Ramontella, seducing women comes as naturally as breathing. Alessio lives his life based on two criteria: first that success and satisfaction are guaranteed, and second that all his dealings are discreet and conducted between mutually consenting parties.

Then he meets innocent English beauty Laura Mason. She’s sweet, tempting…and off–limits. Alessio must decide: should he ruthlessly pursue Laura until she gives in?

MY THOUGHTS: Ok, so this one was the one that was a blast from the past, but in a good way. Some... hmm, I'd say between 10 and 15 years ago (man, I'm getting OLD!), before I discovered online shopping, I fed my romance craving with translated Harlequins I'd buy in a bookstore near my house. I'd go every couple of months and choose a huge pile, just by skimming the back-cover blurbs. Authors? Who cared who the author was? There were two I knew I disliked, so before paying I weeded out anything by Betty Neels and Lass Small, but other than that, it was all about plot. And my favourites were 1) secret babies (*blushes*) and 2) the very plot of The Count's Blackmail Bargain: the heroine is pretending to be some guy's girlfriend so he can make some kind of point to his family. They're horrified by her, and the head of the family, usually an older cousin or an uncle, is determined to separate the young couple. And of course, the heroine and this guy fall in love.

In this case Laura is helping out the slimy Paolo, whose mother is pressuring him to marry this young woman who's been intended for him practically since they were born. She barely knows the guy, but he's paying good money, which she wants to help her little brother (of course she's selfless, this is a HP!). The batshit crazy mother won't be thwarted, so she then blackmails her nephew, Alessio (who's head of the family business and Paolo's boss) to seduce Laura so Paolo can see what kind of woman he's with.

The beginning is pretty bad. That Zia Lucrezia is waaaay over the top, and not in a good way. Plus, I never bought that Alessio, the way he's otherwise characterized, would give in to her blackmail as he did in the first scene. Seduce this girl or I'll expose your affair with this married woman and it will be such a scandal! Ohhhhhhhh, scary! He looked like a total wimp for not telling his aunt to go to hell. I think Craven realized that, because she tried other explanations later on... he likes the woman's husband, so he was protecting him (eh? Just don't sleep with the man's wife then. Very heroic of you), etc., but none really fly.

But.... things soon improve, and quite a lot. I especially liked Alessio. Yeah, he's suitably macho and dominating, but he's alright, this guy. He has a sense of humour, for starters, and he falls for Laura straight away. And a huge difference from the older books, which made this one so much, much better, is that we get into his head quite a lot, so even when he behaves like an asshole to Laura, we kind of see why he's doing it, and that he's not, in fact, really such a cruel bastard.

Laura was pretty cool, too. Ok, so she's like no 20-something British woman I've ever met, from her attitudes to her wardrobe, but there were some glimmers of modernity there. I liked that she was nobody's doormat. When things started going weird, she very sensibly decided to get the hell out and forcefully demanded to leave.

There's some very definite chemistry there between Laura and Alessio, and I enjoyed their interactions. I even looked forward to the explosion when she found out about Alessio's deal with his aunt, and it really fulfilled all my expectations. Oh and the setting was just lovely!

Now, for the bad: the whole virginity thing raised my hackles. When Alessio first discovers Laura's a virgin (duh, of course she is, this is a HP!) he backs off at full speed. There were some very dated things said here when he was insisting he couldn't have sex with her now because he'd just realized she had been a virgin (*had been*... the moment of realization was just in the middle of things). The whole "Ah, your innocence is a precious gift which you should give your husband" (dude, you've just taken her virginity already, just get on with it.) and "I want you to be able to go with him without shame" Shame?? You sexist little hypocrite!

MY GRADE: In spite of the virginity stupidity, I liked this. A B-.

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TITLE: The Forced Bride
AUTHOR: Sara Craven

COPYRIGHT:2006
PAGES: 184
PUBLISHER: Mills and Boon (Modern Romance line)

SETTING: Contemporary England, Scotland and Italy
TYPE: Series romance
SERIES: I'm not sure... there were two secondary characters there who seemed to have a story of their own (Rafaele's friend Marcello and his wife Fiona).

When Emily Blake innocently kissed formidable Italian count Rafael Di Salis, she didn’t know that she was bound by her late father’s wishes to marry him. Emily agreed to be the count’s wife until she reached twenty–one….

Count Rafael has bided his time. He’s kept his passions under iron control for two years—his bride was young and he did not want to claim her until she was woman enough to handle him. But now she has come of age, she will be his!

MY THOUGHTS: Have you read Candy's recent post at SBTB about how one should embrace one's bad taste? (If you haven't, go read it, she's so right.) I read it while I was in the middle of TFB, and one particular paragraph caught my attention:

Those old Mills and Boon novels, in which the hero (who’s usually about 35) at some point grabs the heroine (who’s usually about 19) and gives her a punishing kiss? So. Bad. They’re clumsily written, and awful in all sorts of ways—the repugnant gender politics alone made me seethe with rage, and this was back when I was 11, mind you, when all I could articulate about what I didn’t like about those books was that “they weren’t fair to the heroine and the hero got to win way too often.” You know what? I still found them compelling, and I read them by the boatload.

Indeed. TFB could be poster book for "repugnant gender politics", and it's the kind of book I didn't think was still being published.

We've got a much older hero (we don't get his age, but I'd put him in his early 30s) who lusts after a 17-year-old. But we're told it's ok, because he waits until she's 20 before he jumps her... until she's "woman enough to handle him", as the back cover so elegantly puts it.

We've got a heroine who constantly lets herself be bullied, and whose entire purpose in life is being her husband's hostess.

We've got Emily's demands for an annulment rather than a divorce, because she intends to wear white when she remarries "so that my bridegroom will know that he isn't getting damaged goods" (damaged goods, for crap's sake!!),.

We've got Raf's demands that Emily cook for him, because that's what a wife should do, and we've got her acceptance of this. She obediently goes to the kitchen and cooks for him. And cleans for him. Obediently, too.

We've got Rafe sleeping with other women all throughout the first years of their marriage, even though he claims he was in love with Emily from the start.

And the worst of all: we've got Emily's resignation to the fact that being her legal husband gives Raf the right to "take her" whenever and however he wants, even if she's screaming no. Never heard of marital rape, you little twit? What universe is this book taking place in? Because it was rape, and it made me seethe. The first scene, especially, turned my stomach. As did the fact that these constant rapes are portrayed as positive, what Emily needs to realize she loves him, and that she actually feels guilty because he's trying his best to seduce her and she's not letting him. WTF??

The word that summarizes this book is "Blergh!". "Disgusting" and "ghastly" would also do.

And you know, the only reason I didn't tear up this book and flush it down the toilet (even though it belongs to the library and I would have had to pay 3 full pounds for it), was that I couldn't decide which one of them, Emily or Rafaele, disgusted me the most. So the happy ending was a HEA after all, because these two deserved each other.

MY GRADE: A big, fat F.

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Has anyone got any recs for Sara Craven books that are like the first one and nothing like the second one? I've got Mistress at a Price here with me, how about it? Any good?

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