Secret baby stories are often hard for me to swallow, particularly in this modern day when fathers are more involved in their children’s lives than ever before. Ordinarily, I likely would have set this book aside after the first chapter when it is revealed that the heroine, Fia, has kept her son’s parentage a secret for over three years with her only excuse that the relationship had been a one night stand.

The Ferrara family and the Baracchi family have been feuding for two generations.  Santos Ferrara, a younger son, and Fia Baracchi shared one explosive and secret night with each other which resulted in the creation of Luca.

Santos reconnects with Fia when he decides that he will win back the property lost to his family two generations ago. He needs Fia’s cooperation, cooperation he stupidly (in my opinion) believes he will be able to obtain despite having a one night stand with her and never speaking to her again.  But this is Santos Ferrara and throughout the book, he is treated as a man who makes no mistakes and thus if someone like Fia would not speak to him it is only because she is a foolish child hanging onto foolish grudges.

While I was perturbed with Fia keeping Luca a secret from Santos, Santos never thought to connect with Fia after their one night stand either. Santos refers to their one encounter as a relationship but from the description, it more resembled an anonymous hookup:

Before tonight they’d never actually spoken. Even during that one turbulent encounter, they hadn’t spoken.

Much of the first half of the book was spent reading the two trade accusations, insults, and assumptions about each other. Santos assuming the worst about Fia’s parenting skills and Fia responding with barbs about his lack of experience with children. Santos is often putting Fia in a position to have to apologize. Santos, of course, is never wrong even when he is wrong. Weirdly, when Santos is incorrect, he never apologizes whereas Fia’s dialogue frequently begins with “I’m sorry.”

Santos assumes that Fia is a bad parent because she grew up in a shitty household.  When Fia explains that she would not want for her son the same childhood that she had, Santos questions how she could have even learned good parenting skills:

And if you know what mine was like then you should also know that I would never want that for my son. I don’t blame you for your concern but you are wrong. I do understand what a family should be. I always have.’

‘How? Where would you learn that? Certainly not in your own home.’ Her home life had been fractured, messy and unbelievably insecure because the Baracchi family didn’t just fight their neighbours, they fought amongst themselves. If family was a boat built to weather stormy seas, then hers was a shipwreck.

Santos even believes that Fia has allowed their son to be abused, at least emotionally, on the basis of his years ago past interaction with Fia.

Sweat beaded on his brow. He could barely allow himself to think about what his son’s life must have been like. What was the long-term impact of being raised in an emotional desert? And what if the abuse hadn’t just been emotional?

Santos doesn’t like that Fia uses nannies.  His aunts and cousins could watch Luca but no stranger and certainly not “paid” help. Interaction with Fia shows Santos that she is a good mother, but no apologies are forthcoming from Santos. His outrage and assumptions are justified.

He just took control, she thought numbly, the way the Ferraras always took control. Not once did he hesitate or fumble.

His insistence that they would be passionate lovers again and that he would make her feel for him made me uncomfortable. Certainly this was a romance book and that may be the end result but at the time he was making these delcarations, Fia had just placed her only relative in the hospital, was reeling from having to face the father of her child, and was doing her best to cope. Telling her that she was going to be naked and under him soon enough sounded like an ominous threat and not a passionate promise.

This book hewed so closely to a pattern of HPs and lacked the originality and freshness other Morgan HPs have brought. I wasn’t surprised at anything that came out of Santos’ mouth because it comprised mostly of him telling Fia what she was going to do, where she was going to do it, and how she was going to feel while doing it. Fia, for her part, lived up to the fragile adjective that was used to repeatedly describe her. She would often jump to conclusions which would necessitate her apologizing. “I’m sorry” was her regular refrain.

At one point, Santos admonishes Fia for appearing angry with him in front of the child. How obvious that Fia would be the one to be angry and not Santos because everything Santos does is either right or with the right intentions. Fia is the flawed one.  By the end, of course, Fia opens up beautifully as Santos predicted she would, under his tutelage and passionate hands, and they live happily ever after.  Blergh.  C-

Best regards,

Jane

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1. Untraceable by Laura Griffin A | BN | K | S
2. Bared to You: A Crossfire Novel by Sylvia Day A | BN | K | S
3. Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry A | BN | K | S
4. One Reckless Summer by Toni Blake A | BN | K | S
5. Hot Island Nights by Sarah Mayberry A | BN | K | S
6. The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan A | BN | K | S
7. A Different Kind of Forever by Dee Ernst A | BN | K | S
8. Natural Law by Joey W. Hill A | BN | K | S
9. The Heart of Devin MacKade by Nora Roberts A | BN | K | S
10. Raised by Wolves by Jennifer Lynn Barnes A | BN | K | S

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“Lucy Martin’s dream of marrying her Prince Charming might have fallen apart, but she’s determined to make her soccer-mad nephew’s dreams come true. But that means asking her old crush Ryland James, the legendary bad boy of soccer, to coach her nephew’s team.

Injured and ordered to polish his tarnished reputation, Ryland’s looking for distraction. Coaching might be more involvement than he likes, but with gorgeous Lucy offering cookies as a bribe he can’t resist! This soccer superstar might have met his perfect match…if he can convince the once-burnt, twice-wary Lucy to get back in the game….”

Dear Ms. McClone,

This book turned out to be more than the cute, sassy read I thought I’d get based on the book blurb. But that’s not to say that I liked what I got instead of what I thought I’d get. There are some things hinted at early in the book that turned out not to have a great deal of impact on the story or the characters. Plus the first half was filled with lusting while the romance of the second half felt rushed and unfulfilled. I also had issues with how involved I felt with Lucy and Ryland.

In the introduction to the book, I discovered that the heroine is a liver transplant recipient and you talk about how you went to lengths to find someone to talk to so this would all be correct but…except for a few passing comments about how this made heroine so ill as a child, there is almost no current inclusion about how it affects her life now – and I imagine that it would if only in how many anti-rejections meds she has to take. Perhaps it was a matter of not having enough space to include details but I had initially been excited at the thought of reading about such a heroine.

Ryland comes from poor background and was teased and bullied over it. When he returns to town and begins to coach, you say that he notices some of the people who did this are now parents watching their children play on the Defeeters but honestly this doesn’t seem to still affect him much – to the point that it’s almost like you went to a hero checklist and ticked off this item to add to the book to act as a quick background shading like hair color or height. He also says he’s already earned so much money that he doesn’t feel the drive to make tons more which doesn’t seem quite right an attitude for a man who grew up so poor.

For the first half of the book it’s lust, lust, lust. Endless sections of lusting. Every scene has to have either Ryland or Lucy mentally lusting over the other to the point I’m surprised they don’t walk into walls or run over fire hydrants because of it. Lust is fine but not so much that it takes over and overshadows their other connections which I really wanted to see.

Then at the halfway mark, things flipped and suddenly after pretend dating for a few weeks, the two of them go out to dinner and finally share their secrets about her illness and his childhood poverty. Only there’s the one brief mention of both issues and then zip! everything gets buried again. Lucy’s art also gets similar short shrift. She paints and sketches a little, bares her artistic soul to Ryland off page and then events speed on along leaving that behind as well.

It takes an overseas article about the two of them together to get Lucy all bothered and finally facing that she’s falling in love with Ryland. I’m glad I get told this because without that, I wouldn’t have thought so. Lucy then goes from feeling she’s in love to pissy that Ryland so easily dismisses this as mere tabloid gossip. Now that she’s on the love bandwagon, she wants to be a WAG for real. But no dice from Ryland who’s still focused on getting back to his MLS team. That is until a tornado ripping through town while he’s back in Phoenix gets his attention and – I guess also due to the end of the book rapidly approaching – he admits his feelings and goes for the engagement ring GOAALLL. Only, this feels rushed to me as well.

The parts of the book I do really like are Lucy and Ryland’s coaching of the youth soccer/football team. It’s this that awakens Ryland’s renewed dedication to the sport and determination to regain his teammates and the fans’ respect. I did wonder though why such a star player would be allowed to recuperate from his injury so far from the team doctors and trainers. Yes, I know the book plot depends on it but it still seems incorrect.

Too much lusting then such a quick turnaround to instalove means the book doesn’t work for me as a romance. I also felt that there were too many issues that only served as tokens of character development without adding substantially to the story. As well, for a great deal of the book, I felt distanced from the characters- as if I’m being told about them but not that I’m really “feeling” what they’re going through. For me, the sports sections are the best but they’re not enough to carry the rest. D

~Jayne

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Announcement.

Beginning in 2013, Dear Author will only review books that are available in both epub and Kindle formats.  Let me explain why.

There are two primary reasons why all books should be available in epub and Kindle formats.  The first reason is that competition is important for even (or especially) Kindle users.  The second reason is that publisher, regardless of whether the publisher is the author herself, a traditional print first publisher, or a digital first publisher, should go to where the reader is.

Competition is important.

Competition is important to both authors and readers.  First, the authors.

I argued a couple of weeks ago that Agency pricing helped spur both the self published market as well as the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform.  The reason for this is because if Agency pricing had never reared its head, Amazon might well have felt no need to develop its own publishing platform. It is true that Amazon bought Createspace in 2005, well before Agency was instituted in 2010.  Further, Amazon had been in talks with agents well before 2010.  But the KDP did not announce the 70% royalty platform until January of 2010, the same month in which Agency was imposed upon them.  The program was not put in place until June 2010.  It’s safe to assume that the announcement was made intentionally prematurely to show publishers that Amazon would aggressively move into the publishing space.  Who knows what the royalty fee would have been if Amazon had not been pushed there by Agency.  Who knows when the KDP program would have launched without Agency?  In other words, competition is good for authors.  If Amazon has no competition, there is little incentive for it to keep the royalty structure high.  Amazon is working on razor thin margins and lowering the royalty structure, would increase its publishing margin.

Next, the readers.

Kindle was launched in 2007. It was slow, had an ugly keyboard attached, but featured an e ink screen.  Nook introduced the Nook which featured an eink screen and an lcd display at the bottom.  In June of 2011, Nook introduced the Nook Simple Touch, a touch screen device.  The Kindle touch screen was announced a few months later.  In November 2010, Nook announced the Nook Color, a tablet type device.  Kindle follows with the Kindle Fire a year later.

This year Nook released the Glow Nook, a front lit e ink screen.  Kindle rumors heat up that in September, a front lit Kindle would be introduced.  (In order to give appropriate credit, it should be noted that Sony developed the devices with a keyboard, a touch screen, and a front lit screen before both Nook and Kindle).

Kindle’s software has often lagged behind that of the Nook, Kobo and Sony.  For instance, Kindle did not have folders or collections like the Nook and Sony.  Kindle did not have library access unlike the Nook and Sony.  Kindle, in order to be competitive, has had to constantly advance its software and hardware in order to meet the new market demand created by new devices such as the Nook Simple Touch or the Nook Tablet or the iPhone and iPad.

Without competition, the Kindle readers would suffer with outdated software, hardware and access.

In sum, competition is important for both readers and authors. A robust competitive market means good things for everyone–lower prices, higher royalties, better devices.

Going to where the reader is.

In a letter to clients he [Mark Suchomel, IPG president] notes, “I only regret that we weren’t able to make up for all of the lost revenue when your Kindle titles were not available. We will continue to work hard for every last sale so that all of our publishers stay healthy moving forward.” To that end, IPG is waiving its distribution fee on the next three months of Kindle sales.

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Grief stories have to be one of the more difficult stories to write. After all, grief stories can often rely on low hanging fruit using a death as the easy emotion evoker making the story seem manipulative instead of touching. However, there isn’t anything easy about the lives of Lucy Alatore or Jeremiah Stone. Lucy’s life was on the upswing, her one of a kind jewelry catching the eye of movie stars and other rich and famous people. When she makes a rookie business person mistake, Lucy’s entire career gets flushed and she runs to her family home in Northern California. She’s not sure how to remake herself and her mother is acting strange and her sister’s newly found bliss is rubbing her the wrong way.

Jeremiah Stone’s promising rodeo career was ended by an injury but his worse loss was when his sister and brother in law died and left Jeremiah the guardian of his nephews. Jeremiah doesn’t know how to parent three boys, let alone ones that are suffering their own grief. He’s so far removed from his star filled life that even Lucy doesn’t recognize him:

“Are you…” It was just so weird to think of Jeremiah Stone as the guardian of three small boys.
Jeremiah Stone was a cowboy sex symbol. He got interviewed on ESPN, and that footage of him getting trampled by a bull had been a YouTube sensation. He dated beautiful country music stars, and did not, definitely did not, fold superhero underwear.

Jeremiah and Lucy are both suffering from loss, both experiencing grief. For Jeremiah, it’s the loss of his sister, but also the loss of his independence and his dreams. He sees a counselor and at one point she asks him if he has grieved.

“For my sister? Yeah. Of course.” Cried like a baby through her funeral. Boxed up her clothes and sobbed. Had to call Cynthia to help him.

“No. Have you grieved for your old life? For the rodeo? For the life you lived before you took over caring for the boys?”

His stomach dropped and his brain felt too light. His skin painfully tight. Panicked, suddenly shaking with adrenaline, he glanced up at the clock.

“Time’s up, Dr. Gilman.”

“Jeremiah—?”

He didn’t stop. Didn’t listen. He grabbed his hat from the stand by the door and slipped out the door. But his stomach stayed in his leaden legs and his skin itched like it wanted to come off.

The realism and authenticity of the characters and their emotions permeates every page. I felt that the easy path was avoided but without making the story drag. A common romance trope would have had Jeremiah be the strong silent type that simply works out his feelings through the love of a good woman, Lucy, who comes in and bakes the most awesome meal, complete with a pie for dessert while handing out sage phrases that heal the wounded souls of each child.  This was not that book. Lucy is not instinctively great at parenting. Her presence actually makes the older child uneasy.

I liked that Jeremiah was seeking help.  It didn’t emasculate him, but portrayed the helplessness of his situation – a bachelor with three growing boys. I liked Lucy’s frank appreciation of Jeremiah and her ineptness at mothering and her missing her life in LA. I would have liked Lucy’s arc to have been less reliant on her feelings for Jeremiah. Even her newfound creativity seemed based on her attraction to Jeremiah.  Perhaps that is authentic, in and of itself, but I would have liked to have seen Lucy’s renewal be somewhat separate.

The transition from bachelor to father isn’t easy for Jeremiah and it isn’t easy for the children. They are lost, sad, and angry. Lucy doesn’t come in and magically save the day.  But as Lucy says, “who wants easy?”

Jeremiah laughed, pressing his forehead to hers. “It won’t be easy,” he said, as if warning her.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, holding on as tight as she could. The ride would be bumpy, no doubt about it. But she couldn’t imagine anything more fun, more exciting, more fulfilling, than taking this ride with Jeremiah and his boys.

“Who wants easy?”

The secondary romance between Lucy’s mother and the alcoholic father of the ranch owner where Lucy’s mother kept house was interesting but subdued but my focus was on Jeremiah and Lucy.  B+

Best regards,
Jane

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Your Dark Soul series has been a roller-coaster ride for me. It is not a genre romance, even though it has some very romantic moments. It features themes I rarely seek out, including menage, BDSM, and protagonists in organized crime. Purchasing all five volumes is not inexpensive. It is quite brutal in places. And while I enjoy serialized fiction, this one is more like a set of linked short stories in parts than a serialized novel.

And yet. And yet. I read each installment with apprehension but also eagerness, and they have rewarded me handsomely. I put off reading Volumes 4 and 5 for weeks, in part because I wanted to give them the attention they deserved. I’ve already talked about Volumes 1 and 2 here and here, so this review will cover the last three installments. I’ll do my best to avoid spoilers, because part of the pleasure and impact of the story comes from the way you’ve put it together. For readers who find my plot summary inadequate, there are reviews at Goodreads and a number of blogs that provide more answers.

The overall storyline is relatively compact: Stefano Marino, a avowedly heterosexual mob boss with a beautiful wife whom he loves, falls hard for Silvio Spadaro, an assassin who is the lover and heir of another boss. That boss sends Silvio to Stefano to assist him in a battle with the Russian mob. Volume 3 begins with the Russians’ attack on Stefano and Silvio’s retaliation against them, two acts that bring them together physically and emotionally, and it introduces a character from Silvio’s past who becomes part of the campaign against the Russians. This installment reveals more about Silvio, from his ruthlessness as an assassin and a person, to his sexual needs, to his vulnerability when he was a child. Stefano finally starts to come to terms with his attraction to Silvio and realizes it is not something he can wish or repress away.

In Volume 4, Silvio and Franco’s onslaught on the Russia mob continues and the relationship between Silvio and Stefano deepens, and both developments have their inevitable consequences. The mob war escalates beyond something that can be dealt with by merely buying off local law enforcement, and Donata is no fool. Stefano’s personal and professional existences are both up for grabs by the end, and it’s not at all clear which way the resolutions lie. Stefano is deeply conflicted because he is growing more emotionally committed to Silvio, but he also loves Donata, and he wants to keep everything the way it is and somehow add Silvio into the mix. Plus, he is trying to maintain his mob supremacy in the face of increasing threats.

Volume 5 has to wrap all of these loose ends together. And it does, with style and assurance, all the while introducing another major character. Savvy readers should deduce the backstory of the new character fairly quickly. Since I was slow on the uptake, I was kind of annoyed at first that this character became so important, although I understood why he had to for storyline reasons; then I finally got it and everything made sense.

In this final episode, the Russians are basically out of the picture but Stefano and Silvio have to deal with the increased law enforcement attention that accompanies their demise. Stefano tries to find a way to salvage his marriage while still hanging on to Silvio and fighting off challenges from within his organization. We also find out more about Silvio, which I found extremely helpful. By the beginning of Volume 4 I was starting to wonder if he was a sociopath. The ultimate explanation for some of his personality made sense to me, although I’m still ambivalent about how trustworthy he is and how fully he can commit to other human beings. But I could definitely see why Stefano didn’t want to have to choose:

He stood and slipped out of bed and closed the door behind him on the way, smiling to himself. Compared to Donata, Silvio was the polar opposite. Not a graceful or early riser. And that would be less funny if Silvio weren’t a sicario. If he killed a stranger for absolutely no personal reason, how would he respond if unduly irritated?

But of course, all that was idle bullshit, especially considering that the big issue in the back of Stefano’s mind was his wife. He kept checking his phone in the hope of a text from her. He sometimes touched her profile on his phone, especially when Silvio was asleep or occupied with something else. He’d snapped a photo of her on one of the date nights, dressed in a gorgeous red dress, her hair tumbling down. It showed up every time she called him, and sat as a tiny thumbnail right next to her name. Donata Marino.

And he was hiding away from her in this hotel, fucking Silvio, finally sating that hunger and that deeper need, the terrible affection for another man. But, truth was, he was hiding, still avoiding her.

I needed time to work this out for myself. I needed to know if it was real. And God help me, but it is.

I thought that the way you resolved these threads was ingenious from a storytelling point of view, but I wasn’t completely convinced in terms of the characters.  What I mean by this is that everything worked in terms of the characters as they appear in the book, but I wondered if real people would work things out the same way (and it’s definitely a testament to the quality of the characterizations that I came to think of them as real people).

First, I  thought Stefano needed to experience the consequences of his various decisions a bit more than he did. I didn’t want him to grovel more or be punished, exactly, but resolutions seemed to come a little too quickly (this may have been a consequence of page length). Second, I wasn’t fully satisfied by way Stefano made the decisions about his future and the ramifications of those decisions for both him and Donata. Stefano made them unilaterally even though they affected both of them, and I had trouble believing that it was as easy for the two of them to live with the decision as it seemed in the end. Even when you hate something, it’s hard to shift the patterns and habits of decades. And while I was pleased that there was an HEA in the end, I had trouble believing the characters were as free of their pasts as they seemed to be. So, in some ways, Volume 5 was the least satisfying for me.

Overall, though, the way the characters and the plot unfolded over the installments was really well done. Stefano goes from being confused and not very self-aware to decisive and much more in control, as well as more honest with himself and those he loves. Donata, when she finally appears on the page, is worth the wait. She’s a little too understanding in the last installment, but she’s a strong woman who seems to be making thoughtful and considered choices. And Silvio becomes less of an enigma and more of a human being. He’s still the same Silvio we met at the beginning of the first volume to a great extent, but we see him less as a gorgeous assassin and more as the complex young man that he is.

The quality of the writing sustains a high level of quality throughout the five installments; it is taut, focused, and perfect for the subject matter. The sex scenes are explicit, hot, and critical to the development of the plot and characters. There is an m/m/f scene which is extremely well done. If readers aren’t fanning themselves throughout, I’ll be surprised.

I am so glad I stretched outside my comfort zone and picked up this series. I want to reiterate, this is not a genre romance. It’s not easily classified, either as conventional m/m or menage. There are some extremely violent scenes, and the characters do some pretty unlikeable things. They are ultimately sympathetic, but it takes some of them quite a while to get there, and all readers may not make the journey with them. But for those who do, this is an incredibly rewarding read. It’s not perfect, but it’s very hard to forget.

Grade for series: A-/B+

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Your novel was discussed in the comment thread to Kim T.’s post about South Asian romances. I discovered the ebook version after a bit of digging, since my first hit was on the paperback version, which you published under the name “Nina Roy.” While the blurb made me a little skeptical (“revolt is seething in the loins of the colonial settlement” sounds painful rather than appealing), I downloaded the sample and was intrigued. The Kindle sample offers the first two chapters, in which there are three quite enjoyable sex scenes. But as the story progressed, I grew more and more annoyed. The novel belongs to a well-trodden genre. It’s a mixture of Heat and Dust, A Passage to India, and (as was suggested to me on Twitter), The Lover. In other words, Western woman journeys to the Exotic East and finds herself through sexual pleasure with a dusky, alluring Native Man. To add insult to injury, it’s not that erotic.

Devora Hawthorne travels to India to join her husband, Gerald, who is British civil servant in a small cantonment town in the United Provinces. She and her husband are in love and have satisfying sex, but Devora feels as if she’s missing something in life, something India can provide her. Gerald has to travel out of town regularly, and when she is on her own Devora finds amusement first with the Maharaja of a nearby princely state, and then with their servant, Rohan. Gerald, meanwhile, has spent their six months apart amusing himself with his servant, Kalindi, who herself is in a relationship with Lota, another servant. Devora realizes this and is both resentful and intrigued (I really wanted this storyline to go somewhere, but no). Slowly, Devora and Gerald drift apart, partly because of his frequent absences, partly because Devora grows increasingly disenchanted with her British neighbors in the cantonment, and mostly because Devora becomes passionately attracted to Rohan, Gerald’s inscrutable majordomo.

The characterizations started out well. Devora was your garden-variety curious Englishwoman, but she was well written. Gerald was a bit on the obtuse side, but he loved Devora and didn’t seem like too much of a colonial bigot. The other English characters were uniformly and stereotypically bigoted about India and ignorant in general, but they were window dressing so I was willing to live with that. But as the story progressed, Gerald and even Devora became less and less likeable, and the Indian characters fulfilled any number of standard colonial-fiction stereotypes.

For example, the Maharaja starts out as an intriguing Indian aristocrat with a penchant for erotic art and a harem full of beautiful young women. That could be interesting, and when Devora is invited to lunch and seduced by him, it does. But then the Maharaja takes her to Khajuraho, famed for its erotically explicit temple architecture, and it’s the Marabar Caves all over again, except with consensual sex that goes wrong. The Maharaja morphs from a charismatic character to a skeevy lecher, and that’s more or less the end of him until the last part of the book. Devora then moves on to Rohan, with whom she has been bickering and arguing up to this point. She realizes he’s attracted to her and taunts him with subtle and unsubtle sexual cues until he gives in to his passions. The story then transforms, awkwardly, into a romance between them. Except Gerald is still around, so he has to be shown to be a pig by resuming sex with Kalindi. In due course, Devora and Rohan are found out, Devora leaves first Gerald, then the town, and finally India and returns to England, complete with an unbelievable, fifteen-years-later, Happy Ending of a conclusion.

The depictions of the Indian characters (and the English, for that matter) read like something written in the 1920s or 1930s rather than a decade ago, and maybe that’s the point. But it’s difficult for me to read a book about Indians during the independence movement and have them relegated to the extreme roles of Maharajas or servants with no purpose other than to bring sexual enlightenment and satisfaction to the white people who rule them. And yes, I know it’s an erotic romance and disbelief should be suspended. But is it really necessary to use such stock characters? Kalindi is depicted as enjoying sex with Gerald, but she has no control over when and whether it happens. Rohan is seduced by Devora, presumably so that he doesn’t fit the predatory native sex machine stereotype, but again, how was he supposed to say no? He’s written so that he falls in love with her, but that’s the author talking, not something that emerges organically from the character. And the Maharaja is Devora’s sexy tutor until he steps over a line, at which point he is revealed to be a villain who abducts village girls for his icky pleasures.

The setting is strange. If you are reading this book because of the Indian context, you will come away less well informed than when you started. The story takes place in a cantonment town (these were settlements where the British lived), which is (a) near the Ganges; (b) a few hours from Agra; and (c) two hours from Khajuraho. Maybe that intersection exists on a map, but I couldn’t find it. The year is 1925. I know this because it says so at the beginning of the book. But there is no sense that this was an era in which Indians participated in contention and rebellion with a specific political agenda (there is a roaming gang that attacks British people and a mention of Gandhi, but that’s the extent of it). The author does not seem to understand the distinction between “civil lines” and “civil service.” I finally lost it at the point where Devora falls down in Agra and when Rohan helps her up, British men think he’s a coolie trying to take advantage of her. Devora says,

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I hate men like that.”
“I’m used to them. I will wait here while you make some purchases.”
Worried that the unpleasant men would come back, Devora quickly bought some fruit and mutton pies before she and Rohan returned to the car.
“I guess it’s not possible to really escape, is it?” she asked.
Rohan shrugged and pulled onto the road. “It depends entirely on your definition of escape.”
“Have you had many encounters like that?”
“Some.”
“Rohan, don’t you ever just want to leave here?” Devora asked. “I mean, move to another country or something? It must get unbearable at times.”

This is a time when Indians were sacrificing themselves for the good of their country, incurring physical, financial, and other kinds of injury and hardship to gain freedom. And this chick wants to know why an educated but low-paid servant doesn’t just leave for somewhere else because it’s so bad there with the British in charge. Hello! Allow me to introduce you to a newspaper, any newspaper, which will be full of articles on this strange organization called the Indian National Congress. It is working for what you seem to want, White Lady. Perhaps you should consider learning something about it? Or there is the Muslim League? But wait, there are no Muslims in this story. Oh, I’m sorry, the United Provinces is only the cradle of the Muslim League. Why would there be any Muslims?
[/rant]

I know, I know, we don’t read erotic novels for the history lesson. Sadly, however, the erotic parts of this book are not that erotic. The early scenes are well written and appealing. And as Devora learns a little bit from the Kama Sutra (come on, you just knew she would, didn’t you?) and by looking at the sculptures at Khajuraho, the sex gets slightly more interesting. And then it plateaus. It’s just basically the same type of sex scene, over and over again:

Arousal surged in Devora’s loins as her tension began to ascend. The railing pressed hard against her belly, but she welcomed the abundance of sensations. Rohan’s cock thrust in and out of her like pliable iron, his hands gripping her hips. His belly slammed against her buttocks as the wet, delicious sounds of sex filled the air and seemed to drown out even the noise of the rain.
Devora’s heart pounded so hard she could hear it inside her head as Rohan filled her again and again, his hard testicles slapping against her sex. He slipped one hand underneath her, sliding it over the surface of her belly and through the damp curls of her mons. Devora gave a cry of pleasure when his fingers began rubbing her sensitive nub.
“Oh, yes,” she moaned. “Harder. Oh, please…”
Rohan thrust into her with rapid strokes, his pathway eased by Devora’s slickness. With a groan, he pulled out of her and pressed his shaft between her buttocks, sliding it up and down before spurting onto the round globes.
He leaned over her, reaching around to massage her breasts with one hand as his other hand continued working at her sex. Devora couldn’t breathe for an instant as her body hovered on the precipice of rapture, and then a final stroke from Rohan sent her over the edge into a swirling mass of color.

It’s not bad. It just gets repetitious and dull after a while, maybe because Devora seems more selfish and clueless as the story progresses. There’s a threesome scene in the later part of the book, but it was hard for me not to notice that two of the participants didn’t have the option to say no. And it involves Gerald, who by that point has turned into a total jackass. I can read unlikeable characters in erotica if the erotica is really good, but here, the uneasy balance between romantic and erotic made it totally not work for me.

Overall, then, an unsatisfying read. But it took the end of the book to send it firmly into wallbanger territory. No, it was not the miraculous way Devora was able to get away from Calipore to Bombay and then England. It wasn’t even the fact that Rohan joined her in Bombay and then eventually followed her to London, where a saccharine epilogue informs the reader that they lived happily ever after, with Devora’s books and erotic illustrations supporting them during the 1930s depression and then World War II. No, it was this:

Rohan shook his head. “There is much unrest in India now,” he said. “I do not know what will happen, but the Indians are determined to free themselves from British control.”
“As well they should,” Devora muttered. “I heard Gerald is still there, only he’s in Calcutta now. Apparently he’s a top official in the freedom negotiations, only of course on the British side.”

Excuse me? Why wouldn’t Gerald be on “the British side?” He’s a civil servant. There’s a war on. It’s his job to administer the country for the British. To do anything else would be treason. Of course, Devora was willing to betray the British government for money earlier in the story, so maybe the author thinks this would be a Good Thing.

But wait, it gets better. The epilogue heading specifies that fifteen years have passed since Devora left for Bombay. That means this conversation takes place in 1940. Britain is fighting World War II and London is enduring the Blitz (this is unremarked in the epilogue, where everything is wonderful). The Indians will eventually be revolting in the Quit India movement, but that won’t start until 1942. Any “freedom negotiations” are at least six years away, and partition and independence occur a full year after that. In Delhi, not Calcutta.

And that, dear readers, is how a book earns the Mistorical tag from me.

Grade: D

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Your last few books have had a sort of a madcap adventure feel to them and so “Bring Him Home” is a change in tone and pace. It deals with grief and recovery and discovery and relies less on external conflict and more on the internal changes that the leads experience.

Nathan Wyatt found a family in his SAS brothers but when their convoy was hit in an ambush, one of the men that held the group together becomes mortally injured. Nate has the choice of staying with his best friend, Steve, and saving Ross. Steve orders him to save Ross and leave him. Nate knows that this is the only genuine choice he has. He also knows he has the choice of allowing Steve to burn to death, trapped under the flames of a burning Humvee, or to provide his best friend relief. Nate does the right thing, both times, but his actions and the war scarred him and after he is discharged, Nate abandons his friends and his makeshift family which included Steve’s wife, Claire, their son, and everyone else important to him.

Eighteen months later Claire tracks him down in Hollywood where Nate is serving as a bodyguard to a rock star (the brother of the hero in What the Librarian Did). Nate and Steve and Claire had formed a family trust and now with Steve dead and Nate unreachable halfway around the world, Claire needs Nate to sign papers to revert all the property of the trust into her name. She wants to turn the dilapidated fishing boat that Nate and she went halfsies on into a charter boat business. Claire needs Nate to pay attention to their combined business matters so she can move on with her life. Nate is too busy getting “comfortably numb.”

What makes this a different kind of friends to lovers book is that neither Nate nor Claire had feelings for each other before Steve’s death. Nate looked at Claire as a true friend, but most importantly, Steve’s wife. For Claire, Nate was Steve’s brother in arms. We get a look at Claire’s past relationship with Steve. One of my favorite scenes in the book was when Claire was sharing with Jules, the fiancé of one of the members of Nate’s team that had also died in the same ambush, that Steve and Claire had been on the brink of divorce but that a letter from Steve had saved it. Claire admitted that they both wanted the marriage to be saved but that the letter was a turning point. It turned out that the letter was written by committee of Steve’s team members. They were all single and very invested in Steve’s marriage and the success of that marriage.

Claire returned, carrying a sheet of handwritten paper in a plastic sleeve. “I cried over this so much I had to protect it.” Narrowing her eyes, she thrust it across the table at Nate. “Give me an example.”

Nervously Nate glanced again at Jules and then down at the page, cursing that he’d ever raised the subject. Would this make things better or worse? He was a guy, how the hell would he know? He cleared his throat. “Okay, Steve would start with something like, ‘Without you, my life would be crap.’ We’d workshop that into…” Nate found the quote with his finger “‘—you make my life worth living.’ Trying to put a positive spin on a neg- ative statement,” he added, risking a glance at Claire.

Her expression, as she eyeballed him over the edge of the champagne flute, gave nothing away. “Lee, being our romantic, suggested some of the poetic stuff… changing ‘wife’ to ‘soul mate,’ for example.”

Claire exchanged glances with Jules but made no comment.

Nate stared at the letter, fighting that male sense of helplessness that told him nothing he did now would be right. “Okay, this line, ‘We have so much fun, in bed and out of it.’ That’s all Steve’s…except for the ‘out of it’ part. That change was group consensus—we thought it might look like Steve was being shallow.” Nate told himself to shut up now, but the continuing stony silence only increased his verbal diarrhea. “The marriage vow thing, for better or worse. I think Steve wanted to write about things having to get much worse before he gave up….” Desperately he scanned the page. “That sorta morphed into, ‘No matter what, I’m committed to you for the rest of our lives.’”

Nate could see them all now, four bearded, dust-covered young men agonizing over this damn thing while Steve paced camp, occasionally bursting out with, “It’s not frickin’ right yet…. It’s got to be right.”

A lump in his throat stopped him. He looked up. Claire had her head bowed, so did Jules. Oh, shit. Claire’s shoulders were shaking. “You’re upset,” he said helplessly.

A hoot escaped her…a hoot? She lifted her face and there were tears in her eyes. “Th-th-that’s hilarious!” The two women collapsed in paroxysms of laughter.

Nate stared at them in amazement.

“Can’t you see them?” Claire hiccuped. “Oh, Jules, can’t you just see them?”

“Right down to licking the pencil,” Jules managed to say, sending Claire into whoops again.

“It was a pen,” Nate said stonily. “And I don’t see what the hell is so funny.”

“You’re right, it’s beautiful.” With a last giggle, Claire wiped her eyes dry with a napkin. “Steve was so hopeless at this kind of stuff, and for him to do this, to lay it on the line in front of you guys…and for you all to agonize over it…” She leaned over and hugged him. “Nate, it’s sweet and funny and, well, thank you.”

When Nate discovers that Claire holds strong resentment toward Steve for constantly signing up for new tours, he makes it his mission to show Claire how much Steve loved her. As the Nate and Claire remember Steve, they help each other get over their grief and find space in their hearts for something new. Watching them both discover that newness was engaging. Nate becomes grumpy at other men finding Claire attractive, something he tells himself is a holdover of his protectiveness toward Steve. Claire realizes what other women around her acknowledge – that Nate is one very sexy guy whose endearing gruffness masques a tender heart and whose commitment to a cause or a person is never wavering. The biggest problem I had was the ending. The last few lines caused me some confusion and I wished for an epilogue. B+

Best regards,

Jane

P.S. That cover is terrible. It looks like some teenage vagabond coming home and not a sexy former SAS now turned bodyguard to the stars.

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I picked up your book because it is everywhere lately. The concept of the teen boy-older woman romance is pretty repellant to me, but over 700 positive reviews on Amazon for a self-published book told me I should give this one a try. I read it, and I can see why it appeals so much. It’s a quick, easy read with a sweet romantic storyline at the center. If you’re looking for something soothing and nice, this is the book for you. If you are looking for controversy, keep looking.

On the Island is the story of Anna and TJ. Anna is a 30 year old private tutor who has traveled overseas for the summer despite her boyfriend’s wishes. She wants to be engaged and start a family, and the boyfriend does not. So she takes a job as the private tutor of TJ, who is a 16 year old recovering from cancer. While on a plane ride over the Maldives, the pilot has a heart attack and the plane goes down. Anna and TJ make it to the island and then struggle to survive.

The plot is a very simple one: stay alive until rescue. TJ and Anna have a hard time adjusting to the island life. There’s no fresh water, they don’t know how to care for themselves, and there’s no shelter. Over time, they figure out how to care for themselves, and as the years pass, they grow to care for each other. Three years pass on the island before they are rescued. I feel like that is a spoiler, but it’s touted as a romance and I don’t think these two could have a happy ending while on the island, so I’m comfortable revealing that.

The romance between TJ and Anna is rather uneventful despite their age differences. TJ of course finds Anna extremely attractive, but he holds this in check and doesn’t touch her or even watch her bathe in the ocean. They’re never nude around each other. They’re very careful until TJ is over the age of eighteen, and then he slowly begins to make moves on Anna, who is reluctant because he’s her student and he’s barely legal. Eventually, however, Anna gives in and they have a relationship. By the time they get off the island, they are firmly a couple. When they are off the island, society questions the relationship between the two and Anna continues to have doubts as to whether she should be with TJ.

I thought it was good that Anna had doubts, as being the reader, I had lots of doubts about this relationship. While it worked for them on the island, when they got back to land, I did wonder how it would pan out, and the author explores this for a time. Unfortunately, once they do get off the island, I felt as if all tension had drained from the book and struggled to finish the last third of the story. It went on for too long. Furthermore, I felt like the conflicts of Anna and TJ’s relationship were easily resolved. Anna was a teacher, and she’s fired, but she is given a settlement, so she’s fine monetarily. TJ’s family likes Anna so there are no problems with the relationship there. It’s just all very…pleasant.

I think that was my biggest beef with the story – it’s just nice. Anna and TJ struggle to survive on the island, but they are given lots of things to ‘help’ them survive. Anna’s suitcase washes up and it is conveniently filled with enough shampoo and toothpaste and such for several years on the island. They use her earrings as fishhooks. No one really has a problem with the relationship other than the media. All conflicts are presented and then quickly dismissed again. Overall, it’s just a nice, easy story. It’s not particularly memorable in my eyes, either. Everything is just a little too pat and saccharine. Even TJ’s cancer, which is a concern for both characters in the time on the island, is easily dismissed once they return.

It’s not a bad book. The cover is pleasant, the typos were few and far between, and the writing style is very easy to sink into. I read this in one sitting and enjoyed it, but looking back on it, I feel vaguely dissatisfied. Perhaps I was looking for more emotional nuance, or perhaps I was just hoping to be blown away like the other 700 positive reviews on Amazon. It’s not a bad read, but it wasn’t a great one, either. C+

All best,
January

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“At the turn of the twentieth century, London’s political climate is in turmoil, as women fight for the right to vote. Dody McCleland has her own battles to fight. As England’s first female autopsy surgeon, she must prove herself as she proves that murder treats everyone equally.

After a heated women’s rights rally turns violent, an innocent suffragette is found murdered. When she examines the body, Dody McCleland is shocked to realize that the victim was a friend of her sister – fuelling her determination to uncover the cause of the protestor’s suspicious death.

For Dody, gathering clues from a body is often easier than handling the living – especially Chief Detective Inspector Pike. Pike is looking to get to the bottom of this case but has a hard time trusting anyone-including Dody. Determined to earn Pike’s trust and to find the killer, Dody will have to sort through real and imagined secrets. But if she’s not careful, she may end up on her own examination table.”

Dear Ms. Young,

Is this to be the start of a new series? It seems like it and may I be selfishly honest and say that I hope so. I’ve got to get a replacement for my historical forensic mystery fix since Ariana Franklin’s death.

The story is chock full of lots of details about the time, place and events. I know a little about the British women’s suffragette movement but not much. The background info you provide is greatly appreciated and I think you accomplished easing it into the narrative without coming to a full stop to do so. I have to agree with Mrs. McClelland, Dody’s mother, that rights are fought for by the rich and privileged while food is the main worry of the poor and downtrodden. Lord love us with a father like Mr. McClelland.

Pike could have been written as a man with moody angst but instead he buttons it all up and holds it in. I think he’d be almost embarrassed to be seen as angstful, much like going outdoors in nothing but his drawers. He’s got just enough opposition and problems to deal with on the force balanced with his sense of purpose and seeking justice and the truth. I totally believe that he’s the kind of man who would feel ashamed of any tiny infraction so when he hides evidence that would show his own daughter is a wannabe suffragette, I feel his inner conflict over it. Chief Inspector Shepherd is a piggish “keep women in their places” type but Pike appears to know how to get around him and his roadblocks. I would hate to think that Churchill was in on all the police violence at the rally. Pike’s also human – he doesn’t always know how to get along with and speak to his teenage daughter and enjoys a night playing piano at the local pub. It all makes him more human to me and to Dody, once she learns all this.

Dody is strong minded enough to get through medical school and find a speciality that would accept her but practical about not rocking the medical boat. She’s also got her doubts about the tactics of the suffragette movement and the lengths toward which they’re headed. She keeps her head down and forges on, remaining as invisible as she can in order to get as far as she is able. One problem I had with her backstory was that I felt as if I stepped in halfway through Dody’s off again romance with Rupert the weenie. Frankly, I wasn’t sorry to see him go early in the story. Dody also has to contend with her fiery sister Florence who is totally on board with the more militant suffragettes who are ready to seek the advice of Fennians and resort to outright violence to further their cause and gain notoriety.

Dody and Pike are both outsiders – she because of her gender and her, frankly, cuckoo family while Pike was not a gentleman who rose to be an officer in the Army only to have that held against him in the Met. But they’re both truth seekers who don’t shirk from dirty work even if it’s hard to do and hard on them. They start to work together even before they realize it – each determined to get to the bottom of Lady Catherine Cartwright’s death and “helping” each other along by turning a blind eye to “after hours” sleuthing. Even if she doesn’t entirely trust him as a police officer and he is appalled at the suffragette movement. Each takes a sly dig at the other – he in presenting her with the details of the execution of Dr. Crippen and she in daring him to watch the forced feeding of the hunger striking women. Yet they’re both fighters, in their own way, determined to make a difference.

Forensic and police investigational science have certainly progressed and the conditions under which Dody and Pike have to work certainly highlights it. There definitely won’t be any Forensic Files type case cracking here. Nevertheless it’s all fascinating to read about and again shows how keen Pike and Dody are to take advantage of whatever might help them solve cases.

I have a silly question. Would an aristocratic family have the last name of Cartwright? Wouldn’t that be a laborer’s last name?

I tend to agree with Dody that slow but steady and not blowing up things is the way to seek positive social change but given the attitude of some of the men, it’s hard not to see how the more militant suffragettes arrived at their beliefs. Most of the secondary female characters served to illustrate one aspect or another of how the law still favored men even with the easier divorces now available. Dody’s dreary rounds at the hospital – dealing with women who died of septicemia from botched abortions or helping women suffering from the delivery their tenth child in that many years – showed another side of how hard it was to be a woman then. Even jail privileges are unequal. One thing that I realized early on was that due to the setting of the book (1910) I had to tamp down my disappointment that it wasn’t going to be in this book that the vote was won.

The mystery of who killed Lady Catherine is more something that propels other things in the plot than the main focus of it all yet I, along with Pike and Dody, still wanted to know the answer. And the answer is a wee bit anti climactic and soap opera-ish. The villain turns out to be one of those who change fairly quickly and suddenly start foaming at the mouth before conveniently spouting off about why they did what they did. Still the final section of the story unfolds in a way that slowly and relentlessly cranks up the tension. I knew what was coming and was still quickly flipping pages as Florence got deeper into trouble while Dody and Pike raced to save her.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I hope to see more of this series and am excited that you’ve chosen to set it during such a tumultuous era. Pike and Dody have caught my attention as professionals as well as – perhaps in the distant future – possible romantic partners. Only time will tell. B

~Jayne

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The first book I read of yours was a contemporary romance which I enjoyed and hoped to see more of your work in that area. When your book, Darkest Caress, was released on NetGalley I was intrigued because it was not contemporary romance but instead, a paranormal. I am constantly on the lookout for a new paranormal author. While the work was competent, I think my tastes are too jaded at this point to find a competent story compelling.

Darkest Caress relies on the mate bond, an old prophecy, a small band of good guys (actual brothers in this case) who will defeat a bad man and his army form the basis of its world building.  The “others” are individuals who apparently feed off the energy of others.  There is some play with the concept that every person controls their aura which is fed by their internal energies which the host can decide to be good or evil.  This was unsubtly demonstrated through one non essential secondary character. (First he was bad… and then … after some reflection and intervention he was suddenly good.  It was like an injection of super clozapine).

Liv Farrell, realtor and part time piano teacher, meets Daegan Blackwell, a mysterious and wealthy potential purchaser of a million dollar home situated on the coast in Vancouver. Daegan is an Empowered and he and his three brothers form a triumvirate that will someday battle Xavier who seeks to become the Obsidian Lord. What exactly they will be fighting over is not fully explained. I suppose the soul of humankind or something. I’ve never really understood why any immortal being would want control human kind. Wouldn’t they want to just wipe us out? I guess in this circumstance, humans serve as food. The energy of a human is a power source for the “others”.

Liv is also Empowered, which she would have to be in order to be Daegan’s mate.  Darkest Caress does allow the characters to struggle with the mate bond but they can’t be too far apart because of the Heat Cycle.  The Heat Cycle causes the parties pain when they are apart and nothing short of bonding will abate it.  Forced love!

Daegen is immediately in lust and, I guess, love, but allows that Liv needs time to adjust to the knowledge that she has a supernatural power as do others and that they are destined to be together.  The problem is that Liv’s struggle with the mate bond places everyone in danger making her refusal to accept the inevitable pairing.  The authorial choice in this regards felt unfortunate to me. It was easy to place the blame on Liv for a negative outcome but it also made Daegan’s self sacrifice look foolish as well.  In fact, at some times I wrote in my margin that he was portraying the too stupid to live role. At one point, after Daegan has marked her which endangers her life, he purposely leaves her and his brother has to fill in the details.  Even after she knows about being empowered, the mate bond, the Heat Cycle, and the power struggle, Daegen still refuses to give her the full picture.  I couldn’t believe he was trying out half truths at this point in the name of protection and allowing her free choice. It was ridiculous.

I also wondered strongly about the need for DNA evidence that Liv purportedly needed to prove she was an Empowered.  It might have made sense if Liv was a scientist but she wasn’t and thus this idea that DNA would convince her where her own senses could not seemed odd.

Every movement seemed telegraphed with a heavy hand and the attempts at intrigue came off hokey instead of suspenseful. For instance, one character thinks to himself “fucking riddles … always more riddles” in regard to this line: The Obsidian Lord shall confront the Empowered who embodies the reflection of what he once was.”  The character goes on to lament that “[h]e didn’t pretend to fully under the dark prophecy.”  The riddle isn’t that confusing particularly when it is known that the Obsidian Lord is an Empowered male who lost his mate.

If a reader is a fan of the JR Ward and Lara Adrian series, and is jonesing for something similar, this may fit the bill. I appreciated that this was not a vampire story but I felt like the worldbuilding relied on worn tropes and failed to be presented in a fresh way. C

Best regards,

Jane

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I’ve never read any of your books but I’ve certainly heard of you. How could I not? Not only do you have a substantial backlist, you’ve had a long career. Recently, it seems like you’ve turned your attention towards YA retellings of mythological princesses. In this novel, you focus on Himiko, the shaman-queen of Yayoi era Japan.

Not much is known about the Yayoi period. My knowledge of Japanese history only goes back to the Heian era, and even the historical facts seemed to be obscured since most of what we know comes from outside sources (China, Korea) rather than directly from Japanese record. So in many ways, this is like fleshing out a myth. Unfortunately, that comes with some pitfalls.

Spirit’s Princess tells the story of Himiko, princess of her clan. The only girl among many brothers, Himiko wants nothing more than to become a hunter. But when an attempt to persuade her beloved older brother that she’s capable goes awry, any possibility of walking down that path is crushed.

But it turns out Himiko is destined for another path. She’s always been able to hear the voices of various spirits: tree, animal, rock, you name it. It’d be easy to dismiss these voices as the imaginings of an especially precocious child but as Himiko grows older, it becomes apparent it’s something else entirely.

She is destined to become a shaman. Unfortunately, the previous clan leader was a shaman herself and her rule left many scars, many of them inflicted upon Himiko’s father. And so Himiko must learn to become a shaman while keeping it from her father.

This book is structured differently from a lot of current YA. For one, Himiko spends a good chunk of the book extremely young. And she reads young, making all the impulsive and terrible decisions young children are prone to do. It isn’t until the latter half of the novel that she’s the “normal” age for a YA protagonist. I can see how this extended timeline would be necessary to set up the world and Himiko’s life, but it also causes the book to drag a bit. I couldn’t help but think that this is a rather long book for a plot in which not much happens.

Readers expecting action will be sorely disappointed. This is primarily an introspective novel. Himiko gives up her early childhood dream of becoming a hunter, only to choose another path that is soon barred to her. There’s some inter-clan conflict but not much is shown on-page. I suppose that’s to be expected since Himiko isn’t privy to many of those interactions and the book is told through her POV. On the other hand, since the historical Himiko is said to have risen to power amidst a civil war, I can see the events of this book laying the groundwork for that backdrop.

I’m sure many readers out there just groaned by what I implied. Yes, this is the first of a series, possibly a trilogy. I wish I had known that going in. Then I wouldn’t have wondered at the abrupt ending and set-up for what I assume is the confict for the next book.

What I’m most unsure of, however, is the historical basis for this novel. I know I said I don’t know much about the time period, and what information out there is murky and often taken from outsider viewpoints, but there were bits that I know are incorrect. For one, the names read particularly modern: Yuki, Kaya, etc. During the Yayoi period, the names would have been much longer and a little more bombastic in convention — including the name of the clan, etc. I realize this boils down to authorial choice. It is easier to remember shorter names, both for the author and the reader. But it doesn’t sit well with me to eschew accuracy like this. And if something simple like the names aren’t remotely accurate, how can I be sure the society is portrayed properly? It casts doubt on a lot of things.

I’m also not convinced about the magic system/religion. I believe Shinto was already established by this time period. It was never clear to me if the book’s presentation of spirits was meant to be equivalent to the kami of Shinto. I’m not sure if the book intended it to be a presentation of early Shinto or if it was meant to be something else entirely. Perhap an animist precursor?

I really wanted to like this book. It’s not often that a Japanese princess is picked as the focus for a retelling, let alone that princess being Himiko. But I was never entirely convinced of the setting, which could have been any “exotic” place save for the Japanese names, and the plot served almost entirely as set-up for Himiko’s burgeoning powers. It’s only been a week since I finished reading the book and already my memories of the details fade. Never a good sign. C

My regards,
Jia

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When I saw you’d released your Tigress series digitally and the first one, originally published in 2005, White Tigress was free at Amazon, I downloaded it immediately. I’m always thrilled to find a historical romance not set in Regency England and I’m fascinated by China and its complex history. I cannot say I was fascinated by this book. I was actually rather repulsed by it and found it to be so bizarre I wondered perhaps, in order to make sense of the story, I needed some sort of cultural Rosetta stone. I questioned if I was too Western or too humdrum for your book for not only did much of the novel baffle me, much of it made me cringe.

The book is set in Shanghai in 1897 and, from the first chapter, the heroine, Lydia Smith behaves inexplicably. She’s arrived in Shanghai two weeks earlier than her fiancé Max (Maxwell Slade) is expecting her—she got better rate on an earlier boat. As she steps down the gangplank, she’s oddly sure everything will be JUST FINE even though she doesn’t speak the language, she’s a beautiful blonde woman traveling alone in Asia in the 19th century, her fiancé has no idea she’s in town, and everyone around her is a total stranger. The only person she knows is the captain of her ship, whose looks she hasn’t liked from the moment she met him. He promises he will take her to the address she has for Max, bundles her onto his rickshaw, and promptly delivers her to a brothel, the Garden of Perfumed Flowers, where she is drugged with opium tea and abandoned to her fate.

Normally this fate would be a life where she was forced to become addicted to opium, used over and over again by men, and then, when her beauty and youth had faded, she’d be thrown out on the streets of Shanghai where she’d ultimately die of opium addiction and/or the damage from of life of prostitution. But, Lydia gets, comparatively, lucky. A very bizarre woman, Shi Po, who is considered “senior in these teachings, a tigress far ahead… on the path to immortality,” (she’s an expert practitioner in the certain Taoist tantric sex practices that can make one, while still living, an Immortal) has found out about the now captive Lydia and believes her primary student, Ru Shan, needs to buy Lydia immediately—while she’s still unsullied—in order to restore him to his place on the path to Immortality. This didn’t make a lick of sense to me. Maybe it will to others. In case it’s just me who is clueless, here’s Shi Po’s reasoning:

“Look again at the girl,” she ordered. “See how much water she has in her? See her breasts, how full and round they are? They will give much sustenance to a man with too much yang.”

Ru Shan grimaced, knowing she referred to him. Indeed that was the source of his problem, according to her: too much male yang. Too little female yin.

….”You will have to buy her.”

“What?”

….”No!” The very idea revolted him.

“Then you have abandoned the Tao and all the gains you have made these last nine years. You will never become an Immortal. Even your status as a jade dragon will disappear.”

He felt his jaw tighten at the thought, the heat in his belly rising with his temper. Nearly a decade of study, of diligent effort and constant attention, all would disappear? Because he would not sacrifice his family to his goals? Not possible!

“Then you must buy the white girl. You must establish her in an apartment close enough to see her every day. You must partake of her essence every moment that you can.” Shi Po stepped even closer, pressing her point. “And as her water flows into you, your family’s fortunes will recover and your pathway back to the Tao will be revealed.” She lowered her voice into a seductive murmur. “Your mind will find peace, your body rest. You will return to the middle path with new energy, and as her yin mixes with your yang, the spiritual embryo will be born. You will become an Immortal. You can, Ru Shan, if only you will do what is necessary.”

So, Ru Shan, whose life has sucked for the past two years, goes deeply into debt and buys Lydia, a ghost woman, whom he sees a little more than a pet. He installs her in an apartment and plans to use her yin to balance his yang and thus make it back to the Chamber of a Thousand Swinging Lanterns, the antechamber to the Realm of the Immortals, where he’s been three times before his life fell apart. Lydia, still heavily drugged from her doctored tea, has no idea what has happened to her and, when she finally comes out of her opiate induced coma, she finds herself lying on a bed in a small room, completely shaved, and being cared for by a nice young Chinese houseboy named Fu De. When she first awakes, she believes, for no reason I could fathom, somehow her situation is due to Max, her fiancé, whom she demands to see.

Instead, Ru Shan walks through the bedroom door and tells her she is now his slave. (He speaks English.) He explains to her,

“I have extended myself greatly to purchase you. You were most expensive.” His tone indicated disapproval, almost anger. “But it is done now, and you will perform such tasks as I require when I require.”

Lydia has a complete conniption at this idea and spends the next several days rebelling by struggling, refusing to eat, and fouling the sheets of her bed. Neither Fu De nor Ru Shan pay any attention to her actions. After a week of such behavior, Ru Shan comes to her and tells her to get a grip or he will send her back to the brothel where her future—opium, sex with violent strangers, the streets, painful death—will be far worse than what he will ask of her as his slave. He promises she will remain a virgin, that all he wants is her yin—her feminine water. She is confused by what he is asking for. He tells her,

“What I require is your yin. Your water.”

She shook her head, frustration making her surly. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means that I require your feminine fluids. But not your virginity.”

She blinked, sure she could not have heard him correctly. “You do not intend to ravish me?”

He shuddered—he actually shuddered—at the thought. “I am working to become an Immortal. Ravishment, as you put it, would require a release of my yang power—my manly fluids and energy—into you. That would decrease my ability to attain Immortality.”

She frowned, trying to understand. “But you need my female energy, my—”

“Yin.”

“My yin to…”

“To mix with my yang energy and create the power that will take me to the Immortal Realm.”

“You’ll die?” she gasped.

She thought perhaps his expression lightened at her dramatic statement, but his tone remained level. “No. I will become an Immortal. Any man or woman can visit Heaven, but only if they have sufficient spirit to take them there.”

“Spirit? You mean a mixture of your yang and my yin.”

I considered putting the book down and giving up at this point. I was less than a quarter of a way through the novel and the thought of wading through 250 more pages was tiresome. But, wade I did. It wasn’t fun. Lydia stays in the apartment, starts taking off her clothes, and letting Ru Chan draw her yin out of her breasts through regular and, soon enough, arousing caresses. Ru Chan teaches her to stimulate his jade dragon in a way that stirs his yang but doesn’t release his seed. He plays with her cinnabar cave. The two, when not involved in six million acts of non penetrative tantric sex—at least I think it’s tantric sex—argue about whether or not Lydia is an actual person as opposed to a dog or some other sort of lesser being—Ru Chan has been raised to believe Lydia, like all white people, especially ghost women, are

“not completely stupid. But you are still a woman, and nine virtuous Chinese women are not the equal of even one lame boy. You, ghost woman, are worth even less than a Chinese woman.”

They also explore why Ru Chan’s path to Immortality is blocked—it has, disturbingly, to do with his mother’s death. (His mother’s story is told is a series of letters, interspersed in the novel. I found this device jarring and it never explained, to my satisfaction, why Ru Chan’s life was in such shambles.)

Halfway through the novel, Lydia escapes and the relationship between her and Ru Chan changes. I’m not going to explain the rest of the plot—I’ve already given up too much of my life to this book–except to say it was  unlikely on so many levels—the only exceptions being that 1) Maxwell, utterly unsurprisingly, turns out to be an ass and 2) Li Po is a devious, bitchy woman.

By the time Lydia and Ru Chan attained their Happily Ever After, I was bewildered about so many things, I again wondered about that Rosetta Stone concept. I never understood why Ru Chan was blocked, why expending his yang was acceptable at some times and not at others, why the two fell in love, why Ru Chan kept a fairly huge secret unrelated to his yang problems from Lydia, or what all the sorta sex they kept having had to do with becoming Immortal. I’m not clear on the difference between a jade dragon and a green dragon. I think the former is a penis and the latter a youthful Taoist male but I wouldn’t swear to it. I have no idea how much of what is in the book is factually accurate—so much of it seemed right out of the empire of crazy made-up crap—but whether the book is historically authentic or not wouldn’t change the fact it’s an awkward, confusing, non-erotic read. I give it a D.

I will end this review with a spoiler. The rather long scene that follows is taken from the end of the book when Lydia and Ru Chan have finally mixed their yin and their yang perfectly. If this scene works for you, ignore my review. I read it and thought, “Really? A perfect paroxysm can toss one into the firmament…. Hmmmm, I must not be doing it right.”

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

Sincerely and probably limited by my Western cultural background,

Dabney

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“A mom in her early fifties, Clover knows she no longer turns heads the way she used to, and she’s only really missed when dinner isn’t on the table on time. Then Clover wakes up one morning to discover she’s invisible–truly invisible. She panics, but when her husband and son sit down to dinner, nothing is amiss. Even though she’s been with her husband, Arthur, since college, her condition goes unnoticed. Her friend Gilda immediately observes that Clover is invisible, which relieves Clover immensely–she’s not losing her mind after all!–but she is crushed by the realization that neither her husband nor her children ever truly look at her. She was invisible even before she knew she was invisible.

Clover discovers that there are other women like her, women of a certain age who seem to have disappeared. As she uses her invisibility to get to know her family and her town better, Clover leads the way in helping invisible women become recognized and appreciated no matter what their role.”

Dear Ms. Ray,

I fell in love with your first book “Julie and Romeo” then wryly laughed my way through “Step-Ball-Change” though I will admit to failing to keep up with the books after that. So many books, so little time. I did remember that first book from time to time and say “I need to see what she’s written lately” so I was a happy bunny when we were offered your latest book for review. After reading it, I’m glad to discover that your gentle, humorously zinging style is still humming along.

I have heard the sayings for years – that older women become invisible to strangers then to family, that older women are overlooked, that older women fade into the background. Maybe this is why older women turn to purple to stand out? Since I’m headed towards this age, the plot made me sit up and want to read the book. But to Clover, it actually comes true. She also discovers that it leads to some freedoms. If no one cares what you wear, then you can wear anything, go anywhere, say anything and shrug your shoulders saying “the hell with it.” I’m understanding my mother more and more lately.

The book is more women’s fiction – even older women’s fiction as Clover ponders her two children 20 and 24 which might be a turn off to some but the marriage she has is a sturdy one and I enjoyed seeing how it’s held together over the years, though it does take her busy doctor husband a while to catch on to the obvious. Still, once he does he proves that he’s one of the good ones as he rallies to the cause.

Vlad and Nick and Miller, the young men of the story, give me hope – they’re basically decent guys who’ve been raised right by their mommas – which is high praise in the South. Daughter Evie I wanted to shake. Just wait til she gets older and some of that Beautiful Woman light begins to fade and she can’t get by on her looks any more. I hope Clover is still there to gently let her in on “life after your youth is past.”

There are things here that the reader is required to accept: that there is an army of invisible women out there and that some people have actually noticed this – as in the case of the nurse or the teacher Lila Robinson who got fired after fading away – and that it hasn’t become a headline news story. With all the 24 hour news stations desperate for copy and something to fill air space this stretches credulity but that’s what must be believed. Okay, fine. Clover’s initial reaction – stunned panic – makes sense as do her practice efforts about how to live with it and get around in society. Her finding the help group would be a Godsend of support – emotional and practical. There truly are support groups for everything these days.

Yet I’m surprised that it’s taken the Invisible Women so long to confront the pharmaceutical giant responsible for manufacturing the meds that turned them invisible. Or that Jane, the woman who’s devoted so much time to haunting their headquarters, reading mail, listening to conversations and being able to find out so much about what’s going on there, wouldn’t have confronted TPTB there or have met with the chemist who agreed to talk to them. She and Clover are remarkably calm in the face of his brusque response to their enquiries. I think I would have acted on Clover’s thought to overturn his desk and run amok. I’ve always wanted to run amok.

Still, once the ladies make up their minds and decide that they are “mad as hell” and they’re not going to take it anymore, they get organized via Social Media, T-shirts, picket signs and physical presence to make their voices heard and their demands known. Power to the invisible women!

But there’s more to this book than just one women or some women who feel that they were practically invisible to their families, coworkers and friends before actually turning invisible. Clover discovers that there’s a lot she doesn’t know about her husband and son. So the question is, how much do most of us really see those around us? Beyond how the presence or lack of it of those people impacts us and our day, how much attention do we pay to them and how much should we? That’s a sobering mass of thoughts to think on. B

~Jayne

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Men’s Guide to the Women’s Bathroom by Jo Barrett
2. REVIEW: Double Dare by Jeanne St. James
3. Friday Film Review: The Closer You Get (aka American Women)

Back in March, I read and reviewed your terrific debut, Midnight Riot (Rivers of London in the UK), an urban fantasy/police procedural narrated by an endearing London police constable named Peter Grant.
Peter is a new recruit in a secret (and very small) department of the London Metropolitan Police which investigates supernatural crimes. Moon Over Soho is the second book that follows Peter, and I’m pleased to say that like Midnight Riot, it was highly enjoyable.

The two books are closely related so it’s impossible to review the second without revealing spoilers for the first. Therefore, readers who have not yet read Midnight Riot and who don’t want to read spoilers for that novel should read no further.

Moon Over Soho begins a few months after Midnight Riot has ended. Due to the events that took place toward the end of Midnight Riot, Peter’s superior officer, wizard/Chief Inspector Nightingale, is very frail, and Leslie, a coworker on whom Peter had a crush, has been horribly scarred. Beverley Brook, another potential love interest of Peter’s, is still away from London, and the murder that took place at the end of the last book remains unsolved.

As Moon Over Soho opens, Peter is visiting Leslie, who conceals her disfigured face beneath a hood, a scarf, and sunglasses. Leslie wants to know whether magic can “fix” her face, but Peter doesn’t think it can. Soon after parting from Leslie, Peter gets a call from Dr. Walid, the department’s coroner, about a body which may belong to a victim of supernatural foul play.

At the morgue, Peter senses vestigia, the remnants of magic, emanating from the body in the form of the jazz tune Body and Soul. The dead man is a saxophonist named Cyrus Wilkinson. At Cyrus’s house and in the vicinity of his address, Peter meets Simone Fitzwilliam, Cyrus’s girlfriend, as well as Melinda Abbott, Cyrus’s fiancée. Later he locates the rest of Cyrus’s band, and in this way he learns that Cyrus died shortly after a big gig.

Further investigation reveals that Cyrus isn’t the only jazz player to die immediately after a brilliant performance. There appears to be some kind of supernatural being hunting down these talented men, and Peter is determined to find out why, how and who.

Meanwhile, two other murders with a very different MO take place. A dark haired, pale skinned woman seduces men only to bite off their sexual organs with her own. The vagina dentata case (featuring a killer with teeth in her vagina) from the previous book remains unsolved, but when a journalist/amateur practitioner of magic is killed in this same way, Peter is pulled in on the case.

Then there is Peter’s private life. While the investigation unfolds, an attraction blooms between Peter and Simone Fitzwilliam, the deceased Cyrus’s girlfriend, and their mutual infatuation grows consuming. Concurrently, Peter’s father, a former saxophonist somewhat famous in jazz circles, takes up the keyboard and hooks up with Cyrus’s band members.

Is Peter’s father in danger? Is Peter himself in danger? Who are the killers in each case, and can Peter track them down before they do further harm?

Moon Over Soho answers these questions and the joy of reading the book is at as much in Peter’s narration as it is the process of solving a paranormal mystery. The book crackles with wit and humor even as it tackles some dark subject matter. For example, here is a brief description of Camden Market, one of many funny bits in the book:

The important thing about Camden Market is that nobody planned it. Before London swallowed it whole, Camden Town was the fork in the road best known for a coaching inn called the Mother Red Cap. It served as a last-chance stop for beer, highway robbery and gonorrhea before heading north into the wilds of Middlesex.

The dialogue is equally wonderful. Take for example this bit, which deftly handles the race and diversity issues. Here’s Peter, who happens to be biracial, discussing the case his white supervisor, Inspector Nightingale, while they walk Toby, their dog. Since they are searching for the magician who trained the dead journalist, and Nightingale says there weren’t many people who could have done so in England, Peter asks about magicians from other parts of the world.

I asked about other countries—China, Russia, India, the Middle East, Africa. I couldn’t believe they hadn’t at least some kind of magic. Nightingale admitted that he didn’t really know, but had the good grace to sound embarrassed.

“The world was different before the war,” he said. “We didn’t have this instantaneous access to information that your generation has. The world was a bigger, more mysterious place—we still dreamed of secret caves in the Mountains of the Moon, and tiger hunting in the Punjab.”

When all the map was red, I thought. When every boy expected his own adventure and girls had not yet been invented.

Toby barked as we overtook a juggernaut full of God knows what going God knows where.

“After the war it was as if I was waking up from a dream,” said Nightingale. There were space rockets and computers and jumbo jets and it seemed like a ‘natural’ thing that the magic would go away.”

“You mean you didn’t bother looking,” I said.

“It was just me,” he said. “And I was responsible for the whole of London and the southeast. It never occurred to me that the old days might come back. Besides, we have Dunlop’s books so we know his teacher wasn’t from some foreign tradition—this is a home-grown black magician.”

“You can’t call them black magicians,” I said.

“You realize that we’re using black in its metaphorical sense here,” said Nightingale.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Words change what they mean, don’t they? Some people would call me a black magician.”

“You’re not a magician,” he said. “You’re barely even an apprentice.”

“You’re changing the subject,” I said.

“What should we call them?” he asked patiently.

“Ethically challenged magical practitioners,” I said.

“Just to satisfy my curiosity, you understand,” said Nightingale, “given that the only people ever likely to hear us say the words black magician are you, me and Dr. Walid, why is changing them so important?”

“Because I don’t think the old world’s coming back anytime soon,” I said. “In fact, I think the new world might be arriving.”

As I stated in my review of Midnight Riot, Peter is a loveable character. He genuinely cares about every life he attempts to save and wants to believe that a good outcome is possible. At the same time, he isn’t blind to flaws, especially flaws in systems, and can snark with the best of them.

Still, I liked him a little less in this book than I did in Midnight Riot, perhaps because he struggled less in this one. It seemed like he had grown not only better at his work, but also significantly more physically coordinated, to a degree that seemed less than completely believable given the span of three months that had passed between the two books. It also bugged me that he was occasionally distracted from his casework by his involvement with Simone.

Additionally, I found the vagina dentata idea sexist and if the female character this subplot centered around hadn’t been treated so respectfully I might have been offended. That I was able to go along with it is a testament to the sensitivity and humor with which every subject in this book was approached.

In other ways, though, Moon Over Soho was a stronger book than its predecessor. The mysteries at its center were even more compelling, the investigative legwork was still there, and this time, the villains’ paranormal abilities were explained more clearly than in Midnight Riot.

Most importantly, though, I felt that this book dug deeper into the characters and I got to know them better. Though I am starting to get the sense that Peter will never be the kind of touchy-feely guy who talks about his emotions, those emotions nonetheless came through more in this book.

Readers who are looking for a great urban fantasy series with a fresh setting, endearing and vulnerable characters, a threatening villain, humor as well as substance, and smart writing can’t do much better than this one. B+/A-.

Sincerely,

Janine

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch
2. Nicholas Sparks to Write Novel to be Turned into Movie for Miley Cyrus
3. REVIEW: Bayou Moon by Ilona Andrews

A few years ago, I watched a Hindi language, historical epic film called Jodhaa Akbar, starring Bollywood superstars Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.  As a librarian with a graduate degree in European history, I was intrigued by the 16th century historical detail in the film.  And I completely swooned over the beauty and charisma of the lead actors.  Being a film geek, I began to explore the Bollywood film genre.  I was, admittedly, drawn first to the beautiful costumes and song picturizations, but I soon found myself just as interested in the cultures of India.  I began to read non-fiction on modern India and watch Indian films (in Hindi and other regional languages) that went beyond the typical Bollywood masala formula.  Still, my favorite Indian films (and the ones I watch over and over) will always be Bollywood romances.  As a lifelong romance reader, I think this makes perfect sense.  There’s nothing as wonderful or satisfying as a delightful, fluffy romantic comedy or an angst-ridden, passionate romantic drama whether in print or on the screen.

My reading interests have paralleled my interests in Indian films and I’ve read several non-fiction titles on India and literary fiction by South Asian authors.  However, I’ve had to be very creative in locating mainstream romances with South Asian settings and/or South Asian characters, especially contemporary titles.  I’ve also received many recommendations from members of the romance reading community.  The following are titles that I’ve enjoyed with a strong romantic element and they represent a variety of genres including chick-lit, historical fiction, literary fiction, and traditional romances (category, paranormal, historical, etc.).

The Zoya Factor by Anjua Chauhan

Published by Harper Collins in India, this is the sweet and hilarious story of an advertising executive who becomes the “lucky charm” for India’s cricket team during the ICC World Cup.  She finds romance with the captain of the team.  There are several untranslated Hindi phrases in this book and some very specific cultural references that will be lost to most Western readers, but I still highly recommend it, especially if you’re interested in how an Indian author takes on the chick-lit format.  I also enjoyed Advaita Kala’s Almost Single, another chick-lit title by an Indian author, reviewed here at DA.

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Saris and the City by Rekha Waheed

This Little Black Dress UK title written by a British author of Bangladeshi descent is a traditional chick lit story of a career-minded woman dealing with her conservative Bengali family’s demands and her attraction to the typical rich and gorgeous hero.

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The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan

In this first in a historical trilogy about Mughal India, the love story of protagonist Mehrunnisa and Prince Salim is a blend of historical fact and romantic fiction.  This book piqued my interest in historical romance written by Indian authors and I recently stumbled upon a series of historical romances called Kama Kahani published by Random House India and written by Indian authors. The series, including titles like Kiran Kohl’s Passion in the Punjab, can be found through Amazon.co.uk.  They have beautiful covers and I particularly love the series’ taglines printed above the back cover blurb: “Are you a spirited beauty, your fire contained – buy only just – by the clinging brocade of your lehnga’s choli? A delicious Kama Kahani is sure to strike your fancy.”

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The Stolen Bride by Abby Green

Several years ago, Mills & Boon began to increase their presence in India and to search for promising Indian authors for their lines.  To date, two Mills & Boon titles by Indian authors have been published but they’re hard to find outside of India.  So, in the meantime, we’ve had some other interesting developments in the M&B/Harlequin Presents line, such as the late Penny Jordan’s 2008 title featuring an Indian hero and several more titles by other authors featuring characters of South Asian descent.  As a sometimes reader of the Presents line, I have enjoyed Abby Green’s The Stolen Bride and its Bollywood actress heroine and cringed at other lazier titles that simply shift the overplayed “sheikh romance” formula to the Indian setting.  I’ve also been inspired to collect vintage Harlequins and other category titles that are set in India (I’ve only found a couple that actually feature heroes or heroines of South Asian descent).  A pleasant older Harlequin Presents title set in India is Jayne Bauling’s Sophisticated Seduction (#25), published in 1996.

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The Mango Season by Amulya Malladi

In this literary fiction title, Indian born-Denmark based author Malladi writes a moving depiction of a young Indian woman’s struggles with her parents’ demand for an arranged marriage and her love of an American man.

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Finally, the following titles, which have been recommended here and elsewhere numerous times, should also be mentioned:

The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran

Historical romance partially set in India, with Anglo-Indian hero.

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Not Quite a Husband by Sherry Thomas

The 1890s northern Indian setting of this much-praised historical is superbly drawn.

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Demon Moon by Meljean Brook

A paranormal with a heroine of Indian descent, this is one of many examples of the culturally diverse heroes and heroines that have become happily commonplace in paranormals over the last several years.

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Sexy as Hell by Susan Johnson

The Bruxton Street Bookstore series has been a bit of a guilty pleasure for me.  This title features Osmond, Baron Lennox, a hero of Anglo-Indian descent who grew up in Hyderabad and now owns India’s largest bank.  Johnson excels at interesting and unusual historical detail, but it’s often overshadowed by her steamy content.

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These are just a few titles that have stood out for one reason or another in my search for romance with a South Asian flair.  I hope that these recommendations will lead to even more recommendations from other Dear Author readers.  Happy reading!

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3. REVIEW: The River Devil by Diane Whiteside

“How much can you hide?

Jemima Hutton is determined to build a successful new life and keep her past a dark secret. Trouble is, her jewellery business looks set to fail – until enigmatic Ben Davies offers to stock her handmade belt buckles in his guitar shop and things start looking up, on all fronts.
But Ben has secrets too. When Jemima finds out he used to be the front man of hugely successful Indie rock band Willow Down, she wants to know more. Why did he desert the band on their US tour? Why is he now a semi-recluse?
And the curiosity is mutual – which means that her own secret is no longer safe …”

Dear Ms. Lovering,

Since I enjoyed the first book of yours I read, “Slightly Foxed,” I jumped at the chance to check out your latest release, “Please Don’t Stop the Music.” Your description of it as a ‘dark psychological romance – with jokes’ is dead on. I knew from the beginning that there were going to be angsty emotional revelations along the way but I still enjoy laughing a bit on the road to them.

These are two very wounded people who have both current and past problems. They have to open up in order to heal and allow for possible future love and you take the time to pry them open, almost like clams, to allow this. Thank you for giving them REAL problems and not just “I’m so misunderstood by the world” navel gazing idiocy. I like that you give us some clues about what these issues are – it’s not all coy as some stories are – but the final revelations are still powerful and haunting. But it’s good that Rosie and Jason realize that Jem is hiding something – what friends would they be if they didn’t plus they’d look like idjuts.

I can kind of understand why Jem keeps running and almost runs again one last time. She’s got some serious self-esteem issues she has to deal with. Her warped views on sexuality were gained at a relatively young age and she’s both ashamed of what she allowed to happen and still not quite over it. But as Ben points out – look how she’s grown in the time since he’s met her. She is willing to confront Saskia (what’s with the popularity of this name anyway?) to help her friend Rosie and him and at least she realizes what her problem is even if she’s still sees running as how to overcome it. Ben does a wonderful thing for her in following her and *showing* her what she means to him. I don’t think Jem would believe it any other way.

Ben also has to overcome not only his “sex, drugs and rock’n'roll” past but also the guilt over how he left the band and the grief of the reason why. He had to get over the ‘towering artiste knocked down in his prime’ delusion. But get beyond it he finally does as he admits that he wouldn’t take his past back as a gift if it meant not having Jem in his life. That was a powerful revelation. No, he’ll never play again but he can still work in music.

Even after the explanations of why she did it, I have to say that Saskia gets away with too much. Her reason for what she did doesn’t excuse her for trying to ruin two lives – and harming Ben’s business as well. And she appears to be walking away from it scot free. Perhaps Jem and Ben will put the York trade authority screws to her but I needed to see some punishment or retribution.

I love that baby Harry isn’t a little bundle of total joy and happiness for Rosie. He’s not just a plot moppet but a real influence on Rosie and Jem and Jason’s lives. Rosie’s issues are certainly different and I did wonder about her relationship with the father but you turned that for an interesting twist as well. I like the sort of open ended finale – Jem and Ben look to be working things out. Jason and Rosie as well but no wedding bells are shown yet.

Yeah for the York setting again. Yes, there are other parts of England besides the Home Counties and London and I’m delighted to see them! I love the image of the center of York with streets that fold in on each other and hidden nooks and crannies. Plus I enjoyed the sardonic English humor in the story. Jem and Ben take the piss out of each other on a regular basis.

The book is Chick Lit’ish in that it’s mainly first person but there’s much more angst and we get Ben’s thoughts through his journal, which I loved. You’ve done a good job showing the arc of the characters’ development and change – of Jem and Ben falling in trust with each other, feeling safe and happy with each other, then falling in love. You put these two through the wringer a time or three but theirs is a HEA I believe in. B

~Jayne

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The romance of this story was enjoyable but the sweet and sometimes serious nature of the romance was offset by over the top descriptions of the “villains” of the story creating a cacophonous tone mismatch. A late conflict arose in the book and while it could have provided a challenging and very real impediment to the happy ever after (and thus making the connection of the lead couple all the more satisfying)

Melissa McGuire ends up in San Gabriel working as a news producer at the local television station after being humiliated in Los Angeles. She had an affair with her boss that went south

Her grandmother is convinced that Melissa needs a boyfriend and buys a date for Melissa with a fireman at a local bachelor auction. When the bachelor fireman backs out because of a desire not to go out on a date with a grandmother, Captain Harry Brody takes his place. Brody is used to acting as the father figure to many of the younger firemen and conversely they all hold Brody in awe because of his steadfastness and his past history of bravery.

Brody isn’t interested in dating right now. He’s trying to rebuild his life after a painful divorce but Melissa strikes all the right chords for him. The two end up spending a lot of time together when the local media personality, Ella, (one of the villains) decides to do a reality special involving the San Gabriel Fire Station. The Fire Station is famous because the all bachelor crew was featured on the Today Show and in People magazine.

Brody is a really great hero. He’s unshakeable. There is a scene early on in the book where Melissa is relating all her assumptions about firemen and Brody doesn’t rise to the bait:

“I apologize if I was rude,” she said, nose in the air.

“Not at all.”

“So you don’t deny I’m right?”

“Why should I, when you seem so convinced that you are?”

Now those emerald sparks were firing again.

“You could at least try to defend yourself.”

“Are we in a battle? I thought this was a date.” “You . . .”

She gave a squeak of pure frustration.

“Don’t you ever get rattled?”

“It’s part of my job to not get rattled.”

His character was consistent throughout. The steadying hand, the leader, the guy who watches out for others. Melissa was observant, as befitting her role as a news producer, and a quick learner. She led her tribe of news people in her own way. She was quick to make amends, didn’t hold grudges, and allowed herself to be educated.

Brody and Melissa were the best parts of the book but we saw so little of them together that the romance and their interaction took a back seat to the atmosphere of the firehouse, the backstabbing news room, and the machinations of the villains–Ella and Melissa’s former boss, Everett. Ordinarily, in a straight contemporary, I wouldn’t identify people as villains but from the way in which two of the characters were written, they fit the profile perfectly. I am pretty sure one, if not both of them, twirled a virtual mustache after every encounter.  For instance, Everett is using Ella to get back at Melissa and Ella is trying to use Everett to get a better job.  Their sexual encounters, which are often degrading for Ella, are described in some detail.

There was little relationship conflict other than standard and heavy handed use of the big misunderstanding until the last third of the book which is probably why so much of the first part of the story was filled with non relationship story lines but the relationship conflict was one that could have provided a real challenge. Brody’s ex wife returns to his life with a child in tow. It isn’t his, but Brody had always wanted a family and he can’t turn his ex wife who needs him away. The way in which this storyline is resolved, however, is written with the same over the top narrative used with the villains. The tension in the story seemed too manufactured and while I liked the leads, they weren’t together enough on paper to keep me interested. C

Best regards, Jane

P.S. As a side note, I am not one for sequel baiting, but this book did the opposite. Ryan, the lead in the sequel to this book, bails on the date with the grandmother because he fears the teasing he will get from his fellow firefighters. He also takes a shine to the empty headed and mean spirited Ella displaying that he is turned by a pretty face and not much else. He came off as self centered, shallow, and a bit of a simpleton.

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Related posts:

1. REVIEW: Viscount Who Loved Me, Second Epilogue by Julia Quinn
2. REVIEW: Revenge Wears Rubies by Renee Bernard
3. REVIEW: The Fallen Angels by Bernard Cornwell (aka Susannah Kells)

There is a strong stigma surrounding self-published YA novels that suggests that they are all badly written and derivative. Even with authors like Amanda Hocking becoming successes in both print and digital publishing, there is an inherent idea that self-published YA is bad and a constant stream of riffs on the latest trends – namely Twilight.

Many books live up to this stigma, but I had the hope that Feyland would be a different story. The pitch you sent sounded interesting, though done before: a girl gets caught up in an immersive MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game)-type experience that suddenly becomes more than a game. I’ve read books with a similar premise, but never billed as a retelling of the ballad of Tam Lin along with it.

The long and short of it? I really enjoyed this book. Even if the cover made my eyes twitch profusely. Jennet Carter has been secretly playing a prototype game being developed by her father’s company. Made by a company that uses a fully-immersive type of gaming technology, Feyland is a computer game that promises to change the face of gaming. An avid gamer like Jennet ise nticed by using the new system – even though it’s directly against her father’s wishes. She can’t stay away from it. Feyland is unlike any game ever created. It shows an entire world that seems to have a life of its own.

The goal of most games is to get to the final level and to beat the boss waiting at the end. Feyland’s boss is the Dark Queen, and Jennet has worked insanely hard to get the chance to face her. She goes in with her all, and in strength they appear to be evenly matched. The Dark Queen then challenges Jennet with something unexpected: a challenge of wits. A riddle. Jennet has spells and spoils at her disposal, but she doesn’t have the answer that the Dark Queen seeks. As forfeit, Jennet has to give more than her pride.

The Dark Queen takes her soul.

Jennet thinks its only a game, but she soon realizes that the Queen’s threats and actions have direct consequence to the outside world. Something is indeed missing from her, and she cannot get it back on her own. She must go in with a champion – a gamer as skilled as she, if not more so – that can win back the part of her lost to the Queen. Jennet finds such a person at her new school, but Tam Linn is less than willing to jump at Jennet’s beck and call just because she’s rich and beautiful. Tam has lived life day-to-day, and he can’t believe that Jennet would do anything other than use him.

The friendship between is rocky, but Jennet’s life rides on Tam Linn’s gaming mastery. She introduces him to Feyland, soon discovering that there is more at stake than her soul. Not only do Jennet and Tam Linn have to save Jennet’s soul, but they have to find a way to prevent the Dark Queen and the other beings of Feyland from slipping into the non-virtual world. Tam Linn’s abilities may seem great, but the challenge of Feyland may just be too much.

Feyland: The Dark Realm plays to a lot of initial stock-character personalities in order to set-up the characterization, later going beyond the aspects of the stock character to deepen the character. Jennet is portrayed as a rich girl, and a rich girl in a YA novel is usually stuck-up or at the very least dramatic. I can enjoy those portrayals, but they can easily veer into stereotypical territory that comes across as inhuman and stupid. Jennet isn’t one of those rich girls. She’s surprisingly understanding and humble, and she doesn’t feel like she has the propensity that I often believe people of wealth to have.

Jennet’s kindness is a nice aspect on its own, but her love of gaming adds something unique to her character.  People don’t expect her to love it. Frankly, I didn’t expect her to love it. People rarely acknowledge the female gamer in the gaming world, and Jennet is not the stereotypical female gamer, either.  (The stereotypical gamer girl is often assumed to be a tomboy and socially awkward).   This with her kindness makes for a surprisingly versatile and savvy character that attracts our attention – mostly because both aspects grow as the novel progresses.  She steadily becomes more and more understanding of Tam Linn’s situation, showing that her kindness is an inner trait that she improves upon in the story, and she uses her gaming abilities to show the reader that she has the ability to defend herself and be a strong female.    The set-up of the story does involve her needing to turn to a “knight in shining armor” type character, and the gaming expertise allows her to avoid becoming a female character who depends upon the male love interest for everything.

Tam Linn, the resident love interest and hero of Feyland, was also a surprisingly endearing character, though he’s not as uncommon as Jennet. Tam Linn isn’t an amazingly sexy character, and all of his angst and brooding comes from understandably awful living conditions. Tam Linn is just as aloof as Jennet is forward, and he provides a nice contrast to her. Tam Linn is in many ways a beta to Jennet, yet his gaming skills allow him to step up and protect her as a hero would. Tam Linn also has the added effect of being very sympathetic, as he shows a lot of tenderness once his outer shell chips away, and the scenes that show him with his family are very sweet.

The characters’ depth only goes so far, however.  Feyland sets up each character with a strong character arc, but the arc is small.  Plot takes precedence over character, and the focus only gets stronger as the novel goes on.  The slower pace allowed the romance to develop at a respectable pace and avoid insta-love, yet the characters never get the time to show the reader exactly why the romance develops.

Tam Linn’s life is also filled with a lot of backstory centered around his home life. His mother rarely takes her medication and is often never around, and Tam Linn is thus left to parent his baby brother. The emotional depth and complexity behind this isn’t explored to its fullest extent, and  a more introspective look would have made Tam Linn more complex as a character.

Feyland’s plot engrosses the reader easily.  Many readers will be attracted to the story as a retelling of Tam Linn, which isn’t often retold to the YA audience.   The story’s placement of that retelling in a near future with virtual-reality gaming makes the retelling seem fresh.  The concept of a realistic virtual-reality game is one that seems more and more plausible with today’s advancing technology.   The game itself feels well-constructed, and the action scenes pertaining to it are fabulous. It is quite easy to tell that the author has ample experience gaming and knows how to write about it in a way that is entertaining. That kind  pacing makes Feyland a treat to read. It doesn’t garner the atrocious page count that some self-published YA books seem to have , and if anything the book could have been expanded in some portions. A sequel appears to be in the works, but the story functioned as its own entity, and that was excellent.

Plot-movement isn’t everything, however, and in some places the world building fell short. The real world in Feyland seems to be something in the near-future in our present world. Mentions of devices like grav-cars are made, but those devices are never really described or reasoned out beyond the mentioning. That kind of world building feels sloppy, and mentioning that type of thing without an explanation just leaves holes within the reader’s vision of the world. Other elements such as the structure of the actual game of Feyland and the slum area (known as the Exe) in the real world fell underdeveloped. There wasn’t a clear, concise idea as to how they functioned, worked, and related to the whole novel. They worked for the plot, but the connections between them weren’t finely tuned enough to feel complete.

As an avid gamer, there’s a lot to like in Feyland: The Dark Realm. The writing is solid and contains a minimal amount of errors, and the characters and story aren’t the usual romance-centric reading. If anything, the story goes by too quickly and misses some things that would have given it a layer of depth. Feyland: The Dark Realm is still a solid and fun addition to the YA world, and it could easily sit on the shelves with books published by traditional publishers. I’m definitely on board for more.

B-

All the best,

John
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This is a friends to lovers story and generally speaking I love those. Luke moved next door to Ava when she was eight and she promptly fell in love. Luke stoked those feelings unintentionally by championing Ava. When Luke’s dad dies, Ava and Luke promise to go out for a drink but Ava is embarrassed and ashamed of her body and refuses to answer his calls. Her sisters called her Fatty Fatty Four Eyes. After hearing her being mocked for hugging hot guy Luke, Ava went on an image improvement binge, losing weight, getting fashion and make up advice. Luke then says that Ava is not the same person anymore. Instead, she’s a bitch. Ava calls herself a bitch. Luke wants the old Ava back. What Ava and Luke calls being a bitch, however, reads to me like Ava standing up for herself. I tried to look at it from the characters’ point of view without some superimposition of my own personal beliefs, but alas, no, she still sounds like a normal female to me. To wit:

“Why am I always repeating myself with you?” he asked, sounding slightly impatient.

“Maybe because I don’t snap to when you tell me to do something like all the other women in your life likely do,” I retorted, sounding bitchy as all hell.

or

I needed time to bury that deep before I set myself up to start thinking he was a good guy again only to find out he wasn’t. To buy that time, I said quietly, “Luke.”

“We’re not talking about this anymore,” Luke told me.

“We are.”

“We’re not.”

I glared. “We are. Give me something to go on here, what’s triple payment mean?” I asked, sounding kind of bitchy.

I mean, asking a question is bitchy? Refusing to be bossed around and told what to do is bitchy? Maybe my bitch meter is completely off. But then later Luke admits he likes the bitch. Does that make it not sexist? DO YOU SEE MY CONFUSION HERE?

Obligatory pain in the ass statement (there are two of them in this book so bonus!):

“Jesus, Ava,” he said, his voice strangely part curt, part amused like he found dealing with me frustrating but he found that frustration enjoyable. “It’s a good thing your sweet body and the fuckin’ things you don’t even know you’re doin’ give you away or you’d be a serious pain in the ass.”

and

“Dexter was wrong, you don’t taste like cherry pie, you taste a fuckuva lot sweeter. If you didn’t, babe, you’d be a pain in the ass.”

I really did like Ava. She had good and bad angels sitting on her shoulders having semi hilarious discussions. She wears crocs and flip-flops. Eats processed cookie dough to soothe her battered feelings. Curses a lot, dresses up, and gets shit faced with her girlfriends. These are all blue collar guys and gals, albeit ones with good jobs and their romances play against a background of assaults, explosions, and tons of oversharing gossip. Unfortunately, it glossed over some opportunities for deeper emotion exploration particularly with Luke’s past attachments to a couple of former Rock Chick girls. Ava rightly questions his devotion to her and Luke’s succinct replies don’t cut it. Just once I’d like to see a Rock Chick say to a Hot Bunch Guy “Good thing you are a great lay and very fine because otherwise you’d be a serious fucking pain in the ass.” D

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Rock Chick Reckoning by Kristen Ashley

This one is a reunited lovers trope. Stella is a musician and Mace is a member of the Nightingale crew. They had a previous relationship but then Mace broke it off because Stella was too needy. They still have strong feelings for each other, but Stella is just as needy and Mace, well, and this is where it goes off the rails. The reason why they broke up wasn’t consistent with the previous hints. Mace hints earlier that it was Stella’s band that broke them up. Then later it is supposed to be that Stella was supposed to chase after Mace when he broke up with her.

Stella supposedly turns down the opportunity to be a huge rockstar because she doesn’t want her parents to find her. Yet when Mace gets involved, she begins to meet with agents about pushing her to the next level and suddenly her “fame” doesn’t pose a problem anymore.

Consistency was a huge issue in this book.

Obligatory “get me” phrase:

He interrupted me. “We’re done talkin’ about this. I said what I had to say. I think you get me.”

This one had at least five different points of view which were essentially used to show how the previous relationships were progressing. This book could have been interesting given the different types of characters playing the leading roles but they were, despite their professions and backgrounds, nearly indistinguishable from previous characters. Clothing details were superseded (but not eliminated) by extensive discussions of lyrics and set lists. Ironically, one of the most important sentences of the book is indecipherable. Mace says to Stella “I can’t be the star in your sky when you’re the only star left shining in mine.” What does that even mean? F

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Rock Chick Regret by Kristen Ashley

I almost didn’t read this one because after the incomprehensible tragedy that was Stella and Mace’s romance, I questioned whether I wanted to read another Ashley book ever. But, because of my OCD, I couldn’t leave the last book of the Rock Chicks unread. Hector Chavez, brother of Eddie Chavez (leading male in Rock Chick Rescue) is the hero in this book. He was deep undercover for the DEA working to bring down drug lord Seth Townsend. Sadie Townsend, Seth’s daughter, and Hector fell for each other while Hector was undercover but Hector couldn’t jeopardize his role and Sadie was too shy and reserved to act on her feelings except for one night when she was a little tipsy and Hector lost control. Except Hector says something very vulgar to her (that he was glad she was slumming) and Sadie ran away from him. After Sadie’s father was imprisoned, she became the target of the bad guys who wanted to take her father’s place. Having Sadie under their thumb was a way to cement their top dog position. She goes to the Nightingale Agency to pay for a protective detail and is turned away by Lee. Sadie then proceeds to be viscously beaten and raped.

Chapter two has five! different points of view because you can’t get the full range of regret in the first person. The pathos expressed is great, but the way in which it is done seems manipulative and cheap.

That said, Sadie’s blossoming after her rape was touching. She feels like she is alone in the world because her father made it that way. She had no friends or so she thinks. But the sole employee in Sadie’s art gallery takes her to his home where he lives with his partner and together the two gay men show Sadie that she is loved and worthy of love. The relationship that develops between Sadie and the gay couple is almost worth reading the book.

Hector and Sadie’s relationship is a standard Rock Chick story. Only Hector gives epic “pain in the ass” speeches.

Then his eyes opened and he said softly, “Christ, Sadie, puttin’ up with you demonstrating how many more ways you can be a pain in the ass was worth every fuckin’ second if that was the end result.”

and

“If I didn’t know it was worth it. If I didn’t know from what happened last night and, whatever the fuck you thought it was, mamita, what happened this morning. And if I didn’t like your hands in my hair holding my mouth to you, the smell of your fuckin’ perfume when I’m buried inside you and the way you lose that tight-as-shit control over every fuckin’ move you make when you get excited and you use your nails and teeth on me, I’d give up, because, mamita, you are one serious pain in the ass.”

I ended up liking this more than I thought I would. It has disturbing misogynistic overtones that made me flinch throughout the book, however, such as Hector instruction Sadie that she wasn’t to stand close to any other man.  Plus, the Rock Chick name checks were tiresome. There were complete pages that were tl;dr and were completely meaningless such as identifying every character who was attending a barbecue and mentioning who was pregnant and who was engaged and who was married.  Tiresome.  Unnecessary.

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There is a lot to like about Ashley’s stories.  The characters are vivid.  Her romances are charming.  The settings are ordinary in a very positive way.  There aren’t billionaires here, for the most part.  There is a lot of cursing, drinking, fighting and partying.  These characters say things that aren’t normally voiced in the regular and polite course of events.  I feel like Ashley is writing about characters we don’t read much about.  But I think a content editor could help to reduce the repetition, point out the inconsistencies, increase the flow, and reign in some of Ashley’s writer tendencies.

Related posts:

1. MINI REVIEW: Rock Chick Rescue, Rock Chick Redemption, Rock Chick Renegade series by Kristen Ashley
2. REVIEW: Rock Chick by Kristen Ashley
3. REVIEW: Rock Hard by Olivia Cunning