I was interested to read your debut novel for two reasons. First, I love the title. I’ve always thought being a husband’s harlot is one of the best parts of marriage. (Plus, it reminds me of a classic song, the number one single from 1973, Charlie Rich’s Behind Closed Doors. I’m humming [...]]]> Dear Ms. Callaway,

I was interested to read your debut novel for two reasons. First, I love the title. I’ve always thought being a husband’s harlot is one of the best parts of marriage. (Plus, it reminds me of a classic song, the number one single from 1973, Charlie Rich’s Behind Closed Doors. I’m humming it as I write.) Second, I think it’s impressive you’ve taken your 2010 winning manuscript, (Her Husband’s Harlot was a 2010 Romance Writers of America Golden Heart Finalist) and turned it into a successfully selling novel: It’s currently the 36th most popular Regency romance at Amazon.com and has a five star reader rating.

I enjoyed your book. You utilize a typical regency plot—virginal girl marries sensually experienced and sexually voracious man whose heart she longs to win—and give it an innovative rendering.  I loved the opening scene in which your heroine, the well-bred Lady Helena is wandering the halls of the Nunnery, a high-end London brothel, determined to track down her husband Nicholas and beg him not to consort with whores but to consort with her instead. The two have been married just a month and, after a truly awful experience for both on their wedding night—she practiced “ladylike forbearance” until the moment she screamed in startled pain; he jumped off her, ran out of the room, horrified he’d hurt her—the two barely speak. Helena, though, longs for another chance and so, upon learning Nicholas will be at the bordello this evening, she slips on the clothes of a tart, paints her face, dons a wig and a feathered mask, and goes husband hunting.

She finds him, hidden behind a curtain, watching an exceedingly bawdy threesome. Nicholas has been in sexual hell since his wedding night. He is consumed with lust for his wife, but sees her as too genteel and pure for him. He thinks, after their wedding night, she wants nothing to do with him. But he’s a guy with big needs and even beating off three times a day, while fantasizing about fucking the hell out of Helena, is neither slaking his lust nor assuaging his loneliness. He came to the Nunnery thinking he’d find relief in another woman’s quim, but found, much to his despair, he only wants his wife.

Usually, in romance novels, the hero doesn’t ever have sex with another woman—many romance readers have zero tolerance for unfaithful husbands. In your book, you take a different path and I liked that. When Helena literally bumps into Nicholas, he doesn’t know her. The light is dim—they are swathed in heavy velvet drapes–, she’s wearing a mask and, most importantly, in Nicholas’s mind, Helena is a paragon of virtue; there’s not a chance in hell his highborn, pristine wife would ever be rubbing up against him in a den of vice.

The minute the room is emptied of the threesome, Nicholas jerks Helena into his arms, lays her flat on the nearest table, yanks down her bodice and unbuttons his trousers. He is aflame with desire for this woman who is not his wife. Helena, who got quite an education from watching the ménage a trois, is just as desirous of him. She realizes, though, he doesn’t recognize her, and, afraid he’d condemn her for her wantonness—she speaks to him in French in an altered voice. The two have explosive sex—I love the bawdy language of your sex scenes—after which Nicholas drops a fifty pound note on the table and abruptly leaves.

Nicholas, of course, feels worse than ever after this event. He’s already believes he’s not a worthy spouse for Helena and now he’s gone and fucked a whore while imagining he was defiling his wife. Helena, now that she knows how great marital bliss can be, is more determined than ever to woo her husband. Here again, you don’t take their story down the expected path.

Helena does everything right and Nicholas behaves like an ass to her. She tries to talk with him, works on de-dowding herself, and—I really liked this—gets angry at him when he doesn’t respond pleasantly to her. The nicer she is to him, the nastier he is to her. Normally this dynamic would irritate me, but you make it work. You do a wonderful job of showing why Nicholas thinks he’s so unworthy of Helena.  Nicholas is not from the privileged class. He grew up alone and wretchedly poor in the slums of St. Giles.  He was well on his way to death by noose or starvation when he was given a chance by the owner of a shipping company. Nicholas worked his way up, ethically, to managing the company and when the owner died, he left it to Nicholas to run. Nicholas now has money and a title, but he still sees himself as the abused boy he once was. He’s consumed with shame for things done to him and the things he did in his vile past.  You write Nicholas’s shame so believably—he may be crippled by it, but you give him just enough emotional flexibility for the reader to believe it’s possible for him to change.

You also do a nice job of making Helena a credible character. She may be from the ton with snotty parents, but she really doesn’t care that Nicholas isn’t from her class. She was thrilled when he courted her and has always found him incredibly attractive. She really doesn’t understand why he doesn’t seem to want her anymore—she knew nothing about sex and thought what happened on their wedding night portended permanent problems. Once she goes to the Nunnery, and experiences successful coitus, she sees sex as a way to connect with her husband. It’s not, however, the only way she tries to forge a bond between them. She asks him about his work, invites herself to meet the Fines (they are the family of the shipping company owner and are as close to family as Nicholas has), and pleads with him to socialize with her. She sees what works, what doesn’t, and adjusts her behavior accordingly. I liked that she works so hard to get her husband to be with her but she never acts in any way that is debasing or untrue to whom she is.

I appreciated the emotional relationship between Nicholas and Helena. I liked the way it evolved and how, over time, both Nicholas and Helena began to trust and rely on one another. I also really liked their sex life. Your sex scenes are incredibly graphic and your characters use fairly blunt, even brutal language, as they couple.  Nicholas is such a sexual person—the way he speaks in bed is the way he thinks out of bed. And Helena has, from the beginning of the book, wanted to become her husband’s harlot. For her, listening to Nicholas ask her if she wants his cock and being able to say yes is an affirmation that all she’s worked for is hers.

I did feel that Nicholas’s self-loathing went on longer than it needed to, but this is a small quibble. In general, I loved the romance in your romance.

I wasn’t as engaged in the suspense plot that comprises a great deal of your book. You have Nicholas being anonymously threatened by some unknown villain. Nicholas keeps getting notes that threaten to tell the truth about his past. This extra level of threat seemed overkill to me. Nicholas is already consumed with fear that if Helena knew what he’d been, she’d be disgusted and repulsed. When he uses the possible blackmail to distance himself further from Helena, it felt heavy handed to me. I also had a hard time caring who was behind the notes and, as the book progresses, the criminal activity at Nicholas’s shipping company. For me, the relationship between Nicholas and Helena was so interesting, I was somewhat resentful when you took the focus off of the two of them and put it on bad guys at the docks.

All in all, though, this is a good book. It’s the kind of debut novel that gives me faith your next book will be even better.  It seems possible the next book will be about Helena’s friend Marianne. (She helps Helena get into the Nunnery in the first place.) She was a great secondary character and I hope to read more about her.

So, again, congratulations. Her Husband’s Harlot is a pleasing, out of the ordinary read.  I enjoyed finding out what went on behind closed doors in your book—it was nice to watch Helena become her husband’s harlot!

Thanks,

Dabney

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I always seem to be behind in keeping up with this series but I think it’s because I want to be sure I have a Pink Carnation book on hand. And in this instance it worked beautifully for me. You see, I’ve been in a reading slump for it seems like ages [...]]]> Dear Ms Willig,

I always seem to be behind in keeping up with this series but I think it’s because I want to be sure I have a Pink Carnation book on hand. And in this instance it worked beautifully for me. You see, I’ve been in a reading slump for it seems like ages (actually about 3 months) and “The Orchid Affair” is what I needed to finally pull out of it. So thank you for doing me such a service. Now, on to our regularly scheduled review:

Miss Laura Gray has been a governess for sixteen years and is convinced that if she doesn’t do something different now, that this is all she will ever be. Her chance arrives when she is recruited by the Pink Carnation. After a short stint at the Selwick spy school, she leaves on her first assignment. Her job is to take a position in the household of Andre Jaouen who is the right hand man of Bonaparte’s minister of police. True she’s pretending to be a governess for his two young children, but if she does well perhaps her next assignment will be something a tad more exciting.

However, she has to survive this job first and things begin to get dicey after she’s recognized by an old friend of her deceased parents. Is Antoine Daubier merely a friend of her employer or is there something else going on here? Should Laura be worried that Gaston Delaroche, Andre’s sinister colleague, knows not only the names of Andre’s children but hers as well? And who is behind the Royalist plot to remove the First Consul and restore the monarchy? Laura wanted exciting but maybe merely interesting would have been a better wish.

I’ll start by saying that there are some details about the book and its setup that don’t make a great deal of sense and are perhaps best skimmed over. How was Laura discovered and recruited? Why was Andre willing to bring someone new into his household given what was going on? And though I know that the Treaty of Amiens was still in effect during the timeframe of this novel, how are two so obviously English people as Miss Wooliston and Mr. Whittlesby so accepted in the circle of the First Consul’s family? After pondering these questions a bit, I realized that to continue was to not only invite a headache but to also ruin the story for me.

Laura Gray – or Laure Griscogne since she decides to use her real French name while on the assignment – is a great heroine. She’s intelligent, she’s resourceful, she thinks quickly and acts decisively yet she’s not a typical “kick ass” woman. She has been trained – a little – in self defense and how to use weapons but she rarely relies on this. Instead, she acts like the best spies do and that’s to blend in and not attract attention. Sixteen years of blending and being “gray” for lack of a better word serve her well. She’s also not all angsty. Life hasn’t treated her spectacularly well – she lost her parents at age sixteen and has fended for and survived on her own since then – but she doesn’t weep and wail about it and, when the opportunity appears, she takes a chance to change things.

Andre is more complicated than he might initially appear. Laura’s first impression is of a cold, matter-of-fact man who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. As her time in the household passes, she sees a man who loves his children even if he might not think he knows how to show that. She also discovers that he isn’t at all what she or her superiors believe him to be. She – and I too – wonder how can this be? Here is a man who has been dedicated to the changes that have taken place in France over the past fourteen years. A man who worked to bring about those changes. So, why is he doing what he’s doing? The way you have him explain it to Laura makes sense. He is a man who wants a better future for his country and, especially, for his children. But he also wants a stable world for them. Since he isn’t a swashbuckling man-of-action, he works for this end in his own way.

I like their relationship. They aren’t flamboyant people and the way they fall in love is slowly and gently. When the misunderstanding arrives, it’s not really a Big Mis and it doesn’t derail their feelings. Instead of a “you betrayed me you beyotch!” scene, there is initial astonishment followed by thought and a reconciliation.

The tension and atmosphere of the novel is excellent. I can feel the cold, wet damp of Paris in the winter. Likewise, the ravaged Hotel de Bac echoes its past glory and sulks in its present gloom. The feeling of political change is in the air as the fervor of the Revolution has almost died down and the status quo is shifting. But there are still throwbacks to recent past methods of dealing with dissension. Andre might not enjoy putting suspects to The Question as much as does Delaroche but he still gets results for his superiors. He is, after all, a practical man who does what is needed to try and bring about the changes he wishes to see take place. It all makes sense given the way you’ve developed the plot and the characters.

The modern portion of the book doesn’t interest me or hold my attention as much as you’d probably like it to. This relationship and Eloise’s research is moving so slowly – glaciers move more quickly – that when it pops up, I feel more impatient to get back to the main action than any burning desire to know about what is going on with her and Colin.

A heroine who is strong in a “period” way, a beta hero who comes to love and admire her for who she is as well as being strong in his own non-flashy way, two children who I haven’t really discussed much but who don’t annoy me – and that’s saying a lot from me, the slow building to a bang up finish and a wrap up that doesn’t require a gooey sweet epilogue means I like this book a lot. Good job and I’m looking forward to the next installment which hopefully I’ll get to sooner than I did for this one. B

~Jayne

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Blake Maddock spent his life [...]]]>

The last person Mardie Rainey expects to see on her doorstep is her childhood sweetheart, Blake Maddock. Fifteen years ago, Blake Maddock had walked away, leaving her teenage heart sore and broken. But now—with a thunderstorm raging overhead—she can’t turn him away, nor the injured border collie in his arms….

Blake Maddock spent his life running from one tragic mistake… Now the frightened boy has become a formidable man—and he’s coming back for the woman he has never forgotten….

Dear Ms. Lennox,

Recently I met fellow DA reviewer Sunita, which was a blast, and as book lovers do, of course we talked about books. We agree that one of our least favorite tropes is the “I kissed you once 10 years (or more) ago and have never forgotten it nor moved on with my life.” Argh, I hate this. So imagine my happiness when you made it very plain that Mardie hadn’t waited and faded away, she hadn’t lived in stasis since Blake left. She’d loved another man, married him, had a good and satisfying life before losing him. She still loved him in a way that was all his though there was room in her heart for another. Yeah, that’s another trope I dislike: the “I’ve loved and lost and will never love again!” Hate that too. Thank you for this.

I seriously enjoyed the sections about the dogs. They are such a part of these peoples’ lives that a story without them would feel incomplete. The parts with Charlie and Bessie working again and later at the funeral had me almost bawling. Would have had I been home but I had to hold it together at work. Still these are lovely scenes of how much dogs love and are loved and love to be useful.

Another wonderful thing about the story is that when Blake returns fifteen years after he left and shows up at Mardie’s door, she doesn’t turn into mush – well, perhaps for a minute in surprise but then she gets over it. And lets Blake know that she hasn’t wrapped herself up and mourned his loss all this time. He left, she was sad but then she got over it. She moved on. She’s lived a successful life and hasn’t thought about him or wondered about him. She took her passion for art and has made a name for herself as well as finding happiness teaching arts courses. I was bouncing in happiness through all this. Oh, and I loved it when she called him on how he viewed her life since she hadn’t gone overseas and saved children’s lives. And even after Blake makes a half hearted and emotionally induced proposal, she is wise enough to turn him down because she knows it’s still all wrong. Yeah, Mardie!

It’s wrong and Mardie insists that it be right. She probes Blakes’ reasons for not wanting to stay in Banskia Bay, she offers encouragement and mentions the therapy that helped her past the loss of her husband but she doesn’t push it or make ultimatums. She – and Blake – realize that neither will be happy trying to make a marriage work at their present stage. Yes, this takes the story down to the wire but I needed for them to work all this out to their satisfaction before I’d believe in their HEA.

And Blake does have some serious issues in his past. Some screwed up parents and a guardian aunt who wasn’t much better. Again I appreciate that this isn’t just a pity party on his part but some deep seated emotional mess that goes back a ways and must be dealt with. The way you described why he had to leave Banksia Bay and why he never contacted Mardie makes sense. He needed to leave this place that he saw as an exile where his parents sent him and if he’d talked to or written to Mardie, he wouldn’t have been strong enough not to crumble. When Mardie is finally given a window into what has driven Blake all these years and what still continues to haunt him, she knows these are things she might be able to help with – a little – but she can’t solve them for him. Nothing gets papered over or shoved under a rug with these two. They hurt each other somethimes with what they say but no punches get pulled and I like that.

Blake’s reasoning about why he needs to leave Banksia Bay and Mardie now also makes guy sense – he’s afraid he’ll hurt her by getting involved while he’s there – and planning to leave. It’s here that I can sort of see the start of his change of heart. Before, he’s wanted to leave to escape bad memories or to in some way make up for his twin’s death but now, emotion for Mardie is starting to seep through. I like that the time frame of the story allows for these slower shifts in emotion since there’s a lot to be dealt with and sorted out. Over the course of fixing Bessie’s eyes and the fund raising dinner and the month long recovery needed for the dog, Blake gets time to think and time to slowly see Mardie and Banksia Bay not as escapes anymore but as a person and a place that are home to him. There’s also the fact that they still have that connection they had years ago of being able to tease each other and almost know what the other is thinking that they’ve never lost.

Their ultimate realization that they’re both ready, willing and in an emotional place to finally get together for good is sweet and gentle and plays out in a way true to the setting of the story. Thanks for another enjoyable excursion with these salt of the earth people – and their dogs! B

~Jayne

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I saw this book on NetGalley and requested it immediately. I started laughing about about 5 paragraphs in and didn’t stop. Johnny Smith is a guy’s guy. He loves sports. He belches at the table. He wears his baseball cap backward. He hosts a weekly poker game and has been the best [...]]]> Dear Ms. Baratz-Logsted:

I saw this book on NetGalley and requested it immediately. I started laughing about about 5 paragraphs in and didn’t stop. Johnny Smith is a guy’s guy. He loves sports. He belches at the table. He wears his baseball cap backward. He hosts a weekly poker game and has been the best man 8 times. He’s like the Pied Piper of men. Yet this has not translated into many women for him. Instead he is 33 years old, single and with no female opportunities. He was interested in law at one time, but did not pursue a degree because his father fell ill and Johnny came back to take over his father’s painting business.  (Reading Johnny’s thoughts about color on the walls was a hilarity all on its own).  His oldest friend, Billy, has just married Johnny’s next door neighbor Alice, who in another book would be Johnny’s love interest. I admit wondering whether Billy and Alice would be getting a divorce. Alas no.

Johnny is in a rut. He wants to find a nice girl, settle down and get married but being a guy’s guy hasn’t worked out for him.  Everywhere Johnny goes, guys fall in best friend love with him and Johnny goes through a litany of things to show how men think he is awesome whereas women just view him as an asshole.

Exhibit 1: The One with All the Cars: Between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two, I owned a total of twenty-five cars. Not all at once and sometimes not even all by myself; a few of those cars I owned jointly with Billy Keller. See, the thing is, I couldn’t see the point in driving anything new or even remotely new. I excel at understanding what’s going on under the hood and I loved the challenge of finding the clunkiest clunker I could find – more than one of those cars was discovered in The Penny-Saver – and then doing the necessary work to get that baby on the road. Put in a little more work, and not only were those cars drivable but also profitable when I’d turn around and resell them. My proudest acquisition? A VW that Billy and I purchased jointly for twenty-five dollars. It’s amazing what a little duct tape and a few strategically placed rubber bands can do for a car!

The thing those twenty-five cars all had in common was that no matter how much work I put in, no matter how good a mechanic I was and still am, they all each would break down at least once, often at inopportune times, like say on dates.
Guys’ Verdict: “How cool! You get to tool around town in a different car every few months. You avoid the high costs of buying new or good used, thereby having more money to spend on partying or prime tickets to ballgames. You beat the system by never having to pay high insurance or taxes on your vehicles. Coolest. Guy. Ever.”

Women’s Verdict: “Asshole.”

Apparently, women prefer reliable transportation over variety and savings.

I’m not convinced that Johnny is an accurate rendition of any one guy.  He is likely a caricature of some sort but he’s a consistent one.  Johnny recognizes that neither himself nor his BFF Sam are going to get Johnny a girl so he turns to the wives of his buddies and through them, he changes his name (no girl wants to date a guy whose name ends in the long e sound); buys new clothes (He’s surprised at how well the J Crew attire actually looks on him); redecorates his house (the throw pillow scene at the home store made me laugh out loud); and gets a cat (the cat procurement scene is possibly the best in the book).  Morever, Johnny, err, John must suppress all affection for sports.  Johnny also asks advice from the elderly owner of the coffee shop; the guy who fits his rental tux; and just about any one else who will give an opinion on what makes relationships work.

He meets and dates Helen, an assistant district attorney.  What is obvious to readers is that Helen is not the type of girl that probably expects a guy to have throw pillows, enjoy opera, and have a cat but Johnny is too busy transforming the exterior of his person and suppressing his supposedly baser character traits to notice.  What leaks through, however, is what a genuine guy Johnny is.  He really wants to change. He really wants to settle down.  He works had at making sure that Helen is having fun and is happy.  What makes guys love Johnny made me love him too. To wit, he was a self deprecating guy who didn’t take himself too seriously but really enjoyed people.  The truth is that Helen and John are single not because they are misfits but because they haven’t met the right person and, well, both are really bad at dating.

This is Johnny’s transformation, though, and Helen remains somewhat of a mystery.  I thought the story did a good job of showing the mystery of both the man and the woman. It represented how everyone is different and that everyone’s match is different.  John would never have been happy with Alice. Sports was a big part of his life.  Wearing J Crew plaid shirts and removing his ball cap and tossing some throw pillows on the sofa were cosmetic and something fairly easy to adopt but Johnny cannot change what is essentially him. The good thing is that he doesn’t have to.  B

Best regards

Jane

PS. The title and cover  are off-putting.

PPS.  I have to include the pet store scene:

The guy brings down the item and places it on the counter next to the rest of my stuff. “So you’re getting a cat and a dog?” he says.

“No, just the cat.”

“Then what do you want a leash for?”

“The cat. So I can take it for walks.”

“People don’t usually – ”

“Don’t even bother,” Sam cuts him off. “He’s probably got this whole thing pictured in his head: him walking down the street, his cool new sleek black cat on the leash strutting by his side, maybe the two of them popping into the neighborhood bar for an ice cold beer for him and a saucer of milk for his furry little friend.”

Really? Am I that transparent?

The guy breaks out in a wide smile. “Man, that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. I never thought to do that with a cat before. Maybe I should get one.”

“The Home Goods guy’s going to get throw pillows because of you,” Sam says, “now this guy’s going to get a cat so he can take it to the bar because of you. You’re like the Pied Piper of weirdness. Just what is it with you and guys?”

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I’m always happy to find a new novel by you when I’m browsing the Harlequin site, and when the cover (accurately) includes a dog, I’m immediately downloading. This book is the second in your Banksia Bay series, the first of which Jayne reviewed here. While both books are set in the [...]]]> Dear Ms. Lennox,

I’m always happy to find a new novel by you when I’m browsing the Harlequin site, and when the cover (accurately) includes a dog, I’m immediately downloading. This book is the second in your Banksia Bay series, the first of which Jayne reviewed here. While both books are set in the same place and have plots revolving around stray dogs, the stories are independent and stand alone. This is an unusual book in several ways, but I found it a satisfying and enjoyable read.

Nikkita Morrissy is a thirty-year-old professional from Sydney. She’s retreated to the seclusion of Banksia Bay after finding out that her boss and lover of four years had a wife and family half a world away (with any other author I would be out of here now, but it’s you, so I keep going). Nikki rents half of a duplex cottage from the live-in owner, Gabe Carver, a local fisherman who is notoriously unsociable. They manage to avoid each other for three weeks, but then they collide in an attempt to rescue an abandoned dog. This dog is huge, shaggy, malnourished, and desperately missing his owner, who has sailed away and apparently isn’t giving him a second thought.

The local animal shelter has reluctantly decided that he isn’t able to be adopted and so will be put down when he’s captured. But Nikki, who has never had a dog, falls in love with him, matted hair and all, and decides to take him in pending Gabe’s approval. Gabe recently lost his canine best friend of sixteen years and doesn’t want the dog around but has no good reason to refuse Nikki, especially after a couple of the townspeople enthusiastically offer to help her learn about dog care and training. Slowly and reluctantly, Gabe grows closer to both Nikki and the dog, and all three learn to live less in the past and look forward to the future.

One of the things I like most about your stories is that the people feel real and worthy of the reader’s respect. Nikki is an engineer who designs commercial air-conditioning systems and is both successful and highly paid. When she breaks off the relationship with her boss she doesn’t throw up her job but finds a way to do it from Banksia Bay. Over the course of the novel Nikki does change to a different occupation, but her reasons for doing it make sense, and they are motivated by changes within herself. Gabe is genuinely surly and antisocial, and he has good reason to be. And although he is the owner of a fishing business that is crucial to the town’s economy, he is still very much an everyday fisherman. For both of these characters, work is a critical part of their lives, and the story reflects that.

This is definitely a book for animal lovers. There is a lot of time devoted to the rescue and rehabilitation of Horse, the aptly named dog. Parts of the book are heartbreaking for a dog person like me, for example when Horse runs away to find his worthless master. You don’t sugarcoat what it takes to rescue a dog, and it’s clear you know what you’re talking about. I was pretty sure that Horse would also have an HEA, and I’m glad to say he does, or this review would have to come with a trigger warning.

Nikki and Gabe need rescuing as much as Horse does, but as is often the case in your books, they rescue themselves and then commit to a relationship, rather than using insta-love to make their individual problems go away. Nikki is quicker to acknowledge that she’s fallen for Gabe than he is to admit his feelings, but she refuses to become a doormat in the process:

He wanted her–she could see it, she could feel it, she could almost touch it. But he was … afraid?

“You”re not like your father,” she said as evenly as she could. “But I’m not Lisbette, either.”

“I know that.”

“You don’t,” she said. “Otherwise you’d check my pipes for me, right here, right now. Trust me, Gabe.”

“I do.”

“No, you don’t. And whether you can learn … You can’t open yourself a little and protect the rest. That’s what Jonathan did. That’s what I’m used to and I’ve moved on. I think … I think I love you, Gabe, but I’m not going to love a man who spends his life protecting his boundaries.”

She stepped back. Hoping he’d stop her.

He didn’t and she felt sick.

Feeling bad was dumb. She should give him space.

She had to give him space.

Like she’d given space to Jonathan?

“Goodnight, Gabe,” she said as firmly as she could. “Thank you for a wonderful dinner. Horse and I loved it. See you … see you tomorrow. Come on, Horse, bed.”

Gabe eventually comes around, of course. If readers are looking for a good grovel in this book, they won’t find it (and Gabe does a few things that merit a grovel). Instead you give us a dog-in-jeopardy scene and a rescue that fits the tone of the story and lets the community give back to Gabe a bit of what he’s provided to them over the years. And we know he’s finally wised up, because he lets them.

Grade: B

~ Sunita

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I haven’t read too many regencies lately because they were all beginning to smear together in a Duke/spy/fiesty heroine filled blur. I had Regency ennui. When I started this book, I kind of got the feeling that it was part of a series but nonetheless, I took the plunge and dove [...]]]> Dear Ms. Johnson,

I haven’t read too many regencies lately because they were all beginning to smear together in a Duke/spy/fiesty heroine filled blur. I had Regency ennui. When I started this book, I kind of got the feeling that it was part of a series but nonetheless, I took the plunge and dove in. I also decided not to seek out any other reviews of your previous books so that nothing would cloud my judgement or color my view. After finishing it, I can understand the variety of grades as some aspects worked for me while others were tired retreads.

Adelaide Ward never wanted to be the head of her little family – was never trained for it – but after the death of her parents and her younger brother is imprisonment for crushing debt, she has little choice. At twenty-seven, she’s not looking for romance or passion. All she wants is a respectable marriage to a man who can support her and hopefully pony up enough money for her younger sister to have a Season, help pay off her brother’s debts and take care of his son, her little nephew George. She thinks she’s found the man in Lord Robert Maxwell, (incorrectly called Sir Robert on the back blurb) a Baron of modest means but means enough for Adelaide. She’s positive he’ll come up to scratch at the house party they’re both attending – at least she prays he will as time and her modest funds are running out.

But fate has something different in store for Adelaide in the form of Connor Brice who suddenly appears on the scene and gently romances Adelaide before deliberately compromising her. Now Adelaide finds herself with two suitors and two proposals though it’s looking like they both see her more as a bone to be fought over because of a private feud rather than a bride to be won. Connor and Robert have a long and bitter history which Adelaide painfully discovers as each attempts to sway her his way. Connor sweeps all before him and wins Adelaide’s hand in marriage but can he possibly win her trust after all the half truths he’s told or allow himself to focus on love instead of revenge?

I’ve read tons of Regency historicals and revenge plots aren’t my favorite so why did I start and keep reading “An Unexpected Gentleman?” Adelaide, that’s why. I have a thing for the quiet, unobtrusive heroine who isn’t The Most Beautiful, or The Most Outrageous, or The Most Fill in the Blank. I like a practical heroine who doesn’t expect a Grand Romance but who gets one anyway. And if she isn’t physically transformed from the brown wren she starts out as, so much the better. Adelaide might be the practical one, and she does this well, but she doesn’t want to martyr herself either. Yes, she does need to marry either Robert or Connor a) for the money, b) because Society demands it and c) because her younger sister’s chances would be ruined if she didn’t but Adelaide doesn’t rush nor allow either man to force her choice. In the end, the choice is fairly obvious but Adelaide still gets to make it. And she stands up for herself after marriage. She doesn’t cut her nose off to spite her face, she attempts to make the best of it, she goes for what she wants and is the first to lay it on the line. Adelaide is truly the stronger of the two, IMO, and she is the one I’m rooting for to get a HEA.

Now Connor has been dealt a raw deal by Robert and I can understand his driving need for revenge. What salvages the revenge plot for me is that Connor already has feelings for Adelaide even before he incorporates her into his plans. He’s not willing to call his emotions love yet but he doesn’t plan on making her life miserable just to get back at someone else. In fact, he wants to spoil her, wants to take away the burdens she’s been laboring under and wants to take on her family obligations. He’s not an asshole. He also comes to his senses about who and what is more important to him and I can almost see the pieces falling into place in his head and heart as the penny drops. He’s the one who has the furthest character arc distance to travel yet I do feel that he has accomplished this by the end.

Though this is the third (?) book in the series, I didn’t feel lost nor that the previous heroes and heroines were trying to shill their past books. There is a realistic family dynamic that ends the book which some people might not like but that I’d rather see occasionally instead of forced happy bunnies and rainbows reunions. Anything else would have diluted what went before. However I do wish that the final scene with the villain isn’t something I saw coming a mile away based on having read it so many times before. A heroine I enjoy watching get her HEA, a hero who isn’t a Duke – oh, thank God, and nary a spy in sight. Looks like there are a few single title Regencies I can manage to finish after all. B

~Jayne

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You have a knack for writing characters who are all different, no matter how many times you seem to write them into similar situations or how similar they seem at the start. And your conflicts are entirely character-based, so the conflicts are all different. I find your construction of BDSM sometimes requires [...]]]> Dear Ms. Dare.

You have a knack for writing characters who are all different, no matter how many times you seem to write them into similar situations or how similar they seem at the start. And your conflicts are entirely character-based, so the conflicts are all different. I find your construction of BDSM sometimes requires a lot of suspension of disbelief but as you get the emotions right, no matter how far-fetched some of the scenarios, I (usually) don’t really mind.

In my shopping sprees buying your books, however, I had avoided this particular book. I’m a simple girl and tend to like my romance non-paranormal, non-world-building-heavy. I like books to focus on the characters, not on supernatural aspects. But when I was rhapsodizing about your other books, Duck! was recommended so often and by so many people I trust, that I bought it, devoured it, and loved it.

Ori Jones is an avian shifter. The avian shifter community is rigidly heirarchical, with birds of prey as the aristocracy and all other birds fulfilling more or less submissive roles below them. The bird you are seems to guide your personality to a great extent, so crows are assholes who hang out in packs, ravens are clever and strong, seagulls are bad-tempered, peacocks are tattoo artists. And everyone’s gay. Or at least, willing to fuck other men.

Up front, the one thing that bothered me most about this book is that there are NO women. Anywhere. Not one female is mentioned — literally, the words “she” and “her” don’t show up once. I have no idea if there are female shifters, no idea how shifting gets passed down, no idea if women CAN be shifters, or if they can be a part of the shifting community. I found that extremely odd, especially since, if the entire world is built on heirarchies, some species of birds are matriarchal, with reversed gender dimorphism. If the invisibility of women in m/m romance bothers readers, they should avoid this book, because women are more that invisible — they’re almost hyper-present in their complete absence.

Anyway…Ori is “an ugly little duckling,” according to the avian elders who watched his partial shift when he first joined the community. He can’t fully shift until he comes of age at 21. He’s been serving in the “nest” for six months, a sort of communal hotel/dormitory/community center, having come to the community at 20 because his foster parents suggested he see if he’s a shifter (implying a Alternate Universe in which shifting is known and acknowledged by outside humans, but this is never really dealt with or discussed in the book). Ori’s been serving in the communal restaurant/cafeteria, suffering the abuse of the birds higher in rank than him (pretty much anyone). One day, Raynard, a high-ranking hawk shifter, saves Ori (twice) from a pack of crows and eventually takes him from the nest to be a personal servant. And that’s…pretty much the story for much of the book, although the emotional stakes are higher than they sound here. Ori serves Raynard and slowly finds his place in the world as they slowly figure out their relationship. Ori is first servant, then submissive to Raynard, then lover, then beloved. But all is halted when he completes his first shift.

This gets a bit spoilery, perhaps. It happens just over halfway through the story, so if you don’t like to know this stuff, then don’t read anymore.

This story is overtly styled on the “Ugly Duckling” fairytale, so it should be obvious what Ori actually shifts into, rather than a duck. But this changes everything, because swans are:

the purest species of avian that exists. They are good, and noble, and beautiful. They have the most exquisite spirits, the finest temperaments.

Swans are the tiptop of avian heirarchy, treated like royalty, cossetted and served, able to command all other avians, no matter their rank. It would have been nice to have some sort of indication, some foreshadowing, some hint of a swan’s rank prior to Ori’s shift, so we could have known what was coming. Instead, it comes out of the blue, because, really, why would a swan be royalty in the heirarchy except for the need to fit the fairy tale inspiration? So Raynard leaves Ori at the nest to get used to his new life as an unexpectedly high-ranking bird. Except Ori hates it, is actively hurt by losing his master, by not being allowed to serve, as is his nature.

The D/s in this book is all about the characters’ nature, tied up with their avian species. And I love what Dare does with Ori’s nature as a swan, why and how he’s a better swan when allowed to act upon his submissive nature. This is an incredibly emotional book. Not much actually happens, but every action is deeply felt by both characters (and we do get both Ori’s and Raynard’s viewpoints), their motivations deeply explored, their responses deeply examined. And it’s a very sexy book. Raynard and Ori have a lot of hot sex, all of it D/s flavored.

In fact, it’s got one of my favorite lines so far for a D/s sex scene. Ori, of course, is not allowed to come unless with his master’s express permission. Raynard’s just had a wonderful orgasm, leaving Ori wanting:

The older man pushed the last of his clothes off the bed and collapsed back against the mattress. Ori nibbled at his bottom lip as he watched the dominant settle and rest. There was a sensitive spot on his lip, where his master’s teeth had caught him hard enough to draw blood. He ran his tongue over it, relishing the sensations it sent spiraling through him.

“Come here.”

The first word almost had him spilling onto the sheet. Somehow, Ori managed to shuffle forward without tripping over his orgasm en route. [Seriously, I just love that. Sweet and funny.] His master’s hand wrapped around his cock as he reached his side, his grip tight and perfect.

Ori met Raynard’s eyes. There was a touch of amusement mixed in with the sleepiness and the afterglow, but all the anger and confusion was gone, at least for a little while. Moving his own hands behind his back, Ori knelt next to his master and arranged himself as close as he could to his rest position, his knees spread wide apart and his head bowed to watch his master’s hand toy with him.

Raynard had always liked to hold him like that, to cradle him in the palm of his hand and know that he had complete control over his lover. He was treating him in exactly the same way he had when he was a duck. Ori had never been more grateful to feel so painfully frustrated in his life.

“Come.”

The word was said at his master’s discretion, and according to his own timetable. Ori knew that. He also knew he’d never been more thankful to hear it spoken.

He came. Lights flashing, head spinning and his master’s hand never even slowing its movements. The older man’s palm kept pumping around his shaft long after he had stilled.

Ori whimpered, too sensitive to truly enjoy his master’s touch right then, too lost in his submission to even consider protesting. Gradually his master’s hand slowed of its own accord until it finally left him completely.

Despite my misgivings about the utter absence of females and the sometimes sketchiness of the world building, I really enjoyed this book. It was such a different take on the fairy tale, such a different take on a shifter myth, such a different take on D/s, that all in all, it was way more interesting — and way more well-written — than it was confusing or annoying.

Grade: B

Best regards,
-Sarah

P.S. Loved the cover. Very evocative. (Except that’s only one full wing, not two, which looks kinda funny.) Copy editing from this publisher sucks (I lost all my OMGWTFBBQ highlights when my Mantano app started acting strangely on my Android device, but still, the copy editing sucks.)

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When your book was offered to us for review, I was intrigued enough by the blurb to request a copy. When I received the book and started reading it, I wasn’t sure what had initially drawn me to it. Not that it looked bad; it just seemed like the sort of literary [...]]]> Dear Ms. MacDowell,

When your book was offered to us for review, I was intrigued enough by the blurb to request a copy. When I received the book and started reading it, I wasn’t sure what had initially drawn me to it. Not that it looked bad; it just seemed like the sort of literary women’s fiction that I generally avoid. I am not a big reader of women’s fiction as it is, and when I do read it, I tend to favor funny chick-lit over serious women-bonding stories (OMG am I the only one who thought The Friday Night Knitting Club was just so bad?). I wasn’t sure if The Lost Book of Mala R. would feature lots of female bonding, at first, but I could tell within a chapter or so that it was modern literature of the sort that I often have a problem with. That is, the characters, their lives and personalities were rendered in a depressing, even ugly, light.

This is what I think is considered in modern literature to be “realism”, and it’s what drives a lot of readers to romance or mysteries or spy stories. I can live with bad things happening in a story, but I hate when the writing itself seems to be infused with a sort of contempt, or at least a lack of emotional generosity towards the characters. It makes reading a grim experience.

But I’m getting off track here; it wasn’t that The Lost Book of Mala R. was entirely grotesque in its depiction of the characters, but it was unpleasant and grimy enough in the early pages to give me pause. The reality of the rest of the book was both better and worse than I had begun to expect.

The story is told in alternating chapters by four women, one in 1948 and the other three in the present day. Mala Rinehart belongs to a group of gypsies in Texas, but in the first chapter, she is cast out for the period of one year, accused of causing bad things to happen with her spells. Mala is 18 years old and only really close to her broken-down alcoholic father Beni; she has always been an outsider in the clan. She decides to travel to Bakersfield, California to see if she can find a woman named Ruth Simon. Ruth knew Mala as a child and was kind to her, and told her to come to her in Bakersfield if she ever needed a home.

Meanwhile, in modern day Southern California, in a faceless new-ish subdivision whose denizens all seem to have been hit hard by the recession, a notebook that Mala wrote cryptic notes and spells in surfaces at a garage sale. It’s scooped up, on impulse, by Linda, a recent (and reluctant) transplant from New York. Linda is married to Peter, a divorced father of two in the financial business. Peter’s transfer (it’s implied that it was a demotion) has uprooted Linda from a comfortable and hard-gained life, and she’s not happy about it. She’s even less happy when Peter’s 10-year-old daughter, Paige, comes to stay for the summer, and possibly longer. Paige isn’t getting along with her new stepsiblings back in Connecticut, but Linda certainly doesn’t want her there. Paige makes her nervous; she may be only 10, but she’s already given to incisive observations and subtle put-downs that put Linda on the defensive.

Linda ends up giving the notebook to Audrey, who is married to Mark and has a 12-year-old son. Audrey seems to adore her son, but she’s less enamored of Mark; ever since losing his job he’s gotten involved in weird money-making schemes that seem to combine a cultish self-help message with a genuine and bizarre belief that one can live forever (if only one limits their diet to super-healthy food, and precious little of that). Audrey has recently begun an affair with William, a young disabled war vet who she met through her job (she works for an agency that finds low-cost housing for returning veterans). William is pretty obviously a distraction from Audrey’s dissatisfying life, and Mala’s little book provides another one, one that quickly begins to obsess Audrey as she decides to see if she can find Mala (or find out what happened to her).

The third woman in the modern day group is Christine; when Audrey convinces Christine to try a spell from the book, her already troubled life takes a turn for the worse. Christine is pregnant, which is a good thing, but sure she’ll miscarry just as she has so many times before. She’s so sure that she and her husband Tim go forward with a meeting with a potential surrogate, one they’d found before the latest pregnancy. Christine’s pregnancy has persisted further than any of her previous ones had, but she’s unable to really be happy about it. She’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop and disaster to strike. When it does, it’s from an entirely unexpected direction. Tim becomes a suspect in the murder of a local nanny, and then, when Paige disappears, a suspect in her disappearance. Christine isn’t sure she trusts Tim, which naturally enough further strains a relationship already strained by years of fertility problems.

The chapters covering Mala’s story are generally the most absorbing; this may be partly due to my preference for historical settings over modern-day ones (especially modern-day ones rendered so grimly as this one). But Mala is also generally a much more sympathetic, relatable figure than Linda, Christine and Audrey are. She’s half their age and then some, but she’s miles less self- absorbed than any of them. I found myself a lot more interested in what would happen to her than I was in Audrey’s affair, Christine’s pregnancy or Linda’s neuroses.

Of the three, Audrey was probably the most compelling, and again I think I can track it to self-absorption or lack thereof. Sure, Audrey is flawed, but at least she’s interested in the world around her, interested enough to want to find out about Mala (a device that is never entirely realistic; it feels pretty arbitrary). Linda and Christine go along for the ride but both are pretty consistently wrapped up in their own low-grade misery. This is where the literary “realism” comes in – none of these women seem remotely happy. Like, I’m not expecting nothing but sunshine and roses, but the depression and ennui that hangs over these women is just not something I want to read that much about.

The Lost Book of Mala R. would seem to have something in common with female-based friendship stories, except that Linda, Audrey and Christine don’t seem to be that great friends. Linda has lived in the neighborhood for less than a year, and her unhappiness about being there and general lack of warmth make it hard to imagine anyone really warming up to her. It’s unclear how long Audrey and Christine have known each other, but I didn’t get the sense of real affection between them – theirs seemed to be a friendship of proximity, and a fairly superficial one at that.

I would’ve liked to have seen a little bit more depth of characterization in the depiction of Linda, Audrey and Christine. Each has a backstory that is only really hinted at; at times I find it hard to keep their backstories straight (the exception was one trauma in Linda’s past that is alluded to, finally explained and resolved). They also seem to mirror each other in that each of their husbands has suffered financial hardship in the recession – apparently none of the women really expect to be their husbands’ equals in the financial sense, though Christine and Audrey do work.

So, what does this book have going for it, after all of my picking apart? Well, strong prose, for one thing – this is a well-written book. Perhaps because of that, and because of the alternating-story form, I found myself eager to pick up the book each time. That’s a big plus for me – there are books that I’ve probably liked more in a lot of ways but didn’t feel that compelled to read on a daily basis. The characters do become more sympathetic as the story progresses, and thus I found their navel-gazing less depressing than I otherwise would have. The various crises are resolved in some interesting and unexpected ways, though the one I cared about most was the most downbeat.

If I had a rubric for grading The Lost Book of Mala R., the grades would probably be all over the place. I think they’d average out to a low B, skirting the edge of a B-. I think it’s worth reading, but probably only for readers who are intrigued by the subject matter and don’t mind a little grim literary realism in their fiction.

Best regards,

Jennie

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A few months ago, I read your Carina Press novella, The Devil’s Garden, and enjoyed it quite a bit. It reminded me somewhat of a cross between Storm Constantine and Jacqueline Carey, which I thought was a good and interesting mix. I also liked that your characters fell outside the usual gender [...]]]> Dear Ms. Kindred,

A few months ago, I read your Carina Press novella, The Devil’s Garden, and enjoyed it quite a bit. It reminded me somewhat of a cross between Storm Constantine and Jacqueline Carey, which I thought was a good and interesting mix. I also liked that your characters fell outside the usual gender binary and heteronormative boundaries so when I heard you had a full-length novel coming out, I made sure to put it on my list. And even though I was less than enthused when I saw the cover (to say the least), I decided to follow the old adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” This is definitely one of those cases.

The Fallen Queen tells the story of Anazakia Helisonova, the bored daughter of the ruling imperial family of heaven. As should come as no surprise, Anazakia finds the trappings and social airs of royalty boring. She’d rather spend her time in heaven’s equivalent to slums where she gambles away her riches. It’s here that she meets a demon named Belphagor who takes her for all she’s worth.

But the loss of her valuables takes an immediate backseat when disaster strikes. On that very night, her family’s rule over heaven is usurped. Even worse, her family is massacred by someone they trusted. It’s only through a bit of magic, and trickery that Anazakia is alive. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like she’ll stay that way for long, especially once her family’s assassins realize she’s still alive.

If readers are having some deja vu, there’s a reason for that. Anazakia’s story mirrors the story of Russia’s Anastasia Nikolaevna. And this isn’t some veiled reference; they’re explicitly linked in the novel. The Fallen Queen is essentially epic fantasy set in modern day Russia. I found this interesting because you normally don’t see fantasy that does this. There’s epic fantasy set in secondary fantasy worlds. There’s urban fantasy set on modern-day earth. We do occasionally see portal fantasies where people from modern day Earth go into a fantasy land or urban fantasies where the city setting is a secondary, constructed one, but I don’t think I’ve seen this particular mix in a long time. I found it refreshing and I suspect readers with a stronger background in Russian culture would get more out of it than I did. I don’t think a lack of knowledge will hinder comprehension, but I think some would enrich the reading experience.

I liked that Anazakia matures throughout the book. It is in many ways a coming of age story. She starts off as a clueless noble who had no idea of the turmoil surrounding her father’s rule. Yes, it’s true that ignorance is a sign of immense privilege but at the same time I do sympathize because if you’re wrapped in a coccoon, how could you possibly know what’s going on outside your immediate sphere? But as the story unfolds, she learns about the world and how both her own and her family’s actions lead to her current circumstances.

I’m pretty ambivalent about Anazakia’s relationship with the two demons, Belphagor and Vasily. I liked that it didn’t simplify the complicated nuances and that the relationship between Belphagor and Vasily didn’t get shunted aside once Anazakia came into the picture. Given The Devil’s Garden, I expected a varied presentation of sexualities and we got that, which was good. On the other hand, I did find the one character announcing that he was asexual to be somewhat out of the blue. Maybe if there’d been more build-up or actual on-page hints that he thought Anazakia was interested in him, I wouldn’t have that impression. It just seemed like it was thrown in there for the sake of including an asexual character.

On the other hand, despite Anazakia’s maturation as a character, I found her to be reactive rather than proactive for a good portion of the book. I realize that’s to be expected given that she’s on the run from assassins but I did find that her choices and actions to be overshadowed by Belphagor somewhat.

I normally don’t care for stories involving angels but I did like this take on it. The introductory notes on the worldbuilding were overwhelming and I quickly forgot them once I started reading, but the presentation was easy to pick up within context for me and I liked how some of the angels — particularly the ones sent after Anazaki and the guys — were depicted. They captured the idea of angels that were awesome and terrible in their beauty and power.

I do wish I’d gotten a better handle on the antagonist. Even at the end, she strikes me as being evil for the sake of being evil. That’s okay for some stories but since so much else of the novel has nuance, the villain definitely stands out as being two-dimensional by comparison. She’s power-hungry, murderous, and brainwashes people. I’m not asking for her to redeemed or anything, especially after everything she did, but maybe a little quality to make her less 2D.

In the end, I found The Fallen Queen to be an enjoyable read. It’s a fresh take on the hidden heir trying to recover the stolen throne despite all the references and historical events it bases itself on. I’m looking forward to the next installment. I just hope it gets a better cover. B

My regards,
Jia

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The Trophy Wife by Janette Kenny is the [...]]]> I haven’t had much luck with Harlequin Presents subscriptions of late. In December, I enjoyed three of my eight books. The problem is that I’m never sure what books I’m going to enjoy and thus the subscription seems worth it. I guess I’ll reevaluate mid year 2012.

The Trophy Wife by Janette Kenny is the next to last addition in the Notorious Wolfe series (or Bad Blood series as it was originally labeled by Mills & Boon). It featured a model with an eating disorder and computer billionaire. While I appreciated that the story attempted to tackle the issue of anorexia and societal concepts of beauty which prizes thinness over everything, I felt that the story was overloaded with sex and dealt very little with the conflict between the characters. I wasn’t even convinced that they knew each other by the end of the book. They had been married for nearly two years but spent so little time together, wrapped up in their own jobs, that they hadn’t even seen their partner’s homes which may have been okay if the first time that they actually went to the other’s homes wasn’t by the 70% mark of the book. C-

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The Power and The Glory by Kimberly Lang. I bailed on this one after the second chapter. The hero is the campaign manager for his father, a Senator, who sounds like a dickwad and the heroine is a protestor for some environmental lobbying group. I am so sick of politics and politicians that I could not stomach reading more than about 20 pages of this book. Maybe in another era I would find this more palatable but, alas, could not. DNF

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The Man Every Woman Wants by Miranda Lee. The heroine is a lawyer who does contract work for a sports agent. She confesses that she has been weaving a tale about their faux engagement to her dying grandmother and now her dyying grandmother wants to meet him. The hero agrees to do this favor for her and has a bit of fun with it. The heroine’s family is sports mad and the heroine showing up with a former star athlete and current sports agent increases her cachet. B-

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A Christmas Night to Remember by Helen Brooks. My main complaint about this story is that it takes place over two days and the couple has serious issues. The heroine is involved in a terrible car wreck. She’s maimed and scarred and has never felt secure in her husband’s love. He’s so beautiful and so rich and there are always dozens of women casting lures for him, all of which he has steadfastly ignored. The heroine was beautiful prior to the car wreck and she prided herself in being able to fit in with the fast and fashionable but now that her legs are less than perfect, she doesn’t know what will become of her and she’s sure that her husband will leave her. In order to prevent him from leaving her, she’ll leave him. He refuses to leave and in the space of two days (right before Christmas) convinces her anew of his steadfast devotion. I should love this story. It is the kind of Brooks’ story I usually enjoy but I wasn’t convinced that the heroine’s deepseated emotional fear could be assauged in just a couple of days. C

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On the First Night of Christmas by Heidi Rice. Cassie gets splashed by a car careening around the corner while she is looking at holiday windows at Selfridges in London. Rather than be a doormat, she marches over to the vehicle, stopped at a signal and bangs on the window. She tells him off and when he fails to provide an appropriate response to her, she jumps in the car only to realize that the driver is a former high school classmate of hers, one she’s always had a crush on. Just off a broken engagement, Cassie’s confidence is at an all time low and when Jace Ryan comes on to her, it’s like a balm to her wounded ego. They embark on an affair, destined to only last until the New Year when Jace returns to New York. In that time period, Cassie falls hard for Jace but Jace is confused by his feelings. He doesn’t really believe in love and just wants to enjoy the moments as they come. I really enjoyed the ending because I felt like it didn’t force the issue. It does have a traditional HEA (provided by the epilogue). B

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On the First Night of Christmas actually had a similar conflict to Once Touched, Never Forgotten by Natasha Tate, a book that I didn’t like much. Once Touched, Never Forgotten is a secret baby story. The heroine decides that the hero won’t be a good father and more importantly, doesn’t want to be a father so when she finds out she is pregnant she leaves him. Five years later he rediscovers her and her secret baby. She had a terrible childhood and was abandoned by her own father. She projects her fears onto the hero that he too will abandon their child. Of course, she never gives him the opportunity to choose. The hero isn’t sure he knows how to love but he promises that he will be a good father. The heroine is relentless in her accusations that he will be a terrible father based on nothing more than her own fears. She was a bitch but then he later uses sexual blackmail to get her to marry him so I figure that they belonged together. And unlike the Rice book, the hero in this one belabored his inability to love over and over again. I got it. She was abandoned. He had crappy relatives. The melodrama was over the top. D

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I keep meaning to try more self-published books, but I admit I get overwhelmed by sheer amount available. There’s so much out there that I just don’t know where to start. I have no idea how January does it. But when you offered your novel up for review, the premise and excerpt [...]]]> Dear Ms. Quinn,

I keep meaning to try more self-published books, but I admit I get overwhelmed by sheer amount available. There’s so much out there that I just don’t know where to start. I have no idea how January does it. But when you offered your novel up for review, the premise and excerpt caught my interest and I decided to give it a try. For my first foray into the world self-published YA novels, this was a good place to start.

In a future where everyone is telepathic, Kira is a zero — someone who can’t read other people’s minds and someone whom other telepaths can’t read. Obviously, this makes her an outcast. Now not all hope is lost. She could simply be a late-bloomer but the days pass without Kira changing, she’s coming to accept the fact she may spend the rest of her life as a zero.

Zeroes have a hard lot in society. Very few people trust them. After all, how can you trust someone you can’t read? What’s more, Kira has to kiss any chances of her relationship with best friend, Raf, changing into something more goodbye.

Then one day a mishap lands her in the lap of a high school senior named Simon. Literally. As a result, Kira learns the truth. She’s not a zero at all. She’s something else entirely: a mindjacker — someone who’s capable of controlling other people with her mind.

I enjoyed this book a greal deal. The plot was packed full of action and kept moving. It didn’t take the route of girl meets boy, falls in love at first sight, and holds hands with him for the rest of the book. There’s plenty of stories like that out there already, and I’m definitely up for something different.

I liked that Kira wasn’t solely focused on one guy. It’s obvious that she really has feelings for Raf but she feels like circumstances make it impossible to be with him, to even take that chance and see if he’d like to be something more. First, she’s a zero while he’s the reigning high school soccer god. Then, she’s a mindjacker who has to keep that fact a secret. Three generations ago, the first readers were rounded up into camps when the trait started showing up in the general populace. It’s not unreasonable to think they’d do the same thing to mindjackers, who appear to be a mutation of the original reader gene.

Kira’s conflict with Simon is genuine. She has feelings for Raf but feel like she can’t be with him. So here comes Simon, who knows what she is and can teach her how to use her gift. He’s a senior and he seems to like her, which can be flattering for a girl who up until now was a zero, considered invisible by everyone around her.

That said, a part of me wishes there were more interactions with Raf after Kira realized she was a mindjacker. And when I say that, I mean interactions that did not involve Raf being jealous of Kira’s relationship with Simon. They were best friends, after all.

Overall, I think the portrayal of the world was the best part. It’s kind of creepy to imagine a place where you could read anyone’s mind, provided you were within distance. The thought of completely silent classrooms because teachers would plug the lessons directly into students’ minds makes me shudder just a little bit. Plus, there’d be no secrets and gossip would spread even faster, supported with mental visuals from witnesses.

I think this book is a good choice for readers who want a YA novel filled with action and focuses less on introspection and tortured relationship. It is a science fiction novel versus a paranormal, but we still could have gone that way easily. It didn’t though, so readers wanting a change of pace may want to give this a try. B

My regards,
Jia

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | nook | Sony | Kobo

Given that Ms. Hyatt has recently passed away I don’t feel comfortable addressing the review to her. Sarah Wendell recommended this book to me and I’m glad she did. I rarely venture into the Harlequin Desire waters.

This is a bit of a role reversed My Fair Lady story. Adam is the heir [...]]]> Dear Readers:

Given that Ms. Hyatt has recently passed away I don’t feel comfortable addressing the review to her. Sarah Wendell recommended this book to me and I’m glad she did. I rarely venture into the Harlequin Desire waters.

This is a bit of a role reversed My Fair Lady story. Adam is the heir to a small (and fake) principality, San Phillipe. The weight of this responsibility has always sat heavy on his shoulders making him more serious every day. He should be married but his betrothed ran off with his younger brother. Adam bears no grudge for either of them but he does acknowledge that there must be something wrong with him, particularly after a beautiful Fullbright scholar who seemed to share the same geological interests refuses a second date with him. He seeks out his old friend, Dani, and asks for her help.

Danielle St. Claire is the daughter of the palace driver and from time to time, she would relieve her father in his duties until Adam fired her.  She is currently trying to bring the Grand Prix to San Phillipe. She’s unafraid of offending Adam, after all, he’s fired her once, and they have a long history together.  Because of her ability to be frank with him, Adam believes she is the perfect person to help him both find the right woman for him and to catch her, because apparently being a prince is simply not enough.

Dani points out that part of Adam’s problem is that he doesn’t know himself well enough to be able to pick a good partner. He’s so caught up in being the “prince” and can hardly name more than one interest (polo) outside his monarchical duties.

Both characters seem to appreciate the bounds of their position: his as the prince and hers as the driver and though they both wanted to kiss each other, they refrain in the beginning.

A couple things seemed off to me. The colloquialisms and cultural references were distinctly British or American and didn’t fit the concept of a separate European principality. The heroine references Barbies and uses the idiom “you’re winding me up” for example.

I would have liked to have a better understanding of Adam’s attraction to Dani. He was shown nearly immediately to have a physical response to her and there was no explanation for why now he was feeling these stirrings of lust yet before he didn’t.   It wasn’t well defined, particularly in the beginning when we saw Adam date a couple of beautiful women, one incredibly smart and interested in the same things he was interested in. But he evinced no physical attraction to either of them. Was Dani just his type? Why didn’t he consider Dani  wife material?  It didn’t seem like he had class issues.

It was clear as the story went on, the case that Dani and Adam were perfect for each other was well articulated.  They both felt comfortable with each other and enjoyed the other person’s company. They had a long shared history. They both loved San Phillipe and wanted to see it prosper. Dani would always be able to remind Adam of life outside the palace. By grounding him, Adam would be a better leader.

The two act on their attraction when they get stranded at a chalet manned by a burly and oblivious Australian who was filling in for his sister. The temporary innkeeper has no idea who Adam is and this allows Adam and Dannie to have a little holiday ala Roman Holiday (where the Princess played by Audrey Hepburn runs off for a couple of days with a reporter and pretends to be an ordinary girl).

The best part of the book is where Dani plays the aggressor to Adam’s reserved knight.  My only wish is that this was played up more, maybe more extreme. It isn’t that I wanted Adam to be the blushing virgin, recoiling at a light touch, and becoming faint with Dani’s obvious sexuality but I delighted in the role reversal so much that I would have liked to have seen even more contrast.  B

Best regards,

Jane

Lessons in Seduction by Sandra Hyatt | Goodreads | Amazon | BN | nook | Sony | Kobo |Harlequin

This book is also the pick for Smart Bitches’ Sizzlin’ Book Club which means that there will be a book chat for the book on December 22, 2011, and you can also purchase it at All Romance eBooks with a 50% rebate.

I’ve been intrigued by your writing for a while. Your tagline is “Kink, love, and a happy ending. Do you Dare?” which I think is incredibly cute. Honestly, though, I’ve been put off by your publishers (Total-e-Bound and Resplendence Publishing…who?) and by the fact that your series are quite so long (TWELVE [...]]]> Dear Ms. Dare.

I’ve been intrigued by your writing for a while. Your tagline is “Kink, love, and a happy ending. Do you Dare?” which I think is incredibly cute. Honestly, though, I’ve been put off by your publishers (Total-e-Bound and Resplendence Publishing…who?) and by the fact that your series are quite so long (TWELVE stories?!). But I bit the bullet, bought all TWELVE of your G-A-Y series, and I’m going to review ALL of them here.

I chose the G-A-Y series because they’re all m/m, they’re all kink (as all your books are), and they “revolve around various problems gay men might encounter. The stories can all stand alone, and can all be read in any order,” although I’m reading them in order. And the series is complete, so I won’t be missing any. $36 initially seemed steep for 12 stories, but, God, these are SO good, it’s almost worth it.

TL;DR overall impressions for those who can’t be bothered:

• The editing sucks. Doubled words, missed words, and homonyms, worse in some stories than in others. So I was right to be leery of your publisher. And the prices are a bit ridiculous: $2.96 each for 15,000 words each. It just seems…a bit much.
• However! The stories are AMAZING. Oh my ghods, lots of angst; perfect emotional arcs for the short novella size of the stories; amazing distinct, individual characters; hot hot sex.
• The stories are all D/s. You’ve got very little pain play in the stories (except one) and occasional sneers about “sadists” which set up my hackles. But the D/s is fun and very well done and it’s SO fucking refreshing to have stories in which the fact that the characters are D/s isn’t where the angst and trauma is located.
• I’ve read more of your stories than this series (all m/m, though — none of your m/f yet) , and unreservedly recommend every one I’ve read. You’re a very consistent author with strong writing, strong individual characters, great conflict that gets solved satisfyingly every single time, and really great sex.

1. Gaydar
Mathias has incredibly bad luck with men. Either his gaydar is completely messed up, or he’s got really good asshole-dar. He makes an assignation to meet someone in the men’s room of a bar, only to be met there instead — and thoroughly kissed — by the bartender, who has been watching him and lusting after him for months. None of Matt’s experiences have ever been more than fumblings in the dark or an hour in a hotel room, so he’s completely unprepared not only to be with someone who is out, proud, happy, and looking for a longterm relationship, but is also a dominant. He’s very confused and very turned on:

The moment Flynn closed the door, Matt dropped to his knees and reached for the other man’s fly. Flynn easily caught both his wrists in his grip before he even felt denim under his finger tips.

“Don’t do that,” Matt protested.

“Do you remember what your safe word is?” Flynn checked.

Matt nodded. “Yes, but I find it a hell of a lot easier to think when you don’t do that, so if you’re going to start confusing me again, I’d much prefer it if you didn’t hold on to me like that.”

Flynn smiled. “It only distracts you because you like it, don’t you? Being held like this, belonging to another man.”

Matt looked at his wrists, somewhat scared by just how much he loved the feel of Flynn’s hands wrapped tight around his skin. Trying to push that aside, he cleared his throat. “I’d also like to suck you off. I’m good at that. I know what I’m doing with that.”

“I’m sure you do.” He made no move to release Matt’s wrists and let him get on with it.

Matt looked down. “I don’t know what you want from me,” he whispered, surprised by his own honesty. Without knowing what it was Flynn wanted, he had no idea how to keep Flynn wanting anything at all from him and that was even scarier than the lust that shot through his veins every time Flynn’s hands took hold of him.

I liked this story. Told entirely from the perspective of Matt, he’s funny and sweet and sad — partly it’s his unrealized submissive nature that steers him wrong in the first place — and it’s great to see him get his happy ending. Flynn was…pretty much a cipher, but he liked, respected, and wanted Matt and that showed. The only thing that was annoying was Flynn talked about himself in the third person: “It’s not a test. Just show your master how much you like sucking his cock and everything will be fine.” I loved the collaring scene in this story, how it shows that Matt has the courage to go after what he wants. And the sex is hot.

Grade: B+

2. Gay Like You
Tristan’s mother is trying to set him up with someone, anyone. She invites Cory to dinner, someone Tristan knew in high school but who hasn’t been around for years. Cory hasn’t been around because his family threw him out when he was 15. It’s implied, although never stated outright, that he hustled to make do. Certainly he doesn’t know how to interact with Tristan at all without bringing sex into the equation. Tristan shows him that he likes Cory without the sex, but it takes some intense work to get Cory to believe him:

Tristan turned the smaller man around in his grip. “If we have sex like this, you’ll disappear and I’ll never see you again.”

He had no doubt about that. Something about Cody screamed his need to belong to a man who didn’t screw him at the first opportunity. Even if Cody didn’t know it was what he needed, Tristan knew he had to prove that he knew Cody was more than a convenient screw.

“You think I’ll stick around to be turned down again?” Cody snapped. “Thanks, but humiliation isn’t one of my kinks.”

As a result of the waiting, the sex is put off and put off and is intensely emotional when it happens. I LOVED this story. I loved the angst. I loved Cody’s emotional barrier. I loved Tristan’s solution. It’s told from the alternating perspective of both men. And the sex was SO hot. I can’t think of anything wrong with it besides the fact that it was too short. Hits all MY buttons.

Grade: A-

3. Gay Till Graduation
Baxter, who is gay, has lusted after his best friend for years. Spencer, who is bi, is swearing off women, because they might get pregnant and thereby prevent successful college graduation, as it does for a mutual acquaintance, six months before graduation. He’s also intrigued and, we get the impression, pissed that Baxter’s been seen subbing at a kink club. Spencer’s “gay till graduation” vow quickly includes “Baxter’s master till graduation.” Three months later, they’re doing well together, but there are cracks at the edges because Baxter’s convinced Spence is going to dump him as soon as they graduate. Seeing his stress, six weeks later, Spencer’s trying to convince Baxter that everything will be better after graduation, which hurts Baxter terribly, because he thinks Spencer wants to get rid of him.

It’s all one Big Misunderstanding, but for all that, it’s well done and believable. And the fight they have is so well done. Authors can write good sex, good barriers, good resolution, but still fuck up fights. This fight was great and natural and fun. And the make-up sex is, naturally, awesome.

Grade: B+

4. Gay For Pay

This is NOT a Gay For You story, like I thought it would be. Ben Smith is a security consultant and has been charged with finding the missing son of one of his clients. He finds Nate Lockwood for auction as “Gay for Pay” in a ridiculous BDSM club. He buys Nate (hope he can expense that!) and gets him out of the club. He then works out that Nate has promised his father never to say that he’s gay (we find out that it’s because his father is worried that Nate, with his submissive nature, won’t be able to hold his own in business when the gold diggers come out after he comes out — it’s complicated…).

I thought the plot was a little too far-fetched, but Ben’s gentle, dominant guidance of Nate’s first sexual (and first BDSM encounter) was sweet and hot. The story wraps up all the emotional ends very nicely, but there’s one thing at the end that’s odd. Ben gets Nate to sign two documents and then uses the fact that Nate signed without reading them as an object lesson in the fact that Ben’s not a gold digger and doesn’t want any of Nate’s money. But we never find out what the documents are. And that’s just strange.

Grade: B-

5. Gay Divorcee

This one was a little odd. Jones is raving about the possibilities of gay marriage equality at a BDSM club and pisses of Grayson, an older Dom who, it is revealed after he makes a fool of himself ranting about how gay marriage should be banned, married his submissive as soon as he was able to but then found his submissive fucking another man and had to get divorced. So he’s bitter. But not bitter enough to refuse Jones’ offer of spending Christmas together. They hit it off while they each try to figure out what Christmas means to them, but have too much vodka-spiked punch. In their drunkenness, Grayson collars Jones using his submissive’s old collar and when he realizes in the sober light of morning what he’s done, he vows to take things much slower.

What I like about Dare’s work is how she’s got 24 men in these stories, and even though 12 of them are dominant and 12 of them are submissive, they’re all still very distinct from each other, as is the sex and even the D/s interaction between the men. This one is about two men who are really comfortable with themselves and their sexualities finding out what they like about each other and how they can negotiate each other’s baggage and still have a successful relationship, very little angst involved. Gentle, sweet, and hot.

Grade: B

6. Gay Since Today

Tyler Harris and James Ford are at university. Tyler’s had a crush, both romantic and kinky, on James Ford, even though James is straight. Except Tyler’s friend comes to tell him that James is in the gay bar across the street. Tyler rushes there and meets James, who’s just come out (“Gay Since Today”). Tyler takes him back to his place and introduces him not only to gay sex, but also to kinky sex — and he’s right: James is a fabulous dominant. But after their first encounter, it looks like James was pulling off an elaborate April Fool’s joke, rather than really coming out. The Medium-Sized Misunderstanding is dealt with quickly and the boys get back together.

I love reading about an experienced submissive and a virgin-dominant coming into his own. It’s so seldom done because the balance of being “tutored” by the submissive and still exercising dominance is pretty difficult to do. But Dare does a pretty good job. The misunderstanding in the middle was…annoying more than anything else and it seemed that the heroes went through the same realizations in the second half as they did in the first half.

But at the end, there’s a HUGE error about the day on which everything happened. First encounter is March 31, second is April 1, but at the end of the novel, they’re saying it was April 1, and then April 2. Pulled me right out of the story and pissed me off right royally.

Grade: C

7. Gay Pride

Jayden shows up drunk and wearing only a gay pride flag on Crenshaw’s doorstep. Crenshaw is a gay and leather rights activist. Jayden is a reporter who nominally wants to interview him, but really just wants to introduce himself to Crenshaw and hopefully start a relationship. Crenshaw refuses Jayden’s drunk advances that night but allows Jayden to sleep on his couch and in the morning they start to explore their attraction. Crenshaw introduces Jayden to some pretty heavy bondage and Jayden loves it. There’s a hiccup when Jayden announces that he’s a reporter and Crenshaw takes it the wrong way, but Jayden sticks up for himself and gets Crenshaw to admit that he’s wrong in his assumptions.

Over all cute, but not a standout story. I like that Jayden stands up for himself, but the opening scene where he’s naked and drunk and Crenshaw turns him down (rightly so) is a little wince-inducing. But the sex is hot because so unusual

Grade: B

8. Gay Man Seeks Same

Craig McKinley has a huge crush on his coworker Donovan but feels that Donovan’s way out of his league, experience-wise, and anyway, he just wants to find one guy to love and grow old with and he knows One-Night-Stand Donovan doesn’t that. So he goes onto an online dating site and tries to find someone else like him. His first date turns out to be…with Donovan, who is finally ready to admit his interest — his long-term interest. But Craig is convinced that Donovan wants with him what he’s had with all his other lovers. Refusing to consider any alternatives, he figures this is a chance for him to have one night with Donovan before he moves on.

Donovan doesn’t make clear until the very end that he’s interested in anything other than a one night stand, so the reader is taken in as much as Craig is, especially since Craig is the only point-of-view character. Donovan is dominant, of course, so Craig gets to explore bondage with his friend. Confronted with Donovan’s bedroom of kinky delights, Craig feels overwhelmed. Donovan asks him:

“Do you know what my favourite thing is—what I like to play with more than anything in the world?”

Craig shook his head.

“A submissive. Without a man to tie up, the rest is all pointless. It’s the man who goes in the bondage that’s important—everything else is just window dressing.”

I love that answer. :)

Grade: B-

9. Gay Friendly

Ellis is 18 and goes with his cousin to a “gay friendly” hotel, where he finds himself fending off unwanted advances from all the other guests. Thompson helps him out by granting him a collar of protection and then letting Ellis sleep in his room when Ellis’s cousin’s friends get too “friendly” in their room. Over the next week, Ellis and Thompson slowly start exploring each other.

The age difference here was a bit squicky: Thompson is over 30, Ellis is 18. But Dare doesn’t leave this undiscussed. Thompson insists that Ellis ask for everything, that it be obvious to all concerned that Ellis wants everything that happens to him. And it goes deeper than that:

Part of him couldn’t help but believe that Ellis would be far better off with a vanilla boy his own age. Except he’d seen how panicked Ellis became when he was with a man who wasn’t old enough to know how to take his time and appreciate someone who was so new to everything. And he’d seen the way Ellis had soaked up every touch of dominance that had been offered to him.

Bowing his head, Thompson brushed another gentle kiss against the younger man’s lips and forced himself to face the true facts of the matter. He had no intention of telling Ellis he would be better off with another kind of man because the thought of another man laying a hand on him made him want to throttle the guy. He tightened his grip around Ellis’ wrists at the very idea. Ellis whimpered his approval and rose onto his tip toes in the hopes of gaining a deeper kiss.

Because the age difference isn’t ignored, and because Thompson is such a mature character, perfectly aware of how far and how fast he’s falling and how to deal with Ellis, I totally trusted that these two would make it, despite the age difference.

Grade: B

10. Gay Best Friend

And here we have the Gay For You story I was expecting earlier and the opposite type of sub from the previous story. Carlton, who is straight, is best friends with Bryce, who is gay. At the pub one day, Carlton is sort of goaded into kissing Bryce (the other guys they’re with made a bet behind their backs, but Carlton noticed, kissed Bryce, and took the ante for the bet and split it with Bryce). This precipitates Carlton getting trashed, finding out that Bryce is not only gay, but kinky, not only kinky, but a very pushy, brash submissive, and then trying out his Gay-For-You feelings out on Bryce when utterly smashed. Bryce pours him into a cab, but the next time they get together, they explore things a bit more.

This is another story with an inexperienced dominant and an experience submissive. But this submissive is very dominant in his everyday interactions with everyone:

As fantastic a friend as he was, Carlton was more than a little aware that Bryce had the potential to be a complete bastard when you caught him in the wrong mood, and he sure as hell wasn’t the kind of guy to make things easy for a friend who suddenly found himself out of his depth.

No, Carlton couldn’t help but smile a fraction at the idea of him babying someone through anything. Bryce was very much the ‘learn how to swim fast or get back into the shallow end where you belong’ kind of guy.

I love how we get into Donovan’s head, even though the whole story’s from Carlton’s perspective:

The look of easy relaxation Carlton had seen in his friend’s expression earlier in the night deepened with every moment that passed, as if Bryce had focused in on that one task and, if only for a little while, that let him forget about the rest of the world.

I also love that this story has the dominant choosing to bottom for sex, to make a point to his submissive about how “Gay For You” he really is:

When Carlton opened his eyes, Bryce was staring up at him. It was only then that he really realised just how closely every single move he made, his every reaction was being studied. And Bryce would remember it all. He had no doubt about that. Bryce would always know, and he’d always know that his gay best friend knew just how much pleasure shone in his eyes when he rode him for the first time.

Loved this story all around.

Grade: A

11. Gayday! Gayday!

Okay, first thing: Rip and Slade? Really? Scraping the bottom of the name barrel there. >.<

Right. So, Rip is a submissive who has a habit of getting himself in over his head at clubs. At which point he calls Slade, his dominant but straight — or so Rip thinks — friend to come save him. And Slade’s happy to oblige, giving them a great scene each time he does, with no strings attached. Except both Rip and Slade increasingly want strings. Finally, Rip gets himself into a really bad situation…and gets himself out of it again, meaning, he thinks, that his need for Slade’s “white knight” routine is exposed for the ruse it has been for a long time. Then things get really interesting.

I love the twist at the end where Rip thinks he’s messed everything up by NOT needing saving. But I found it incredibly frustrating that he remains utterly blind to the fact that Slade is very very bisexual. Even at the end, Rip thinks:

he had never allowed himself to fall so far into his fantasies that he’d forgotten he was playing with a straight man who was occasionally willing to indulge in a little guy-on-guy kink when given the right motivation.

This is quite so frustrating, because it’s made very clear in their very first scene that Slade comfortably identifies as bi.

That aside, this is a great story. It’s one of the very few that has some pain play in the D/s when Slade punishes Rip.

Grade: B+

12. Gayish

After reading eleven really strong, interesting, sexy stories, it was very disappointing to read the last one of the group. It seemed very scattered and confused and the characters seemed a little off.

Ben Langford, out and proud, is at a gay pride rally in the rain. He sees across the road, standing in the rain, the deli counter guy he’s been lusting after for months. The guy’s either waiting for a bus, or trying to get up the courage to go to the rally. Langford takes him home, dries him off, takes him back out to the rally to introduce him to people, then takes him back home and fucks him. And I understood why he did that, but it dragged the story out and didn’t seem to add much to character development. And Tayton was just a wet blanket. I wanted him to grow a spine and he never really did.

Grade: C-

Overall, except for the last story, I loved these stories. They all did a great job at showing the very beginnings of twelve different relationships between twelve different couples. Each of the characters were distinct, as were all the relationships, all the D/s pairings. This series utterly hooked me on your writing. Which is great, because you seem to do a lot of it.

Amazon | BN | All Romance

I know that when I start a Carla Kelly book, I’ll get a certain number of things. An honorable hero, an unflappable heroine, some idiot secondary characters who may bluster and threaten to cause the hero and heroine some problems but who usually are mainly all hot air and dismissed as [...]]]> Dear Mrs. Kelly,

I know that when I start a Carla Kelly book, I’ll get a certain number of things. An honorable hero, an unflappable heroine, some idiot secondary characters who may bluster and threaten to cause the hero and heroine some problems but who usually are mainly all hot air and dismissed as the pompous stuffed shirts they are and a gentle love story of two people finding each other – often where they least expected. As this is a linked anthology, here I get this in triplicate which makes sense since all three stories involve the military and we know how much the military, the world over and throughout time, loves its paperwork.

1812 Alta California and stranded Navy surgeon Thomas Wilkie wishes he were home in Scotland rather than in the Spanish held San Diego. Here by the fortunes of war and left here as a bargaining chip when his remaining shipmates finally head north to where they hope to eventually find passage home to England via the Americans in Oregon, he tends the people of the Presideo and surrounding area since he’s the only medical man between there and Tucson. When lovely Laura Maria Ortize de la Garza finds herself ostracized due to her father’s embezzling, Thomas also finds himself in the unlikely position of savior and new husband. Can this unlikely pair discover lasting love from such a beginning?

In 1855 Crimea, widowed Lillian Wilkie Nicholls trusted what she was told – namely that this war would be over in 6 weeks. Two years later she’s still Doing Good in a hospital in Anatolia as she and wards full of wounded soldiers await their return to England. With her is American military observer Major Trey Wharton who has somehow ended up as the administrator of the hospital and who, along with Lily, doesn’t suffer fools or nitwit English surgeons gladly. Their year long friendship will be ending soon – as quickly as the wheels can turn in a military environment. Or will they find the courage to speak up before it’s too late?

1877 Fort Laramie finds Army surgeon Wilkie Nicholls Wharton far from his parents in Philadelphia but finally headed home for Christmas and his long delayed marriage to a fellow Main Line Philadelphian. His hopes for a quiet journey are dashed when he’s asked to keep an eye on lovely Frannie Coughlin who’s also headed East and then has to take responsibility for transporting Nora Powell home from her 13 years of Indian captivity to whatever relatives she still has left in Iowa. Then, just as he thinks he might still get some of his medical journals read, yet another female joins them on the train and precipitates Wilkie and Frannie’s discovery of what they really want this Christmas season.

Paying homage to Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegone denizens, in your novels the women are strong, the men are honorable, and the children are usually cute without being annoying. The “villains” are generally just thickheads and idiots who might have a higher rank but who are usually dismissible from the main action by the hero and heroine who are as incapable of intentionally hurting anyone as they are unable to turn their backs on anyone in need. It’s more fantasy than reality but it’s a lovely fantasy to sit down to and drift into for a while as I forget just how awful the latest blaring news headline is. These are people as I would love us all to be.

I enjoyed the way the stories are varied in time and location with a mix of ages, nationalities and – let’s hear it for – experience. Lily Nicholls, who misses the comforts of marriage, and Frannie Coughlin, who earlier anticipated a marriage that never happened, are frank about their wants which delights their heroes no end. One thing I wish had been expanded was the substory of the young woman being returned to white society despite her wishes. There could be a whole book in this. The delightfully devious Sultan was a fun character and Father Hilario an example of pure compassion.

When I finish reading one of your books, I might feel as if I’d had one too many pieces of sugar sweet sheet cake but I also feel happy. These are people I’d like to meet in real life – real salt of the earth sorts.The time just flew while I read about them. And thank you so much for picking varied backgrounds for the characters and locations in which to set your stories here. I still enjoy reading Regency set anthologies but something different every now and then is a real treat. B for each novella.

~Jayne

| A | BN  Sony | Kobo |HQN ]]> http://dearauthor.com/ebooks/review-coming-home-for-christmas-anthology-by-carla-kelly/feed 7 http://dearauthor.com/book-reviews/overall-b-reviews/b-reviews/review-fates-edge-by-ilona-andrews http://dearauthor.com/book-reviews/overall-b-reviews/b-reviews/review-fates-edge-by-ilona-andrews#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 20:00:13 +0000 Josephine http://dearauthor.com/?p=37094 Dear Ms Andrews,

I must confess, I am a fan. You are one of those authors I count on to consistently deliver good stories. The presence of your name on the cover of a book will motivate me to buy what I would otherwise pass. I’m hooked on your Kate Daniels series of Urban Fantasy [...]]]> Dear Ms Andrews,

I must confess, I am a fan. You are one of those authors I count on to consistently deliver good stories. The presence of your name on the cover of a book will motivate me to buy what I would otherwise pass. I’m hooked on your Kate Daniels series of Urban Fantasy novels. I enjoy the way you twist tired genre tropes in your Kinsmen series of Sci-fi Romance ebook novellas. I adore the excitement, intricacy and interconnectedness of your Edge series of Fantasy Romance novels, the third and most recent installment of which, Fate’s Edge, is reviewed here today.

Unfortunately, intricacy and interconnectedness have their price in that they tend to make later books in a series less accessible to new readers. Though I enjoyed Fate’s Edge and look forward to the next book in the series, I was left wondering whether the plot threads and characters carried in from earlier books would intrigue new readers or alienate them.

Like other heroines in this series, Audrey Callahan lives in the Edge, a hardscrabble, half-magical borderland between the Broken—the modern North America we know and love—and the Weird, an alternate North America which, with all of its monsters, mayhem and magical devices, more than lives up to its name. Audrey comes from a family of grifters, but where most Edge families stick up for each other, Audrey’s family used and neglected her in favor of her drug addicted brother. She reluctantly agrees to one last heist for an unknown buyer in order to sever her ties with her family.

Kaldar Mar is exactly the sort of handsome, smooth-talking con man Audrey knows she should avoid, but he’s also the secret agent tasked with recovering the item she stole. And he’s not the only one after her. With evil agents of the Hand close on their trail, Kaldar and Audrey must combine their talents for conning and thievery in order to find and regain the dangerous device. Along for the adventure are stowaway brothers Jack and George whom fans of the series will recognize as Rose’s brothers from the first Edge book, On the Edge, and Kaldar’s ward, Gaston, whom we met in book two, Bayou Moon.

I enjoyed the way this book started with the events that bring this group of adventurers together. It filled me in on what life was like for Jack, George, and, to a lesser extent, Gaston, since I last saw them in earlier books. It also served to establish Kaldar’s and Audrey’s excellence in the arts of deception. Though it takes a while for them to meet, when they do, the scene is a very fun contest of cons with each trying to manipulate the other.

In addition to scenes shown from the hero’s and heroine’s points of view, Fate’s Edge gives the reader several scenes from Jack’s point of view and some scenes written from the villains’ points of view, too. I enjoyed your POV choices, and especially appreciated that though the villains were cruel and scary and evil, their motives made sense. Additionally, the increasingly complex plans Kaldar and Audrey devise in their quest for the MacGuffin require independent action from all of the main characters. We would have missed a lot of excitement without Jack’s point of view. And, we would have missed Jack. To be honest, I like Jack and George so much that I would have read and enjoyed this book even if it were only about them.

And therein lies the difficulty. While I adored the relationship between George and Jack—the dramatic posturing of adolescents, the alternating feelings of responsibility and resentment each boy feels for his brother—Audrey and Kaldar’s romance just was not as vivid a relationship. I think part of the problem is that much of Kaldar’s character development comes in the form of other characters telling Audrey—and by extension, the reader—about Kaldar rather than Kaldar showing who he really is:

Gaston bit his lower lip. “He’s not right… He still pretends that everything is cool. You can’t tell by looking at him because he acts normal, but the rudder on his boat stuck…He wants revenge on the Hand, and he doesn’t care what happens to him or how he gets it.”

Given that Kaldar is a con man, it makes sense that he would not readily reveal his deepest secrets, and I would have thought it odd if he had. But because he spends so much of his time with Audrey trying to be the type of man she would sleep with, I don’t feel like his character ever really solidified for me, even during the endearing scenes where he realized he loved her.

The difficult thing about confidence men as heroes is that the con is often bigger than the character. I found Audrey a fascinating heroine at the start of the book, but she faded in comparison to the scams she and Kaldar ran in order to retrieve the MacGuffin. By the end, I was happy when Audrey and Kaldar got their HEA, but content to let them ride off into the sunset. I am sure they will be useful in future installments of the Edge series, but Audrey and Kaldar didn’t hook me the way William and Cerise did in Bayou Moon or, to a lesser extent, Rose and Declan did in On the Edge.

Overall, I enjoyed Fate’s Edge and would recommend it to any fan of the series. I would not recommend it to new readers for fear that the tangle of preexisting characters, plots, and histories might prove daunting rather than intriguing, and I would really hate for any reader to miss out on a series as good as this one.

B

~Josephine

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Steampunk is that subgenre I want to love, that I think has so much potential. Unfortunately, we have a rocky relationship. I’ve attempted to read too many novels in which the steampunk trappings are superficial — put a pair of goggles on someone, mention an airship, and have someone drink some tea seem [...]]]> Dear Authors,

Steampunk is that subgenre I want to love, that I think has so much potential. Unfortunately, we have a rocky relationship. I’ve attempted to read too many novels in which the steampunk trappings are superficial — put a pair of goggles on someone, mention an airship, and have someone drink some tea seem to be all that’s required. It can be disappointing.

This anthology, however, spans the gamut of what steampunk can offer. From the South Pacific or ancient Rome, it takes us to places beyond the traditional Victorian England setting. Some stories take place in the modern day; others in the far-flung future on an outpost-like planet. In total, Steampunk! collects twelve stories and two short comics. For the purposes of this review, I’ll only be covering the included short stories simply because my review copy mangled the comic formatting so badly I could barely follow what was going on.

“Some Fortunate Future Day” by Cassandra Clare
The opening story is surprisingly creepy. The protagonist is a teenage girl who’s been living alone for some time. Her father went off to war, and she has no idea if he’s ever coming back. The only thing keeping her company in that big, empty house are the automatons her father made for her. That is, they did until the day an injured soldier comes crawling out of the forest and into her garden.

I thought this story did a great job showing how the innocent can transform into something menacing. It starts off on a normal, if melancholy, note but as it progresses, the tone becomes increasingly ominous. Things that seem harmless transform into the creepy and macabre. In the end, the protagonist — for all her faults — is a pitiful person, left alone and caught in a self-destructive cycle. B

“The Last Ride of the Glory Girls” by Libba Bray
My favorite story of the entire anthology, “Last Ride” takes place on an outpost planet, proving that even a sci-fi western can embody the heart and soul of steampunk. This tale is about a young woman who left her religious fundamentalist home and sought her fortune as a gifted tinkerer of technology. First, as a watchmaker’s apprentice, then as part of a investigative task force, she later goes undercover with a gang of female outlaws who rob trains courtesy of a gun that can stop time.

This short story reminded me of why I love Libba Bray’s writing and makes me want to give Beauty Queens another try. The strong voice of the narrator combined with the female outlaws and a heroine with a strong technological bent, it features so many of my favorite elements. I also loved how it interwove the present-day plot with the past events that drove the heroine to her present circumstances. A-

“Clockwore Fagin” by Cory Doctorow
I’ve heard a lot about Doctorow’s work so I read this story with interest. It tackles the disabled orphan trope of many a Victorian story, portraying children who’ve sustained injuries (lost limbs, lost extremities) from working on various forms of steampunk technology and are sent to an orphanage under the care and guidance of an abusive monster. The main story gets going, however, when a new orphan arrives and faces their caretaker head on.

I won’t say that this isn’t an interesting story nor will I say this isn’t a well-written story. It’s both of these things. But for all that, it left me feeling ambivalent. B-

“Hand in Glove” by Ysabeau S. Wilce
What’s a steampunk anthology without a mad scientist story? This story features a female detective who struggles not against sexism but against skepticism over her style of investigation — one that utilizes forensics (e.g. fingerprints and evidence) over beating confessions out of suspects (who, past a certain point, would admit to anything to make the pain stop). Her rival, the golden boy of the precinct, has just caught the perpetrator of a series of brutal stranglings. Our heroine, however, thinks he’s gotten the wrong guy because none of the evidence supports it but no one will believe her. Despite this, she won’t stop her own investigation because she refuses to let an innocent man hang.

This story was entertaining and over the top. It treaded just barely on this side of ludicrous and made it work all the more because of it. Overall, I thought it was a good story but the ending left me unsatisfied because it lacked that comeuppance of the golden boy rival for mocking the heroine. I admit I prefer that in my stories, realistic or not. B

“The Ghost of Cwnlech Manor” by Delia Sherman
This is the gothic offering of the anthology, complete with absent-minded heir of an established family, a young local woman who becomes the housekeeper, and a ghost who knows the location of the family treasure. Again, another well-written story but not particularly exciting. While I liked that the story didn’t walk the well-trodden “housekeeper falls for heir” storyline, I wish there’d been a little more life to the narrative. As far as I’m concerned, the best part of the story was the ghost. Poor thing. I’d be annoyed too if the person I’d been trying to reveal the location of the family treasure to completely explained away my existence and wouldn’t acknowledge it because he was a man of science. C

“Gethsemane” by Elizabeth Knox
Chronicling what happens to the denizens of a South Pacific town before a volcanic eruption, this is one of those stories where I knew it was referencing something while reading it. Unfortunately, not knowing the what it was actually referencing, I suspect a lot of the context went right over my head. I never connected with any of the characters nor cared what happened to any of them. Perhaps if I’d been familiar with the reference/event beforehand, my initial experience would have been different. As it is, my reaction can only be described as “meh.”C-

“The Summer People” by Kelly Link
In addition to being what I consider a characteristic Kelly Link story, this is also one that pushes what steampunk can be. More magic realism than outright genre SFF, it’s about a girl whose female ancestors have taken care of the local faeries for generations. The steampunk comes in with the faerie inventions that they bestow on their caretakers and people they like.

I liked “The Summer People” more for the ideas and concepts it introduces than for the feelings it left me. In the end, it’s about escaping the burdens parents leave their children and while that’s something I can understand, I also don’t like that often times in stories it means finding someone else to take your place. Sure, I’d like to think the replacement would be more willing and happy to do so, but there’s a part of me that dislikes a character for doing so. C+

“Peace in Our Time” by Garth Nix
I have a feeling this story is one that only Garth Nix fans would enjoy. While I thought the technology portrayed in the story was great, an example of how versatile steampunk can be, I thought it was depressing and there were parts of it I could not understand. I think it might have been better as a longer story. D

“Nowhere Fast” by Christopher Rowe
In a future where technology has broken down and the U.S. is divided into sectors, a group of teenagers meet a guy with a car. And I use the term “car” very loosely. But given the state of technology, this is a big deal that causes a ruckus among the local people and law enforcement. When I finished this story, I felt like it was an extended set-up that finished just as the main narrative was about to start. Disappointing. C-

“Steam Girl” by Dylan Horrocks
Similar to Kelly Link’s story in which it’s set in the modern day, “Steam Punk” tells the story of a high school outcast who befriends the new girl, another outcast who tells the awesome adventures about a young woman named “Steam Girl.” What I liked best about this story is that it can be read two ways. It can be about a girl telling stories about an alter-ego that lives an amazing, adventurous life to make her real life in high school bearable. At the same time, though, I think the story plants enough hints to make you doubt that and wonder if she is in fact telling the truth and is really from an alternate universe where she used to be Steam Girl. The second option is more outlandish, I’ll give you that, but wouldn’t it be nice to imagine that was true? B

“Everything Amiable and Obliging” by Holly Black
The fantasy of manners offering of the anthology, Black’s story tells the tale of a young woman who’s been recently orphaned and taken in by her aunt. But unlike other stories where the relatives hate her or treat her badly, this aunt actually wants her to marry her son. Now our heroine would like nothing more than this as well. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem aware of her existence which is a change from their childhood. Things get further complicated when her aunt’s other child, a daughter, falls in love with one of the house robots. Awkward.

This is my second favorite story of the anthology and one I wish could have been longer. Not because it needed to be longer but because I wanted to see more of Amelia and Valerian. That said, I felt horribly sorry for the robot who’s become the object of the sister’s affections. I suspect that fate is not a good one for him. Robot or not, it can’t be a good thing to be wanted solely because you’re incapable of saying no! B+

“The Oracle Engine” by M.T. Anderson
I suspect the final story of the anthology is one that is simply not for me. A reader-story mismatch, if you will. It puts a steampunk spin on ancient Rome, which I like, and portrays a revenge tale, which I normally like even more, but I admit I found it boring. It’s written in a semi-historical voice (it’s meant to be a translation), but it just didn’t work for me. C

While I’m not sure this anthology is worth the price of hardcover, I liked that it contained a variety of stories set in different places and time periods as well as spanned many different genres. When I think of an anthology, this is the sort of variety I expect. I also like that there was good representation of women and minorities. And once again, I do think “Last Ride of the Glory Girls” is not a story to be missed and the anthology is worth checking out for that story alone.

My regards,
Jia

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In the glutted world of YA dystopians, it can be hard to stand out. After all, how many variations of a grim future in which a teenager’s entire life is mapped out by a test can there be? But despite that, your novel reminded me that even the most tired plot can [...]]]> Dear Ms. McLaughlin,

In the glutted world of YA dystopians, it can be hard to stand out. After all, how many variations of a grim future in which a teenager’s entire life is mapped out by a test can there be? But despite that, your novel reminded me that even the most tired plot can find new life through fresh execution.

In Scored, towns all over the U.S. have agreed to take part of a program in which their children are “scored.” Based on an array of criteria, children are assigned numbers, which can rise or fall depending on their behaviors. A high score opens a new world of opportunity, but a low score means your options are limited at best.

Imani LeMonde doesn’t come from a rich family. It’s why her parents agreed for her and her younger brother to be scored. A high score means chances for them that normally would be impossible due to a lack of funds. One month from graduation, Imani is sitting pretty with a high score of 92.

Despite Imani’s high score, there are some things she’s not willing to give up — like her best friend, Cady, whose score is 71. If Imani and Cady followed the unspoken rules of teenage social groups, they wouldn’t even associate with one another. But they made a pact with each other when they were younger, and Imani intends to see it through the end. After all, what’s the worst that could happen? (Famous last words.)

As I mentioned elsewhere, if I’d known the protagonist of this book was biracial, I would have picked it up far sooner. I liked that Imani being biracial wasn’t made the issue of the book. It came up but in ways that were natural and not preachy. In fact, the book does a good job of implying a multicultural cast without hitting us over the head with it. It read natural, and I’m a big fan of that.

I also liked that Imani came from a lower class family. One of the things the book makes clear is that the “score” is meant to be the great equalizer. Of course, there’s a price to pay for that but it allows kids who don’t have the resources to get educations that they want and need. I loved that Imani wanted to become a marine biologist and that her desire to do so stemmed from her family of clam diggers and watching their livelihood dry up as the area gets overharvested and their clients leave for more posh towns.

What’s interesting is that not everyone is “scored.” True, the novel implies that it’s moving in that direction but we’re not there yet. This is that rare dystopian where we catch the beginning of the totalitarian regime. Because there’s a mix of scored and unscored at Imani’s school, there are interesting dynamics that play out.

One dynamic I liked was the relationship between Imani and Diego. Just as Imani is scored, Diego isn’t and he doesn’t need to be because his family is one of the richest in town. He doesn’t need to worry about a score to get him into college on a scholarship. His family’s money can take care of that all on its own. This difference comes to a head when they try to collaborate on an essay about the scoring system that could land the student who writes the winning essay a scholarship. Diego is entering for fun but Imani actually needs it, and this major difference plays out in a compelling way.

I also liked that this wasn’t a book where the girl meets the boy and they hold hands for the rest of the story. Imani has serious issues with Diego and it takes a lot of working out before they can reach an accord. That said, I really liked seeing Diego’s fascination with Imani. While the book is told from Imani’s POV (but in third person, not first), we get enough hints that he really likes her because she’s smart and challenging. Yes, he does make the mistakes you’d expect from a privileged, rich boy but there’s enough hints to infer he’ll work through that.

On the other hand, I thought the ending was rushed and abrupt. I can’t decide if there’s going to be a sequel or if that was intended. There are enough hints that there could be a sequel and given the series-happy nature of the YA dystopian subgenre, I wouldn’t be surprised, but it could also end here. As I mentioned earlier, this is the beginning of the dystopian society. I’m not completely sure I’d want to read a book about the rise of the oppressive regime.

While I went into this book expecting more of the same, I was pleasantly surprised to discover it wasn’t. Even though I thought the conclusion was rushed, I liked this portrayal of a society where scores could mean opportunity or disaster. The protagonist and subtle touches of race and class were a bonus. B

My regards,
Jia

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I’ve been wanting to read more YA; the genre seems to have changed so much since I was a, well, young adult. There are so many fresh and exciting YA books being written these days, and that’s exciting to me, especially when I’ve just finished my umpteenth uninspired English historical. Even though [...]]]> Dear Ms. Harrington,

I’ve been wanting to read more YA; the genre seems to have changed so much since I was a, well, young adult. There are so many fresh and exciting YA books being written these days, and that’s exciting to me, especially when I’ve just finished my umpteenth uninspired English historical. Even though some of my favorite YA novels of the past several years have been set in alternate realities (The Hunger Games and sequels, the Megan Whalen Turner series, Dia Reeves’ A Slice of Cherry), I tend to pass over such books when looking for something to read. I usually only read paranormal/fantasy books on the recommendation of other readers; maybe it’s just that such books absolutely glut the romance market and have for seemingly ages, but the minute I read the phrase “shape-shifter” or something like that in a book blurb, my eyes start to roll (yes, I know someday they’ll get stuck that way) and I begin sighing a put-upon sigh. Can’t I just read a normal book, about normal people?

That sentiment is what brought me to your YA novel, Saving June - the blurb contained no fairies, vampires or magical goats. Rather, Saving June was about a teenager trying to cope with her older sister’s suicide. This sounded like a relatable, if grim subject. Harper Scott is sixteen years old; her sister June was just a year older, and about to graduate from high school, when Harper found her in the family garage, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. In the aftermath, Harper is numb, her mother is coming apart at the seams, and her father (estranged from her mother and in the process of divorcing her) has withdrawn from the scene entirely.

It’s at the gathering after June’s funeral that Harper conceives of the idea of taking her sister’s ashes to California. California was a fixation for June, a destination as different from her small, dreary Michigan town as possible. June wanted to go to college in California, and Harper decides that California is where what is left of June belongs. She comes up with a plan with her best friend Laney to liberate the ashes and go on a road trip. The only problem (well, the only one they can think of; I thought of several, myself) is the lack of a reliable vehicle – Harper doesn’t drive, and Laney’s car is not up to a cross-country trip. That’s where Jake Tolan comes in.

Harper doesn’t even know Jake when she encounters him at June’s wake; later she vaguely remembers him from high school, but she was unaware that he knew June at all, never mind that he was close enough to her to be making her CD compilations and giving her CDs of some of his favorite artists – Tom Waits, The Kinks (artists that our young protagonist seems entirely unfamiliar with; man, I am old). It turns out that Jake made the CD compilation that was playing on the car’s CD player when June died.

Harper is pulled out of her ennui by her road-trip plan and by her curiosity about Jake and what seems to be his mysterious connection to June. Jake denies a romantic relationship with June (who had broken up with her cheating boyfriend shortly before her suicide), though he’s not exactly straightforward about the nature of their association.

Harper, Jake and Laney eventually head out on their road trip with June’s ashes in tow. I had some issues with this; even though neither of Harper’s parents was especially sympathetic, stealing all that they had left of their dead daughter seemed to me to be a heartless act. Strangely, this is not addressed until the end of the book, when Harper indicates that she hadn’t really thought of what taking the ashes would do to her parents. Which was oddly realistic in context; Harper’s a teenager after all, with a teenager’s occasional great lapses in awareness and tendency towards self-obsession.

This was actually a larger theme with Harper, one I had to work out my feelings about. She was a bit of a difficult character for me to warm up to, and I struggled with whether I thought her depiction was realistic. It was the old problem of the first person narrator; I can be a bit thick as a reader and can find it difficult to separate the first person voice of the narrator from the author’s intent. Harper’s worldview is very binary: June was perfect and she, Harper, is the screw-up. Laney is beautiful and outgoing, while Harper is plain and awkward. The black-and-white contrasts felt trite to me, but I had to remind myself that this was the world the way Harper viewed it, not necessarily objective reality as created by the author. I’ve known enough teenage girls to know that they aren’t always big on nuance, particularly if lack of same gives them an opportunity to sulk. Still, Harper’s relentless focus on how awkward and socially inept she is and how perfect everyone else appears to her to be became aggravating.

The road trip aspect of the story, I think, lightened the heaviness of the suicide theme for me. The trio have interesting little encounters along the way, some of which deepen their relationships or give a bit more insight into who June was as a person. In a sense, even though her suicide is the reason behind the trip, the trip itself allows Harper, and thus the reader, to sort of put off dealing with it.

When they finally arrive at their destination, in San Francisco, Harper is forced to confront both letting go of June and the secret Jake’s been keeping from her. The secret felt a bit anti-climatic to me; its purpose seemed to be to cause conflict between Harper and Jake, more than anything else.

I felt ambivalent about the resolution of the mystery of June’s suicide – there is no real resolution, and while the reader in me wanted something dramatic and emotionally cathartic, ultimately, again, the truth was more realistic. There’s no resolution because there was no single mystery: there was just a girl who kept a lot of things inside, and was in more pain than anyone around her realized. That’s not the reality of all teen suicides, but I’d guess it’s not a rarity in such cases, either.

There were events in Saving June that objectively felt trite: most notably, the resolution to a late-in-the-book crisis for Laney. In general, I guess the whole road trip dynamic was kind of trite, though it’s still very effective. Music plays a big part in Saving June; music is hugely important to Jake and it’s largely how he communicates with the people he cares about. During the road trip, the three bond and argue over their musical tastes in turn. As a lover of music (including some of the music mentioned in the book; Jake has eclectic tastes), I appreciated this aspect of the story a lot.

I don’t know that the hopeful ending is quite the right note; the suicide of one’s only sibling seems so devastating to me that it’s hard to imagine any sort of closure of the sort depicted in the book could be achieved in a few scant months. This is a case where an epilogue several years out might’ve worked better for me. Still, Saving June is a solid effort, and a welcome respite from fairies and werewolves. My grade: a high B.

Best regards,

Jennie

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While I didn’t think the first two novels of your Inheritance trilogy were perfect, I liked that they were different and introduced some much-needed fresh air into the fantasy genre. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the final installment given that it’s about the child god, Sieh, and the thought of [...]]]> Dear Ms. Jemisin,

While I didn’t think the first two novels of your Inheritance trilogy were perfect, I liked that they were different and introduced some much-needed fresh air into the fantasy genre. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the final installment given that it’s about the child god, Sieh, and the thought of him being in a consensual romantic relationship made me uncomfortable. (God or not, he’s still a child.) Having had some time to mull over the book since I finished it, I reached the conclusion that I enjoyed it, but I think that romance readers might not find it as accessible as previous novels.

Kingdom of Gods focuses on Sieh, the child god first introduced in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. The child of Enefa (now incarnated as the new goddess, Yeine) and Nahadoth, he’s always occupied an awkward place. The oldest of the gods after the original three but also embodying the young, immature aspects of nature, Sieh can be a contradiction at times.

Since the book takes place long after the events of the previous two novels, the once-powerful Arameri family are diminished. Though they desperately cling to their authority over the world, it’s obvious their power is dwindling as the years pass. This becomes important because one day, while roaming the Arameri palace, Sieh meets the latest generation of Arameri scions, a pair of twins named Shahar and Dekarta. Which, if you’ve read the previous two books, are very unfortunate names to give a pair of kids.

Intrigued by the twins, Sieh follows a whim and makes a blood pact with them. Unfortunately, it ends in disaster with the twins being separated and Sieh landing in a strange decade-long coma. Even worse, when he comes out of the coma, another fact is realized: the child god is aging.

While the cover description is accurate, it’s misleading and only provides half of the picture. I especially don’t like the sole focus on Shahar when Deka’s relationship with Sieh is just as important to the story. This is a very different sort of book from the previous installments. More epic and in line with the narrative structures of standard traditional fantasy. It has a lot of originality and flair, but the structure and protagonist’s journey is more familiar. It brings all the pieces laid down in the previous books, especially in The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and brings it full circle.

I liked the fact that the narrative voice decided to change it up. Without spoiling, the previous two novels had “tricks” associated with why their stories were told the way they were. Except for the end in which there is a narrator change, here the narrative is straightforward. As Sieh says in the opening pages, the reader has no reason to anticipate an impending twist but can relax and enjoy the story.

As for the story itself, it’s a very different sort of coming of age story. With Yeine’s book, she came of age and gained power because she discovered she was the incarnation of a dead goddess. In this book, Sieh comes of age but the results are something entirely different. After all, what happens when the god of childhood (and all its related traits: mischief, trickster, etc) grows up and becomes mature? How can he retain his power then? So I enjoyed that exploration.

That said, I found the relationship aspects weak. I wish there’d been deeper interactions between Sieh and the twins. He spent a lot of the book running around to investigate a potential war. I know it was for plot-related reasons but because of this, Shahar and most particularly, Deka, ended up reading shallow to me. I did like that there were no easy answers for the relationship between Shahar and Sieh but by comparison, Sieh’s relationship with Deka seemed unexplored.

I’ve heard heard rumblings on the internet and via email regarding a child god having sex but having finished the book, I find myself wondering what those complaints were about exactly? Are there references to distasteful things that Sieh was forced to do in the past? Yes but those were more explicitly stated in the first book, and I don’t actually consider what happened in those cases sex. Rape, yes. Sex, no. Sieh, like his siblings, were enslaved by the Arameri and were abused. This was made abundantly clear and is further explored in Kingdom of Gods because Sieh knows how to carry a grudge. Or are they referring to a specific incident which, to my reading, was never described as anything but negative and traumatic. One of the underlying themes of the Inheritance trilogy is power and how it can be abused, and I feel that was what happened there. So, again, not sex. If the complaints were about the coercive aspects and not wanting to read about those interactions, I would completely understand. But the impression I got was that there was lots of consensual child sex which made me leery because that’s the last thing I want to read. I think it’s best to remember that Sieh is aging, physically and mentally — not by a matter of years but by decades. When he comes out of his coma, he’s a teenager; by the end of the book, he’s an old man.

My favorite part, however, was the ending. I thought it was beautiful and perfectly answered the question of what happens when child gods grow up. I liked the idea of a cyclical existence — that all beginnings have an end and that all ends promise a new beginning. I don’t want to spoil in this review but if anyone who’s read the book would like to discuss, I’d love to do so in the comments.

All in all, I enjoyed Kingdom of Gods. It is a different sort of novel from the previous two installments, following a personal journey across a more epic backdrop. But I think anyone hoping for intense relationships like those seen in Hundred Thousand and Broken Kingdoms should adjust their expectations accordingly. And as a bonus for those readers who were less than enthused about the ending of Broken Kingdoms, there’s a short story for you at the end of the novel. As for myself, I’m looking forward to the new trilogy coming out next year.

My regards,
Jia

P.S. – The glossary in the print edition is great. I have no idea if this was replicated in the ebook version and if not, then this is a rare case where I recommend the print edition if only to see what was done.

Previous novels in this series: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (review), The Broken Kingdoms (review)

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