Dear Author » cabin romance

REVIEW: Expecting the Boss's Baby by Christine Rimmer

Jane — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 21:33:27 +0000

Dear Ms. Rimmer:

I am ordinarily not a fan of Christmas stories unlike my partner here, Jayne, who has a well known affinity for these stories and given the proliferation of them in the months preceding the holidays, clearly I am in the minority. I’m always afraid the holiday spirit will overcome the story and everything will become treacly. However, I always seem to respond well to your books so despite the baby on the cover and the tree and the ornaments, I rushed to download and read this story.

The heroine is the youngest of the Bravo girls. If we were pigeonholing her, Zoe Bravo would be the free spirit. Oh, she’s not running around in peasant skirts and beads, but she’s flitted from one position to another, finding nothing that has really engaged her passion and interest in the long term. She’s easily distracted which is why she has attended two of the best schools in the country, but never graduated. And it kind of explains what she is doing applying to be Dax Girard’s assistant.

Dax Girard is a “great adventurer and magazine publisher” which, in this day and age, doesn’t seem to be the most credible basis for a rich man, but Dax is very wealthy. (Maybe he’s modeled after Branson?) Dax thinks highly of himself and during the interview makes sure that Zoe understands that if she is hired, she cannot have sex with him. Thankfully, Zoe thinks well enough of herself to laugh at Dax’s serious warning.

He wasn't finished. "And if I were to meet you under other circumstances, I would be only too happy to have sex with you. But I need good staff, above all. So I have a house rule. You work for me, that's all you do with me."

Zoe stifled a burst of inappropriate laugher and sat up straighter in the chair. Somehow, she managed to reply with a straight face, "Seriously, it's not a problem. I've known you for what, two minutes?"

Dax can’t wait for Zoe to fail so he can ask her out, but Zoe is committed this time to seeing this position through. She wants to prove something to herself and to her family. Everyone at Zoe’s new office think she’ll succumb to ol’ Dax’s charm in no time so Zoe pretends that she is in love with someone else and thus immune to Dax. Dax is, well, a rake? I mean, in one scene he is calculating how long it will take for Zoe to fall in bed with him but in the next he is making out with some chick in his office and setting dinner dates with her. So monogamy doesn’t appear to be Dax’s strong point, as well as resisting his staff. Fortunately Zoe has his number:

How old was he anyway, thirty-five or thirty-six? Old enough to stop jumping from one woman's bed to the next. If he didn't watch it, he'd end up ancient and wrinkled, wearing a satin bathrobe, with a blonde young enough to be his granddaughter on his arm.

A subtle humor is imbued in the story because Dax catches on almost immediately that Zoe’s Johnny is fake and Zoe figures out that Dax knows, but she refuses to give up the charade so she keeps on making up fairly believable, yet kind of crazy stories about her and Johnny.

Plausible circumstances leave Dax and Zoe stranded together wherein they don’t have the barriers of the office or Zoe’s fake fiance to keep them apart. Alone and having to rely on each other (or mostly Dax having to rely on Zoe), they succumb to the seeming inevitability of their attraction. It is during this time that Zoe realizes that while everyone has labeled her as flightly and insubstantial, when the chips are down, she is a very capable person. Although it’s a bit trite, Zoe learns her value as a person and I think it was this experience, in part, that makes her able to resist Dax later on in the story after she becomes, um pregnant. (It’s not really a spoiler when it’s on the cover right?).

Dax is a little harder of a nut for me to swallow. He seems kind of consciousless when it comes to women, at least in the beginning. It is true that he has his own emotional baggage that leads him into his certain lifestyle and he certainly makes a big gesture at the end of the book but I wondered if the transition from lover of all to lover of one was too easy. Even though there is passage of time, it’s time spent mostly in Zoe’s head and not Dax’s. However, this is a minor complaint and even the Christmas part was well woven throughout the conflict. B

Best regards

Jane

REVIEW: Ice by Linda Howard

Jane — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:00:08 +0000

Dear Ms. Howard:

I confess that I was at first taken aback by the length of this hardcover. I remember thinking unkind thoughts about this format when Janet Evanovich put out her first Christmas hardcover. Those have sold like crazy so I guess that readers are unfazed by the length of the story and the cost. After all, a story is a story, right?

When I started ICE, I began to get excited. A good category length Howard is worth hardcover pricing. I know that I would have paid quite a bit to read the Diamond Bay trilogy because it was so good. The first and second chapters read like a vintage category Howard romance and if it had kept in that vein, I would have been able to recommend this unreservedly. However, in keeping with your current writing voice, this book is far more focused on the action/suspense than it is on the characters and their relationship with each other.

The story takes place, mostly, over the space of one afternoon. There is an impending icestorm and military policeman, Gabriel, is home on leave. His father, the local sheriff, sends him to retrieve Lolly Helton from her mountain home because she won’t be able to survive up there if there is an icestorm. Gabriel is not thrilled about his father’s assignment. He wants to spend the afternoon with his son and he doesn’t really like Lolly. When they were in high school, Lolly always looked down her nose at him. Him! The highschool jock, son of the sheriff, friend to everyone; yet Lolly was always using her sharp tongue to cut him down. Still, Gabriel isn’t going to refuse to do what his father asks and heads up the mountain.

Lolly is preparing the family home for sale. Her parents have moved south and Lolly doesn’t live in the area. The local grocery store owner invites Lolly to stay with them over the icestrom and Lolly acquiesces. She knows the danger. She heads back up the mountain to get the supplies she needs. Her return to town is cut short when two meth addicts break into her home and prepare to rape, rob, and kill her.

It’s about the time when the meth addicts appear on the scene that the book kind of falls apart for me, maybe because I was hoping and anticipating Lolly and Gabriel interaction. no matter how hard you had Lolly explain everything to me, I was beset with questions regarding the plausibility of the suspense. For example, meth addict 1 is male and tries to rape Lolly only his girlfriend, Meth 2, comes in and starts to beat Meth 1 about the head. Why would Meth 1 think that he could get away with raping Lolly when his girlfriend was standing right there? Did he have a history of this? Was it simply to place Lolly in further sympathy with the reader? When they put Lolly in a room upstairs, it easily allows her to escape. Why not just tie her to a chair in the same room as the Meth heads? Or why wouldn’t they try to secure her in some fashion?

Now the answer may be that the Meth addicts are high and who can explain their actions, but they seemed capable of executing a plan (targeting Lolly in the grocery store and following her up the mountain, getting her to give them money, etc). It was no quick grab sort of thing.

Gabriel comes along and they try to escape together but they are found out by the bad guys so Lolly, Gabriel and the bad guys are running in the woods in the mountain during the icestorm. Only Gabriel and Lolly are affected by the cold. The Meth addicts seem impervious. Where Lolly is nearly hypothermic, Meth addict is able to plot, plan and carry out an effective threat to both Gabriel and Lolly’s lives.

The interaction between Gabriel and Lolly is quite brief and there is no real character development. The focus is squarely on the icestorm and the meth addicts and the danger the two pose for both Gabriel and Lolly. While the story ends with Gabriel and Lolly pursuing each other, I wasn’t convinced of much of anything at the end, least of all their ability to form a lasting connection. C

Best regards

Jane

This book can be purchased in hardcover at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.

REVIEW: No Surrender by Shannon Stacey

Jane — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:00:07 +0000

Dear Ms. Stacey:

I confess that I haven’t ever read you before. I thought I had and just decided that while you were a great gun, your books were just not for me. Then, after seeing two recent releses, Becoming Becky and No Surrender, I thought I ought to give you a try. I tried Becoming Becky but couldn’t get into it at the time. But then I saw that Keishon, a very picky suspense reader, mentioned she was excited about your Devlin series book, No Surrender.

No Surrender is a fast paced action story that is sort of split in two. While I was reading it, I was instantly reminded of Suzanne Brockmann back in her earlier days when she was writing more romance actions stories than simply action stories.

I hadn’t read any other books in the Devlin Group series and never once felt lost. I do, however, have the urge to read the entire series now (and plan to buy them this weekend). The primary focus of the Devlin Group is of Gallagher and Carmen Oliveria. Gallagher is the number two man at Devlin Group who is primarily responsible for logistics of a mission. Carmen Oliveria (and her past was a little light on the details) appeared to be a former thief whose speciality is picking locks and being invisible.

Together Gallagher and Carmen are sent to peak through a very bad man’s house in Canada. The house is supposed to be empty of everyone except for staff but the situation turns ugly when the bad man returns unexpectedly. Carmen and Gallagher get out a live but are stranded in the mountains of New Hampshire. The first part of the story is a road romance as the two struggle to survive in the mountains with very few supplies and an attraction that at least Carmen does not want to explore.

Whether it is the adrenaline, the near death experience, or the forced intimacy, Carmen can’t hold out and she and Gallagher enjoy a memorable physical encounter.

The second part of the romance takes place in Matunisia where the Devlin Group sets up camp to remove a hostage.

Carmen and Gallagher are both very competent. I was also very convinced that these people knew what they were doing. There is a great scene in which Carmen is stuck with only a .22 and the bad guys are out of range. Gallagher does something with the pistol to force a greater velocity from the bullet. It was details like these (whether it was accurate) that made me a believer of the story. There is a great sense of realism here which rachets up the suspense.

For the most part, I kind of guessed what would happen next. I thought that the conflicts were signalled a bit strong. For example, when we first meet Jake Donovan, a member of the Devlin Group, he’s drinking a beer and being despondent over the loss of his best friend who he lost in a rock climbing episode three years before.

There was another tell in a setup scene when the Devlin group first gets to Mutinisia which I thought was overtly obvious as well. The lack of surprise in the story is the one complaint I had so I was even more grateful that the penultimate moment (assuming you don’t consider the epilogue the final scene) wasn’t what I thought it would be.

The emotional exploration was a bit on the sparse side although I wouldn’t have expected either of the characters to be big mopers. The absence of long expository segments was a relief after I had tried to get through two others that were replete with them. Gallagher is really the all American boy next door, a very capable and deadly one, but one who had little emotional baggage other than his longing to be with Carmen.

Carmen is more conflicted, having had a bad childhood and a lack of close friends or good relationships. Her one good thing in life is the Devlin Group and she certainly doesn’t want anything to happen that would affect her position. She worries, rightfully so, that Gallagher’s feelings for her will prevent her from being part of the group. She worries about what would happen if they would form a bond and then break up. Her concerns were legitimate and I liked that there was no easy, concrete answer for her. To be with Gallagher would be a risk.

While I thought that there were a few problems (and thought the two part story was a bit strange), I really liked No Surrender and think that those readers who are looking for a Suzanne Brockmann type of story with more romance, would be pleased with this book. I’m off to get the other Devlin Group books. B

Best regards

Jane

This book can be purchased on line at various retailers on August 25, 2009. You can read excerpts at Shannon Stacey’s site.