I picked up your book because of a recommendation by someone whose taste I trust and because I liked the excerpt. The story was cute, but the flaws outweighed the cuteness for me.

This is a book about Being a Gay Athlete. This was NOT a romance. Oh, it had a love story in it and the love story had an HEA, but that HEA was never threatened. There was no barrier, no conflict, no tension integral TO the love story. The barrier/conflict/tension was all located in the Being a Gay Athlete story.

First up: I know nothing about baseball. Nothing. I actively dislike baseball, in fact. So I mostly skimmed details about the games. I’ve invited Sunita to comment on those aspects of the story in particular (but also on whatever else she wants to say).

The story is thus: Matt Blanco is a Hall-of-Fame worthy first baseman with the Brooklyn Eagles in his fourteenth season. His knee hurts, a lot. And he’s very very closeted. Ignacio Rodriguez is the Hot New Thing who has just been traded to the Eagles as their new third baseman. Matt might be fifteen years older than Iggy, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t appreciate precisely how hot Iggy actually is. There’s a little bit of lust for a chapter, then they both figure out the other’s gay in chapter 2. Which seemed a bit quick to me. Then they quickly get together.

The book takes place over four years and includes Matt’s coming out post-retirement and Iggy’s while still playing. Like Sunita (see below), I thought both of those were well done (except in that Matt wrote a book and the day before the book released in stores was when he came out for the first time. I just don’t believe that the secret would have been kept to that point). I like that the book doesn’t try to schmoosh everything into one season. I like that a lot.

However, I was frustrated by many things in this book. The “gee, shucks, little ole me?” stuff from both men got old pretty quickly. Both of them have obscene amounts of money and obscene endorsement contracts, and they just “want to play ball”:

Iggy rubbed his head. “This was easier when the hardest decision I had to make was whether or not I’d pose holding a bat in my baseball card photo.”

“I know, but these are all excellent opportunities. You’ll gain more visibility with fans, which puts more of those fans in the stadium, which gets you more favorable treatment from the Eagles front office. Everything is linked.”

“With money.”

Chris scoffed. “Don’t be like that. It’s part of the game, Ig. You signed your name on that contract knowing that.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m really grateful for all this. It’s just completely overwhelming.” Although, now that he’d said it, he wasn’t sure “grateful” was really the right word. He supposed he was happy enough that people wanted to give him money. And really, if having too much money was his only problem, he was happy to take it.

“You’re kind of a sex symbol, you know,” Chris said. “You could be cultivating your female fans.”

Iggy sighed. “Is it a cliché to say I just want to play baseball?”

Yes, in fact, it really really is. And just seemed utterly disingenuous to me, on the writer’s part, not on Iggy’s. The character has to be sympathetic, so god forbid he actually be money-aware. Just easier to make his aw-shucks-y instead.

The telling, not showing was most frustrating for me, though. At one point, Matt’s knee gives out on him during sex. The next day, he’s thinking about it:

 Matt still regretted having to put the brakes on their session the night before, but it couldn’t have been helped. He was embarrassed, too, that Iggy now knew about the knee. He hadn’t wanted Iggy to know, hadn’t wanted to lose face in front of him. He’d wanted to be a whole man for Iggy, a strong man. He wanted to live up to the image Iggy had worshipped for years. But now Iggy had seen his weakness. [ . . . ] Matt dug his sneakers out of his locker and eavesdropped on the conversations around him. A few more players trickled in and roamed around, some idly talking about plans for the evening. Matt mostly wanted to go home and ice his knee. And, he found, he wanted Iggy to come with him. Not even for sex—Matt didn’t think he could make his knee work well enough for that anyway—but just to hang out and talk with. The cat was really out of the bag now. It was kind of a relief not to have to pretend with Iggy that everything was hunky-dory.

Really? This could have been…so much better done. This was rarely hinted at in the lead-up to the scene, and it could have been a site for serious tension between Iggy and Matt until Iggy assured Matt that of course he cared that Matt was injured, but only in so far as he wanted to be able to help and support him…or something similar. Instead, it’s a throwaway couple of paragraphs and then ignored.

And then there’s the fact that the whole thing was about Being a Gay Athlete. EVERYTHING had to do with this. Every scene, every tension, every decision, every discussion, every plot point, almost every sex scene, it seemed. It got tiring and a bit boring. But if readers like that sort of this, then this is the book for them.

If I were to compare this book to anything, it’d be Amy Lane’s The Locker Room (basketball, not baseball), but I think that book did a much better job of making the tension of being closeted into something that almost tears the heroes apart. This book tries to, but doesn’t quite get there.

One thing I will say, boy, you can write great sex scenes. The writing soared during the sex:

Iggy dug his fingers into Matt’s back. Matt thrust his hips forward, and their cocks rubbed together. God. God. Goose bumps broke out everywhere, and Matt groaned, his heart rate and anticipation mounting. He knew sweet release would come disastrously fast, but he didn’t care much. This was so damn good, and Iggy seemed to be right there with him, grunting and biting now.

Except for the unnecessary “sweet” here, I loved this scene. Most of the sex was very well done.

Overall, this book could have been so much better. The characters themselves were great. I really enjoyed watching them have dates together, to be honest, when they were just talking. But the book as a whole never really gelled for me, mainly because I could see the potential there and was frustrated with what was should have been there, rather than with what existed.

Grade: C

Sunita: This book is a great example of how two readers can see entirely different things in a story. My grade is not that different from Sarah’s, but for very different reasons, and I would recommend this book for certain readers.

First, the baseball. I know the author is a big baseball fan (she talks about it in the front matter of this book, among other places), and so I was looking forward to a romance that got the sports right. In some parts she succeeds, but in others, not so much. The camaraderie of professional athletes is really well done. I enjoyed the locker room scenes with the other members of the team, and a later scene in the hospital was just terrific, in part because the author took it in a totally different direction than I expected. But I had two gripes about other aspects, as well as a third I share with Sarah. The shared gripe is that their salaries are barely mentioned. These dudes are really rich. We all know what star athletes get paid, and even the MLB minimum is nothing to sneeze at. So can we please not pretend that they’re anything other than totally loaded? Make it something Iggy is getting used to, but don’t treat it as unimportant.

My big complaint is that the protagonists don’t seem to concentrate very much when they’re in a game, or in the late season and playoffs. They wind up in the ALCS, but they’re thinking about their romance. When they walk up to the plate, they’re thinking about each other or something related. When they’re in the field, they’re making eyes at each other. Really? Once in a while, okay. But it happens over and over again. It really detracted from the verisimilitude of some of the scenes. Pro athletes spend their entire lives preparing to get to the top. That takes a very high level of focus and compartmentalization (for most of them).

My small complaint is that the strategy within the games, which is sometimes important for the plot, sometimes doesn’t make sense. When Matt hurts his knee, it’s when he breaks from third to home. On an infield popup with one out. That kind of boneheaded running play would get you chewed out in Little League, let alone MLB. And there are other descriptions of play that had me shaking my head. It’s tough to satisfy both baseball aficionados and those who don’t care, and mostly the author does a good job. Perhaps because of that, the little things stood out.

OK, the romance. Unlike Sarah, I definitely thought this was a genre romance. Maybe it wasn’t executed as well as it could have been, but I saw both internal and external conflicts. The problems of being a gay athlete are analogous to external conflicts in historical romances, e.g., class, race, religion, and another similarity is the way in which external issues create internal conflicts to be resolved.

One of the reasons sports settings work so well in m/m is that the closet is a requirement, not an option, in most (male) professional team sports. The fear of being discovered, the fear of your teammates turning on you, all that is very real and ever-present. And I thought the age difference and the fact that they were at opposite ends of their careers made for an interesting internal conflict, giving it a Star Is Born quality. The internal conflict wasn’t as well developed as it could have been, and I would have liked to see more of Matt’s post-baseball issues and how they affected the couple. I did think the two big coming-out scenes were really well done. I’ve read two earlier books by this author, I felt these scenes were far better integrated here.

Matt and Iggy were thoroughly appealing characters, which again is a feature of this author’s books (I have liked every one of her main characters). They could have been a little less loveable, to be honest. And a couple of the supporting characters verged on stereotypes (please, authors, middle-aged mothers do not have to be From Hell or From Heaven).

I can see why so many readers loved this book. Once I got over my baseball-related niggles and there were more interactions with the other baseball team members, I quite enjoyed the story.

Grade: B-

~SarahF

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I was in the mood for something different when I ran across your novel. A reader can take only so many paranormal and dystopian YAs before she loses it. A YA mystery/thriller sounded right up my alley. Your novel delivered what I needed, along with something more.

Rain was once best friends with Wendy Geller. Both outsiders at their exclusive high school — Rain, because of a cleft palate that left her speech imperfect and Wendy, because she came a less privileged background — the two bonded immediately. Rain was shy and quiet; Wendy was outgoing and took no crap. But they drifted apart over the years as Rain remained shy and quiet while Wendy became a bonafide party girl with a penchant for messing with other people’s boyfriends.

Then the worst happens. Wendy doesn’t return home one night after a party. When her body is found in Central Park the next day, people shake their head and hold her up as a cautionary tale. Look what happens to party girls. Never go home drunk or high. Don’t walk through a park alone at night.

But Rain thinks differently. She was at that party. She talked to Wendy. She didn’t seem drunk and she didn’t seem high. Something doesn’t add up. Everyone assumes it was a random attack, but Rain fears the murderer might be closer than everyone thinks.

I enjoyed this book. It was a fast read, not just because of the short length but also because of the way it was structured. Rain made a wonderful narrator. She’s never been able to speak up for herself. But now that Wendy’s dead and no one can speak for her, she takes it upon herself to do just that in order to find her friend’s killer.

I also liked the look into Wendy. Her character is one that’s often vilified in fiction and in real life. The book pulls no punches and makes it clear that Wendy liked to mess with other girls’ boyfriends, usually in retaliation for the way those specific girls treated her. But there are two details everyone forgets. First, the cheating boyfriend also holds some responsibility; just because a girl goes after you doesn’t mean you have to take her up on it. And secondly, for all that Wendy is treated like crap and gossiped about, she’s still accepted into their social circle because she entertains them. Everyone was always looking forward to seeing what she would do next. In fact, many of them egged her on in her antics and boyfriend-stealing ways. That’s hypocritical.

The incorporation of Facebook was also well done. You always hear the warnings about social media and not putting too much online. You never know the impression you’ll leave. Often this is in the context of seeking employment. If employers are checking up on you, you probably don’t want to make those photos of you doing body shots in Aruba public for anyone to see. But the aftermath of Wendy’s murder shows how else putting up photos, status updates, and videos can leave an impression. With those things used as evidence, Wendy would obviously look like a party girl of the worst kind. And if no one speaks up for her, that’s the image everyone will be left with.

I also liked the commentary about the media and how it’s a feeding frenzy when it comes to cases like this. They swarm the school after Wendy’s death. They comb over the relevant Facebook accounts and exploit everything there to put together the story they want to tell. After all, with the victim dead, who’s going to gainsay them? I liked how all those things came together.

The true identity of Wendy’s murderer really took me off-guard. Looking back, I should have predicted it. I knew the person who eventually does get accused of it was too obvious a choice, but I never even considered the possibility of the real killer. Perhaps because the thought is just too horrible in many ways.

Rain’s emotional struggle throughout the novel — her guilt, her anger — really pulled the story together for me. I liked the exploration of how the faces we present to other people don’t necessarily capture the entirety of us. In fact, one person may see a different face than another. Yes, Wendy was a party girl and it’s easy to paint her in a completely negative light. But people are more complicated than that, and I thought this novel did an excellent job showing that. B-

My regards,
Jia

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Dear Ms. Allen,

This review is long overdue. I loved this book when I read it last year, so much that I put it on my Best of 2011 list. But I didn’t get the review written in proper time, and then the Dreamspinner Press debacle happened and Sarah and I stopped reviewing DSP’s books. Your review became collateral damage of that decision. Then you retrieved your rights from DSP, and I swore to myself that I would review it as soon as it was available. You’ve self-published it (at an attractive price, no less), so here we go!

Jonah Woolner is a bank clerk in New York City. He is a very good bank clerk, and when his superior retires he hopes to be promoted to replace him. But instead, the bank owner names an outsider, Reid Hylliard to the position. Jonah is devastated; Reid is charming, handsome, and charismatic, and he soon wins over everyone but Jonah. But Jonah’s antipathy is not just sour grapes. He genuinely fears that Reid’s policies will undermine the bank’s business and undo all the good work Jonah has achieved. Reid sees Jonah’s animosity clearly but refuses to accept it. He works to win Jonah’s friendship and then, slowly, more than that. But just as Jonah succumbs to his attraction to Reid and hesitantly begins to believe in an emotionally satisfying life, their fortunes and that of the bank are jeopardized by a bank heist that places them in mortal danger. And worse, it may or may not involve Reid.

One of the aspects of your novels and short stories that I enjoy so much is your ability to create not just a sense of place, but the fullness of the historical moment in which you are writing. As you did in Whistling in the Dark and If It Ain’t Love, you paint a compelling, rich picture of life in New York City, this time in the late 19th Century. Jonah commutes to the bank by a combination of walking and streetcar, and we make that journey with him. The bank comes to life through your words, as do the people who work there. Jonah’s boarding house is full of the kinds of characters that populated Americana novels of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and they are utterly believable. For me this novel recalls the writers of the urban landscape of the United States in that era, like Dreiser writing about Chicago in Sister Carrie. More recently, it brings to mind Steven Millhauser’s Martin Dressler, which painted a minutely detailed portrait of an ambitious young New Yorker. These are the kinds of books that causes me to forget that I’m sitting in a suburban house in Northern California in 2012 because I’ve so thoroughly immersed myself in the milieu. Anyone who reads my reviews knows how high a premium I place on context and historical authenticity. For me, you’re the gold standard, and this book is an exemplar.

But the characters are just as compelling as the context. Jonah is not an easily likeable character. He is extremely disciplined in his approach to his work, and he has little personal life that we can see. He cares about the bank almost too much, the way a more emotionally rounded person might care about another human being. And yet, I had to respect him. His devastation at being passed over for promotion wasn’t just a reaction to his thwarted ambition, he really worried about the bank.

Reid is a complex character. We see him through Jonah’s perspective, and we share Jonah’s suspicion, puzzlement, and unwilling attraction. Where did he come from? He’s obviously intelligent, gifted, and ambitious. Why this bank, now? And why is he attracted to Jonah? This is a classic opposites-attract setup, but Jonah isn’t one of those characters where, when he metaphorically takes off his glasses and gets a good wardrobe, turns into a gorgeous stunner. He really is prickly, repressed, and hidebound. So what does Reid see in him? Does he have an ulterior motive?

At first, Jonah resists, but then as he gives in, he warms up, and Reid sheds some of that obvious, self-protective charm and becomes more genuine. He’s still a mystery, but he’s more approachable.

“You said it yourself. I’m not one to take risks. I’ve been as careful in the planning of this venture as any officer in the bank.”

The searching light returned. “I was wrong,” Reid said quietly after a moment. “You’ve taken one damned substantial risk.”

“Being involved with you?”

“Handing over your heart.”

Jonah raised an eyebrow. “Very sure of yourself, as usual.” That provoked a low laugh, and Jonah was glad to feel more of the tension ease from the limbs wrapped around him. “The damnable thing is—you’re invariably right.”

“Good. That’s the one thing I most wanted to be right about.”

Jonah smiled. “Does everything come to you so easily?”

“Easy? You?” Reid snorted. “Jonah—”

“Jo.”

Reid’s narrowed gaze could not mask an elated light. “You’re just trying to prove me wrong.”

Jonah laughed. “That’s part of it. But only a very small part.” His kiss encouraged more, and Reid took his breath away.

As Reid opens up, Jonah is more willing to let down his guard, and the romance that develops between them is warm and very believable, as is the way you deal with the historical issues surrounding homosexual relationships (I should note here that as with your other stories, the sex scenes are not at all explicit).

Even after the physical and emotional relationship deepens, it’s obvious that Reid is still hiding a lot. I found the contrast between Jonah, who is naturally reticent, and Reid, who seems so extroverted but masks so much, intriguing, and assumed it would cause conflict. And it did, but not at all the way I expected. The storyline ratchets up once the possible heist comes into play, and we move from a rather leisurely character study to an action plot. There are hints of it in the earlier parts of the book, so it’s not out of the blue, but I still found it a bit disconcerting. I probably should have anticipated the mystery better (and Reid’s role in it), and I’m sure other readers will figure it out much more quickly; I think I was subconsciously avoiding solving the puzzle because I wanted to stay in Jonah’s head.

The HEA is quite satisfying, and again, it’s believable for the time period. I closed the book wanting to read it all over again. I can still see Jonah walking to the streetcar, or walking with Reid down the streets of 19th-century New York. Once again, you’ve written a compelling, romantic novel that makes me glad I have one more Tamara Allen book left in my TBR.

Grade: A-

~ Sunita

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I’ve been remiss in not reviewing these books. I recommended them in November, but then the end of the semester and the holidays and then the beginning of the semester and and and…caught up with me. But I’ve been dipping into them again and again through the last few months when I needed to cleanse my palate from other books.

Nicky Avery is a TV star who is rehearsing for a Broadway show. He meets Devon Turner, film star and all around amazing actor. They connect instantly, Nicky feeling Devon’s dominance, Devon reacting to Nicky’s submissiveness. But this isn’t a touchy-feely story. This is pure D/s with intense sadomasochistic overtones. Devon doesn’t let Nicky get away with anything, either physically or emotionally. The first book, Master Class, shows Nicky and Devon’s meeting and the start of their relationship. SUBlime (really on that title?! Please trust your readers to Get It without the hokey capitals!) is a serious of short vignettes, mostly (really great) wank material more than anything else, that reveals scenes in their daily life, but that doesn’t really forward their relationship.

Devon and Nicky meet at a dinner with friends. I love this. I love that they don’t meet at a Kinky Klub of Kinkiness. They meet like other normal people do. And they’re drawn to each other through mutual attraction rather than some ridiculous set up. The book definitely has a lot of “All-Knowing All-Seeing Dom Who Knows What’s Right for the Misguided Little Submissive”-itis to go around. Devon recognizes that Nicky’s submissive, that he’s deeply masochistic, that he’s utterly fucked up. And he knows just what Nicky needs. Of course. (Honestly, just once, I’d like to read a book with a fucked up Dom and a has-it-together sub who saves him/her.) But if that’s going to be the point of the book, it’s very well done. Brilliantly done, even.

Devon takes care of Nicky. He knows what Nicky needs and he gives it to him. And as physically excruciating as their play can be, both for them and for the reader, depending on the reader’s squick levels, it’s possible to see Devon’s care for Nicky all the way through the book.

As an example of the physical and emotional intensity of the book:

Devon retrieved his crop. He wasn’t usually such a one-toy man, but he needed precision tonight without too much bite. He thwapped it lightly against Nicky’s testicles. Stretched and weighted as they were, even a light touch was painful; Nicky grunted, stumbled, fell. The rigging caught him, and he scrambled back to his feet and forced his limbs back to their straining stance. Devon rewarded this by striking Nicky’s nuts again, upping the force a bit. Perhaps expecting it this time, Nicky kept his feet.

“Now, I do believe we were having a conversation. Tell me what I’m doing.”

Another strike. Nicky gasped.

“You’re cropping my nuts, sir.” Again, and Nicky lifted one foot but quickly put it back, gasping out, “Fuck, it hurts.”

Devon knelt down to add a second weight to the leather cord, stretching Nicky’s sack a little more. He let it go carefully, stroking one sweat-damp thigh as he released the weight. Nicky’s whimper went straight to Devon’s cock, but he ignored it. Right now, his boy demanded all his focus.

Devon picked up the crop again and rubbed it against the stretched skin of Nicky’s scrotum, then slapped it lightly, several times in succession, until Nicky danced away. “Hold still,” Devon warned, grabbing him by the rigging to keep him in place and resuming his tapping with the crop.

It was impressive that Nicky remembered to speak through this treatment. He gritted out, “Tapping my balls, sir,” through increasingly heavy breaths that became grunts, then cries: Devon’s cue to stop. Devon smoothed over the hot skin with his thumb, gave Nicky’s half-hard cock a few quick pumps.

“And I suppose you know what my next question’s going to be.”

Chest heaving, limbs quaking, Nicky said nothing as Devon worked his erection. Finally, he shook his head, looking contrite and a little frightened. A drop of sweat flew from his chin and plopped to the floor.

Good. Nicky was moving beyond the ability to parse every little thing, moving beyond control and into true subspace. Devon added another weight, and another.

“How do you feel, Nicky?”

“Hurts,” he panted.

“How you feel, Nicky, not how it feels. That’s five.”

This book is not for the faint of heart. It shows an intensely physical and deeply emotional relationship between a sadist and a masochist, between a Dom and a sub, that has some necessary suspension of disbelief (do people REALLY play that hard — especially emotionally — with each other right away?), but is otherwise beautiful, brilliant, and if you like that sort of this, deeply arousing.

Grade: B+

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SUBlime, on the other hand, is a series of vignettes that seems to lose sight of the fact that Devon and Nicky are people. In these stories, ever-in-control Dom and bratty sub are thrown in with various kinks (medical play, knives, cross-dressing, isolation, mummification). And while the individual stories stay true to Devon and Nicky’s personalities, and while the stories are arousing if it hits the reader’s kink buttons, and while they’re very well-written, Devon and Nicky are no longer actors with real lives. They’re just posable kink dolls you brought out whenever some nifty new kink caught your fancy.

Which is not to say they’re not fun, but I doubt very much that an A-list film actor can bring his A-list stage and TV actor boyfriend to a huge party, no matter how “private,” and parade him around in pony-play gear without having to worry about it getting out to the press. No matter how much you trust other people in the lifestyle, stardom is still fraught with blackmailers and paparazzi, and I just missed the real lives of Devon and Nicky amidst the kinkiness.

I feel like I’m hammering these stories for not being something they never tried to be, and I REALLY hate it when people do that. I *think* they were written first, precisely AS wankable shorts, and Master Class was written to show how Devon and Nicky got together. But however they were written, they were published as a stand-alone story and some sequel shorts, so that’s how I read them. And with that in mind, the posable kink doll thing bothered me, as much as I enjoyed the individual stories themselves. They were more erotica than romance. Brilliantly GOOD erotica, with each short having an emotional arc of its own, which is SO important, but erotica, not romance, nonetheless. As erotica, I’d give it another B+. But as romance:

Grade: C+

Best regards,
-Sarah

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Definitely, Maybe is another film Netflix kept urging on me and I kept resisting. The star ranking was only slightly above an average of 3 and the description didn’t grab me. I like a HEA in a movie that looks to have romance in it and with this one I just wasn’t sure I’d get it. But finally, in an effort to review more recent movies after a spell of 1930s/40s era ones, I heaved a sigh and clicked “add to queue” then “move to top.” And while the movie doesn’t exactly give a HEA ending, it does deliver a HFN with optimism for the future that is enough for me to be happy.

“Interested in knowing how her divorcing parents met, young Maya (Abigail Breslin) listens as her dad, Will (Ryan Reynolds), recounts his romantic past with three different and special women — Emily (Elizabeth Banks) , April (Isla Fisher) and Summer (Rachel Weisz)– leaving Maya to guess which one is her mom.”

So, maybe you can see what I mean about the blurb not exactly promising hearts and flowers. The leading man is getting divorced from the mother of his daughter and giving her a flashback on his romance with her mother which has obviously gone sour. Sounds like a winner, yeah? But as Reynolds said about the script and several commenters at Netflix seconded, this it a movie which I had no idea how it was going to go or where it would end until it did. I had my suspicions, some of which were right and others of which were wrong, but honestly I wasn’t sure who would wind up being the woman Will married or how the film would still end up being called a romance. But trust me, it more or less does.

This is definitely a film with a plot which would not have worked more than 3 decades earlier than now. The tone is more modern with divorce being something that happens even to the best of relationships and – this was a nice surprise – there really isn’t a bad guy or woman in it. No one ends up being a screaming bitch or cheating bastard as no one ends up the one “at fault” for ending the marriage or for the end of the many relationships in the story. For most of them, it’s a matter of two people not being at the same place – emotionally or relationshiply – at the same time. One breakup is caused by Will’s then girlfriend doing her journalistic job and digging up the truth about a candidate for whom Will is working but I end up respecting her for sticking to her principles. Will actually manages to maintain good relations with all three women which, as I mentioned earlier, is such a treat. But what I actually like best of all is his relationship with his daughter. While he’s telling her the story late in the evening, he promises to finish it the next day and tell her what the happy ending is. When that moment comes, I got a touch teary and smiled at how much he loves his little girl.

I also like that the movie takes place over the course of 16 years which gives a lot of time to follow the changes in the characters’ lives. It’s nice to see Will and the other women mature and evolve. When Will makes his final move, I have the feeling that this time, the people involved are both on the same page at the same time and that the relationship truly will work out. And that it has his daughter’s blessing. I do agree that it is a touch unrealistic to believe that Maya wouldn’t be able to guess her mother’s identity for as long as the story telling takes place but then Will does announce as he starts that he’s going to change names and details and during the film I was caught up enough in it not to notice this til the end.

Breslin is cute without being obnoxious, Reynolds has great chemistry with Banks, Fisher and Weisz, the City of New York shines and it manages to be a romantic comedy/drama that I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen next. The relationships seemed realistic and there weren’t those rom-com, chick-flick OTT hoops to be jumped through to keep things going. “Definitely, Maybe” turns out to be a movie I might not have watched except for Netflix but one I’m glad that I did.

~Jayne

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This review took me far longer to produce than it should have. It was no fault of the book. The blame rests entirely upon my shoulders. But once I was able to clear some time to devote to reading, I devoured the first book in this series, Bright Young Things, in an afternoon. The same thing can be said about this book. What can I say? I’m a sucker for great relationships between female characters.

Beautiful Days picks up where its predecessor, Bright Young Things, left off, following the lives of three remarkable young women in New York City during the 1920s. Stunning socialite Astrid continues her tempestuous relationship with a bootlegger’s son, Charlie. Charlie’s half-sister, Cordelia, has joined the family’s illicit business after the violent murder of her father. And Cordelia’s childhood friend, Letty, continues to dream of becoming a star.

Things aren’t easy for them, however. Despite her newly announced engagement to Charlie, Astrid remains discontent. After the death of his father, Charlie has had to take the reins of the family’s bootlegging business. This leaves little time to spend with Astrid, who is used to being the center of attention and the darling of everyone’s eye. She dislikes taking second place to anything and the strain begins to show on their relationship.

Cordelia, on the other hand, feels inadvertently responsible for her father’s death after an ill-advised affair with the son of the family’s main rival. To make her feel better, Charlie puts her in charge of opening the family’s first speakeasy. Unfortunately, she finds her attention distracted by the straitlaced flyboy, Max Darby, who is the only man immune to her charm.

Meanwhile, Letty finds herself adrift. While she finds herself esconed in luxurious surroundings, it takes her far away from the city where she thought she’d find her destiny. Instead of becoming the star she thought she was meant to be, Letty shadows Cordelia and Astrid, being drawn into their lives and intrigue.

I won’t lie. This isn’t a deep book. It’s easy fluff. But it’s entertaining fluff, filled with glitz, glamour, romance, and a little action and intrigue. Essentially, it’s better-written Gossip Girl without the catty narrator. It’s not to everyone’s taste but if you’re in the mood for it, it can really hit the spot.

What I like best is that the focus remains solidly on the female characters. Yes, their romantic lives and interests do play a role in the story but why shouldn’t it? Their relationships with men are as important as their relationships with each other. I really enjoyed how different each girl was from another — and not in the stereotypical beauty, brain, and brawn sort of delineations either. All three girls are definitely beautiful but each in their own ways: Astrid is the stunning ingenue, Cordelia is the mysterious beauty, and Letty is the waifish starlet. Each behaved in completely believable ways relevant to their backgrounds — Astrid is privileged, Cordelia was the unwanted orphan, and Letty came from a very conservative family.

I also liked that they supported each other despite each having their own lives independent of their friends and the men in the life. When they needed distractions or a shoulder to cry on or just someone to talk to, they were there for each other. Sometimes other things got in the way but there was always a reason for it and even better, the girls were aware of being unable to support the others. After reading so many books in which there’s a loner heroine with a chip on her shoulder (yet who’s always surrounded by guys!) or girls who fight each other for whatever reason, sometimes I just like being able to read those sorts of interactions in fiction. It’s a palate cleanser.

Of the three girls, I do think Letty’s storyline is the weakest in this book. I suppose it can’t be helped. With Astrid’s melodramatic antics and Cordelia’s troubles, her simple struggle to get on the stage would get overshadowed. Given the way Beautiful Days ended, I’m hopeful we’ll see more of her blossom in the next book. I definitely liked the turn of events at the end.

While I’m still lukewarm on the idea of Astrid and Charlie — all that fighting and making up must get exhausting and I still not-so-secretly hope for something between Astrid and the riding instructor at the country club — I am particularly intrigued by Cordelia and Max’s relationship. I like the push and pull of this particular couple because it makes sense: Cordelia is a bootlegger’s daughter who recently joined the family business while Max is a media darling and complete teetotaler. But the reveal at the end of the book made me root for them even while it made me terrified of what might be in store for them in the next book. Even if I hadn’t read Bright Young Things’s prologue, I’ve read your previous series. I know how these things go — one of the girls ends up dead!

I thought Beautiful Days was a great addition to this series and in fact, I liked it better than the first novel. What can I say? I prefer danger and intrigue over Romeo and Juliet star-crossed forbidden-style romance. I understand the allure, but it’s been done to death. So far, I’m on-board for the next one! B

My regards,
Jia

Previous book in this series: Bright Young Things

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I read your first novel, 666 Park Avenue, earlier this year. In it, readers were introduced to architect Jane Boyle who gets swept up in a whirlwind romance with the man of her dreams, only to discover that not only does she come from a long line of witches, she just married into another family of witches that covets her power. The Dark Glamour picks up where the previous novel left off, with Jane on the run from the Doran family.

Forced to go into hiding, Jane doesn’t have many options. Lynne Doran is a powerful woman, both magically and socially. There’s nowhere in the world that Jane can escape from Lynne’s connections even with her estranged husband’s advanced planning. So instead she tries to outwit her mother-in-law and remain in New York City. Whether this is actually a smart choice considering the circumstances, I leave up to the reader. With this series, you have to accept Jane’s haphazard way of thinking.

That said, she does learn a couple things by staying in NYC. First, Jane discovers that a pair of siblings from another witch bloodline are in “business” negotiations with the Doran family. More importantly, however, she learns that Lynne’s daughter, formerly presumed dead, is still alive. As a result, Jane goes on a globetrotting trip to find Lynne’s daughter and deliver her back to her mother. After all, the only reason Lynne wanted Jane to marry her son was so that she could give birth to a daughter to continue the Doran bloodline. If Jane can find Lynne’s daughter, then she can have her life back. Maybe not the most altruistic motivation, but I never said Jane was a nice person.

There are times when I really question Jane’s judgement. It’s not just the part where she chose to stay in NYC, with her face plastered all over TV and knowing that Lynne could stumble across her at any moment. It’s the part where she sleeps with the brother of the sibling pair negotiating with the Doran family. I realize part of it is that magic attracts magic — sort of a way to keep the bloodlines strong — but she wasn’t ripping the clothes off Harris in the previous book despite the existence of that magical attraction. And I’d think after the whirlwind romance with estranged husband Malcolm, she would have known what was going on. That she didn’t realize the reason behind her attraction to this stranger requires a heavy amount of disbelief, especially when combined with the mystery woman stalking Jane all over NYC. Of course, I freely admit I have a hard time understanding characters with raging libidos despite being on the run for their lives. In my opinion, there are more important things on which to focus your time.

I thought the clues regarding the big revelation at the end were a bit too obvious. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I prefer discovering those revelations with the characters. Figuring things out ahead of the characters tends to ruin things for me because I then start questioning the characters’ competence and lack of insight. On the other hand, I know other readers like that sort of thing (figuring something out and then watching how the characters reach the same discovery) so your mileage may vary. Or maybe it’s not as obvious as I think, and I just made a lucky guess.

That said, I did like the big twist of that revelation. It builds upon the story told in 666 Park Avenue and complicates the history of the different witch bloodlines. It wasn’t without its flaws, however. I thought the events bridging Jane’s finding Lynne’s daughter to the climax were rushed. I liked the character of Lynne’s daughter so I wished we could have seen more of her reactions towards discovering she’s the long-lost daughter of a wealthy family and how she copes with that change of fortune.

Like its predecessor, The Dark Glamour takes longer than it should to get moving (and once again, the cover copy reveals far too much information) but when it does reach the point of no return, it’s a steamroller. The main highlight of this book for me was that it portrayed how you could do something considered a good deed (even if it was for selfish reasons) but things can still go wrong. The climax of this book came about because Jane found Lynne’s daughter but didn’t realize the true reason why her mother-in-law was so desperate to find a female heir.

Overall, this novel is an easy read, good for lazy afternoons. It’s not particularly deep but sometimes that’s the kind of book I’m looking for. While I could have done without all the lusting over men who are a danger to her and would have liked to have seen her interact with more female friends (because she does have them!) outside of plot necessity, the ending twist made the book for me. But I can only hope that this series is finite and doesn’t intend to drag this plotline out. The ending was a bit of a cliffhanger. C

My regards,
Jia

Previous book in this series: 666 Park Avenue (review)

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1. REVIEW: 666 Park Avenue by Gabriella Pierce
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3. REVIEW: Doppelgangster by Laura Resnick

For many months, Jane had been talking about how wonderful your first New York Blades hockey Romance, Body Check, was. When I finally succumbed to reading it, I was elated with almost everything about it. I especially loved the set-up between the taciturn hero and the career-minded heroine. After reading Gina and Michael's story (Fair Play), I have skipped ahead to Icebreaker, anxious to check in with previous characters and discover new ones. And while Icebreaker didn't thrill me the way Body Check did, it was still an enjoyable read.

Sinead O'Brien had worked extremely hard to become the only female partner at her law firm, and if she had to sacrifice time with her family and even a husband who wanted her to be a traditional wife and mother, it was going to be worth it in the end. She did not mind the long hours and ever-growing workload, because she was passionate about her work and good at it, to boot. Still, she felt a little bit of jealousy whenever she saw her infant nephew, Charlie, because she did want a family of her own – just not on anyone else's unilateral terms. The distance this has caused between Sinead and her sister Maggie is one more thing Sinead needs to deal with . . . later.

Recently acquired New York Blades captain Adam Perry is known as "a man of
few words who only spoke when necessary," and a hockey player who is master of the old style "open-ice body check," a move that has become less and less common, especially with the league encouraging players to promote a more family-friendly game. When an ambitious district attorney decides to bring assault charges against Adam for injuries sustained by a player whom he body-checked during a game, the Blades hire Sinead's law firm to defend Adam and ideally get the charges dropped before trial.

Sinead is not unusually concerned about her case until she meets with Adam Perry and encounters the brick wall of his aloof resistance to her questions and, more importantly, to revealing anything about his personal life that Sinead might need to mount a defense, should the case go to trial, and, in the meantime, anything she might be able to use to get the charges dropped. Adam is similarly frustrated with Sinead, a woman he correctly pegs as completely ignorant of hockey. Besides his general disgust with the DA's obvious attempt to criminalize the game of hockey, he does not have a great deal of confidence in Sinead's ability to comprehend the importance of the game that has been his life since childhood:

"Tell me in your own words what happened on the ice with Nick Clarey."

"We were playing Philly, and I made a hit on Clarey. Philly released a statement saying Clary was concussed and had a fractured cheekbone. I was suspended for two games. The next day I found out I was being brought up on charges of assault causing bodily harm. Kidco has hired you to defend me."

Sinead waited for more, but after a few seconds, she realized that was it, that was all he had to say. He's a caveman, she thought. A simpleton.

"Could you elaborate a little?" she prodded.

"What's there to say?"

"Do you and Clarey have a long-running, acrimonious relationship?"

"Not particularly."

"Was he trash-talking to you or doing anything to incite you?"

"No."

"How did you feel when you saw what your hit did to Mr. Clarey?"

Adam looked baffled. "How did I feel?"

"Let me rephrase that," said Sinead, since feel clearly wasn't a word he was comfortable with. "What did you think?"

"I felt sorry when I saw he was hurt. I hoped his injury wasn't severe. That was never my intent. But I knew it was a clean hit. We're professional hockey players. He was doing his job. I was doing my job. End of story."

"Except it's not the end of the story, because you're now being charged with assault. Tell me about "your job,' as you call it."

"I'm a hockey player."

Sinead closed her eyes for a split second, trying to ward off the frustration building inside her. "Elaborate."

Adam looked genuinely perplexed. "What do you need to know?"

What we recognize early on is that Sinead and Adam have a great deal in common, particularly their unerring focus on career and a punishing work ethic, and it is, ironically but expectedly, these commonalities that make their initial acquaintance so rocky. Sinead is so focused on what she needs to know as a lawyer that she makes assumptions about Adam that are untrue (that he's stupid and recalcitrant). And Adam makes incorrect assumptions about Sinead, as well (that she's an uptight bitch). When he discovers that Sinead plans on visiting his Canadian hometown and interviewing his brother and other family and friends. Adam is extremely unhappy, although Sinead does not understand why, when the more information she has, the better she can defend him. However, once she visits his hometown and meets his brother, sister-in-law, and best friend, Ray, Sinead realizes that there is a great deal more to Adam Perry than he likes people to believe, and while much of it raises her estimation of his character, some of it might be damaging to his defense.

Although I have only read three of these New York Blades books, I already recognize a pattern in the relationship development: two stubborn, independent people meet and rub each other the wrong way; attraction wars with seeming dislike until it tips the characters into a tentative relationship; crisis occurs that break the couple up; a tentative reunion ensues that deepens the intimacy and therefore scares the hell out of the characters; which leads to another breakup; followed by the final, full-of-emotion reunion and HEA.

As a fan of both New York hockey and the law, and understanding a bit about the difficulties inherent in both, I appreciated some of the issues this couple has to contend with. First is the fact that both have had to sacrifice quite a bit to be successful, and both are sort of loners, despite the close family ties they both have. Both are reluctant to reveal too much of themselves and become vulnerable. Sinead, for example, is resistant to talking about her ex-husband and the issue that broke them up, namely that he expected her to stay at home and raise any children they might have. Adam is reluctant to talk about most of his past, and he is protective of the people in his life, and humble about his off-the-ice accomplishments.

Then there is the issue of Sinead's professionalism with regard to sleeping with a client. Although New York does not have an ethics rule against this (yes, I checked), Sinead knows that as the only woman partner in her firm it is much, much riskier for her to sleep with a client than it is for her male colleagues, who regularly indulge without qualm. In fact, her best friend, Oliver, has made a virtual avocation of sleeping with his female clients, and he regularly shows up to the office disheveled and hung over. It is a sad fact that the law remains a male-dominated, highly patriarchal profession, in which women do face various forms of sexual and gender discrimination. I liked that Sinead was aware of that and that the novel took that issue seriously. I also appreciated that Adam's dedication to hockey was treated with the same seriousness, that his "job," was, indeed, portrayed as inclusive of substantial responsibilities.

What worked best for me in the novel was the struggle that these two independent characters go through to become a couple. One of my favorite things about all three Blades books I have read is that compromise is an ongoing process and traditional roles are not reinforced when the characters do not fit within their narrow confines. In fact, despite my general wariness of epilogues, I felt that the one in Icebreaker was the most original I've read in a long time, a true and pleasant surprise that for me justified epilogue status. I also like that the protagonists tend to come from strong family backgrounds, and they both want families of their own. I really like the way they have to work to balance multiple, even competing priorities, and the way they do that such that it honors both individuals and the family they might want together.

What did not work as well for me was the way the actual relationship between Sinead and Adam progressed. It was obvious right away that Sinead and Adam found each other attractive. But given their mutual wariness and the very real ethical concerns that Sinead has, the shift from lawyer/client to first kiss felt awkward and forced to me. In fact, the whole trajectory of the relationship felt a bit forced, a bit shallow. Despite all of the interesting issues between these characters, what brings them together felt most like sexual attraction, and most of the issues that break them apart seem, well, a little ridiculous. Actually, it's not the issues that are ridiculous as much as the rapidity with which they create distance. And while I understood clearly that these were two characters who were resisting intimacy with almost everything they had, the issue from Adam's past that Sinead uncovers is so compelling that I really expected the book to make more use of that, both inside the romantic relationship and in general. When that did not happen, it felt to me like an opportunity for a much more interesting, much deeper book was bypassed, and that only accentuated the superficiality of Adam and Sinead's relationship.

Consequently, the book felt more constructed to me than naturally flowing. For example, since Adam is so reserved with Sinead, he is given a bromance with Anthony Dante, chef and brother of Blades captain Michael Dante (both men have their own books, as well), and Adam and Anthony talk like little old women on testosterone, complete with a long-running, and increasingly forced Three Stooges allegory/philosophy/bonding moment. The relationship created a contrast in Adam's character that seemed more convenient than logical to the rest of his character development. And ultimately, that is how I felt about much of Sinead and Adam's relationship development, as well.

I did, however, enjoy spending a little time with Ty Gallagher and Michael Dante, though, and had I not read Body Check, I might have found Icebreaker a bit fresher. Overall, it was a well written, diverting, mostly fun read, if not a revelation. B-

~ Janet

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I’ve made no secret of my general malaise when it comes to the urban fantasy genre. I overloaded on it during its boom period, and I still don’t think I’ve entirely recovered. That said, I’m always willing to give a book a chance, especially when it tries to do something different with the subgenre. After hearing that your novel was set in Prohibition era New York City, I decided that was the kind of different I was looking for.

Zephyr Hollis comes from a family of demon hunters. Her father, in fact, is the best demon hunter in all of Montana. But after deciding the family business was not for her, Zephyr heads east to the big city. In New York City, she’s gained the reputation of being a bit of social crusader; her nickname is the vampire suffragette. It seems Zephyr feels a little guilty for all that hunting she used to do in her past and hopes to make amends.

In this Prohibition era NYC, Others (supernatural beings) face persecution along the lines of those experienced by minorities at the time. I especially liked this element of the novel because there was a large overlap between the vampire and immigrant populations. It makes sense from a worldbuilding standpoint that the most vulnerable segments of society would be the ones most likely to fall prey to vampires. Zephyr, however, has made it one of her life’s missions to work for their benefit. In addition to attending activist meetings and public protests, she also teaches night classes to Others and immigrants alike.

One of her students is the very tempting Amir, who is an Other but not one that Zephyr immediately recognizes. But in addition to being the expected love interest, he also asks her to track down the true identity of the vampire crime boss, Rinaldo. Because in addition to be a former vampire hunter turned social reformer, Zephyr has a bit of special ability: she’s immune to vampire bites. No matter how many times she gets bitten, she doesn’t change.

As you can probably guess, the best parts of the novel for me were those dealing with the class and race issues. Moonshine is not anachronistic. Readers will encounter the perspectives and opinions they’d expect of the time period but filtered through Zephyr’s POV, they are never presented as acceptable. We see this play out in two of Zephyr’s relationships: her romantic one with Amir, and her almost-friendship with Lily.

Speaking of the latter, I loved the portrayal of female relationships in this novel. They were never one-note or token. From the contentious relationship with her landlady to the almost-sisterly one with her roommate Aileen, we get to see the full gamut. My favorite relationship, no surprise, was that with Lily. Seeing lower class country girl Zephyr have to work with a socialite reporter was great. I actually wouldn’t mind a book about Lily, to be honest. If there’s a story in why Zephyr became a social reformer for Others’ rights despite her background, then there’s definitely a story in why a socialite from a wealthy family became a reporter.

I admit I’m lukewarm on the romance subplot with Amir. I liked the fact that he wasn’t a vampire, or even a werewolf, but it didn’t do much for me. Part of me felt like it was there because it’s expected of the genre. On the other hand, I did appreciate the fact that you did not shy away from the fact that, as an Other, Amir lives on a different time scale from humans and has a different set of values from humans. He is not a human in a monster’s suit. He is an Other to the core, and the ending does not gloss over that. This may be disappointing to readers who prefer a neater ending, but it is a more realistic take that at least acknowledges the implications of being a supernatural creature. (I’m deliberately vague about what Amir is. It’s not quite a spoiler because there are hints early on in the novel but if readers would like to know right now, check the tags as always.)

Zephyr’s family was charming, to the point that I wish we could have seen more of them. I thought the scenes in which they were on-page were gold, personally, but I’m also a sucker for family dynamics and interactions. It was definitely refreshing to have Zephyr’s family still love and adore her even though she became something of a black sheep.

Overall, I’m glad I broke out of my longstanding urban fantasy funk to give your novel a try. The setting was different enough to keep it fresh while I also think the structure is familiar enough for diehard urban fantasy fans to enjoy. I don’t know if you intend to write more novels along this vein, but I’d certainly be up for them. B-

My regards,

Jia

Book Link | Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders
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Has it ever been a long wait for the follow up book to “Disappearing Nightly!” Which I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about. When I read, and loved, it in late 2005, I was peeved that it would probably take a year to find out if Esther and Lopez would get together. Little did I know…So I was a happy camper when news of “Doppelgangster” reached me and even happier after I’d finished it and read that there should be at least two more books to look forward to in the series.

Esther Diamond, aspiring actress in New York City, finds a whole new set of Evil People up to no good in the five boroughs. After the show she was in closes, Esther returns to waiting tables at Bella Stella, a restaurant frequented by several members of the Mafia. When she witnesses a mob hit, even though she didn’t actually see anything – and isn’t that the excuse all would be witnesses tell the police? – she and Max Zadok, along with wise guy Lucky Battistuzzi, find themselves frantically racing to eliminate someone who’s clever, connected to magic, and trying to start a mob war in the Big Apple. Oh, and keep Detective Lopez, who’s just been transferred to the Organized Crime Control Bureau, from figuring out what the three of them are really up to.

While the plot, as a whole, is creepy enough to give me the same willies it does to Max, Esther and Lucky, it doesn’t exactly zip along despite the short length of time the action actually encompasses. First our three principles have to get a rough idea of what’s going on, then it all gets rehashed every time someone new has to be told about it and then the basic information must be honed and new insights discovered, usually through improbably circumstances, just when needed. As bored as Esther and Lucky got reading and researching in Max’s antique book collection, I was still more bored reading about them doing it.

There’s a lot of talking and more talking and still more talking that goes on in this book. And the sparkling dialogue that delighted me in the first book makes only sporadic appearances here. Without the A grade I gave to “Disappearing Nightly” and my anticipation for this book, I’m afraid I might have tossed in the towel before getting to the good parts here. The scattered “now why aren’t they clueing into the glaring warning signs” moments didn’t help either. It’s not that I expect this plot to make total sense, things come from seeming nowhere on a routine basis, but I expect the main characters, who’ve spent the whole book fixated on what they think the problem is, to recognize the problem when it shows up right in their faces.

I had also hoped for more romance between Esther and Lopez. They’re certainly willing and give it their best shots but I need more. And then the ending, while it does make sense, isn’t the reward I’d hoped for them for the whole book. However, I will continue to cross my fingers that you have more planned for them. And I’m also willing to overlook a lot of disappointment for Lopez’s last line in Chapter 25. Yes, it’s that line that boosts the total grade to B-.

~Jayne

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Fictionwise | Books on Board

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Hello early 1960s morality. It’s ‘Sex and the Single Girl’ as it hasn’t been for a long time. Eileen (Jane Fonda) arrives in New York City on a Sunday morning having been recently dumped by her almost fiancé Russ (Robert Culp) in Albany because she won’t (gasp) go to bed with him. Her older brother, airline pilot Adam (Cliff Robertson), lectures her on how she should behave then lies to her about his own amorous activities as he heads out to try and find an empty friend’s apartment (since Eileen is in his own) where he can shack up with his girlfriend Mona.

But Adam is on flight call for the weekend and when his boss Drysdale (Jim Backus) calls looking for him, Eileen heads out to try and find her brother in an age before cell phones. Along the way, she meets up with Mike Mitchell (Rod Taylor) and winds up spending the afternoon with him before they get drenched in a downpour. After heading back to Adam’s apartment to dry off, Eileen decides to go for it and ditch her virginity by seducing Mike who will have none of it as he doesn’t want to be responsible. More lectures to Eileen on morality and waiting for the right man are delivered.

Now the movie takes a shift to screwball as Russ and then Adam arrive at Adam’s apartment, identies are deliberately confused and Eileen has to decide whom she truly loves.

Susanna Kearsley recommended this one to me and I can see she’s learning my movie tastes well. Here’s a 1960s sex comedy that holds up fairly well for its age unlike some others I’ve recently revisted (Jack Lemmon’s “Under the Yum Yum Tree” for one). In “Sunday in New York” we’re still in a time when women wore heels and pearls, smoking was cool and swinging bachelor pads included “modern” lighting, jazz LP records and only had one lock on the door. Idlewild Airport also had a sexy, breathy overhead announcer you could actually understand and flying was still glamorous.

A very young Jane Fonda looks marvelous in her 1963 fashions and shows that she already knew how to act even if she’s asked to be a touch ditzy for the plot. Rod Taylor is charming and handsome as are Cliff Robertson and Robert Culp. A comment at IMDB struck me in that the movie does appear to only be populated with good looking, white, middle class people except for the employees at the Japanese restaurant – which must have been almost the height of exoticness for most movie goers of that time.

The film handles its adult theme of premarital sex in a family friendly fashion without lowering itself to leers, winks and nudges. And oh, the irony of the scene we drop in on after Mike has learned what Eileen wants and is outraged, outraged I tell you!, that such a nice girl would be willing to ask him, almost a total stranger, to do such a thing. My how times have changed. But as seen our recent post on romance and morality, have the expectations that a woman will keep herself pure for marriage, or at the very least (I’ll concede) just a few very committed relationships, really changed? It seems like the status quo all the men in this film argue for is still with us to some extent. Nice girls better not be seen to sleep around too much. Even Adam, who’s spent almost the entire film trying to arrange a tryst with his hottie, ends up proposing marriage at the end with a future of settling into staid domesticity apparently before him.

This one must have seemed a bit daring and risque for the time though still firmly controlled by the Hays Code (note the Playboy magazine being thumbed through by Eileen has no picture on the cover). But without any nudity or resorting to the characters falling into caricatures or descending into silliness, it manages to convey exactly what it’s truly talking about in a light and breezy manner that provides 104 minutes of entertainment. It’s dated, yes, but check it out for a trip back to just before ‘free love’ began to shake things up.

~Jayne

Note: this is another movie not currently out in DVD format. It’s due to be shown on TCM this coming Monday, December 21st.

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Although I have not read your series novels, I have enjoyed all the paranormals in your Psy/Changeling series to varying degrees. Moreover, I have a real soft spot for angels, dragons and other winged creatures. So when I heard about your new Guild Hunter series, which has a world with angels, vampires and vampire hunters, I was very excited to read the first book, Angels’ Blood.

Twenty-eight year old Elena Deveraux is a vampire hunter. Gifted with acute senses, and, in another sense of the word, with weapons, Elena belongs to the Guild, an organization through which she is contracted to hunt wayward vampires and return them to their masters. The vampires’ masters are the angels — winged beings with special powers whose most powerful leaders, the archangels known as the Cadre of Ten, rule the earth.

The angels in this book are not necessarily saintly or even good; some of them, are, in fact, downright corrupt. It is the angels who can turn humans into vampires, but they only do so in exchange for a century of indentured servitude on the vampires’ part. Most vampires are the angels’ minions, but some vampires chafe at the angels’ authority and go rogue, and that is when the Guild’s hunters are called on to capture them.

After returning from one such mission, Elena hears from her closest friend and Guild Director, Sara, that she has been contracted to do a job for the archangel of New York, Raphael. It was not a contract that Sara could refuse, as to risk an archangel’s wrath is to risk death. Elena feels trepidation at the thought of even meeting with Raphael, much less doing a job for him, but she doesn’t feel she has much choice, and she would rather die than show her fear.

On seeing the archangel, Elena is struck silent by his unearthly beauty and the power that is “stamped on every inch of his skin.” But Raphael’s terrifying beauty and power aren’t the only shocks to Elena’s system. She is even more stunned when she learns from Raphael that instead of tasking her with retrieving a rogue vampire, he expects her to track another archangel — a being as powerful and deadly as himself.

The reasons why Raphael and the other members of the Cadre of Ten want one of their colleagues captured are shrouded in mystery, and Raphael is not above threatening Elena or using his mental powers to try and control her. When she protests this, he displays an ability to get her to cut herself. To Raphael, who has lived for over a millennium and who feels responsible for millions of lives, one woman’s life is a puny thing.

Elena fully expects that if she fails at the task he has set for her, Raphael will kill her. If she succeeds, she may come to know too many of the Cadre’s secrets. Refusing the job means signing her death warrant as well as her friends’ and her family members’, but taking the mission on is only marginally less dangerous.

Raphael is a terrifying being, unused to being disobeyed, while Elena is fiercely independent and unwilling to kowtow to anyone. But despite this, a powerful attraction coalesces between them, one that unsettles Elena and intrigues Raphael — one that will change them both.

Angels’ Blood is part urban fantasy, part romance, and part detective story, as well as an exhilarating, addictive read from start to finish.

The premise of fallible, flawed archangels who rule and oversee different geographic territories was reminiscent of one of my favorite books, Sharon Shinn’s Archangel. But the world of Angels’ Blood was also more familiar than the one in Shinn’s book.

The world-building raised some questions in my mind, since I wasn’t sure at what point in an obviously alternate earth’s history the story took place. The level of technology seemed similar to ours, with cars and cell phones still in use, as well as similar fashions, but this is also true of the Psy/Chaneling series, which if I’m not mistaken, takes place in the future of an alternate earth.

The world of Angels’ Blood shared some of our own vampire myths — the notions of vampires being vulnerable to garlic and sunlight — even though these myths were wildly inaccurate and in truth the vampires in Angels’ Blood were mostly immune to these things. It seemed to me that vampires are widespread enough in this world that most people would know better than to believe false myths.

I was willing to suspend disbelief though, because of the beautiful images created by the unexpected contrasts in the world you conjured. An angel with blue wings… Celebrities being seduced by vampires at a party as an angel watches… An angel using a cell phone… and I could go on. There was a seductive pull to this world and its not-so-angelic angels.

The mystery surrounding the archangel Elena was expected to hunt was suspenseful. There were also many interesting side characters, from Elena’s hunter friends Ransom and Sara, to the angels and vampires who were loyal to Raphael. I was particularly intrigued by Illium, an angel who was fascinated with mortals, and by Elena’s father, who had disowned her for being a hunter but showed signs of caring for her nonetheless.

Elena herself was an appealing heroine, bright, loyal and above all, courageous. Sometimes almost too courageous. I liked the way she stood up to Raphael even at his most terrifying because she “wouldn’t crawl, not for anyone.” But therefore, when she wisely chose not to antagonize the villain toward the end of the book, it seemed a bit out of character.

There were times I felt that someone as smart-mouthed as Elena should have run into even bigger trouble than she did, and I also didn’t love being told that she was feminine over and over. I never doubted Elena’s femininity because I don’t feel strength and courage are the exclusive territory of men. But despite these hiccups, I liked Elena and enjoyed reading about her.

The character that made the book, though, was Raphael.

I loved the fact that unlike many romances with immortal beings, Angels’ Blood did not shy away from the natural consequences of extreme age and power. Raphael was not merely jaded by his age and isolated by his power; he had grown distant from human concerns, even as he tried to rule wisely. His compassion extended to human beings as a whole, but not to any one individual, since in order to put thousands or even millions of lives above any one life, he had to exert his authority to a sometimes terrifying degree.

The conflicts between Elena and Raphael were therefore the conflicts between the old and the young, the somewhat detached and the deeply engaged, and between an individual’s need for freedom and a leader’s need to put the needs of the community ahead of the needs of any one individual’s wants or needs.

All of these made Raphael an exciting character to read about (his good looks and sex appeal didn’t hurt, either), and I thought it was a fascinating paradox that Raphael’s very need to rule responsibly was one of the things that threatened to make him tyrannical and capable of dark deeds.

It was thrilling to see Raphael’s feelings for Elena humanize him, though I would have liked to understand better what it was about Elena specifically that gave her the ability to engage Raphael’s emotions more deeply than any of his other lovers (all warrior women) had done in his millennium of existence.

Raphael’s transformation was so absorbing that I wanted more of it, and I felt that it was a little rushed, in that he changed a bit too much a bit too quickly. Despite this, the moment in which his realization about himself came was terrific, and the ending of the book, though not unexpected, was still so wonderful that I have read it a few times now.

I look forward to more of Raphael and Elena’s story. There are things in their past and present that they have not shared with each other yet, and the mystery surrounding Elena’s parents has also captured my interest. Not to mention that this book that the ending for this book made me feel that there is a lot more excitement in Elena’s future. In the meantime, while I eagerly await the sequel, I recommend Angels’ Blood to fans of paranormal romances. I feel certain that this series will hit it big. B+.

Sincerely,

Janine

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or ebook format from the Sony Store and other etailers.

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It was the back blurb of this book that caught my attention. The mob thinks the heroine is with the FBI. The FBI thinks she’s with the mob. And she’s dating an exterminator? After reading that I just knew I had to try this one.

Zephyr Zuckerman has a vivid imagination, four best friends from high school, a former asshole boyfriend she’s still not over and at age twenty-seven, still hasn’t made up her mind what she wants to do when she grows up. In the meantime, her parents have hit on something to occupy her time and save them some money. After the long time super of the small apartment building they own is arrested on charges of taking kickbacks from an oil company – and honestly how could that be a lot of money since there are so few tenants there? – they suggest that Zephyr take over his job.

A strangled, “What?!” is her initial response. She’s never dealt with stopped up sinks, unlocking the garbage hold, identifying unknown smells or allowing an exterminator through the building. It’s mainly the guilt over the money her parents have tossed down the drain funding her various attempts at grad schools that gooses her into agreeing to it. Now she’s the one getting the early morning phone calls from the neurotic old lady in the garden apartment. Oh yeah, and trying to figure out the exterminator who definitely doesn’t look to anyone like he’s an exterminator.

However it’s Gregory who actually discovers the mysterious secret staircase leading between two of the apartments which kicks off the whole bizarre FBI/mob mix-up. Well, that and the fact that Zephyr and her friends have a habit of crashing parties for free food and Zephyr has been called upon to do her civic duty.

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “only in New York” and it’s the one which came to mind the whole time I was reading the book. Not only because of the ultimate way the plot winds up but also because of all the details of life in the city you include. I’ve never lived there, never even been there but I can see the stores, bars, hotels and places Zephyr and her friends grew up in and around. I can hear the accents, smell the food and feel like I need to dodge out of the way of dog walkers with their fourteen charges.

And even while the plot languidly spooled out, gathered steam then hauled ass to its conclusion, I was laughing my ass off as Zephyr daydreamed about the tales she would tell her children of how she cute-met their various fathers. And how she and her girlfriends recoiled in horror at the apartment that the ex-super treated like a petri dish – definitely double glove before going there. And as she tried to figure out who and what Gregory really is.

Zephyr shares a lot with other Chick Lit heroines – mid twenties and drifting through life, sucky job, repugnant ex-boyfriend, close gal pals and a hero who baffles her before they finally work out their HEA – but she – and the book- are also genuinely funny unlike a lot of the pratfall filled Chick Lit books I’ve struggled through in an attempt to recapture the joy of the first ones I read years ago. This is a book I’m glad I got in my bimonthly care package from Jane and one I know I’ll probably read again. B+

~Jayne

This book can be purchased in trade format from Amazon or ebook format from the Sony Store and other etailers.

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I had heard high praise for your novel, “Whistling in the Dark,” after my initial foray into m/m stories. And I’d actually bought a copy of the book in its previous form though I hadn’t read it yet. So, when you offered the new and improved version to us for review, I decided it was time for me to get off my lazy butt and actually read the darn thing.

It’s post war New York City and everything is changing. Old conventions are being abandoned for the bright new possibilities as flappers bob their hair and raise their hemlines. People can actually buy a newfangled contraption called a radio and listen to music in their homes. Sleek cars cruise the streets and wild parties take place on rooftops. Jazz fills nightclubs and people are hurrying to buy up booze before Prohibition finally goes into effect. The city that never sleeps has something for everyone. You just have to know where to look.

But for Sutton Albright, New York is a last resort. He could go home to the family empire in Topeka but after what he was expelled from college for doing, the shame would embarrass his family. So he pawns most of what he owns and gratefully takes a job in a diner. It’s here, while delivering meals across the street to an eclectic mix of people, that he finally finds a home.

I love the way you slowly shade in the characters over the course of the story much like an artist adding depth to the outlines of a drawing instead of info dumping on us. It takes a little while to fully understand the people and the places, the relationships and the history but the end result is worth the wait. The trip there is something to be savored.

Information is delicately revealed about gay life in New York but never with a heavy hand. There’s a little about the anonymity of the baths, quick encounters that don’t last, rendezvous that aren’t kept, the lack of commitment. How men will marry to hide their sexual inclinations and blend into society and the danger of being found out. The hedonistic parties where anything, including public sex, goes. The beginning of the flapper age and jazz – which is a revelation to Sutton.

I love Theo the hopeless romantic who thinks “there’s someone for everyone. Even us.”

“We all live two lives, ” Miles said. “Well, most of us.” His smile at Theo was fully affectionate. “After your dad’s chased you off with a shotgun, pretense is pointless thereafter.” Theo grinned toothily.

But it’s Theo who figures out how to permanently deal with the man who preyed on Sutton – and all with only a little violence – which I feel they were entirely within the bounds of reason to exact on the man.

Gert ain’t no dumb blond no matter how she talks. Despite her sympathy and generous deeds to further Ox and Esther’s romance, she’s still very much Gert first with an eye to what will help her. I thought her ultimate game plan very much a product of the times and something that fit her personality like a glove.

It was a time of great social change and upheaval – jazz, flappers, increasing independence for women, radio, the coming of prohibition. I like the use of the Albright siblings to show this to us, the readers. Instead of just reciting these things as a backdrop, you make them come alive as Sutton and later his sister, Mary, experience them. The scene of the Albright children fondly remembering childhood events was nice and shows that their older brother isn’t entirely a stuffed shirt.

Both Sutton and Jack have had previous relationships – both are secretly hoping for something longer lasting, something more emotionally satisfying, yet neither dares to really think that he might have found something long lasting. Sutton’s former lover, David is sort of a cardboardish antagonist. I guess he’s used to show how Sutton has matured in his handling of relationships, as well as being a test of how much Sutton wants to stay with Jack.

Does Jack believe that he’ll go to hell for his sexual proclivities? His pronouncement to Sutton about when he wandered through NYC after getting home and finding his parents dead makes me think so.

There’s a lovely period feel even though, as I said, book isn’t loaded down with exhaustive descriptions of people, places and things. You don’t go overboard on period words – a few “swells” here and there – but the speech conveys the time more by lack of general swearing and modern terms than any thing else. I loved the touches such as the brief mention of what would have been a recent play – Pygmalion. The horrible toll of the flu pandemic is shown merely by the mention of the deaths of Jack’s parents and his reaction to one of the few Health Department posters detailing what had turned out to be useless ways to avoid the contagion.

The after effects of war on the characters is also shown with a light touch. The hypervigilence at night, the times when Jack gets overtaken by the need to hide, the instances when he’s afraid to discover if he’s at home dreaming of the war or in France dreaming he’s home, the memories Sutton has repressed until one night he remembers. We get glimpses of what Sutton, Jack and Mary’s fiance John Campbell endured. Since these men have barely begun to examine the issues themselves, it’s understandable that they’re not going to go into full fledged psychoanalytical mode – but when mention is made of that, it is believable since Freud’s lectures would have been known by then.

I like that the characters don’t stay static. It’s obvious that changes are ahead for them all. Ox and Es look to be getting married soon, Harry and Opal might have something going, Gert, Chase and Ned are all headed for Hollywood – even if it is mainly a way for the men to get away from the law.

The details of early radio broadcasting are fascinating. How loose and “by-the-seat-of-the-pants” the whole thing was. Music – either live or via victrola, weather reports, ads, singing, whatever. How amazing it was to these people to be able to hear all this in their homes and not only local stations but even those several states distance away.

While I loved the friends who gather in the emporium, after a while, they all just seemed too happy family, too accepting of everyone’s little foibles and flaws. Gert discovers that her flirting with Jack is pointless since he’s gay? No worries, she won’t expose his secret to Chase or Ned who could use it to destroy Jack. Harry finds out Jack has blown what little money he has? Not a problem since Harry is such a lovable stand-in parent who’ll hand over his last penny and offer his apartment as a place for Jack and Sutton to live if the emporium is lost. Sutton has sunk to poverty after being tossed out of school because he can’t face his family finding out about his sexual orientation yet when the family finally does appear – they either accept him without any signs of disgust or seem to agree to tolerate him. Which sort of negates the whole drama and set up of most of the book.

And I’m not sure of reason for Woodrow. There’s enough color and quaint charm to the story without a live crocodile thrown into the mix.

Yet despite the often cocooned feeling of acceptance within the emporium of the characters’ homosexuality, you do make sure we remember there’s always the lurking danger of them being caught out. We see it from the very beginning when Sutton is wrongly arrested on charges of degeneracy. This is followed by the robbery after he’s lured out by a man preying on homosexuals, who counts on his victims remaining silent to cover their own actions. And the number of nightclubs they’re thrown out of when the men attempt to dance together. It might appear to be an okay gay world but it really isn’t.

Jack goes all noble in the end which didn’t feel quite right. He’s spent the entire book basically getting his way – through smiles and charm – then suddenly changes. I guess this is supposed to show how deeply Sutton has affected him. But for me, the emo scene with Harry before the ending dragged a little too much as does the reconciliation. I was kind of expecting something along the lines of Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins.

The pace of the book is leisurely but doesn’t drag. Sex is there but often just hinted at. Readers looking for hot erotica will need to head elsewhere. I think this is an m/m book that even people who don’t think they’d like m/m would enjoy. Sure, there are a few issues that keep it from being an A for me but not many. I hope this new version will reach a larger number of people because it certainly deserves to. B+

~Jayne

This book can be purchased in trade paperback from Amazon or Adobe Epub from AllRomance ebooks (also Kindle).

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After eyeing it all year last year, I finally decided to sign up for Keishon’s TBR Challenge. I figured it would motivate me to dig up some of the older books that have piled up around my house which I have been ignoring in favor of the new and shiny.

Keishon’s assignment for January was category romances. I must admit that though I did have a few in my to-be-read pile, I don’t read many categories. I tend to prefer longer books. But your 2007 book, The Billionaire Next Door, has been in my TBR pile and I’ve wanted to read it for a while. This challenge was my golden opportunity.

Sean O’Banyon specializes in corporate mergers and acquisitions. Although he is now a Manhattan billionaire, pursued by women and sought after by deal-makers, Sean was once an abused child from Southie, Boston. When Sean’s once-abusive father dies, Sean, who hasn’t spoken to his father in years, travels to Boston to collect his father’s remains and get the duplex in which his father lives ready to sell.

It is in Boston that Sean encounters Lizzie Bond. Lizzie is the nurse who lives in the other apartment in the duplex, and was a friend of Sean’s father. Since Sean’s father kicked his drinking habit some time after Sean left the house and before Lizzie moved in next door, Sean and Lizzie each view the deceased Eddie O’Banyon very differently.

Though at first Sean suspects Lizzie of having tried to get her hands on his father’s money, he can’t help but be attracted to her warmth and kindness. And while Lizzie tells herself that Sean is just passing through and she is the long-term relationship type, she finds it hard to resist his good looks, his charm and his obvious vulnerability.

Then Lizzie loses her job. Before too long Sean and Lizzie are spending more and more time in each other’s company. But Sean, who cherishes being appreciated for who he is rather than for the fortune he has banked, doesn’t tell Lizzie about his true career, nor does he tell her much about his childhood. He is afraid to trust Lizzie fully, and Lizzie knows he’s holding back. Will they be able to overcome the obstacles of Sean’s present and his past?

Sean reminded me a bit of some of your heroes from the Black Dagger Brotherhood series, in that for all his external power, he could be very vulnerable at times. His memories of his father’s abuse reduced him to a child whenever he entered the apartment he had lived in as a boy.

He had also exhausted himself with work, and it was good to see him relax a little with Lizzie’s help. One of my favorite scenes in the book was one in which Sean and Lizzie “play hooky” and bask in the joys of a beautiful day. It was very satisfying to see Sean learn to relax and savor the simple things that can make life joyous.

I was a bit less enamored of Lizzie than I was of Sean. She was so sweet, caring and self-sacrificing that it was hard not to feel that she was more saint than human. I appreciated that she stood up for herself in the relationship, and I didn’t dislike her, but the way she was so patient with Sean, and never pushed him to reveal what happened in his childhood, even though she could see signs that something was wrong with the O’Banyon family, did not seem realistic to me.

On one level, The Billionaire Next Door is a classic Cinderella story, in which the sweet, hardworking and impoverished heroine gets her prince. But on another level it is also a story about two people who had completely different experiences of the same man. To Sean, his father was a monster, while to Lizzie, Eddie O’Banyon was someone who looked out for her and worried for her as she worried for him.

While I liked that Lizzie and Sean viewed Sean’s father through different lenses, there were times when I felt that the contrast between the way Sean saw his father and the way Lizzie saw him was too great. Sean seemed to have no good memories of his dad whatsoever, not even from the time before his mother died and his father began drinking. Lizzie did not see even a glimmer of her neighbor’s abusive streak.

Still, I loved that Eddie O’Banyon remained partly cloaked in mystery, even at the end of the book. He was an enigma even to those who had known him best, a loner whose innermost thoughts and feelings were never expressed. The dead take their regrets to their grave, and the living can’t always know what drove them. That was very much the case here, and it made the book more lifelike and real as well as more poignant.

One of the scenes late in the book, in which Lizzie learns about what Sean suffers and they talk about it, made me cry. You made me care very much about Sean and his brothers, and I hope very much that Billy and Mac’s books are forthcoming, since I would definitely read them. As for The Billionaire Next Door, I enjoyed it and do recommend it to our readers. B.

Sincerely,

Janine

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or ebook format from the Sony Store and other etailers.

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I admit I passed on the first book in this series, The Luxe, when it came out earlier this year. The tagline of Gossip Girl does the Gilded Age turned me off. Young adult novels featuring catty, backstabbing characters do nothing for me. And while the Gossip Girl TV series is watchable, I find the novels they’re based on unreadable. But then I read a few reviews that piqued my interest so when I got the chance to review Rumors, the second book in the series, I jumped on it. I’m glad I did.

Although I haven’t read The Luxe, I didn’t find that a problem. I think you do an excellent job including enough details to clue in new readers without resorting to mindnumbing infodumps. At the same time, I think you left out enough details that I feel I can go back and read The Luxe without finding it boring or repetitive because I already have an idea of what happens.

Set in Manhatten at the end of the 19th century, The Luxe series follows multiple younger members of the upper society elite. When Rumors opens, it’s mid-December 1899 and society is still reeling from the untimely death of its brightest ingenue, Elizabeth Holland. It doesn’t help that the gossip rags continue speculating that Elizabeth is still alive. And as expected given that she is a young, beautiful woman, the rumors range from kidnapping by a gang of thieves to being sold into slavery.

I think it’s funny that the gossip mill chose to focus on such outlandish possibilities. It makes for a better story, but the truth is even more scandalous. Elizabeth faked her own death so she could run off to California with the family coachman, with whom she’d had a secret, illicit relationship for years. Only two people know the truth: Elizabeth’s younger sister, Diana, and Elizabeth’s best friend, Penelope Hayes.

Considered by society to be impetuous, wild, and nothing like her perfect older sister, Diana has a problem. She’s fallen in love with rich heir and notorious playboy, Henry Schoonmaker, who was also previously engaged to Elizabeth. It was that engagement which drove Elizabeth to faking her own death in the first place. The Holland family, formerly the cream of Manhatten’s crop, has fallen onto hard times lately and it was Elizabeth’s marriage to Henry that would have saved them from disaster.

Unfortunately, in the aftermath of Elizabeth’s decision, Diana finds herself stuck. Both Diana and Henry must observe the proper mourning period for Elizabeth’s death. But when that period ends, then what? While Henry may love Diana, she’s the younger sister of his dead fiancee. It doesn’t take much effort to predict what society’s reaction will be.

On the other hand, there is backstabbing Penelope. With Elizabeth gone, she intends to assume the position of society’s brightest ingenue and she’s already well on her way there. What’s more, she wants Henry for herself. One of Henry’s previous dalliances, she will do everything in her power to get him back and keep him for good.

The parallels to Gossip Girl are obvious. Elizabeth is The Luxe‘s equivalent to Serena, and Penelope is Blair. But while I find the omniscient narrator of Gossip Girl to be obnoxious and off-putting, Rumors‘s narrative voice is almost charming. I wish I could say why exactly I prefer the latter over the former. Maybe it’s the historical setting over the modern one. The book is told in a manner reminiscent of old-style, high society gossip columns aiming for urbane sophistication even while gleefully ruining its members’ reputations. Each chapter is even prefaced by an excerpt from various gossip columns, newpaper clippings, and even high society handbooks, all of which contribute to the Gilded Age flavor.

It also helps that for all their money and social status, the characters are easy to identify with. Elizabeth gave up everything for the love of her life. She’s out of her element in California but she has no regrets. Diana is suffocated by society’s expectations and trapped by her family’s current situation. Penelope is tired of being second-best and much like Gossip Girl‘s Blair, I think her scheming provides the most interesting storyline in the book. Henry’s past affairs and less-than-sterling reputation influence his perspective on his relationship with Diana. I personally think he’s a bit of a fool but I guess when you’re goodlooking and have lots of money, you don’t need much sense. Lina, Elizabeth’s former maid, seeks to improve her lot in society, even if it means lying about her identity and pretending to be something she’s not.

While I thought the end of the book — specifically the closing action — was a bit rushed, this was a good, light read for me. Not exactly original, given the success of Gossip Girl, but I think the historical setting adds a nice flavor. B

My regards,
Jia

This book can be purchased in Hardcover from Amazon or Powells or ebook format.

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Long Time Coming is the first book in your trilogy about the Whitfields of New York. For the Whitfields, weddings and other celebrations are a family business. The book’s heroine, Tessa Whitfield, is an event planner and owner of Signature Bridals, the company through which she orchestrates dream weddings. Tessa’s sister, Simone, is a floral designer, and her cousin Faith is a baker who specializes in wedding cakes. The three have a warm personal and working relationship, although tension sometimes flares up between Faith and Simone, requiring Tessa to play the role of peacemaker.

As the book opens, Tessa arrives at her home and business (a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights) and finds a message from Bridget Sanborn on her answering machine. Bridget, a young bride, was to come by that evening for a wedding planning session, but can’t make it because she is on a sequestered jury. The problem is that it is now mid-October, and Bridge’s wedding is scheduled for New Year’s Eve. The meeting with Tessa was an important one, so Bridget sends her brother Micah in her stead.

Micah, an assistant DA and twenty-year veteran of the NYPD, arrives shortly after Tessa receives Bridget’s message. Micah and Tessa both like each other’s looks but before they have spent more than a few minutes in each other’s company, they are plunged into darkness. They quickly learn they are caught in blackout affecting much of New York City, and so, Tessa invites Micah to dine with her.

After dinner, they discuss Bridget’s wedding to her groom, Seth Cohen, and Tessa says she’ll need to see the location, which is the New Jersey home of Micah and Bridget’s parents. Micah offers to take Tessa there the following weekend, as well as to take her out to dinner to repay the nice dinner she had cooked for him, and Tessa agrees.

They join a neighborhood party, but when night falls and the lights have not returned, Tessa offers Micah her bed to sleep in. She comes in to check on him, sits on the bed and begins to tell him stories of past weddings, and before she knows it, she falls asleep. When she wakes the next morning to find herself alone, she realizes that Micah is a trustworthy man — he had every opportunity to take advantage but didn’t.

On Saturday, Micah takes Tessa to see his parents’ house where the wedding will be held and in the process she meets many members of Micah’s large and charming multicultural family. Later on, she also allows Micah to take her up to a house he owns in upstate New York, and while there, things start to get hot between them.

But Micah and Tessa have both been burned in the past, Tessa by a relationship with a man who turned out to be involved with another woman, and Micah in his early childhood, when his biological mother told him she loved him and then left four-year-old Micah in a hospital. Micah subsequently spent three years in foster care before being adopted by the Sanborns. Now Micah can’t bear to hear a woman say “I love you,” since it brings back memories of his abandonment, and he doesn’t stay in any romantic relationship longer than a year.

While Micah doesn’t tell Tessa all of this, he does explain early on that he’s not interested in marriage. Tessa gets the message and since she herself is deeply devoted to her time-consuming business, she suggests that the two of them be “friends with benefits.” Micah agrees, but almost from the first, part of him wants more. The same is true of Tessa. The two lose sleep from the intense desire and longing they feel when they are apart, and then try not to confess how much they each miss the other. But how long can they continue to do so?

Micah and Tessa are both likable and appealing characters. I especially like Tessa’s independence and her dedication to both her business and her family. Micah, too, was family oriented and hard working, so it was very easy to understand Micah and Tessa’s attraction to one another. I really felt their emotional connection, too.

The New York City setting is interesting as well. Outside of chick lit, I haven’t read many romances set in New York, and I do enjoy visiting the Big Apple in books, so it was nice to see the city and its surroundings depicted here. Tessa’s business of wedding organizing is also fun to read about.

Both Tessa and Micah have close and supportive families, and it is always nice to see familial warmth and support portrayed as a part of the hero and heroine’s lives.

Unfortunately, the book’s negative points outweigh it positive ones for me. My biggest problem is that Tessa and Micah, much as I liked them, seem nearly perfect and therefore for most of the book there didn’t seem to be anything major keeping them apart. Tessa’s involvement with the man in her past turns out to be nothing major, and though Micah’s issues are mentioned, they are not shown or explored in much depth for most of the book, so prior to the last few chapters they simply didn’t feel real to me. Ergo, nothing much compelled me to keep turning pages.

Also, the writing is awkward in places, both in the narration and in the dialogue, which at times feels stiff rather than flowing naturally the way conversation does.

Detailed descriptions are given of nearly every room the main characters enter, nearly every clothing outfit they wear, and most of the food they eat. While these descriptions are often quite nice (some of the food sounded mouthwatering), they don’t always seem relevant to the story, and I feel there are times when they disrupt it. For example, in the middle of an emotionally loaded encounter between Tessa and Micah’s mom, Rosalind, Tessa’s outfit and new hairdo are described in detail, and as I read, I felt it interrupted the emotion of the moment.

The last few chapters are the most emotionally charged, and my interest in the story was engaged to a greater degree there than earlier, but when Tessa and Micah are finally in conflict, neither one communicates all that well with the other. And soon after that, Micah’s commitment issues are resolved very quickly and easily, when his father gives him a new perspective. I wondered, if it was so easy, why his dad hadn’t done so years ago.

The storylines about Faith and Simone could probably have benefited from more page space. We are told that Simone’s on-again, off-again relationship with her ex-husband is bad for her more than we are shown it. Faith, meanwhile, seems like a nice enough woman but it’s hard to get a strong sense of her personality from her appearances in the story.

Many of the couples whose weddings Tessa had planned in the past are mentioned in the book by name, and I wondered if these were characters from previous books or not.

I also thought that the way the entire Whitfield family was in some way involved with weddings a bit unlikely. Not only was Tessa a wedding planner, Simone a floral designer, and Faith a wedding cake baker, but Tessa’s mother designed and sewed wedding gowns, and her father and uncle had owned a catering hall. It seemed a bit much at times, and I also had a little trouble suspending my disbelief that the wealthy clients who could afford Tessa’s services would purchase gowns from her mother’s small business, when she seemed to make only a few such gowns, rather than from a major big business designer like Vera Wang.

Long Time Coming has some strengths, but as mentioned above, for me these were outweighed by its weaknesses, especially by the absence of much conflict to keep me engrossed in the story. I could have easily put the book down and stopped reading it altogether. So, even though I appreciate the characters’ likeability and connection, my lack of engagement in the story leads me to give the book a C-.

~Janine

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format.

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Exactly one hundred days to her marriage to her husband Andy, Ellen Graham literally crosses paths with her ex-boyfriend Leo. Ellen describes their encounter this way:

From the outside, say if you were a cabdriver watching frantic jaywalkers scramble to cross the street in the final seconds before the light changed, it was only a mundane, urban snapshot: two seeming strangers, with little in common but their flimsy black umbrellas, passing in an intersection, making fleeting eye contact, and exchanging stiff but not unfriendly hellos before moving on their way.

But inside was a very different story. Inside, I was reeling, churning, breathless as I made it onto the safety of the curb and into a virtually empty diner near Union Square. Like seeing a ghost, I thought, one of those expressions I’ve heard a thousand times but never fully registered until that moment. I closed my umbrella and unzipped my coat, my heart still pounding. As I watched the waitress wiped down a table with hard, expert strokes, I wondered why I was so startled by the encounter when there was something that seemed utterly inevitable about the moment. Not in any grand, destined sense; just in the quiet, stubborn way that unfinished business has of imposing its will on the unwilling.

Although Ellen is happy in her new marriage to Andy, when her cell phone rings only minutes after the encounter and it turns out to be Leo, asking where she is, she tells him. He arrives shortly. Since they haven’t seen each other in several years and their breakup was painful for Ellen, she’s pleased to tell him she’s now married. Leo, who says he has missed her and apologizes “For everything,” suggests that they try out being friends and despite her better judgment, Ellen hears herself agreeing.

Ellen gradually tells the reader the story of her past. She is originally from Pittsburgh. Her mother, a junior high school math teacher, died of lung cancer, leaving thirteen year old Ellen, her older sister Suzanne and their salesman father bereft.

When it was time for Ellen to go to college, she applied to Wake Forest, a school in North Carolina. The roommate she was assigned could not have been more different in her background. Margot is the daughter of a rich and prominent Atlanta attorney and a beauty queen from Charleston. She has flawless manners and a fondness for the color pink. Yet despite their differences, the girls hit it off and became fast friends, and it was through Margot that Ellen met Andy, Margot’s older brother. For many years, though, she thought of Andy as nothing more than Margot’s brother.

After graduating, Margot and Ellen headed for New York, where they got an apartment and started looking for work. Nothing great panned out for Ellen, so she took up waitressing to earn her keep and photography because it interested her.

Margot encouraged Ellen to treat her photography as more than a hobby, and eventually Ellen found a job as a film processor in a photo lab. She was twenty-three year old and working there when she got summoned for jury duty and was immediately intrigued by one of her fellow prospective jurors.

Leo was then in his late twenties, originally from Queens and working as a reporter for a small newspaper. He had dropped out of college after three years because he could not pay for a fourth year, and his brothers and father were firefighters. Leo has dark hair, olive skin, high cheekbones and deep-set eyes, and Ellen felt a powerful sexual pull toward him right away.

When Leo was selected for the jury, Ellen disregarded all the advice she got from Margot’s brother Andy, an attorney, on how to avoid jury duty. Instead, she did everything she could to get selected, too. She was chosen, and eventually their mutual belief in the defendant’s innocence drew Leo to her. When Leo suggested that he visit her hotel room, against the rules for the sequestered jury members, Ellen tried to refuse, but what came out of her mouth was the word yes. As she observes, “It would be the first of many times I couldn’t say no to Leo.”

From that point on, Ellen and Leo became nearly inseparable. Ellen made herself completely available to Leo and did everything she could to impress and please him. At first, it appeared they were both passionately in love. They spent months in deep conversations and intense lovemaking, revealing everything to one another and comforting each other over their losses and vulnerabilities.

But after about a year of this, a gradual shift took place, and Ellen began to feel that while her feelings for Leo were as powerful as ever, Leo’s were becoming less so. He made it clear to Ellen that marriage was not for him. And then, after New Year’s Eve of 1999, when he failed to meet her at a party and did not call her that night or the next morning, Ellen suggested that they break up, thinking it would lead to the confrontation she wanted. Instead, Leo agreed with relief, and Ellen left his apartment feeling dumped.

In the wake of her breakup with Leo, Ellen found herself in a tailspin. She kept hoping Leo would change his mind and come back to her and spent her days listening to sad songs, staying in bed, neglecting her appearance, eating junk food and generally wallowing in her misery.

After months of this, Margot stepped in, telling Ellen that Leo made her “needy, spineless, insecure and one-dimensional,” that the pictures she took during that relationship were some of her worst, and that in essence, she needs to stop wasting her time on him.

Margot’s words snapped Ellen out of her self-pity, and she bought herself a new camera the next day. During the next year, Ellen learned all she could about photography, and got a job as the second assistant to a respected photographer. In the two years that followed, she learned even more and her confidence grew. She also dated a little bit, and healed a lot.

Then, while in Atlanta to celebrate Thanksgiving with Margot’s family three years after her breakup with Leo, Ellen ended up washing the dishes alongside Margot’s brother Andy. He asked after her and her family, and then if she’s single, and that is when Ellen realized Andy was interested in her and that she could fall in love with him.

Andy and Ellen had a smooth courtship that ended in marriage after three years of dating, and as the book begins, Ellen is doing well as a photographer and very happy with her husband. Andy, is as she says “approachable, friendly and somewhat goofy,” as well as “very cute” and “very successful.” Ellen says of the way their romantic relationship began:

It might not be as titillating as striking a love connection with a dark stranger while sequestered on a murder trial, but in some ways it was even better. It had substance. A sweet, solid core. A foundation of friendship and family–the simple things that really mattered, things that lasted. Andy wasn’t about mystery because I already knew him by the time he asked me out. Maybe I didn’t know him well, and the knowledge I did have was mostly filtered through Margot–but I still knew him in some fundamental, important way. I knew where he came from. I knew who he loved and who loved him back. I knew that he was a good brother and son. I knew that he was a funny, kind, athletic boy. The sort of boy who helps with the dishes after Thankgiving dinner, ulterior motive or not.

But when Ellen returns home from the diner, she decides not to tell Andy about her encounter with Leo, because Andy knows that her relationship with Leo was, in her own words, “intense,” and she is afraid he might be hurt. Instead, Ellen makes passionate love to her husband, trying to obliterate Leo’s presence from her mind.

When Ellen and Andy fly to Atlanta to visit the pregnant Margot and her husband Webb, Ellen is disturbed to find a message from Leo on her cell phone, one in which he says he has a question for her. She resolves not to return the call, but changes her mind when her preoccupation with what Leo’s question might be interferes with her ability to enjoy her visit with Margot and her in-laws.

So Ellen finally calls Leo back, and he reveals that he has a great opportunity for her — he’s arranged for her to photograph rock legend and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Drake Watters for the cover of a magazine. It is a huge career break for Ellen, but she does the right thing and calls back to leave a message on Leo’s machine turning it down.

But several days later, when Ellen’s agent calls about the same job, Ellen, assuming that Leo has taken himself out of the picture and is being generous, feels that she can accept the work.

Since Ellen’s sister Suzanne is a huge Drake Watters fan, Ellen allows her to tag along to Los Angeles for the photo shoot. But when Ellen arrives at the shoot’s location, she discovers Leo is waiting there. Will Suzanne, who always liked Leo and is less than approving of Ellen’s wealthy new family, prove an adequate chaperone, or will Ellen give in to her attraction to Leo?

Love the One You’re With is written in Ellen’s nicely conversational voice. As was very much the case with your first book, Something Borrowed, you do a very good job at portraying your heroine’s moral dilemma, her desire to do the right thing and the attraction she finds difficult to resist.

The book is propelled by a great deal of suspense surrounding the question of what moral lines Ellen will cross and what lines she will remain behind. Even as I wondered if Ellen would cheat on Andy, or even if not, what the fallout might be from her keeping secrets from him and from Margot, I found myself liking all the characters. There are no bad guys here, just imperfect human beings.

I also liked the way Ellen’s mother’s death and her lower middle class background affected the romantic conflict. Ellen had reinvented herself by going to Wake Forest and befriending the wealthy Margot. There were times when I wondered if she hadn’t married Margot’s brother Andy partly because his family was warm and loving and she did not have a mother. Leo’s background was more similar to Ellen’s, in that neither of them had rich parents, and they also both shared a love for New York.

But it was clear that Ellen did love Andy, despite the powerful attraction and unresolved feelings she had for Leo. As I read, I found myself torn between Andy, who was such a nice and committed guy, and Leo, who was more sexy to me, and who clearly also had feelings for Ellen.

In the end, I was mostly satisfied with Ellen’s choice and with the resolution of the story.

I also liked the way you portrayed the characters. Ellen is the star of this book, and she is mostly likable and understandable. There are a few times she behaves immaturely, but since she knows she is being immature, it was easy to forgive those instances. I thought the way she interrogates herself about her own choices, and the way she tries to justify or rationalize some of her more questionable actions was very lifelike and real.

Leo has a kind of charismatic appeal that makes it easy to understand Ellen’s attraction to him. He has just a little bit of the brooding loner and the dangerous bad boy in him, but at the same time, he also shows a very human and sympathetic side that makes it tempting to forgive him for the rough breakup that he put Ellen through, and for coming on to a married woman.

Andy is the quintessential nice guy, and he is mostly sweet and thoughtful, calm and calming, and clearly committed to Ellen. I have to say though that I wish that Andy’s courtship of Ellen had been shown more in the book, because I think then I might have found him as romantic and appealing as I did Leo, whereas without that, Andy’s slight goofiness did not always charm me, and I did wonder whether he and Ellen had enough in common.

Margot and Suzanne were interesting characters too, so completely different from one another yet both important to Ellen, in her corner at times, but far from perfect themselves. Ellen’s friendship with Margot feels almost as central to the story as her relationships with Andy and Leo, and I love the way you emphasize female friendships in your books, and make them as interesting as they are in real life.

While I found the ending of Love the One You’re With a bit rushed, I enjoyed the book much better than your most recent one just before it, Baby Proof, and almost as much as Something Borrowed. Something Blue remains my favorite of yours, but since Love the One You’re With was suspenseful and thoroughly enjoyable, I recommend it to our readers and give it a B+.

Sincerely,

Janine

PS for readers. Since the spoiler of who Ellen chooses in the end has been requested — Ellen ends up with Andy.

This book can be purchased in hardcover from Amazon or Powells. No ebook format.

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You came close to a trifecta. You really did but it’s with sadness that I’m going to have to grade this book down. Don’t worry, it’s not a D grade because so many things are still right about it that were right about the first two books in the series. But a few things missed and that’s enough.

It’s not that Sean O’Sullivan changes radically from the easy talking, female pleasing man we’ve seen already. The guy knows how to talk, kiss and finesse his way through relationships, racketball games and courts of law. Want something fixed? Sean’s the man who can. And he’ll leave most everyone with a smile on their face after he’s gotten his way.

It’s not that I don’t like Cleo Hollings, one of the Deputy Mayors of NYC who’s got a pair and who isn’t afraid to show that she does. This woman gets off on negotiating union contracts, thrives on the pressure of getting a strike bound city moving again, enjoys Town Hall meetings in which she knows she’s going to get yelled at. And she’s sexually aggressive too.

The dialogue is still wonderful. As I read the book, I kept marking scenes that I wanted to put up here until it got to the point that I was in danger of trying to quote 1/3 of the book. And that’s way too much to put in one review!

It’s not that I don’t like the conflict that you set up between Sean and Cleo. Both have high powered jobs that demand a lot of their time. Both have family demands to answer to. Both pencil people in during the spare 2 minutes they might have free. This is real life.

It’s that after setting up this great conflict, there’s not enough time to let it play out. Cleo has issues from a past relationship and it’s one in which she admits that the man wasn’t pond scum. I can see her hesitation since the reason he bailed is still an active concern. But. She and Sean are together for all of three weeks before Cleo is basically tossing the poor man to the curb and insisting that it’s Never Going to Work. Give the man a chance. Give the relationship a chance. Don’t rush him either in or out of it. I realize with a category length story this can be hard but it’s something you managed with the other two books so I know it can be done.

I know there’s a lot to like in this book. And that’s including the epilogue which I’m not a great fan of. I don’t think readers will go wrong trying it on its own or finishing out the trilogy with it. It’s got great characters, hotness and snappy dialogue. But I just wish it’d had more time for the resolution of all the that you included in it. B

~Jayne

This book can be purchased in mass market from Amazon or Powells or ebook format and three signed copies from Kathleen. Woot! Make a comment, be eligible for the drawing. It’s that simple. Sweet.

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Your book, Driving Him Wild, came to my attention when it was announced as one of the RNA nominees for best category romance of 2007. As Sarah from SBTB notes, the lovely Harlequin folks decided that they would change the title for us Americans to His For the Taking. Driving Him Wild was a much more apt title and I kept wondering throughout the story how the heroine in the book was EVER for the hero’s taking.

But aside from the title, this was a very surprising Harlequin Presents. First off, the heroine is the one with money. Zoe Drake finds Maine forest ranger Nick Giroux, sitting outside her great-aunt Zinia’s Park Avenue apartment. Nick believes that his father, who left his family 16 years ago, is hiding out inside the apartment and he is not leaving until he gets inside. Zoe is partially turned on by Nick’s aggressiveness and partly creeped out. After all, Nick is a gorgeous specimen of a man. On the other hand, it is New York.

Zoe explains that she is there to get the clothes that recently deceased Xinia wanted to be buried in. Zoe gives in to Nick’s pleas and lets him inside to look around. He finds nothing but Nick provides a good distraction for the pain of the loss of the one family member that seemed to accept Zoe for who she is. Zoe does not fit in with her immediate family. Her sisters are all successful, petite, and traditionally beautiful. Zoe is the ugly duckling – larger, a cab driver with no meaningful ambition. She dreads family get togethers because of her inability to measure up.

Nick’s family loss happened years ago. His father’s abandonment led Nick to become a caretaker. Ordinarily, his choice of women were much like the animals he was saving – small and helpless. Zoe is anything but he is attracted to her nonetheless. Nick is determined to find his father and sticking close to Zoe, his best clue, seems like the perfect way to muddle around the City.

While I appreciated the themes of the book that family is what you make it and you are not made by your family, I thought that some of the character drawings, particularly of Zoe’s family were heavy handed. The sisters, in particular, were unlikeable, full of pettiness and self absorption. Zoe was actually, for all her outward independence, seemed really in need of Nick’s care. Physically she wasn’t his normal “type” but emotionally she wasn’t much stronger than the wounded NYC pigeon that Nick decided to save.

Nick wasn’t much better. He had been living in the past, unable to make a committment because he was paralyzed emotionally by his father’s abandonment. His inability to deal with this made him project onto Zoe feelings and intentions that she didn’t actually have. One problem I found with this was the speed at which Nick fell for Zoe and then was perturbed by her lack of immediate capitulation which he then viewed as a rejection. Sometimes, I felt like the emotional arcs and revelations were dealt with a heavy hand and that took away from the meaningful character development.

Overall, though, this was an unusual Harlequin Presents because it did not deal with the billionaire businessman and an extravagant locale. Instead, the strength of the book was the extravagance of the emotional exploration. B.

Best regards

Jane

This book can be purchased in mass market or ebook format.

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