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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best regards,

Jane

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I did receive a copy of your book from a publicist to review but I ended up buying the book from Amazon as I believe it was discounted at one point and I prefer to read digital over paper. I had heard good things about your book and was excited to read it. While I understood the appeal, I found the story to be standard paranormal romance fare bringing little new to the sub genre.

There is a group of good shapeshifting dragons called the NightFury who are fighting against bad shapeshifter dragons called the Razorbacks. The bad shapeshifter dragons are engaged in scientific experiments that would aid their dominance of the world. The good shapeshifter dragons are experiencing a life changing moment in the beginning of the book. The leader, Bastian, has decided to take a mate and obtain a son in order to further the numbers of good dragons available to fight the bad dragons.

The war had gone on for so long that Bastian had lost count of the casualties. Centuries of fallen comrades, of hunting and being hunted. It would never stop. A clean victory was an impossibility for either side now. With only a handful of warrior dragons left, little choice remained but to replenish their numbers…and that meant breeding the next generation.

The problem is that every woman who births a dragon son (and it is always a male child) dies and while Bastian feels a bad about this, it cannot be helped. He’ll make sure that the mating, however, is wonderful and he’ll also take care of the mate until she has the baby dragon. That Bastian. He’s a thoughtful guy. The fact is that the “good guys” simply want Bastian to pick a girl out of the crowd and be done with it despite the fact that they are essentially dooming a girl to death. But all is okay because a) they feel bad about it and b) they’ll take good care of her until the alien baby kills her during the birthing process. But it’s not murder, according to Bastian:

He didn’t even know what she looked like and yet, he mourned her. Already felt sorry for the life he would take. It wasn’t murder. Not really. He would never willingly hurt a woman, but that didn’t change what he must do. To save his kind he must breed, and females never survived birthing Dragonkind.

But it’s not murder to  choose to impregnate a girl knowing the end result will kill her.

The dragons have human servants, much like the Black Dagger Brotherhood, that are “bred to serve”. “It was his job to keep the lair organized and well stocked, to caretake like you read about. The TLC routine had been bred into Daimler.” What’s really unfortunate is that Daimler is a Numbia, a cherub with dark curls and gold teeth. I was uncomfortable with the term Numbai being used with people who are “bred” to serve.

Bastian has limited time in which to seduce a woman because in five days, the Meridian will be in alignment which is the time in which the power is the highest and Bastian should be breeding. Fortunately, Bastian runs into Myst, a nurse, at a scene in the mountains where a young woman was birthing a dragon baby. Myst does not know what is wrong with her patient but she recognizes that the baby will have to be excised lest they both die. Bastian finds the two of them and Myst’s electrostatic energy marks her as a powerful woman. In fact, Myst is referred to as a “female of great worth” which seemed to be yet another nod or derivation of the BDB.

Bastian immediately marks Myst as his own and sets out to convince her that they must be together. He actually falls in love with her at the first whiff of her powerful energy and cannot want to copulate. Strong babies are derived from two powerful parents. Of course, there is that little problem of Myst dying once she has given birth and the nightly fighting that Bastian must engage in with the bad guys.

Consistency in details was a little problematic. For instance, at location 3331, Myst complains about the kitchen being filled with only organic foods “The entire kitchen was full of organic, whole food that no one in her right mind would want to eat. And she was a nurse, for pity’s sake…totally game for the health food scene.” But they also have chips, makings for waffles, and other delicious foods. At location 4626, “But then, the Numbai was all about pleasing those he served. Well that, and food. The male never missed a beat in the kitchen. Was always experimenting, serving new dishes, everything gourmet-style. Which was a good thing. Daimler kept the males of the lair satisfied in the eats department… ”

There are a number of lines or analogies that didn’t make sense. For instance, “The stats read like a rap sheet without the criminal element: twenty-eight years old, lived alone, a landscape architect with a shoe fetish. Okay, so she’d made up the shoe thing, but…really.” Why is twenty-eight years, lived alone, statistics in a rap sheet?

Myst wasn’t an easy pushover. She was scared of the dragons, wanted to escape from Bastian’s stronghold, and exhibited some fairly good sense. The dynamic of the poor downtrodden warrior males living in their secret conclave to which they will bring a woman, one by one, is a magnetic storyline.  Bastian and his band of half dragons are trying to do good in their world.   The  idea of men taking women to their beds, impregnating them with the knowledge that doing such acts would kill the female is fairly unappealing. No matter how great their remorse, it really is murder.  In some ways, this only a story that can be told within the romance boundaries. We readers know that murder won’t happen in these circumstances because Myst dying would prevent the HEA.  Readers who are primarily PNR fans might enjoy this series despite the fact that it brings nothing new to the table.  The pace is good, the fight scenes are entertaining, and Myst and Bastian have a strong connection.  C

Best regards,

Jane

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This is a two story collection and while the world was intriguing, I felt like I was only given tiny glimpses of what could be instead of a full fledged immersion into a new world. I’m not sure if it was because of the two story structure or whether the teasing reveal was an intentional way storytelling choice.  The two stories are told from the point of view of the Sword and the Chalice of Queen Idony.

Much of the worldbuilding is a mystery and it hampered my enjoyment of the stories, particularly the first one.  By the time I had reached the second, I had a more fulsome understanding of what was going on, but the setting, politics, intrigues, were still pretty nebulous.

Earthly Desires

We open Earthly Desires with young Dare, the chalice for Queen Idony whom is some kind of diety to the land, a powerless diety who has been kidnapped.  Dare is one half of Queen Idony’s entourage.  There is the Sword (Cyrus) and the Chalice (Dare).  What purpose these two serve isn’t revealed for some time.

Dare receives a message encoded from the Queen to seek out a ship called Deviant.  Without much skill, Dare embarks and is kidnapped, saved, brought aboard Bodhan’s submarine brothel, Siren.

A lot happens to Dare, but she is not the instigator of action which made me wonder about her abilities.  References are made to her as a shield guard and engaging in feats of amazing resilience but she is presented as this diminituve almost child like person. Where is her wit? her strength?

Perhaps because of the shortness of the story, Bodhan and Dare engage in sexual activities quickly despite Dare being a virgin.  (The quick movement in the book from set scene to sex scene was problematic in the second book as well but for different reasons).  Dare had never been outside of her land, her main companions being the Queen and the Sword.

There are a number of great ideas brought up in this story.  Bodhan is a flesh peddler yet his ship serves as a safe spot for many women to sell their services.  Dare is a diminutive but has a strange power that lends her strength.  The world is intriguing and mysterious.  Unfortunately, none of these interesting things were teased out. I was impatient during the sex scenes, feeling like the couple wasn’t ready for that type of action and the word count could have benefited from more world building and secret revealing than sexual pleasure.

Fiery Temptations

This entry tells the story of the Chalice or Cyrus.  Cyrus was sent on a mission and was sold into bondage through an unfortunate encounter with Seraphina, a Felidae.  Felidaes are a creature that appeared part human, part thing. (Tail, ears and claws).   Initially Seraphina was portrayed as amoral, completely beholden to her own interests, often sexual in nature.  She appeared to be at least bisexual.  In Fiery Temptations it seemed like there was an attempt to redeem her.  She wouldn’t have given Cyrus up to the people who paid her for him had she known how he would be treated, she asserts.  I liked her more when she was consistently self interested because the transformation would have been more interesting.

Cyrus was a more typical romance hero – strong, tall, and protective in nature.  His pride smarting from being deceived, he nonetheless desires Seraphina like an addict seeking another hit of a bad drug.

This story focused a bit more on revealing the secrets of the world building and because I thought the world was so interesting, I liked it much more than the first.  I was frustrated whenever we cut away from the pursuit of the answer to the mystery for Cyrus and Seraphina to have sex or flirt. I wanted less about their relationship and more about the setting and the mystery subplot.

In the end, I wished that these weren’t erotic romances because the rush to insert the sex distracted from the interesting possibilities that you presented about a new world.  Paranormal romance is in need of fresh new settings and this was fresh and new. I just wanted more time spent developing the world so that it became more real instead of merely a backdrop for sexual antics.  C

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While I enjoyed Dragon Bound, the first novel in your Elder Races series of paranormal romances, I had a hard time finishing the second novel, Storm’s Heart. The third book, Serpent‘s Kiss, felt rushed and left me unsatisfied. I went into your latest novel, Oracle’s Moon, hopeful, but worried. I wanted the sort of compulsive, engrossing read I’d found in Dragon Bound, but after books two and three, I was afraid I wouldn’t get it. Boy, was I wrong.

I’m so glad I read Oracle’s Moon. I think it just may be my favorite in the series. It is that rare late-series book that appears to stand well alone. It features characters from previous books, and mentions earlier events, but aside from the set-up, the plot doesn’t hinge on them. Yes, it helps to have read Serpent’s Kiss first, but the paranormal politics subplot that threads through the rest of the series is not as strong here. In Oracle’s Moon, the romance is the primary focus and draw of the story. I really enjoyed it.

Poor but proud, Grace Andreas is the latest in a long line of oracles stretching back to ancient Greece. She is struggling to balance the enormous weight of her position as oracle while caring for her young niece and nephew, who were orphaned when her sister and brother-in-law died in a car accident.

Readers of the series met Grace in Serpent’s Kiss when she was inadvertently drawn into an Elder Races power struggle by the heroine and hero of that novel, Carling and Rune. In Serpent’s Kiss, Carling called in a favor from a powerful Djinn, Khalil, and asked him to protect Grace and her family. Grace doesn’t know it, but Khalil’s promise was not a time-limited deal. At the start of Oracle’s Moon, she’s pretty much stuck with the meddling, overprotective Djinn who has taken a shine to her niece and nephew.

In a way, Oracle’s Moon reminded me of one of those category romances that manage to wedge the words “babies” and “billionaire” into the title. Like those stories, this book offers the arc of a cold, powerful man who finds himself drawn to the comforts of children and family, only to fall in love with the woman struggling to hold that family together. Except, instead of a billionaire, the hero is a Djinn prince. And instead of a scrappy secretary struggling to manage kids and career, the heroine is an oracle struggling to support her family and accept her “gift.” And instead of the hero’s dysfunctional, snobby family standing between our protagonists’ happiness, Khalil and Grace have to deal with a threat to her life and Khalil’s dysfunctional, snobby family.

Though Oracle’s Moon is set in a decently-drawn paranormal world, it is basically a traditional romance story. Grace and Khalil are not drawn to each other because they are “fated mates” or because of some magical force; they begin a relationship because they are attracted to each other, and continue it because they like and respect each other.  The lack of any paranormal plot mechanism forcing Grace and Khalil together made their romance sweeter, and created a greater feeling of uncertainty in me about how they would work things out than I’ve felt with previous books in this series.

At first, Grace is leery of beginning a relationship with Khalil. She says:

…the kids must always come first…I’ve been too impetuous lately, about a lot of things, and I need to be more careful. I think friendship is all I can offer you.

To which Khalil’s response is a very thoughtful and well-reasoned:

I will not make things harder for you. I said I would protect you and the children, and I will in this way, too.

Of course, they do reconsider, and shortly thereafter decide to go on a date. Khalil’s preparation for the date is amusing and endearing. Though I adored Grace and Khalil together, I also enjoyed the scenes where they are each on their own. They’re smart and reasonable, and at various important moments in the story, they actually take a moment to stop, think things through, and act according to the result of their thinking.

At one point early on in the story, Grace reflects that the enjoyment she gets from teasing a powerful being like Khalil “might put her in the unforgivable range of TSTL—Too Stupid to Live.” No worries there. I think Grace and Khalil are Too Smart to Dislike.

In addition to an enjoyable romance and likable protagonists, Oracle’s Moon also has serviceable subplots. The death of Grace’s sister and brother in law may not have been an accident, her life is in danger from unknown forces for unknown reasons, and Khalil has some dangerous relatives who aren’t too pleased he has fallen for a human. While there was nothing particularly new or amazing in the development of these subplots I really enjoyed the way the resolution required a balance of power and trust between Grace and Khalil.

Before starting this book, I was curious as to how you would handle the inherent power imbalance between a magical, immortal being and a woman who is, aside from her gift/curse of prophecy, mortal. I enjoyed watching Grace take charge of her power almost as much as I enjoyed watching Khalil recognize and accept his tender emotions. The resolution to their power imbalance was a little strained, but overall, organic to the story.

I also appreciated the hint of uncertainty left at the end. Paranormals often take the romance genre’s fairytale-inspired Happily Ever After requirement too literally—characters don’t just live happily ever after, they live happily, immortally, forever and ever after. This story left me with the impression that though there were still some questions to be answered about the future, Khalil and Grace would work them out because they loved each other and wanted to be together. This ending left me with the feeling that while the book was over, Grace and Khalil’s story together was just beginning, and that, dear author, is fairest ending of them all.

A/A-

~ Josephine

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I had not planned to read this book. I kind of recoil from the blend of paranormal mysticism and romantic suspense. For some reason these blends don’t appeal to me even though I have read and enjoyed them in the past (Dream Man and Now You See Her by Linda Howard, for example, are favorites of mine). However, Wicked Pixie alerted me to Mandi’s review on Goodreads and that she had DNF’ed the book because of the racial slurs that peppered the story. Mandi took some grief for this review and you came in to say that the voice behind the racial slurs died just a few chapters into the book, as if the dying of the character washed away the offensiveness of the book. I was curious enough to find out for myself what would justify the use of repeated racial slurs in a contemporary genre fiction book and thus bought this book at the indecently high price of $9.99.

I recognize that by writing this review, I will be propelling sales to those who are curious, just as I was curious but I want to talk about the book and the uses of the racial slurs and thus even though I find the book troublesome and offensive, I think the inadvertent promotional benefit is worthwhile.

Teague Creek was convicted of the brutal murder of his girlfriend, a DA who was investigating a series of arsons. (Pay no attention to all the legal errors such as the DA doing the investigating that a fire cop would do. I’m not sure that this book contains even one correct legal representation). It was posited that she figured out it was her paramedic/firefighter boyfriend and he killed her to silence her.  Teague breaks out of prison during a medical visit with the help of another prison, Taz, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.  The two take a hostage, a woman named Alyssa Foster. Alyssa is a mix of heritages.  She identifies with no particular race and the only reason that the reader knows she might have some non Caucasian blood is that she becomes the target of a variety of racial slurs from Taz.  He calls her a dink immediately.  The first four chapters of this book are a barrage of racial terms and racial stereotypes.  Luckily for me, the book moves beyond that once Taz is dead, but for the first 80 pages or so you don’t go three pages without something offensive being slapped in front of your face.  The following are the excerpts with corresponding page numbers (according to my Kindle copy).  I am putting everything in a spoiler code (except for you RSS readers) because the racial slurs are so numerous and so offensive that I think that they could be considered triggers.

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

The sadly ironic part is that the next two hundred pages are incredibly boring. The two talk, drive, talk, eat, talk, kiss, drive, and end up at a cabin.  Teague isn’t supposed to be much of a talker but the two seemed to have non stop repetitive conversations and internal monologues about how angsty their situation is.

Alyssa’s initial representation is contradictory and relies heavily on the romance reader’s assumption that all heroes are intrinsically good.  In other words, Teague who has the tattoos of a member of the Aryan Brotherhood such as a swastika and other symbols of hate on his body; who hangs around with a man who uses the worst racial slurs possible; who  has threatened Alyssa at every turn to do her harm; to kill a cop, a child and a woman if she doesn’t cooperate with him; who has placed in her harm’s way repeatedly; who has essentially ruined her career by helping to plant evidence that makes her look like an accomplice, is really a good guy.  When Alyssa voices her physical desire for this racist murderer as she defines him, we are supposed to nod our heads at her good taste.  When Alyssa doesn’t trust him and treats him with doubt, we are supposed to be chagrined at her inability to see through all the superficial bad things to the truly heroic guy underneath.

This book asks the reader to buy into the idea that Alyssa should instinctively know that all these bad things are merely acts and a true heroine would recognize the decency and humanity behind the swatiska emblazoned escaped felon/convicted murderer. About 40% in, Alyssa notes “There was a lot of good in this man, more good than she’d seen in most men.” and I couldn’t help but think that Alyssa must know really horrible men if Teague is the guy she think is better than most men.

Teague and Alyssa have a dilemma. In order for the happy ever after to occur, Teague must be exonerated from his crime; solve the mystery behind who framed him; and repair past sundered relationships.  Teague wants to do none of these things and although he has no money, he is intent on doing things his way which would essentially mean life on the run for him and his child.  Alyssa wants to do things a different way.

Here’s what struck me the most after thinking about this book for a while. The Aryan Brotherhood character’s dialogue is crafted with such attention to detail. Some of the slurs were so obscure to me I had to google them. Others were all to painfully familiar. This was a throwaway character who dies in Chapter 4 and then only two passing references are made to him throughout the rest of the book. Teague supposedly hooked up with Taz because Taz had outside contacts, ones that were willing to help him, but those contacts never come looking for Teague and Taz.  Never.  There is never any repercussions for Taz dying.  He was, literally, a throwaway character one whose deletion from the book would not have affected the plot arc in any fashion. You could have replaced him with anyone and the story would have remained much the same.  Additionally, it did appear that Teague had at least one friend on the outside who may have been willing to help him.

Contrast this to the legal aspect of the book. The hero is a convicted murderer. In order for a happy ever after to occur, the conviction has to go away. There are ways for this to happen but not in the way that is described in the book. I’m not sure how much legal research was done for the story, but I wondered if there was even one legal detail in the story that was correct. The ending was almost comical in its improbability.

There were other important inconsistencies. For instance, at one point Teague points out that he is totally broke and cannot afford any more appeals. Earlier in the story, however, Teague uses a credit card to do a cash balance transfer of $5,000 to Alyssa’s account to implicate her heavily in his escape.  Where did he get the credit card?  Was it just lying dormant for 3 years?  I thought he has spent all his money in pursuing custody while in prison!  (Yes, he pursues custody of his child while in prison and is devastated when he loses). And then he, a firefighter/paramedic, asks Alyssa what PTSD is:

What the hell is PTSD”

“Post-traumatic stress disorder.”

There are almost no details given regarding the hero’s paranormal ability which consists of primarily being able to burn things with his hands and heal things (mostly cauterization but also reversing his burns). Throughout the story, this paranormal element is never explained and used in the most shallow of ways. He alternately burns and heals Alyssa and uses his high internal energy to hot wire about five cars. That’s it.

This is a Brava and I did think the story would be more spicy than it was. The story contained two full sex scenes and one was fairly tepid. It’s definitely not overly spicy. I wasn’t convinced of the chemistry between the two characters. Alyssa was constantly ruminating about Teague’s amazingly hot body but that seemed about it. Oh, and she noticed how, once he had showered all the blood off him, he looked “cleaner,more human.” Those powers of observation are keen.

These inconsistencies aren’t fatal to the book, but placed in juxtaposition with 10-12 hateful, racial slurs used to build the character of one throwaway person in the book, the inconsistencies place the use of racial slurs in sharp relief. Why?

These words are hateful and harmful. Why are they used? What do they add to the story? I wished some editor at Kensington had taken a step back and asked these questions.  This is no Huck Finn comparison. In the first place, the use of racial slurs in Huck Finn were period appropriate. Those terms, unfortunately, were used in regular commonplace vernacular. The use of these types of slurs today get people fired, even if they are used accidentally.

This language added nothing to the story other than to be shocking and offensive. Maybe people who have never been the subject of racial slurs don’t recognize how harmful these words could be but people whose business is made out of the use of words should recognize their power.

I’m not saying that racial slurs should never be used in literature or even genre fiction like romance, but I do believe that when you go down that route, there should be a good reason for their use.  There was no good reason for the barrage of hateful words used by a character that is non essential to the storyline.  I’m giving the book a D because I feel I may be overly biased due to the racial slurs.

Best regards,

Jane

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While historical romances aren’t my favored genre, I do love paranormal romances. If I pick up a historical, more often than not there’s a whiff of the paranormal in it. I remember first hearing about your debut novel several months ago and it sounded interesting enough that it stayed on my radar. As I was warned, Firelight is certainly a mix of many different genres. I’m all for genre-mixing, but I’m just not sure it worked here.

The youngest daughter of a destitute family, Miranda Ellis was born with an unusual gift. She has the ability to start fires, and I don’t mean with matches. In fact, it is because of this firestarting ability that her family is penniless. To survive, Miranda has taken to using her pretty face (and other, ahem, assets) to steal.

That ends when Miranda is forced to marry the infamous Lord Benjamin Archer, who wears a mask to hide his disfigured face. Miranda is resigned to her fate but complications arise when Archer becomes the main suspect of a series of murders. The victims were all prior acquaintances of Archer’s and more importantly, were known to be on poor terms with him.

Despite his reputation, Miranda knows that her husband can’t be responsible. She sees the goodness in him. She embarks on a quest to discover Archer’s past in order to learn the mystery behind his mask and why he hides his face from the world. But in doing so, she attracts the attention of the real murderer and may soon become the next target.

Firelight is indeed a paranormal historical and while I think that’s an accurate subgenre label, it’s also very much a gothic romance in tone. At first glance, I thought these elements would work well together. But as I continued reading, I was strongly reminded of a conversation I once had with Jane in which we discussed why paranormal historicals often fail for readers. In a nutshell, we concluded that both paranormals and historicals require a certain amount of worldbuilding to ground the narrative for a reader. In a paranormal historical, you have to combine the paranormal worldbuilding with the historical worldbuilding. Unfortunately, you end up with one of two options: success or a confusing mess. I found Firelight to be a confusing mess.

I realize a lot of this is the result of my preferences. I know I’m particular when it comes to worldbuilding. I don’t like it when things are dropped in without any explanation whatsoever and I’m just supposed to accept it. As a reader, I’m already accepting that there are fantastical elements which, let’s be fair, is a pretty big suspension of disbelief. I need a little more grounding to avoid frustration. In this case, I’m specifically talking about Archer’s “disfigurement.” What was up with that? I was torn between rolling my eyes at the tweeness and going WTF at the random tossing in of Egyptian mythology.

This in turn brings us to what I consider the major flaw of the novel. There’s a fine balance when you draw out a mystery. It can increase tension or it can become outright annoying, thereby having the opposite effect of slowing down the narrative. While it was initially novel to speculate about Archer’s disfigurement and presumed paranormal dilemma, this soon got tiresome. And the more tiresome it got, the less engaged I became. It was very easy for me to put this book down. I sometimes forgot I was reading it and had to force myself to pick it back up. By the time we learn Archer’s secret, the revelation was so anticlimactic I found I couldn’t care less.

At its heart, this is a Beauty and the Beast story. Unfortunately, the romance left me cold. I understood why Archer loved and adored Miranda. But I never quite followed why Miranda began to reciprocate. Whether or not this romance works for a reader will depend on that reader’s tolerance for couples who lie to each other. Miranda and Archer spend the majority of the book lying to one another. Miranda doesn’t tell him about her firestarting abilities. Archer doesn’t tell her about his past, what he knows about the murders being pinned on him, or about his disfigurement. This type of storyline is one of my least favorites. They kept lying to one another and shutting each other out, so I failed to see any lowering of defenses or the emotional intimacy I like to see in romantic plots.

Overall, I found this book to be unfocused. That could simply be due to the fact that I was so irritated with the drawing out of Archer’s mystery disfigurement that I began to notice other flaws. It happens. In theory, I thought the various elements should go well together but they came off as jumbled to me: Archer’s mystery disfigurement, Miranda’s firestarting ability, the murders, Archer’s rivals and enemies – one of whom keeps flirting with Miranda and may not be entirely human, a mysterious woman who may be Archer’s ex-lover, a mysterious club that Miranda cannot track down and so on. I guess I expect a certain level of depth to any given plot element and when you have too many in a book of this length, it starts becoming a bit shallow.

I can see why some readers would enjoy this book. It has a gothic sensibility to it. It’s very reminiscent of Phantom of the Opera. For all that I found Archer’s secret to be underwhelming and perhaps a little silly, it was fairly original. I don’t say that often when it comes to paranormals. But despite all that, I’m afraid this book just didn’t work for me. C-

My regards,
Jia

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This book came to my attention because someone mentioned that you were the same author as Tori St. Claire. I reviewed your erotic romance, Stripped, earlier this month. Immortal Hope’s world building follows in a long line of paranormal romance books that feature the wounded hero who needs to find his mate to make him whole again. I’m a big fan of this trope so while this book didn’t work for me, I am hopeful the next one in the series will.

My main problem is the heroine and the flawed worldbuilding and that the conflict, which was based upon her forgetting something very important, made her look like the dumbest heroine in a long time.

The series involves a fight between immortal Knights Templar and fallen angels.  The Knights can only kill so many demons before succumbing to the dark side.  God has created seraphs and if the Knights Templar can find their seraph they will be saved by her goodness.  The story starts out by describing nine cursed Templars, but there seem to be several hundred spread all across the world or at least the white, Christian part of the world like Europe.

The heroine, Anne MacPherson, is a PH.D candidate writing her thesis on Templars.  Let’s just stop for a moment and consider this.  A Ph.D. candidate. Writing a THESIS.  It’s a dissertation in any university in the U.S. except maybe those pay for degrees that you can achieve online.  But then the book goes on and compounds this error with another, even more amazingly incorrect assertion:

But with most of the documentation about the Order’s demise lost to time, her driving theory hinged on discovering what the Order had found—something no one in history had ever been able to discover. As such, her paper was at a dead standstill, unless she could find the evidence through the metaphysical.

If she didn’t manage to prove the statement by Christmas break, Dr. Phillip Knowles would retire, and she could kiss the position as head of the History Department good-bye. As Dr. Knowles’ protégée, and the foremost expert on medieval France despite her relative youth, it had been conditionally promised to her.

A non PhD, non published, non tenured, not even a professor is promised to be the HEAD of a history department?  Heads have exploded.  The entire conflict of Anne’s is built on this flimsy and inaccurate premise.  In sum, she cannot do whatever it is that is asked of her because she wants to be the head of her history department in which she is some kind of teaching assistant. I feel like a fool even typing this description out because it is ridiculous. And to become the head of her history department she needs to prove the objects found by the Templars.  How does she plan to do this? Well, she gets kidnapped by Templars and when she realizes that the actual artifact might be in the compound, she resolves to seduce the location out of one of the Templars and thereby prove her theory.  How this proves her theory, I know not. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Anne does find the artifact. How does she intend to prove its existence in a paper?  What are her sources?  Shall we read in the footnotes of her thesis that she found an artifact held by immortal Templars in some compound in Kansas?  Because that’s believable, right?  Is she going to steal the artifact? What kind of provenance would it have? How would she pass this off?

Why do I care? Because, as I said previously, this need to prove her thesis position is the crux of her emotional conflict.

So Anne gets kidnapped and taken away to some compound in Kansas that houses the North American Templars. Or something. It’s not really clear because even though we started out with nine, we now meet hundreds of poor warrior Templars looking for a seraph.  Anne is found to be a seraph and warrior Merrick is assigned to find her mate.  The warrior and the seraph is known as a pair by their matching markings. It’s like the tattoo version of memory games only it is played with body markings instead of faces or objects on a flip card.   Anne sees immediately that Merrick is her match but refuses to tell him.  Instead, she allows him to take her around to meet the other men, all of whom hope that she is their match.  I found this to be incredibly cruel. It would be one thing if Anne thought these were all crazy men and she was just humoring them.  But she had studied the Templars. She bought into their magic and immortality almost immediately.  She actually uses the matching game to incite jealousy in Merrick because he is not quick enough to her bed:

Pretending interest in these strangers lost its appeal after she’d witnessed the hope in the second man’s eyes dim, then flicker into nothingness. Though maintaining the charade came easily enough, now on the tenth potential knight, she felt more like a betrayer than any preordained savior. Her heart broke a little more with every grim expression, every brusque nod.

But as she snuck a glance at Merrick from the corner of her eye, the agitated way his jaw worked when she took a few moments to delay her verdict, said her efforts were working as she’d hoped. He’d paced all the way through her initial conversation with this man, only stopping to lean against the table’s edge when this knight presented his hand. Every once in a while, when she caught him looking, his eyes sparked with the same unmistakable fire of a man who couldn’t chain his jealousy.

This is disturbing.  Even though she recognizes she is giving the men false hope, her need to incite jealousy trumps.  And then she engages in some nice little slut shaming. To set the table for this quote, Anne is trying seduce all the secrets out of Merrick in order to prove her paper:

A blush crept into her cheeks, Ranulf’s insinuation about her intimacy with Merrick too fresh to dismiss. Even if she was doing something unethical—not to mention dangerous to her heart—by seducing Merrick, she wasn’t a whore, and the fact even one man might think of her that way, left her mortified.

…How her sister managed to go through life without feeling this kind of humiliation, she’d never understand. Always a flirt, always accustomed to men’s attention, Sophie flaunted her affairs without regard. Somehow, she never suffered for it either. In some weird way, it seemed to boost her reputation with the elite.

Who cares that Sophie didn’t hide that she slept with men. Heaven forfend! At least she isn’t parading herself in front of a bunch of lonely desperate men pretending that she might save them in order to make another man jealous.

I was further made  uncomfortable by the reference to the  people in the Holy Lands as heathens

Twas 1119, and I was but a young knight desperate to prove himself worthy. I grew up in the shadow of the first victory in Jerusalem and longed for the respect the returning knights received. The cause presented, and I rode to it with Hugues. ’Twas a noble endeavor, a fight worth spilling blood. Protect the pilgrims on the road to the holy places we claimed from the heathens, defend what rightfully belonged to Christians.”

I could excuse this thinking if it was indeed 1119 but it was the 21st Century in this book and one would think that the Templar would recognize that all the good people aren’t just Christians.

My dislike for Anne grew steadily.  Merrick believes that Anne is someone else’s seraph and is beset with guilt over the face that he is attracted to her.  Worse, he actually has sex with her, betraying one of his brothers.  Rightfully Merrick is beset with guilt. He feels terrible and he expresses this to Anne. She just laughs

“What amuses you so? You do not mind that the entire Order will know I have taken you to my bed?”

Still chuckling, Anne shook her head. “Did you forget I’ve studied your Order all my life? I know the Code. I’ve seen the surcoats in the hall. I just wanted to watch you squirm a bit.”

and

There was something fantastically erotic about having the entire Order know she’d given herself to Merrick. Merrick led these men.

She knows the Code. She knows the Order. She believes in demons. She has the second sight. She believes in mysticism and magic. She also knows she is sent to be paired with one of these men yet she doesn’t appreciate the anguish that Merrick is going through and instead thinks it is fantastically erotic? I was just dumbfounded.

Worse (and I know, how can it get worse, right) and I don’t think this is a spoiler because it occurs early on in the book, but I’ll put it behind a spoiler tag:

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

I weep for the stupidity of Merrick yet he is probably a perfect match for Anne because the ending results in something so incredible stupid that if I wrote reviews with gifs, it would be appropriate to insert one with Homer Simpson saying “Doh!”

[[Visit blog to check out this spoiler]]

Yet, I’m totally on board for book 2 and hoping that the portrayal of the characters will win me over in the next book.  What can I say? I am a total sucker for the wounded warrior trope and given that I really did like Stripped, I am hoping that this book is simply an aberration.

Best regards,

Jane

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I have no idea where to start with this review. My reactions to this book ranged from glee to boredom. The heroine is a personality-free wimp. The hero is an ass. The story brings nothing new to the table and reads like fanfiction. And yet every time I told myself I would not continue reading this book…I read more pages.

Bound by Night is about the romance between human Elena and vampire Drake. Elena is a young twenty-year old orphan living in Transylvania with her uncle. Her uncle wants to marry her, but Elena wants nothing to do with him. One night when her uncle pushes his attentions on her and kisses her, Elena knows she must run away. She runs to nearby Wolfram Castle. It’s rumored to be haunted. As soon as she gets into Wolfram Castle, she lays down on a couch in the foyer and goes to sleep. The owner of the castle, Drake, sees her there asleep and must have her. He grabs her and puts her to bed. In his bed. After he undresses her so she can be comfortable of course.

Drake continued up the stairs and into the lord’s chamber. After removing her T-shirt, khaki shorts, and shoes, he tucked her under the thick blankets in the big four-poster bed.

Then, because he is hungry, he feeds on her while she is unconscious. I had a very big problem with this, as this is not hero-like behavior.

The next day, Elena wakes up and finds herself unclothed in a stranger’s bed, and her reaction is not to call the police, but to wander about the castle, curious about her new surroundings and her new friend Drake. Their attraction continues to grow, and the story spirals out from there.

I have a long, long list of problems with Elena, the heroine. In short – she is clueless. Even though she lives in Transylvania, it takes her forever to actually figure out that Drake is a vampire. He doesn’t eat meals with her. He only shows up after sundown. He wears a cloak and is very pale. She sees his eyes have a red gleam every now and then. He lives alone in an ancient castle rumored to be haunted. When she cuts her finger, he sucks the blood from it. He has no mirrors in his house. She comes across a coffin in a secret room.  After all this, she still doesn’t put together that he’s a vampire until she catches him sucking blood from someone’s neck. Then, she is horrified and surprised. Meanwhile, I’m horrified that this clueless woman is our heroine.

Elena also reads like someone out of a bad fanfiction (which might not be too far off the mark, given a quick perusal of the author’s website). She is a virgin who has no friends in town. She has a molesting uncle. She’s a good girl who has never had sex, doesn’t own a phone, doesn’t go to college, and doesn’t do anything but exist to be a foil for the hero. Her reactions – and her thoughts – are so bizarrely anachronistic for a modern twenty year old that for a time, I thought I was reading a historical paranormal and a find/replace had been done to change ‘trousers’ to ‘jeans’ every now and then. Elena acts and thinks like a prudish Victorian spinster. Her thoughts on sex as a modern twenty year old is that it is something wives suffer for their husbands. This does not strike me as a twenty year old mentality.

The longer the story goes on, the more Elena remains a victim. Another vampire brutalizes her and she has to be saved from him.  She also has to be saved from her uncle. Drake is the one that saves her every time, and Drake is the one with purpose in this story. Which is a shame, because he’s an ass. Not too far into the book, they decide to marry to save Elena from her uncle. Elena doesn’t want to have sex, so Drake promises her that they won’t until she is ready. Then, a day or two later, he decides that they should have sex to ensure the marriage is not annulled by other vampires. He is certain she’ll object to this, but doesn’t care:

He considered waiting until she was asleep, then hypnotizing her so that she would give him the answer he wanted. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but if it did, so be it. He would do whatever was necessary.

The man’s an ass. He also thinks of Elena in insulting, dismissive terms.

He had thought to gentle her to his will as one might gentle a filly who had not yet learned the touch of her master’s hand.

Take note, romance heroines. If you are reluctant to have sex with an aloof, mysterious man you just discovered was a vampire, it’s not that you have common sense or are not attracted to him. It’s that you just haven’t yet learned the touch of your master’s hand and need to be gentled.

His high handed and sometimes callous treatment of Elena did not endear me to him. Nor do we get to see how he treats her wonderfully in bed, because all of the sex scenes are a paragraph long at most. Even for all of this, the first half of the book moves at a fast pace and I found myself reading to see what would bizarre thing would happen next.  The second half, however, becomes murky with vampire politics and I found myself growing bored. If the first half of the book was head-scratchingly fascinating, the second half was simply bland vampire filler and domesticity between Elena and Drake.

I have no idea what to give this book. I didn’t hate it, but I’m puzzled by it and the unlikeable characters. I think I’m going to go a little higher than a D, simply because of this line:

“This man’s kiss was nothing like her uncle’s.”

You cannot imagine the enjoyment I got out of reading that. C-

All best,

January

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A couple of weeks ago there was a small online furor over the Publishers Weekly review of Jennifer Crusie, Eileen Dreyer, and Anne Stuart‘s collaborative book The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes. The review referred to the book as three novellas, concluding with the hope that “the authors’ next collaboration will be on a single, full-length novel-or better yet, three of them.–? The book is quite obviously not written as separate novellas. However, there are other observations in the PW review with which I agree, begging a question relevant to my own take on the book: what does it mean when a review captures the core of my own reaction to a book while at the same time asserting something that might make the authors legitimately wonder whether the reviewer had even read their book? As someone who did read every single page and word of The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes, I feel a little cheated too, not by the PW review so much as by the collaborative novel, which, while a moderately entertaining read, did not feel either as fresh or rich as I would have expected from three such powerful genre voices.

Sisters Mare, Lizzie, and Dee have been running for years from their evil Aunt Xan, a witch who apparently murdered the sisters’ parents for their magical power and has been after the girls ever since. Aunt Xan, in reaching middle age, is losing her own power, and has been using the years during which her nieces were on the run to hone her magic for the ultimate purpose of draining the sisters of theirs. Not that the younger women are so thrilled with their gifts: Oldest and most responsible sister Dee has been unable to rid herself of her virginity because she tends to shapeshift at exactly the wrong moment; Lizzie can’t yet turn straw into gold, but can create bunnies and shoes in the blink of an eye; and Mare has not yet figured out how to control her power to make the earth move –” or those parts not heavy enough to resist –” when she gets excited.

So with their close bond to sustain them emotionally, the sisters have remained somewhat isolated and alone, on the move from place to place, seeking anonymity and normalcy from a life that threatens anything but. In the meantime, Xan has managed to track them down and sent ahead her own magic in the form of the sisters’ true loves, all of whom arrive virtually at the same time into the small town of Salem’s Fork. At that point, the blessing and the curse of love confronts the sisters, who have grown complacent enough in their isolated closeness that they are not overwhelmed with gratitude and excitement at the prospect of the unexpected surprises that desire and deep romantic love promise. For three women who have spent years trying to focus their power and their chance at safe normalcy, the disruptive power of attraction creates a parade of dilemmas around whether it’s wise to consider living their lives separate from one another, no matter how much happiness each woman senses her true love can manifest in her life. So between these emotional dramas and the external threat that dear Aunt Xan represents –” amounting to three love stories and a revenge tale — The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes has a lot of surface ambition.

At 416 pages, it looks like a substantial book, but like Aunt Xan’s beautiful shell, that’s a bit of an illusion. Ultimately, the book felt to me like Practical Magic meets Walt Disney. Mare was a paranormal take on many of Jennifer Crusie’s heroines in her “Queen of the Universe–? quirkiness, that likeable blend of vulnerability and bravado with which Crusie is so competent at imbuing her heroines. Mare even sleeps on a “watery blue satin comforter,–? which I imagined looked much like Min Dobb’s “watery lavender-blue satin comforter–? in Bet Me. Lizzie possessed that plucky imperviousness to obvious danger that has become an Anne Stuart staple, bright and stubborn, yet oblivious to the natural laws she’s breaking by crossing elemental boundaries in her amateur alchemy. While Mare must overcome a certain cynical insecurity in her ability to be loved for who she is, Lizzie grows through her passionate encounter with an extremely powerful wizard and discovers that she’s so much stronger than she thought. Sound familiar? Only Dee was a bit of a discovery for me, because I have not read any of Dreyer’s previous works, and others will have to decide if the slightly martyred older and responsible sister Dee is anything like her other heroines.

Entertaining heroines all, but no revelation, either in craft or character. They all fall in love in an instant and wrap up their happy ending within the space of a weekend. The dialogue can be snappy, the characterizations quirky, and the love scenes passionate. And although every character is an accomplice in the novel’s movement, and therefore an actual participant in the work of moving the relationships and the ultimate crisis forward, the glib tone of the narration created a sense of superficiality that I never felt the book was able to transcend. Instead, I skated through the novel, attentive but not particularly engaged beyond amused curiosity, and by the time I was halfway through I was checking to see exactly how many chapters I had left, not sure whether I was hoping for more text or less. It was mildly amusing to watch Xan’s menopausal crisis play itself out in her cannibalization of youth (no need for plastic surgery when you have magic!), but it was also unsettling to see that attention focused on her powerful but undisciplined magical nieces. If there was a symbolic point to this familial violence beyond the villainy necessary for any fairy tale, it didn’t feel particularly coherent or cogent to me. And while I could appreciate the thematic relevance of having the sisters own emotional disruptions fuel their lack of control over their own powers, it also felt as if the men (and love) provided the real magic for the sisters, which was pure Romance formula. In the same way that naming the town Salem’s Fork felt more mundane to me than ironic, so did the triumph of three good young women over one bad aging woman.

It is clear that Crusie, Dreyer, and Stuart are talented writers, and each has a strong voice that shines through in this novel. In some cases the collaboration between authors who each have a strong voice can result in exactly what the PW reviewer accused of happening in The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes; that is, the book can feel like a forced truce between competitive creators. TUMF doesn’t come across that way to me, though; instead it feels like a friendly, cooperative give and take of voices and perspectives. Although I could tell right away who was writing which character, I didn’t feel that each authorial voice was jockeying for some kind of narrative superiority, or that there was strong disagreement on the overall vision of the book. In fact, at more than one point I had the distinct sense that this book was probably a lot of fun to write, because it possessed a sort of good-natured self-consciousness, a conversational tone within each heroine’s point of view that nicely matched the close relationship between the sister heroines. And while I appreciated the coherent integration of the different authorial voices, that accomplishment is, in my opinion, the greatest that the novel yielded, which is wonderful news for the prospect of future collaborations, but did not work similar magic on the other elements of the novel.

My general assessment of The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes is that it provided a pleasant but not fresh read. I expect that it will satisfy die-hard fans of each writer, and I think releasing it in mass market paperback was both wise and reasonable; this is the kind of book for which I would have deeply resented paying hardcover price. As to how the Publishers Weekly reviewer was able to make the statement about the book being three novellas, I would pose the issue differently. I would suggest that the reviewer’s ability to articulate some of the core issues I also had with the book reflects an overall superficiality in both the review and the book itself. More generally, I think it might be worth thinking about the possibility of reviews being written on the basis of a mere skim, but in terms of The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes, I was hoping for a more powerful reading experience with more depth, more . . . magic. Absent that, I would give The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes a B-.

Best Regards,

Janet

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Your story presents a complex but not complicated paranormal inhabited by strong personalities. The plot is fairly simple. Lucas Hunter, the alpha of the DarkRiver leopard pack, is searching for a Psy serial killer who is kidnapping, torturing and killing changeling women. In order to find out more about the mysterious Psy, he offers his business services as a consultant and agent for a construction project run by the Duncan family. This puts him in direct contact with Sascha Duncan, a cardinal Psy.

The Psy are a species who have been trained from birth to not feel emotion. The Silence was a program to stamp out emotion in order to rid itself of violence. But some Psy do feel and Sascha Duncan is one of them. The problem is that Sascha understands that to feel is weak and that the Psy do not allow for weakness within its group. The weak are culled from the herd and basically institutionalized.

The setup creates instant conflict. Sascha a Psy who must feel no emotion is thrown together with Lucas, a changeling whose entire existence is built upon feeling. Lucas feels every emotional range, from hate and vengeance, to caring and love. Importantly, however, is that the conflict in this story is external and does not rely on the Big Mis or hateful actions by the protagonists to drive the story forward.

As Sascha realizes that she is losing control over her ability to eliminate emotions, the worst thing that can happen to her no longer becomes having emotion but living without it. As Sascha becomes more important to Lucas, the worst thing changes for him as well. While there is not significant intricate layering in the story, the subject matter is provocative. The story impels us toward the maxim that feelings, no matter how gritty and painful, are more worthwhile that living without. There are extremely romantic moments and sentiments expressed by both characters.

The sexual tension is thick and the consumation scenes are intense. This book has it all: the paranormal aspect, the alpha hero, the strong heroine, the hot sexy romance, and external conflict. There was a plausible and believable ending which, if a little schmaltzy, suited me just fine. In fact, I could have even endured a few more epilogue pages to show Lucas and Sascha enjoying themselves together.

It’s a book that fulfilled all my emotional needs as a romance reader, closing with a satisfactory HEA ending but still left me anxious for more. The setup for future books was excellent and not at all intrusive. I feel that this is the beginning of a great series. A for the book.

Best regards,

Jane

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