Anyone who listens to the podcasts will know that I (and Sarah Wendell) are huge fans of werewolf books, particularly those that involve a pack dynamic. I was so excited to read this story. The promotional materials refers to the heroine being an Alpha and a “strong leader.”  Apparently being a strong female alpha means finding the right male warrior alpha to take care of yourself and your packmates because you are too weak in all areas to take care of yourself.

Alpha Instinct is about this poor pack of she wolves who are left alone after all the men in the pack were poisoned. Connor Armstrong, a shifter from the heroine’s past returns with a new pack of his own, all warrior caste and alpha males to join with the women’s pack because the women can’t protect themselves. Not only can the she wolves not defend themselves, but they CANNOT EVEN PROVIDE FOR THEMSELVES.

“At least we know him and his brother, and if the Councili has officially recognized them it means they have the financial wherewithal to support all of us”

This is said by the “strong” female warrior to her cousin.  *weeps* They can’t even financially support themselves, you guys.

Not only can the chicks not protect themselves nor can they provide for themselves, they are also the last to know if they are “mates”

She was a smart-ass. Absolutely perfect. And he was absolutely screwed, because she was human. Matings between shifters and humans weren’t exactly accepted in all circles. On either side. For all he knew, she hated his kind anyway. His inner wolf didn’t care, though. It recognized her on a primal level. When he’d been barely seven, he’d asked his father how he’d known his mother was his intended mate. His father’s green eyes had sparkled as he’d explained that some shifters knew immediately but most didn’t. And males almost always knew before females did.

The women were so dense, apparently not being able to tell that the males were wanting to have sex with them. I guess this is consistent with the portrayal of the women not being able to even financially care for themselves.

After he’d gotten back from the bank, he’d been putting out fires between his guys and Ana’s packmates. Small, unavoidable spats that were based more on sexual frustration than anything else. The females didn’t seem to realize it, but he could see it clearly. Most of his guys had been lone shifters, roaming the globe for decades or longer until he and his brother had convinced them to settle down. Now that they were on a ranch full of single, beautiful wolves, they wanted to mate in a bad way. Their most primal instincts were kicking in and wanted release.

and

She stared at him, waiting and wanting him to do something to ease the ache she felt inside. She briefly thought about asking him why he’d left, but bit the question back. Maybe there had been someone else. That thought stung impossibly deep and she didn’t want to hear the answer. If she pushed harder and he told her there had been another female . . . that would be worse than not knowing. With his hard length pressing against her abdomen and distracting the hell out of her, it was hard to think of anything other than what he would look like naked. Yes, she wanted to keep some control, but she was also a female and wanted him to want her as much as she did him.

So in sum females don’t know about sexual tension. And because she was female she wants to be wanted. Unlike males.

The basic plot in this book is that  Analena Cordona is the head of her pack, a pack that has had all its male members killed.  Ana and her pack live on a ranch but recently have been subject to increasing vandalism from a male alpha who wants Ana and her girls to assimilate into his pack.  Ana’s solution is to find another alpha male group who is more amenable than her neighbor Taggert.  Ana is an alpha wolf but she isn’t strong enough to defeat Taggart (and apparently is she a good enough fighter to take down someone who has more strength than her but then neither does she try).

Taggart plays a classic villain character.  A trill of the keyboard should accompany his every entrance on stage.  He grabs his crotch in the first scene:  ”He shrugged and had the nerve to grab himself. ‘I wanted the exercise. Besides, you should get to see what’s going to be yours soon.’”  He threatens violence even though we are told Pack violence against female wolves was rare.  He calls her a bitch and turns tail and runs when he spots a stronger Alpha male.

Connor Armstrong appears with his brother Liam and a whole host of alpha males ready to defend Ana’s pack and mate with them.  When Conor had disappeared from Ana’s life, she wondered why. Of course it was because Ana’s father didn’t think he was a fit mate for Ana and so Conor ran off.  He’s back and with a pack of his own has something to offer because while Ana and three of her cousins and sisters are alphas they are not Alphas.

Even the thought of one of her sisters at his mercy made her see red. “We might be alphas,” She gestured to the four of them at the table, “but none of us are Alphas and certainly not of the warrior class.”

All true Alphas were also warriors, though warriors weren’t always Alphas. They were just damn good fighters. Warrior shifters were so different from the rest of the population. Bigger in human and shifted form, they seemed to be born with slightly different DNA, even from their shifter counterparts. They embraced their animal side a lot more than their human one. It’s what made them the protectors of the rest of their kind. Ana might hate it and crave complete independence from outsiders, but she wasn’t an idiot. She wasn’t an Alpha or a warrior, and if it came down to it, it was better to embrace someone like Connor as pack Alpha than an unknown.

I guess in this world only the men are born with a warrior shifter gene? She’s only an alpha, lowercase “a” as are all her fellow she wolves. In sum, the worldbuilding includes alphas, Alphas, Warrior caste Alphas, and betas. There is additional external tension provided by vamps and weres coming out  of hiding about 40 years ago.  They are viewed with suspicion by the human populace. This is supposed to add a layer of external tension by bringing the human police to their doorstep for perceived problems but instead it read like a retread of other paranormal worlds.

I didn’t find the world building to be all that consistent either. Ana complains that the North American Council won’t pay attention to their little tribe of female wolves, but obviously the female wolves were important enough to have two Alphas ready to go to battle over them. If female wolves were important yet viewed as weak and ineffective (which they were), then it made sense that the North American Council would award them to some Pack that they wanted to elevate in power instead of leaving them to flounder and possibly die out.

Ana and Connor renew their past acquaintance, fight off the bad guys, and prepare for all the girls to be nicely matched up with the boys.   The world building was obvious and uninspired.  There was no tension, either suspenseful, emotional, or sexual, and the depiction of these poor little she wolves who couldn’t even financially care for themselves was depressing.  D

Best regards,

Jane

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One of the first AAR DIK books I ever read was one of yours: “Walking After Midnight.” Now here I am, years later, reading another “walking” book that involves a hero and heroine on the run and trying to stay alive. My questions for myself as I started the book were will the romance work, will the suspense work and how will I feel about the thief hero when all is said and done. The answers are yes, partly, and ultimately it’s a cop out.

“For years after witnessing the murder of her mother, Micayla “Mick” Lange has been forced to relive the horrific events of her dreams, often causing her to sleepwalk. Now a Detroit cop, and stinging from a recent breakup, Mick has arrived early to housesit during the holidays for the wealthy father of her longtime best friend. When she catches Jason Davis in the act of stealing a large sum from the home safe, Mick finds herself embroiled in a crime so explosive it could cost both of them their lives. Although their attraction to each other is palpable, as natural adversaries their only common ground is mutual distrust – and the fact that the same killers are now hunting them both. Sparks fly and passions flare as Mick and Jason run for their lives, knowing that teaming up is the only chance they have to survive.”

The book gets off to a quick start with a throw down that shows Mick and Jason just how evenly matched they are. Mick might be littler but she can put a hurting on anyone stupid enough to discount her in a fight. But when proof of a horrific crime stares her in the face and she realizes that her knowledge is known, she has no choice but to flee with this crook she just caught red handed. This is one of the better set ups that forces the bickering hero and heroine on the road together that I’ve read. In a flash, Mick’s whole world is flipped and it’s she who does the most to get them away from the henchmen – something that I truly enjoyed. She doesn’t want to do this but once she makes up her mind, she’s the one leading the charge. I did wonder how she’d managed to remain in total denial about the true nature of the main villain, though. That must have taken some mental hoop jumping of major proportions.

The race away from the killers is one of the best parts of the book. There’s enough trash talking to keep the tension between Mick and Jason wound tight plus a little sexual frisson which – thank God – doesn’t lead to inappropriately timed boinking. Several thugs are still after them, forcing our lead characters through the bitterly cold, snowy night, just barely missing being caught time and again. But caught I knew they’d eventually have to be and it’s done realistically and due to the fact that Mick is a cop with ingrained instincts. Makes sense. Yet, I also think most people will see the twist coming that brings Mick and Jason into the hands of the baddies.

That entire scene is cool and I sat riveted to see how they’d escape from handcuffs, several men who weren’t going to hesitate to kill them, and through a steel reinforced door. Jason’s calm under pressure is a joy to see and his humor in the setting of a large percentage of the DPD being hot on their tails needles Mick in a way that had me laughing.

Now, this is the point where the suspense stuff begins to go pear shaped. I’m willing to go along with how you get these two out of Detroit. I can also accept the sweet little set up Jason and his cronies have going. And the explosion of Happy Boinking between Jason and Mick is inevitable given the sparks that are being struck between them. I can also trust Jason’s realization of how much Mick means to him and not just because of the hot lovin’. She’s more than that to him and given the life or death situations that they’ve gotten into and out of, I think they know each other and their feelings pretty well by this time. But…but…I did some serious eye rolling from here on out about the suspense.

The baddies had to make a return if only because they hadn’t been dealt with. Suddenly Mick lying to Jason about what she did was alright. And given Jason’s history – he only robs from crooks so that makes it all okay – he still has contacts in a Big Government Agency who are deliriously happy to help them out when it’s discovered that Mick is being blackmailed by the killers to return to Detroit – in a way that makes me wonder why none of these smart people realized it was a given it would happen this way. And everything that could go wrong does go wrong yet – booyah! – it’s Mick who mainly saves the day.

I gotta say that I have serious doubts about the rainbow happy ending. No one is going to discover where Jason lives by following him or – later – Mick back to the Bat Cave? No associates of the villain will make trouble for the rest of Mick’s family? She’s going to be okay living with a thief who, at the end of the day, has no plans to quit? But, that’s right, he’s a Disney thief who only steals from crooks so I guess she can accept that. I suppose she won’t be tied up for ages taking part in the trial of the villain or his minions either. It’s off to Jason’s sunny little hideout to put cracks in the wall plaster and shock the iguana.

After how good lots of the previous parts of the book are I hated to see it all go wonky at the end. Sigh.

~Jayne

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Dear E.L. James,

So I’m pretty much in the minority when it comes to this book as I hated it.

Fifty Shades of Grey came to my attention during a Twitter conversation. I was intrigued by the fact that the book was apparently once a Twilight fan fiction piece entitled Master of the Universe and featured a BDSM relationship between the main protagonists. I was told that there was a high level of WTFery but I ignored this warning. I’m usually a fan of WTFery. If I was not a fan of WTFery, I would not have enjoyed afternoon soap operas for most of my teen years. After all, WTFery is simply the absurd taken to new heights of, well, of absurdity. But this was not WTF in an absurd, adorable way. It was infuriating. I wanted to scratch my eyes out or maybe the characters’. I’m not really sure. At one point, I had to start drinking heavily. But even gin didn’t dull the fury.

In writing this, I’ve been thinking of alternate titles, something that plays on the title of the book, what it is about, and how I feel about it. Something succinct like: “50 Shades of Grey, 7 Shades of Scarlet, & 372 Pages of Dumb.” Or maybe: “120 Days of Boredom.”  What about: “The Story of Oh . . . My!” Perhaps, “Where There’s a Will, There’s an Ellipsis” or “The Whiner, the Witch, and the Wanker”? No, I’ve got it: “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” but I wouldn’t want to associate X-Ray Spex with this book. So let’s call this after my favorite safe word: Julie Andrews!

I should state, for the record, that I was did not buy this book. I was lent it and I am very grateful to that person.  Yes, I am very grateful despite the fact that I ended up loathing this book. So, what’s it all about?

Anastasia Steele is on the cusp of graduating from Washington State University. Before she can do that, though, she’s got to get through finals, a task which would be made easier if she didn’t have to drive up to Seattle to interview some billionaire named Christian Grey for the student newspaper. But she does have to, even though she isn’t technically on the student paper. Her BFF Kate is sick, and being sick she is incapable of driving the three hours or conducting the interview. So Anastasia does it instead. It’s a last minute thing and honestly, she’s just not prepared for it (or for anything in life, really, but we’ll get to that). She doesn’t know anything about Christian Grey. She doesn’t know how old he is or what he does. All she knows is that he’s rich and he donates to the university.

Whatever she expected, it wasn’t the reality of Christian Grey. He’s young, for one, and he’s intense, really intense. Anastasia knows that she’s no match for him looks-wise, so it baffles her when he starts pursuing her: showing up at her work, sending her a first-edition of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, rescuing her from a drunken evening out. She can hardly believe her luck when this perfect man whisks her away to his penthouse in Seattle. Only Christian Grey has a dark secret. No, he isn’t a vampire or a spy or Batman. He’s kinky. He’s into BDSM. He likes to whip and chain it. GASP!

That’s pretty much the plot. Ignorant young woman with virginity still intact and a case of low self-esteem meets a controlling, manipulative, hot, young billionaire who identifies as a dominant in order to justify the fact that he’s a paternalistic control freak. Yay! Oh, yay! It’s just such an original and imaginative take on heterosexual relationships, don’t you think? It really offers some new insight into sexuality and power.

I am, of course, being sarcastic. Fifty Shades of Grey does the exact opposite. Not only does it perpetuate damaging untruths about BDSM as a sexuality and a sexual identity, it also manages to do so in the most clichéd and hackneyed way possible. It is a thoroughly uninteresting book. The characters are as flat as a thing can be without entering the first dimension. The plot has only a single conflict: that Christian is BDSM identified and Anastasia is vanilla. E.L. James has managed to take the worst aspects of Twilight, the worst elements of a Mills & Boon circa 1977, and the worst of BDSM erotica and combine them into one glorious whole (or should that be hole?). She deploys the tropes and clichés with a heavy hand—tropes and clichés that, to be fair, are everywhere in romance. But it is the thoughtless use of these clichés that makes them problematic for me. And this is coming from a person who has just written and presented an academic paper defending the cliché and clichéd language!

Worse, the prose itself is stuttering and robotic. Sentences are rendered in a childish sing-song structure (subject verb predicate) and overwhelmingly they are in the active voice. Moreover, the prose beats you over the head with its intended meaning. James clearly doesn’t trust her readers to pick up on nuance, to infer traits and qualities from the characters dialogue and interactions, or to remember events from mere paragraphs prior (God knows Anastasia doesn’t). Instead, she spends a great deal of timing telling us all sorts of things about Anastasia and Christian but somehow manages to demonstrate the exact opposite.

What I hated about this book are certainly issues and problems that I have disliked in other novels. However, as I said above, by separating the clichés from the original forms and contexts (particularly in the case of Twilight), James loses the subtlety that made these problematic clichés at the very least tolerable in their other contexts. For instance, in Elizabeth Hoyt’s Wicked Intentions the hero’s desire for kinky sex is “cured” by his relationship with the heroine. However, the central conflict of that book does not revolve around the hero’s sexual identity nor does the heroine find it any way monstrous. As such, I was able to overlook it enough to enjoy the rest of the novel. That simply was not the case for me in Fifty Shades of Grey.

In order to address the multitude of problems in the narrative, I have divided the review into three sections. I have not written a thesis statement, which I’m sure will disappoint Maggie Stiefvater. C’est la vie! We can’t always get what we want. I certainly didn’t whilst reading this book.

Prose

The prose is dull, but it isn’t unreadable. It’s competent. The best thing I can say about it is that vast majority of sentences are grammatical. More problematically was what I shall call the rhythm of the prose. Like Gertrude Stein, I believe the sentence is the basic building block of narrative. The sentences in this book did not help me enter the world of the story. They were an obstruction. A series of pedestrian, pre-chewed sentences only slightly more sophisticated than the ones found in my 2^nd grade reader:

The drive to the heliport is short and, before I know it, we arrive. I wonder where the fabled helicopter might be. We’re in a built-up area of the city and even I know helicopters need space to take off and land [Reviewer’s Note: No. They don’t. That’s their advantage over the plane!] Taylor parks, climbs out, and opens my car door. Christian is beside me in an instant and takes my hand again.  (p. 63) Kindle Edition.

By pre-chewed, what I mean is that every sentence, every piece of dialogue is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect in a book like this. Like in a James Cameron movie where every character says exactly what such a character always says at such a moment. It is uniformly predictable and because it is uniformly predictable it doesn’t convey any subtle or nuanced meaning to the story. Its uniformity on a sentence level shapes the superficiality of the rest of the book—the plot, the characters, and the underlying themes. This is what I mean by clichéd.

The prose is further made awful by James’ weird and arbitrary use of the italics. Italics are used to emphasize certain words or phrases. They are also used, on occasion, as a way of setting off a character’s thoughts. By using the italics all the time, which she does, the emphasis loses all meaning and force. Quite frankly, the italics make Anastasia look dumb—not that she needs any help with that. They create a constant sense of Anastasia as a person easily startled, like someone suffering from short term memory loss who forgets she just saw you ten seconds ago and then jumps when she sees you again. It’s fucking ridiculous. For example:

“I assume you’re not on the pill.”

What! Shit.

“I didn’t think so.” He opens the top drawer of the chest and removes a packet of condoms [Reviewer’s note: the pill doesn’t protect from STDs, yo!]. He gazes at me intently.

“Be prepared,” he murmurs. “Do you want the blinds drawn?”

“I don’t mind.” I whisper. “I thought you didn’t let anyone sleep in your bed.”

“Who says we’re going to sleep?” he murmurs softly.

“Oh.” Holy hell.

He strolls slowly toward me. Confident, sexy, eyes blazing, and my heart begins to pound. My blood’s pumping around my body. Desire, thick and hot, pools in my belly. He stands in front of me, staring down into my eyes. He’s so freaking hot. (p. 82).

Why are these in italics? What is the purpose of the emphasis? What does it tell us that the context doesn’t? That the words themselves don’t? We don’t need them if they are just supposed to be setting off Anastasia’s thoughts because the story is told in the first person and we are already occupying her headspace. We don’t need to be told that this is what she is thinking via italics. They emphasize nothing. And at one point, dialogue coming from another room is in italics (Location 2842 of 10541). So to me, there is no rhyme or reason for this usage. It just takes the reader out of the story. Let’s not even get into the plethora of ellipses (oh my god . . . the ellipses!).

A final, but by no means last, word on the prose is the use of the word subconscious. The subconscious plays a large role in Anastasia’s life. Almost as large as her inner goddess, which I can only assume is some kind of euphemism for vagina. The subconscious is constantly berating and admonishing her. The problem is that this is not what the subconscious does. That’s what the conscience does or the superego, if you are going to be Freudian about it. You are not actually consciously aware of the subconscious because it is sub conscious; it is below the level of consciousness. This may seem like mean-spirited nitpicking, but it isn’t a singular instance of wrong usage. It is a constant refrain within the book. Every time the subconscious spoke, I thought to myself: No. Wrong. No.

Because the prose is so weak, it ends up highlighting and accentuating the book’s other weaknesses, which are as follows:

Plot/Character

The plot in this book is the characters. And that’s the problem. There is no other conflict or story other than the fact that Anastasia wants a normal relationship and Christian can’t give her one. He gives it the old school try, I’ll tell you that. Theoretically, this could be a really interesting story. What happens to a kinky person when/if they fall in love with someone who is vanilla? Is it bound (ha!) to be a doomed relationship? Or is there a way to make it work for both people? There’s a good story there. That’s a good premise. Unfortunately, that is not the story in Fifty Shades.

Going in, I had heard rumors to the effect that Christian gets “cured” of his BDSM kink and to me it was fairly clear from the beginning that this is trajectory of the story. This because of the way the narration—that is Anastasia as the first person narrator—characterizes Christian’s kink and the presumption that the reader is going to or ought have her same perspective about BDSM. But let’s talk about Christian first.

Christian is an asshole of the first order. At the outset of the story, he employs the classic move of mind-fuckers and bad boyfriends everywhere, “Anastasia, I’m not a hearts and flowers kind of man, I don’t do romance. My tastes are very singular. You should steer clear of me” (p. 52). Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ooohhh god! What girl hasn’t heard a version of that before? Am I right, ladies? Regardless of what language it is uttered in, this is the first tip off that you are dealing with a manipulative fuck. But you know what? Let’s give credit where credit is due, Anastasia actually takes him at his word, something Christian never manages to do when it comes to her word. No, no. He just steamrolls right on over every one of her objections. But Anastasia doesn’t pursue him after he tells her this. No, he pursues her. He sends her a first edition. This is not the action of a man who wants a woman to stay away from him. When she calls him drunk to ask him why he would do that, he tracks her down and takes her back to his hotel. Nothing happens, but again, his actions say something different than his words. I would call him a stalker, but he doesn’t have that level of subtlety

The mind games really set the scene for when Christian takes Ana to Seattle where he has her sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement prior to revealing the fact that he’s a dom. There is so much wrong with this I don’t know where to begin. First, Anastasia has no effing clue what BDSM is. Second, she has no sexual experience. Third, the agreement says she can’t talk about this to anyone, which means that she cannot ask anyone bedsides Christian anything about BDSM. Thus, Christian gets to be the one who controls the interpretation of what it means to be a submissive. Does that not strike anyone else as abusive? This is such a violation of kink ethics, of ethics period.

Fine. Whatever. Let’s move on. So then, he hands her a contract. Surely you jest? I mean, dude. Just . . . wow! For god’s sake, he doesn’t even give her a chance to find out what BDSM is or whether or not she wants to pursue something with him. No. He just hands her a contract that’s basically structured to be a 24/7 Dominant/submissive relationship. I mean, I’m not kinky but it seems to me to be common friggin’ sense that you ought to at least play with someone, do a few scenes with a new partner before you go all 24/7! Let’s hire a U-Haul! Forevah, Babes! Not the mention the fact that he’s totally pressuring her to say yes immediately. Argh!

Anyhow, I shouldn’t have been surprised that Ana’s virginity would not stop him from just steamrolling right on over that issue and continuing with his plan to have her as his sub. Oh! And did I mention he blames her for not telling him she was a virgin. Douchewad! So then we get this romantic and touching scene:

“We’re going to rectify the situation right now.”

“What do you mean? What situation?”

“Your situation. Ana, I’m going to make love to you, now.”

“Oh.” The floor has fallen away. I’m a situation. I’m holding my breath.

“That’s if you want to, I mean, I don’t want to push my luck.”

“I thought you didn’t make love. I thought you fucked hard.” I swallow, my mouth suddenly dry.

He gives me a wicked grin, the effects of which travel all the way down there (p. 81)

Somebody call the producers of Jersey Shore, because it turns out The Situation is actually Anastasia Steele’s intact hymen. Yes, responsible sex at its finest. This attitude pretty much characterizes Christian throughout the novel. The only difference between Christian Grey and a Greek Tycoon is that Christian isn’t Greek, as far as I know. He also has more contracts. Other than that, his paternalism and general alpha-hole behavior may as well have been stripped from any number of Harlequin Presents, sans the nuanced characterizations or groveling scenes of penance.

Besides being the worst sort of alpha male, Christian’s personality can be summarized thus: spectacularly beautiful man who smirks a lot. There’s not a lot there. He’s pretty much a cipher, not so much enigmatic as empty.

Then there’s Anastasia Steele. She has shockingly little personality for a first person narrator. She’s vapid and dumb, so very, very dumb. She’s TSTL, but not because she chases down villains in London’s worst slums. No, but because she fails to register the blatantly obvious. Right after Christian tells her he’s kinky, we get this gem of an exchange:

My mouth drops open. Fuck hard! Holy shit, that sounds so… hot. But why are we looking at a playroom? I am mystified.

“You want to play on your Xbox?” I ask. He laughs, loudly.

“No, Anastasia, no Xbox, no Playstation. Come.” (p. 70)

Is this supposed to be cute? Endearing? If so, fail. It is one thing to be a virgin, it is another thing to be so flamingly, fantastically ignorant of the universe and the obvious. I mean, good god, Xbox?! Freaking Xbox?! (Note the use of italics, used to emphasize my disdain). Come on, woman!

I don’t have a problem with virgin heroines, because I don’t equate virginity with being a brain-dead ignoramus. Call me crazy, but I don’t think one needs to have had sex in order to be able to connect the dots in basic human interactions. James has Christian constantly praising Ana’s intelligence and bravery and cleverness, but everything Ana does renders these compliments into ironic, nay sarcastic statements. Every time something sexual is mentioned Ana blushes or flushes or gasps. Any time Christian tries to have an adult conversation with her about BDSM, she bites her lip and peeks out from under her hair like Princess Diana used to do at the paparazzi. Then he tells her he wants to fuck her. Ana’s entire attitude towards their relationship is immature and adolescent, while Christian’s is controlling and manipulative.

If only she were just dumb and easily embarrassed by sex, but no. Ana’s also judgmental and shallow. I think her attitude towards Christian is fairly well summarized in the following lines: “The problem is, I just want Christian, not all his… baggage – and right now he has a 747 hold’s worth of baggage” (p. 217). And later she says: “I’m in this fantasy apartment, having fantasy sex with my fantasy boyfriend. When the grim reality is he wants a special arrangement, though he’s said he’ll try more” (p. 269). The sheer immaturity of these statements is awe-inspiring. Ana doesn’t want Christian with all his baggage. She wants the fantasy, not the grim reality of the actual man. The fact that her adolescent crush on him is characterized as true love illustrates the underlying fuckwitted-ness of this book.

In an adult relationship we deal with the other person’s baggage, whatever that baggage is because everyone’s got it. When Ana talks about how she doesn’t have any examples except literary heroines for knowing how to deal with men, her fundamental misreading of relationships is revealed. She says, “My other references are all fictional: Elizabeth Bennet would be outraged, Jane Eyre too frightened, and Tess would succumb, just as I have” (p. 163). Ana seems to be under the misguided impression that Elizabeth was upset with Darcy for having baggage. That Jane was scared of Rochester’s baggage, which like most people he kept in the attic. But this is a terribly naïve reading of those books and the relationships they depict.

And this naïve attitude toward sex and romance is reiterated in the way that Ana repeatedly characterizes Christian as a monster, as depraved, as a nut-job, as scary, and as dangerous. At one point she says, “This man, whom I once thought of as a romantic hero, a brave shining white knight – or the dark knight as he said. He’s not a hero; he’s a man with serious, deep emotional flaws, and he’s dragging me into the dark. Can I not guide him into the light?” (p. 259). And that pretty much sums up the problem with Ana, Christian, and the plot. BDSM is something you do when you don’t know how to have a “real” relationship. Something you use when you don’t know what “real” love is. “Real” love being two flawless people with no baggage loving boinking. And that’s bullshit.

Spectacle

Oh BDSM! Up Yours! Kink serves three contradictory purposes within this story: it is a justification for Christian being an alphahole (He’s damaged! He’s dominant! He doesn’t know what real love is!). It is the erotic titillation and tension in the sex scenes—which, FYI, are so boring they could have acted as general anesthesia. I could have had a tooth drilled during and not realized it. And it is the obstacle or conflict the hero and heroine must overcome in order to be together.

The narrative wants to occupy a position where we get to take the moral high ground sexually speaking but at the same time get to be thrilled by the eroticism of BDSM. It wants us to think of Christian’s BDSM as something that’s wrong with him, a symptom of his inner, childhood demons. But it also wants us to get off on it. Like teenage girls giggling over pictures of penises, it seems to say of BDSM, “Tee he he he! That’s so gross!” But secretly loves the titillation it gets from viewing the forbidden.

Nowhere is this made clearer than in the depiction of Mrs. Robinson. Mrs. Robinson is the name Ana gives to the older femdomme who introduced Christian to BDSM when he was but fifteen years old. Ugh! But friends, it gets worse. Ana, in her typically sensitive and insightful way, refers to her in front of Christian as Mrs. Pedo. To which Christian responds, “She’s a dear, valued friend and a business partner. That’s all. We have a past, a shared history, which was monumentally beneficial for me, though it fucked up her marriage – but that side of our relationship is over” (p. 314).

Cue stunned silence.

I don’t even know where to begin with this: the fact that one of the few, and certainly the most important, femalez involved in BDSM is depicted as child molester. Or the fact that she gave Christian the only kind of love he would accept and saved from a life of darkness and drugs. Oh my! Or the fact that it basically justifies Ana’s view of BDSM as “scary” and “dark” . . . like Christian’s eyes. This is just so, so, so WRONG.

The characterization of Mrs. Robinson as a pedophile is followed by Ana getting turned on, for the umpteenth time, by Christian and then trying to use sex to get him to tell her about his past. Followed by BDSM being characterized as some kind of therapy. Followed by another mind-blowing orgasm. This is fairly typical as far as this book is concerned. One minute BDSM is wrong, wrong, wrong. So scary! So dark! Then the next it is hot, hot, hot! Then it is therapeutic. Then it is wrong and dark again. Then Ana’s getting off on images of Christian with a riding crop, and so on and so forth. In short, the depiction of BDSM as an identity and as sexuality is careless, inconsistent, and rests on common myths and misperceptions about it. And I haven’t even gotten to the contract, yet!

It is entirely obvious to me that this used to be Twilight fan fiction because James manages to capture the vibe of the original: the shoe-gazing, eye-gazing, pseudo-angst of Bella and Edward’s tumultuous love affair. Yes! It’s all there from the zero conflict to the zero chemistry! However, as it turns out—and believe me I’m as surprised to be saying this as you are to hear it—Twilight turns out to be the more sophisticated version. If we were to characterize Edward and Bella’s relationship as BDSM, then unlike Anastasia, Bella eagerly and unconditionally accepts Edward and his darkness. She embraces him and his baggage wholeheartedly. She is happy to go into his world. She never thinks of saving him from his darkness. She never thinks of him as a monster. Edward is the one in the closet, so to speak. Edward is the one who fears his desires. This book has completely missed that aspect of its source material.

For all that Twilight normalizes the Gothic, the monstrous, and the kinky it never “cures” it. It never tries to “drag it into the light” and reform it from its bad, bad ways. Instead, and I’m quite startled to realize this, Twilight posits a world in which the “monstrous”, too, can be happy. Even the villains experience real love and true love. In fact, Victoria’s pursuit of Bella is based upon the fact that she did love her partner and mourns his death. Fifty Shades, on the other hand, persistently characterizes kink as abnormal except when it uses it to excuse bad behavior or to titillate its readers. It is exploitive and appropriative in the worst sort of way. More importantly, it separates the “hearts and flowers” sort of romantic love Anastasia wants as being distinct from and incompatible with BDSM.

I could say a lot more about this book: the use of musical references as status symbols, the weird relationship to food the narrative has, the weird relationship to appetite generally the narrative demonstrates, how the text defines love and normalcy, etc. Not to mention the hoops E.L. James has to jump through to keep Ana innocent of the world. I mean seriously, what student doesn’t have an email address? Or a computer? And there is a helluva lot more to say about the depiction of BDSM. But I will refrain.

While I recognize that there are two other books in this series that I have not read and have, therefore, not completed the narrative arc, I have no confidence that the problems that were so garishly on display in this first book have, in any way, been resolved in the subsequent installments. And I will not be reading the others to have my suspicions confirmed. I’m quite positive that my predictions will come true: Jack Hyde will turn out to be some kind of bad dom; Mrs. Robinson will play the role of jealous, glamorous older lover that Christian has to break free from in order to be with Anastasia; and finally, Christian will be set free from his need to be a dominant once he has fully come to terms with his dark past.

But why did this infuriate me so? Why? I think, after much contemplation, it was because the way in which the clichés and elements of genre romance were deployed served to reveal a troubling and repugnant worldview. Troubling for the very fact that these are not issues isolated to 50 Shades of Grey. The artless way in which they were written simply laid bare the problems, exposing a terrible underlying ideology. Whether James realizes it or not, intended it or not, she has written a book whose ultimate message is this: the only people who deserve love are those who are perfect and normal. Redemption is nothing more than learning that you were always already chosen, always already perfect.

How Calvinist! I find this message foul and damaging. Because of that fact and because it is rendered in dull, robotic prose, I hereby give this book an F.

Lazaraspaste

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo

I loved your 2009 book, Scandal, and very much enjoyed Indiscreet, which came out later the same year. So when I learned that you were publishing a new historical called Not Wicked Enough I got excited, and asked Jane if she could send me the ARC. Having now read it, I have mixed feelings about Not Wicked Enough. The novel has quite a bit of elegance and charm, but it’s in a lighter vein than Scandal and Indiscreet and was not quite as satisfying to me.

Lily Wellstone arrives in Bitterward, the home of her widowed friend Ginny, at night and in the middle of a downpour. Occupying the entrance hall is an unsmiling gentleman in rough clothes. Yet despite his ill-fitting attire, Lily correctly identifies him as Ginny’s older brother, the Duke of Mountjoy. Lily and Mountjoy converse and when Lily mentions that she is rarely tired enough to sleep before four in the morning, Mountjoy shows her to the library.

Once there, Mountjoy learns from Lily that she is a wealthy heiress, the owner of Syton House, a very prosperous property, and that she was once disowned by her father for her wild nature. Lily offers to leave Bitterward before Ginny learns of her arrival, but Mountjoy, who finds her uncommonly attractive, welcomes her into his home despite the misgiving that Lily may “disrupt his peaceful country existence.”

Mountjoy is not wrong about that, since Lily proves to be a “managing” kind of woman, a bit like Sophy in Heyer’s The Grand Sophy, but more whimsical and less madcap. Lily likes to take others in hand and assist them in finding happiness by enticing them to have fun.

Lily’s first and foremost project is Ginny, who has been mourning her late husband too long, to a point of isolating herself and not allowing herself to enjoy life. Under Lily’s encouragement, Ginny begins to blossom once more, to wear colors and smile again.

But Lily does not confine herself to amusing Ginny alone, she also engages Mountjoy’s near-fiancée Miss Jane Kirk, and his brother Nigel, in such experiments as writing with glowing (and flammable) phosphorous ink. Which would be bad enough, to Mountjoy’s thinking, even without Jane’s suggestion that she write “Mountjoy has not smiled these seven years.”

Although Mountjoy and Jane are not betrothed, the entire neighborhood, Mountjoy included, expects they eventually will be. That Jane is shy and even fearful in his presence is disconcerting to Mountjoy.

Mountjoy and Lily encounter each other at night, when Lily wanders the house or the gardens because she has difficulty sleeping. The first time they meet in the garden, they kiss and then restrain themselves from succumbing to their mutual attraction.

That same night, Lily shows Mountjoy the medallion she says she received from a gypsy king in thanks for rescuing his dog. The gypsy king promised the medallion would unite its wearer with the person with whom he or she “is happiest in love.” But Lily does not expect that will happen for her, since she has already met that man.

Lily loved and still loves Greer, a soldier she meant to marry who died in the war before their union could come to pass. It’s been five years since Greer’s death, but Lily does not believe she will ever love again. Nonetheless, she still has an appreciation for a man’s body and has not forgotten carnal pleasure.

Thus it happens that Lily and Mountjoy become lovers, although neither of them admits that is what they are. During their nighttime encounters, one thing leads to another, and another, and another. Eventually they become what today would be termed “friends with benefits,” neither intending to fall in love with the other, although they like each other very much.

Lily will never love again. Mountjoy will someday marry Jane. Yes, he should stay away from a gentlewoman who is also his sister’s friend. Yes, she shouldn’t touch her friend’s brother. But when there is so much pleasure to be had, how can they keep their hands to themselves?

Not Wicked Enough has considerable strengths to recommend it. First, the characters are delightful. Lily, for all she takes charge of others’ happiness, is endearing because of her generosity of spirit. Her desire to bring joy to her friends makes her appealing, as well as charismatic and outgoing.

Although she had a lonely childhood, Lily looks forward rather than back, and displays a great deal of strength of character regardless of the occasional moment of vulnerability. Her love of color, clothing, and other beautiful things, her sense of whimsy and adventure make her stand out in Mountjoy’s eyes like a bright, exotic flower.

Mountjoy is just as appealing, though in a subtler way. He was a gentleman farmer who came to prominence when it was discovered he was the heir to a dukedom, but he continues to dress like a gentleman farmer in an attempt to prove something to people who are superficial enough to dismiss him on the basis of his garments.

And that is not the only difference between him and Lily. Whereas she is extroverted, he is shy of crowds and social occasions. While she looks for ways to enjoy life, he is dedicated to hard work. And when she takes risks, he feels protective of her. (I especially appreciated that despite those protective feelings, Mountjoy does not attempt to control Lily but gives her the freedom to be herself. He also acknowledges at times that she is in the right and he is in the wrong.)

The affection between these characters is palpable, for all that it grows out of a physical relationship. Their energetic lovemaking sessions are filled with humor and teasing, and I could see them bonding with each other in a way that reminded me of some of Susan Johnson’s earlier erotic romances.

To add to the novel’s strong points, your writing style has a beautiful clarity that I love. There is smoothness to the writing that made me want to savor the words.

Still, while I liked Not Wicked Enough I found myself reading a few chapters and then putting the book down for the day. The reason, as best as I can articulate it, has to do with the relative absence of either external or internal conflict.

While Mountjoy was almost engaged, his near-betrothal never felt like a real obstacle to me. Although he kept thinking that he ought to propose to Jane, his heart was never in it, and it was also evident that Jane’s affections had settled on someone else.

Yes, Lily believed her own heart belonged with Greer and she could never love another, but since she rarely thought of Greer except to repeat this mantra, it was hard to feel that her disloyalty to Greer ever truly upset her. I also didn’t get much indication of what Greer had been like as a man, so I did not feel that Lily was haunted by her past love.

Additionally, the subplots didn’t have much forward momentum except near the very end of the book. Lily’s cousin the Marquess of Fenris skulks around Bitterward’s neighborhood for much of the story, but doesn’t really reveal his motives until close to the end. Nor do we find out the reasons behind Nigel’s odd behavior any sooner, although I guessed what was going on there early on.

Because of the above, and because Mountjoy and Lily were such good friends and lovers, and clearly got on like a house on fire, I didn’t feel their relationship faced real obstacles. The stakes felt relatively low, and consequently I wasn’t deeply driven to find out what would happen next. I also don’t know how much this book will stick with me. Still, while I read about them, the characters charmed and entertained me, and I enjoyed their sexy relationship and the hours I spent in their company. B-.

Sincerely,

Janine

I was on vacation last week but was emailed by a reader that an RWA chapter in Oklahoma known as Romance Writers, Ink. was refusing same sex romances entry into the chapter contest. As I understand it, chapter contests are fundraising endeavors. The chapter membership voted and based on a majority feeling uncomfortable with these types of stories. Ironically, the readers judging don’t seem to mind as m/m romances have won before.  That has to be the last straw, right? That not only are there books that feature sexual acts between same sex people but those books are winning over heterosexual love stories.

My initial response was that I didn’t feel that Dear Author could do anything to assist in this matter given that a) RWA has banned me and b) I don’t think the board responds well to any suggestion a reader might make, particularly one that they kicked out.  Authors like Suzanne Brockmann and J.R. Ward may have influence and given that they write m/m in their mainstream books would be the right people to advocate for change within their own organization.  Brockmann did make a strongly worded statement on her Facebook page.  But what kind of change? I’m not sure. My understanding is that RWA chapters are largely autonomous.

RWA could condemn the action or at least make some provision that contests cannot exclude books that meet the definition of romance (which no longer says one woman and one man). Problematically, it has been the chapters who have been more progressive than RWA, accepting m/m and digital books long before RWA accepted them. (I’m not sure that RWA does accept digital books that don’t have a print companion)

Courtney Milan’s suggestion of shunning the contest makes sense, but given that the judges are readers, it is unlikely that agents, editors, and writers refusing to judge would make a difference. Milan also suggests that aspiring writers not enter the contest which would likely have more impact given that the chapter contests are about making money. Money, and the possible reduction of it, leads to a lot of change.

******

Another distressing thing that happened last week was the Susan G Komen foundation’s defunding of Planned Parenthood followed by the reversal of its decision which seems on the surface to mean that PP would be funded in the future but could easily be defunded again based on the wording of the new policy.

It brought to mind the issue of the pink (breast cancer), teal (ovarian cancer), and other ribbon oriented promotional campaigns.  The pink ribbon has been a huge driver of merchandise.  Publishers use it (and others) and authors use charities as promotional vehicles.  On the one hand, it is for a good cause and on the other hand, the use of a deathly illness for promotion makes me a bit uncomfortable. I didn’t always feel this way, but after reading about the documentary of “pink washing” I’ve been a lot more skeptical about how much good these ribbon / charity promotional campaigns are actually doing.

******

The U.S. is going digital for textbooks if the government has anything to say about it.

The problem is that they clearly don’t mean a flat PDF or EPUB: “We’re not talking about the print-based textbook now being digital. We’re talking about a much more robust and interactive and engaging environment to support learning,” says Karen Cator, director of the Education Department’s office of education technology. No, they want the whole interactive thing, too. “When a student reads a textbook and gets to something they don’t know, they are stuck,” Genachowski said. “Working with the same material on a digital textbook, when they get to something they don’t know, the device can let them explore: it can show them what a word means, how to solve a math problem that they couldn’t figure out how to solve.” Cator says that students should expect video explanations to help with homework, to be able to rotate and move 3D molecules, or use a globe to explore the news

******

Avon sent me this email:

At Avon right now, we’re on a quest to find our biggest super readers—we’d like to reward them for being such devoted “Avon Addicts” with special monthly packages containing advance copies of forthcoming books to read and share with friends; fun promotional items (swag!), and other goodies. We will send our Addicts early copies of hand-selected Avon, Avon Impulse and Avon Red titles, with a special invitation to write blurbs and mini-reviews of these books on the Avon blog.

What qualifies someone to be an Avon Addict? They can name all of the members of Avon’s most famous families, such as the Bridgertons and the Cynsters. They once curled up under the covers with a Kathleen E. Woodiwiss classic, flashlight in hand, hoping their parents didn’t find them reading after lights-out. Their favorite sports teams are the Chicago Stars and the Seattle Chinooks. They think Bones the sexiest vampire alive.

Would you mind helping us spread the word about our search? Potential Avon Addicts are invited to apply for the program here: http://goo.gl/KNjyL.

• Catriona by Jeanette Baker * $0.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Wild Highland Magic by Kendra Castle * $0.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Wicked By Any Other Name by Linda Wisdom * $0.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Kiss at Your Own Risk by Stephanie Rowe * $0.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Warrior: The Cat Star Chronicles by Cheryl Brooks * $1.79 * A | BN | K | S
• Lady of the Storm by Kathryne Kennedy * $1.79 * A | BN | K | S
• Greatest Love on Earth by Mary Ellen Dennis by Mary Ellen Dennis * $1.79 * A | BN | K | S
• Tyler by C H Admirand * $1.99 * A | BN | K | S
• I Dream of Genies by Judi Fennell * $1.99 * A | BN | K | S
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• Montana Legacy by R C Ryan * $1.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Monarch of the Sands by Sharon Kendrick * $2.7 * A | BN | K | S
• Everything I Know about Love I Learned from Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Me, Myself and Why? by MaryJanice Davidson * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Tides of War by Stella Tillyard * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Death, Taxes, and a French Manicure by Diane Kelly * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S
• One Good Dog by Susan Wilson * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Hot Girl by Dream Jordan * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Wanna Get Lucky? by Deborah Coonts * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Blood Song by Cat Adams * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Siren Song by Cat Adams * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S
• Demon Song by Cat Adams * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S
• One Good Dog by Susan Wilson * $2.99 * A | BN | K | S

HPs under $2.80

• A Spanish Awakening by Kim Lawrence * $1.24 * A | BN | K | S
• The Highest Stakes of All by Sara Craven * $1.25 * A | BN | K | S
• Untouched Until Marriage by Chantelle Shaw * $1.28 * A | BN | K | S
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• Taming the Last St. Claire by Carole Mortimer * $1.42 * A | BN | K | S
• The Proud Wife by Kate Walker * $1.53 * A | BN | K | S
• Much More Than a Mistress by Michelle Celmer * $1.76 * A | BN | K | S
• The Impoverished Princess by Robyn Donald * $1.80 * A | BN | K | S
• Do Not Disturb by Anna Cleary * $1.94 * A | BN | K | S
• The Lift She Left Behind by Maisey Yates * $1.99 * A | BN | K | S
• For Duty’s Sake by Lucy Monroe * $2.04 * A | BN | K | S
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• The Heir from Nowhere by Trish Morey * $2.33 * A | BN | K | S
• From Dirt to Diamonds by Julia James * $2.42 * A | BN | K | S
• Reckless Night in Rio by Jennie Lucas * $2.45 * A | BN | K | S
• With This Fling by Kelly Hunter * $2.46 * A | BN | K | S *recommend*
• In Bed with the Boss by Susan Napier * $2.52 * A | BN | K | S  *recommend*
• The Revenge Affair by Susan Napier * $2.52 * A | BN | K | S
• The Virgin’s Secret by Abby Green * $2.55 * A | BN | K | S
• An Accidental Birthright by Maisey Yates * $2.55 * A | BN | K | S
• The Unclaimed Baby by Melanie Milburne * $2.55 * A | BN | K | S
• The Wealthy Greek’s Contract Wife by Penny Jordan * $2.55 * A | BN | K | S
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• The Secret Baby Scandal by Jennie Lucas and Kate Hewitt * $2.56 * A | BN | K | S
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• A Stormy Spanish Summer by Penny Jordan * $2.64 * A | BN | K | S
• Doukakis’s Apprentice (Harlequin Presents) by Sarah Morgan * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S  *recommend*
• Monarch of the Sands by Sharon Kendrick * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S
• The Stolen Bride by Abby Green * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S
• Prince of Scandal by Annie West * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S
• The Disgraced Playboy by Caitlin Crews * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S *recommend*
• Surrender to the Past by Carole Mortimer * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S
• His Unknown Heir by Chantelle Shaw * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S
• In Bed with a Stranger by India Grey * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S *recommend*
• Craving the Forbidden by India Grey * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S *recommend* connected with the previous book
• The Price of Scandal by Kim Lawrence * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S
• The Man with the Money by Lynn Raye Harris * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S
• The Petrov Proposal by Maisey Yates * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S
• Marriage Made on Paper by Maisey Yates * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S
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• The Kanellis Scandal by Michelle Reid * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S
• The Power of Vasilii by Penny Jordan * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S
• Passion and the Prince by Penny Jordan * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S
• The Most Coveted Prize by Penny Jordan * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S
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• The Ice Prince by Sandra Marton * $2.70 * A | BN | K | S
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• Meddling with a Millionaire by Cat Schield * $2.72 * A | BN | K | S
• A Savage Betrayal by Lynne Graham * $2.74 * A | BN | K | S
• Public Marriage, Private Secrets by Helen Bianchin * $2.78 * A | BN | K | S
• A Treacherous Seduction by Penny Jordan * $2.80 * A | BN | K | S
• Marriage on the Edge by Sandra Marton * $2.80 * A | BN | K | S
• Slade Baron’s Bride by Sandra Marton * $2.80 * A | BN | K | S
• More Than a Mistress by Sandra Marton * $2.80 * A | BN | K | S
• The Greek Billionaire’s Innocent Princess by 2.55 * * A | BN | K | S

My favorite books have always been your hockey books and I’ve recommended “Body Check” to any number of readers looking for a modern contemporary romance. We were given locker rooms scenes and game scenes and while none of it may have been authentic, it felt authentic to me.  We then detoured into a number of books involving non hockey players and found ourselves in Ireland.  ”Breakaway” attempts to bring the hockey to Ireland but unfortunately the only real sports connection is that the hero is a hockey player.  The focus of “Breakaway” is on the reunited lovers theme.

The male protagonist is Rory Brady, the first Irish born hockey player to play for the New York Blades.  He dated a girl from Balleycraig, Ireland, for eight years and promised he would marry her.  When he left for the NHL, he was going to bring her with him, but once he arrived on U.S. soil he promptly forgot her caught up in living the high life as a professional athlete in New York City.

Erin O’Brien was stuck in her village, slaving away for her parents and dreaming of getting an art degree. She gave Rory an ultimatum that they marry or they are done. So he breaks up with her. He essentially leaves everyone in Balleycraig behind, including his best friend. Two years later Rory decides he has made a mistake.

I thought, based on the blurb and set put, that this would be a redemption story and that Rory would have to suffer consequences of his actions in order to win over his best friend and win back his girl. Unfortunately there was no comeuppance.  Rory waltzes in.  His best friend, Jake, forgives him.  Erin takes him back without almost no whimper. What makes it even more sad was that Jake, the nice steady guy, tried to woo Erin after Rory left her and at the cusp of the two of them exploring something deeper than a close friendship, Rory returns and Erin can’t take her pants off fast enough.

I didn’t understand Erin at all.  She had a wonderful man who was ready to commit to her, but instead she readily accepts Rory back into her life who left her two years ago. I didn’t feel that the depiction was consistent with Erin’s portrayal as someone stuck in a rut, unable to muster the courage to leave her village to explore the big world beyond and pursue her dreams. Settling into a marriage with her best friend Jake would have made more sense than sliding back into a relationship with Rory. Returning to Rory’s arms with no resistance after stating that she was mistrustful and hurt led to a story with little conflict.

Eerin’s inaction creates a certain aura of passive aggressiveness. If she wanted to leave so badly, why didn’t she?  Unanswered was whether she didn’t love Jake because he represented stagnation and wanted Rory because he represented the incarnation of her own dreams – success outside in the big world, a conflict that might have retained some interest. Yet, if that were the case then the romance isn’t true because Erin doesn’t love Rory for who he is (and who would, really) but rather what he represents.

It is a small town setting but the small town relies too much on quirky characters to give it personality such as the three brothers who seem to be an Irish version of Larry, Curly and Moe. Three dumb and loose lipped individuals we see only in the Balleycraig pub and only as set up characters for Rory’s actions.

Rory seemed to exemplify the rich jock who treats everyone shabbily and gets only accolades in return. There wasn’t anything compelling about him. He never suffered or wanted for success, love, or even happiness. A conflict arising out of Erin’s fear of independence came far too late. A disappointing entry in the Blades series. C-

Best regards,

Jane

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo

Title by Author Sep Amazon BN Sony Kobo HQN ARE
• Truths and Roses by Inglath Cooper | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | HQN | ARE
• And Then He Kissed Her by Laura Lee Guhrke | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | HQN | ARE
• Untie My Heart by Judith Ivory | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | HQN | ARE
• Everything I Know about Love I Learned from Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | HQN | ARE
• Angelfall by Susan Ee | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | HQN | ARE
• The Lone Wolfe by Kate Hewitt | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | HQN | ARE
• To Love a Thief by Julie Anne Long | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | HQN | ARE
• Mad About the Duke by Elizabeth Boyle | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | HQN | ARE
• Untamed by Elizabeth Lowell | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | HQN | ARE
• Forbidden by Elizabeth Lowell | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo | HQN | ARE

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B&N does not allow for returns. Some people have reported that if it is an error on BN’s part, you can call and get a refund. I tried to get one for a book that was ordered but I didn’t authorize and after two weeks of run around, I just swallowed the cost.

Items That Cannot Be Returned

We are unable to accept returns for NOOK Books, magazines, downloadable PDFs for SparkNotes products, gift cards, and shrink-wrapped items that have been opened. Please note: Once purchased, NOOK Books cannot be refunded.

Barnes and Noble keeps an archive of your past nook book purchases. You can also access your Nook library via any nook device or App.

What is My NOOK Library?

Your NOOK Library is a private page on BN.com that lists your previous purchases, allowing you to manage your NOOK Books quickly and easily. It is a permanent home to your purchases and free samples, no matter how many different devices you use to read your NOOK Books. To see your NOOK Library, sign in to your BN.com account.As your NOOK Library grows, you can move previously read items to your Archives by clicking the Archive link. This simply takes it out of your main view, but it is always available in case you want to download it again.

Kobo

I find Kobo to have the worst customer service around. They rarely respond to their emails and when they do, it usually takes weeks to resolve. If you have an issue with a book your purchased from Kobo, I highly recommend you contact the publisher of the book instead of Kobo.

I emailed and asked if they had a refund policy and while I received a response back asking that I clarify my question (how can it be more clear?), I never received an actual answer even though I did reply that I wanted to know whether there was a refund policy.

Kobo keeps an archive of your past purchases and you can redownload them from the site or you can access the “My Library” link from the web browser or the Library icon in any Kobo App.

Sony

Sony does not allow digital returns.

Can I return an eBook?

No. Please confirm all purchases before you complete them as all sales are final. There are no refunds for digital content.

Sony allows you to redownload past purchases by going to the Reader Library Software on your computer, logging in, and accessing My Library tab.  The archived books have a download arrow underneath. Alternatively, if your device is a wifi enabled Sony, you can access past purchases from the Store tab -> My Account link.

Diesel

Diesel will refund any book that was not downloaded and if the title has been cancelled but only if less than 30 days have passed since the order.

Refund Policy

We are able to refund any ebook that has not been downloaded. If a title has been cancelled by the publisher (after download), our policy is to refund the order/title if less than 30 days have passed since the order was placed.

Within 24 hours of purchase, you can access all your Diesel purchases from your bookshelf.

Link here.

In addition, 24 hours after your purchase, you can also download your books from your bookshelf (in addition to your email download link).

Fictionwise

According to an email reply from a customer service representative at Fictionwise, books that have not yet been downloaded are eligible for a refund.

If you purchase a book, but do not download it, then we will give you a full refund. Once a book has been downloaded we cannot refund the book unless of course the file is broken. We have already been forced to pay royalties for your copy.

Your purchased books can be found on your “Bookhself” and can be redownloaded individually or in bulk.  The download in bulk feature is particularly awesome if your hard drive crashed.

Bookshelf Features:

Some of the features in your Bookshelf include:
– Download your eBooks individually or in Bulk
– Rate your eBooks individually or in Bulk

All Romance eBooks

ARE does not allow for refunds or returns but will replace a damaged file.

Q: Do you give refunds?

A: No. We will, however, replace any damaged files.

ARE allows you to redownload your past purchases.

Q: Can I access my library anytime, anywhere?

A: Your library, where all of your eBooks can be downloaded, can be accessed via the internet. We selected our Web-host due to their reliability. We experience 99.9% up time, use multiple redundant telecommunications paths and carriers, have secondary power solutions in case of emergencies, RAID mirroring, 24/7 monitoring, backups and security updates.

Google eBookstore

Google allows you to request a refund if the book is not as described or has an error or defect. The request should be made within 7 days of purchase.

Request a refund for a Google eBooks purchase

You may return an ebook for a refund or replacement if the ebook does not perform as described or has an error or defect. We request that you submit your request within 7 days of purchase. In certain cases, we may consider refunds outside this period, but please note we make these decisions at our sole discretion. Refunds will not be granted in situations of purchase abuse.Note: When a refund is granted, we’ll remove your access to the ebook and your money will be returned.If you bought your Google eBook from another retailer, you’ll need to check their refund policy.

Google allows you to redownload your past purchases from the “My Library” tab. Look for the “Read from My Device” link under the “Read Now” tab. Clicking on that link will bring up a new page. Scroll to the bottom to find download buttons for ePub or PDF.

Books on Board

Books on Board has one of the easiest to find Refund policies but once a download is attempted a refund cannot be issued. The policy goes on to state that refunds can only be issued if there are defects in formatting, missing parts, or have incorrect content assigned to meta data. You must contact customer support in order to request the refund or store credit.

Refund

Please choose your format carefully. Once a download has been attempted using the link in your order, the publisher requires payment for the file and it is, per publisher requirements, Non-refundable. Self-reporting that an item has been deleted from your computer is not accepted by the eBook wholesaler or publishers as a de facto reversal of the actual delivery and possession of digital content of value by the user.….

If you select and checkout with the wrong format, contact us, we can verify with the distributor that no download has been attempted and they will allow us to exchange unused links for new formats. However, once the link has been used and file downloaded, the distributor treats a second format as a unique transaction and charges for the new file.

Due to the extensive fraud on the internet, we have no choice but to contest all credit card disputes in situations where download of an eBook or Audio Book has been attempted.

BooksOnBoard Provides Refunds or Credits and Exchanges Under Very Specific Circumstances

eBooks and Audiobooks that have been downloaded and found to contain defects in their formatting, missing parts, or have incorrect content assigned to meta data, may be refunded or credited by BooksOnBoard only after our Support staff has been contacted and has submitted the files to the eBook distributor or publishers requesting that they 1) provide a working replacement issued in a timely manner, or; 2) evaluate the file for the reported issue and verify that it is eligible for credit on the transaction.

Redownloading books can be achieved by logging in and accessing “My Account.” On the right should be a listing of recent orders. The last column gives you the option to View & Download.

Harlequin & Carina Press

Harlequin and Carina Press have the same policy which is that an ebook cannot be returned. However, sources indicate that customer service for both presses can be accommodating when contacted directly.

Harlequin:What is your return policy?

As eBooks cannot be physically returned, it is our policy to not offer refunds on successful purchases (i.e. items have been successfully downloaded to your PC or reading device). If you have concerns about your purchase, please contact customer support.

Carina Press: What is your return policy?

As eBooks cannot be physically returned, it is our policy to not offer refunds on successful purchases (i.e. items have been successfully downloaded to your PC or reading device). If you have concerns about your purchase, please contact customer support.

Can I download a title multiple times?

If you’ve misplaced your copy of a downloaded title, this site maintains a history of purchased digital materials called ‘My Bookshelf’. You can re-download from the ‘My Bookshelf’ feature by clicking on the ‘My Bookshelf’ link in the ‘eBook Account Info’ section. To reach the ‘eBook Account Info’ section, click the ‘eBook Account Info’ link and enter the required login information.

My computer crashed and I lost all of my books, can I re-download my purchase?

Yes. Click to access the My Account section of the site. Once you log in, you can access all of your previous purchases via the My Bookshelf link.

Samhain

Samhain allows for a refund if a) you have not downloaded the book and b) the purchase was made in error.

Q: Do you give refunds?

Don’t download the books and email support@samhainpublishing.com right away. We will refund your money.However, if you have downloaded the books prior to asking for a refund, we consider you to have bought them.

Samhain allows you to redownload your past purchases, even those published by others when the store was “My Bookstore and More”.

How do I download my books from Samhain?

Once your purchase transaction is complete, or any other time you need to download an ebook file, login to Samhain and go to “My Bookshelf”. There you will see a listing of all the titles you have purchased through Samhain. The default sorting is with the most recent purchases first. You can resort by Title, Author, Genre and Order Date either ascending or descending. You can also search by a word or phrase. At this time, this only searches the title, it will not search author name or the description.

I passed this book over several times on NetGalley because the blurb seemed to imply a two girl one guy menage.  I am not usually a fan of those but curiosity got the better of me. I figured that access to a free copy should be utilized to try books that I might not otherwise take a chance on if I had to spend the money.  This book, however, isn’t a romance.  If anything it is a horror book with sex and since I have never reviewed a horror book and read even fewer, I don’t know whether this is a good horror book or a bad one.  From a romance reader’s point of view, it was a bizarre story with a cliffhanger ending and a sad depiction of women.  Perhaps the next book, the women rise up? I don’t know.

It’s hard to review this book because much of the details are surprise so I’m going to be intentionally vague.  There are three main characters in this story with two important secondary characters.  Anna Rice falls for a charming and wealthy man, John Stone.  She becomes completely under his control. She quits her job. She acquiesces to his sexual demands but she is very happy.  She is even happier when she becomes pregnant.  In some ways, I wondered if this was supposed to be a satire of Harlequin Presents or, at least, a pointed jab.

Mimi Leblanc is billed as Anna’s best friend but she doesn’t really act like it.  While she questions Anna’s near instant devotion to John, particularly when John makes noises that he’d like to add Mimi to his harem of women, Mimi succumbs to John’s advances as well.

I think the problem that I had was the quickness in which everything took place. Anna falls for John immediately and is swiftly captured by him, moving in with him and then marrying him.  Mimi puts up only a token resistance and perhaps her weak resistance can be blamed on something out of her control; yet, because the women were so weak in this story, such easy prey, it lacked power in the telling.  Perhaps if there was more time between Mimi trying to protect Anna and Mimi wrestling her clothes off, I would have sympathized more.

John is no hero.  If anything he is villainous. (Is this a spoiler? I don’t even know!)  He intends to use both women for a nefarious purpose yet, even knowing this, they both seem to love him.  Mimi’s is a reluctant love, however.

I don’t know much more to say other than I don’t really understand the point of the story.  Was it that all really hot, rich men are evil?  Was it that women are nothing but vessels?  I felt sad and confused by the story but I wasn’t really scared. I was horrified at the women and perhaps that was the point? That women in harlequin presents romances are nothing more than spineless wimps whose sole purpose is to be the fruit bearing wombs for men?

C-

Best regards,

Jane

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo

***

Stop and smell the roses, for tomorrow they may be dead.

Chapter 1

The tribal drum thumps in my head slow and steady – boom, boom, boom – and the Cherokee markings under my eyes feel heavy, but I keep my gaze steady ahead of me. Blue paint cracks on my arms as I curl my hands. My arms soon join the dance as I weave them in front of me like two snakes.

More drums join in, and the pace quickens. The flames dance to the same rhythm in front of me. I take a step sideways and bring my legs back together, executing a pirouette, and repeat the pattern several more times. After making it around the small propane-fed fire, I bow to it, willing my ancestors to leap out. I run backward; my footfalls mimic the drums inside my head.

After curling my fingers to my chest, I punch my arms out far above my head and release them into the sky. With a tiny movement, so the recital audience won’t see, I wave to the stars projected on the ceiling. Sue me.

“There’s no real music at first, at least none with a beat,” my dance instructor said a couple of months ago. “You’ll just have to imagine a regular little beat, Kara. You can do that, right?”

Can I imagine a drum beat? You mean like the ones often in my head anyway? The soft, sometimes hard, pats have been part of my psyche for as long as I can remember. At the moment, they’re the only things that keep me anchored.

I have so much on my mind right now, but I must perform. A ghost dance – how ironic. I picked this week for my summer visit with Grandpa because of the Panama City recital and now I’ll be watching my ancestor die.

Layout, ponche, forward roll. Great, I didn’t break my collar bone.

Thump, thump. The drums are real this time—electronic. My cue. I pick up the arrow and leap into the air.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks,

Dabney

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo

“There’s sex, snotty people and flamboyant costumes. What more could you want.” – Spanky and John Go to the Movies.

I’m almost hesitant to recommend this film just because I know a lot of people probably won’t like it. Note I’m not saying you won’t get it, just that you might not like it. I had read many of the reviews in which people who’ve seen the film praise it to the heavens – and also say that many viewers won’t get it – or conversely damn it as totally unwatchable. But with the film also getting heaps of praise for its costuming and music I decided to give it a go.

The plot is very complex so I’m just going to steal what they say at Netflix: “In 17th-century England, aristocratic Mrs. Herbert (Janet Suzman) commissions handsome draughtsman Mr. Neville (Anthony Higgins) to produce a dozen sketches of the family estate to surprise her absent husband. Neville accepts the project – in exchange for 12 sexual favors. The exceedingly smug Neville is in control till Mrs. Herbert’s daughter (Anne Louise Lambert) — who has her own agenda — outfoxes the arrogant artist.”

The film is gorgeous to watch. The costumes, which are exaggerations of the current fashions of that day, are fabulous. As one reviewer said as many ribbons and lace as money could buy and then some. Plus wigs which are fantastic in length as well as amazing in the slight horned shape that some of the men wear – and which is very apropos for one of the men in particular if you know what the phrase “made to wear horns” means.

The Jacobean house and gardens used in the production are beautiful and good use is made of all views and angles. Greenaway mentions that the antique tea set seen in one scene belongs to the owners of the house who kindly allowed them to be used and which were insured for more money than the entire budget of the film. The lighting, which is often just candles or lanterns, deserves praise as well as it helps set the mood for many shots.

Greenaway set many of the scenes up as tableaux with few cuts and changes of viewpoint in order to make them look more like staged plays of the age. And the wide angle often used means that the actors’ faces aren’t close up enough for us to gain a lot of insight into what their characters are thinking – thus requiring the watcher to pay close attention to the many meanings of what is being said. I also love the music which riffs on Purcell.

But it’s the layers within layers of the plot that makes you pay attention. I knew to be looking for the little items which appear in the views that Neville is drawing of the house and gardens. Items which on their own mean nothing but which put all together can make a case for murder. Because, yes you guessed it, this is actually a Glorious Revolution country house murder. Someone is dead, someone is going to get blamed for it and lots of people stand to gain from the death. Greenaway presents all the clues, shows who is responsible without coming right out and saying whodunnit and then has the culprits eliminate all those clues in order to wrap things up. And what had started out as a film showing Neville in control suddenly switches to reveal who has truly been in control all along and exactly what was needed from Neville.

But wait, there’s more. Maybe. Even though Greenaway doesn’t mention this in his commentary on the film, a few reviewers have mentioned that the characters can also stand in for the great political figures and tumultuous situations of the day: William of Orange, James II, Queen Mary, Princess Anne, Prince George of Denmark, George of Hanover and England herself. I must admit I had fun listening for these allusions. There are allegories and symbolism in regard to fruit and paintings. The film tackles issues about Protestants and Catholics, servants and masters, sex and power.

The pace is stately, the camera is fairly static, the dialogue – which the actors deliver with careful pronunciation – is period without being too archly stuffy, there is a moving statue – who is mainly naked and pees in one scene, there is no romantic love involved and one can’t mentally drift off or fast forward at the risk of missing something. In short, there are many reasons this film won’t appeal to a broad audience. But if you’re looking for something lovely to look at, beautiful to listen to and a puzzle which will keep you wondering and thinking – and rethinking – on what you’ve seen, this one is superb.

~Jayne

I liked the poetic nature of the title given that this book kind of closes the door on the Black Ops, Inc., or BOIs, crew. Joe Green is indeed the last man standing of the group. The other living members have all fallen in love and had a happy ending. Joe’s done the falling in love part. He can’t stay away from Stephanie Tompkins. But the happy ever after ending is eluding them, primarily because Joe is driven to seek justice for the death of his best friend, Bryan Tompkins, Stephanie’s older brother.

This leads him to Sierra Leone, a cell, and certain death. Stephanie, a code breaker at the NSA, sees a picture of Joe, beaten. Under the photo is a notation that he was arrested for the slaying of a Sacred Heart priest. Stephanie calls on the BOIs to get Joe out but the team is deployed on a deep undercover mission with no communication. Rafe is manning the home base but is recovering from a severe bout of malaria. He tells Stephanie to wait until the team comes back, a week, maybe ten days. Stephanie believes that Joe will not make it ten days and flies to Sierra Leone. Help comes in the form of a teenage boy who Joe saved. Together they work to get Joe and Stephanie out of Sierra Leone to safety.

The setup worked for me. Stephanie is out of her mind in love with Joe and she wasn’t going to leave him in a Sierra Leone prison to die alone. While a number of coincidences, or conveniences may be the better word for it, occur to aid Stephanie in freeing Joe and escaping with him, Stephanie never acted TSTL. In fact, she demonstrated for Joe a certain type of strength he hadn’t seen in her before.

I’ve really enjoyed this series and reading Last Man Standing was bittersweet for me and maybe it was for you as the author. The tone of the book seemed regretful. Joe wanted Stephanie, loved her, but he didn’t love her enough to be with her. Instead, he had to seek out the truth behind Bryan’s death, a truth he believes implicates someone wealthy and powerful. Stephanie loved Joe more than anything. She’d do anything for him, including following him to a hellhole in Sierra Leone.

Joe says to Stephanie when he leaves her that he doesn’t love her, not enough. And frankly there is a ring of truth to that even though Joe would deny it. He characterizes his departure as being weak, succumbing to the pleasures of Stephanie’s flesh where the better man would have resisted and broken it off with her long ago, knowing that he could never commit. But I did view Joe as not loving Stephanie enough or maybe he was scared of loving her.

Even though I admired Joe and his dedication, there were several points where I wanted to tell Stephanie that she was just too good for him. But her dogged pursuit of Joe and her refusal to accept him pushing her aside won her the man she wanted in the end and that is kind of kick ass all on its own.

What does happen is that Joe begins to see that Stephanie isn’t the frail, weak kneed girl he must have thought her to be. She blows his mind (and well she should). I never could figure out if Joe was falling in love with a new Stephanie, whether Stephanie blossomed under dire circumstances, or whether Joe was simply blind to the kind of person that Stephanie always was. I think it was the last one. Joe was so caught up in his own mission that he couldn’t see the gentle but determined woman that Stephanie was.

Even though this was the last in a long line of books, I definitely think that a reader could pick this up and not be lost. There aren’t many appearances of the other BOIs until late in the book. The focus is primarily on Stephanie and Joe. B-

Best regards,

Jane

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Sony | Kobo

Brenda Novak’s auction will take place from May 1st through the 31st. They are looking for donated prizes. I’m thinking of donating a 100 page critique but honestly I don’t know whether that would be something someone would want. I can’t offer an ad as I’m sold out for the year. What do you think?

******

Melissa Foster and Amy Edelman for IndieReader.com itemize a number of reasons why self published authors aren’t getting respect. The reasons are commonsense and include the lack of editing and quantity over quality.

A scarier issue is that some independent authors simply believe that their work does not need to be edited. Writers are often too close to their work to make the critical structural and grammatical changes that might make the story more succinct. Let us simply say here that every writer benefits from a good editor.

******

Music firms are going to be offering licensing for websites. This will allow ordinary folks to add well known music tracks to their videos or advertisements:

Examples of the customers they hope to attract include couples wishing to add music to their wedding video before uploading it to the internet, film festival entrants, small businesses making web adverts, school clubs and smartphone app developers.

Online licensing is a bonanza for music firms. Vevo made $150 million last year putting up web videos and paid out $100 million to artists.

******

Stick a fork in Dorchester? That’s the question swirling around the internets now that it’s last known editor has been laid off. According to Brian Keene, Chris Keeslar has been let go.

Dear Publishing Colleague:

As of January 31st, 2012, I am no longer employed by Dorchester Publishing or collecting mail from this address. I have left a list of outstanding issues and will be available to management if questions arise, and I know that my colleagues are aware of each issue’s importance.

You can see a list of contacts Chris Keeslar provides to the publishing colleagues at Brian Keene’s site.

******

Remember how Kiera Cass plotted “quietly” on twitter to down vote a negative review on Twitter? The bad review, the bad behavior, and the resulting brouhaha affected her not at all. CW has ordered a pilot of her book which is apparently Hunger Games meets the Bachelor (this book should be panned on the idea alone).

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Barnes & Noble is not stocking any print versions of Amazon published books. No way, no how, even those distributed by Houghton Mifflin. But, as Nate the Digital Reader points out, is BN going to pull all the Harry Potter books when Pottermore is launched and the only place you can buy the digital versions of Harry Potter is through Pottermore? After all, to not do so would be to violate B&N’s own policy that it created to punish Amazon. B&N’s policy is that books that are exclusive to Amazon shouldn’t be allowed into B&N’s stores. It’s the reason that B&N gave when it pulled the DC Comic books and it is the reason B&N is giving now to avoid stocking Amazon books.

******

Amazon’s Q4 results are disappointing to Wall Street. It’s stock is tumbling because while the revenue stream is growing, the margin is not. Remember that Apple had a record quarter of revenue and a high margin (44%+). Wired writer, Tim Carmody, notes that Amazon’s game is the long ball.

Amazon has strategically placed a very long bet on growth in revenue and sales at the expense of profits. The Kindle Fire is a perfect example. Amazon makes relatively little in revenue and virtually no profit on the sales of individual devices. Millions of Kindle Fires, however, become millions of tiny retail outlets for everything Amazon sells, from digital books and movies to decidedly analog clothing and hardware. The company trades profit today for revenue tomorrow — with even more revenue and even higher profits arriving in the years to come. That’s the yardstick the company judges itself by.

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One of the reasons publishers are having a hard time competing with Amazon is Amazon’s direct to consumer relationship which eliminates some costs and provides Amazon with a hoard of data. The reason for this is because publishers don’t view readers as their customers and making that transition is difficult. Oh, John Scalzi might want to argue otherwise, but I don’t think that you can state it more clearly than the Authors Guild did yesterday:

For book publishers, the relevant market isn’t readers (direct sales are few), but booksellers, and Amazon has firm control of bookselling’s online future as it works to undermine bookselling’s remaining brick-and-mortar infrastructure.

The entire blog post is worth reading if only to understand the mind set of the most powerful author lobbying group in the business. There are about a half a dozen things wrong in the post but learning what others think about the business can help one understand the decisions that are made.

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A number of academics (1900 so far) have pledged to do no more work for Elsevier Publishing.  The boycott was suggested by a mathematician of the University of Cambridge.  The reason is threefold: 1) high priced access to scholarly works; 2) bundling of unwanted journals with high priced, coveted journal; and 3) support for the Research Works Act.

Hal Abelson, a professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an open-publishing advocate, signed the pledge and wrote that “With the moves of these megapublishers, we [are] seeing the beginning of monopoly control of the scholarly record.” Benjamin R. Seyfarth, an associate professor in the School of Computing at the University of Southern Mississippi, wrote that “nearly all university research is funded by the public and should be available for free.”

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education

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“It started with a baseball…

Which shattered Lauren Russell’s perfectly ordered life. Lauren’s new neighbors were about to see the Southern lifestyle columnist’s temper! Then she met Cole Donovan, the sexy single dad. He was not the man from her husband list; he was too tall, too sexy—and definitely had too many kids! But somehow, looking into his blue, blue eyes, she forgot all that….

Lauren was too elegant, too prim and didn’t understand that his three rambunctious kids were the focus of his life. But his tempting neighbor smelled delicious, looked luscious and cooked like a dream. Cole wasn’t looking for a wife, but he couldn’t stay away from Lauren. Was it a recipe for disaster—or marriage?”

Dear Ms. Winstead Jones,

There still sure are a lot of Harlequin authors who I haven’t tried yet and it just happened to be your newest book which caught my eye next. My own house is a disaster and my cooking – though I love to do it – often depends on how many pots and pans I’m willing to get dirty at a time. I envy people who can look into their pantries and whip up something scrumptious from what’s there so Lauren’s profession called to me. Then it’s also kind of fun to watch an ordered person’s world upended and it appeared that these three children would accomplish that. And who isn’t interested in sexy? So, selection made I got to reading.

Cole and Lauren begin to interact almost cautiously. Neither had counted on meeting the other, both have lives and plans and they take things fairly slowly, get to know each other and establish a foundation before jumping into bed. They get to like each other before they start to love each other. They’ve also dated in the past and are open to possible relationships. This is important to me because I don’t like characters who fixate on one past love to the exclusion of all others. I’ve just read that trope too often. Here, Cole and Lauren seem like fairly normal, well adjusted adults.

The three children also come across as such. They’re definitely not plot moppets and are neither perfect, lisping angels nor spawn from out of a nightmare. They run around, they play, they like to eat fish sticks and don’t want to brush their teeth. The’re also intelligent and view their dad’s relationships in the way young children would – how the dates would affect them. I especially think Meredith’s character is well drawn as a young woman on the verge of growing up but who’s still got a bit of maturing left.

A major thing I like about the book is that both Cole and Lauren don’t immediately dissolve in a puddle of lust. In fact, despite noticing each other’s better physical qualities, they remain relatively in control until after quite a few meetings. When things do heat up, they sizzle yet at the same time there’s a degree of humor that had me laughing such as the first time Cole arrives at Lauren’s house and sex is on the agenda.

“Reality intruded like a splash of ice water. “Oh, tell me you came prepared.” When she’d thought about not overthinking, that hadn’t meant they shouldn’t think at all.
His voice was raspy as he responded, “Do I not look prepared?”
She smiled, touched him, leaned in so her breasts rested against him. He was so warm. Almost hot. “A condom, Cole. Please tell me…”
He squatted and reached into the back pocket of his jeans, pulling out three wrapped condoms. A baby monitor and a three-pack. He was most certainly prepared.”

I do like some humor with my sex. Some smiles along with the sparks. And things were going well until the last minute additions of Complications to the mix combined with the panic button pushing done by both Cole and Lauren. One person sounding the “I’m not sure I’m ready for this” alarm is understandable but when they both did it, it was too much. This followed by the quick realization by both of them that they’d messed up all seemed too much like plot manipulations and running out of space rather than the natural flow of a relationship.

This slight hiccup is somewhat redeemed by a good, solid ending. Both Cole and Lauren have come to their senses, they talk and it doesn’t appear that Lauren is ready to throw over her career to be a baby maker. The children and adults are all on the same page about the relationship and things look good without an immediate frog march down the aisle to show how deliriously in love everyone is. Overall, I’m impressed with “The Husband Recipe” and have added you to my list of watched authors. B-

~Jayne

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One of the reasons I was excited to read The Whip is that I lived for quite a while in Santa Cruz County, where some of the novel is set. I was also intrigued by the idea of a fact-based story about Charley Parkhurst, a woman who not only lived for most of her life as a man, but who was one of the most respected “whips,” aka stagecoach drivers, for Wells Fargo. While not a great deal is known about Parkhurst’s life, especially her early life, what is known provides a lot of rich material for any novelist, and certainly there is a great deal of drama in this fictionalized account of Parkhurst’s life. I found some of that drama moving, and there were significant stretches of the story I felt immersed in as a reader, but I ended up feeling ambivalent about both the kind of drama created around Parkhurst and the amount, which for me too often crossed the line into melodrama.

In 1812, Charlotte Parkhurst was left as an infant on the doorstep of the Boston Society for Destitute Children. Her first days at the orphanage were hardly auspicious, as the overworked, uncaring caretaker sees fit to lock the crying infant in a laundry closet at night so she will not keep the other children awake. Were it not for the immediate interest and devoted protection of a four-year old boy named Lee Colton, who rescued Charlotte from the closet and then kept her under his protection for the first four years of her life, Charlotte may not have made it through that first night alone in the closet. The relationship between Lee and Charlotte is somewhat like brother and sister, but the appearance of a new headmistress and the imposition of new rules, including the separation of male and female orphans, jeopardizes Lee’s authoritative protection of Charlotte, and his open defiance of the rules results in the kind of discipline that brings out the bad in Lee, a darkness that never leaves the bond he shares with her.

As Lee and Charlotte grow, their relationship becomes fraught, both with Lee’s conflicted feelings toward his “sister,” and the perceptions of others about the nature of their closeness. Charlotte is much more innocent than Lee, and while she escapes most of the brutality that Lee suffers under the orphanage’s “improvements,” her persistent efforts to spend time playing games with the boys instead of learning the domestic arts eventually results in her banishment to the stables, where the headmistress is certain she will learn humility and a desire to be a “good” girl. Instead, Charlotte discovers her love of horses, and under the wise tutelage of the stable master, Jonas, she gains both skill and the protections of a father-figure, both of which become necessary once Lee’s mixed feelings become dangerous to her and she needs to fashion a life without social, financial, or family connections.

Charlotte lives as a woman for the first four decades of her life or so. During that time, Lee moves in and out of her life, becoming more and more unstable and belligerent, and Charlotte moves from job to job, each more drab than the last, and the sum total causing her to “disappear” from her own life. Until, quite unexpectedly, she meets the local farrier and blacksmith in Providence, Rhode Island, where she is working and living in a women’s boarding house. Byron Williams, who was born into slavery and sent North through the Underground Railroad at 12 by his mother, who also taught him to read and write so he could support himself as a free man, introduces Charlotte to Emerson, and their mutual passion for the Transcendentalist’s ideals is matched by their physical passion for one another and their eventual love. Although their relationship is shunned in Providence, they eventually find happiness and stability on a farm, and the birth of their daughter brings them fulfillment neither ever thought possible.

So when tragedy comes to the farm donning white sheets and masks, and fueled by racism and a personal anger that is definitely not brotherly, Charlotte heads out West to California, where she hopes she will find the master of her misery and exact well-deserved and long-overdue revenge. Instead what Charlotte finds is a new life as Charley Parkhurst, stagecoach driver and Sacramento resident. Although small and slim, Charley manages to pass as a man, although the parts of the narrative told from Charley’s point of view continue to use female pronouns, suggesting that Charley never thought of herself as male. Whether this was the case in real life is not clear, but for the purpose of the book, Charley’s dual identity is necessary because of the various relationships she has during the second half of her life, one of which is as a woman with a local gambler she periodically trysts with in San Francisco, and another as a man with an actress and her daughter who live with Charley as caretakers of a sort. I will not describe this section of the book in much more detail, because it is difficult not to venture into serious spoiler territory, but I will say that this was the most problematic part of the book for me.

Fictionalized biographies are interesting creations, because the choices the author makes for her “characters” are as significant as the real life history on which she draws. In Parkhurst’s case, there are so many gaps in the story that Kondazian invents the majority of the biographical details, incorporating those that are speculated or known alongside the fictional aspects. For example, it is known that Parkhurst was abandoned and raised at an orphanage, but the content of those years is not known. The invention of Lee Colton is interesting and provocative, because it is Lee’s idea to initially disguise Charlotte as a boy so she can stay with him once the orphanage is divided along gender lines once the new headmistress arrives. He is the one who dubs her Charley, and even though her real gender is discovered almost immediately, the ruse sets the stage for the second half of the book and problematizes the relationship with Lee in a way that creates a lot of dramatic attention throughout the novel. Lee is characterized as possessing “anger” that is often seen “showing off its sexual side.” He feels possessive and protective of Charlotte/Charley, but is also attracted to her, and it baffles and angers him that she does not easily submit to those desires.

Lee’s dark ambivalence is later mirrored in Charley’s dualistic experience of herself as both male and female. She is most at home on the stagecoach driving her beloved horses, but experiences some of her happiest moments dressed as a woman and making love with a man who knows her secret:

Charley could sense Edmunds not only made love to Charlotte, but to Charley as well. The vision of Charley on the driver’s box, sweaty, dirty, whipping the six-team, powerful and brave as any man. She imagined it excited him to feel Charley beneath him or on top. As it excited her . . . the freedom to be a man and a woman in the same body – at the same time.

But that dualism can also be extremely difficult, as when Anna, the woman who lives with Charley, wants to make their relationship sexual and Charley can neither satisfy Anna’s desires nor tell her the truth.

And, indeed, this ambivalence, which can be so interesting when it’s explored in terms of the fluidity of gender identity and issues of power, also becomes problematic and ironically constraining when it comes to the novel’s dramatic structure. For example, why is it that Charley can trust her male lover with the truth of who she is but not the woman who claims to love her? And why is it that Charley necessarily thinks of herself as female when she not simply passes as male but seems so embedded in male culture and so infused with male habits and behavior as to be considered male and to be characterized as relishing the freedom of being male? Is there really a gender duality or is it more about conforming to the varying demands of the fictionalized drama? Also, why is it that some people conveniently see through her disguise but not others? Why does no one who could be dangerous to her see through it? And if, as she is told by her doctor at one point, that she is not the only woman living the way she is, that there is “nothing unusual” about her choice, why doesn’t she run into any of these other women? It feels that her secret is alternately urgently well-hidden or not so necessarily hidden depending on the circumstance, and the differences feel more contrived for plot than realistic consistency.

Realism is not necessary for the success of a fictionalized biography such as this one, but believability is, and there are so many coincidences in the book, especially in the second half, that for me that crucial believability became strained to the point of frustration at several crucial points in the story. In some ways it was fun to see all the artifacts and details packed into the book – the historical speculation that Charley was the only woman to vote in the US during her lifetime; myriad locations from Rhode Island to Sacramento to San Francisco to Soquel to Watsonville; Transcendetalism; saloons and chewing tobacco and sound horse knowledge and relevant social issues and events; even the preserved head of Joaquin Murrieta! But in other ways the novel had a kitchen sink feel, and more importantly, a sense that the book could not decide whether it wanted to be a serious, even heartbreaking, examination of prejudice and social identity or an indulgently pulpy historical melodrama. Even the prose shifted from banal to lyrical to purple:

Byrne had heard that old Charley Parkhurst was one of Wells Fargo’s most adept drivers…that he could get his coach along twisting roads in the dead of night as a dog can follow a trail by his nose.

. . .

It was March of 1812, the month when wagon-ruts were filled with cold, dark puddles – the month of mud and suicide in New England.

. . .

She tried to take all this in. That the woman in her had died in anguish and a vengeful man had been born in her place apparently brooked no notice of the universe. Nor had the universe even blinked in the absorption into itself of her tragedy.

And speaking of tragedy, there is a lot of it in this book. During the first half of the book, I felt that the darkness was effective at engaging my emotions and empathy. But the second half, where the tension between Charley’s tragic past and the almost ebullient indulgence of her masculine identity creates some over-the-top melodrama, I felt like The Whip was drawing on a number of stereotypes of life in 19^th C America more than constructing a believable tale about a complex and provocatively fascinating character. Consequently, my experience of the book was mixed and while I’m glad I read it, I cannot recommend it without reservations. C+

~ Janet

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A couple of friends of mine have encouraged me to watch Downton Abbey. One of them said it is like watching a very smart historical romance. The Earl of Grantham married Cora, Countess of Grantham when he was poor and titled and she was young and rich. (Sound familiar?) Overtime, they grew to love each other. The show, Downton Abbey, centers around the Earl’s aristocratic family and their help. The show is available on Netflix and free streaming via Amazon Prime.

Susanna Kearsley, author of some of my favorite Harlequin Superromances, polled the members of the Romance Novelists Association (RNA) for suggestions about books like Downton Abbey and members provided the following list:

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Dauntsey Park/The Last Rake in London, by Nicola Cornick, recently re-issued with the label “Perfect for fans of DowntonAbbey”. Here’s a summary: Sally Bowes is a scandalous figure in Edwardian London. The owner of the outrageously fashionable night club, The Blue Parrot, Sally guards her business and her heart well. But when she meets Jack Kestrel, both come under threat… Jack Kestrel is known as the last rake in London. Descended from the ancestral line of the devastatingly attractive Dukes of Kestrel, Jack is dangerous and dissolute and irresistible. When Jack and Sally start a passionate affair, neither of them think that the last rake in London might finally lose his heart. You can read an excerpt at Nicola’s web site:http://nicolacornick.co.uk

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The three books of Anita Burgh’s The Cresswell Inheritance Trilogy (The Broken Gate, The Heart’s Citadel, The Breached Wall) are set on a great estate in the West of England from Victorian times up to the end of the First World War. The trilogy follows the loves and fortunes of the aristocratic Cresswell family which are inextricably intertwined with those who serve them.

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Anita also sent this summary of one of her standalone novels, The Azure Bowl: The pretty blue bowl is the only possession of value owned by, Ia, a servant girl in a large Victorian mansion in Cornwall. Ia is consumed with anger at the injustice of her life compared with Alice’s who is the daughter of the house. Running away, at risk in the East End of London, Ia, eventually becomes a rich woman as Madam of a whore house, while Alice finds happiness in the US until their roles are reversed. But does it last and do the two ever meet again? You can find more on all Anita’s books at her website,http://www.anitaburgh.com

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Anne Whitfield offered her book The House of Women: As the Victorian Age draws to a close, Grace Woodruff, rejected by her first love and facing a spinster’s future, struggles to hold her broken family together, fighting for her sisters’ rights to happiness while sacrificing any chance for her own. As her disenchanted mother withdraws to her rooms, Grace must act as a buffer between her violent, ambitious father and the sisters who depend on her. But when the fires of her heart are rekindled by another, will the possibility of true love lead Grace to relinquish her responsibilities in the house of women and embrace her own right to happiness? You can read an excerpt at her website, http://www.annewhitfield.com

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Anna Jacobs’s bestselling series about The Gibson Family has been reprinting in paperback since 1994. It’s a rags to riches story. Annie Gibson is a survivor who overcomes huge difficulties to find love, starting life as a maid and ending up the owner of the town’s biggest mill, and mistress of a huge country mansion. It’s set in the mid-Victorian rather than Edwardian era, and Anna warns, ‘It’s not a “pure” romance,” but over the course of the five books—Salem Street, High Street, Ridge Hill, Hallam Square, and Spinners Lake—Annie has three husbands, and two of those are definitely love stories.http://www.annajacobs.com

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The Summer House by Mary Nichols was longlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 2010: In 1918, Lady Helen believes her parents when they say she will never find a better husband than Richard, but when he returns to the Front, she realises that she has made a terrible mistake. And when Oliver Donovan enters her life, they begin an affair that leaves Helen pregnant, and she is forced to surrender her precious baby. Two decades later, the second war ravaging Europe is not the only echo of the past that haunts the present. Laura Drummond is caught in a tragic love affair of her own and when she is forced to leave London during the Blitz, she turns to the mother she never knew.

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For a different angle on the time between the wars, Mary also has The Kirilov Star: Four-year-old Lydia is the only survivor of her aristocratic family when the Red Army over-run their home in 1920. She is adopted by a British diplomat and brought up in England, but the pull of her roots is strong…

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In ebook, Mary’s novels A Line Through Chevington (A | BN | S | K ) and Promises and Pie Crusts( A | BN | S | K) both have an “Upstairs, Downstairs” theme. You can find more details on her website: http://www.marynichols.co.uk

And finally, there’s Nora Fountain’s ebook, Blackthorn Child: The much wanted son of Lord Downley is swapped by a vengeful maid for her own dead child and the estate is lost to his line, but the truth emerges and a few generations later it is restored to the rightful heir with a supremely happy ending at the end of WWII. http://www.norafountain.co.uk/

Nora added, “Incidentally, I had to change the family name. When I wrote it many years ago the title was ‘Downton’s Heir’!!”

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I haven’t read any of the books myself, so can’t vouch for the HEA’s beyond the promises of the authors involved.

From the readers here at Dear Author:

Rowen S: For m/m readers, Charlie Cochrane’s series that begins with Lessons in Love is a fabulous look at life in that era. It follows two Cambridge dons as they solve mysteries and fall in love. The last book of the series takes place immediately after WWI, and deals with the fallout from that. I can’t recommend these highly enough–they are beautifully researched, beautifully written, and beautifully sensitive.

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Farmwifetwo: Elswyth Thane wrote a Williamsburg series 70yrs ago or so. Starts just before 1776 and goes to WWII. They are romances with kisses.

Also, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s “Anne” series ends with Rilla of Ingelside during WWI.

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Victoria: More YA romance than romance, but A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson! It’s set after the war, and it’s a bit fairytale-ish, but so charming. (Also reviewed here)

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Julie: It’s not strictly romance, but Charlotte Bingham wrote two wonderful stories set during that period: Debutantes and The Season.

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Evangeline Holland: As for Downton Abbey-type romances (and speaking as someone who writes Edwardian/WWI-set historical romances), there aren’t too many out there.

Jane Feather wrote a trilogy set in 1905-08 (The Bachelor List, The Bride Hunt, and The Wedding Game – A | BN), which I do like, but aren’t Feather’s best when compared to her excellent “V” books. Laura Lee Guhrke’s Abandoned at the Altar ( A | BN | K | S) trilogy is set in the early 1900s (Wedding of the Season, Scandal of the Year, and Trouble at the Wedding), and Kristi Astor’s Upon a Midnight Clear (A | BN | K S) is set in 1908–once again decent reads, IMO. Lucia Grahame’s haunting historical romance (A | BN) is set in 1900s France and England I think, and of course you can’t go wrong with Judith Ivory (Beast ( A | BN | K | S), Dance ( A | BN | K| S) and Bliss ( A | BN | K | S) [written as Judy Cuevas]), who gets the zeitgeist of the early 1900s spot on.

Rosalind Laker’s Orchids & Diamonds falls a tad outside of the romance genre spectrum, but it’s set in 1900s and WWI Europe, I really, really loved Sarah Smith’s trilogy set in mid-1900s to 1914 Boston and Europe (The Vanished Child, The Knowledge of Water, and A Citizen of the Country), I really enjoyed Harriet Smart’s Daughters of Blane (a UK release from the 90s now self-pubbed by the author), Gwendoline Butler’s gothic suspense The Red Staircase is set in 1900s England and Russia, and Clare Langley-Hawthorne’s mysteries are set in Edwardian England.

Lada: I think Catherine Cookson wrote some older romances set around the turn of the century. Its been years but The Wingless Bird (I think this is the one) stood out for me at the time from all it’s regency-set cousins. I believe some of her books were made into movies though I have not seen any of them.

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DS: Humor with some romance , I warmly recommend Angela Thirkell, particularly the Barsetshire books. She wrote between 1931 and 1959 so don’t expect a sensual read. They are comfort reads.

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Laura Lee Guhrke: Thanks Dear Author for bringing up Edwardian romance! Those of us writing it sometimes feel like it’s an uphill battle, but we are persevering. Some recommended reads:

• Non-fiction: A Perfect Summer, by Juliet Nicholson (fascinating, packed with juicy info). ( A | BN}
• Bio: Below Stairs, by Margaret Powell ( A | BN)and Testament of Youth, by Vera Brittain ( A | BN)
• Fiction: The Edwardians, by Vita Sackville-West ( A | BN)

But as to romance, there just aren’t many of us doing Edwardian. Evangeline, above, mentioned all the ones I can think of except Connie Brockway. Her new e-book, The Other Guy’s Bride, is set in turn of the century Egypt.

Tina: If anyone likes light mysteries set in Edwardian England, Marion Chesney has written a 4-book (i think) cozy series Snobbery With Violence is the first one. I listened to the series on audio Davina Porter narrating. It was lovely to read something set in Post-Victorian England.

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Kathryn: Can’t think of any romances that haven’t been mentioned but there is Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody series ( A | BN) which starts in 1880s goes up to 1920s and Mercedes Lackey’s Elemental Masters Series ( A | BN), which is set in parallel-universe late Victorian-Edwardian England. Both series have romantic elements to their stories.

And if you want late Victorian/Edwardian authors that were writing about their times there are writers such as John Galsworthy (whose Forsythe chronicles were also turned into a successful British/PBS series), E.M. Forster (Howard’s End, Room with a view), Rudyard Kipling, G.K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan of the Apes), E.M. Hull (The Sheik), and Elinor Glyn (Wikipedia credits her with pioneering women’s erotic fiction).

Ros: Flambards by K M Peyton. I think if it were published today it would be YA. And The Edge of The Cloud. There are two others in the series but I am not a fan of them.

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Bren: LOVE E.M. Forster’s novels. I also really like Elizabeth von Arnim, whose book was actually mentioned in the first episode of Downton Abbey: ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN ( A | BN). Her more famous ENCHANTED APRIL is a delight and takes place at an Italian Villa that four women go in together to rent for a special retreat all their own ( A | BN). Very enjoyable reading and romantic story lines. Love this period. Also suggest renting the DVD “Manor House”… a fascinating PBS reality show where people from our day were retrained to live an Edwardian lifestyle, both above and below stairs. Fascinating stuff. http://www.pbs.org/manorhouse/

Julie: Daisy Goodwin’s The American Heiress ( A | BN) is another novel set in Edwardian England.

You might also want to try Margaret James’ excellent The Silver Locket ( A | BN), set before and during the First World War.

Don’t forget to check out Amy at Harlequin’s list as well.

In general, with the exception of Deadwood, I have never been a fan of the western. I’ve read good things about your Hell’s Eight series, however, so I thought I’d see if perhaps your book Shadow’s Stand might be the western that changed my mind. After finishing it, I am open to reading another western. That said, I don’t think it will be one of yours.

My struggle with Shadow’s Stand began with the opening scene. The time is the summer of 1859; the place, the West Kansas territory. Fei Yen, a young Chinese American woman, needs a husband and she needs him fast. There’s a new law that forbids Chinese from holding mining claims and Fei has a claim on which she’s found gold. (Were you were referencing the Foreign Miners Tax passed in California in 1850 that taxed any non-citizen—which meant non-white–claim owners at astronomical rates?) There’s also, in your book,—I couldn’t find any mention of such a law after a cursory internet search so I’m taking your word for this—a law that allows a woman to take a condemned man as a husband thus saving him from death and giving her a spouse. This law also states that should the woman become displeased with her convict, she may return him to the gallows where he will be immediately hung.

Fei, who has just locked her literally crazy father in the cellar and has no one to turn to, rides into town and claims the half Mexican, half American Indian Shadow Ochoa just as he’s about to be hung. Shadow, though, despite the noose around his neck, refuses to be claimed by Fei until she actually asks him to marry her. The sheriff, racist asshole that he is, starts to hang Shadow before Fei has a chance to say anything. Fei grabs up a knife conveniently sticking out of a nearby boot, runs up Shadow’s body and, as he is choking to death, saws through the noose around his neck and, in the literal nick of time, cuts him down. Even after she’s saved his life, he still won’t take her up on her offer until she gasps out “Marry me,” to which he replies, “I thought you’d never ask.”

None of this made much sense to me. If Fei needs someone who could legally protect her claim, why pick Shadow, a non-white? Won’t he run up against the same prejudices and laws limiting the Chinese? The men hanging Shadow are violent racist drunks; Fei, a young unmarried attractive “half-breed” Chinese with an out of it dad, lives near them and yet none of these cretins have managed to rape or harm her. Shadow viciously fights the men trying to hang him, despite having his hands tied behind his back, and yet, when offered escape, he refuses it. This seemed unlikely to me. One moment he’s fighting for his life and the next he needs to be wooed?

After the two are (maybe legally, maybe not) married by a drunken “padre,” Fei, who married Shadow so she’d have protection, then asks the same men she’s worried will harm her and steal her claim to put Shadow in shackles and toss him in her wagon.  Fei puts the key to the shackles “into the lace-trimmed pocket above her breast” and Shadow thinks “Of all the things that pissed him off about the last day, it was her drawing attention to her breasts that he resented the most.” REALLY? Being beaten, hung, knifed, and shackled all rankled less than having to notice his new wife has breasts?

Shadow doesn’t want to have hot flashes for his bride because “inside him there was only darkness.” He’s a bad, bad man, or so he tells himself over and over. Fei, of course, can tell by page 30 he’s wrong about himself, that really, he’s an honorable guy. That dynamic pretty much sums up most of the book. Shadow can’t stay with Fei because he knows he’s not a marrying man, he can’t love, he isn’t worthy—the dude’s got quite a list. Naturally Fei falls for him like a ton of gold bricks. Everything about him–his voice, his body, his arrogance, his strength, his overly thick eyelashes, and, especially, his outrageously stimulating kisses—gives her pleasure. She’s sure he’ll leave her once he’s helped her but she gives herself to him anyway—she wants what she believes will be her one shot at passion and love even if she knows it can’t last.

Part of the problem with this dynamic is that it allows both Fei and Shadow to act inconsistently. Fei picks Shadow as a protector, and then locks him up. She kisses him passionately, and then tells him they can’t have sex. A few chapters later she’s changed her mind and goes to great lengths to be able to make love with him. Shadow behaves just as contradictorily. He freaks out when she’s in danger, and yet plans to leave her as soon as he honorably can. He’s consumed by lust for her and yet doesn’t have intercourse with her. Until he does—I had no clue what changed his mind.

Their relationship flip flops between the two sharing their deepest thoughts to not telling each other the most basic pieces of important information. At times, Fei trusts Shadow with every aspect of her being. A chapter or two later, she doesn’t tell him the truth about her plans or her feelings. Shadow is at times all action and the plot whooshes forward; other times, he just lets things happen, too busy feeling sorry for himself to take charge. Neither of them really owns their separate and combined fates—it takes the other Hell’s Eights to show up and push the two into their happy ending. Fei and Shadow were more irritating than interesting, despite their unusual backgrounds.

Your plot was marred by Fei’s and Shadow’s emotional melodrama. The most interesting parts of the book involved the two fighting against the racist establishment’s efforts to steal Fei’s claim. I enjoyed all the information about explosives although I thought it unlikely that Fei’s sexist father would have taught Fei his craft as an explosives expert for the mining company. But the parts of the book—and they seemed to go on forever—that dealt with Fei’s relationship with her Chinese family dragged for me. I haven’t read the first four books in the series, so the plotline revolving around Shadow’s being wanted for murder by the United States Army was both a little hard to follow and clearly not resolved in this novel. (It bothered me Fei risks her life, at the end of the book, to steal a notebook that may or may not shed light on the truth about the man Shadow killed, and then nothing more was mentioned about it.) I felt like the novel had some exciting scenes and far too many meandering confusing scenes.

I wish you’d done more with the social issues faced by your main characters. The American West in the 1850’s was a brutal place in which to be a woman, a Chinese, an Indian, or a Mexican. You touched on the prejudices Fei and Shadow faced but didn’t really explore them. Your book showcases what Fei and/or Shadow are thinking rather than what they are experiencing. One of the oldest adages on writing is it is better to show than to tell. Shadow’s Stand is full of telling—it would have been a much more riveting book had you spent less time elucidating your characters’ inner musings and more time describing the world around them.

Your sex scenes were detailed without being very sexy. Shadow clearly has a dominant side but keeps it suppressed around Fei. He swats her butt, uses lots of four letter words when the two have sex, but for all that, their love making is a bit uninspired. Here again, I got a better sense of what the two were thinking when they made love rather than what they were feeling and/or doing. I understand the earlier books in your series are quite spicy–this book was not.

You also have Fei, the first time she wants to have sex with Shadow, do a truly creepy thing. Fei and Shadow have rescued Lin, Fei’s more traditional Chinese cousin from an angry old lecher. (Fei’s father had sold Lin to the man to pay a debt.) The three of them are traveling to the town of Barren Ridge to return Lin and Fei to their Chinese family. Although Fei and Shadow have only known each other a few days, Fei has decided she wants to do the deed. However, since they are in the middle of nowhere and being pursued by several different villains, Fei and Shadow can’t head off into the hills and abandon Lin while they get busy. Fei’s solution to this? She gives the unwitting Lin an herbal tea that knocks Lin out. Fei tells Shadow, “If I had not, she would have spent the night talking and I would not have had this time with you.” Even Shadow “didn’t know whether to be flattered or appalled.” I was appalled. There’s just no way that’s an acceptable thing to do.

Ironically, the thing I liked best about your book was the setting. The American Wild West was crude and violent; poverty beat out prosperity for most who journeyed there. The rule of law rarely existed, women were far and few in between; the prejudice faced by and done to immigrants and Native Americans was extraordinary. That world which you convey bits and pieces of is a fascinating place.

Sincerely,

Dabney

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Note from Jane: Dabney is a new guest reviewer for Dear Author and will be reviewing here during the Spring to see if she feels comfortable with us. You can find her at her blog http://thepassionatereader.blogspot.com/. You can also find Dabney at All About Romance.

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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