Archive for the 'DNF Reviews' Category
Dear Ms. Hart,
 I’ve enjoyed several of your books, and three of them, the novels Dirty and Broken, and the novella collection Pleasure and Purpose, are among the best books I’ve read in recent years. I was thrilled by Pleasure and Purpose and greatly looking forward to No Greater Pleasure, its sequel, so I’m genuinely sorry to report that I found the first half of the book unsatisfying enough to put the novel down unfinished. The following, then, will not be a full review but rather an attempt to articulate the reasons I stopped reading.
Like Pleasure and Purpose, No Greater Pleasure takes place in (to crib from my review of the earlier book) “a fantasy setting which resembles mid nineteenth century Europe in terms of its technological development.”
It is the prevailing religious belief that each time a soul finds perfect solace, even if only for a moment, an arrow appears in the god Sinder’s quiver. According to legend — and many people’s faith — when the quiver is full, Sinder, his wife and his son, The Holy Family, will reunite, bringing peace and harmony to mankind.
To that end, the Order of Solace
…
Ruthless Tycoon, Inexperienced Mistress by Cathy Williams
Cesar is tired of bailing his younger brother out of hot water so when Ferdinado asks for access to his trust fund, Cesar heads out to see who it is that has her gold digging claws in Ferndando. He finds not a statuesque model blonde, but a mannish, petite redhead. Not Ferdinado’s type and certainly not his. The two get stuck in a snowstorm. They have sex. Jude becomes pregnant and the real fireworks begin. Cesar is standard HP hero (alpha, hot, assholic). Jude isn’t a doormat but falls pretty easily for Cesar. B-
This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.
Up Close and Dangerously Sexy by Karen Anders
Given that the haikus have come to a close here at Dear Author, I submit my own:
Stranger danger here
As long as he gives good Os
No worries, she thinks
I stopped after the second scene. The heroine is in the sister’s apartment. Some stranger comes in and thinks she’s the heroine’s twin. He gets in bed with her and brings her to orgasm with his hand. “She …
Beware: There May Be Spoilers Ahoy.
I’m going in blind
Never read your HP fic
Bought for hot cover
 Looking for a fix
I need a new series to
Get my ‘crack’ fix on
Sorry – this ain’t it
I tried, I really did try
But you soon lost me
Here’s a quick recap
Clary sees a cute boy at
a club…and he’s killed
But his killers? Hot!
And only Clary sees them!
Plot unfolds from there.
Right away, I have
Many, many issues with
Heroine Clary
She’s a hardcore Sue.
Clary Sue can see ‘Hunters
She is SPECIAL, guys!
- Show quoted text -
Miss Perfect? Miss Chosen One?
Misses the big clues
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER (maybe this should be spoiler-cut all the way to
the end)
Clary Sue’s mom was
Married to the bad guy and
Then ran away, hid.
Never told Clary
Sue about her missing dad.
Big “Who is dad” plot.
IT’S THE BAD GUY. WHY CAN NO ONE SEE THIS BUT ME. WTF.
Ahem. Sorry. Cough.
That’s the big ‘gasp’ plot reveal
She is evil’s kid.
Cue lots of ‘oh noes’
And then? Epic wallbanger
moment happens here.
Hot hero guy Jace?
She’s been kissing? Get ready.
‘Nother big reveal
Won’t spoil it here but
It rhymes with TWINCEST. So. Yeah.
Book hits wall. I’m done.
DNF.
This book can be purchased in mass market from an independent bookstore or …
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
Auto-buy for me
Jane Austen and zombies? This
is my dream come true.
 At first, I’m puzzled.
Why is Jane Austen sharing
copyright with Seth?
Public domain book
But I read and it is clear
more ripoff than new.
The text, dialogue
word for word what Austen wrote
…with minor changes.
This book reads more like
wild usage of “Find/Replace”
tool in MS Word.
At first, this is cute.
Men are judged by number of
kills, not money. Nice.
Darcy is a catch
Because he is a master
of zombie slaying.
The Bennett daughters
act the same, talk the same
but they are…ninjas.
My eyebrows? Raised but
I still read. Netherfield Ball?
Invaded by dead.
Darcy slights Lizzy
Instead of laughing it off,
she wants to…gut him????
This is where you start
to lose me. Despite Bennett
bloodthirst, I press on
But when Darcy asks
Lizzy to dance with him,
the story has changed.
Instead of the Austen
version where she declines, she
gives him ‘cut direct’
I realize at
this point that Grahame-Smith?
Doesn’t know his Jane.
I don’t mind a spoof
Of beloved author. BUT.
You missed the basics.
Give the cut direct?
MAJOR deal in Regency.
But no one here blinks.
I realize that it’s
A bit silly to get mad
over a detail.
But missing that small
detail showed me …
Dear Ms. Dayton,
 Unlike some of my fellow reviewers here at Dear Author, I don’t try books by new-to-me authors as frequently as I probably should. A lot of that is simply due to the fact that I am a slow reader and it takes a lot of my reading time to keep up with new books by authors whose previous works I’ve liked. But another piece of it is that although I can enjoy books in a wide variety of genres, I am, even so, a finicky reader with very specific tastes. Nine times out of ten, when I try an author I haven’t read before, those tastes go unsatisfied.
Such was the case with New Blood, which I decided to try after hearing it was steampunk and reading an excerpt that intrigued me. I don’t feel that New Blood was a bad book–I have certainly read much worse, and the fact that I made it to the one-third point shows that it is stronger than many of the other books I’ve tried, only to put down much earlier. But for me, New Blood also wasn’t a very absorbing …
Tycoon’s Pregnant Mistress by Maya Banks.
 I laughed a little when I finished this book because it had virtually all the common HP/SD tropes smushed into one small category. We have the secret baby, amnesia, asshole boyfriend with trust issues, evil other woman, and an abduction for added spice (plus the requisite travel to an exotic locale).
There is something kind of fun about a secret baby mistress abduction amnesia story but the melodrama level was a bit too high for me. Essentially the heroine is the mistress of a wealthy developer and she is unjustly accused of selling secrets to his competitor. She’s virtually tossed out of his home and then kidnapped. But once the kidnappers realize that there is no use for her, she is released unharmed. This stretched my credibility even for an HP. As a result of her trauma, she gets amnesia and her lover comes to take care of her and as a result learns that she could not have possibly sold secrets to his competitor. Of course, why he couldn’t have figured out that before, I’m not sure. C
This book …
Dear Mrs. Quinn,
 I didn’t start reading your books until the publication of the second Bridgerton novel. The hoopla surrounding it was impossible to miss. Once I’d finished it, I had to go back and read the first book and then each of the following books in the series. My favorite remains Colin and Penelope’s story. As I read each novel after book four, I noticed that my enjoyment dimmed slightly. Not by much but, yes, there was a downward trend. But at eight books it was a lengthy series and such is to be expected.
I wasn’t thrilled with the book that came next, Miranda Cheever, as shown by my C+ review grade. But I heard that this was an older manuscript you’d pulled out, dusted off and polished up for publication while you worked on two all new books. So, okay I was still willing to keep reading your novels. And with “The Lost Duke of Wyndham,” at first it looked like you and I were sympatico again.
But even though my final grade for “Duke” was better than “Cheever,” I couldn’t help but notice that certain aspects of the writing style …
Dear Ms. Bourne,
 It’s taken me a while to get around to reading your debut, The Spymaster’s Lady. Back in the winter, Robin asked me if I would review it in a conversational review with her before your next book came out, and I promised that I would. When I got to reading it last week, my repsonse to The Spymaster’s Lady was far from Robin’s own experience of the book and she suggested that I convert the notes I had prepared for a conversational review into this letter instead, so that the review could stand on its own.
Readers who have not yet done so can find a plot summary for The Spymaster’s Lady in Jane’s A- review. Another opinion can be found in Jayne’s A- review. And readers should also be aware that this review will contain spoilers.
The writing in The Spymaster’s Lady is crystalline in its beauty and sharpness. The prose is just gorgeous, scintillating, and as others have noted, the French dialogue and Annique’s POV thoughts in French are absolutely spot on in capturing the cadences of the French tongue. You are a brilliant stylist, a …
 Hot for You by Jodi Lynn Copeland. This is a friends to lovers story (the first of two in the anthology). Carinna was a cocktail waitress at The Liege, a resort in Las Vegas. She likes her men like her martinis “dirty as a girl could get ‘em.” The man she want right now is her good friend, Jack. Jack is a local fireman who is working to parlay his mastery at the poker table into a classic car restoration business. Carrina loves Jack and Jack loves Carrina but Carrina can’t allow herself to have a relationship.
The story is told in alternating first person. I don’t mind this technique and I thought the author did a good job showing the distinct personalities through the varying narration but I did feel that Jack’s narration was a bit florid with unintentionally comic results:
The thought of her warm pussy sucking at my tongue had me returning to that fateful night four months ago.
“Pussy sucking” and “fateful nights” aren’t two phrases that I ordinarily would put together in the mind of one man. The paragraph goes on …
Dear Readers,
Two more vol 1’s from Viz. But the first is a Vol 1 from CMX, another publisher who brings quality shoujo to the US.
 Land of the Blindfolded by Tsukuba Sakura. CMX. Retail $9.99. Not rated, but I’d say high school and up. 9 volumes (complete in Japan and in the US.)
(I should mention that the main story only takes up about 2/3 of the first book. There are also two unrelated short stories at the end that are rather sweet, both romantic.)
I actually heard of this story back when I first started reading manga and the concept intrigued me. I never knew it was released over here though until recently, and so I bought the first volume. It’s definitely a cut above other shoujo.
The story involves a high school girl named Kanade who can sometimes see the future when people touch her. She thinks of it like living in the land of the blindfolded, only her blindfold sometimes slips. One day she bumps into a young man in the hallway, Arou. He can see the past …
Dear Readers,
Here are some more first volumes of shoujo series coming out:
 B.O.D.Y. by Ao Mimori. Viz. Retail $9.99. T+ for older teen (kisses, sexual innuendo). 12 volumes (ongoing in Japan, just starting here this month)
I’d never heard of this title but I was taken with it from the first page. The drawing is clear, sharp, and expressive, the characters modern, attractive and easily distinguished, the storyline cute, funny and lively.
Ryoko has a crush on a silent studious type in her class that everyone else thinks is creepy because he’s so morose. But she likes a guy who’s so conscientious about his work, and can’t stop thinking about him. She decides she’s in love and dons her battle armor (mascara, curls, accessories, and courage).
Then she finds out he’s working as a host (a male escort affiliated with a host club, sex not necessarily included) because he likes playing around and getting paid for it, and he has a completely different personality outside school. She rightfully knocks him on his ass and tells him she would absolutely never fall for …
Dear Ms. White:
 I haven’t written a DNF review in a long time. Generally, I don’t like to write them but in this case, I read all but the last 50 pages. I stopped because I felt the relationship depicted on the pages had such an uncomfortable power disparity I couldn’t move forward. I admit that my problem with the book is really a personal thing. I reacted negatively based on my personal belief/opinions.
Wicked starts out with a fresh premise. The heroine, Lara Fox, is a computer technician who installs a new system at attorney Karl Dawson’s office. Lara is a fun, sassy woman unafraid of her own sexuality. She flirts outrageously with Karl but while instantly attracted to him doesn’t do more than flirt because she’s just not sure about him.
Karl is no slouch in the opposite sex department himself but has become bored with his bed partners and sexual lifestyle of late. Lara is an instant turn on because (and this wasn’t so fresh for me) he believes for all Lara’s outward bravado, she is secretly a submissive.
Lara and Karl play a short cat and …
Dear Ms. Drennen,
 There’s no way to sugarcoat this review. I found “Mauvelous” to be just ghastly. Sorry but that’s the word that comes to mind. This book is bad. It’s supposed to be about some agents from a security firm called Aztec. I have no idea what they do but mention was made of villains being traitors so I guess there’s some tie in with the government. If they’re what’s standing between civilization and anarchy then God help us all.
The hero comes across as a smarmy used car salesman with a bad toupee who still thinks he’s the hottest thing on two legs where women are concerned. He smirks when women check out his “package,” drives a muscle car because it seems to be a projection of his manhood, and flubs up almost everything he tries to do.
Mauve, the heroine can’t get her mind off the one night of hot luvin’ they shared and the multiple orgasms he gave her. Never mind he was blowing off enough booze fumes to fell an ox, damn he gave her some fine sex. Oh, what…watch for the villain. Yeah, but she’d rather think of …
One thing that Julie Bindel’s piece has done is peak my interest in Harlequin Presents books. In addition, a few weeks ago, I did a piece on category romances and how I was coming to appreciate the Blazes, Harlequin Historicals, and so forth that I have been reading. A couple people suggested authors in the Harlequin Presents line and I have since started reading them.
I don’t think that I had read them since my early reading days (maybe 20 years ago). My recollection of this series were that it was peopled by really rich men and their secretaries. In the last month, I’ve read 20 Harlequin Presents. 7 of them were by Sara Craven but most of them were in the Harlequin Presents One Click Buy. It’s a program where you can buy all the HPs for one month in one big package. Incredibly, you can buy the entire 8 books at Books on Board for $9.49.
I think it’s a bit interesting to read the entire collection. I felt like I was reading an album versus a single record. The collection itself was varied, as if the editors make an attempt …
Dear Ms. Sawyer,
 After hearing great things about your work, you’ve been on my “I gotta try this lady someday” list for a couple of years. I had heard that your books were long historicals filled with facts and details, with great characters and realistic plots. Hey, what’s not to love? I’m in heaven when someone tells me about books like these. Set it during the little used 17th century and I’m practically orgasmic. So, why didn’t “The Winter Prince,” the telling of the secret love between Mary Villiers Duchess of Richmond and Lennox and Prince Rupert, work enough for me to even finish it?
Upon seeing a copy in Waldenbooks, I snatched it up. The matte cover is lovely and fondle-able. The flyleaf is filled with glowing quotes about how wonderful the book is, the type is easy to read and it’s not a weird trade size. I set down to start and realized by page 17 that this book was going to take a while to get through. I revised my goal of finishing it in one day to finishing 2/3 of it. Then that got revised downward as the pages just crawled by …
Dear Ms. Hoyt,
 Many readers (including Jane and Jayne) have fallen in love with your debut, The Raven Prince. I wish I were one of them, but unhappily, I have to report that I closed the book feeling that the fan bus had left the bus terminal without me. As I sit here, figuratively waving to all those folks whose faces are plastered to the bus windows, wondering how to explain to them why I couldn't get on board, the bus turns smaller and smaller, until it's a dot on the horizon. I look around. Yup, I'm all by myself out here.
The Raven Prince takes place in eighteenth century England. It's the story of Edward de Raaf, the temperamental Earl of Swartingham, and the widow Anna Wren, whom he nearly runs over with his horse one day. Shortly after that, Edward finds himself in need of a new secretary, and since he doesn't give his steward, Mr. Hopple, much time to come up with one, Hopple hires Anna, a woman.
It doesn't take long for …
Dear Ms. Balogh,
 I’ve been slowly reading my way through your backlist, and several of your older regencies have found a permanent place on my bookshelf. Among them are Dark Angel, Dancing with Clara, A Christmas Promise and others. Unfortunately, A Certain Magic won’t be joining these books.
A Certain Magic begins when Alice Penhallow, a 29 year old widow, arrives in London from Bath. She has come to London to help her sister in law nurse her children, who are suffering from the measles. Shortly after arriving there Alice meets her former friend and neighbor, Piers Westhaven.
Some of the early conversation between them did not feel natural to me, because Piers and Allie talked about things they already knew, and I felt that they would not have needed to discuss them. For example, there’s this bit:
“Well,” he said, “I wish you had not left home, Allie. I have no reason to spend time at Westhaven Park any longer. First Web dying two years ago and then you purchasing a house in Bath last summer and taking yourself off. It’s deuced lonely at home
…
Dear Ms. Nichols,
 Since I only read 148 of the 443 pages that comprise your first novel, Sunburst's Citadel, there are a number of things I'm not qualified to say about it. I can't say, for example, how much the characters grow or change over the course of the book, or whether the plot takes exciting or unexpected twists and turns in the latter two-thirds of the book. For all I know, if I'd stuck it out, I might have been rewarded with something really wonderful, and if so, that's my loss.
What I can talk about, though, are the things I liked and didn't like in the first 148 pages, and the reasons why I did not make it to page 149. What attracted me to Sunburst's Citadel was the unusual setting, medieval India, and the fact that the hero, Karim, was a Moghul and a Christian, and the heroine, Shamsi (a name that means “sunburst”), was a Rajput and a Hindu. Cultural or religious romantic conflicts often add dimension to characters, and this book, I thought, promised to be something different from the same-old, same-old.
After an intriguing opening in …
Dear Ms. Walker:
I started this story and then could not get past the first chapter or the hook and flipped to Sasha’s story. I came back to finish it, about the time we were having the DNF dilemna and I couldn’t make it past the fifth chapter and rather than forcing myself, I gave up.
Kelly sneaks past security after a concert of a major rock musician and makes her way to his dressing room with the intent to get her best friend an autograph. While all other groupies are cleared out, Kelly remains hidden and is privy to a sight she shouldn’t be seeing: That is the rock star and a roadie begin to engage in serious love play. A bouncer eventually finds her and takes her off to sexually punish her (much to Kelly’s delight). Kelly and Tommy, the bouncer, have emotional hangups. Tommy’s looking for the barefeet, aproned girl next door and Kelly doesn’t want her heartbroken like her mother’s had been.
What? Usually this is about the time that said groupie gets killed and a police investigation starts up. One …
Dear Ms Thornton,
 Though I’d never tried any of your books before, I took a chance on this one when I saw it was set in Restoration Era Venice and England. Alas, it turned out to be a style of novel I’ve lost all patience for. The hero and heroine are torn apart years before by the treacherous actions of a slavering villain overcome with lust for the heroine. For 8 years, the hero then believes the worst of the heroine. Then when they finally met again he accuses her, insults her, manipulates her into his power, treats her like dirt and ensures that anyone else who might have come to her rescue believes the worst of her. And has the nerve to still accuse her of lying to him and treating him badly once he knows the truth. Here’s the woman he claims to have loved yet he’ll more easily believe the lies told to him by someone he doesn’t even know rather than listen to her. Bastard. I read the first 100 pages then flipped to the last 50 to see if his …
Dear Readers and Authors,
In our FAQ section, Jane and Jayne posted the following review grade explanation:
Our review grades are our own opinions, obviously, and therefore fraught with subjectivity. You may or may not agree with our opinions, our grades, or anything else. We’d love for you to comment on the reviews and tell us where we went wrong or what we got right. If you are wondering if there is any objectivity in a review, we can only provide you with the information below:
A: I loved it and would cry if someone took it from my library. I would need lots of chocolate to get over its loss.
B: It’s good and I would buy it again, given the chance.
C: Eh. Not bad but I probably would never read it again.
D: I want my money back.
F: I want my money back and repayment for the time wasted reading it.
At the bottom of this grading scale is one more grade:
DNF: does this really need an explanation?
I’ve decided that in my case, it really does.
What brought me to to this realization was the inauguration of our Dear Author Book Club. Naturally, I offered to read our first book …
Dear Ms. Blair,
 I know there will be people who adore this book. People who enjoy a more wacky, screwball type of comedy and who’ll love watching these two characters interact. I’m not one of them.
I know that lots of people have enjoyed the two previous books in this series, The Kitchen Witch and My Favorite Witch and I would imagine they will eat this one up too.
Vickie Cartwright lives in Salem, Massachusetts and runs a vintage clothing store. When her Nana died, Vickie inherits the key to a large wardrobe that’s been sitting in the family’s old attic. Legend says that only a Cartwright woman who possesses the magic of her ancestresses will be able to open it. Well, Vickie manages to open it and finds a beautiful antique carousel unicorn inside. When she and the unicorn are featured on an antiques roadshow, it catches the attention of Rory MacKenzie and the citizens of Caperglen, Scotland.
A century ago, one of Rory’s ancestors carved the entire carousel set which drew visitors to the tiny town. When he lost the women he loved, he presented her with the unicorn thus breaking the set and …
Dear Ms. More,
 “Allegiance” caught my eye as I’m always looking for a good western and it’s harder and harder to find them in print anymore. Unfortunately, I don’t think you’ll like to read my opinion of it.
Amy Baker and her brother Jeb are headed downriver to New Orleans on a Mississippi River boat. They plan to sell the furs that Jeb and their now dead father trapped for trade goods to haul to Santa Fe. Along the way they met up with Major Tyler O’Donnell who tries to help Amy get Jeb out of prison after he’s arrested in New Orleans for attempting to prove a gambler was cheating him. Tyler doesn’t have time to help this young woman yet he can’t turn his back on her. When she discovers his plan to buy muskets and transport them to the newly independent Texas to help fight off the Mexicans who want to take parts of it back, she finagles her way in on the deal. After breaking her brother out of jail, they head back to St. Louis, get the of their cargo, hit the long trail across the wild west, fighting their passions …
Dear Ms. Havlir,
 Several of your books were nominated during our monthly ebook contests but it’s taken me until now to try one. Unfortunately, it didn’t work too well for me.
You describe your heroine as super intelligent, a woman who graduated from college at age 16 and who at age 26 is a trauma surgeon. It’s too bad that you didn’t have her act that way. She is the only witness to a cold-blooded murder, the killer got a clear glimpse of her, several police officers tell her that she’s in danger and needs the 24 hour bodyguard her father wants her to have and all she can do is whine that it’s cramping her style and will keep her from getting the sexual encounters she wants to broaden her limited sexual knowledge. What an idiot. I think I might have liked the down to earth hero a lot but I couldn’t make myself read past the point where Paige gives him the slip so that she can go out on a date and hopefully get laid. He calls her words to the effect of spoiled princess senseless moron and I totally agree with him. …
Dear Mrs. Poff,
 I tried. I really tried to finish Chase for an Angel. But I just couldn’t. The book starts too slowly with a whole chapter of flashback. Then your style, more telling than showing, distanced me from the characters and the story. Then you separate the hero and heroine for years. The way I had the book paginated in my IPAQ, at one point you spend 25 pages telling those years from the heroine’s POV then about 40 pages with the hero. You’ve obviously done your research into the American Civil War but by putting so much of that in such a dry form into the story, it turns it into some kind of CW battle travelogue.
And then once the story picks up, it gets incredibly hard to read because of the villains and what they do to the heroine. I must warn readers of this. The heroine is raped, abused, raped some more then kidnapped by the villains and taken with them on their terror spree from New Orleans through Texas. You do not spare readers from the extreme viscousness, brutality and horror of her weeks in the hands of these monsters.
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