When I put this in my Netflix queue, I had no idea how truly revolutionary it would be. Even as I started to watch it, I didn’t know what was coming but found myself charmed, delighted and emotionally connected to the story and the storyteller. For, you see, both become entwined as Nina Paley tells of her marriage and its failure along with an abbreviated version of the Ramayana. WTF? you say. Yes TF I say, it’s true. And we also get a healthy dose of a wonderful jazz age singer named Annette Hanshaw whose songs are just perfect to help tell the tale.

Paley uses 5 distinct styles of animation plus some amazing music – including modern Indian as well as jazz singer Hanshaw – as she winds her story together with that of Rama and his wife Sita. All the animation is fantastic and clever but my favorite are the parts narrated by Indonesian shadow puppets. The voices behind the puppets are three Indians from various parts of the country who provide the basic details of the story – though they sometimes disagree on and mess up the details of the complicated tale which leads to some comic moments as they correct each other and worry about how it will make people mad.

And then there’s the Intermission! Yes, the film has an intermission and don’t skip through it as it’s hilarious watching the various characters head to the concession stands for popcorn, hot dogs and drinks. You can even use it as an intermission was intended if you need to.

The DVD I bought, as well as the website, has various subtitles available – including LOL – and I suggest that, at least the first time through, people watch the film with them on since the accents can be hard to understand at times if you’re not used to them. There’s also a commentary track that’s interesting to listen to. For further details on the movie, there’s a FAQ section at Paley’s website for the film www.sitasingstheblues.com. There’s also a blog and a wiki.

Apparently when the film was first released, there were problems with how it was viewed as a religious story as well as copyright issues with the Hanshaw songs. The songs stuff has been worked out but some viewers might still object to the way Paley chooses to portray the various people of the story. The various versions of the Ramayana are thousands of years old and though Paley doesn’t tell the whole story, what she does tell is definitely from a feminist slant yet some stuff modern feminists might find hard to swallow. But it is what it is and she felt that animating it was a cathartic experience for her after the break up of her marriage.

So, you want to try it? Well, you can rent it, you can buy a copy and it’s available on the internet. Yep, that’s right. Paley has made it freely available to do anything with except copyright it. I know that you can watch it at the Sitasingstheblues.com site as well as youtube and the IMDB. Once I’d seen it, I had to own a copy and gladly paid for it from the website. It’s amazing. It’s funny. It’s inventive. It’s unique and I hope that people check it out and enjoy it as much as I do each time I watch it.

~Jayne

For a contemporary without a suspense aspect, this story moved along at a quick and even pace, never sagging. You have a great touch with secondary characters, making even those that only have a little screen time seem individuals without being caricatures.

The main protagonists in On the Steamy Side seem to be a flip from Can’t Stand the Heat. In Can’t Stand the Heat, Miranda is a prickly character who, for most the story, was kind of unlikeable for me. In OTSS, it’s Devon, the hero, who is the asshole. Part of the problem is that Devon is a superstar chef, known for his reality tv show where he goes into any kitchen, anywhere, and challenges them to a cook off. It’s called One Night Stand with Devon Sparks. So in my mind, I kept thinking Gordon Ramsay.

Devon is tired of being a celebrity chef. He is embarrassed when he is named #1 Chain Restaurant Operator. This will only contribute to the disdain his peers have for him. It also is the nail in the publicity coffin for him. He doesn’t want to be considered a brand. He is a serious chef.

Devon seeks to prove to himself, and everyone else in the foodie community, that he is still a serious and superior chef by standing in for Adam Temple, the owner of The Market. Adam, hero of CStH, has an Alice Waters’ type restaurant offering simple, delicious foods based on ingredients ordered not farther than hundred mile radius of Manhattan.

Devon has a big ego:

Devon glared around the empty dining room. So no one had bothered to roll out the red carpet for his first night at Market. Fine. But was it too much to ask that at least be a peon or two polishing glassware and setting tables? Granted, Devon hated waiters of every size and stripe, but they had their occasional uses. For instance, greeting a visiting chef during off hours and telling him where the hell everybody was.

Devon’s ego is so big that it seemed odd that when his special additions to Adam’s menu failed he wasn’t accusing those around him of sabotage or wasn’t blaming the line chefs and sous chefs for failed execution or wasn’t berating customers for their lack of refined taste buds. No, instead, Devon feels like the flaw is in him.

Now I did understand that Devon was like a wounded bear, backed into a corner trying to defend himself from further harm. Anytime anyone got close, sensed his weakness, he lashed out. Yet, I found the tender, likeable Devon artificial given his original construct. I think we were supposed to see his as both an ego driven maniac and a frightened boy still seeking his father’s approval, yet the two sides didn’t coalesce well for me.

Lilah Jane Tunkle was an art teacher in Appalachia who was a victim of budget cuts. She decides to move to New York City to find an exciting new life. Her best friend is Grant, the front of house manager for Market, and one night at a bar, she gets propositioned by the hottest thing this side of the mountain range. After a delicious one night stand, she heads to Market to meet up with Grant, only to see Devon, her hook up.

She serves one disastrous night as a wait staff only to be kept in close contact with Devon when his ten year old son shows up in the custody of child services. Devon had abdicated all care of his son to Heather, the mother, only Heather was a drug addict and had placed herself in rehab. Devon doesn’t want his son, or so he says, but Lilah Jane demands that the son stay with Devon and Devon agrees only if Lilah Jane will be the nanny.

Lilah Jane is a managing sort, if the previous paragraph didn’t spell that out. She proceeds to manage Devon, undertaking to help him and his son bond together. I didn’t find her manipulative but I did find her convenient. She was all sugar and sweetness to Devon’s spice, amazingly intuitive and usually able to defuse even the most volatile of tempers. At times, I felt that it was a Lilah Jane knows best show. I never really did understand why she came to NYC and what she planned to do with her high school teaching experience.

My favorite parts of an Edwards’ book is the kitchen scenes and the kitchen staff. The kitchen scenes are so vibrant, I can almost see the flash of the knives and hear the sizzle of the saucepans. I feel like I am right there, inside that sacred domain, seeing the success and the failures. And the Market staff and their romances and their breakups and their secret longings kept me glued to the pages. C+

Best regards,

Jane

| Book Excerpt | Kindle | Amazon | Nook | BN | Borders |
Fictionwise | Books on Board

Proviso: This is a Macmillan book so the list price for the ebook is $14.00.

Denise Rossetti recommended this book to me late last year, but it took Maili ALSO recommending it to me recently to finally make me read it. I think I had about 7 hours of sleep in the three days since I started it. It’s just…brilliant. As I write this review a few days after finishing it, I’m still lost in your world, thinking about the characters, wishing them well.

Dr. Jack Francisco is a maxillofacial surgeon who witnesses a mob murder and is taken into protective custody. He gives up his life and his job (OMG, all that training!) in order to do the right thing and testify about what he saw. But he’s quickly found by a hitman, known only as D, who refuses to kill Jack because he’s been mysteriously blackmailed into taking the hit and can’t bring himself to do it. He’s one of those mythically moral hitman who will only take the hit if the mark “deserves” to die. One might roll one’s eyes at the cliche and might even, in a dorky moment, quote Gandalf (“Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends”), but by this point, your writing and characterization had pulled me in so perfectly, I really didn’t care about quite how much disbelief I was suspending.

D takes charge of Jack (if HE found Jack in protective custody, someone else would too, and in sparing Jack’s life, he felt he’d taken responsibility for it), and they wander around the country, avoiding death from the many people on their tail (mob hitmen, mysterious people after D, Federal Marshals who want Jack back), and falling in love. One thing I ADORED about this book was that they only started noticing each other physically and being attracted to each other and falling in love AFTER the danger was (mostly) over. When they were running for their lives, they were running for their lives and not stopping to fuck like bunnies, or even stopping to make eyes at each other. And yet the sexual tension, the unacknowledged attraction was still there and I’m not sure how you did it. Brilliantly done.

That’s pretty much the plot for half the book. The second half is taken up with trying to keep both Jack and D alive through the trial and then trying to clean things up enough that they could get their HEA. But this bare bones summary does the story such an injustice. You don’t shy away from the moral issues these two men have to face, you don’t shy away from showing their struggles with themselves and with each other. And OMG, you don’t shy away from their emotions. You show Jack struggle with his feelings for a hired killer. You show D’s slow return to emotional life so carefully, so perfectly, I literally couldn’t put the book down:

D shut his eyes, every cell in his body pushing and pulling at him…pulling him toward Jack, pushing him away, a tug-of-war where nobody won. He shuffled forward, slow and hesitant steps that drew him up behind Jack. He didn’t turn from the window although he surely knew D was there. D’s hand rose from
his side, a marionette arm on strings, his breath going shaky and panicked like a spooked horse. Jack didn’t move.

Fuck it. D let his hand fall to Jack’s shoulder. He felt him flinch a little at the contact, but he didn’t turn. The feeling of Jack beneath his hand, warm through his shirt and solid and strong and alive, sent another blast against that vault door, shuddering it on its hinges. He put his free hand on Jack’s other shoulder, his head sagging down. He could feel Jack thrumming, like putting his hand on the hood of a car with the engine
running.

D gave up. He couldn’t fight this, at least not now. [ . . . ]—it was all too much, even for him. He tilted forward until his forehead was resting against the back of Jack’s neck. A great exhale rushed from him and
he found himself hanging on to Jack’s shoulders for dear life.

I’m still drowning in these characters a full day after finishing this book.

Also, the suspense was unbelievably good. I am not a mystery reader and I rarely read suspense, so the fact that I had no idea about the course of the plot might not say much, but I think it was wonderfully done. My heart was in my throat for HOURS on end and I could NOT put this book down. (It might have helped that I was reading on my iPhone — it’s so difficult to read ahead.)

Niggles: Jack had a doctor’s bag and it had stuff in it. Do doctors REALLY have doctor’s bags nowadays? Especially specialists like Jack? If they do have doctor’s bags, would he really still have it all through the many transfers of protective custody? And if he DID keep it with him, would it really have medicine in it? And syringes? Really?

Also, Jack’s profession is not fully integrated into his character. He chafes a little at losing it in the protective custody, but considering how what D does is SO much a part of who he is, in comparison there’s no discussion of WHY Jack chose to do what he trained for. It’s part of his Type A personality and it’s used to discuss moral issues:

“How about deciding whether you’re going to treat the woman with the head trauma or the drunk driver who mowed her down? Or whether to let a man die of gunshot wounds because you know he shot a cop on his way down? How about treating a woman who’s been beaten nearly to death and having to watch her walk out the door back to the husband who nearly killed her while she tells you that he didn’t mean it, not really! Don’t you fucking talk to me about hard choices, and harsh reality. Just because I didn’t tote a rifle around Kuwait and never put a bullet between someone’s eyes doesn’t mean I live in some world of sunshine and rainbows, D. I live in a world where I spend months putting a four-year-old’s face back together after her own father smashed it in with a bowling ball. You think you’ve got it so hard, and maybe you do, but the shit is tough all over. Fucking suck it up, man.”

But his career is not as brilliantly a part of him as being a hit man is part of D. But that’s really an “in comparison” niggle rather than anything else. If D hadn’t been so brilliantly done, I don’t think I would have noticed this about Jack.

D’s “dialect” is…slightly annoying. When he’s thinking to himself about whether or not to kill Jack:

Just do it. Fuckin’ do it. You can live with it. You cain’t live with what’ll happen if you don’t, and that ain’t no figure a speech. Only takes a second. Two shots. Shut them eyes a his lookin’ at you like they see through ta yer bones. Fucker; why does he keep lookin’ at me like that? Most folks look away. Look at the floor, at the ceiling, at their own hands, anywhere but at me. Biggest damned eyes I ever saw on any man, and bluer’n the sky down in Bryce Canyon. Big enough ta hold all the life in him so’s I can see it, the life they want me ta take, the life I’ll hafta stand here and watch leave him. Stupid motherfuckers killin’ their own and makin’ me clean up for ’em like they fuckin’ branded me.

It’s part of him. It’s perfectly sustained throughout the book. But it’s never explained by where he came from (either geography or class). And it slowed down my reading sometimes enough to be mildly irritating. But not enough to stop. Never enough to stop. Did I mention I couldn’t put this book down?

And finally, there’s a 15 page Epilogue that should have been cut completely. Even before the Epilogue, you’ve got two endings. I’m glad you went beyond the first ending to the second ending, but then adding the Epilogue as well was just too much. And the short stories on your webpage are just…sad? I understand another sequel’s coming, but don’t give Jack and D problems before they’ve even settled into their happy ending.

That aside, your writing is amazing. The individual words you choose surprised me in a good way. The sentences you string together flow beautifully. The paragraphs you make are perfect:

With his shorn hair and stubble, D’s head looked like it had been sandblasted and weather-stripped. Jack had spent most of his professional life cutting people’s faces open, and his surgeon’s eye showed him the bones beneath D’s skin, although his seemed much closer to the surface than most people’s. His jawline was like a flying buttress, his brow like one of the table mesas that lurked on the horizon. His skull was geologic in its architecture. One could only imagine the seismic events and plate tectonics that had gone
on in his life to shape him into this…whatever he was.

The story as a whole is still glowing bright in my mind. I would pretty much read anything else you wrote, no matter what. I’m torn how to grade this book. Logically, looking at all the niggles I had, it should get a B+ or even a B but the book FELT like an A- book, so I’m going to go with my gut.

Grade: A-

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

| Book link (no excerpt) | DreamSpinner Press | Kindle | Amazon

| Fictionwise | BooksonBoard

Since I’ve been having good luck with contemporary British authors lately, I decided to check out your latest book, “Starting Over.” Things were bubbling along nicely until right at the end when…well, we’ll get to that in a minute.

Tess Randell is starting over. Her fiance dumped her by email just days before their wedding, she miscarried then suffered physical after effects for months while living with her smothering parents – who also seemed to have more sympathy for the bastard ex-fiance then they should have. While driving to her newly purchased country cottage, she rear ends a wrecker and damages her car. Life just keeps getting better. < /sarcasm>

The owner of the wrecker tows her into town then helps her lug her stuff to her house after which Tess starts to try to assimilate into her new life. New town, new house, new people around her but same old friction with her parents and, amazingly, old fiance showing up looking contrite. Will Tess take him back, settle for just being friends with a new possible someone or dare to try one more time for love?

Even though this initially sounds like a first person Chick Lit book de jour, it turned out to be very different. It’s not first person and there’s no immediate hero in sight. Plus Tess and the person who does turn out to be the hero don’t either instantly love each other or fight an attraction by pretending they don’t like each other. I was a bit stunned as the narrative flows on and months pass with no romance in sight. Yet I was enjoying watching Tess fit herself into her new life so much that none of this bothered me. In fact, I was tickled to be reading something different.

I also like that Tess isn’t in some dead end and boring job she hates. She’s actually a talented illustrator who is in demand and respected for her talents. And then there’s Ratty – Miles Arnott-Rattenbury – though one would never know it at first glance. The tattooed owner of a very successful garage dealing with vintage cars hides his posh background well. But then Ratty’s not posh in either attitude nor actions. He’s more a working class man whose father just happens to be a solicitor. The fact that you have the authorial guts to let time slide by without forcing sparks or attraction between Ratty and Tess delights me. And there’s no sudden about face at the end of the book with Ratty being elevated in status. No long lost Duke nonsense at all. Ratty is as he is and stays that way.

I mentioned in my review of Rosy Thornton’s book, “Crossed Wires,” that I like seeing a different country through a book. I like reading about petrol, bonnets, boots and the M5, village life, pubs and fetes, ticking things off lists, ringing people and wearing knickers. It’s nice to feel like I’ve actually traveled to a different place even if it’s just though the pages of a book.

Another good thing is that neither Tess nor Ratty are wholly likeable characters. Both of them do things which make me want to bash their heads. Ratty can be, as his mother warns Tess, very manipulative in getting his way and Tess tends to take off and flee when the going gets tough. This made some of the reading hard going but I can say that neither character bored me. Nor did I feel that this was a book I’d read a thousand times before.

I feel I need to talk a bit more about the above paragraph though. What is done to precipitate the romance does initially make me see red – as it does Tess. But I end up accepting it, as does Tess, because it gets her what she really wants and it shows how much Ratty wants a relationship with her. Plus I like that you don’t have Tess flounce off in a tiff as would happen in so many romance books.

Tess’s actions, when a past event threatens their romance, also initially makes sense given what her ex-fiance put her through. But the extent of it before she wises up and heads back to face the music put a damper on my enthusiasm for the book as a whole. She ends up way past a reasonable response and deep into selfish territory. What gets her back in my good graces is she does face what she’s done and she’s not let off lightly by those she hurt.

Good onya for writing compelling characters who are engaged in a complex relationship. While it doesn’t totally work for me, as I outlined above, I still found it fascinating and so different from the norm that I hope readers will be willing to sit back and go with the slower pace of this story to discover its nuances and charm.

~Jayne

| Downloadable Excerpt | Smashwords |

| Book Depository | Amazon UK |

Proviso: Smashwords is having a huge sale because it is International eBook Week (or something like that). Anyhoo, this book is 50% off right now which makes it all of $3.00.

A reading friend initially recommended your series to me last year with the book, Big Bad Wolf. I am a big shifter fan and was looking forward to reading this release. (It crept up on me). There were two things I particularly liked in this story: the mystery and the courtship. Ironically (or not), components of those two factors also bothered me the most.

Josie Barrett is Stone Creek, Oregon’s veternarian. She took over her father’s practice upon his retirement. Her single minded focus on becoming a veternarian has left her little time for personal relationships. At least this is the excuse given for the fact that Josie has never before recognize Eli Pace as a sexual being.

Eli Pace is the sheriff of Stone Creek, a town that is comprised primarily of Others, mostly shapeshifters. Why Eli is there is a question that is raised but never really answered. He, too, has been ignorant of Josie’s charms until he barges in one night carrying a gun shot wolf.

I liked that this was a departure from the previous book which was more urban in setting and involved pack politics. This was more of a scientific whodunit. The wolf that Eli brings to Josie is really Lupine (shapeshifter) and to her surprise and dismay, the wolf does not heal nor can she shift. Worse, once the wolf’s mate is found, he, too, shows signs of a mysterious Lupine illness which is resulting in an unexplainable high white blood count.

I really enjoyed seeing Josie use her training and skill as a veterinarian as she tried to ascertain the source of her patient’s medical problems. Her employment was an integral part of the storyline. Having no medical background myself, I can only say that the medicine sounded right and added a layer of realism to the paranormal setting.

I liked their courtship which included the sudden realization of the other as a sexual and attractive being and then the banter and flirting which followed. Unfortunately, the characters move from not even knowing the other existed to true love within five days. Love is faster than a speeding bullet in this book. The rapidity of Josie and Eli’s feelings for each other were disappointing because it seemed like care had been taken to create a basis for their relationship that extended beyond the common “mate bond” that so often fills these books.

This build up and then disappointing denouement to plot points happened more than once. For example, much is made of Josie’s levelheadedness. She promises not to interfere with Eli’s investigation, after all she is human and he is preternatural. But she violates this promise to her detriment in a kind of silly way. Eli thinks about the best way to bring the villains to justice, such as considering what testimony he will need to get a conviction but then violates basic probable cause requirements (i.e., you can’t just go breaking into someone’s home to make your case). The scientific mystery held my attention for most of the book and the resolution seemed so over the top that, again, the careful planning that went into it seemed for naught.

Paranormals have a tough time catching my attention these days so that fact that I read this in one sitting, even despite some of the disappointments, means I’ll be on the look out for the next Other book. B-

Best regards,

Jane

| Author Website | Kindle | Amazon | Nook | BN | Borders |
Fictionwise | Books on Board

Proviso: This is a St. Martin’s Press book thus the current ebook price is listed at $14.00. Also, no nook link because apparently BN isn’t selling the ebook even though its subsidiary, Fictionwise, has it.
Second Proviso: I have no idea what is going on with Warren’s website

Seeing the title of your book, I couldn’t WAIT to find out exactly why a modern woman in a paranormal would still be a virgin. Anecdotally, I’ve found that virgins in paranormals are rare, and finding one is like hitting the lottery, even more so if the reasoning behind the retention of virginity is plausible within the construct of the storyline. This one worked for me…sorta. This is the eighth book in the Love at Stake series and I haven’t read any of the previous books.

Olivia Sotiris is an FBI psychologist that’s been sent on a forced vacation to the Greek island of Patmos. She’s staying with her grandmother and attempting to forget a serial killer that has fixated on her, threatened her, and scared the daylights out of her. But since he’s in solitary confinement, it’s nearly impossible for Olivia to get her FBI colleagues to believe that the killer is the one psychologically toying with her. So she agrees to escape to Patmos, suffer her grandmother’s attempts at matchmaking and try to forget about her job and her troubles.

Robby MacKay has been sent to Patmos by his great-grandfather (?) to regain his strength and get out of his own way after his capture and torture by the Malcontents (which I believe happened in the previous book). Robby is so focused on killing Casimir, the leader of the Malcontents, that he could end up putting his family and friends in jeopardy. He’s refused any sort of help, so MacKay Security & Investigations has shipped him off to Greece to cool his heels.

Robby and Olivia meet on the beach at night (duh) and he is immediately taken with her. Olivia is both fascinated by and suspicious of Robby because he’s the first person she’s never been able to “read”. Olivia is like a human lie-detector, a psychic trait that has been passed down through generations (her grandmother has the same ability), and works for the FBI to ferret out killers, bad guys, and what have you. And here’s my problem: this vamp/psychic mixture comes very close to the Sookie Stackhouse books. However, TVATV is written in a completely different style from the Stackhouse novels, so I made an effort to overlook it.

Earlier, I noted that this was the eighth book in the series. There were secondary characters that had definitely had their own books in the past, but the way the book was written allowed it to stand on it’s own. While I enjoyed reading about Robby and Olivia’s relationship, there were a lot of fits and starts due to Olivia’s suspicion growing since she couldn’t read Robby’s truthfulness and Robby’s efforts to hide his Vampirism from her. I also spotted the bad guy as soon as the charater showed up in the book. This book felt a bit like “Vampire Lite”. So many of the paranormal books I’ve read have been heavy or dark with incredible amounts of worldbuilding. This was written more like a contemporary but there were a few curveballs, one of which is that some of the characters were Vampires and Weres. Vampire Lite isn’t a bad thing, but there was nothing compelling me to return to MacKay S&I and the Malcontents. C

~Shuzluva

| Excerpt for Book | Kindle | Amazon | Nook | Barnes and Noble | Borders |
Fictionwise | Books on Board

Ever since you revealed that your next book would be about Jae Sun Kim, the hot, sarcastic, misanthropic doctor from Collision Course, I have been yearning for this book. Yearning, I tell you. The problem, of course, with wanting a book so hard is that when it comes, it might suck and all that yearning is transformed into disappointment more crushing because of the depth of the yearning.

This book doesn’t do that. This book is worth every ounce, every drop, every last millimeter of yearning. In fact, this book is about one of the most perfect romances I’ve ever read.

Jae Sun Kim is a trauma surgeon who finds himself on a live-on dive cruise vacation for a week because he’s running away from the fact that his careful plans to move from his residency in Jacksonville to a fellowship in Seattle have collapsed through no fault of his own. He desperately wants to put the continent between himself and his homophobic parents in Orlando but has no idea what to do now. Shane is the dive master on the cruise, very much a rolling stone determined never to grow any moss. Much to Kim’s disgust, he and Shane end up rooming together in a tiny cabin even though he booked a single cabin. And the cherry on top of his loss of control is an unexpected sea-sickness that Shane helps him through.

I love the first description of these two men:

The guy might have been giving a lesson on a dude ranch. The lilt in his voice made cactuses and Stetson hats tumble out along with his words. Which in a less stressful situation might have been nice, because a tall guy in boots, a hat and dusty jeans, drawl pouring sweetly from a wide mouth, was the kind of thing Kim had been known to bookmark on his laptop. Especially when that cowboy parted with the dusty jeans and boots in the first thirty seconds. He could leave the hat on for the ride.

It tells us so much about Kim — workaholic extraordinaire — and about his perception of Shane, one that Shane does nothing to dispel.

While Kim and Shane enjoy some really great sex in their time together on the boat, sea-sickness aside, they are really drawn together when the boat abandons them during a dive. This extended scene of survival reads like an adventure story, but tells us a lot about the characters. In fact, everything tells us about the characters. You are, to my mind, the undisputed queen of Show, Don’t Tell, and these two characters are so brilliantly constructed, they felt like they should have walked off the page into my living room (I wish). I was grinning like a fool as I watched Shane stumble toward the realization that Kim is a top and only a top and that pocket-sized Kim expected tall, muscle-bound Shane to bottom. And I had an even bigger smile on my face when he did and loved it:

Kim wrapped a hand around Shane’s neck and pulled him down. Fuck if the bastard hadn’t been right about Shane’s wiring, because the weight of Kim’s hand on that spot had Shane’s knees starting to bend. He took a deep breath when he realized all Kim was pushing for was a kiss. Shane spread his legs until they were a little closer in height and met him halfway.

After the life-and-death situation, Shane follows Kim to Jacksonville, and it’s in the relative peace and quiet of everyday living that their flaws come out and threaten the relationship. But I love how unabashed both Kim and Shane are about their character flaws. Shane is perfectly happy being a fuck-up, following his traveling itch, moving to make sure he doesn’t get bored. He thinks to himself once:

His conscience always took a back seat to the fact that he was a slut for pleasure and that wasn’t going to change any more than the fact that everything he got involved in turned to shit.

He tells Kim during their final fight:

“I’m not a fighter, Jay. I don’t have the patience for it.”

But he’s not an asshole because of it. He’s just…Shane. Just as Kim is just…Kim, completely unable to understand emotional entanglements, completely uninterested in having relationship conversations, frustrated and embarrassed by them:

Kim couldn’t begin to understand what he wasn’t understanding and he hated it. Confusion was as unfamiliar as it was loathsome, and he remembered why, despite the human propensity for pairing off, he had successfully avoided being befriended. For the most part. Unwilling to expose more of his efforts at communication to ridicule, he folded his arms and leaned back against the couch.

The ending is…just sublimely perfect. I always squint my way through my first reading of the ending of a highly anticipated book (yes, I read the end first) because it just might not live up to expectations. And if it’s good, I then kind of wince my way through reading the book because it might not live up to the ending. But this ending is perfectly suited to both characters and to the rest of the story. I adore the fact that Kim doesn’t come to a sudden realization about love — although he and Shane definitely get their Happy Ever After. I love that Shane is so ready to quit…and yet not. I love how they don’t change because of their love, that their love, instead, shows them being more themselves. Kim’s despair and actions, and the way you bring the imagery and themes of the whole book together in the final few scenes is incredible.

I have learned to live with the fact that I can’t turn off my literary critic. I might want to at times, just so I can settle in and enjoy a book without thinking about it, but I can’t, so I deal with it. And it’s books like this one that makes all my training worthwhile. Watching how the symbolism of Kim’s tattoo and the imagery of death and the theme of impulsive actions weave themselves throughout the book was a wonder to behold. It’s done so smoothly, I think, so unintrusively, that it’s not obvious to any but the most obsessive reader. But it’s there and it layers the book, drawing everything together to make everything just make sense by the end.

And it’s unintrusive because you trust your readers to get it. You trust us to get the desert dry humor of these two men, their flaws and foibles and fucked-up motivations. You trust us to understand and in doing that, present us with an amazing story because you’re letting the characters speak for themselves without any unnecessary explanatory narration.

I’ve read this book twice straight through and probably another two times in bits and pieces, rereading for the good stuff — which usually means reading most of it because it’s all good. And I can’t find any flaws. Even the inclusion of Joey and Aaron from Collision Course is integral to the story and well-done and readers don’t need to have any previous knowledge of them to understand their role in this story. I didn’t know if you could top Collision Course, but you absolutely did. This is a perfect romance with stunningly vivid characters, a beautifully constructed plot, and a brilliant emotional arc. Everyone should go and get a copy. Right now!

Grade: A (FWIW, I’ve been reviewing for Dear Author for 18 months now — wow, really? — and this is only the fourth straight A review I’ve given. That’s how good this book was.)

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

| KA Mitchell’s Website | Samhain | Kindle | Nook |
Fictionwise  | Books on Board

You created a splash in the subgenre of historical mysteries with the “Silent” series and now move on to something a bit different. The era is still Victorian but the place is the depths of Transylvania where the strange is normal and things are believed which defy the imagination of other countries.

With little to hold her in Scotland, Theodora receives a letter from an old school friend which will change her life. She’s been invited to the friend’s arranged wedding to a relative, Count Andrei Dragulescu. So off Theodora goes, with everything she owns, to a Carpathian castle which seems mired in the past and a family which borders on Draconian.

Theodora feels as if she’s in a totally different world from anything she’s ever known, a place where the bizarre is accepted, a land where no one questions the existence of werewolves or vampires and everyone keeps their windows shut tight at night. Can she survive this alien place and find love or will its secrets claim her very life?

This literally has almost all the elements listed for a gothic novel. I looked. You must have looked at numerous sources and checked off each element as you worked it into the plot. The parts makes a satisfying whole yet there is almost nothing new. The book isn’t a parody of gothics, it doesn’t use those standard elements as a springboard to something different, it merely tells a story which has been told many times already. It’s told well, it’s readable, it uses the usual gothic features to convey what you want but unless the status quo is what a reader wants, I’m afraid fans of the genre will find themselves on autopilot to the finish.

I do like that there are explanations for all the supposed supernatural events described. And that the explanations make sense both in the story and in a historical context. I like that the heroine is a strong enough character to go about doing some of her own saving. Even if at the end, she still needed to rely on others for her final salvation, she wasn’t totally weak and fainting. I like that the hero appreciates a smart woman and reading and writing woman even more. There’s a great dog. I even like that both Theodora and Andrei compromise their life goals at the end in order to work towards their HEA.

Yet I found parts of the story to lag and drag and noticed that my reading pace varied markedly throughout the book. After a certain amount of time stuck spent reiterating the same things, my mind would drift a bit and I’d have to wrestle it back onto the subject. Built in reading breaks became a necessity instead of breathlessly turning pages to discover “what’s next.” For some reason, the relationship between Andrei and Theodora lacked “oomph” for me. Maybe because it sticks so closely to the established stereotype in gothic novels thus not allowing for any surprises along the way.

The imagery of the countryside, the peasants, the castle – all were nicely done. And if you’re going to write a gothic novel, where better to set it than Transylvania? And what better nationality to use to counter all that gothic-y-ness than a Scotswoman of English descent. No offense to either country but both have an image of solid implacability and sound sense. There is Theodora with her stout walking shoes and plaid wraps, ready to face anything that overblown Transylvania might try and throw at her.

I’m not sorry to have read the book and I felt almost certain that with your name on it, the book would prove to be well written. But it didn’t turn me into a fan of the genre though it served as a nice change from my usual fare. B-

~Jayne

| Book Link | eHarlequin.com in print | eHarlequin.com in digital |
| Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders |
Fictionwise | Books on Board (couldn’t find)

In a way “Steal Away” is a major departure from the previous books of yours I’ve read. Yet in others, it’s very similar. Here there’s no paranormal element, at least not that I noticed. But you reprise the use of two men and one woman as the main characters around whom the drama unfolds. As well, there is an immediacy to the story that makes me feel that I’m there, right there, with the characters.

During Prohibition, Twilight Amery has dreams that she refuses to let die. She’s going to escape rural Alabama and get to Harlem where a young woman with a voice can sing at the Cotton Club. But even after years of scraping by, she doesn’t have enough money for a train ticket. So, dodging Pinkerton men, she hops a northbound train and encounters two very different men. Courtly Hector with his deep, booming voice and Daniel Stone, who is initially as hard as his name, are unlike any men she’s ever met with a relationship unlike any she’s seen. Together they’ll backtrack across the South then end up in an Atlanta whorehouse where they pick up a deadly foe before finally reaching Harlem. But once there, will Twi achieve her dream, will the three of them work out their relationship and can they escape a deadly enemy determined to track them down?

The sex is hawt but it doesn’t overpower the story nor is it included in inappropriate places. I don’t usually care for or read menage books but you’re one of the few authors who can entice me to do just that. Yet this one has a twist from your usual m/m/f books in that there is a bisexual character, Hector, who has relationships with both a man, Stone, and a woman, Twi and often in the same bed while the other character watches. Okay, so add voyeurism onto the list of things I don’t generally read but which I will from you. And doesn’t that sentence sound strange?

When I read your novels – I’m there. I feel surrounded by the atmosphere you create and immersed in the action. This is something I look forward to in your novels and you don’t disappoint. I can feel the tension as Twi waits to jump a train, the heat in the upstairs room of Miss Beu’s house, the tenderness with which Hector removes Twi’s face paint, the nonstop action on the streets of Harlem. The period detail is wonderful and I never once thought I was reading 21st century characters in Prohibition era clothing.

At Loose-Id this is listed as a novel length story but it’s shorter than the usual Harlequin category novel by my ereader page count. So I wasn’t too surprised when the final conflict was resolved mostly off page. I was bummed that some of what happened isn’t explained at all – how did the injuries occur? how was the rescue carried out? how was the escape made? will there ever be a resolution or will these three really have to watch their backs from here on? But, on the other hand, I like the open ending of the relationship of Stone, Hector and Twi.

An unusual setting, coupled with three dimensional characters, mixed with hot sex makes me happy you offered me the chance to read this novel. Since you took such care with the action throughout most of the book, I was sorry that the ending seemed slightly truncated but overall it’s still a B read for me.

~Jayne

| Author Website | Loose Id |

I think this is the first book I’ve read of yours and I read it because of the excerpt that was posted. The excerpt was intriguing.  Elizabeth Ashburton was attending a wedding of one of her closest friends at St. George’s.  Danger presents itself at the wedding and her only course of escape leads her directly into the arms of Rowland Manning, the bastard half brother of the groom.

Rowland is on the verge of ruin. He had been contracted by the calvary to provide in excess of eight hundred horses for the war against France.  Now that Napoleon is in exile and the war is over, Rowland is stuck with the stabling of 800 horses and no buyer.  If he doesn’t rid himself of these horses, Rowland will descend to poverty, a state which he had vowed never to revisit.

The  conflict that is set up requires Rowland to choose poverty and the love of Elizabeth over that of the finalized sale of his horses.  The story plays loose with history.  The villain of the set is one General Pymm who is said to have delivered the gold eagles directly from Napoleon and is considered to be one of England’s famous war heroes.  Prinny is set to award a duchy on General Pymm and Pymm is determined that Elizabeth will be by his side when this honor is bestowed.

Elizabeth is just as determined to avoid Pymm as she believes he is responsible for her father’s death in a battle at Badajoz.  (Very David and Bathsheba like here).  She feels safe at Rowland’s despite him pawing at her, locking her in a dank storeroom, demanding that she assist the stable cook, and never once treating her with any dignity.  Elizabeth whips up a meal for some thirty eight men in under two hours and after one well cooked meal, the stable hands at Rowland’s place are now her loyal followers.   Of course Elizabeth is irresistible to Rowland and vice versa.

This book appeared to be the last of a series or connected books pertaining to a group of widows.  There is a complete chapter toward the end of the story that provides closure to a number of relationships.  The problem is that this is my first entry to the series and I felt that there was a number of nuances that I was missing.  There were references to Rowland’s past as well, the death of his brother and sister, which may have been more fully fleshed out in previous books.

Another example, this group of widows is supposed to be fast friends, lasting over a long period of time (although how long and how they know each other isn’t revealed in this book). Yet there was little evidence of the strength of the connections.  The connections revolved largely around the hero and his acquaintances which happened to be the husbands of the band of widows.  It was very male focused.

Elizabeth seemed dim witted at times.  She’s trying to avoid being caught by a famous personage of the upper 10,000 yet she attends and stands up at one of the most heralded weddings and at the most famous wedding site: St. George’s thinking that she’ll never be caught here.  She relies on the largesse of a man she doesn’t know and who treats her poorly.  Her plans to seek refuge from the villain are never fully formed.   Why she would seek the aid of Rowland when she had many a moneyed and powerful connection through her friend’s marriages is really beyond me.  Well, it wasn’t beyond me. It was obvious that Rowland and Elizabeth be thrown together for the romance but the overt manipulation was annoying.

Rowland’s language veered from coarse to cultured with no consistent reason, i.e., when he forgot himself or when he became excited, just in general he would be saying “bloody gawdamned devil of a miracle” (intentionally misspelled to portray his uncultured speak?) and then he would be spouting off differently with his “shall nots”.

There were points in which the story could have been deepened, challenged, but these were whisked away without any inspection such as Rowland’s possible past as a prostitue.  Given that his mother and sister apparently died because of prostitution, wouldn’t his own activity caused him some agnst?  What was the point of bringing up these dark periods if they weren’t intrical to the storyline, character development?  It was like a dandy dressed up with a sword, all affectation and no bite.

There were times in which I enjoyed the prose and I felt that there were elements of likeability. Rowland was raised in poverty. His mother’s credo was “forget not, want not”.  Rowland lived a life of austerity so that he would never be impoverished again. But how about a downpayment for those horses?  How about a contingent plan?  Not much of a brilliant business man was Rowland.  I wonder how I would have felt if I had read the other books in the series.  Maybe more grateful and less critical?  C

Best regards,

Jane

| Author Website | Kindle | Amazon | Nook | BN | Borders |
Fictionwise | Books on Board

Is there a genre of movie that Woody Allen hasn’t tried? Since I’m not his biggest fan, I can’t say for sure but he certainly has turned his hand to most of them by this time. “Everyone Says I Love You” is another one of those fortuitous Netflix recommendations that’s worked out for me.

Recently I decided to rent it again to see if it would work for a Friday Film Review and discovered that it’s no longer in print and can’t be rented. Major bummer. But once again it was Half.com to the rescue though I did wait a few months to see if the prices would come down a bit. When someone posted it for a more reasonable price, I pounced.

The story revolves around a wealthy New York family. Bob (Alan Alda) and Steffi (Goldie Hawn) have two daughters and a son between them while Steffi and her first husband Joe, have two daughters: Skylar (Drew Barrymore), DJ (Natasha Lyonne) who acts as the narrator, Lane (Gabby Hoffman), Laura (Natalie Portman) and Scott (Lukas Haas). Skylar is engaged to Holden (Edward Norton) and Joe has terrible luck with women.

DJ attempts to help her dad by telling him all about a beautiful woman, Von (Julia Roberts), who’s caught his eye while they are in Venice. Meanwhile back in New York hilarity and mayhem erupt as Skylar breaks off her engagement to Holden once she meets an ex-con, Charles Ferry (Tim Roth) whose cause has been championed by her socially conscious, rich mother Steffi.

There are a few other subplots such as DJ’s man of the week and Scott’s sudden turn towards conservative Republicanism but the main questions are: will Joe finally find the relationship of his dreams and who will Skylar end up with?

After watching the movie and beginning to look back on it, the plot seems to be mainly cobbled together as a framework to hang the songs on. Allen has picked some great ones – My Baby Just Cares for Me, Makin’ Whoopie, Everyone Says I Love You, I’m Through with Love, Enjoy Yourself, Cuddle Up a Little Closer and many more. The dance numbers are fun from the salesmen in Harry Winston’s to the medical staff and patients at the hospital Skylar and Holden have to go to after she accidentally swallows the engagement ring Holden put in her dessert.

The Fifth Avenue penthouse apartment is to die for as are the locations in Venice and Paris. It must be nice to have that kind of money. Sigh…Everyone looks lovely, dresses divinely and, amazingly, sings rather well. Well, maybe except for Woody Allen in one number you can barely hear him in and apparently Drew Barrymore who’s so tone deaf she had to be dubbed. There’s also a neat dance between Goldie Hawn and Woody Allen with Goldie on a wire harness that floats her around the stage.

Since it’s basically an all star cast and the secondary characters are only on screen very briefly, I can’t say much about them except that they seem to do a good job in their small parts. One thing I have to say is that I hope Woody Allen is now over casting himself as the love interest of beautiful women.

For anyone interested in the movie, I’d say try (if you can) to try it first before unloading any money on it. The DVD (from 1998) is just the basic nuts and bolts with no extras beyond subtitles. It’s funny, frothy and enjoyable – just what a musical should be.

~Jayne

FTC discloser – I bought this with my own money.

I picked up this book because it was a romance with a female dominant and a male submissive, which is about the only reason I read straight romance nowadays. And while I enjoyed it, it has solidified for me that BDSM romance is mostly about fantasy fulfillment rather than verisimilitude. I’m becoming more accepting of that fact but it’s still disappointing to hope for a romance with BDSM-identified people I might realistically meet and get instead…a fantasy. But then what is any romance but fantasy, right? Where/when/why does the desire for stark reality bend to the needs of the story? I don’t know, but this story was too much fantasy, not enough reality for my tastes. (I’ll reiterate here that the “reality” I’m looking for is psychological, emotional reality, not complete James-Joyce-ian stream of consciousness of actual reality.)

One of my biggest problems with this book, however, was something else, and something that effects even my plot summary: it’s so obviously part of a series of romances that it was difficult to follow a lot of what was happening. Characters were either past or future main characters of their own stories and it got to be very annoying and rather confusing when more and more characters piled in for their own cameo. Not only did I not understand all the character connections because of this sequel-baiting, the timeline of the story was strangely off.

For example: in some near past, Megan Jamison went to a club called Velvet Ice and found herself very much at home in its more private upper floors, which are a BDSM club, but was barred from it because of her friend’s feud with the club owner, a plot point that was obviously important to the larger series but was so irrelevant to Megan’s story it was maddening. In some measure of time, she manages to rate a private room at the club. This plot point (will she or won’t she get in to the club) is unnecessary to THIS story and drags out the beginning so that it’s really slow, rather than focusing the beginning of the story on the interaction and tension between the main characters.

All this time, Megan has been attracted to one of the club’s bouncers, Gregori Lavinkia, a sexual submissive. But she refused to play with him because…well, I’m still not 100% sure. She repeats again and again that she won’t play with him because she never has sex with her submissives and, I guess, Gregori makes her want to have sex:

As a Domme she needed to call the shots. She didn’t want to give over control, and that’s exactly what happened when she made love. So, to protect herself, Megan had compartmentalized. She kept sex tame and vanilla—and infrequent—and saved her passion for Velvet Ice. She couldn’t, wouldn’t let the two merge.

But Gregori doesn’t just want to submit to her, he wants a full D/s relationship. They go back and forth on this, with him pursuing her and her refusing him, until finally they have a showdown in which she tops him and bests him and retreats:

She’d fucking Mastered his fine ass, and kept her composure the whole time, proving once and for all that for her, D/s wasn’t about the sex.

The throbbing between her thighs said she was a liar.

He then begs to be only her lover, rather than her submissive, because having any part of her is better than nothing. And then of course (and very quickly) they work things out and all live HEA.

The BDSM scenes and the sex scenes are super hot and very well done. What disappoints me about this book, however, is something that someone else without my own personal experiences might find perfectly fine. These two are into BDSM for reasons: Megan is a Southern Belle rebelling against her Daddy’s domineering life plans for her by dominating submissives at the club, by never losing control, and by never having sex with them, although I’m never sure how and why she makes the jump to BDSM to exercise control rather than…I don’t know, being anorexic or an exercise freak or a crazy cat lady or something more socially normal. Nor do I really understand how and why she manages to separate BDSM from sex, but maybe that’s just me. Gregori is a submissive and masochist in order to sublimate the pain of his Russian upbringing…or something: it’s never really explained well — Yeltsin’s regime is brought up, and that didn’t really work for me because it’s not like the 1990s in Russia were 1960s Cold War communism. Anyway, not only did I find their reasons paper thin (in an ebook); I found the NEED for a reason frustrating. No one asks why gay people are gay. Okay, scratch that: no one sane and rational asks why gay people are gay. We’ve accepted the fact that gay people ARE, that being gay an immutable part of their nature that doesn’t need explanation or to be changed. It IS. Not so much with BDSM, apparently. So instead we have pop psychology of an Electra complex and a strangely (a)political statement about the deprivations of…post-communist Russia? None of which really ACTUALLY explain why these two people are so heavily into BDSM — mostly because being into BDSM doesn’t need explaining. It’s as much a sexual orientation as being gay is.

That aside, whether or not it’s an issue for your other readers, the realization of how to overcome Megan’s barrier to the relationship (because Gregori has no barrier and very little character development — he’s just strong and hot and a wonderful submissive) is abrupt and ridiculously easy. We’ve got Daddy complexes galore and one phone conversation makes her change her whole worldview, blowing all psychological barriers out of the water and leaving her open to Gregori’s love? Uh, okay. And once the crisis is over, there’s still another 20 pages (of 70) of the story left. You would have done better investing as much time into the overcoming of the barrier as you did into constructing it, with less time on the denouement and happiness at the end. These are both writerly issues that have very little to do with my own personal hang-ups about BDSM and bugged me slightly more than your depiction of BDSM.

That aside, like I said, the sex and the BDSM scenes were hot. The emotion was strong. The sexual tension was good. Gregori is a wonderful sexual submissive. There’s no cringing around the fact that there’s a male submissive and a female dominant. If this is a peek into a future with more femdom stories, I’m (mostly, sort of) happy with it.

But what I’d really like to see is a BDSM romance with characters who just accept that they ARE kinky, without needing reasons for it. I mean, angst about that is fine (needing to beat someone and/or be beaten to get off — rather than *choosing* to, as shown in this story — is a very difficult thing to accept, after all). But angst about manufactured reasons about WHY one likes to beat someone up and/or be beaten for jollies is a different thing and rings false to me. I stress the “to me” part of that. This story might and probably will work for other readers without my own personal hangups. Because, like I said, the emotion is strong, the sexual tension is good, the characters are enjoyable.

And finally, authors, can we PLEASE stop with the BDSM clubs? I mean, really, please? Been there, done that. Find another way to get your kinky characters together. Maybe a kinky craft club? Or a kinky reading group? Or, hey, maybe two people just meeting each other like normal people and recognizing something in each other that might work? Something different? Please?

Grade: C+

Best regards,
-Joan/Sarah F.

| Author Website (no direct book link) | Liquid Silver |

I am a reluctant paranormal reader these days. Everything seems so common that it’s hard to generate excitement.  This book came to me on the recommendation of someone whose previous recommendations had worked out for me and so I took a chance. I was so glad that I did.  This is a curious and interesting mix of philosophy and myth which takes it a step beyond the ordinary paranormal.   I wondered, at times, if it was inspired by Alice in Wonderland.

I do want to state out front that I am not sure why there is any mention of steampunk surrounding the marketing of this book.  Brass fittings and mechanical gadgets do not a steam punk make. Steampunk is a specific ouvre and using the term to describe this book is misleading and might lead to reader disappointment.  //rant over

Now that I have that out of my system, let me address the book directly.  It is atmospheric with some gorgeous prose.

“We are all broken, Dominic, all of us—cursed, or damned. Our fragile minds cannot span the paradox. We wish to stand out and fit in, to be unique but not alone, one with God and still ourselves.”

I am going to be purposefully vague because the way in which the story unfolds is part of the beauty.  The story is told in alternating POVs, first person from the female’s POV and third from the male’s POV.

Oliva is a fallen angel and, like all fallen angels, feeds off the blood of humans. All the vampires are the female progency of the Angel of Desire, cursed only to feel vicariously through human blood. The vampires have quills in their nails and teeth to allow for blood gathering. She is searching for a way back to heaven and believes that if she can find a man who would love her, quills, wings, and all, she can escape her curse.

Dominic is a Reborn, an ancient cursed to reincarnate every 30 or so years. In early adolescence, the reborn begin to recover their memories of their past life and generally it drives them crazy. Of course, the worst thing for a reborn is to suicide because they will relive their suicide every time they are reborn.

Dominic doesn’t belief he is cursed but mentally ill.  In this life he is a neuroscientist who is determined to discover the way to isolate memories and obliterate them.  A wealthy woman agrees to donate money to his university on the basis to further his research. She is desperate for a cure for her granddaughter who believes that she is a vampire.

Dominic posits that traumatic events can cause people to believe that they are vampires or reincarnated individuals and that if the root cause of the event can be isolated and erased, the psychosis would be cured.

“Now this isn’t neuroscience, just psychiatry, but let’s take, for example, an outgoing, imaginative child who believes in monsters,” Dominic extemporized. “Maybe this girl is involved in a traumatic car accident. Her parents are killed, and she is thrown from the car.” Now he had Madalene riveted. “The child recovers physically, but the emotional pain is so severe that she begins to dissociate. She might pretend to be incapable of suffering.” Madalene nodded encouragement. “The girl might start to believe she’s a monster and responsible, somehow, for the death of her parents.”

Madalene was pale, and even dull Harold looked alert. Dominic’s rogue imagination stretched itself. “The little girl, guilty and frightened, remembers being thrown from the car and the taste of blood, and she imagines herself a powerful, flying, insensate monster.”

“A vampire . . .” Madalene whispered.

“Sure,” Dominic took the suggestion readily. “This confabulation, tied to a trauma-related identity disruption, could become so foundational to her self-image that she might lose her ability to taste food. She starts sleeping in a coffin, develops a phobia of mirrors or crosses or wooden stakes, and becomes immune to physical pain, all in service to this explanatory story that helped her escape intolerable suffering as a child.”

Dominic and Olivia meet in L’Otel Mathillide in Ireland. It’s an underground hotel for the damned: the vampires, the reborns, and every other type of “paranormal” being. But is it a hotel for the damned or a rehab center? Is it the portal to Hell where beings seek and may find redemption? Olivia’s own mental state reminded me of an addict desperate to be free of her addiction yet helpless to find a cure.

While the story makes it clear that it is a paranormal or urban fantasy, there is the underlying question of whether the curse of vampirism, reincarnation, etc. is really the product of someone mentally ill. The overarching story arc is that what you believe you want may never make you happy. Dominic wants to lose his memories but if he does so, he’ll forget Olivia and everything that she meant to him. Olivia wants to return to heaven but given the opportunity, she must abandon what she found with Dominic. I’m not sure what awaits me in the next White book, but I’m anxious to find out what it is. For those romance readers who want to know about the happy ever after ending: There is a solid HEA for Dominic and Olivia. B

Best regards,

Jane

| Skylar White’s Website (no direct book link) | Kindle | Amazon | BN | nook | Borders |
Fictionwise | Books on Board

Dear Author received a copy of your latest book, “Scarlett Fever” for review and since I’m slightly anal about reading a series in order, I backtracked to read the prequel book, “Suite Scarlett” first. And wow am I glad I did. YA isn’t my usual forte here but with books like this one, I could see myself changing my mind.

Scarlett Martin and her family live in a small hotel in NYC. Oh, not just any hotel but a once beautiful, though now slightly frayed around the edges, example of Art Deco which the family has owned since it opened in the 1920s. All the family, parents, older brother Spencer, older sister Lola, Scarlett and baby sister Marlene pitch in to keep it going but, frankly, with the guest load they have, or rather don’t have, something needs to happen.

And that something is Amy Amberson. Vibrant, outgoing, sweeping Scarlett and everyone else along with her, Amy arrives and immediately begins to manage Scarlett, who becomes “O’Hara,” girl Friday, and Spencer who is desperately trying to achieve his dream of acting with garage staging of “Hamlet.” Then there’s Lola and her wealthy, though not too bright, boyfriend Chip and Marlene, who gets away with murder all because she’s a cancer survivor. It might be summer vacation but Scarlett’s running flat out to try and keep up with and on top of it all before everything risks spinning out of control.

I love a book with subtle humor which arises out of the characters and events in it and which doesn’t rely on pratfalls or making fun of anyone. Even the chapter titles amuse me here. But, despite the set up of living in a boutique hotel, the whole thing seems realistic and believable too. The plot never ventures into “okay, now this is going too far” territory.

And speaking of the setting, it all reminds me slightly of Never Land with Amy as an irrepressible Peter Pan figure leading Scarlett/Wendy deeper into chaos as the story unfolds. Here the children are mainly in charge of events while the parents are secondary and rarely involved in the action except to be people who must be kept from knowing most of what’s going on. Amy is an adult with money and so has more independence than the Martin children but she’s still not quite grown up, or doesn’t act it, and makes mistakes that even Scarlett sees coming. And then it’s usually up to Scarlett to fix and straighten things out.

The relationship of the children makes the book. Marlene has been coddled yet kept from everything the others do and take for granted. I enjoyed watching her finally enter into the circle of her older siblings. Lola and Spencer are there to be PITAs, sometimes, but also back Scarlett up and present a solid front to the world. Spencer is willing to risk discord with Scarlett’s “maybe boyfriend” during the show to support his little sister. And the two of them have to deal with the fact that Scarlett is venturing into the world of dating.

Speaking of which, I doubt there are many people who haven’t, at one time or the other, been in her shoes. Though she’s watched Spencer’s many, week-long romances and Lola’s relationship with someone the others feel is not worthy of her, Scarlett’s never dated before so the whole thing is new to her. She’s not sure what’s going on or even if she’s really dating. The problems she runs into with Eric and his slippery ways are realistic – he’s older and already into game/role playing while she’s running just to catch up.

New York City is almost a character in the book. You add countless, every day, touches that indicate the story is taking place there and no where else as well as making use of the well known theater setting. Scarlett sees her hometown slightly anew through Eric’s eyes which also serves to show it to us. I doubt there are many other American cities where this book could be set and I enjoyed my “trip” there while the action lasted.

“Suite Scarlett” is a direct prequel to “Scarlett Fever” so I’m glad to took the time to read it first. As I finished the book, I was left with several questions I hope will be answered in book two. Wither Lola and Chip? How will Amy’s venture into agenting play out? Will Spencer’s dream come true? Is Marlene fully a part of the action now? And what’s in store for Scarlett once school starts again? I can’t wait to find out.

~Jayne
| Link to Book Website | Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders |
Fictionwise (not present) | Books on Board (audio format only?)

Dear Ms. Black,

I will admit front and center that I never read Decadent, but I definitely did read the reviews and comments on both this site and Smart Bitches Trashy Books. I was intrigued by the reviews and comments, similar to how one is intrigued watching the slow-motion replays of the crashes during the Women’s Olympic Downhill ski race. The hits just kept on coming. But for some reason, I never picked up the book, and after readingDelicious, I am very happy that I didn’t bother.

It took me quite a while to get through this book, not because there were big words or complicated plot twists, but because I had to keep collecting my jaw from the ground and re-reading to make sure I’d read what I thought I had. I laughed…I cried…I nearly barfed. I can’t say it was better than CATS, but that’s probably because none of the characters were weres.

Luc Traverson (cousin of Deke from Decadent) spent an incredible, unforgettable night with Alyssa Deveraux, but it’s a night he’s never going to repeat. Alyssa is a stripper and very unsuitable mother material, and Luc is looking to marry his mommy. Don’t believe me? Straight from the horse’s mouth:

A perfect wife. A perfect stay-at-home mother, just like his own. That’s what he wanted.

Why, you ask, is Luc looking for this paragon of virtue? Well, Luc has some sperm issues, and his biological clock is TICKING! He wants babies, and he wants ‘em now, and he’ll do anything to get ‘em, be it adoption, insemination…he didn’t go as far as stealing, but it sounded damn close. This guy has baby fever…lord knows why. Luc thinks Alyssa is totally unsuitable as a mother because she’s a stripper. And, in Luc’s vernacular, stripper also equates to stupid, sex-crazed, gold digging whore. Without asking, knowing or having any sort of proof, Luc assumes that all of Alyssa’s interactions with the male population involve her trading sex for just about everything.

So why is Luc back in Alyssa’s neck of the woods? Well, remember that special night they spent together? As an exchange for sleeping with him and Deke (Deke chickened out at the last minute), Luc promised Alyssa he’d cook for her restaurant opening week. One wonders why Luc thinks Alyssa uses sex as currency.

Alyssa knows deep in her bones that Luc is the man for her. Anyone that gives a rogering that amazing and sends you flowers days later, but won’t return phone calls, is your one twew wuve. Alyssa has Luc cooking at her restaurant for one whole week, so she has seven days and nights to work her wiles on him. Oh, and she hasn’t had sex with anyone since she hooked up with Luc in Decadent, and before that encounter was celibate for 3 years. I bet that re-virginized her.

Alyssa’s restaurant, Bonheur, is an expensive, upscale endeavor that is blocks from her original business venture, the strip club Sexy Sirens. I don’t find it strange that Alyssa would want to be the proprietor of a hip, upscale business venture and shed her stripper image. However, it’s hard to do that when you’re still stripping. You read that right. Alyssa owns Sexy Sirens (and apparently has for five years) but still strips at her own club to make ends meet…or something. Oh, the humanity. Luckily, Alyssa’s bouncer (and giant, Goldberg-sized slab ‘o meat) is there to keep the riffraff away:

[...] Tyler lifted Alyssa, sat in her chair, and set her on his lap. His hand rested high on her thigh, the other on her waist. And the bouncer’s fingers weren’t still. They roamed, his thumb brushing the curve of her breast, his other palm disappearing under her skirt, over her hip.

Alyssa didn’t blink, much less fight him off.

What? In addition to this, Luc has caught Tyler ogling Alyssa naked…in her own home. Alyssa’s reaction? Not much of a reaction at all, in fact they had a conversation as he helped her out of the tub. Hell, I’d assume the same as Luc; she’s fucking the bouncer.

Happily, the stripper prejudice goes both ways. Alyssa is the target of a crazed lunatic and is on the receiving end of threatening notes and break-ins, in other words, the usual. Rather than doing things to protect her own well being, she’s TSTL (as are all the characters in this book) and ducks away from Tyler and Luc to check in at Sexy Sirens. She’s talking to an employee and there’s this:

Though it was hard to take someone seriously wearing a thong and pasties, Alyssa couldn’t discount the dancer’s observation.

Yep, you read that right. She just knocked her own employee for doing something she does on a regular basis. You may think I’m nit picking here, but I promise you, there is a gem on nearly every page of this book. At this point, I’m sure you realize that the back-and-forth between Luc and Alyssa consists of Luc hating that he wants Alyssa and punishing her for it, Alyssa wanting Luc but hating that he doesn’t want her, respect her or seem to give a rat’s ass about her:

“What I really wanted to hear was that you believed I didn’t have sex with Tyler today.”

Luc shrugged. “You don’t owe me explanations.”

“I don’t,” she agreed. “But I want to know what you really think.”

It was probably pointless, but she couldn’t stand him thinking she was the kind of woman who slept around.

He paused, seemingly lost in his thoughts, sorting through them. “You’re too dedicated to your future to fuck away the afternoon the day

your happiness opens its doors.”

Tears hit her instantly. He got it. He got her! It was a start.

Trust me, for much of the book, we don’t get beyond “start”. Luc’s jealous of any interaction she has with any other man, and backs it up with his crazy assertion that <sarcasm> relationships are difficult and take work </sarcasm>.

No matter what route he took to fatherhood, he couldn’t achieve it without a woman in the picture. Even if Alyssa supported his decision to adopt or undergo surgery or visit a sperm bank, she’d have to agree to go through the process with him, perhaps carry a child. And they’d have to find a way to make their passionate, difficult relationship work.

What kind of mother would she be? Certainly not like his own.

I nearly cried when I read the above, and this is the point the wheels fell off the bus for me. There are so many things wrong with it that I think any commentary would send me into rantsville, and I don’t want to go there. In addition to all of the relationship angst, sexxoring and fighting, there’s a buttload of non-communication, miscommunication, intentional miscommunication, oversharing (by secondary characters) and an annoying background threat to Alyssa’s well-being that could be resolved/avoided if she’d just discuss her past with someone…anyone. This book is written in all seriousness, but the characters, plot and dialogue are so unbelievable that I kept thinking my brain was going to spontaneously combust from the absurdity. F.

~ Shuzluva

| Author Website | Kindle | Amazon | Nook | BN | Borders | Book Depository | Fictionwise | Books on Board

Dear Ms. Balogh,

Your books have been an acquired taste for me. My early experiences of them were like my first taste of sushi. They too, seemed like something unusual, intense and raw, to which my palate was unaccustomed. At first I wasn’t sure they would appeal to me, since the protagonists are so often emotional or filled with trepidation, and since it’s not uncommon for the heroes to have names like Rex, Edgar, Archie or Freddy — names that don’t call to my mind much glamour. There’s also the tendency your characters have to think in circles, repeating certain sentences over and over.

But after several tries, I got the hang of reading your books. It takes a certain degree of patience and tolerance for human vulnerabilities and even weaknesses, yet that is also what I find most rewarding about the best of your novels. They can be stories of heartfelt redemption and moving forgiveness.

I’ve now come to appreciate the insight you have into your characters, and the freshness of many of your plots. I still have much of your backlist to catch up on, and not all of your oeuvre has worked for me, but I have kept a dozen or so of your books, and very few authors have come close to matching that.

Among those dozen or so books is Dark Angel, originally published in 1994 as a traditional regency, and now reissued in a 2-in-1 volume with Lord Carew’s Bride. It probably sounds fanciful to say so, but if good books are gems, I like to think Dark Angel is a ruby — a hard, cool stone of a color we associate with both hearts and wounds, with gleaming facets and warm depths.

As a friend of mine once pointed out, the plot of Dark Angel is a bit reminiscent of Les Liaisons Dangereuses (the French epistolary novel which has been adapted for the big screen at least three times, as “Dangerous Liaisons,” “Valmont,” and “Cruel Intentions.”). Here, too, women become pawns in a dangerous game of one-upmanship, although the motives of the game players differ.

The novel begins with two young ladies conversing in a carriage as they enter London. Jennifer Winwood and Samantha Newman are cousins, about to make their debuts in society, but in different circumstances. Eighteen-year-old Samantha is nervous about whether she will have any beaux. Twenty-year-old Jennifer is relieved to have no worries on that score. Jennifer is betrothed–albeit unofficially–to Lionel, Viscount Kersey, and has been since she was fifteen.

Jennifer’s debut has been delayed due first to the death of Lionel’s uncle two years earlier, and later to her own grandmother’s passing, but now, after five years of waiting, she is thrilled at the prospect of coming to London, where her betrothal will be officially announced. She could not dream of a handsomer and more wonderful husband than Lionel, and has no interest whatsoever in any other man.

What Jennifer doesn’t know is that two years before, when Lionel was attending his ailing uncle in Northern England, he toyed with the affections of a young countess married to a much older man. When Catherine turned up pregnant, Lionel abandoned her to face the fury of her husband. But Catherine’s grown stepson, Gabriel, came to her aid and accompanied her to Europe, to offer his support until after the birth of Lionel’s daughter.

Now that Catherine no longer needs him, Gabriel has returned to England. Gabriel’s father passed away during Gabriel’s absence, and the young man is now Earl of Thornhill. But Gabriel’s reputation has been all but destroyed. His stepmother never named her seducer, and when Gabriel left England with her, it was widely assumed he himself impregnated his stepmother, and that his actions brought about his father’s death.

Thus, Gabriel is paying for Lionel’s sins. And since to duel with Lionel would only bring further scandal to Catherine’s name, Gabriel has ruled out slapping his glove in Lionel’s face. Nevertheless, he loathes Lionel with the heat of a hundred thousand suns, and would like nothing more than some kind of vengeance.

On their second day in London, Jennifer and Samantha go for a stroll in Hyde Park, and come into Gabriel and his friend Bertie’s view. Gabriel and Bertie admire the beauty of the two young ladies, while Samantha and Jennifer also notice the men. Jennifer compares Gabriel’s attractive darkness to Lionel’s angelic, golden beauty:

“Yes,” she said, “he did look like the devil, did he not? As Lord Kersey looks like an angel. You were quite right to say they are handsome in quite opposite ways, Sam. That gentleman looks like Lucifer. Lord Kersey looks like an angel.”

That Lionel is not an angel of light and Gabriel not a prince of darkness is only the first irony, and also the first of many mistaken impressions Jennifer and Samantha have. But soon enough Gabriel proves he is no angel, either. When he sets eyes on Jennifer again at her come-out and learns she is affianced to Lionel, he decides that she will be the perfect means to revenge.

Gabriel, who like many of your characters, is so lifelike and believable, tells himself he will be doing Jennifer a great favor by enticing her to some indiscretion or scandal that will humiliate Lionel publicly. After all, Lionel already has two mistresses, one of whom had borne him children, and Gabriel knows firsthand how unfeeling Lionel is. Though his conscience protests at the thought of manipulating and deceiving an innocent young woman, Gabriel drowns it in both alcohol and anger at the man who debauched his stepmother.

Jennifer is perhaps not the most powerful piece on this chess board, but she her painful vulnerability renders her very sympathetic. In her eagerness to get to know Lionel, whom she has loved for five years, she is disappointed when her betrothed does not steal a kiss or profess true love, and angry with Gabriel for depriving Lionel of a couple of opportunities to show her affection. Yet despite that anger, she is also susceptible to Gabriel’s overtures of friendship. People keep warning her that Gabriel has a terrible reputation, but she can sense he is not cad enough to have earned it.

Meanwhile, Lionel, a delicious villain if ever there was one, realizes what Gabriel is up to and has a play or two left to make. His pawn is Samantha, who is torn between loyalty to Jennifer and an unwelcome attraction to the golden, beautiful Lionel.

Who will win the “game” between the two men, as Lionel calls it? And what will happen when Jennifer realizes she has been played by them both? Can love emerge from these underhanded maneuvers?

Dark Angel is a rewarding book on many levels. The complex plot is deftly handled, and the themes of revenge vs. moral justice, deceit vs. conscience, naivete vs. cynicism, and immorality vs. redemption, are beautifully realized.

The characters feel so real, and the tension that comes from the reader’s knowledge of all that Jennifer is unaware of mounts and mounts until the story reaches its pinnacle in which one twist comes on the heel of another, and revelation follows revelation.

The second half of the book is so tightly packed with dramatic payoffs that I defy anyone to put the book down for very long during this section. I certainly couldn’t, even though I was rereading it this time and knew how things would turn out.

No book is perfect — Dark Angel did not make me fall in love with any of its characters, and I felt a bit of impatience in the first half — but I find it hard to care about that, since for me, this is surely one of the most original and satisfying books in the traditional regency subgenre. A-.

Sincerely,

Janine

| Mary Balogh’s Website | Kindle | Amazon | nook | BN | Borders |
Fictionwise | Books on Board (epub)

How do I like this book? Let me count the ways. I do like contemporaries and even the occasional romantic suspense but rarely do they combine as well as you’ve done with “Something About You.” And wow, even the cover model kinda looks like she’s wearing the dress you described. And how often does that happen?!

I’m going to be mega lazy after a hard day at work and just borrow your blurb.

FATE HAS THROWN TWO SWORN ENEMIES. . .

Of all the hotel rooms rented by all the adulterous politicians in Chicago, female Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron Lynde had to choose the one next to 1308, where some hot-and-heavy lovemaking ends in bloodshed. And of all the FBI agents in Illinois, it had to be Special Agent Jack Pallas who gets assigned to this high-profile homicide. The same Jack Pallas who still blames Cameron for a botched crackdown three years ago—and nearly ruining his career…

. . .INTO EACH OTHER’S ARMS

Work with Cameron Lynde? Are they kidding? Maybe, Jack thinks, this is some kind of welcome-back prank after his stint away from Chicago. But it’s no joke: the pair is going to have to put their rocky past behind them and focus on the case at hand. That is, if they can cut back on the razor-sharp jibes—and smother the flame of their sizzling-hot sexual tension…

Jane said the book was good but she didn’t say how good. It’s great. Lessee, a heroine who is smart, acts smart and when she’s told she needs to be under protective custody, she doesn’t fight it with the same old stupid plotting I’ve seen with this kind of novel. She doesn’t think it’s fun to escape her police escort, she agrees to have them come along for a bridal party at a nightclub and ends up telling them all about her friends and the wedding she’s going to be in. They like her and she likes them. She’s good at her job and follows her professional principles even when she has to come to Jack’s rescue. And even after he loses control and tells the world she had her head up her ass during a previous case. Bliss.

And then there’s the hero who is portrayed as being as sinfully delicious as a double fudge chocolate cake with chocolate chips on top. And whipped cream. Jack’s initially not thrilled to have Cameron back in his life – just as she’s not too thrilled with him, but he takes her protection and her involvement in the case seriously and treats her with professionalism. He explains why she needs to be under protective custody instead of just strong arming her then he’s willing to protect her at any cost. Bliss, bliss.

The dialogue is fantastic. Smart, snappy, funny yet realistic. I can’t count the number of times I laughed while reading the book. The scene of the two CPD officers and the two FBI men talking about Cameron’s dating life is a sceam.

“So… for some reason we thought you were the guys assigned to Ms. Lynde’s surveillance. Guess we were mistaken?”

“Nope, you got it right,” Kamin said. “We do the night shift. Nice girl. We talk a lot on the way to the gym.”

“Oh. Then I guess Agent Wilkins and I are just curious why you two are here instead of with her.”

Kamin waved this off. “It’s cool. We did a switcheroo with another cop, see?”

“A switcheroo… right. Remind me again how that works?” Jack asked.

“It’s because she’s got this big date tonight,” Kamin explained.

Jack cocked his head. “A date?”

Phelps chimed in. “Yeah, you know—with Max-the-investment-banker-she-met-on-the-Bloomingdales-escalator.”

“I must’ve missed that one.”

“Oh, it’s a great story,” Kamin assured him. “She crashed into him coming off the escalator and when her shopping bag spilled open, he told her he liked her shoes.”

“Ah… the Meet Cute,” Wilkins said with a grin.

Jack threw him a sharp look. “What did you just say?”

“You know, the Meet Cute.” Wilkins explained. “In romantic comedies, that’s what they call the moment when the man and woman first meet.” He rubbed his chin, thinking this over. “I don’t know, Jack… if she’s had her Meet Cute with another man that does not bode well for you.”

Then, there’s when they’re standing outside Cameron’s house and exchanging information, and awe, at the bachelorette party game going on inside.

“What do you think the pink bags are for?” Wilkins asked. His voice was filled with wonder.

Phelps stood next to him, similarly wide-eyed and awestruck. “It’s a game. Each girl buys a pair of underwear, something she would normally wear herself. The bride has to guess who brought which pair. If the bride guesses wrong, she has to do a shot. If she guesses right, the other girl drinks.”

“Cameron was afraid Amy would think the game was tacky, but the cousins insisted, see?” Kamin said.

Jack glanced over. “You guys sure are getting into all this.”

Phelps grinned. “When a girl like Cameron talks about underwear, you listen.”

“How about you, Jack? Could you do it?” Wilkins asked.

“Do what?”

“Twenty pairs of underwear. Think you could figure out which pair belongs to Cameron?”

Jack had been interrogated at knife-point, gun-point, pretty much at all-points a man could think of, but hell if a question had ever made him squirm as much as that one.

Because now he was thinking about her underwear.

“I don’t see why I’d have any particular insight into that,” he answered gruffly. “Think you could figure it out?”

“No, but I didn’t try to kiss her three nights ago,” Wilkins said.

Jack glared at Kamin and Phelps. “You two tell all sorts of tales, don’t you?” He nodded to Wilkins. “We should get going.”

Wilkins shook his head. “No way. We came to show Cameron those photographs, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Jack pointed to the house. “You can’t seriously be thinking about going in there.”

Wilkins’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “Oh, I’m going in all right. And you are, too, partner.”

“You thought that going into a purse was sacrosanct? Infiltrating a bachelorette party is way beyond that.”

Wilkins rubbed his hands together eagerly. “I know. And I’ll never have an excuse like this again.”

“You’re an FBI agent, Sam,” Jack reminded him.

“I’m also a single man, Jack. And inside that house are twenty gorgeous women who are drinking and showing off their panties. It’s a no-brainer.” He pushed off the car and headed toward the house.

The heroine’s Gay best friend isn’t a stereotypical Gay Best Friend. Thank you for no mention of “Project Runway,” interior decorating (at least in relation to Collin), or squeally moments. The plot just seemed to flow and I didn’t notice your authorial hand jerking the characters’ strings to get them to move as you want them to. Bliss, bliss, bliss.

The villain isn’t a serial killer! So his POV of course doesn’t lovingly detail how much he likes to kill people. Sure, he did commit murder and does need to go down, but I can almost understand the situation in which he found himself and what made him kill. What’s the saying? Everyone could kill under the right circumstances. Then he stays a professional and methodically tries to cover his tracks. It was almost fun to watch him delve into why the crime didn’t have the outcome he’d expected. Still blissful.

Let me mention again how much I enjoy watching Cameron and Jack work this case. Despite a rocky start…

Before he could call her bluff, Cameron grabbed her purse and headed for the door. The hell with her stuff, she’d get it later. “It was nice catching up with you, Agent Pallas. I’m glad to see those three years in Nebraska didn’t make you any less of an asshole.”

She threw open the door and nearly ran into a man standing in the doorway. He wore a well-cut gray suit and tie, appeared younger than Jack, and was African American.

He flashed Cameron a knock-out smile while precariously balancing three Starbucks cups in his hands. “Thanks for getting the door. What’d I miss?”

“I’m storming out. And I just called Agent Pallas an asshole.”

“Sounds like good times. Coffee?” He held the Starbucks out to her. “I’m Agent Wilkins.”

…they quickly start meshing together. They listen to each other, respect each other professionally – now, mull over the other person’s ideas and suggestions and when someone higher on the food chain than the killer is contemplated, there’s no immediate dismissal that “this couldn’t possibly be right.” Cameron does do one slightly silly thing which no one would think might bring a killer to her house one day and because she didn’t go out once and try and track down and bring in the killer, I’ll forgive it. She also ends up doing something Jack calls “fucking brilliant” to aid in capturing the killer. I’m almost in a haze of bliss.

I did end up marking the book down slightly because I just felt the ending kept on going and going. The last chapter felt tacked on and was somewhat of an anticlimax but other than that, this is one book I can totally recommend. A-

~Jayne

This book is the subject of a new Save the Contemporary campaign. Come back tomorrow to hear about the details to win a new iTouch and a bottle of Stags’ Leap Petit Syrah which is a wine featured in the book.

| Julie James’ Website | Kindle | Amazon | Nook | BN | Borders | Fictionwise (eReader/epub) | Books on Board (epub/PDF)

I was drawn to your book for a fairly superficial reason – I liked the title. It’s semi-alliterative and evocative, and I am a sucker for the angst potential in a good revenge plot.

The story begins with a prologue set in a Bengali dungeon in 1857. Eight Englishmen find themselves imprisoned in a dark cell, each kidnapped for reasons that are unclear (they remain unclear at the end of the story; since this is the first book in a series presumably the reasons will be expanded on in future books). They introduce themselves to each other and banter, before the scene shifts to the first chapter, set two years later in London.

Our hero is one of the formerly imprisoned men, Galen Hawke (I’m going to have to sigh twice, one separate sigh each for the first and last name). Galen is tormented by memories of his imprisonment and doesn’t sleep well. Over breakfast with the strumpet he picked up the night before, Galen finds out that he and his surviving comrades are being talked about in society as a secret club, known as “the Jaded” (sigh number three for that name). The woman tells Galen,

“I’ve heard the Jaded described as a sullen group of impossible men too handsome for their own good, and you–while you are a delectable specimen, you are the dreariest man I’ve ever met.”

Sigh number four is occasioned by the phrase “sullen group of impossible men”, I’m afraid.

The strumpet departs, and Galen’s attention is caught by an item in the newspaper: a Miss Haley Moreland (our heroine; her first name inspires sigh number five) is engaged to be married. Galen is familiar with Haley Moreland as the much-beloved object of affection of his late friend John Everly (a normal 19th century name! Yay! Too bad he’s dead). John was one of Galen’s fellow prisoners in Bengal; he died in Galen’s arms after their escape.

This is where the revenge of the title comes in. Galen had heard all about John’s devotion to and love for Haley; John had declared his intention to marry Haley as soon as they returned to England. And, boy, is Galen pissed:

Galen struggled to focus, disbelief and fury warring behind his eyes. It couldn’t be the same woman that John had spoken of! She would be in mourning! She would be some distraught pale version of a girl bemoaning a life without her one true love…

Just like that, Galen has a new purpose in life: to get revenge on Haley Moreland, who has so cruelly thrown off the cloak of mourning that Galen thinks she should be wearing, less than a year after John’s death. He decides that he will break Haley’s heart and then “laugh, Miss Haley Moreland, when you cry at my feet.”

Oh, good gravy, there aren’t enough sighs in my body for this plot development. I’d start hyperventilating and faint dead away.

Look, I get it – Galen is Messed Up. He has been scarred by his imprisonment, and he’s obviously not thinking very clearly. But this is such a lame, weak excuse on which to hang a revenge plot that from that point on I couldn’t decide if Galen was too loathsome to care about, or too stupid to hate. I may have the advantage of knowing that Haley is a romance heroine, and thus probably all things good and virtuous. But even without the advantage of that knowledge…there’s just no getting around the fact that Galen is a huge asshole.

As for Haley, she is indeed blameless, though the true story of her relationship with John doesn’t come out until fairly late in the book. But her hasty engagement (to a basically harmless but over-the-top buffoonish fellow) is motivated by the usual self-sacrificing heroine’s reasoning: she has an alcoholic father and a quirky aunt who are depending on her to make a good marriage and support them. Haley would be just as happy being a modiste; she has a flair for dress-making and has often practiced economy by making her own clothes, in spite of her aristocratic pedigree.

Galen’s pursuit of Haley follows along fairly predictable lines; he is, after all, ridiculously handsome and she is a naive young miss with a rather toad-like fiance (who doesn’t seem that crazy about her; she’s marrying Herbert for his money and he’s marrying her for her lineage). Haley tries to resist, but soon succumbs to secret meetings with Galen, eventually giving in to his seduction completely. The love scenes are fairly hot, though rather purple. I raised my brows at the depiction of Galen’s semen as his “crème” the first time it appeared; little did I know that it would be referred to thusly thereafter. “Crème” makes me think of some sort of new drink at Starbucks, or perhaps an off-brand hair conditioner. It strikes me as a rather silly attempt to pretty up the word “cream”, a word that would have been bad enough, honestly, in this context. My preference is for oblique references or exact terms, and nothing in between. Though “seed” is so ubiquitous, I suppose I’m inured to it at this point. But no man-juice, cream, crème or baby batter, please. (Heh: I just found this on Wikipedia under “cream”: “Words such as creme, kreme, creame, or whipped topping are often used for products which cannot legally be called cream.” I guess that’s true of Galen’s semen.)

Anyway, also fairly predictably, Galen begins to have regrets. After all, he’s an asshole, not a monster. His musings mostly seem to come on the form of wondering whether he can have Haley without betraying John, though; he doesn’t give a lot of thought to the betrayal that he’s already committed against Haley. This did not endear Galen to me.

This is the second historical romance in a row that I’ve read that contained a rather murky and indifferently plotted suspense subplot. In this case, I think it may be something that plays out over several books. Galen and his friends are being pursued by various factions because of some treasures they took in their escape from Bengal (where apparently the treasure rooms are right next to the dungeons, and conveniently unguarded, I guess. I don’t know – it really wasn’t explained). The best I can say about this subplot is that it didn’t interfere with the main story too much.

I have the feeling that this book may work better for some other readers than it did for me. Emotional involvement in a romance can be a tricky thing, and if I’d cared more about the hero and heroine, I could have ignored Galen’s paper-thin reasoning for wanting revenge and some of the other problems I had with the book and just enjoyed the angst. My grade is a C-.

Best regards,

Jennie

This book can be purchased at Amazon (affiliate link), Kindle (non affiliate link) or from other etailers.

I am not sure why I am always surprised when I read a good series romance. After all, I’ve been a big proponent of series books for the last few years. I suppose it’s partly the titles and maybe it’s the brevity of the books that gives rise to a preconceived notion that these stories will be lightweight. The one big complaint I had about this book, though, was related to length. I’m not sure if it is length of book that was the issue. More on that later.

This is a very tender love story between two misfits. Marnie Jones’ longtime boyfriend, Mark, broke up with her, leaving her heartbroken and lost. She drives away from him and her hometown to seek refuge with her sister, Tess who married Ash Bravo. Marnie’s boyfriend told her that she had lost what it was that made her special. Upon reflection, Marnie realized that he was right. She had moved in with him and because he had a trust fund, she didn’t need to work. His friends became her friends; his interests her interests. Her whole world narrowed to focus solely on him and Marnie transgressed to become his shadow.

Marnie had actually been a wild child of the family engaging in everything from petty thievery to general outrageous behavior. She had grown up with Mark, fell in love with him, and thought that they would live happily ever after. It wasn’t that Mark asked her to pack away her identity. She just did.

Upon arriving at her sister’s house, Marnie runs into Jericho Bravo, a big, tattoed, and dangerous looking man. She thinks he might be an intruder. This does not go over well with Jericho who is really the black sheep of the Bravo billionaires. Jericho is not a billionaire but a former felon and current owner of a custom motorcycle business. He doesn’t want to be the black sheep but he doesn’t fit in with the rest of his overachieving family either despite loving them very much.

Jericho is a sweet man. He does not feel good enough for someone who looks like Marnie, full of spirit and freshness but Marnie convinces him that she’s only in town temporarily and a fling would be good for the both of them. Marnie goes so far as to sell Jericho on the idea of being the rebound man. She won’t fall in love with him because she’s still nursing her broken heart. At first, this appeals to Jericho. There is something about Marnie that trips his trigger. The more time that Jericho spends with Marnie, the more that he regrets the lack of permanence of Marnie in his life.

I also appreciated that Marnie and Jericho’s interaction with their siblings. There was a bit of sibling rivalry between both the sister and the brother and everyone didn’t always get along. These seemed to add a feeling of realism to the story.

While I totally believed that Jericho and Marnie were meant to be together, I felt that the time which passed between her break up with Mark and her falling for Jericho was too short, particularly given the strength of Marnie’s feelings for Mark at the beginning of the book.

I did enjoy seeing Marnie step out from the shadows and find balance between being the free spirit and the responsible adult. Jericho was a sweet, sweet hero who found himself in love with a woman who might still love her former fiance. B

Best regards,

Jane
This book can be purchased at Amazon
(affiliate link), Kindle (non affiliate), eHarlequin in print (non affiliate link), eHarlequin in ebook (non affiliate link) or other etailers.

Eighteenth century conspiracy theorists would have had a field day with this movie and the real events that inspired it. As it is, twenty-first century film goers can watch it then wonder, “What on earth did I just see?” It’s a monster film! It’s a historical! It’s a romance! It’s a bromance! It’s even a martial arts film! That’s right, it’s damn near everything!

It’s during the Reign of Terror. As peasants scream for an aristo’s blood, he ponders events which occurred many years ago. Determined that the truth should be known, he begins to write….

We start with an opening scene that could be called “Jaws on land.” A terrified French peasant girl flees – something – which grabs her and flings her back and forth before killing her. Then two muffled riders find a father and daughter (?) being attacked by more peasants. (The peasants in this film will give you the creeps.) Martial arts fight ensues. The riders ride on and we discover they are Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan) and Mani (Mark Dacascos), his faithful Mohawk companion/blood brother. Fronsac, a naturalist, has been sent by the King to the province of Gevaudan to investigate the mysterious killings which have terrorized the land for over a year. No one knows what the beast is but it’s evaded the soldiers sent to kill it and Something Must Be Done.

Fronsac and Mani shack up with some decadent aristos and wow them with stories of America. Fronsac flirts with the daughter of the house (Émilie Dequenne) while Mani makes Deep Pronouncements. He’s a Noble Savage, you know. Talks to trees. Does cool martial arts fighting. Communes with nature. A beautiful hunt scene follows which actually does…nothing. The beast kills again. Fronsac flirts more then visits a high class brothel which has a madame (the beautiful Monica Bellucci) who’s into weird shit.

More killing despite the hunt which wiped out most of the area wolves. The King sends his top man who kills a wolf and leans on Fronsac to stuff it and make it look good. Political pressure is applied and Fronsac caves in. But he knows the real beast is still out there. When it kills again, he yields to the entreaties of the young aristo ( Jérémie Renier) he’s befriended and goes back with Mani. More hunting, more martial arts, and we begin to get an inkling of what’s really happening. Well, as much as you can in this film.

Mani is killed. Fronsac mourns then buries him in grand style, vowing revenge. Bizarre nastiness occurs between Fronsac’s wannabe aristo girlfriend and her brother (Vincent Cassel). All of a sudden we’re getting Voice Overs telling us what’s going on – which is good because at this point I totally lose track of the plot. I mean it gets really strange from here on. But I do know…the beast is killed, we’re given some half ass excuse as to what happened and why it was occurring and Fronsac sails off with his lady love – as written down by the aristo who is thoughtfully allowed the night before his execution to pen all this. Yeah, right…

So, why watch this movie? It’s gorgeously filmed. The colors of the aristos’ clothing just jump out and grab you by the throat. The misty landscape is beautiful and director Christophe Gans shows it to best advantage. The martial arts scenes are lovingly shot in real time and slo-mo. The costumes are great, the interiors are fantastic, the music is fine, there’s pageantry all over the place and it’s got a plethora of hunky actors to drool over. There’s also an interesting plot angle of the entrenched aristocrats vs the new Age of Reason sweeping the world if you want to get intellectual. What’s not to love?

Okay, so if you want your movies to actually make sense this one will give you fits. But I’m enjoying the visual feast so much that by the time everything goes to hell in a handcart, I don’t care. The strong cast of actors actually do a pretty good job with what they’re given and I’m still believing in what they’re presenting even as a tiny part of my mind is asking, “WTF?” But I get the idea it’s supposed to be totally over the top so I can’t complain when it is. One reviewer at IMDB calls it “Merchant Ivory takes up kickboxing.” Others label it an amazing genre film. It’s definitely one of a kind – at least so far.

~Jayne