Archive for the 'A- Reviews' Category
Dear Readers,
 Back in July of 2008, I reviewed Tangle XY, an anthology of short speculative m/m stories. Earlier this year, Blind Eye Books, the publisher of Tangle XY, came out with Tangle Girls, an f/f anthology. As with Tangle XY, some (not all) of the stories are multicultural, and many have fairy tale or science fiction elements, but in this anthology the commonality all the stories share is the focus on girls who love other girls. Here are my reviews of the six stories:
“Raccoon Skin” by J.D. EveryHope
In “Raccoon Skin,” Sophia, a college student, arrives at her parents’ home on a pre-dawn morning. After seeing that her parents’ trash can that has been upended by a raccoon, Sophia goes outside to put it back up, and while there, she sees crows attacking a golden eagle. The eagle falls to the snowy ground, and Sophia chases the crows away. Just as she is debating whether to take the eagle inside, the bird shifts shape and turns into a human girl — and not just any girl, but Sophia’s girlfriend, Caterina.
Caterina and Sophia met …
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Genre: Romantic zombie comedy
Grade: Effing hilarious
When I looked ahead on the October calendar and saw that this last Friday would be the day before Halloween, I realized I needed some kind of horror film or monster film or, well you get the picture, to tie in with it. But since that genre isn’t something I normally watch and I wanted some romance in the film, I was a bit panicked. “What can I watch?” I muttered as I chewed a fingernail. A quick check of my Netflix queue and the day is saved. I’ll watch “Shaun of the Dead!” I said.
The plot is fairly simple. Shaun (Simon Pegg) is a 29 year old appliance salesman who’s having problems with his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) who is dissatisfied with their relationship, primarily because it revolves around going to “The Winchester,” Shaun’s favorite pub, every night. She wants something different, a nice dinner at a nice restaurant somewhere other than the pub. But Shaun screws even that up and tops it off by giving her flowers, complete with card, that he’d bought for his mother. She dumps him and Shaun and one of his flatmates, Ed (Nick …
Dear Ms. Austen,
I will confess right off the bat that I’m one of those readers who never “got” you. I tried to read Pride and Prejudice years ago, but gave up after a few pages because of your writing style. What can I say – I had less patience in those days with long, indirect sentences which seemed to use 20 words to say what could be easily said in five (hah! I’m one to talk on that score…). I read Emma a few years ago and honestly did not care for it. It wasn’t so much the language this time; it was the fact that there seemed to be about a dozen main characters and only one of them (Mr. Knightley, of course) appeared to not be a complete and utter twit. Emma herself was dumber than a bag of hammers, and every other character seemed to fall somewhere on the continuum between “moron” and “get any stupider and we’ll need to water you twice a week” (to paraphrase the late, great Molly Ivins).
I don’t really like reading about stupid people, so Emma frustrated me. Nonetheless, I picked up a copy of Sense and Sensibility recently, and though I …
 PLEASE NOTE: this conversational review does contain some spoilers.
Jennie: I was one of many readers mightily impressed with Carolyn Jewel’s previous historical romance Scandal, which I read in January and graded an A-.
Janine: Totally with you on that. Scandal was one of the most impressive books I’ve read this year, and it’s stuck with me so much that I recently went back to my own review and raised the grade from an A- to an A-/A.
Jennie: I was very much looking forward to Indiscreet. While I had some problems with the second half of the story, overall, it did not disappoint.
Janine: Agreed again, although, as readers will see our opinions about what works in this book differ a bit more than they usually do.
Jennie: The book begins:
How everything started.
This incident took place at about two o’clock the morning of September 3, 1809. The location was the back parlor of a town house owned by the Duke of Buckingham but lived in by the Earl of Crosshaven on a ninety-nine-year lease, presently in its twenty-third year. It should be remarked that Lord Edward Marrack, the younger brother of the
…
This guest review is brought to you by Jill Myles, author, friend and blogging partner of Meljean Brook. We will have a review of Demon Forged by Janet (aka Robin) next week.
****
Dear Meljean Brook:
 I’ve struggled to write this review a little. In fact, this is the second time I’ve tried to write it on paper, and probably the ninth draft from my head.
Disclaimer – you and I blog together and we are friends, but…I was a friend to your series (does that sound lame? Can I say that?) long before we’d ever said hello. I was first introduced to the Guardians when Jane Litte of Dear Author raved about DEMON ANGEL. Hello, angel story? I am there. It wasn’t until much later that we became friends, but I wanted to throw this out in the open lest someone think I have bias, and I guess I do.
Some of your books I have loved more than others. DEMON BOUND was my absolute favorite, and some of the others were less…favorite… (I’m looking at you, DEMON NIGHT) but were still excellent reads. For me, your books are …
Dear Ms. Carlyle:
 I have read you since your debut in 1999 with My False Heart. My False Heart remains high of my favorite romances of all time and it is the book against which I measure all of your other titles. The story was so fresh at the time. The heroine, Evie Artevalde, was not a virgin. The hero, Eliot, the Marquess of Rannoch, was a surly, disreputable lord. He lies to her. She turns him off but ultimately they have a memorable happy ever after. Wicked All Day tells the story of of Eliot’s illegitimate daughter, Zoë. Zoë’s mother was an opera dancer whom Eliot paid off. Eliott was not a good father. He had good intentions, but up until his marriage to Evie, he had left Zoë in the hands of a succession of governesses.
Zoë was incredibly spoiled because Eliott didn’t know how to be a good parent. His response to a governness that treated Zoë badly was to cast her out without a reference and order his servants to make sure that Zoë never had another unhappy day. Zoë grew …
WARNING: this review may not be work safe as it includes profanities and sexual situations. Carry on.
Dear Ms. Byrne:
 I hadn’t even realized that this book, the third in the Faustin brothers trilogy, was set for release until I received the Samhain reviewer email. I jumped on the chance to obtain a review copy because I had enjoyed Bound by Blood quite a bit.
I thought this was a great, fresh vampire romance. It wasn’t fresh because the vampire myth held anything new. The freshness was totally based on the characters themselves. Mikhail is the eldest of the Faustin brothers. He and his family rule over the East. His mother calls him home to tell him of a prophecy of his mate. It is Alya Adad. I’ll just let the book do the talking:
Helena’s shrill whistle cut through the sludge of noise. Mikhail lifted his head and looked around the room with fresh eyes. In just a few seconds his world had collapsed and been rebuilt in a terrible new form. Helena threw out her arms in frustration. “Excuse me. I’m new here. Could somebody please tell me who this Alya Adad is?â€
His father said, “The eldest child of Prince Zouhair Adad of Morocco.â€
His mother said, “Mikhail’s first love.â€
Gregor said, “She’s the fucking queen of the damned.â€
Mikhail stood. That surprised them all, he could tell, and he hated their worried glances. He cast a long, slow gaze around his family circle, warning them against pity. “You should know her name, Helena. She rules the entire West coast. And we’re at war with her.â€
Dear Authors:
 I only opened this volume when Dreamspinner sent it to us because Madeleine Urban had a co-written story in it. I adore her longer co-written stories with Abigail Roux, and the volume started off with “Reluctant,” so I thought I’d have a great little story and then skim through the rest. Instead, “Reluctant” was truly awful and the rest of the stories saved me from chucking the volume off my computer.
At 332 pages, this is a seriously hefty volume (electronic, of course). And with only 12 stories, that’s between 25-30 pages a story, much longer than the usual short stories crammed into an anthology. This gives enough time to actually flesh out the characters, plots, and themes. Or time for the story to move from blah to boring and awful.
The theme for the volume is sex industry workers: both low- and high-end prostitutes and strippers, mainly. What was fascinating to me more than anything was how each story used the sex industry angle—as a meet-cute, as conflict, as a moral failing, as a perfectly legitimate profession, with or without comment. I’m strangely fascinated by this particular profession and by how …
Dear Ms. Hart,
 Two of the many things I enjoyed about your erotic novella collection, Pleasure and Purpose, are the setting and the heroines’ background. All three novellas take place in a fantasy setting which resembles mid nineteenth century Europe in terms of its technological development. As far as I can tell, this world does not seem to contain magic, but underlying all the stories is a fascinating mythology that plays an important role in the characters’ lives.
It is the prevailing religious belief that each time a soul finds perfect solace, even if only for a moment, an arrow appears in the god Sinder’s quiver. According to legend — and many people’s faith — when the quiver is full, Sinder, his wife and his son, The Holy Family, will reunite, bringing peace and harmony to mankind.
To that end, the Order of Solace was created. The women who enter the order, called handmaidens, make it their task to bring solace to the patrons who engage their services. Sometimes doing that involves sex, but there is more to it than that. To give an idea of the handmaidens’ outlook, here are …
 So yes, it seems like everyday is a giveaway but it just kind of happened that way. Â I don’t want Jo Goodman’s Never Love a Lawman get lost in the shuffle. We have 10 ARCs to give away to 10 random commenters. One of the books is the copy I read but I wanted to give it away because if even one more person becomes exposed to Goodman, all the better.
I do not envision Wyatt looking like this. ——>
Robin facilitated getting us these ARCs and I hope, come September, she shares her thoughts about the book as well. Â I knew this was a good book because the minute I finished the book, I started paging through it to re-read passages and ended up reading the entire book twice in the space of 24 hours. Â Now, this isn’t a perfect book. I had some issue with the villain and how that part of the story wrapped up, but for the pure joy of reading a romance, this book comes close to being some kind of perfection.
Jo Goodman’s books are not quick category reads to be devoured in an hour. Her stories are more …
Cluny Brown – 1946
Genre: romantic comedy
Grade A-
Here’s another older movie I’d love to see on DVD – at least in the US. You European readers are lucky enough to have a region 2 version available. I’m so happy for you.
::smiling:: ::still smiling:: ::snarling actually, if you want the truth::
“Cluny Brown” is a little known gem from Ernst Lubitsch which features two outsiders who find each other in prewar England. Cluny Brown (Jennifer Jones) is the niece of a London plumber who answers the call of the plumbing pipes one Sunday afternoon when a society gent has a backed up sink. There she runs into Adam Belinksi (Charles Boyer) who is a Czech writer who has left Europe to find refuge in England after running afoul of the Nazis. After successfully fixing the sink, she and the men toast each other just a bit too much which is when her Uncle Arn arrives. Horrified that Cluny has forgotten her “place,” he makes arrangements to ship her out to the country as a parlor maid at the home of Sir Henry (Richard Owen) and Lady Carmel (Margaret Bannerman).
Meanwhile, Belinski meets up with their son Andrew (Peter Lawford) who is in awe …
 Dear Ms. Briggs,
I always approach an old favorite with trepidation. So often they were favorites because of the person I was at that time in my life, and having changed, they no longer affect me as they once did. But sometimes I’m lucky and I find that it was something more timeless and I love the book as much as ever.
I’m a long-time lover of science fiction romance, and have been reading it since the 70s, even though I didn’t have any concept of the sub-genre at the time. I’m going to be revisiting some of the classics, those books considered must reads that I haven’t read in ages. I expect that I won’t love some as much as I once did. I’m happy to say that the first I chose, a favorite of both mine and Jane’s, is one of those timeless ones, your Dragon Bones / Dragon Blood.
Honestly, I was hard-pressed to come up with any criticism of this book. I sat down after re-reading it and tried to come up with something I’d have changed had I written it …
Dear Ms. Duran,
 I was a big fan of your debut The Duke of Shadows, published last year. I can’t say how excited I was to learn that you had not one but two books scheduled for release in 2009, one in June and the other in July. Having now read the first, I can say that The Duke of Shadows was no fluke – Bound by Your Touch confirms that you possess a rare talent.
On the surface, this is the familiar tale pairing a bluestocking spinster with a profligate aristocrat. Lydia Boyce and James, Viscount Sanburne meet when he interrupts a speech she is giving before an archaeological society, hoping to drum up funds for her father’s research. Lydia is devoted to her absent father, who spends most of his time in Egypt on archaeological digs, and relies on Lydia back in England to act as his secretary, agent and fund-raiser.
James is actually at the meeting for the opposite reason – he wants to flaunt an artifact that he’s snatched from beneath his hated father’s nose at said father, who is in attendance at the meeting. Lydia is piqued at the interruption to her speech …
Dear Ms. Singh,
 Your Psy/Changeling series has me hooked. Set in a future and alternate Earth peopled by three races, humans, Psy, and changelings, the books feature dynamic characters, suspenseful plots and subplots, intricate world-building, and a lot of sexual and romantic tension. Though the world is dominated by the Psy, who are connected through a telepathic net, the changelings, who can shift form from animal to human, have slowly been gaining power, and it is they who are the focus of Branded by Fire, the sixth book in the series.
The story begins with a hot encounter between two changelings. Mercy, a sentinel for the DarkRiver leopard changeling pack, walks through the forest feeling the effects of eight months of abstinence. She is now the only one of the sentinels who is still unmated, and she worries she’ll remain that way. Mercy is dominant in her personality, and while she doesn’t want to walk all over a submissive man, she will also never allow someone else to boss her around. It’s a problem that other dominant females have sometimes been unable to resolve, and Mercy fears that even if she …
Captain Blood (1935)
Captain Blood (DVD 2005 Turner Entertainment Co and Warner Bros Entertainment)
Grade A-
Genre: Romance/Swashbuckling/Pirate
I had so much fun doing my last Friday Film review that I decided to comb through my DVD collection and see what else might be suitable. Captain Blood is one of the epic pirate movies which set the standard for Hollywood historical action films for years to come. I first saw this as a teenager. I loved it! And then I discovered it was an adaptation from a book so I hunted that down and, wait a minute!, the author, Rafael Sabatini, wrote lots of similarly styled books. I was in heaven then. So not only did I fall in love with the movie but I ended up getting years of reading enjoyment out of it. Not a bad bargain.
Peter Blood, bachelor of medicine, is caught up against his will in the attempt to overthrow King James II (boo hiss). Called out to tend to a wounded rebel, Blood cares little for the man’s politics until he too is swept up by the King’s soldiers and sent to jail to await trial with the rest of the rebels. There he’s condemned and faces death …
Dear Ms. Krentz:
 This book was published in 1989 but I don’t think I read it until the early 1990s. My copy was used and I recall that I had purchased it used in its original Harlequin Temptation iteration. Since that time, it has been re-released by Harlequin at least twice more. I anxiously await for it to come out in ebook format. (Hint. Hint.)Â The thing that I remember most about this book is that it was the first one that started out with the hero and heroine in bed together.
Juliana Grant is a tall, confident, passionate business woman. When Travis Sawyer first met her, a relationship is that last thing on his mind but she embodied everything he had ever wanted in a woman. Travis, a business consultant, had sought out Juliana because she was the only member of the Grant he had not yet met. He begins to woo her under the guise of offering his consulting services for her burgeoning coffee shop empire. Travis plans to crush the Grant family because they promised him a part of the business when he saved their bacon but reneged when …
Janine: When Jaili (Maili) and I recently found out we were reading the same little-known book from 2008, Dru Pagliassotti’s Clockwork Heart, we thought it would be fun to discuss it here at Dear Author. But first, a plot synopsis:
 Clockwork Heart takes place in a fictional Industrial Age city-state called Ondinium. One of Ondinium’s industries is the mining of ondium, a precious metal lighter than air. Ondium is used to make wings for Ondinium’s icarii, flying messengers allowed to travel freely between Ondinium’s three sectors.
Ondinium is a divided city. Its citizens worship a goddess known as the Lady of the Forge and believe in reincarnation. Most of Ondinium’s citizens are divided into three castes, and the members of each caste live in separate sectors, and have their caste marks tattooed on their cheeks. Upper caste citizens are believed to be more enlightened than others, and are referred to as exalted. In theory the icarii, who do not belong to any caste, don’t have to defer to them, but the reality is different.
The story begins when its heroine, an icarus named …
Dear Mrs. Hoyt,
 Your books work for me. What else can I say? I believe in these characters. I believe in the circumstances you place them in. I believe the ways you make them act. I want them to find happiness and when they do, I’m thrilled. When Jane sent out a DA email asking for our recommendations for May, I realized I, once again, needed to get off my ass and read. I just now finished the book and am happy as a clam at high tide.
Sir Alistair Munroe thinks his life is the way he wants it. Living alone, except for a surly, lazy manservant, in a dirty castle in a remote part of Scotland while he works on his latest book on the flora and fauna of the British Isles. Therefore, when a woman with two children presents herself at his door as his new housekeeper, he knows she’s lying. He doesn’t want her or her children in his life, thank you very much, now go away.
Helen Halifax can’t afford to let this beastly man turn her way. On the run from her former …
Dear Ms. Enoch:
 I’ve really enjoyed this Notorious Gentleman series which started with After the Kiss and ends with Always a Scoundrel, a book that csquared deemed one of your best in years. I agree. This is a book that had my emotions in my throat nearly the entire time. It was dark, evocative, and moving.
Lord Bramwell Lowry Johns is the second son of the Duke of Levonzy. He lives off his gambling winnings and his allowance, although, the latter is an unreliable source of income as his father is prone to cutting Bram off regularly. Bram actively courts his father’s disapproval. The two have been at odds since Bram was 16 years old when the Duke told Bram he was a disgrace and Bram set out to prove the Duke correct. He contacted Kingston Gore, the Marquis of Cosgrove, and allowed Cosgrove to lead him down every path of licentiousness. For years and with the tutelage of Cosgrove, Bram has tried to bring disrepute onto the house of Levonzy. His goals were slightly interrupted when his two best friends entered the First Royal Dragoons …
Film review: Firelight (1997)
Grade: A-
Genre: romantic period drama (UK/USA)
Â
Dear William Nicholson,
I was challenged to find and review a period romantic film that isn’t an adaptation. I was all for it until I discovered finding the task wasn’t as easy as I thought.
All I could find were the adaptations of works by Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Margaret Mitchell (Gone With the Wind), Baroness Orczy (The Scarlet Pimpernel), Barbara Cartland, Oscar Wilde, Frank Yerby (The Foxes of Harrow and The Golden Hawk), Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (Les Liaisons Dangereuses), E.M. Forster (Maurice, A Room With a View), Anya Seton (Dragonwyck) and many others. I had hoped Captain Blood, The Horseman on the Roof and River Lady wouldn’t be adaptations, but they are. Damn you, Rafael Sabatini, Jean Giono and Frank Waters.
The originals I did find—such as The Abduction Club, Vidocq, Tugboat Princess, Lady Jane, and Brotherhood of the Wolf—can’t be easily found on DVD world-wide. O world, why art thou taking the mick?
I was about to fall on my knees in defeat when I remembered one of my role models Sandra Goldbacher (an awesome BBC history researcher and documentary maker) wrote and directed a film, The Governess (1998). I tried to …
Dear Ms. Knight:
 There are so many blocks against reading this book that I wonder you ever had the audacity to put pen to paper. The story is told from the first person present tense in alternating points of view. Â It features a gay/bisexual/quasi-queer man who purportedly falls in love with a Hollywood actress. Â I got to the end of chapter 1 and emailed your editor, Angela James, and said, what the hell have you sent me?
Her response was an inscrutable admonishment, “keep reading.”  And so I did.  I haven’t said word one to Angela about the book since she sent it. The truth is that I really struggled to put into words how strongly I felt about the book.Â
Rebecca O’Neill was starring in a hit comedic primetime drama when a stalker flayed her face and her body scarring her dramatically and ending her promising acting career. She recovered and moved behind the scenes to development. Recovery, though, is a broad term. Rebecca still has panic attacks. She sometimes is scared by the slightest wrong movement at night. She hasn’t dated in three years, hasn’t been intimate since before the …
Dear Ms. Wendell and Ms. Tan.
 I spent Wednesday through Saturday last week at the Popular Culture Association Conference in New Orleans attending all the Romance Area panels. There were papers about domesticity as it constructs Eve’s character in JD Robb’s novels, and the moral construction of Sookie Stackhouse and the vampires she interacts with (from Jessica of Racy Romance Reviews, whom we have seduced to the dark side!), and how Milton’s Paradise Lost informs and creates the themes of Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm, and how sadomasochism is constructed and subverted by BDSM romances. An excerpt from this book would have fit right in at the conference, because it’s that insightful and well-researched. And a few “cuntmonkey”s and “fuck”s would certainly be no less inappropriate at an academic conference than me reading out loud “fisting his own cock desperately and sucking on his fingers like a whore sucking cock for a fix.”
You ladies need no introduction to the romance world, of course. You are the Smart Bitches, romance reviewers, fans, and advocates. (And Google-bombers extraordinaire.) Now, I consider Sarah a …
Dear Ms. Andrews:
 It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of your writing. I was thrilled to beta read Magic Strikes about a year ago. I remember being very impressed by the quality of your manuscript and gave quite a bit of positive feedback. I was happy to discover that the changes made since then have only made it better.
Magic Strikes is the third book about Kate Daniels, kick ass mercenary, and Knight of the Order of Merciful Aid. Book 1 dealt with Kate’s quest to find her guardian’s killer, a search which brought her to the Pack and the Beast Lord’s attention. In Book 2, while Atlanta is gripped by an intense wave of magic known as a flare, Kate’s ties to the Pack continue to grow when she joins up with them to save the city.
Book 3 begins about two months after the events in book 2. Atlanta is still recovering from the backlash caused by the flare. Kate is keeping busy, running from one emergency to the next, and getting very little sleep in between. One such emergency pops up when she is …
Dear Authors,
 This anthology is subtitled “Forensic Mysteries from Today’s BEST WRITERS.” I’d heard of some of your names but forgive me if I say that mysteries, though I enjoy them, aren’t my first reading choice so there are some of you I’d never heard of before. What can I say except – I have now. And the stories live up nicely to the claim of having been written by the best writers.
I applaud Dana Stabenow not only for her contribution but also for her editing of the collection. Marty Greenberg and John Helfers rounded up the writers and got the project published.
The stories are located across America, from the heat of Florida to the bone chilling cold of Alaska. The people solving the crimes are from varied backgrounds and hold different titles. The ways the crimes are solved utilize everything from spy satellites, knowledge of sports, tax implications of a home sale, CPR, OCD, dental records, the victim’s job, and, of course, some post mortems. All are solved by the clues left behind and the intelligence of those determined to see justice done.
If you like CSI …
|
|
Loading ...
Open Threads at Dear Author. Want to know what new releases are out this month and what readers are excited about reading? Check out the threads below. 
We don’t like to censor comments nor do we endorse the comments of any poster. We do reserve the right to moderate comments but most of the time will not, believing, as Justice Brandeis did, that the greater good is in “more speech, not enforced silence.â€
