Archive for the 'B- Reviews' Category
Dear Ms. Thompson.
 I’ve had numerous people recommend your books to me as examples of good BDSM romances. When James Buchanan recommended you yet again, I broke down. I’m glad I did. I really enjoyed Submission Times Two and look forward to reading more of your books.
I started with Submission Times Two because how could I not?! It hit all my buttons: menage, m/m, and BDSM. But especially the menage. Cam and Ethan are desperately in love with each other. They’ve been living together for just under a year. They’re committed and focused on making their relationship work no matter what. The problem is, they’re both submissive, and unable to dom each other convincingly. So they’ve worked out a deal: on the weekends, they each go to different clubs, scene with doms there, get their pain-play needs met that way, and then go home and fuck like bunnies. So far, it’s been working out for them. Then Ethan hooks up with Maestro and starts thinking about how he needs more than just weekend scenes — he needs a full-time dom, which of course starts getting in the way of his relationship with …
Dear Ms Dee,
 Thanks for offering Dear Author the chance to review your latest historical from Liquid Silver. And then for following up with me to be sure I got the book. I do fall behind on my reviewing at times.
After the death of her fiancé, Catherine Johnson, a New York schoolteacher in 1901, travels to Nebraska to teach a one-room school and escape her sad memories. One afternoon, violence erupts in the sleepy town. Catherine saves deaf stable hand, Jim Kinney, from torture by drunken thugs.
As she takes charge of his education, teaching him to read and sign, attraction grows between them. The warmth and humor in this silent man transcends the need for speech and his eyes tell her all she needs to know about his feelings for her. But the obstacles of class difference and the stigma of his handicap are almost insurmountable barriers to their growing attachment.
Will Catherine flout society’s rules and allow herself to love again? Can Jim make his way out of poverty as a deaf man in a hearing world? And together will they beat the corrupt robber baron who has a stranglehold on
…
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 …
Dear Ms. Gray (aka Ms. Aguirre):
 In reviewing my emails (because my memory, as you know, is terribly spotty), I see I received the book for review from you. I had enjoyed Grimspace and heard that this book was fresh for the romance genre and it is. Kyra is a grifter, working with her father, until he is beaten and left for dead by a casino owner named Serrano. Kyra runs a long con on Serrano, not just to take his money, but to humiliate him. She does this by learning what Serrano likes and transforms herself into the perfect woman, luring him in, and then ultimately humiliating him by gambling away his engagement ring, taking his money, and publicly admitting she just dated him for the money.
Serrano has his security guy hire a hitman to retrieve the money and kill Kyra, in that order. Reyes is one of the best but he’s a hitman with scruples. He is meticulous about who he kills and for whom he kills. He agrees to take down Kyra because she allegedly killed her father. A woman that kills her …
Dear Ms. Townend,
 I’ve enjoyed several of your other books for Harlequin Historicals and was delighted when you contacted me offering a copy of your latest in the “Wessex Weddings” series for possible review. (Note: FTC discloser out of the way!) And the heroine is a Fallen Woman too. Even better. At first I didn’t realize that the hero is the same man used as a decoy in “An Honorable Rogue,” but once I recalled this, it upped the incentive to read the book.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Four years ago, Lady Emma of Fulford would never have thought she’d be sorry to lose her livelihood – washing dirty laundry in an icy cold river – that puts clothes on her back and a roof over her head. But then she also never thought she’d have an illegitimate child or not be living in her father’s noble household. A love affair gone bad has landed her where she is today and that somewhere is desperate to escape the abusive father of her child who has somehow tracked her down.
Her appeal for a job to …
Dear Authors and Readers.
 If you will excuse a personal history, you will see its relevance to my review. I enlisted in the Army National Guard after 9/11. I became a US citizen and commissioned (became an officer) in 2003. I accepted a medical retirement in May of this year, at the rank of Captain, after 7 ½ years of service. I never went overseas, but I served in the Katrina response in Louisiana. I was a soldier and damn proud to be so.
But I am also bisexual (with some extra kinks outside the Kinsey continuum). This is the first time I’ve been able to admit this in public (well, I came out on Twitter on National Coming Out Day) since figuring it out because of the US military’s destructive Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. My sexuality in no way affected my service. All outward appearances show a happily married, monogamous, heterosexual soldier, which is mostly what I am. But every now and then the issue came up and I had to bite my tongue. I could have been kicked out of the service if anyone had dug too deep, for a reason …
Dear Ms. Campbell:
 I read your controversial debut and while I appreciated the chances you took, it didn’t inspire me to read your other books. When Captive of Sin arrived on my doorstep, I thought I would give the book a chance.
Sir Gideon Trevithick finds a woman cowering in the stable where his horse is quartered.  She has clearly been beaten and when he extends his mantle of protection, she would rather be alone and in pain that accept his help.  Gideon will not be gainsayed and sweeps the woman into his carriage and away from the perceived danger.  He vows that he will not only protect her but he will not harm her himself.
Lady Charis Weston is one of the wealthiest women in England. Her stepbrothers are trying to force her into marriage with another man to pay off their debts. Â Charis refuses. Â She is only a few months away from gaining control over her fortune. Â Her stepbrothers engage in a series of small punishments which crescendo into threats of rape and of actual physical abuse. Â She runs away with no clear picture or plan, just an instinctive need to …
Dear Ms. Justiss,
 You’ve been writing Regency set stories for years now so by now, I’m sure you’re more than familiar with all the conventions, the standard plots, the trope characters, all the things we’re used to seeing in this historical category. Well, I am too so when I come across something different, I’m liable to sit up, smile and say, “Yes!”
I’m sure that Sir Edward Greaves was, even if only briefly, a minor character in your book, “An Unconventional Match.” Alas, I don’t recall him. Shame on me as he’s a nice guy. As he, himself, thinks, he doesn’t have the lofty title of his friend Nicky Stanhope, the Marquess of Englemere, or the money his financial wizard friend Hal Waterman does but he’s not a bad catch on the marriage mart. So far, his attempts to find a wife he can admire as well as love, and who he thinks would enjoy living with him in the country, have not panned out but hope springs eternal.
In the meantime, he’s intrigued by a little property owned by Nicky. It’s far from Nicky’s other holdings and has currently …
Okay people, listen up. This is the last book in the series and the whole thing is a spoiler for the first three books. You have been warned.
Dear Ms Hoyt,
 Capturing my attention for an entire series before I’ve even read the first book is something. Me remembering that a new book in a series is coming out without having someone remind me of it is something. Keeping my attention and enthusiasm for a series all the way into book four is something. So don’t be bummed that the grade for this one is lower than most of the others.
At last, here we are at the final book of the series when the bombshell, which was hurled at us in the preview included at the end of the previous book, explodes. For the length of the other three books and all during the seven years since the horrible events at Spinners Falls in the Colonies, everyone has known that Captain Lord Reynaud Hope, heir the Earldom of Blanchard, is dead. The pitifully few fellow Englishmen taken with him as captives by the Indian allies of the French saw poor Reynaud die. Two …
Dear Ms. Schmidt,
 I am coming to look forward to your many novels set on the Massachusetts coastal islands. Plus you use the turn-of-the-century (turn of the last century I should say) era which is something I’d love to see more of.
Nola Burns initially appears to be an uptight, dried up spinster who’s as rigid as her corset while Harrison Starbuck has been known as a scamp and a carefree rogue since his boyhood. Nola’s hardworking, having taken over the care of her siblings at the death of their parents and since run the teahouse which was her childhood home. Harry is well off due to his instinct for a good business deal. Now they’re about to clash over Harry’s latest venture.
The beachfront teahouse is the perfect location for Harry’s planned luxury hotel to accompany the cabaret he’s building to entertain the locals and summer tourists upon whom they all depend. But it’s all Nola has and she’s not going to sell it or see her business ruined without a fight.
When Nola allows the actors to stay in her house in order to fill in for the summer …
Dear Ms. Michaels,
 If the purpose of the novella “How to Woo a Spinster” was to get me to buy this full length novel, it worked. But as I started to read How to Tempt a Duke, I wondered if I would get through it. Let’s see…Regency era, Duke hero, feisty younger sister, heroine with Dark Secret in her past who starts to bicker with the hero as soon as he shows his face at the old homestead. Hmmmmm, where have I read all this too many times to count?
Rafe Daughtry, son of the younger son, never expected to inherit the Dukedom. After all, his uncle was healthy and the heir and a spare were still up to their wicked, disgusting ways. That is until all three were drowned – along with some barques of frailty – in a yachting accident. Once word finally caught up with him in Paris, Rafe decided to stay and escort Bonaparte to Elba before heading home.
When he arrives in England, it’s to discover that his newly married aunt has left his two much younger sisters in the charge of his old neighborhood friend, Charlie. And hasn’t …
Dear Ms. Dare:
 A Lady of Persuasion brings home all the characters in the previous two books in the trilogy as the previous protagonists play a part in the romance of Sir Tobias Aldrige and Bel Grayson. Â Sir Tobias was jilted at the end of book one, Goddess of the Hunt by Sophia, the heroine of Surrender of a Siren. Â Â In an effort to save some face for himself and to allow Sophia to reenter society should she come back from her lark unmarried, Toby played the part of a rake. Â He might have been jilted, but it was because he was not ready to settle down. Â The truth is that Toby is very angry at being jilted and it causes him to have self esteem issues. Â He can get young ladies to fall for him, but they fall out of love with him, seemingly just as easy.
When he spots Bel Grayson at a party, he finds that she can be the perfect instrument of revenge against Benedict Grayson, Bel’s older brother. Â Bel doesn’t want to marry a mere sir. Â She has plans to effectuate reform in London and must have a …
Dear Ms. Kery:
 I really enjoyed Wicked Burn, your debut novel, enough so that I hunted down and purchased quite a few of your ebook backlist titles. Â From those I can see that you have eclectic writing tastes and from those I’ve come to acknowledge that, personally, only your straight up contemporaries work for me. Â The paranormals, the ode to Chicago (Daring Time), just aren’t to my taste. Â Lucky for me, Paradise Rules, is a straight up contemporary. Further, Paradise Rules features two multicultural characters. (Right, like one is a hard sell, so two is like the kiss of death! Who wants to read about hot Polynesians???)
Lana Rodriguez’s is a famous bluesand jazz singer.  She’s on vacation in Hawaii with her personal assistant, Melanie, who was undergoing a very acrimonious divorce.  Melanie wanted to do something to reward herself, like going to Hawaii and having a fling.  Lana is her best friend and goes along, reluctantly.  Hawaii holds some bitter memories for her and everything about it – the scent, the scenery, the laid back attitude of the natives, stirs up things she’d rather forget.
Jason Koa is a former Olympic …
Dear Ms. Carriger:
 Orbit kindly sent me a copy of your book for review. (Thanks Orbit). I became interested in this book, not because of a blurb or someone else’s review or anything like that. No, I became interested in the book after spending far too long playing with the Soulless digital paper doll. (Readers, it’s a timewaster. Don’t cl—okay, well, come back after you are down, okay?)
I have very little knowledge of the sub genre called Steampunk and its sister creatures. Therefore, a review from me will not have the scope or depth of someone familiar with the trope. I am afraid that my inexperience is going to seep through here, but the best I can do is tell you what I liked and what I didn’t. If the reader is a long time lover of steampunk or intimately acquainted with period pieces like gaslight fantasies and the like, then the reader may have a completely different reaction to this book.
Based on the previous discussion of steampunk, I would classify this solidly as a gaslight fantasy. It has steampunk elements, but very little of the book is …
Dear Ms. Edwards:
 Thank you for sending me this book. I confess I tried to read this book many times, never making it out of the first few chapters. The heroine, Miranda Wake, a food critic, gets drunk at a restauraent premiere and makes some very loud and rude remarks. She then insults the chef, accepts a dare to be in his kitchen for one month, and sells a tell all memoir based on her experiences, which she has not yet had.
But then the book was released and positive reviews popped by readers who had actually finished the book. Finally, Sarah convinced me that it was worth powering through. Yes, she told me, Miranda gets in her own way, repeatedly, but Adam Temple is a “happy alpha” and his motley crew of chefs make it all worthwhile. It’s true. In the end, I did like the book and was glad to have read it.
Miranda Wake is an esteemed food critic in New York. Her restaurant reviews can be scathing and she is followed avidly by the New York food cognoscenti. Unfortunately, Miranda’s quest to become a …
Dear Ms. St. Claire:
I read your new book, Make Her Pay, with a bittersweet sensibility, because while the end is still open for the series, it appears that this will be the last Bullet Catcher book for a while. Which made me want to love this book, even though we only met Constantine Xenakis in the wonderful Hunt Her Down. And as with all the books in this series, there is much to enjoy here: snappy dialogue between the protagonists, a nice balance of suspense and romance, an interesting backdrop, and sizzling hot attraction combined with good camaraderie between the leads. Although Make Her Pay did not completely wow me, I still found it a respectably entertaining read and a solid contribution to the series.
Constantine “Con” Xenakis is trying hard to switch sides. The former thief is determined to do a letter perfect job for Bullet Catcher CEO Lucy Sharpe, even though the job involves treasure – sunken treasure, to be precise. And someone is stealing these priceless objects, despite the supposedly airtight security treasure-hunting mogul Judd Paxton has in place. So Con must both identify the thief and protect the treasure, along the rest of the dive boat, from …
Dear Ms. Smith,
 Your regencies novels have been among my favorites for years. I’d heard conflicting things about your contemporary mysteries but decided to take the plunge and try one that seemed, from the blurb, to also include some regency stuff.
Belle Savage, American romance writer, rents a cottage in England for inspiration. And she finds her Regency hero. Only he’s a ghost, who entangles her in the past, where Arabella Comstock’s tragic story pours from Belle’s pen. When the Lord Raventhorpe of Regency days finally learns the truth, will the contemporary lord also find his destiny?
I’m going to attempt to avoid spoilers but honestly I think my chances of doing this are piss poor.
There are two sides to the book – the modern part wherein Belle goes to England, settles into her cottage, learns about the tragic past of Alexander and Arabella and decides to write about this. And the part during which Belle seems to be possessed by Arabella who tells her story through Belle’s writing. It has a very gothic feel – especially towards end when All is Revealed and Belle tries to join Alexander. …
Dear Authors:
 I opened THIS anthology because I liked Sindustry I. But this volume is so obviously all the leftover stories from the Sindustry I anthology that didn’t quite make it into the first volume. And most of these stories should NOT have been included. This anthology had very few redeeming stories and some that make me want to puke, which kinda dampens any enthusiasm I might have for the whole. Mostly it’s filled with stories with awful, weak, boring, TSTL characters who couldn’t characterize their way out of a paper bag, and their ridiculously over-protective and unrealistic saviors. I have never really understood what m/m readers are complaining about when they say that that one of the characters doesn’t have to be the woman, but I do now. In this volume, one half of the relationship was invariably the damsel in distress who needed saving, the other the knight in shining armor who knew just how to take care of things, pretty lady…uh, I mean lad. Yech.
As in Sindustry I, the premise is that these are all stories about people in the sex industry, either strippers, prostitutes, or porn actors. This volume does a …
Dear Ms. Stiefvater,
This is the first novel of yours that I’ve completed. I attempted to read your debut, Lament, but I’m afraid my general disinterest in faeries got the better of me. Shiver, on the other hand, is about werewolves, which remain my favorite of the supernatural bestiary. Add to that the fact that I first heard about this book pitched as The Time Traveler’s Wife meets Blood and Chocolate, and my interest was definitely piqued. That said, while Blood and Chocolate is one of my favorite novels ever (please don’t talk to me about the movie; it doesn’t exist in my head), I have to add the caveat that I’m one of the five people in the entire world who didn’t care for The Time Traveler’s Wife. So I was curious to see on which end of the spectrum Shiver would fall.
When she was a child, Grace was attacked by wolves. She’d been playing in the backyard, when wolves pulled her off the swing and mauled her. But mysteriously, one of the wolves — a grey with striking yellow eyes — stopped the rest of his …
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 Mr. Swann:
 Wolfbreed is not a book I would ordinarily pick up despite my appreciation of the shifter mythology but I’m glad that I did.  Set in the Middle Ages, Wolfbreed ponders the core of the werewolf mythology and that is who is the more beastly of creatures? Animals or humans.
When Brother Semyon von Kassel of the Order of the Hospital of St. Mary of the Germans in Jerusalem survives a brutal slaughter of his Order at the hands of an inhuman beast, he believes that he has been granted a gift from God. Â When he finds a litter of ten, he brings this gift to his superiors. Â Together it is decided that these babes will be fostered, trained and turned into the greatest secret weapon of the Church.
Brother Semyon is a sadist at heart. Â He views these creatures as animals and exhibits a sort of unnatural glee at breaking them. Â ”It is simple, my brother; punishment and reward, dominance and submission. Â If every small sin is punished with an iron fist, they will not longer even conceive of large ones. … They obey us not to avoid pain, but because our approval is the only …
I tried to write the review without spoilers, but I talk about the hero in this review which some people may view as a spoiler. STAY AWAY IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED. In summary, so you don’t have to read the spoilery review, this is a gothic romantic suspense that had good atmosphere but needed work on the romance aspect for me to be really sold. Still, it’s a good read.
****
Dear Ms. Silver:
 What an interesting and different book we have here. It reminded me a bit of the gothics of old which I think was intentional. It was set at Cairncroft Abbey, described as follows:
Tipping her head, she contemplated the massive array of limestone and clunch that loomed gray and cold and bleak before her. So many chimneys. They poked up from the steeply pitched tile roof, three on the left, then a single, a double, another single on the far right, dark silhouettes against the suffocating mantle of charcoal cloud. One of the chimneys sent up a thin, whitish curl of weak smoke. No light glimmered in the windows. Instead, they stared, blank and vacant and utterly
…
Dear Ms. Holly:
 I’m a fan of your writing. Most of the time. The problem is that while I’ve enjoyed many of your books, I often tend to drift half way through with either the characters or the story unable to retain my interest. With the publication of your new trilogy about the upyr released in three consecutive months, I decided to go ahead and read all three. I’ll admit that I was a little daunted by such an idea.  And while I probably could have used a longer break between each book, the publication dates allowed the story and the characters to stay fresh in my mind.
The year is 1933. Estelle Berenger has been in love with Edmund Fitz Clare since she was fifteen years old. From the moment he appeared in front of her at school, asking the sullen teenager to look after his adopted daughter Sally, Estelle was smitten. Although she doesn’t know it until later, Edmund is also responsible for saving her life shortly after they meet. While in his wolf form, he jumped between her and a lightning strike. Estelle is unharmed for the most part except for a minor scar …
Dear Ms. Carroll:
 I picked this book up because I had the jones for a good romantic suspense and when I paged through it I discovered that the hero is a former football player. WIN! I love sports related books. Alas, it wasn’t a sports related book but I still liked it.
I’m not sure if this book is marketed as a romantic suspense or rather just suspense because the conflict is not an emotional one between a male and female protagonist. The conflict rests primarily on the heroine and is action driven by the plot. From your website, it appears you are calling this book a thriller and that’s exactly what I would peg it as.
Caroline Hughes married psychoanalyst Dr. Porter Moross when she was young and vulnerable. Having escaped a bad childhood and trying to find herself, Porter knew just how to reel Caroline in. He promised her constancy, affection, and a life of comparative ease – all of which were elements that Caroline had never had and lusted after.
Shortly before their marriage, Porter’s dark side began to show itself. He acted particularly difficult whenever it appeared that Caroline …
Dear Ms Jones,
 First off, kudos to whoever chose the title of the book. It’s cute, inspired and totally fits the subject matter of the story.
Heather Waters has made a life for herself running a Christian charity after that disastrous day ten years ago when she discovered two things. One that her father wasn’t her real father. And two that the man she was going to marry didn’t love her enough to commit to their relationship. It didn’t help her pride any to find out the first truth from the information dug up by the private investigator hired by her fiance’s family. Or to learn the truth about John Parker when he didn’t show up for the ceremony.
Sure that their mutual best friend, Michael Garrison, had known all along yet let her walk down the church aisle without trying to stop her, she hurled some harsh accusations at him, along with her bouquet, and stormed out of town. But the town needs her help after suffering a devastating tornado. Home is home and the pull is strong so Heather answers the call. Will she and Michael, who’s now a minister there, to be …
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