Archive for the 'B- Reviews' Category
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 …
Ninotchka (1939)
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Grade:B-
I’ve now seen 4 Ernst Lubitsch films. I know there are plenty more I need to try but for now, I’m batting average with him. I did not care, at all, for “The Shop Around the Corner” while Ninotchka earns a somewhat lukewarm B-grade.
It’s 1939 and the Soviet Union’s glorious new people’s republic needs cold, hard cash. To that end, delegates are traveling the globe, hawking treasures confiscated during the Revolution. Three delegates are in Paris to sell the jewels of the Grand Duchess (or former Grand Duchess, as the Soviets call her) Swana. They quickly fall prey to the delights of the City of Lights. So much so that another delegate is sent to check up on them and the job they’re doing.
Comrade Nina Yakushova ‘Ninotchka’ Ivanoff (Greta Garbo) is all business and no fun. She views Paris as just another city which she will study to learn it’s technical secrets and has no interest in flirting with charming Count Léon d’Algout (Melvyn Douglas) who tries his best to win her over to the decadent West.
Just when he thinks he’s won, Ninotchka, along with Iranoff, Buljanoff and Kopalski suddenly depart for Moscow. Léon doesn’t know …
Dear Ms. Granger:
 I didn’t have Beyond the Rain as a recommended read this month just becauseit was a science fiction romance but it did play a part. Â There are few of these types of books published within the genre. Â You did a great job of creating not just one different culture but two and allowing those two cultures to provide the conflict for the romance.
Captain Cyani is on her final mission for the Union. She is to rescue the Union soldiers and when she returns to her planet, Azra, she can resign and live a life of isolated meditation. Yet even as Cyani longs for peace, she is conflicted about being alone. Â The portrayal of Cyani as a loner was a bit odd given that she had been part of an elite military team and had devoted troops under her. Â ”She’d done her best to keep them safe in the five years they’d fought together.” Â Did she not consider her comrades as friends, brothers and sisters in arms?
As Captain Cyani gathers up the soldiers, one other unknown prisoner is found in the compound by her pet and scout, a fox named Vicca. Â Cyani can’t leave …
Dear Ms. Strong:
 I like this book and I think it has great worldbuilding, but my big takeaway was “if I never read cuntlips again, I’ll die a happy reader.” On to the story.
Spider Touched is the second in the urban fantasy series started with Ghostland. I think that my understanding of this complex world was aided by my having read Ghostland. For those not familiar with the series, some of the world building concepts might be confusing.
Araña is a seer with a curse or gift, depending your point of view. She has the mark of a spider that migrates over her body. The mark is lethal and provides both protection and isolation. Protection because no one can touch her against her will and isolation because she cannot control the mark, making her poison for any loved one. Araña found a home with two gentlemen who are a type of privateers and have prices on their head. Erik has contracted a terrible illness and so, risking their lives, the three dock in Oakland to seek help. Araña finds herself alone, separated from Erik and Matthew, and soon she is …
Starter for 10
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Romance
Grade: C+/B-
For all of you who were thinking “Jayne only likes old movies,” I decided to pick one that’s not 70 years old. Yes, it’s set in 1985 but it was just released in 2006! So that counts, right? Why did I pick this? 1) James McAvoy. 2) I was in college in 1985 so a trip down memory lane looked good to me.
Brian Jackson (James McAvoy) is a working class teenager who’s just been accepted at Bristol University. Brian loves knowledge, loves learning and genuinely wants the chance to study and improve himself unlike some of his mates from home. So off he goes with the challenge of his friend, Spencer (Dominic Cooper), ringing in his ears for Bri to “not become a wanker.”
Next follow scenes of Bri starting to find his way around, going to lackluster “costumed” theme mixers and pretending, like most of the other freshmen, that he’s having a good time at them. One of the first women he meets at a party is Rebecca Epstein (Rebecca Hall) who’s the slightly more sophisticated campus protest leader.
It’s at a meeting to test for a place on the campus “University Challenge” quiz team, that …
Dear Ms. Shalvis:
 This is the second in a series of books about the Wilder brothers. I really enjoyed the first one, Instant Attraction, and I feel that those who enjoyed Cam Wilder’s story will also enjoy Stone’s although these decisions could be made easier if the books were in mass market and not trade.
Emma Sinclair has come to the town of Wishful, California, to help manage her father’s clinic while he is recovering from a heart attack. Stone Wilder, partner and business manager for Wilder Adventure, the extreme vacation getaway that the Wilder brothers own and operate out of Wishful (set in the California Sierras). Everyone in this story comes across as fit, buff, and beautiful which makes for a nice fantasy read but doesn’t entice me to do anything but load on another blanket, reach for my bag of potato chips and snuggle down into the sofa.
Emma wants to get back to New York and her fast paced life, her no strings attached emotional life, and her bevy of take out choices. Wishful, however, moves at a glacially slow pace particularly since no one wants to be treated by her. …
Dear Ms. Morsi,
 You’re a favorite author of mine from way back. Once I’d tried a few of your historicals, I went on a backlist hunting expedition and managed to track down most of them. When you moved in the direction of women’s fiction, I was reluctant to follow and this is, in fact, the first of these books I’ve read. I’m not sure if I’ll go back and check out the books I’ve missed but I did have a good time with this one.
“Red” Cullen is a forty-something owner of a San Antonio honky-tonk bar. It’s not much but it’s hers and is something she’s proud of. From literally living on the streets after she was kicked out by her own mother at the age of sixteen, Red has raised a daughter and started this business.
I like how we get to see Red in this world she’s created. She’s good at what she does, genuinely enjoys her work and both the regular patrons who she knows by name and the newcomers just discovering the place. She cares for her employees and they care for her. Right now, she’s got a thing going with the fiddler …
Dear Ms. Roberts:
 One thing that you never fail to do is make the setting come alive. The South Dakota Black Hills have never sounded so welcoming, so engaging than in your book, Black Hills. The story is in three parts and while I am never a fan of flashbacks, I did feel like the story dragged a bit in the beginning.
Cooper Sullivan is an angry 11 year old who is sent to stay with his grandparents over the summer. His parents are going away to “save their marriage†and can’t be bothered with their kid. Cooper is sullen and unhappy to be stuck in the backwoods of America without even a television. “As far as he could see, it would be him and Tetris for the duration of his prison term.â€
His expectations are challenged not only by the outpouring of love that his grandparents lavish on him but also his burgeoning friendship with Lil Chance, the girl next door. Lil loves baseball and riding horses and animals and that summer she opens her heart and takes in Cooper.
Cooper and Lil are inseparable for the summers that he visits his grandparents, but it …
Dear Ms Ross,
 Some of the other DA reviewers talk about how certain authors and their books are like crack. As soon as the next book is out, it’s in their hot hands and being devoured. I prefer to compare such books to potato chips. I open the bag and intend to only eat a few. Okay, a couple more. All right and damn the bag is practically empty so might as well finish it off. Sometimes my fried snack food weakness bothers me more than others and sometimes I regret reading potato chip books more than others. This is one that I don’t feel too bad about.
Dallas O’Halloran and Julianne Decatur have a history. A bad history since it was Julianne’s job as a Navy JAG Lieutenant to question Dallas about the actions of his fellow Spec Ops survivors of a goat fuck of a mission gone wrong. No one was ever prosecuted but only because none of the higher ups were interested in seeing anything go to trial.
Then Dallas’s black ops cover was effectively shot to shit on a later mission while Julianne was discovering that the rungs on her Naval career ladder had …
Dear Ms. Hart,
 Bess Walsh needs time away from her unhappy marriage. She finds it at the beach house she inherited from her parents. There, in the water, Bess fantasizes about Nick, the boy she loved and lost twenty years before. She touches herself and soon she feels Nick touching her. The lovemaking is intense, unforgettable.
But the next morning Bess is shocked to see that her fantasy lover hasn’t evaporated with the night. Nick is still there, and though physically he hasn’t aged a day since they parted company twenty years earlier, he feels solid and corporeal, and has an emotional maturity he did not have back in those days.
Bess has missed Nick so badly that she does not want to question his reappearance or interrogate his twenty year old disappearance. She knows it must involve something that she won’t like hearing. Instead, she drowns the questions in touch, in passionate sex that makes the rest of the world fade away.
Bess and Nick’s past is revealed in chapters that alternate with the present day storyline. Back then, Bess was a twenty year old college student who came to Bethany Beach …
Dear Ms. Dahl:
 Now that I’ve read three of your novels, I see a pattern in your heroines: they are extremely jealous of their independence, convinced that no man can be depended on, and afraid of showing themselves completely to the world. I appreciate these qualities in a genre that too often holds its heroines to unreasonable standards of nobility, gentility, and congeniality. All of which is another way of saying that I enjoyed Lori Love, the heroine of Start Me Up, and her difficult path toward the kind of happiness she had more or less given up on the moment she had to leave college and move back home to take care of her father and his car repair business. I did not find the book to be as strong as last year’s Talk Me Down, but it was still very readable.
In Talk Me Down, we meet Lori as Molly Jennings’s childhood friend, a woman whose tomboy wardrobe, no-nonsense mien, and skills as a mechanic earn her a reputation as the town lesbian. Lori has no real interest in changing anyone’s opinion of her, as the label gives her a certain amount of freedom from …
Dear Ms. Chase:
 After I read last year’s book, Your Scandalous Ways, I knew my expectations were going to be set incredibly high for anything that came after. And thankfully, Don’t Tempt Me is not a book in the same vein, but instead hearkens back to the Carsington series, especially Miss Wonderful and Mr. Impossible. A hero who has suffered a great loss and who copes by putting on a distracting outward display and a heroine who lives on the margins of polite society’s rules and whose innocence does not equate to naïveté. And while Don’t Tempt Me possessed a number of charms of its own, somewhere between my high expectations and the echoes of other books, I was not as tempted to love it as I hoped I would be.
From the beginning, little Zoe Octavia Lexham, aka “The Bolter,†was a pain in Lucien de Gray’s young neck. Although when Lucien came under the guardianship of Lord Lexham, following a tragic series of illnesses and accidents claiming both his parents and older brother, Zoe was also a “bright, bright spot in his life.â€Â He was the only one she seemed to listen to, and she …
Dear Ms. Winfree:
 I can’t recall why I purchased this book but I bought it a couple of months ago with two other books from Samhain. It could have been a “new” book or it could have been on the bestseller list. Those usually influence my purchases at Samhain. Â I thought it had good suspense and a very nice romance that was often complicated by attention paid to other romances which had taken place prior to the setting of Facing It.
Ruthie Chason is in a terrible marriage. Â When she finds information that Stephen, her husband, is engaged in criminal behavior, she gets up the courage to grab her children and leave. Â Her brother, Tick Calvert, is Sheriff of Chandler County. Â She runs to him.
Tick recognizes that Ruthie has to hide while he figures out the best way to apprehend Stephen and make sure the evidence is good enough that Stephen gets put away for a long time. Â Both Ruthie and Tick know that if Stephen catches her, Ruthie is a dead woman. Â Tick calls on his friend and deputy Chris Parker to take Ruthie and her three children with him to St. …
Ruthless Tycoon, Inexperienced Mistress by Cathy Williams
Cesar is tired of bailing his younger brother out of hot water so when Ferdinado asks for access to his trust fund, Cesar heads out to see who it is that has her gold digging claws in Ferndando. He finds not a statuesque model blonde, but a mannish, petite redhead. Not Ferdinado’s type and certainly not his. The two get stuck in a snowstorm. They have sex. Jude becomes pregnant and the real fireworks begin. Cesar is standard HP hero (alpha, hot, assholic). Jude isn’t a doormat but falls pretty easily for Cesar. B-
This book can be purchased at Amazon or in ebook format from Sony or other etailers.
Up Close and Dangerously Sexy by Karen Anders
Given that the haikus have come to a close here at Dear Author, I submit my own:
Stranger danger here
As long as he gives good Os
No worries, she thinks
I stopped after the second scene. The heroine is in the sister’s apartment. Some stranger comes in and thinks she’s the heroine’s twin. He gets in bed with her and brings her to orgasm with his hand. “She …
 Evangeline Anderson’s books are my dirty little secret, my secret shame, my love that dare not speak its name. I don’t know WHY her writing makes me feel oh so fulfilled but in such a wonderful dirty way, but it does. They’re so full of *angst* and *melodrama* and *gay for you* and all the things that usually just make me roll my eyes. But they’re quick reads, hott! as anything, rollicking good fun, and you totally don’t notice the huge gaping plot holes until after you’re done and REreading the damn thing when you go, Hur? (like I just did). Her books are the one reading habit I’m ashamed of, but it’s the squidgy, yummy shame that you just want to share with people. So let me share…
Str8te Boys is pretty much dorm porn with extra-angst. It’s a short little story–under 70 pages–but so much fun. It’s told completely from the third-person perspective of Maverick (ORLY? I mean, that name? Really?!), an arrow-straight (uh-huh) jock at the end of his senior year of college, who happens to play “gay chicken” with even straighter, party animal roommate and …
Dear Ms. Haymore,
 When I first picked up A Hint of Wicked, I did not have much in the way of expectations. I assumed that this was your first book, since I hadn’t heard your name before. I hadn’t really heard any buzz about the book, and I had to remind myself of the plot before I started by rereading the blurb. I rarely go into reading a romance with less of an idea of what to expect. It was a refreshing change, and one of the strengths of the novel turned out to be how difficult it was to guess what direction the story was going to go in.
The book opens with our heroine, Sophie, the Duchess of Calton, discovering that her beloved husband Garrett has fallen at Waterloo. With Sophie when she gets the news is Tristan, Garrett’s cousin and a dear friend to both Garrett and Sophie.
The story then shifts to eight years later; Tristan has succeeded his cousin as the Duke of Calton, and has now been married to Sophie for a year. Together they are raising her daughter Miranda (Sophie was pregnant with Garrett’s child when he left to fight Napoleon) …
Dear Ms. Anderson:
 Over time, the Australia/New Zealand Harlequin Presents (HPs) have become my favorites mostly because I feel that the women are slightly more emancipated in these stories (not always of course). Pleasured features the requisite millionaire but the heroine isn’t a virgin. Instead, she’s provocative and proactive.
Sienna, on vacation in Sydney, is drawn to a band practicing in a club. Inside she finds not only a band but “Mr. Utterly Attractive.” Â She wants him and after seeing the mutual attraction in his eyes, she sets out to get him. Â Sienna is determined to abide by her new motto of “living in the moment.”
The target is Rhys Maitland, millionaire in disguise.  He’s taking a much needed vacation from his medical career by hiding in this less ritzy, touristy part of Sidney.  Rhys is constantly pursued by women and the tabloids as he is an heir to a large Sydney fortune.  His attraction to Sienna is surprising, a little unwanted but still invigorating.
Sienna and Rhys have secrets that they keep from each other because neither of them want to divulge personal information but for differing motivations.  They both fear that the other …
Dear Ms. Hughes,
 Last year I found “Lord Sin” to be a great and happy surprise. As you’d already written a follow up to it, I was poised for more happiness. Well, I was sorta happy but, alas, not quite as much.
Gabriel Angelstone can’t believe his luck when he discovers that the subject of the infamous divorce portrait is also a guest at the country houseparty of his newly married female BFF George. Gabriel happily anticipates some sexual fun until Imogen sets him straight. “No huggie or kissie” from this woman attempting to edge her way back into polite society.
After her boorish first husband believed the rumors which circulated through London society, he went to the extraordinary length to get a divorce. Can’t have rumors about one’s wife ruining one’s political future. Tossed out on her ass by her husband, banished by her family, Imogen has eked out an existence until George takes her under her wing and decides to resuscitate her life. Imogen’s hopes for this endeavor are simple and she’s aware that she needs to be Caesar’s wife. If only she didn’t find Gabriel so damned attractive …
Dear Ms. Mitchell.
 This book reads like what I imagine being inside a guy’s head must be like. Lots of stonewalling, lots of mixed motivations, lots of confused emotions. This ability you have to get emotions perfectly right and to show how they are so very wrong-headed is both the beauty and the problem with this book.
Daniel Gardner is back at his childhood home in Easton, PA for Christmas and then to supervise the final packing for his mother’s move to Harrisburg. The story opens with a break-in at his mother’s house on Christmas Eve. In the aftermath, he meets Detective Trey Erikkson, his teenage crush and first-fumblings compatriot. They haven’t met in 15 years since Trey ran away to bootcamp and there’s hard feelings between them, as well as the mystery that encompasses the break-in, Trey’s mother’s murder and father’s imprisonment for it, and later criminal shenanigans.
It’s the suspense plot that made the book less than brilliant. While I could get behind the conspiracy theory of the final revelation and I enjoyed the slow reveal of Daniel and Trey figuring out the mystery, the plot itself was Swiss cheese. Why would Daniel’s …
Here is our recommended read list for June. It’s light so feel free to make a recommendation in the comments:
- How to Score by Robin Wells. This contemporary romance book is recommended by Jane. It’s a fun, sexy read with mistaken identities, a bit of deceit, and a crazy dog.  (Warner Forever)
- The Wild West by Victoria Dahl This hot historical novella is recommended by Joan F, Janet (aka Robin), and Jane. It’s a very hot read that is just the right touch for those who wonder what BDSM is all about. Cowboys and sheriffs have never been so hot. (Harlequin Spice Bites, ebook only)
- My Forbidden Desire by Carolyn Jewel. This paranormal is recommended by Janine whose recommendations are few and far between. (Warner)
- Crescent City Courtship by Elizabeth White. This sweet historical is recommended by Jayne who reads across the breadth and scope of the Harlequin categories.  Review of this book to come. (Harlequin Love Inspired)
- Chasing Smoke by KA Mitchell. Â This m/m romantic suspense novel is a recommendation for Joan F. Â (review of this ebook from Samhain publishing to come).
- Sweet Persuasion by Maya Banks. This erotic romance novel from Berkley Heat makes you think about people’s desires. Â Come with
…
Dear Ms. Banks:
 This is one of those books that are well written and evocative but made me feel personally uncomfortable. Despite my issues, though, I recognize that it is a good story.
Serena is in the business of fulfilling fantasies for other people, whether it is preparing an elaborate princess party for a young girl or satisfying a grown man’s desire to be a chef at a noted restaurant for the evening. But she’s got a fantasy of her own that she wants to explore. Serena longs for a submissive relationship. Oh, she’s not so much into the pain aspect (although there is some of that in the story), but she wants to be possessed or owned by a man.
Fortunately for Serena her friend Faith knows of a man, Damon Roche, who could help her fulfill those fantasies. Damon Roche owns, among other things, a house of pleasure and has members who could very well meet Serena’s demands. Once Damon reads her request and sees her, he decides that he wants to be the one to make her fantasy a reality. He lays out …
Dear Ms. Brady,
 After I bought your book, I pulled it up on my Sony and began to read the opening scene. Which is where I stopped, more than a little afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to read a book which seemed to be headed towards over sensationalism. A screeching vehicle bringing in a badly wounded person who a young doctor is determined won’t die on her watch? Hmmmm, let’s read a different book first.
But something made me give it one more try. One chapter, I promised myself, and I’ll know whether it’ll work or not. Good thing for me I tried again because from that point on, I was hooked.
I have endless admiration for those who are in the front lines of emergency medicine. They get it all – from people in the wrong place at the wrong time to those with a long history of destructive behavior which they then expect doctors to fix with a cure all pill. And then there’s the daily grind of sore throats, chronic diseases and assorted ills which bring patients in to see the doctor.
Working in a …
Dear Mrs. Hartman,
 After the A grade I gave the last book of yours I read, I had high hopes for this one. Perfect heroine and slacker hero find love fifteen years later despite having to overcome the mistaken images they’ve maintained of each other over the years? Okay, I can go with that. Heroine who lies to the people for fifteen years, including her own daughter? That, I had trouble with. Lots of trouble with.
Hailey Maddox was always seen as perfect. A popular cheerleader who had all the boys in knots over her, no one was more surprised than JT McNulty when Hailey agrees to go out with him. But Hailey is keeping secrets including the fact that she’s sleeping with someone else.
After she gets pregnant and the father renounces their clandestine relationship, she turns to JT who lies to both sets of their parents about being the father. But when Hailey rejects his offer of marriage and his parents throw him out, JT leaves town.
It takes the death of his mother to bring him back. Then dealing with his father’s injuries to induce him to stay for a few days …
Dear Ms. Blackwell,
 I didn’t realize this book is part of the “Everlasting Love” line until I began to read it. Which shows how much I pay attention to the “icon” on the front cover. Anywho, since my house has been a renovation project in the works for years now, that aspect of the book description caught my eye.
Alyssa Franklin just knows that the run down old Queen Anne house is meant for her, even if it will take her life savings to buy it, months to restore it and probably cost her a long term romance that, actually, is on its last legs. At first, she’s entranced with the idea of the love affair between the original owners of the house – the scion of what used to be the most prominent family in the area and the daughter of a seamstress. I mean, they must have been deeply in love to thwart social conventions. But as she tackles the issues of the house with the help of a hunky handyman, the truth of that marriage as well as Alyssa’s hopes for a new romance, begin to be uncovered.
Managing to …
Dear Ms. Thomas:
 Thank you for sending me a copy of your third book. Not Quite a Husband treats the reader to the same rich and evocative prose that filled the pages of your previous two works. In mentioning new historical authors to be excited about, your name should always mentioned.
Bryony Asquith, the granddaughter of an Earl, was an extraordinary woman who fell in love with an extraordinary man, Quentin Leonidas Marsden, the youngest son of the Earl of Wyden. He was a brilliant mathematical mind who was published and presented at the mathematical society; and she was a surgeon, one of few women practicing medicine, particular one of the few women born of her lineage who actually worked.
While the lede of this review might be their accomplishments, the existence of the accomplisments tell more about the characters than the accomplishments themselves. Bryony chose to be a surgeon not so much because she loved saving people but because it was nearly a necessity for her. Bryony had grown up alone without companionship and in order to survive she withdrew well within herself, drawing a cloak of self sufficiency so …
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