Archive for the 'B+ Reviews' Category
Dear Ms. Harris,
 I have been anticipating the release of What Remains of Heaven, the fifth book in your Sebastian St. Cyr mystery series, for several months. I’ve come to expect a new book in this series every year, and while I’ve liked some of the offerings more than others, each has been satisfying (with grades ranging from A- to B), and the continuing turmoil in Sebastian’s personal life has held my attention from book to book.
Just a quick note: I think it’s probably going to be hard to entirely avoid spoilers for earlier books in the series in this review, so if you haven’t read the series, intend to, and are fanatical about remaining spoiler-free, you might want to stop reading now.
Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, has rather inadvertently and reluctantly become known as a murder investigator (don’t you hate when that happens?). His imperious aunt comes to him accompanied by her friend, the ailing (but still formidable) Archbishop of Canterbury, to request Sebastian’s assistance in finding out who killed the Bishop of London, Francis Prescott. Bishop Prescott had been summoned to the village of Tanfield Hill one night …
Dear Ms. Davitt and Ms. Snow.
 I love the title of this book, because it’s so true to the characters and to the book. I’ve been disappointed, sometimes even sickened by some of Loose-Id’s titles recently (no, I didn’t review them, I couldn’t bring myself to do so), so I was happy to be intrigued enough by the excerpt to buy Bound and Determined. And I’m so glad I did. This book, while lacking slightly in the pure romance department, is a fabulous look at a BDSM relationship with some amazing characterization and some really hot sex.
First a warning for readers, though: the characters in this book are a masochist and a sadist. Yes, much of the relationship is about dominance and submission, which many people have less issue with than with pain play, but the sadomasochism in this book is strong. Not violent and visceral like Anah Crow’s (brilliant) Uneven, but it’s there, its unabashed, and if that bothers you, don’t read this book. However, if you’re intrigued by the psychology behind masochism, this is the book for you, because it’s beautifully depicted.
Sterling is a college senior. He figured out that he …
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 …
 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
…
Dear Ms. Walsh,
 You don’t know me, but I sometimes lurk at your blog, Writer Unboxed, which is one of the best blogs for writers I know of. I’ve been following it since the days when you were writing this book, under the working title of Unbounded, so when Jane told me that we had been sent an ARC of The Last Will of Moira Leahy, I was interested in reading it.
The Last Will of Moira Leahy is narrated in both first person and third person. The first person sections take place in the present day and are narrated by twenty-five year old Maeve Leahy, the book’s main character. The third person sections take place between 1995 and 2000, and are mostly written in the POV of Maeve’s identical twin, Moira.
It becomes clear early in the present day story that Maeve lost her twin nine years ago at the age of sixteen, so although we are not told the details of how and why Moira’s life ended, we do know that the “Out of Time” third person sections, which begin when the twins are happy ten year olds, …
Dear Ms. Mullany,
 Two years ago I feel in love with “The Rules of Gentility.” Its first person spoofing of the Rules of Writing a Regency Romance had me in stitches. When Janine mentioned that you were going to have a sequel to it published this summer, I rubbed my hands with glee.
Deep in debt, widowed Lady Caroline Elmhurst and her maid Mary are decamping from their rented room literally one step ahead of the bailiff. Caroline’s two marriages – first to much older man who left her money and second to a young man who spent that money – plus her slight slip in social mores by allowing a man unrelated to her pay her rent, have left her with a soiled reputation among the ton. Luckily for her, she’s received an invitation to a country house party given by an amateur thespian with plans to stage Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” using his guests and servants as the actors. With luck, she’ll be able to find a wealthy man here to marry.
Mr. Nicholas Congrevance and his valet Barton, lately of the Continent, are also among the guests present. …
Dear Ms. Jewel:
When I met you recently, I had to sheepishly admit that I had not yet read any of your books. So I volunteered to review your new release Indiscreet, relishing the added bonus that it was a Regency set in Turkey. Despite all of the stereotypical sheikh novels and the often fetishized relationship genre Romance has with Middle Eastern settings, I have a very soft spot for these fictionalized locales, and Indiscreet did not disappoint in that respect. In fact, there were very few disappointments for me along the way, and while Indiscreet might be the first Carolyn Jewel book I read, it certainly won’t be the last.
When the Marquess of Foye was merely Lord Edward Marrack, he had the displeasure of overhearing a terribly indiscreet boast from his then-friend, the Earl of Crosshaven. It seemed that Miss Sabine Godard was, as Crosshaven put it, “’no better than she ought to be’” in submitting to Crosshaven’s seduction. And Lord Edwards knows that “’Tomorrow…Miss Godard will not find the world so pleasant a place. That is a fate you ought to have avoided for the girl,’” because “’the consequences of an …
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 …
My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997)
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Grade B+
Let me be honest and say that Julia Roberts is not my favorite actress. I like her in “Steel Magnolias,” loved her in “Erin Brockovich” but beyond that, not so much. And make it a double if it’s a chick flick. So when “My Best Friend’s Wedding” was released, I didn’t see it. Nor did I make any effort to in the years that followed. That is until I started doing these reviews and checked out a few “Top romances” and “best romances” lists. This film kept making the lists. Finally I caved and clicked on it at Netflix and it was here that I read the Roger Ebert review that changed my mind about watching it.
Julianne Potter (Julia Roberts) and Michael O’Neal (Dermot Mulroney) are two people who’ve been best friends since college. He’s always been her standby, the man she thought she could fall back on if, and when, her romantic relationships failed. But one night he stuns her with a phone call and tells her he’s fallen in love and is getting married to Kimmy Wallace (Cameron Diaz). He wants Julianne to be there at the wedding, hence the …
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. McAllister,
Click here to go to eHarlequin.com
 Recently a friend of mine recommended you as a “Presents” author whose heroes aren’t assholes. She said something like, “They don’t suck.” Telling me something is different from the normal is like baiting a juicy worm on a hook for a hungry fish. So yeah, I bit. And guess what? She’s right. Flynn doesn’t suck.
What Flynn does, actually, is try and take the entire weight of the Earldom of Dunmorey on his shoulders after his disapproving father, the eighth Earl, drops from a heart attack. Flynn was never supposed to be the next in line, that would have been his brother Will who died coming to fetch Flynn at the airport from one of Flynn’s many overseas adventures as a journalist.
And one of those adventures was a brief stay in a small town in Montana. Almost six years later, a beat up letter finally catches up with Flynn in Ireland and informs him that the woman he flung with for three days got preggers. Knowing his son is almost six now and frantic for having missed this much of his life, Flynn heads across …
The Big Easy (1987)
Genre: Romantic Thriller
Grade: B+
When this film was released over 20 years ago, I remember all the detractors and criticisms. No one from New Orleans talks this way. Whenever the NOPD makes the news it’s because of corruption allegations. Why must Mardi Gras always be mentioned in any film about the city? It took me a few years to see it but from the first, I loved it.
Homicide Detective Remy McSwain (Dennis Quaid) is an eleven year veteran of the NOPD. Before too long, he’s up to his ass in dead bodies from what appears to be a drug war between two factions in the city. But because of allegations of police involvement, special prosecutor for the DA, Anne Osborne (Ellen Barkin), is also riding his ass.
Remy, along with most of the other officers, has been on the take for years. He justifies accepting small bribes because he does a dirty job for little pay and less appreciation from the citizens he protects. Plus, everybody does it. But he still thinks he’s a good cop. Only…is he? And what about the others? Can they still do the job or has corruption corrupted them as well?
I understand that …
 Story & Art: Fumi Yoshinaga
Publisher: Viz Signature
Rating: M for mature
Retail: $12.99
Length: 1/4+ volumes
I first heard of ĹŚoku about a year ago from a friend. The premise, she said, was that due to a disease that targets only men, the power hierarchy in Japan was genderflipped. Women filled roles that had, up until the disease struck the male population, been traditionally done only by men — including that of the Tokugawa shoguns. It sounded completely like something I would like but since I’m unable to read Japanese, it was one of those things I resigned myself to never having access to. Thankfully, other people thought it sounded interesting too and it’s now available in English.
In ĹŚoku, a strange new disease breaks out among the Japanese male population. It’s characterized by a high fever that’s then shortly followed by red pustules that spread all over the body. These pustules soon fester and the victim dies within a few days. Because of these symptoms, the disease is dubbed the Redface Pox.
Although the Redface Pox originated in a small farming village, it becomes apparent that the plague is highly contagious and virulent as well. It spreads from one …
 Comic Review: Solanin (2008)
Art & Story: Inio Asano
Publisher: VIZ Signature
Genre: Josei / humour / drama
Pages: 432
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1421523213 ISBN-13: 978-1421523217
Solanin is one of those rare comics that manage to something memorable out of a predictable story premise: a coming-of-age story revolving around the lives of twentysomething college graduates.
The heart of the 432-page comic are Tokyoites Meiko Inoue and her long-time live-in boyfriend Shigeo Naruo, whom she’s been dating for six years since their college days. Naruo is the vocalist-guitarist and lyricist of a struggling rock band, Rotti, but he has no motivation to go far. He instead spends time at home, playing video games and strumming on his guitar; generally being a layabout and a dependant on Meiko’s small income. Neither is showing interest in marriage or all other mod cons. Meanwhile around them are their three close former college friends, who are also members of Naruo’s struggling rock band, Rotti.
The story opens with Meiko working in her office job and she isn’t happy. She – at 24 – is becoming acutely aware of the passing time, and that she might be sinking deep into the rat race as another faceless office worker. It …
Dear Ms. Rossetti:
 This book recently won a Passionate Plume Award from Passionate Ink, the erotic SIG for RWA. I’ve long been intrigued by the blurb on EC, so thought I’d check it out. I’m very glad I did. It’s part of a series, but completely stands alone—I haven’t read the rest of the series, after all, and although I could tell I was missing things here and there, and the external plot was obviously part of something much bigger, the core romance was more than enough to make Strongman worth reading by itself.
Strongman is set in an alternate world (or maybe a far future Earth, technologically diminished?), something I’m usually not interested in reading because world building bores me. But here it’s done so smoothly, so organically, that I hardly noticed I was learning about the world as I was reading. I loved the very short Encyclopedia entries beginning each chapter, explaining parts of the world just as they became important to the story. New species and situations were introduced and explained seamlessly, with no info-dumping, no “As you know, Bob” moments. Perfect.
Griff is a tumbler, part of a circus act. …
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 …
Dear Ms. Michaels,
 When I was checking out the new offerings from Harlequin, I saw your name and popped the book in my ecart without looking too closely at it. So, when I opened it up on my reader, I was dismayed to see that this is obviously a novella. Now, novellas can work for me but too often something gets missed or rushed in the short word count race to the finish. Imagine my delight to discover one that gets it right.
Lady Emmaline Daughtry has resigned herself to spinsterhood. Her face doesn’t frighten horses but after three failed Seasons, she’s accepted this fact. Her (much) older brother, the Duke, and his two sons – also miserable specimens – make no attempt to stay with her to celebrate her twenty-eighth birthday, preferring to try out the yacht one of them won in a card game. When a handsome Naval captain arrives with bad news for Emmaline, neither of them know that – for them – it’s the start of something wonderful.
This is a little gem of a novella. It pays court to Regency romance conventions then uses the characterizations you’ve given the …
Horatio Hornblower (1998-2003)
Genre: Adventure, War, Drama
Grade: series as a whole, B+
After my review of “Captain Blood,” there was a call for more swashbuckling films. I do plan to eventually do more of these but I thought I’d detour slightly in this direction. It is swashbuckling, it is war, it is the Navy and it’s set just before and during the Regency period which is so popular with romance readers.
The episodes are basically Hornblower and the British Navy vs Napoleon and his allies. The action begins in 1793 and carries through the short peace and into the beginning of the second phase of war. I’ve never read the CS Forester books on which the series is based so I can’t answer to how closely the TV episodes follow them (from what I gather, very loosely). But I enjoyed seeing some aspects of the era, such as the action in Santo Domingo and the Irish/French alliance, with which I’m less familiar.
Hornblower saves the day, often against impossible odds and, sometimes, by going against his expressed orders when he sees an opportunity to turn the tide of action in favor of the British. It’s this eye for the main chance and the …
Dear Ms. Parrish,
 “Pitch Black,” the second book in your new series has been getting rave reviews at various blog and review sites. After reading it, I can see why. You appear to have taken criticisms of the romantic suspense genre to heart and tried to avoid the ones which cause readers to groan and roll their eyes.
Alec Lambert was supposed to have helped the CAT with their first case months ago but instead he spent the time recovering from the physical wounds he got during a botched field investigation. His body is mainly healed but his psyche remains bruised and he’s still nursing the guilt that his actions helped to contribute to a fellow agent’s death. He knows this chance with the CAT is probably his one shot at redeeming himself and saving his FBI career.
His first day on the job he gets tossed into the deep end as the team begins to investigate the deaths of two teenagers. Combing through the computer of one of them, they find he had contacted Samantha Dalton who runs an internet site devoted to preaching against internet scams and helping people avoid being taken in …
Dear Ms. Briggs,
 Even though I adored “Alpha and Omega” in the anthology On the Prowl, the story which introduced readers to the werewolves Charles and Anna, and also loved the first novel in the series which follows these characters, Cry Wolf, I’m not sure I’m the best person to review Hunting Ground, the latest entry in the Alpha and Omega series. That’s because I have a pattern of tending to lose interest in the second or third book of series which follow the same protagonists, and for this reason, I only rarely read them, and review them even more rarely.
I made an exception for Hunting Ground because when I first read “Alpha and Omega,” I fell in love with Charles and Anna. I felt that I could read about these characters forever and not tire of them. In fact by now I’ve read “Alpha and Omega” around seven times, and Cry Wolf around three.
For readers who are not familiar with them, let me introduce this endearing couple:
Charles is an over two hundred year old, half Native American werewolf. He is dominant enough to be an alpha, but his pack …
Dear Ms. Thornton,
 I’m not quite sure how to classify this book. It has a romance in it but when a couple doesn’t meet face to face until two-thirds of the way through the story, and then only for a few hours, it makes me debate whether or not to call the book a romance. But, regardless of that, it’s a book I enjoyed reading for a number of reasons.
Peter and Mina first “meet” when Peter calls in a car insurance claim after swerving to avoid his neighbor’s cat. It could have been worse, you see, but since his neighbor had just recently cut down the tree and all Peter hit was the stump the claim shouldn’t be bad. Should it?
Mina is amused at this almost hesitant Cambridge professor’s way of reporting the accident and his gentle, wry sense of humor. When he calls in the second accident, which occurs when he’s playing charades with his twin daughters while driving, he remembers Mina’s name and specifically asks for her, which is against all call center policy. It’s then that Mina takes it upon herself to check into his policy at bit and calls him at …
Dear Readers,
 At last to the final book which Sunita loaned to me. Of all the books mentioned in the “Safe Passage” posts, I think this one garnered the most votes and fond recollections. After reading it, I can see why. The impact is that strong. For those who’ve not read it yet, I suggest that you proceed with caution in reading this review as the whole thing will be sort of spoilerish. I already knew the outcome of the book before I started and can only imagine how much more of a shock and delight the ending would have been if it had hit me broadside.
Anthea Benton is taken aback when her voice teacher informs her that Anthea is ready to move beyond anything Miss Sharon can teach her. But money is tight in the Benton household and the cost of Anthea moving to London and affording the kind of lessons which she needs to realize her gift of a voice is prohibitive.
So when her younger brother shows her a newspaper advert for a local contest with a ÂŁ500 first prize (and remember this book was first published in …
 Story: Jamie S. Rich
Art: Joelle Jones
Publisher: Oni Press (5 page preview) or at Amazon
Release: 2006
A passing mention of Twelve Reasons Why I Love Her during a conversation about graphic novels caught attention of the romance reader in me, which prompted me to ask the friend what it was about.
He described it as “a Memento-like story of an average guy’s life with his new girlfriend. It’s all right, I suppose.”
His girlfriend pointed out, “You cried and hugged me, didn’t you?” The friend blushed and pretended he didn’t hear her recollection. I cautiously asked, “What, the romantic interest died?”
The girlfriend flashed a grin and answered, “Unlike a certain classic novel, no one threw themselves in front of a train. Don’t worry, it has the, what do you call it again? H.E.A.? You’ll love it.”
Unfortunately, although it was published in 2006, Twelve Reasons Why I Love Her is already out of stock. But I decided to review this graphic novel because I was able to score a copy at a small London comic shop. If I could get it, then it should be reasonably easy to get a copy from elsewhere or a …
Dear Ms. O’Reilly,
 I love what you do with your heroes and heroines. They’re not always totally believable (I mean, stranger sex in a stretch Hummer?) but I like these people. I’d like to have dinner with them on a couples night out and just sit and talk for hours. I feel that comfortable with most of them by the time the story, regrettably, ends.
David McLean (aka “hot man”) and Ashley Larsen meet not-so-cute in the confines of a packed airplane that’s going no where. Trapped beside a kid from hell whose parents are AWOL even though they’re sitting right there, they chat and attempt to while away the time until it’s finally clear that the spare part or spare plane isn’t going to arrive at O’Hare airport in time to get them to their business meetings in LA.
Which is when they decide to give into the heat that’s been smoldering between them for hours and check into an airport hotel. A night of hot, explosive sex results. But Ashley decides that she wants to leave it at a fling. If they plan for a future, then the “bam” of their hot, sorta …
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