Archive for the 'B Reviews Category' Category
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. 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 Ms. McLeod,
 You’ve never let me down with any of the past novellas of yours I’ve read and you don’t do it this time either. I confess that I was slightly dismayed at the length of the story which formatted to 20 pages on my reader. She’s going to get two people together that quickly? Why, yes, you do.
Lady Genevra Haven is all set to make her debut at Almacks, that place where the cream of the ton dances, consumes mediocre refreshments and matches off. If only her not-to-be-disobeyed mother would let Genevra wear her spectacles. But to have her daughter be seen as a bluestocking sends shudders through the Countess of Raynham. So off go the spectacles into her mother’s reticule.
Things seem to be going well until Genevra is separated from her friends and finds herself, well, lost at Almacks. A series of missteps and false starts lead her through a maze of rooms and corridors, and through encounters with various “types” of London society until she finally meets a man who just might be perfect for her.
This is a delight of a short story. Tasty, easy to read …
Dear Ms. Lee:
  Billionaire’s Bride of Innocence showed tantalizing glimpses of Hugh Parkinson, heir to the Parkinson media fortune and billionaire in his own right. He’s got a soft and romantic heart and for that reason will not marry any poor girl. Â He’s seen his father fall in and out of love what seems a million times and marry and divorce each of them. Â He’s determined not to suffer the same or inflict this on any woman. Â Yet, Hugh is in the grips of a terrible problem. Â He has the hots for his PA. Â Billionaire’s Bride of Convenience is Hugh’s story.
Ordinarily he would just seduce her and be done with it, but his PA is engaged to be married which means he can’t proposition her but going in to work is excruciating for him.  He contemplates her impending marriage and possible pregnancy and half hopes that she’ll stop working for him after she gets pregnant.  Only the idea of her glowing and with child adds a layer of further want.  I thought this was pretty hysterical.
Hugh was already praying for the day when she’d come into the
…
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. Thomas,
 This is the last book in a trilogy that doesn’t read that way. Which is a relief to me as I hate jumping into a series and feeling over my head with past characters and situations. After reading the middle book, The Cowboy’s Promise, I knew the book on the hero’s brain damaged sister would be up next and I knew I didn’t want to miss how you would handle this. As with the other books of yours I’ve read, it is with tact and believability.
Samantha Cartwright was once a no-nonsense tomboy who loved horses and wasn’t afraid of anything. Then she was kicked in the head by a rescue horse, spent time in a coma and then more time fighting her way back to as close to normal as she’ll ever get. Physically she looks fine but she copes by taking notes, making lists and trying to stay calm in the face of trying situations. Since the accident, her overprotective father, wealthy oil baron Dominick Cartwright, has tried to smooth her path but Sam knows she if she wants to obtain her dream, she’ll need …
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. Seidel,
 Your 1983 category, The Same Last Name, begins when three cars arrive at New York State’s Frank Lake State Park. One of the park’s forest rangers, twenty-five year old April Ramsey, greets the man who registers this group of six visitors. April directs the tourist to the best campsites for a group that size, and he gives her a list of the six visitors’ names and the telephone number of the law firm where all six work.
After the man leaves, April passes the list to a co-worker, Faith, and Faith calls April’s attention to the fact that one of the other lawyers shares April’s last name. April freezes in her tracks, because she and Christopher D. Ramsey III have more than their last name in common. The two used to be married.
At age eighteen, April was a bubbly, popular cheerleader from a small Virginia town. But she had never held a job, cooked, cleaned, or kept abreast of the news. April’s mother wanted her daughter to be popular and happy, and she did not prepare her daughter to cope with hardship.
When April began …
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 …
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. Sagara,
 You are easily one of my favorite authors. These days it’s very rare for me to follow a series past a certain point, but I find myself doing that for the novels you write under both the Michelle Sagara and Michelle West names. It also helps that thus far, they haven’t disappointed me which goes a long way to keeping this reader’s loyalty.
Cast in Silence is the fifth book in your Elantra series published by Luna. The Cast books follow Kaylin Neya, a private in the Hawks, the police force that helps protect the city of Elantra. Kaylin is stubborn, hot-headed, and at times immature, traits which prove unsurprising given her background. Still, she’s a useful member of the force despite her flaws.
Unfortunately for Kaylin, she’s also gifted with an unusual magical talent of alarming proportions, the signs of which are evident in the black marks that cover her skin and have, in fact, continued to spread across her body. The only thing she finds useful from this talent is her ability to heal, which she exercises often at the expense of her health. Other people, however, …
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 …
Dear Ms. Collins,
 The Hunger Games was my favorite novel of 2008. For me it had the perfect combination of a great heroine, fast-paced plotting, and gripping tension. And considering the cliffhanger ending, I’ve been looking forward to Catching Fire since I finished last page of that book.
To refresh readers, and to bring people new to the series up to speed, The Hunger Games and Catching Fire are set in a dystopian future in the remains of what was once the United States. At some point in time, an apocalypse occurred, which caused society as we know it to fall apart. From the rubble arose Panem, which consisted of the Capitol and thirteen surrounding Districts that provided the various materials and goods to keep the nation running. To be more accurate, the Capitol ruled over the thirteen surrounding Districts with an oppressive regime that eventually led to revolt. Unfortunately for the Districts, the revolt was squashed and the thirteenth District was utterly destroyed. To top it off, as punishment, the Capitol created the Hunger Games, an annual battle royale designed to remind the Districts who was in control.
Catching Fire picks up nearly immediately where …
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 …
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 …
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
…
 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 …
Dear Ms. James:
 One of my favorite things about your new book, Highland Rebel, is the author’s note at the very end, in which you discuss the historical context of the novel and its fascinating protagonists. This may seem like a trivial thing to highlight, but the thoughtfulness of that note and the enthusiasm for research that you convey in it is reflected throughout book itself, in the detailed attention to the political upheaval marking late 17th century English history and to the era’s cultural and intellectual vibrancy. When I read Historical Romance, I want the history to be as much a character as the romance, and I hope that readers who feel the same way will pick up this book. Because while not a perfect read, Highland Rebel is a rich and ambitious novel with compelling protagonists and an expansive political and geographic scope.
For all of his political cynicism, James (Jamie) Sinclair just can’t resist a woman in trouble. When he realizes, along with the men who currently hold her in capture, that the young Highlander is not a man, but rather a woman, Jamie, unlike the other men, cannot abide her inevitable rape …
Dear. Mr. Carpenter,
Okay, short and sweet review for a short novella. People said you can’t write about rock stars. Well, I guess they’re wrong because here’s a book about one – and a woman rocker at that.
Ami isn’t happy with the way she feels right now. The latest concert is over, the booze is kicking in and her asshole of an assistant is yelling at her to get the fuck out of her dressing room for the next slice of her life he’s partitioned out. She loves the fans, loves the music but she’s alone in her life with no one to fall back on and it’s draining her dry.
Escaping out a back door, she stumbles against a young man and almost faints. In a “Calgon take me away” moment, she begs him to do just that.
Edward can’t believe it! It’s the woman of his dreams, the woman whose music he’s adored for years and the woman with whose pictures he’s jacked off countless nights. Quickly leading her over to his car, he drives off into the night until Ami wakes up. Somehow!, she trusts him and accepts his offer of a place to hide away for …
The Abduction Club (2002)
Genre: Historical/Comedy/Drama/Romance
Grade: B
Ever since I first heard about this movie, while looking for art pics to be used for Lynne Connolly’s “Richard and Rose” series for my reviews “back in the day” when these weren’t available anymore after the original epublisher did an early version of what we now call epublisherfail, I’ve wanted to see it. Problem was, and still is, that it’s only out in a region 2 or 4 DVD which leaves me, in region 1, basically SOL. Or so I thought. Then I discovered a way to see it. On youtube! God bless youtube which allows people to put all kinds of crap up for public viewing or, in this case, a movie that it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to legitimately buy any damn time soon.
So I watched it (in either 9 [German subtitles] or 10 [Spanish subtitles] part sections depending on which version you watch).
It’s a simple plot which is supposed to be based on actual, though much less fun than depicted on screen, events. We’re in eighteenth century Ireland. As in England, the eldest son inherits all the family loot leaving any younger sons to find some other way …
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