Archive for the 'B Reviews Category' Category
How did I miss this? Srsly, where was I? Dunno. I’ve heard about the “holding up the boom box” scene. I’ve seen it on so many “Gawd, these are the best films evah!” lists and heard from so many people that “you have to see this film, I mean it!” that I should have seen it before now. But it took doing these reviews and scanning Top Films lists for more film ideas to finally make me do it.
No one thinks Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) and Diane Court (Ione Skye) will ever last. In fact, everyone’s surprised they ever got together in the first place. Including them. The first time Lloyd asks Diane out, she says yes then has to check their recent senior high school yearbook to even know who it is she just agreed to go to a party with. But as their relationship progresses, they find something special. She feels totally comfortable with him and he starts to trust in himself because of her.
Then things start to go wrong. Her father (John Mahoney) is being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service and the time before she’s due to leave for a prestigious fellowship in England is …
Dear Mr. Nicolls,
 We get lots of arcs and finished copies of books offered to us at Dear Author. Some I am anticipating, others I recognize the author’s name and in a few cases, I’ve never heard of either book or author. Your debut novel, “The Good Mayor” falls into the latter category. I say this not to denigrate it but to point out that I had no idea what I would be getting myself into when I started it. The US cover of the book enchanted me. When Jane sent this in a box of other books, that is what made me pull it out and check the back blurb.
In a busy little city in a forgotten corner of the Baltic, in an office on the square, the beloved mayor of Dot lies on his office floor, peering beneath his door. Tibo Krovic has come to work from his house down at the end of a blue-tiled path. He’s taken, as usual, the tram seven stops, and walked the final two. He’s stopped for strong Viennese coffee. And now Tibo Krovic is looking at the perfectly beautiful feet of his voluptuous,
…
 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
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Dear Ms. Hewitt:
 Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. The thing that stuck out most in my mind at the end of the story was how apt the title was. The story really was about the sheikh’s forbidden virgin. This is part of The Royal House of Karedes miniseries. Â These series books generally don’t work for me because so much of the story is dependent on the overall arc. Â Fortunately, while the miniseries theme and arc was present in this story, it didn’t dominate.
Aarif Al’ Farisi lost a brother when he was young. Â He believes himself to be at fault for this and since that time, he has devoted himself to his family, allowing no room for failure. Â His brother, King Zakari of Calista, is to be married to his betrothed, Princess Kalila Zadar and Zaraq. Â Zakari and Kalila have been betrothed since they were young as the dynastic pairing will bring the richness of Calista to Kalila’s people and the stability of rule from Zaraq to Calista.
On the eve of Zakari’s arrival, Kalila’s father reminds her “Tomorrow is not about …
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. 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 Ladies,
 It’s taken me far too long to finally review this offering which I got in ::winces:: April. Bad moi. But here it is at last.
Once Burned by Emery Sanborne
Dear Ms Sanborne,
Hot firefighters, hot attraction, hot sex. “Once Burned” has all three. Plus lots of local Philadelphia color. Andreas Sullivan has tried to date a fellow firefighter before and all it got him was trouble and heartache. Will this time be any different?
Andreas and Bobby seem to have had some problems with being accepted as gay both by their families and by society. Andreas has been in more than one fight though he’s decided to try and shrug off antigay comments. One of his brothers wasn’t totally accepting of his lifestyle though now it appears that the brother is trying. Bobby’s father, a former Army man, only came to accept Bobby’s sexual orientation when faced with the greater disappointment of his son joining the Marines. Both are experienced and have had long and short relationships though there’s not as much about Bobby’s backstory and history as Andreas’s.
The firefighter stuff adds some color and shading to the story and serves as the …
Dear James:
 I’m not a big one for police procedurals — they usually bore the snot out of me — but I’m a big one for your writing and characters, so I read this anyway and I’m very glad I did. As always, your characters are very real, full of personality, and your spare writing style — no long introspective paragraphs or emotional declarations to be found — appeals to me. While I don’t like mystery books, I like figuring out the mysteries of two men reluctantly falling in love and unable to articulate what’s going on.
Chase Nozick is FBI, following the trail of the man who killed his partner on a bust five years earlier. He’s assigned to a Special Task Force in LA and to an LAPD partner who turns out to be the man he’d hooked up with for anonymous sex the previous night. Both Enrique and Chase are very much in the closet at work, but they use their time together — appropriately: no sex in the middle of a stake-out or on the run — to commit to and deepen a real relationship.
The case gets heavily involved in …
Dear Ms. Brenna:
 I will confess that I don’t often venture into the Harlequin Superromance line. The covers are littered with babies and well, those tiny faces frighten me. This book, thankfully, was baby less although a child did play a fairly important role in the story. I think what surprised me most was that this was a very nice, short romantic suspense.
Erica Corelli is a chef in a Chicago restaurant who receives a disturbing message from her sister to take Jason, her sister’s six year old boy to some place safe. Erica drops everything and heads north to Mirabelle Island. Mirabelle is the site of the best three days of Erica’s childhood and she thinks that this will be a safe place to hide out with her nephew. Erica and Jason pretend to be mother and son until Erica can find out what is going. She suspects that her brother-in-law, Billy Samson, is abusing his family and this is the reason for her sister’s frantic voice mail message.
Erica recognizes she’ll likely lose her job, leaving without notice, and she’s used up about the last of her …
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. 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
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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 …
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