Archive for the 'C Reviews Category' Category
Dear Ms. Dunlop,
 A friend of mine married her Frenchman so when I see books with French heroes, I check them out. Since I’ve found that the Desire line tends towards less assholic heroes, I decided to give “Transformed into the Frenchman’s Mistress” a shot.
If there was anything Charlotte Hudson had learned in her twenty-five years, it was how to be proper. So how had the ambassador’s granddaughter ended up on a wild movie assignment, ensconced in a centuries-old Provençal castle with notorious French playboy Alec Montcalm? While her relatives from Hudson Pictures were busy filming at Chateau Montcalm, the real drama was going on behind the antique wooden doors–beneath satin sheets. Charlotte knew their crazy, scandalous secret liaison wouldn’t last. And then she discovered she was pregnant….
This is a hard book for me to grade. There are some things about it I loved and other things that drove me nuts.
Charlotte actually has a backbone and is fairly intelligent. When she arrives at the Montcalm chateau to ask her school pal Raine Montcalm
if her family can rent it for a movie location and finds she’ll have …
Dear Authors and Readers.
 If you will excuse a personal history, you will see its relevance to my review. I enlisted in the Army National Guard after 9/11. I became a US citizen and commissioned (became an officer) in 2003. I accepted a medical retirement in May of this year, at the rank of Captain, after 7 ½ years of service. I never went overseas, but I served in the Katrina response in Louisiana. I was a soldier and damn proud to be so.
But I am also bisexual (with some extra kinks outside the Kinsey continuum). This is the first time I’ve been able to admit this in public (well, I came out on Twitter on National Coming Out Day) since figuring it out because of the US military’s destructive Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. My sexuality in no way affected my service. All outward appearances show a happily married, monogamous, heterosexual soldier, which is mostly what I am. But every now and then the issue came up and I had to bite my tongue. I could have been kicked out of the service if anyone had dug too deep, for a reason …
Dear Ms. Mallery:
 Having finished the entire Titan sisters series, I find myself in virtually the same place after the fourth book as after the first: I loved so much of the interaction among the women but found the basic suspense premise substantially problematic. Witty dialogue buoyed each book, while unconvincing characterizations torpedoed my ability to make the ultimate buy-in for each book. This last book, Hot on Her Heels, repeats the pattern faithfully, with Dana (an honorary Titan sister and oldest sister Lexi’s best friend for years) a witty, prickly, sassily amusing heroine and Titan half-brother Garth, her inevitable if not expectedly suited hero. With this book, we get the resolution to the power struggle between patriarch Jed Titan and his vengeful son Garth, as well as the Titan sisters’ campaign to bring Garth back from the dark side (i.e. war with the family). Can love redeem either or both of these difficult men?
First a bit of backstory. Unbenkownst to Jed Titan’s three daughters, before he married the first of his wives (Lexi’s mother), he got a local girl pregnant and ended up treating her very badly. When she did not …
Dear Ms. Enoch:
 After finishing the previous trilogy which I believe to contain some of the best work of your career, I was delighted when The Care and Taming of the Rogue arrived on my doorstep, ridiculous title notwithstanding. With the adventurer hero, I thought we might be getting something unique again.
While prose in The Care is a well written, the book lacked the emotional appeal of the previous three. In fact, in writing this review, I found my memory to be totally devoid of this book even though I read it only a week ago. Even the notes that I took failed to jog any emotional response.
Bennett Wolfe is a former adventurer in the Congo. He was thought dead and his journals were stolen by one of his fellow travelers. While he was presumed dead, said fellow traveler, Captain David Langley, published a memoir using Wolfe’s journals and notes and took the opportunity to paint Wolfe in a very unflattering light. Bennett’s uncle, the Marquess of Fennington, has Bennett declared dead so as to take part in the profits of the memoir. Bennett is not …
Dear Ms. Lyons:
 This is a witch/witch hunter paranormal and while witch stories are not proliferous within the paranormal sub genre, the underlying tropes are familiar. Â Wing Slayer hunters, men chosen by the Wing Slayer to protect witches, must find their soul mirror or succumb to the rogue state where they live to slaughter witches. This story tries to inject new life into the soul mate saveth trope by placing into question whether love can overcome magical destiny.
Carla is a powerful witch who helps those rescued from cults to overcome brainwashing. She works at a local clinic with her good friend Max, a sociologist (and probably a Wing Slayer to be). Max was a caring, curious sociologist until he was unable to save someone from dying in a cult. Then he became romance hero material: “The curious sociologist in Max died, and this man, full of passion, grief, anger and guilt, was born.” Max is mentioned quite frequently but plays absolutely no role in this book despite having unrequited feelings for Carla. I can only guess that he is to be hero of his own book after suitably suffering …
Dear Ms. Slade:
 I confess to being reluctant to start this book. I’m not sure why. I think because there wasn’t anything about the description of the book or the cover that really stood out. It was a paranormal story about good demons and bad demons. Given that it was a free book, however, it didn’t hurt to at least read the first chapter. I was intrigued enough by the first chapter to continue given that the writing style appealed to me.
Ferris Archer is a former southern gentleman who is now one of the demon possessed. He and others like him have banded together to fight in the war against other demon possessed individuals and malices that populate the earth. Archer views himself not so much as a warrior, but a trash collector . Malices can be drained but they cannot be returned to hell and over time, just regenerate. To say that Archer is weary would be an understatement. He went from fighting in the Civil War to a non stop, centuries long battle against entities simply cannot be defeated. When others warn him that …
Dear Ms. Warren:
 I went out and bought this book for myself. *runs around in circles* A while back I blogged about the seeming dearth of werewolf books, at least books that focus on the pack dynamics and the myths of the beast. Another reader suggested I try Christine Warren’s Big Bad Wolf. I admit that the one book I had tried didn’t make me a fan but I was willing to take another chance. I went off to the bookstore that evening and bought the book. I read and finished it that same evening.
Graham Winters is the Alpha of the Silverback Werewolf Clan. He is bored to the point of celibacy with all the hot Otherworld women around him. He doesn’t have any problem getting it up, but no amount of sexual innovation from even the most gorgeous paranormal is floating his boat anymore. Thirteen days ago, he walked away from one super model look alike and now he’s wondering what he’s going to do with himself. (For a werewolf, thirteen days is like a decade).
Then at the same party in which Graham …
Dear Ms. Somers:
 Thank you for sending me your book for review. Â It was recommended as an erotic shapeshifting romance. Â I’ll confess that when I started it, I thought it was a werewolf book, but it is not. Â The Pendragon Gargoyles myth is based on cursed (or blessed) creatures that turn to stone during the daylight.
Kennedy Beaumont is a bartender at a popular club called Pendragon.  She has the hots for one of the owners, Tristan Pendragon, but he’s never signaled a return interest and so Kennedy has just lusted from afar.  One night she is targeted by an unknown danger and Tristan helps to save her.  They are placed in such close proximity (her car) that Tristan’s longing for Kennedy cannot be suppressed.  Much to Kennedy’s surprise, Tristan has lusted in a reciprocal, but silent manner as well.
The length of the book is category and I felt it was too short for the subject matter. Â Primal Hunger is the first book in the series, but it seemed like it was a middle book. There were references to other stories, occurrences and myths, none of which are resolved in this book. Â The myth …
Dear Ms. Minton,
 There is a lot of stuff you are trying to cover in this book. Some of it is done just right, some of it is skimmed too quickly for me and some of it just seems to be on an eternal repeating loop.
The small Kansas town of High Plains is still digging out from and attempting to recover from a horrific tornado. Buildings were demolished, possessions were scattered across the county, an unidentified little girl was discovered in the aftermath and town police chief Colt Ridgeway and town vet Lexi Harmon are unsure whether their decision to divorce two years ago was the right one. But have they dealt with the issues that drove them apart? Or is any attempt at reconciliation doomed?
The small town of High Plains seems like a wonderful community. It’s been hit by hardship, not everyone is getting back to normal at the same rate but neighbors are not only willing but eager to help each other. Sure, being known since birth by everyone and his brother has its drawbacks if you want to keep your business to yourself but the “we’re in it together” spirit …
Dear Ms. Ward,
 I don’t even know where to begin. While it’s true I’m a fan of your Black Dagger Brotherhood series, I stopped making any claims about its purported quality many books back. Romance? Unlike most readers who thought the first books were romance, only for later ones to shift into the urban fantasy category, I never believed the series belonged in the romance genre in the first place. So I took it with a very large, very heavy bucket of salt when I heard that your new series, starting with Covet, would be more romantic. Sorry, but it’s true.
Jim Heron is an ex-military assassin, jaded and cynical about life. He drifts from one place to the next, putting down no roots and trying to stay out of trouble. He’s currently employed as a construction worker but when the mansion he’s currently helping to build is completed, he intends to move on. Then on the eve of his fortieth birthday, he hooks up with a woman at the club, Iron Mask.
What he thought would only be a pleasant memory unfortunately leads to more, just not in …
Dear Ms. Lee:
 This is the first book in your Three Rich Husbands series (no need for subtlety here).  Honestly the last memory of a Lee book I had was of a weeping doormat heroine who shed more water than rain falls in Seattle.  I had signed up for the HP subscription service and your book was one I received.  So I tried it out.
Russell McClain vowed vengeance against Alistair Power, a wealthy Australian businessman, when Power Mortgages foreclosed on Russell’s family farm leading Russell’s father to commit suicide. Â Sixteen years later, Russell is successful. Â He has ruined Alistair Power, and, as a coup de grace, has even purchased the Belleview Hill mansion that housed the Powers for years.
Nicole Power is summoned to claim her personal possessions before the family home is turned over to the new buyer. Â Nicole was a spoiled rich girl who, after finding her fiance in the arms of his PA, began shambling about the world, finding new meaning in helping poor children. Â She realizes that the jewels and other effects can be sold to provide for a better environment for the children in a particular …
Dear Ms. Davis:
 I picked up this book at B&N because of the cover. I bought it because of its premise and because I’m fascinated by full triad m/m/f menage books actually being sold in the romance section at bricks-and-mortar stores, so I wanted to support that. Once I did, the book was…well, okay. Nothing to write home about, even though I obviously am right now.
At her own house party, Liv Quinn catches her loving husband Alex making out with one of his junior partners (or maybe she was an associate — it kept changing). She doesn’t call him on it — and he resists full temptation anyway. Instead she makes a plan. She will allow Alex to stray, as long as he confesses everything after he’s done and then accepts his punishment by her hand. Because, see, she gets off — always has — on cuckold fantasies, in which a partner in a romantic relationship knows of their partner’s adultery. In fact, a cuckold might even prepare their partner for the adulterous encounter. The fascinating thing, however, is that cuckold fantasists are almost always male — it’s a very rare female …
Dear Ms. Pearce,
 I wasn’t sure what to expect when I began your latest book, Simply Wicked, not having read you before and having only the vague idea that you write erotic romance, a term that has come to be applied a bit too broadly to provide much useful information for me as a reader. The fourth line from the opening was thus both a bit startling and edifying:
He licked his lips, tasting dried blood, brandy and the acrid tang of another man’s cum.
Ok-ay, then, that clears up the erotic romance part, I guess.
Anthony Sokorvsky is the 25-year-old younger son of an aristocratic family. Marguerite is a widow whose husband, Lord Lockwood, was killed in a duel under scandalous circumstances two years previously. They are brought together when her younger siblings decide that Marguerite needs to get out and circulate and choose Anthony to squire her (he seems an odd choice given that they know him from his frequent appearances at their mother’s brothel).
I felt rather at sea in the early chapters of Simply Wicked – though it is ostensibly set in 1819 London, at times it almost seems like an …
Dear Ms. Roux.
 I opened this file when I got it because it wasn’t paranormal (no world building…I’m so sick of world building) and because you wrote it and I adore your Caught Running with Madeleine Urban. That said…meh. So many holes, such annoying characters, unbelievable timeline, so much potential angst wasted, wasted I tell you!
Vic the lawyer loves Owen the sheriff and part-time bailiff. Owen uses Vic as a fuck buddy and has done so for five years, which is tearing Vic apart. Or at least, so I’m told. Shane the judge is Vic’s best friend and convinces Vic, on 12 hours’ notice, to go on a month’s vacation. Apparently, public prosecutors in North Carolina don’t have to clear their schedule to go on a MONTH’S LONG vacation. I think I need to go to law school. As we learn…eventually…Shane loves Vic and has done so for…yes, you guessed it, five years. But as the entire story is told from Vic’s not-quite-first-person perspective, Shane’s emotions pretty much get lost and ignored in Vic’s angst and general cluelessness. Which is a shame. Vic, of course, comes to realize the relationship potential in …
Dear Ms. Kleypas:
 Tempt Me at Twilight brings readers closer to the end of the Hathaway family romances. We have only Leo and Beatrix left. Poppy and her family are staying at the Rutledge Hotel for the London season. Poppy is convinced that she is in love with Lord Michael Bayning, the heir to a viscountancy. Despite the fact that she is the sister of a viscount, Poppy does not have the bloodlines to be considered a good match for Bayning. He promises her a letter to broach the subject of their romance with his father, but begs her to keep it private. Poppy agrees happily.
Problems arise when Beatrix’s ferret runs off with this scandalous letter and Poppy gives chase. She ends up in a secret tunnel where a mysterious man finds her, lifts the letter, and settles in for a nice chat with Poppy. The mystery man is Harry Rutledge, the powerful owner of the hotel. Poppy’s natural intelligence and her unconventional education pique Harry’s interest. A collector of fine and curious objects, Harry decides immediately that the beautiful Poppy is a must have acquisition for his collection. …
Dear Ms. Kittredge,
 I have a very hard time explaining why I keep reading this series. As I’ve mentioned in the past, the main character, Luna Wilder, can be really off-putting at times. On the other hand, it’s very nice to see her maturing and evolving over the course of the series. The Luna Wilder we meet in Witch Craft, the fourth installment of your Nocturne City series, is certainly not the same Luna Wilder we met at the beginning in Night Life. Well, in some ways, at any rate. I still question her taste in men.
When Witch Craft opens, Luna is now the head of the Supernatural Crimes Squad (SCS), a new division in Nocturne City’s police force created to look into cases not quite on the mundane side of things. Problem is they want the SCS to start bringing results ASAP. If not, then they’ll be disbanded and Luna and her co-workers will be out of a job.
Luna sees their chance to prove themselves with a new case. Mysterious fires are being set all over the city, killing some unsavory people who deal with Nocturne City’s supernatural side. What’s more, …
Dear Ms. Daniels,
 I haven’t read a book from the “Intrigue” line in a long time and decided to check out the latest offerings. While I usually try to avoid stepping into a series midway through, this time it didn’t affect my overall enjoyment of the book. Plus the mention in the blurb about the hero on something other than a horse was too good to pass up.
Russell Corbett was all cowboy and wasn’t about to let a lady lasso him! But Dulcie Hughes had him tied up in knots from the moment she nearly collided with his combine. She rode into town with her fancy rental car and city clothes to claim her secret inheritance. And neither tall tale nor handsome rancher would deter her from exposing a years-old cover-up at the Beaumont property. She expected to find answers, not fall in love. But like the threatening thunderhead on the horizon, the truth would come fast and fierce, and there would be no escaping the consequences.
You toss the reader straight into the mystery. Why has Dulcie inherited this piece of land in rural Montana and why did …
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. Roberts:
 I am trying to climb onto the futuristic bandwagon so I was excited when I saw this book released from Samhain this week. While the story had potential and I found it readable, I ultimately came away disappointed.
Blademir, the Crown Heir to the throne of Barian, was sent on a diplomatic mission to Zona, a matriarchal society that had closed itself off to the rest of the planet. Zona grew out of a pleasure slave to Barin (how she grew to have her own culture I never really understood). Zona refused to advance technologically causing people living in its outer sphere to conduct raids into Barian land. Blade has been sent to Zona to convince the Matriarch that a little cooperation and trade could increase the standard of living for all Zonans.
Taryn Penthes is a Zonan Silvergard Commander. The Silvergard are the elite fighting squad charged with defending the Zonan. She is to escort the Bariani diplomatic team to the Lady Palace. The team gets ambushed and two members of the diplomatic team are killed and so is the Crown Prince’s Prime. Taryn …
Dear Ms. Richards,
 It was the description of this novel which piqued my interest. I mean, how many books are there out there that take place in the prairie province of Saskatchewan? And feature farmers? Not too many, I’m thinking.
Widow Hannah Kramer has decided that turning her house into a bed and breakfast is the way to try and salvage not only the farm she inherited from her late husband but also the one from her parents. Times are hard and agriculture just isn’t paying the bills the way it used to. Hannah despairs that so many of her neighbors are being forced by high debts to sell their land and move so when she, and everyone else, hear that the Golden Oak company is buying up land, she sees red instead of seeing what the company is really trying to do.
Quinn Anderson is immediately attracted to the young widow he helps overcome her fear of heights. Knowing he’s going to be in the area for the summer negotiating farm buyouts, he decides to stay at her B&B and even agrees to help around the place each day. …
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. Green:
  This worked for me on most levels although I know that a non fan of Harlequin Presents would probably be turned off by the manufacturered angst and the constant barrage of distrust and misplaced accusations from the hero. Kate Lancaster, a beautiful young woman, has been unable to get over a kiss she shared with Tiarnan Quinn when she was eighteen. To combat her feelings, she has always acted with hostility toward Tiarnan, treating him with icy disdain but at the christening of her best friend’s baby, Tiarnan’s sister, Kate let down her guard for one moment and he saw it.
…And right then Kate knew that all her flimsy attempts to defend herself against him for years were for naught. He’d just seen through it all in an instant. Seen through her. Her humiliation was now complete.
Tiarnan not only sees it but it provides him an excuse to pursue her. Tiarnan, unlike other HP heroes, suffers some anxiety at being rejected by Kate. He’s always found her to be very cold toward him and at times …
Dear Mr. Lane:
 As I immediately emailed to you when you sent met his book, “Good God, the fairy godmother of cover images likes YOU, doesn’t she?!” I adore this cover, as I did the cover of the first Amaranth novel. (Anne Cain did the art. One might almost say “Of course, Anne Cain did the cover art.” I’m not sure she’s capable of doing a bad cover.) And while I read the novel in one sitting, unable to put it down, I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as Dark Heart and, despite its labeling on Loose Id, I wouldn’t call it a BDSM novel as such.
Coryn is a newly trained Master Mage, a healer. On his travels one day, he stops three men from slaughtering a plague-ridden slave. He heals and claims the slave as his own, then goes to the plague-ridden city Elverton to help the people there. Days later, he has healed so many people, he himself is dangerously weak, but he’s not closer to figuring out where the plague came from and how it’s spreading, which is when he calls in more of his Guild, healers …
Dear Ms. Marsh,
 I’m trying to branch out in my Harlequin reading experiences so I decided to try your book in the “Romance” line. With no mention of secretaries, babies or royalty I decided to give it a go.
Recent widow Tamara Rayne is looking towards reentering the profession she gave up when she married a celebrity chef. With that in mind, she’s honing her food critic skills at the restaurant once co-owned by her husband Richard and his friend, entrepreneur Ethan Brooks. Even before Richard’s sudden death, Ethan had barely paid any attention to her so Tamara is amazed when Ethan begins to flirt with her.
Ethan had good reason to avoid Tamara since he didn’t think he could control his attraction to her and remain on good terms with Richard. But now that Tamara is available and seems to be getting over her grief at Richard’s death, Ethan decides to pounce. And what more romantic place to pursue her than on a luxurious trip across Tamara’s mother’s homeland of India. But has Ethan read Tamara correctly and is Tamara ready for another relationship just when she’s beginning to stand on her own two feet again?
This book …
Dear Ms. Prescott,
 I used to love Chick Lit books, especially those written by Englishwomen. I adored learning Briticisms and watching the underdog triumph in the end. Then the genre got stale and I got tired of reading the same old or worse. When you offered “Mucho Caliente” for review, the fact that the heroine is an (slightly) older woman caught my eye and made me decide to give it a go.
Does Gemma dare wish upon a Latino superstar? Thirty-seven year old Gemma hadn’t reckoned on being seated next to Latino heartthrob Emilio Caliente on the flight to Ibiza. She’s bravely dismissed her cheating husband’s generous divorce settlement, opting instead for a creatively satisfying, financially independent, bohemian lifestyle on a Spanish island in the sun. Falling in love with a pop music superstar eight years her junior was definitely not part of her plan.
Common sense dictates staying away from Emilio Caliente and his cinnamon kisses: his life is in turmoil, his latest single has bombed, the press want to see him naked and his hellacious manager seems increasingly deranged. But surely the chain of extraordinary events that insists on bringing them together
…
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