Archive for the 'C+ Reviews' Category
Dear Ms Allain :
 Thank you for sending me this book for review. I am a big fan of the traditional regency which is what I would categorize this novel as. The key to a successful traditional regency is the total immersion of the reader into the time period which is well done in Mr. Malcom’s List. Like other traditional regencies, the hero is not a lord, but a man of great means and the second son of an Earl which, during that time, was sufficient to make him a marital catch.
Selina was a paid companion who was left comfortably well off after her companion’s death. She does not want to return to her vicerage with her family and writes to her old school classmate, Julia, with a request to visit her in London. Julia is living the life of parties with other young people that Selina longs to enjoy. Julia ignores this request for months and then, out of the blue, Selina receives an invitation to visit.
Julia Thistlewaite had her sights set on marrying The Honorable Jeremy Malcolm, second son of the Earl of Kilbourne. He was the catch …
Dear Ms. Green,
 I had heard about your book, The Husband She Couldn’t Forget, back in September and made a mental note to myself to purchase it, partly because I want to encourage more diversity in the genre, and buying a Silhouette Special Edition that features African American protagonists is a good way to do that, and partly because I have a soft spot for amnesia stories.
Unfortunately, like many mental notes I make to myself, this one went astray, and it wasn’t until your book was mentioned again during our recent discussion of cultural appropriation in romance that I bought the book and began to read it.
In the book’s prologue, we are introduced to Melanie Bishop. Melanie is holding a pregnancy test stick bearing negative results when her doorbell rings. She opens the door to be served with divorce papers. Melanie’s husband, Deion, has left her.
Melanie and Deion have been trying for years to have children, without much luck. Deion has done very well in an investment firm, and he and Melanie have all the trappings of success, but the emptiness of their home has made Melanie miserable. Melanie …
Dear Ms. Stang,
 Me loves a good American Civil War novel but unfortunately, most publishers today don’t agree with me so pickin’s have been slim lately. So when I was perusing the new ebooks at Fictionwise a few months ago, I decided to buy your book and give it a try.
With her three older brothers gone for soldiers, Cassandra Beaumont has taken charge of the family plantation. She, her younger sister Rachel and her sister-in-law Ellie are the only adults there. Things are grim and looking to get worse when a troop of Union soldiers arrives with orders to commandeer the place for use as a hospital. Cassie makes a bold but thwarted stand against Major Joel Bradshaw before realizing she needs his medical expertise to help deliver Ellie’s breech baby. Needs must and the two work out an agreement: his help with the delivery for her help as a nurse once the hospital is set up.
Baby Joel James Beaumont is delivered, everyone settles into the arrangement and the wounded begin to arrive. A Colonel who dislikes the fact that the Beaumont women are still there arrives too and Joel makes …
Dear Ms. Haynes:
 Dr. Brooke Magnati has come out as the face behind the prostitute Belle Du Jour. Dr. Magnati was finishing up her PhD and running low on cash and decided that having sex for money would be a way for her to keep her day job, make ends meet, and presumably have time to herself. Magnati as Belle du Jour wrote a number of bestseling books regarding her life as a prostitute and Showtime has an adaption of this series called Secret Diary of a Call Girl.
Why bring this up? The social messaging of this book is that sexual commerce can be an empowered female concept. Problematically, the stories really don’t play out that way. Instead, as one person mentioned to me, this is Pretty Woman done three ways. Each story in this collection is about a high class courtesan/prostitute/call girl who leaves the empowered life of hooking when a fabulous looking guy who happens to be super rich marries her. A woman is matched with the client. The client pays a fee to the company and the woman gets paid through “tips” …
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 …
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 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 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
…
Dear Ms. Holly:
 The problem I’ve run into with reviewing this trilogy is discussing the book while trying to avoid spoilers. I’ve decided that it’s close to impossible. You’ve been warned . . .
Saving Midnight begins soon after the events of the second. Edmund has been rescued thanks to Graham, Pen, Estelle, Ben and Sally, but the two vampires Li-Hua and Frank have managed to escape. To his dismay, Edmund discovers that while he was captured, Graham had been forced to feed off from Estelle, and that Estelle enjoyed herself. Nevermind the fact that Estelle couldn’t help herself or had no choice but to assist Graham in such a manner, this knowledge is more than Edmund can deal with. He’s angry that such a feeding took place, but he also feels guilty because he knows Estelle had no choice and that neither she nor Graham would betray him in such a way. Instead of discussing his feelings with Estelle, he closes himself off from her and slowly drives himself mad.  His feelings bring forth all sorts of guilt that he has bottled up from his past- most of it not deserved. Once again, I was glad …
Dear Ms. Holly:
 When I first decided to read and review your latest upyr trilogy, I had the idea that I would write a single review of all three books together. Two paragraphs in, I realized I was going to need more space than a single review allowed.
Breaking Midnight begins shortly after the ending of the first. While Edmund was attempting to come to terms with himself and his relationship with Estelle, he is suddenly gifted with enough power to transition to Elder. During this transition, he is captured by Li-Hua and Frank, two unpredictable and very dangerous vampires. Li-Hua and Frank chain him up, torture and starve him in an attempt to learn the secrets that only Elders know: how to change a human into an upyr.
Meanwhile, Estelle, Sally, Graham and Ben are doing their best to look for Edmund. One night, Estelle dreams that she’s with Edmund, although a thinner Edmund than she’s used to.  After a few more dream visits, Estelle begins to realize that these aren’t simple dreams at all. Despite her best efforts, she struggles to uncover clues as to his location.
After closing Kissing Midnight, I was a little concerned where …
Dear Ms. Feehan:
 I haven’t read one of your books for some time despite being an earlier devotee of your pioneering Carpathian series. The blurb for Dark Slayer sounded fascinating and the cover was quite evocative. Ivory Malinov is the vampire boogie man (or woman as the case may be). There is not a vampire alive that has not heard that there is a slayer who travels with a wolf pack and is impossible to kill.
Ivory was sent to Xavier’s school to train but was given to Draven, another madman who wanted her as his lifemate. When she would not bend to the madman’s demands, she was cut into tiny pieces and thrown out to die. Her will to live and exact revenge was too powerful to be denied and her body knit itself back together, piece by tiny piece; and she arose, strong, dangerous and full of bloodlust. She hunts with a physical pack of wolves and her own pack that is born of her body.
After one bloody kill, she finds a man near her hideout. He is nearly a corpse. Immediately she recognizes …
Dear Ms. Van Diepen,
 I can’t remember exactly where I first stumbled across your work. I think it might have been through a string of random link hopping that originated from a list of future Harlequin Teen authors. While your first book from Harlequin Teen won’t be coming out until next year, it turns out that you’ve already published a couple young adult novels. This one, in particular, caught my eye because it featured breakdancers.
Nicole’s family life is in shambles. Her brilliant older brother crashed and burned during his first year of college and has taken to the streets as a meth addict. Despite knowing what has happened, their parents enable him — giving him money in order to keep a roof over his head even though it’s more likely he’ll use the funds to keep up his drug addiction.
To escape the turmoil that is her home life, Nicole has thrown herself into the life of a breakdancer. It wasn’t something she thought she’d ever do before her brother left. But one night, she saw a dancer named Zin at a club and it was love at first sight. …
 Naughty Nights in the Millionaire’s Mansion by Robyn Grady. Â This book violated the number one HP principle. It was boring. Â By chapter five (which is about the half way point in an HP), I noted that there was amost no conflict and that the biggest issue thus far was the heroine being coy about whether she was going to spend another sexually fantastic night with the hero. (um, yes, why not?). Â The plot is that pet store owner with a big heart delivers some dogs to a rich man’s home. Rich man takes one look a dog lover and gets excited. Â Pet store owner is in need of money. Rich man has it but has complications in getting it into the hands of pet store owner. (This part of the story was clumsy in that rich man is head of a bank and facilitates a loan bypassing appropriate loan guidelines which could lead to trouble for him. Why not just give her a personal loan?) Â The conflict contrived by pet store owner at the end was a bit of a headdesker. Â She doesn’t want to be a distraction in his life so they can’t …
Dear Ms. Hill:
 I get the sense from this book that there is a whole series of stories on the LeDeux family led by Tante Lulu, a ninety two year old woman seeking to bring the thunderbolt of love to the LeDeux menfolk. Only this time, the target of the love match isn’t a LaDeuxs but former poker playing Champion, one time Playgirl model, and current treasure hunter/construction owner, Angel Sabato.
Actually the person who needs the shaking up is Grace O’Brien, the object of Angel’s love and lust. He proposes to her in the first chapter of the book and is soundly rejected. Angel decides his next treasure hunting endeavor will not be with Grace and takes himself away, the just friends offer from Grace left behind in the gravel along with the remnants of his pride and heart.
I think the first chapter really demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of this book. So Into You is full of fun and laughter and steamy sexual tension but it’s also disjointed in its characterizations.
Angel’s proposal to Grace came out of nowhere. It seems that while they have known each other for a decade, they only kissed maybe …
Starter for 10
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Romance
Grade: C+/B-
For all of you who were thinking “Jayne only likes old movies,” I decided to pick one that’s not 70 years old. Yes, it’s set in 1985 but it was just released in 2006! So that counts, right? Why did I pick this? 1) James McAvoy. 2) I was in college in 1985 so a trip down memory lane looked good to me.
Brian Jackson (James McAvoy) is a working class teenager who’s just been accepted at Bristol University. Brian loves knowledge, loves learning and genuinely wants the chance to study and improve himself unlike some of his mates from home. So off he goes with the challenge of his friend, Spencer (Dominic Cooper), ringing in his ears for Bri to “not become a wanker.”
Next follow scenes of Bri starting to find his way around, going to lackluster “costumed” theme mixers and pretending, like most of the other freshmen, that he’s having a good time at them. One of the first women he meets at a party is Rebecca Epstein (Rebecca Hall) who’s the slightly more sophisticated campus protest leader.
It’s at a meeting to test for a place on the campus “University Challenge” quiz team, that …
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