What Janine is Reading and Watching in Early 2015
The Broken by Shelley Coriell
I picked up this book after seeing that it made Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of the Summer. I hadn’t read Coriell before but I was in the mood for a good romantic suspense, and this book seemed to fit the bill.
Kate, the heroine of the story, was once attacked and nearly murdered by a serial killer who preys on newscasters. Kate quit her job, changed her name and disappeared. When FBI agent Hayden Reed locates her, she is working as an aide to a blind Vietnam veteran. Kate, who believes the killer is her brother, at first resents Hayden’s intrusion into her life and later agrees to help him solve the case. As the two work together, an attraction develops.
I read 30% of this book and then quit, for the following reasons.
First, Smokey, the veteran, was independent which is good, but I didn’t love the way the book used him and his blindness to make us conscious of his vulnerability, and by extension Kate’s vulnerability, since she worried that the killer presented a thread to his safety.
Second, I wasn’t feeling the romance between Hayden and Kate that much. While I appreciated that it was slow to develop I wanted just a little more spark between them to make me care.
Finally, the suspense / serial killer plot, at least in the section I read, well constructed; truly creepy and disturbing. When the body of someone Kate knew was found covered in roses, the freakiness exceeded my comfort level. For another reader, this might be a plus, but I don’t enjoy being truly scared, and this book made me feel too anxious for reading pleasure, so I quit. DNF.
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Special interests by Emma Barry
I bought this book after Liz McCausland at Something More mentioned that this was probably her favorite romance of 2014. I liked, but didn’t love it.
Parker Beckett is a staffer for the senate majority leader, and Millie Frank is a lobbyist for labor unions. Millie is recovering from a trauma (she was taken hostage by an unstable man) when they meet at a club and Parker hits on her.
Very quickly, Parker realizes Millie’s appeal to him is too great. She won’t fit neatly into his lifestyle of one night stands and friends with benefits. So when she invites him to spend the night, he turns her down. And keeps turning her down, even after their jobs bring them into contact again.
Plus #1: Barry writes about the Washington, DC milieu with conviction. This setting really comes to life and feels distinct from other cities. The book doesn’t read as though it could take place anywhere else, and how many books can we say that about to the same degree?
Plus #2: I really like the way this author writes sexual tension and attraction, without resorting to the too obvious and overtly telegraphed mental lusting that some other books use. Instead of telling, she shows. For example, here’s Millie’s reaction when they’ve just met, after Parker has gotten her to order a drink at a crowded bar for him:
“Thanks,” he said as they elbowed their way through the crowd. “I would’ve been dehydrated all night if it hadn’t been for you. Now I guess I owe you something. “ He dropped a hand on her lower back to direct her away from the bar.
Millie scuttled out of reach. “I’m glad I could use my powers for good.” She hoped he could feel her disdain rather than her attraction.
Plus #3: There’s a work conflict: Millie wants Parker to care about her cause, organized labor. Parker has to get a budget deal, and that may mean throwing labor unions under the bus. Both characters are vulnerable under their professional exteriors, so I should have loved the book.
So why didn’t I? Well, things would get brought up, and then dropped. Millie saw a psychiatrist, but it seemed all he was good for was telling her to cover her windows with light-proof shades. There were hints that Parker was commitment-shy because of his grandfather’s memory loss, but the connection between these two things was never explained.
But the biggest problem I had was with the development of the romance itself, which felt artificially extended. Parker kept turning Millie down even after it stopped making sense — almost as if he knew it was too early in the page count for a happy ending. This book was frustrating, like a tantalizingly spiced meal that turns out to be less than filling. I turned the pages eagerly, but was left hungry for more at the end. C+.
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Dead Heat by Patricia Briggs
I was a huge fan of the early books in Patricia Briggs’ Alpha and Omega series, but its most recent entry, Dead Heat, doesn’t rank as high among my favorites as the earlier four. I liked it, I just didn’t love it.
Charles and Anna’s relationship remains romantic, a true partnership in which each can learn from the other and on occasion, save the other. But whereas in the first couple of books I swooned over their smallest interaction, the power of their exchanges and gestures is starting to fade a bit for me.
I’m not sure whether this is because this is the fifth work in the series, and their relationship is more settled now, or because I’ve read and reread both Alpha and Omega, the novella that introduced the characters, and Cry Wolf, the follow-up novel, so many times that this relationship has finally become diluted for me.
Dead Heat finds Charles and Anna in Arizona, first to buy Anna a horse and meet up with an elderly friend of Charles, and later to solve a crime involving a fae who is preying on children. This goal intersects with Anna’s desire for Charles’ child and Charles’ unwillingness to expose any child to the risk that would come with being his.
Anna’s reasons for wanting a child with Charles were articulated especially well in Charles’ thoughts about how she was robbed of choices when Leo and his pack forcibly made her into a werewolf. But despite this, I couldn’t really relate to her drive to reproduce and wasn’t invested in the question of whether Charles would change his mind.
Also, there was a lot of stuff in the book about horses and shopping for a horse, and honestly, that part of the book bored me. Besides this I anticipated a big turn of events:
Spoiler: Show
What did engage me was the pursuit of the villain and the interactions between Anna and Charles, the Cantrip agents and (Yay for her return, since she’s one of my favorite supporting characters in this series), FBI agent Leslie Fisher.
Before I read Dead Heat, I had feared that the children-in-jeopardy aspect of the book might not work for me, but it didn’t bother me at all because it wasn’t handled in a manipulative way. I never felt the danger to the kids was being used to pull my heartstrings, although some of the scenes involving children got me teary.
I also liked a couple of the new witchborn characters who were introduced in this book, relatives of Charles’ friend Joseph, as well as Joseph himself. Despite my gripes, I found it almost impossible to put Dead Heat down. I wish I’d loved it but even with its flaws, I like it enough to give it a B-.
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Jane the Virgin
This television series is a comedy and hard to describe. It sort of satirizes the telenovela genre while being a telenovela at the same time. It’s also romantic, and as the image to the right proclaims, whimsical. The show has a lot of heart and a caring, strong and very likeable main character. Several of the supporting characters are sympathetic too, which charms me because so much television these days focuses on shady people.
The plot centers on a 23 year old Catholic, Latina virgin — Jane, played by Gina Rodriguez who won a Golden Globe for the role — who is artificially inseminated by mistake. Jane has a boyfriend, Michael, whom she loves very much and who does not want the baby. The father of the baby, Rafael, and his wife Petra do want the child, since Rafael had cancer years ago and this is the only viable sperm sample he had or will ever have. Of course there are more plot complications.
I only discovered this show in the past couple of months and I’m several episodes behind—please don’t spoil me!
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Marvel’s Agent Carter
For anyone who enjoyed Captain America, this series, set in late 1940s New York, centers around Peggy Carter (played by Hayley Atwell), the woman who loved Captain America before his disappearance and must now move on without him. It’s at least as good as the movie. Peggy (another likable and strong woman) works as a secret agent, but since this is the 1940s and she is a woman, her boss and coworkers expect her to get coffee for them instead of doing her job.
So when Howard Stark, a man the agency suspects of cooperating with villains, approaches her about clearing his name, Peggy agrees. This gets her into a variety of dangerous adventures and she’s usually two steps ahead of the agents she works with. But will she catch the arch-villain who has killed someone she cares about before her fellow agents discover that she is working with Stark behind their backs? The 1940s setting is a big part of the fun here, too.
As I write this, the show is on the bubble and I’m hoping it gets renewed for a second season because it sure deserves it.
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Warning–some blathering ahead.
I was glad to read your take on Dead Heat. I was highly satisfied with this outing, but wasn’t overwhelmed by it. What did I like? I very much liked the growth of Charles and Anna’s partnership–and, yes, it’s becoming more of an equal partnership as Anna increasingly gets her feet under her. I also like how the complexity of the relationships within Joseph’s family–all of the normal dynamics but with werewolves, humans, and witches thrown in. Plus Charles’s relationships with the older family members. The Feds were also more realistically/favorably portrayed than in some past books, with the return of a competent and sympathetic FBI agent, and a couple of Cantrip (I always want to say Catnip) agents who weren’t cartoon villains or buffoons. (And their relationship with each other was kinda cute, too.)
What didn’t work as well? Despite the kids-in-danger element, the central mystery/drama wasn’t as riveting as some. I wasn’t on the edge of my seat filled with dread this time. The horses were interesting, but a lot of it could have been edited out. I really didn’t need to know the details of each horse Charles and Anna tried out. At the end, I had to go back and remind myself which ones they’d picked, and wasn’t too clear why them over the others. (And normally I wouldn’t even have cared, but such a big deal was made about them earlier.) And I know Charles’s job means he has to travel a lot, but this was a pleasure trip. I’d like a bit more stay at home with the pack stuff. In a way, this seemed somewhat of a filler book.
I’m glad this book had a reasonable advance price; I might have felt a bit put upon if I’d paid full hardback price.
I really like Jane the Virgin. My sister turned me onto it. I’m even worse than you; I’ve been watching out of order and I had to make a list of episodes I need to go back and watch (so I’ve spoiled myself, in a sense). It’s very cute and funny but also heartwarming, and the characters are really appealing (I really like Petra, and Jane’s father).
I kind of love the telenova concept because it’s an excuse for ridiculous plot twists while maintaining a certain realism in the characterization, I think.
@Susan: I liked the dynamics of Joseph’s family too, especially around what happened with Chelsea. But at the same time, I wasn’t that keen on Hosteen or Maggie as characters, and I was a little bored by the backstory of how Charles and Jospeh met and became friends.
I also didn’t understand what it was about Joseph that set him apart from all those people Charles felt he couldn’t befriend. After all, Jospeh’s dad was a werewolf, which means it was possible for Charles to be called on to kill him, and being a friend of Joseph’s would have made that much harder, had it come to pass. Since that’s Charles’ reason for not befriending most people, I wanted to understand why he made an exception in Joseph’s case, and nothing about the story of how they met helped me to understand that. Joseph did really get to me at the end though — I loved his bravery.
I wasn’t either, and while I was sorry for that in some ways, I was also glad Briggs didn’t constantly highlight the danger to the kids like some authors do with children-in-jeopardy stories. That would have been the easiest way to put us readers on the edge of our seats and fill us with dread, but it would also have been manipulative, so I was appreciative that she didn’t go that route.
+1. I couldn’t agree more on this point. I really was bored with all the horse details and yup, didn’t understand why Portobella (especially since her name reminds me of Isabelle/Isabella, the villainess from “Alpha and Omega”).
Me too! Cry Wolf is my favorite of the novels.
@Jennie:
Yes, and those dovetail well with the comedy.
RE: Dead Heat: The plot of one in a couple wanting a child and the other not is an automatic ‘nope’ for me. Has there ever been a romance novel where that conflict was resolved by the person who wanted children changing their minds? I doubt it. I get enough of the “Oh, you don’t really feel that, you’ll change your mind when you meet the right person” in real life, I refuse to get bludgeoned by a book as well.
@Rosario:
BIG SPOILERS for Dead Heat
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I know exactly how you feel, but I thought that was better handled here than in most books. Partway through the novel Anna realizes that her probing into why Charles doesn’t want children is hurting him, and she drops the subject completely. Near the end Charles comes to a realization on his own (that part didn’t convince me 100%) and asks her if she would be willing to adopt.
Possible spoilers. . .
@Janine: I skipped over this when I was listing my dislikes, but I agree with Rosario. In fact, the whole kid theme in general was as overdone as the horse stuff. Too heavy-handed. It’s like Samuel’s obsession with having kids in the Mercy books has now leached into the A & O books.
And I really didn’t get Charles’s about face on the issue when many of his original objections (kids as potential targets and such) were still valid. I don’t know that I want to see Charles getting all gooey.
@Susan: I didn’t feel the kid theme was heavy handed but I just couldn’t relate. I liked that Anna realized that pushing someone who doesn’t want kids to have them is hurtful, though.
I agree about not getting Charles’ about face and yeah, a gooey Charles would be horrible. I trust Patricia Briggs not to do that to us, though!