LynneC’s review of From Dirt to Diamonds by Julia James
Contemporary Romance published by Harlequin Presents 23 Aug 11

When you want the pure, true crack that is Mills and Boon Modern romance, you turn to Julia James. She gives you all the wild madness, the extremes of the Cinderella trope that is the basis of the line, and the purple prose. Not to mention the exclamation marks! (note; not the same person as Julie James, who writes those lovely romantic comedies. Not many laughs here). From Dirt to Diamonds is no exception. If you want an engrossing, emotional read about characters you can sympathize with, you’re not going to find it here. Where other writers can take well-worn tropes and give you a great, emotional read, James gives you fairytales and extremes of emotion that verge on insanity. So be warned.

In this one, the heroine is going by the name of Thea Dauntry, but she used to be Kat, the daughter of a drug addict who was in her turn the daughter of an alcoholic. So Kat becomes a model (what else?) and falls under the influence of a blackmailer who threatens to cut her if she doesn’t either give him money or do some porn shoots for him. So she steals from the hero and when caught doesn’t come clean. The hero proceeds to ruin her career. Her blackmailer is conveniently offed at this point. And now we’re about three chapters in, so I’ll put spoiler alerts for any more plot details.

Kat decides she is going to change, not go the way of her mother and grandmother, who she never knew, so she becomes a well-paid model. Then after Angelos (I’ll come to him in a minute) ruins her, she reinvents herself but is still a model. WTF? So how did she do that? She has a passport, presumably under her new name, papers, and nobody in her profession recognizes her as the girl who used to be Kat, although Angelos has no trouble recognizing her across the space of a crowded restaurant. Thea’s also got class. She knows the difference between Rachmaninoff and Shostakovitch and she reads. In fact, she behaves like a fifty-year-old in a twenty-something’s body. She doesn’t like being stared at, she doesn’t drink and she doesn’t take drugs. And she’s a model.

So realism just went flying out the window. Forget it, it doesn’t belong here.

The hero, Angelos, is your Greek tycoon hero. Tall, dark, brooding, all that. Executive. Loves to hike in Switzerland. He ruined Kat without really investigating the whys and wherefores, and he hates himself for the attraction he feels for her. So it’s all about him. When he meets her again, he wrecks her plans to marry a nice young man. For the young man’s good, naturally. What a hero. Prince Charming he is not. So he takes her away with him, because that’s what you do to someone you want to ruin. OMG the angst.

And if we can’t feel the angst from the story, James emphasizes it with prose that doesn’t stint on adjectives or exclamation marks. Here’s a bit from early in the book, before James has really got into her stride:

“A hard sliver of satisfaction darted in her mind. All the shock and the panic she had felt were gone now—completely gone. Unneeded and unnecessary. Instead there was now thin, vicious satisfaction. It was fitting—oh, so fitting!—that he should be here, in the moment of her life’s grateful achievement, when he had nearly, so very nearly, destroyed her life.

But I wouldn’t let him! I clawed my way back and now I’m here, and I’ve got everything I’ve wanted all my life! So go to hell, Angelos Petrakos! Get out of my life and stay out for ever!

Then, casting him away with her damnation, she gazed into Giles’s eyes. The eyes of the man she was going to marry.
On the far side of the room Angelos Petrakos’s eyes were bladed like knives.”

There is a sick fascination with this kind of prose, the kind that wonders what is going to happen next, if she can get any purpler. Well, she doesn’t disappoint in that respect. I was going to DNF this, but I wanted to see where it went, reading with the awed fascination usually reserved for watching a great film director crash and burn. Or a media mogul. I mean, you’ve got to admire a vocabulary like that. But does she have to use it all up at once? Eyes wander all over the place, and, in one instance, they twine together. And exclamation marks are used with complete abandon.

This is the way Modern/Presents authors used to write twenty years ago, as we’re all discovering with some of the reprints that Harlequin is throwing at us. There is a hard core of authors who write like it now, but none with quite as much abandon as Julia James. Read and marvel.

Grade: F

Summary:

He’ll stop at nothing to settle old scores!When Angelos Petrakos spies supermodel Thea Dauntry in a swanky London restaurant, he knows she’s not really the effortlessly elegant woman she seems to be…

For Thea, Angelos’s reappearance is disastrous! Dining with a viscount on the verge of proposing, the last thing she wishes to be reminded of is the street–smart, quick–tempered girl she once was.

A lucky encounter years ago with the gorgeous Greek tycoon enabled Thea to make something of her future. But Angelos can’t forget how she used him—and he’ll stop at nothing to bring her down. Not even seduction…

Read an excerpt.

LynneC’s review of  The Marriage Betrayal by Lynne Graham
Contemporary Romance published by Harlequin Presents Extra 28 Jun 10

Harlequin has begun to put selected titles from their category lines on netGalley for review. I’m guessing they want these books reviewed and promoted all over the place. So it beats me why they decided to review a book that Lynne Graham seems to have phoned in.

Warning – there is a kind of spoiler at the end of this review, because this book is one of two books featuring the same characters. But there is a warning too, because Graham uses a trope some readers might not be comfortable with.

I have read some really good Harlequin/Mills and Boon books recently, books that took chances and explored new themes. This book reads like it was set in the 1960s, and, in truth, I’d have enjoyed it much more if it had been written as a period piece. Slang like “shag” belongs in Austin Powers, not the modern world, and this and other aspects dragged the book down and made it a slog to read. Graham uses traditional tropes, but she doesn’t play with them and she doesn’t try to explore character through tropes, like, say, Caitlin Crews and Kate Hewitt. Neither does she plunge into them like Jennie Lucas. She just takes them and plonks them into the plot.

In this one, twenty-year-old Tally meets Sander at a house party. Sander’s there reluctantly, and Tally is accompanying her half sister to the party, but Cosima doesn’t want everyone to know that Tally is her illegitimate half sibling, so she calls her her personal assistant. Cosima refuses to share the room they’re allotted, so Tally has to share the room of one of the servants. She dresses plainly, and what’s more, more like a middle aged woman. Yes, Graham lavishes this, pours the Cinderella trope on with a very large spoon.

Sander is promiscuous and a misogynist, naturally thinking the worst of every woman he comes across. He finishes with his mistresses (and that word, ‘mistress,’ gives me hives) when they get too demanding and clingy. What a prince. Not.

When they get together, he is about to screw her when he tells her he doesn’t do exclusivity. I would have slapped him silly. At least Tally walks out. But in this day and age, it’s just not on. Nor is it on to say it at a moment like that.

These problems are only exacerbated by the poor quality of the writing in this book. Strange descriptors abound. We have pouting nipples and hungry hands, sometimes in the same sentence, and these characters have independent body parts – their hands do stuff, without, seemingly, the approval of their owners. Every author does that sometimes, but too much is never fun, and you start to imagine eyeballs popping out of people’s heads and going a-wandering.

Characters never speak in this book. They breathe, assert, deny, question, retort, even frame. The constant euphemisms for that simple word “said” abounded and took me out of the story more than once. The POV is appalling. It can switch in a sentence. And I do mean head-hopping, with such dizzying frequency it gets confusing as to who is thinking what. It also leads to a shallow point of view, which is one of the main underlying problems in the book. I couldn’t get into either of the characters. With such problematic and difficult characters, the reader really needs to get right inside their heads and feel what they’re feeling, otherwise they’re liable to just not give a damn. Some Harlequin writers do this with aplomb, and I’ve read some Lynne Graham books that really score in this regard. Not this one. You only ever skim the surface with Tally and Sander. Not that you don’t know what they’re thinking and feeling, because Graham kindly tells us. We never experience things with this charmless pair – we are told, and that naturally leads to a dichotomy between what they think and what they do.

Tally is a bolter. Every time there’s trouble, she runs. Except from her miserable home life and her awful mother, and she welters in that. When in doubt, go back to your horrible little house and your promiscuous mother and carry on being a martyr. Sander chases, has sex, and dumps.

Later, Tally agrees to have unprotected sex with Sander. Yes, the Sander that doesn’t do exclusive. I wouldn’t touch him, but there you go. There is a hastily inserted paragraph about Sander having a “health check,” which I bet her editor made Graham put in, but it doesn’t convince me. This man is toxic, in every sense of the word.

And there’s a traffic warden. In London. I kid you not (traffic wardens were abolished in London some years ago. There’s now a different authority that deals with traffic offences). I wouldn’t have been surprised to see parking meters.

On the whole, this is a story about a very young girl and a man who behaves like a stallion in heat, but with less finesse. They both speak in a kind of working-class English slang that isn’t appropriate for at least one of them. But I did notice that the British cover of the follow-up book , Bride for Real, has the same character on the front as is on one of my books (check out Seductive Secrets. Which means Harlequin is using stock photography these days. Interesting. The two pictures could have been taken at the same photographic session, actually.

There is a pseudo happy ending to this book, and then you get the prologue to the next book. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. And here is the spoiler:

This book ends with Tally pregnant and she and Sander together. The next book starts with the news that Tally’s baby was stillborn and the marriage broke up. After reading this book I had no confidence that Graham would deal with an issue as heartbreaking as that with any reality or depth, so I chose not to follow her there.

I hate givig Fs, but I couldn’t find anything to redeem this book. Usually I look for something – realism, an interesting secondary character, or good writing, but I couldn’t find anything here. I’m hard, and it hurts to do this to a Lynne Graham book, but it wouldn’t be fair to the other great reads I’ve had lately to do anything else.

Grade: F

Summary:

Careless passion, pregnancy surprise…

Sander Volakis goes his own way. He’s forged his reputation in business, rather than relying on the family fortune, and indulges his darkly passionate, wild streak. He has no intention of marrying…

He doesn’t do country weekends, either. Pitching up at Westgrave Manor is a favor to his father and a bore…until he sees Tally Spencer, so pretty and voluptuous that he can’t resist her. Sander’s looking forward to casually seducing her, not knowing that one night with the innocent Tally could end his playboy existence…

Read an excerpt.

Ash’s review of A Deepest Thread of Black by Finn Marlowe
Erotic Paranormal Romance published by Samhain Publishing 08 Feb 11

I really wanted to love this book. It has more than a few plot lines that I usually enjoy, but there isn’t a single thing I like here.

As soon as the story starts, it feels like I am missing something. Twice I checked online to see if there were previous books. The world is never explained well. It took a while for me to get the difference between shifters and werewolves, and even then it is unclear. It feels like the world building is an afterthought, something to give the characters a reason to hate each other. It’s just plain confusing.

As for the characters, Colton and Killian, I don’t care for either of them. We are told Colton is a big bad werewolf hunter, but my only impression of him is that he is weak. His character never comes together, and he feels like different people, depending on what the scene calls for. He is a character that is written as expected, with no real personality. Killian is almost the same, he just plays the dominant role. The scenes between them are cold and I don’t believe any of the emotions that are supposedly between them.

I’m sorely disappointed in this story. I had to force myself to finish it so I could write this review, and it’s a short story. Sadly, this isn’t an author I plan to read again.

Grade: F

Summary:

The seduction of his enemy is the ultimate hunt…When his mortal enemy, the handsome and deadly Colton Dècarie, shows up on his doorstep asking an unspeakable favor, Killian Frost is cautious—and curious. What could drive a shape-shifter to beg a werewolf for an honorable death in the line of duty—defending humans from soul-stealing Lycans? Moreover, why ask Killian, who has kept his own feet off that dark path?

Colton’s conflicted heart can take no more of the violence that consumes more of his humanity with every hunt. Even now, Killian’s werewolf scent makes him burn with the instinctive urge to shift and destroy. Death would be a mercy, but the price is impossibly simple: one night of submission in Killian’s bed.

Yet as Killian extracts payment in flesh and pleasure, Colton finds himself giving all that’s demanded of him and more, feeling something he hasn’t felt in a long time. Alive. And Killian discovers the hidden cost of sleeping with the enemy. To keep the balance between light and dark, Bella Luna binds his Lycan blood with a quest to unravel a conspiracy threatening all his kind. If he’s brave enough, he’ll discover a love that means more than the power of a dead man’s soul.

Read an excerpt here.

Sandy M’s review of Passionate Pleasures (The Pleasures, Book 5) by Bertrice Small
Contemporary Erotic Romance published by NAL Trade 3 Aug 10

I remember reading Bertrice Small when I was a teenager. She’s one of those authors a lot of us cut our romance teeth on all those years ago. Her Skye O’Malley series was a favorite back then. So, needless to say, I was a tad curious when I received Passionate Pleasures to review, especially when I realized it’s erotica. I wanted to see how it goes when old school meets new school in the world of erotic romance. Sigh. I’m sorry to say it didn’t go well at all, not only in the erotic elements but also other areas as well.

I’ve not read any other books in this series. I really don’t think that would have made a difference to the bottom line of my review. There are a few relatively major issues that I have a feeling show up in each book. Since the summary below gives you an idea of the storyline, with the exception of not hinting there’s paranormal elements included, I’ll just go to right to those major issues. However, be warned, this is a long review. I just couldn’t help myself.

There’s two elements where it seems Ms. Small is still writing like she did in the 1970s and 1980s. One is dialogue. Most of it is stilted and awkward, and people just don’t talk to one another how a lot of these characters in PP do. In fact, several times during conversations in this story, I kept thinking Stepford Wives. That’s how some of it read, like an automaton, no feeling, no emotion, or the way too much emotion for the situation. There are a few times in the book that work well, but they’re just overshadowed by those that don’t.

Along this same line, there are a lot of inconsistencies when it comes to how the characters speak. An example is the hero, Tim Blair, at one point when talking about an expectant mother used the word preggers. A very up-to-date, today word. Later, however, he uses the phrase “scare the dickens out of me,” and with the inclusion of the rest of that conversation, it just didn’t sound like the same character who I’d been reading about. And it’s not an isolated instance.

To take it a step further, the erotic nature concerning the dialogue is at times very prim sounding between the characters and then in the throes of passion, what is supposed to sound erotic just doesn’t. It’s plastic, wooden, out of character, however you’d like to say it. Very Stepford.

Next is head hopping. Granted, this isn’t done to the extent it was in our romances of old, but it’s still there and it’s blatant. It pulled me out of the story every time. Changing point of view at will never bothered me in the ’70s — I didn’t know any better at the time. But it’s a new age today of both writers and readers who do know better, and this problem is very noticeable in this book when it occurs. Literally a different point of view from a person who isn’t even in the room.

Then there’s a few things I just didn’t like, period. I wouldn’t like them in any book, not just this one. They leave me irritated. First is consistency. A couple of examples.

When Tim is unpacking in his new home in Egret Point, he opens a box of books to place on his bookshelves and he notices a problem. He then goes in to some memory about his father, I believe, and we’re never told what the problem is. Ever. Not just at that point where the problem is immediate, it’s never brought up again. Now I’m wondering about that for pages.

Next, Kathryn is in the middle of one of her fantasies with The Channel, having a rough evening with a barbarian, Temur, who sort of rescues a young girl being roughed up by his men. I say sort of because he diffuses the problem by taking the girl himself to show the boys how it’s done so she’ll cooperate and let every one of them have his way with her. Later when Temur and Kathryn are alone in his room, he orders her as his slave to bathe him, and she does a good job of it, cleaning every body part, no exclusion whatsoever. But within a few paragraphs she’s anxiously awaiting to see what his penis looks like because she didn’t get a good look at it in his earlier demonstration to his men. Huh? The woman, just moments before, had her hands all over that man in the bath.

And since I just mentioned the fantasies Kathryn programmed into The Channel for her daily quota of sex, I’ll just say each of these fantasies are just silly. Way too silly for romance and definitely for erotica. And for a mature woman who wants either just straight sex, rough sex, whatever. It feels like these are just included to get some of the erotica requirements needed.

Another problem I have is being hit over the head with things that make me think the author doesn’t have much faith in her readers’ intelligence. I only have to be told something once and I get it. It’s in the old brain and you don’t have to keep at me about it. The worst example of this is using Kathryn’s full name throughout the book where it just isn’t needed. Ever again. A few times in the beginning is sufficient. I don’t need it thrown at me over and over and over.

Along the same line, Tim keeps thinking or commenting about Kathryn’s “round breasts.” As compared to what? Square? Readers need that same description each and every time a hero pays attention to the heroine’s breasts. We know they’re round and he does too.

I also feel that Ms. Small makes Kathryn, who is an intelligent, confident, and independent woman, and Tim, a charming, educated man, seem rather brainless at times. I take issue with the fact that Kathy believes at 48 she’s too old to date, too old to get married, too old to do any number of things. She’s only three years older than I am. I certainly didn’t like the intimation I’m too old for those same things. I do like the fact that an older hero and heroine are featured, because you don’t see that too often in romance, then they’re knocked down for the very thing that’s unique about them, and it’s too bad they’re portrayed in such a way.

It’s also too bad because I actually like these characters. They’re just in the wrong romance novel. I know Ms. Small is trying to show Tim as an upstanding citizen, school principal, all-around good guy but he’s also what you don’t expect in the bedroom, especially with his sex toys and dirty words. The dichotomy just didn’t work the way it should have.

Oh, Kathy’s also five years older than Tim and has several thoughts or conversations off and on about that. I don’t see the problem. It’s not like they’re at an age that such a gap would make a difference, so I didn’t get the point in talking or thinking about it more than once, and it is more than once. They’re both responsible adults who have lived a good life up to this point, so who cares? There are other more important things to think about.

And the zinger for me, Kathy replies to Tim’s uh-oh moment of forgetting to use a condom with “Not a snowball’s chance in hell. I’m too old,” referring to the likelihood she could be pregnant. For a savvy woman of today’s world, even in small town America, that’s a very narrow, uneducated, and misinformed attitude to have. And Tim’s response to Kathryn at that point?  “I’ll take your word for it.” Please. He’s a middle school principal, a responsible male. Again, it’s just not true to their characters, their intelligence has taken a hike.

As far as my curiosity about the erotica element, I’ve decided there’s a  huge gap between authors from yesteryear and erotic authors of today. Stringing naughty words together and throwing in “Fuck me! Fuck me!” during lovemaking doesn’t make it erotic and it certainly isn’t sexy or romantic, and that happens a lot in this book. I never felt Tim and Kathy truly had an erotic connection in their love scenes. It’s simply intercourse with the F-word being interjected a number of times. It would have been more erotic to have a tender but very intense scene, then add a couple of those explicit phrases whispered back and forth, instead of all the screaming and playing with toys.

Having them playact a version of Kathy’s fantasy from The Channel doesn’t make it erotic either, especially when it didn’t work the first time around. It just feels like a case of a good veteran author trying her hand at one of today’s most popular genres and falling short.

On the other side of the coin, they do have a couple of tender moments and those are so much more enjoyable, more in line with who they are.

I came very close to not even trying to finish this book after the second chapter, but thought I’d better give it a fair shake.  There are a few nice moments in this book, I even laughed out loud once, but there’s too few of those instances to combat all this other stuff. Needless to say, I don’t have any desire to read the other books in this series.

Obviously, this novel didn’t work for me on so many levels. And I will more than likely get some flack from a few of Ms. Small’s readers about my opinion. That’s okay. If it worked for you, that’s great. As much I remember loving this author’s work years ago, I kind of wish this one had worked for me. Alas, it’s just not meant to be.

Grade: F

Summary:

Some think librarians are stuffy, narrow-minded prudes-but that’s not true of Kathryn St. John. She runs Egret Point’s library and is very involved in her community, even down to keeping them up with the latest trends. One major trend she turned the local ladies on to is the interactive network The Channel. It’s there that Kathryn extends her occupational passions into the bedroom by playing out her favorite pieces of medieval English literature. Kathryn is quite satisfied with the princes, musketeers, and highwaymen her personas seduce in The Channel. But her seductions spill out into the real world and reach Timothy Blair, new to Egret Point. He wants to satiate both of their desires, but how can he possibly compete with fantasy lovers? That is unless he can create a wicked plot twist that even Kathryn couldn’t think up in her wildest dreams…

No excerpt found.

Other books in this series:

Sandy M’s review of Ladies Prefer Rogues by Janet Chapman, Sandra Hill, Veronica Wolff and Trish Jensen
Time Travel Romance anthology published by Berkley 2 Feb 10

I’m not a huge fan of anthologies. Sometimes they work for me, but most of the time they don’t. It takes an exceptional author to pull off a short story in the same vein as a novel, giving a reader characters to love, an intriguing storyline, and all those other things we look for. I had pretty good hopes for this time travel anthology. Two of the authors have given me great stories before, one hasn’t, and one I had yet to read, so I didn’t know what to expect. You can say I’m certainly surprised now that it’s all said and done.

Man from the Moon by Janet Chapman

Ms. Chapman is one of my favorite time travel authors. I’ve read her entire Highlander series to date and have loved every one of them. This novella is futuristic, so just slightly different from her Highlanders.

Warriors travel to present-day earth to try to save mankind from a catastrophic event that will happen in the future. When one of them is injured, they mistake veterinarian Isobel for an M.D.

Isobel is a strong, intelligent, and very capable woman, although one who has not been lucky in love. As she spends time with these extraordinary men, she begins to believe their story and eventually agrees to help them the best she can in their monumental and incredible task.

In the end she may have to make the ultimate sacrifice, or will she find the love that has always been out of her before?

Grade: B

Summary:

In Maine four men abduct Isobel the veterinarian because their leader Daniel has a tree limb rooted into his body. She is to care for him although she is not a human doctor. They conceal they search for an extinct animal to save mankind in their time, 2243.

No excerpt found.

Tomorrow Is Another Day by Sandra Hill

At the time I read this Sandra Hill story, I’d  read only one other of her books and I didn’t care for it much at all. In fact, I didn’t finish it. So things didn’t bode well for me when I began this short one. And things did not get better.

As the title indicates, there’s a sort of leaning toward Gone with the Wind, but even that doesn’t save this mess. The time travel portion is actually okay. The heroine is thrown back to 1870 where she meets a man who looks eerily like someone she met in present day. What I didn’t like about this story is the attitudes of both the hero and the heroine.

Laurent is a man of his time, struggling to keep his plantation up and running. Margo, being the modern woman she is, doesn’t try to blend in other than donning clothes she’s not used to. He wants nothing to do with her, she pities him at times, but they end up in bed in no time flat. She even goes behind his back in what she calls helping out, not bothering to think ahead about how Laurent might react to such a thing, which turns out to be an over-the-top reaction that didn’t endear him to me one bit.

From the beginning there wasn’t anything that made me like these two characters, so I never really cared what happened to them throughout the story. There’s just too much silliness going on that I didn’t enjoy much about them.

Grade: F

Summary:

Navy Seals Cage LeBlanc and Sly Simms register their buddy Larry Wilson on the Extreme Dating web site. He is unaware why women keep showing up to date him until his buddies explain what they did to him. He travels to New Orleans to meet owner Margo Baptiste. When an elevator crashes with her inside, she ends up in 1870 where she meets siblings Lette and Laurent Duvall. Margo quickly becomes a matchmaker though she is attracted to Laurent who looks like Larry.

No excerpt found.

The Drowning Sex by Veronica Wolff

I’m becoming more of a fan of Veronica Wolff with each book I read, especially due to the fact I wasn’t all that thrilled with her first two. She gets better and better with time. This novella is my second favorite of the four.

What is done so well is how Ms. Wolff connects past and present for these characters, and love and death which transcend time. Iain has spent twenty years trying to forget how his love died at the hands of her father and also wanting to avenge her death. He’s now an infamous pirate when fate once again intervenes in his life.

You have to read this one for yourself, because to say any more will just give too much away. Let’s just say you’ll love the twists that you’ll never expect.

Grade: A

Summary:

In 1662, Iain sees his beloved love, Cassie die from a stab wound as her father prepares to hang him. He escapes becoming a cabin boy for a privateer. Two decades later he is notorious pirate Black John MacNab still waiting to avenge his loss.

No excerpt found.

Sixteen Decades by Trish Jensen

I’ve not read Ms. Jensen before, but after such enjoyment with this short story, I’m pulling her books from the TBR pile as soon as possible. This one is my favorite.

Maggie has just learned she’s inherited a brothel. Before she has time to really figure out what her father was thinking, she’s knocked out, trussed up and thrown into a shed, only to awaken sixteen decades in the future. She knows the sheriff did it.

Investigating a missing person case, Ty discovers a woman in a shed on the the Rooster Ranch property who believes he’s the culprit behind her captivity. She insists she’s a teacher from 1850, and as he gets to know her, he begins to believe every word she says and fall in love with her in the process.

Learning that it’s a world of difference for women between her time and present day, Maggie is getting used to being her own person in this strange new land. The only thing is, can she trust that sheriff’s ancestor with her heart?

Grade: A

Summary:

In Little Fork, Nevada, Sheriff Ty Coltraine is with Rooster Ranch madam Fannie Mae investigating a missing person’s case. He hears a plea for help and finds Margaret “Maggie” Prescott who insists she was a teacher in 1850 who inherited a ranch from her father only to learn it was a brothel; someone knocked her out and locked her in a shed. She thinks his ancestor is the guilty party.

No excerpt found.

So this anthology is just so-so on one hand for me, but on the other I’ve found a new author to enjoy and two others who I know will keep giving me great stories in the future. I do have to confess that since reading this book I have read one of Sandra Hill’s Viking novels, and I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. So I’m going to be giving her another go when I come across another of those books I have stashed away.

All-in-all, not as bad a time as I thought I’d have with an anthology.

Overall Grade: B

LynneC’s review of Money Man’s Fiancée Negotiation by Michelle Celmer
Contemporary Romance published by Silhouette Desire 13 Apr 10

Last night, I saw a program on TV called “Women.” It looked at modern “radical feminists,” and their main concerns seemed to be with pornography and prostitutes. But instead of worrying about equal rights in the workplace and equal pay, and keeping the workplace safe, they worried about the objectification of women and how they could stop teh ebil. It felt like going back fifty years.

Today, I read a book by Michelle Celmer that felt the same. It advocated staying at home, having babies over having a career, dressing comfortably instead of dressing up, going with the flow instead of working hard for independence and self-respect.

Melody was a confident woman who sometimes took the lead in bed and did some kinky things, which, apart from videoing themselves, didn’t seem to amount to much. But she felt she was forcing it. Ash, her partner, was supposed to be sterile after a bout with cancer in his childhood but when Mel finds herself pregnant, she leaves him rather than tell him about the baby and face his denials. So, although Celmer tries to backpedal later, this immediately condemns kink and adventurous sex as wrong and wicked. Do that, and you’ll never find true lurve. Sex is a complex thing, and the longer a couple stay together, the more complex it can get. Kink, simple lovemaking and sex in the shower, on the stairs etc all play a part in a rich sex life. It doesn’t have to involve hearts and minds every time, it doesn’t have to be “making love” instead of bonking. It all plays its part. True, Mel and Ash seemed to have lost that spark, but it doesn’t just happen, you have to work at it. So Mel rebooted.

I hated that Mel ran away. Babies are people too, and they deserve everything they can get to give them a good start in life. Mel should have kept Ash in touch, should have insisted on paternal rights, because he was rich. She could have proved paternity beyond doubt by a post birth DNA test. But oh no, she runs away. Needless to say she has no money of her own, other than what she’d “saved” (stolen) from Ash.

But a couple of months in, she has a car accident and loses her memory and her baby. So Ash arrives at the hospital, and to get access to her, he says he’s her fiancé. Eyes rolling to the back of your head yet? It gets worse.

I’m not a big fan of the amnesia plot, but Celmer does this bit right. Mel has had serious head injuries, not just a knock on the head, and through the rest of the story, her memory comes back in bits and pieces. Amnesia, if treated properly, can be an interesting plot device, but its misuse and overuse a few years ago gave it a bad name. Also, it smacks of “deus ex machina.”

Mel becomes a sweet girl. She doesn’t like push up, lacy bras because she thinks they are instruments of torture. I was grumbling through this bit because honestly, as a lacy, underwired bra wearer, I can say they are not. The lace is either soft or lined in something comfortable and the underwires mean you can run for a bus without knocking yourself out. She doesn’t like the posh clothes in her closet and prefers jeans and t-shirts. She doesn’t like make-up and gets by with the legendary slick of lip gloss. She wears her hair loose or roughly tied back instead of the pinned up, more elaborate styles the old Mel used. And Ash prefers her that way. Pulease. In your dreams. So making an effort and dressing well is equated with artificiality and slutty behavior?

The old Mel had some confidence issues, it emerges, and has covered them up with the clothes and the make-up. Does this sound familiar? It does to me. I did it for years, still do. When I’m nervous, I’ll sometimes use good clothes and make-up as a confidence booster. So the new Mel is confident enough not to do this? I hate her. And I don’t believe for a minute that a sexy, wealthy, intelligent man prefers her that way, unless—and here’s the rub—he wants to control her and have her as his good little wifey. Celmer tries to tell us that Mel is now being true to herself, which is why she’s a better person, and Ash is forced to reassess the way he looks at women. I didn’t buy it, because Mel’s new confidence includes missionary sex and Ash’s new awareness means asking his ex wife, instead of his current partner, about his behavior in the marriage.

I did like that Ash’s previous marriage broke up because he neglected his ex wife, not that she was a monster and a bitch. But I didn’t like that he checked with her about his fertility, and discovers that not only did she abort his baby early in their relationship, she had an IUD. He didn’t blame her for this, once he heard. And what’s with checking with the ex? Is a doctor’s checkup too much to ask for?

I would have loved this book if Mel had gone from being a doormat to a confident woman. Loved it. And the amnesia twist would have been interesting, because she’d have forgotten the background that pulled her back. I wanted her to go to law school, get the nice clothes and decide to have a life, and I wanted Ash to love her for that. It could have been a great book. But confidence to doormat just didn’t work for me.

I read this book, so you know what you’re in for if you pick it up. You might like the fantasy, but all I can say is that it isn’t for me. I’ve enjoyed some of the books in the “Kings of the Boardroom” series, but this one let the side down badly. I’ve enjoyed Celmer’s books before, but not this one. I’m going to look for a Celmer book that I can give a good review to, because I really hate giving this grade.

Grade: F

See Limecello’s review here.

Summary:

“Finally, after an intensive search Ash Williams had found his runaway mistress. Melody Trent couldn’t even remember him, but Ash was determined to discover the truth. Had he fathered her child? And the only way to bring her to his home was to claim her as his fiancée—even if she had no memory of him whatsoever. At Maddox Communications he could handle any crisis with icy calm. Even so, having Melody back in his life—amnesia or no—would mean using all his resolve to keep his heart from ruling his head.”

Read an excerpt.

Sandy M‘s review of Time Storm by Samantha Winston
Erotic Romance ebook novella released by Ellora’s Cave 1 Nov 09 (reissue)

I’m a huge time travel fan, so that’s why I wanted to read this book for review. It’s a good thing there’s definitely some time traveling in this ebook because that’s about the only thing that worked.

Now, I know this is also an erotica and love scenes need to be more graphic, as well as the language than other genres.  But the way certain words are used over and over again, one right after the other with no variation page after page , and it’s not romantic, it’s not sexy, and it’s definitely not erotic. And the fact that we don’t get to know the hero and heroine that well from the beginning sets the tone for a story that never rises much beyond putting pornographic words on paper just for the sake of doing it . Giving a prologue about the heroine, in disguise, climbing through the hero’s window in the dead of night, blindfolding him, and then proceeding to screw his brains out because he’s leaving the next morning and she may never see him again for quite a while isn’t what a reader needs to get to know the lead characters. At least not this reader.

After that night Ian is lost at sea and for years Heather is lost herself, inconsolable after hearing the news of his death. Deciding it’s finally time to move on with her life, she makes the trip to the island where Ian died, hoping that being in that place will help her along. However, she ends up caught in a storm and when she awakens, she finds herself in another time being rescued by a shipful of pirates. It must be a tour ship and these crazy men are doing their job quite well. Or so Heather tries to tell herself.

But then she comes face to face with their captain and he’s the mirror image of her Ian. Come to find out, the captain’s name is also Ian and he can’t remember a thing before ten years ago when he was rescued pretty much as Heather just was.  It doesn’t take long for them to hit the sheets and that’s when his memories rush back to Ian, how he was lost at sea, his rescue, and of course he remembers Heather, both as the young girl who followed him everywhere and as the woman who came to him that last night, even despite her efforts to keep that from him.

The actual time travel part of this story isn’t all that bad. It’s a little see-through, you figure out quite early on what’s going to happen. But I never felt invested in these characters because I just never got to know them well. The twist at the end is pretty good and about the best thing in the book, but that’s simply not enough to pull this books from such depths of nothingness. I just wish the author would have taken less time with the so-called erotic part of the story and instead give us more about Ian and Heather. It would have made the whole thing so much better.

Grade: F

Summary:

Ian’s loss at sea left Heather shattered. Now she’s come to say goodbye. But her love defies time, and a sudden storm transports her to 1770…and Ian.

Read an excerpt.

Lynne Connolly’s review of The British Billionaire’s Innocent Bride by Susanne James
Contemporary Romance published by Harlequin Presents Extra 8 Dec 09

I read the British version of this book, the Harlequin Modern version, but you can also get it as a Presents Extra.

I know how hard it is to read a poor review for one of your books, and maybe sometimes it’s because the reader and writer just don’t mesh. Maybe this is one of those times. I find it so hard to write a bad review. I want to share my joy in a pleasurable experience, not kill someone’s dreams. I can console myself by remembering that it’s not down to me and a lot of readers might actually enjoy this one.

Title – completely irrelevant. The hero isn’t a billionaire, and the heroine doesn’t agree to marry him until the last 4 pages. Blurb – equally misleading. No developing romance that I could see.

It’s a long time since I read a book which was quite so puppilicious – full of sweet children, niceness and sweetness. I’m hoping it’s a long time before I come across another one.

The book starts with what is effectively two chapters of backstory. I hate backstory and I skipped a lot of it. Nothing much happens. I should have stopped then, but I’d never read this author before and I wanted to give at least one of her books a good try.

Lily meets Theo on a plane. She’s on her way to visit her brother, who owns a small hotel with his friend, who is, we’re told with emphasis, just a business partner. I was surprised, because Lily’s brother sounds exactly like a gushing schoolgirl, or a gay man who is trying very hard to live up to the full-on stereotype. He uses words like “divine” and “gorgeous.” Most of the action, however, takes place in England, where Lily agrees to be childminder to Theo’s children. He’s a widower and has three children, who are perfectly adorable, even the girl, who is supposed to be difficult.

The heroine of this book, Lily, seems to be a time traveller from the 1950’s. She’s a great cook, thinks about things that are nice and sweet and – her word – pure. And pretty, and probably the youngest 26 year old I’ve ever read. Lily lays the table at one point and thinks it looks as wonderful as an advertisement.

The hero is a doctor, a paediatrician, and although his house is, apparently very nice, a billionaire he isn’t. They go on holiday to a hotel in England, as, at one time, middle-class English people tended to do. He’s described as handsome, but I never really got a feel for him. He goes to work, loves his children and at the end of the story, decides he loves Lily.

Lily arrives at his home, bringing sweets for the children. She bathes the boys the first night. Reading through this part, all I could think of was – danger, danger!

And this is one of the reasons I can’t give the book a higher grade. Lily has drifted from being a cook into doing childminding. She doesn’t have any relevant qualifications, isn’t asked for any. At this point I checked to see the publication date of this book, almost sure it was an older reprint. It isn’t. Everyone in England who looks after children they are not closely related to is required to hold a licence from the local authorities, saying they’ve been vetted and their background is thoroughly checked. Lily doesn’t seem to have anything except a sweet nature. And a dubious background which would have made the authorities study her carefully.

This is not a well-written book, and I really feel it could have done with more thorough editing. It was full of those irritations that my editors will always question. “She thought to herself,” “he shrugged inwardly,” and there are far too many tags of the “she thought” variety. There are a lot of words that don’t have to be there – “briefly,” “for a moment,” “slightly.” Cutting them out would have led to firmer writing. And it’s a book of lists. She went here and there, she did this and that, and we get lists of what she wears, what she cooks, in place of much character or plot development. Every character gets a point of view and the switches are so frequent they made me dizzy and detracted from any impact the scene might have had.

There isn’t really a plot. Neither is there a love story. A couple of obnoxious men hit on Lily and she panics (and how did such a nice hero get such a horrible friend and not even notice?). One man does it twice, but neither incident, described in the book, grades too highly on the harrassment scale.

She has a bad background, was fostered out as a child. Theo has lost his wife. They could have healed each other, but they don’t. For most of the book he behaves as a boss, and she behaves like an employee. We don’t really see them falling in love, just behaving nicely to each other. There isn’t one kiss until the last couple of pages, and then it’s not described in much detail. Part way through the book the heroine dreams of making love with Theo, but it’s done so vaguely and doesn’t do much to the story that I suspect it was a request from the editor, who remembered, a bit belatedly, that it was supposed to be a romance. Someone had to.

This book didn’t stir me, didn’t interest me very much and failed on most levels. And then the tooth-churningly sweet, well-behaved children. Regular readers will know I’m not too keen to have children as major figures in romances, and this was definitely no exception. It’s an F from me. Sorry.

Grade: F

Nanny at the billionaire’s beck and call!
When devilishly handsome Theodore Montague meets Lily Patterson in Rome, he is quite taken by this pure English beauty. Theo’s not looking for a wife, but he needs a nanny for his three motherless children and Lily’s the perfect candidate!

Lily might feel completely out of her depth in Theo’s glamorous world, but from the moment they’re under the same roof the spark between them ignites into a passion neither of them can ignore…

Lynne Connolly’s review of The Innocent’s Dark Seduction by Jennie Lucas
Contemporary romance released by Harlequin Presents 1 Sep 09

You know how you’re supposed to always look for the good points in a book? I decided to do that with this review. 

So – let’s start with the best thing about The Innocent’s Dark Seduction. The line editing is great. I didn’t spot one typo in the whole thing, no silly spelling mistakes, like using “they’re” for “their.” And in these days of silly spelling mistakes, typos and appalling grammar, that’s no mean thing and I’m grateful for it. I would love to see more books like this, with careful line editing that means you don’t stop every five minutes to go, “huh”?

The next best thing? Lia sure knows her brands, knows a designer suit when she sees it. She doesn’t wear a grey silk dress, she wears a Chanel grey silk dress, even if it’s a pre-Lagerfeld shirt dress. She likes expensive clothes, even if they are vintage. And she knows just the hairstyle to go with it, too, a smooth, discreet chignon. She drives a silver grey Aston Martin Vanquish convertible, because when she arrives at her Italian castle, she slams its door. Then she forgets it, because she doesn’t use it again. And when her life is falling apart she is wearing a diamond-encrusted Piaget watch. We know, because she takes a moment to admire it before she notes the time. Roarke’s not far behind, and manages to find a hotel suite in New York that costs $20,000 a night. He remembers the cost when he’s riding up in the elevator with Lia, ready for their second explosive encounter. So classy.

Lia is a good girl. A virgin widow, married to an old friend, who left her all his money when he died, stunningly beautiful, highly intelligent, with a fortune that kind of varies. At one point it’s hinted she’s spent it all. Well, she’s given all her money to buy a large park in the centre of Manhattan as a memorial to her dead sister, and for the benefit of all the children of New York. Isn’t that wonderful? Even if the Roarke wants to buy it and put five skyscrapers on it, to create a kind of alternative downtown. On the Far West Side, I suppose he’d have to install helipads so that the executives could fly between that and Wall Street when they needed to, but with Ground Zero the last real estate available there, he didn’t have much choice. But nasty Roarke isn’t going to get his skyscrapers. So rich he can afford a million dollars for a single dance with Lia, he is the man of her dreams. Our nightmares, Lia’s dreams.

More good things. Roarke certainly knows his mind. True, he treats Lia badly for most of the book, but he knows why. She kept her Big Secret from him, even if it was for his own good. It’s his excuse to treat her worse than dirt on his shoe, ignoring her by day and using her body at night. For months. Roarke has ruined Lia’s life before he met her, taking over and asset stripping her father’s business, so he died, her sister died of a rare illness and her mother killed herself. But the business was going under anyway, so maybe he did Lia a favour. But she is generous and kind-hearted and she falls in love with him despite knowing that. She can’t help herself.

We have a magic vajayjay in this book and I haven’t come across one of those in a while. One experience with Lia and all Roarke’s other women melt away as if they never existed. He can’t do without it. He craves it. He just wishes the woman didn’t go with it. And however badly he treats her, she can’t do without his purple-headed mushroom of passion, or his kisses, which are dynamite. She falls madly for him and the worse he behaves, the more besotted she gets. We don’t have enough of those women in romance. Once there were oodles of them, but not now. If you miss them, this is the book for you.

The grovel scene – go straight there if you’re in a hurry. Great grovel scene, really. Complete 360 degree turnaround from complete bastard to sainted husband and father.

I’m afraid this book didn’t work for me, but what doesn’t work for me may well work for you. And if you want to read a book with a great line edit, I can’t recommend it enough.  And since you’ve got to give kudos for good line edits, from me a…

Grade: D-

Blurb:
.
When a passionate possession leads to pregnancy…
.
Roark Navarre is ruthless and relentless. He wants beautiful Lia, and he will have her! When he discovers that she is a virgin, taking his prize becomes even sweeter. But the innocent’s dark seduction has only just begun!
.
Many years ago, Lia was the innocent victim of Roark’s merciless financial ruin of her father. But it’s too late for regrets-soon she finds she’s carrying his child. She doesn’t want Roark, her bitter enemy, to know. Because surely he will do what he’s always done-exact his price!
.
Read an excerpt here.

Shannon C.’s review of Retreat by Mari Carr
Erotic romantic suspense eBook released by Ellora’s Cave 27 Nov 08

With smaller turnaround times between proposals and release dates, it’s possible for an e-published author to get a very good idea of what readers are buying and write books specifically to that market, whether that’s a market they’re any good at writing or have much interest in. It’s a logical thing to do, and if I were a published author, I’d definitely want to write books I knew would sell.  But the knowledge that a book will sell doesn’t guarantee the book will be good, and even if all the elements are there to be a bestseller, the book still has to engage the reader and bring something new to the table, which is not what happened with Mari Carr’s latest.

It feels like the kind of story that was written because both menage and BDSM stories are selling well at the moment. (I don’t know whether this is true, and I wouldn’t dare to presume to speak for the author.) Unfortunately, because this story does feel so much like something that was written for the guaranteed sale, it suffers. Devon has already reviewed this book, and if you are a fan of the author, you might want to read her thoughts instead of mine. Because this book, quite frankly, sucked.

The biggest problem I had with this book was that it should have been a lot darker, and it should have been a lot less superficial. The author thankfully doesn’t go into a lot of detail about the BDSM training that our protagonists, Jon and Night, go through, and she doesn’t use the cult to titillate. But she doesn’t really explain why it was traumatic beyond a superficial explanation. I really wanted to understand exactly why it was that these men in particular felt that they couldn’t be fulfilled sexually unless they shared women, other than that that is an erotic romance trope.

The BDSM aspects that were present weren’t very heavy. They could have been left out entirely, and it wouldn’t have made any difference to the plot. Which is a shame, because I would have respected the author more if she’d pushed the envelope and actually written, y’know, a BDSM story, full-bore, with all the props and bells and whistles. Instead, she writes enough for it to be considered a little kinky, and even during the scene where the boys try to scare the heroine, Carly, away from getting involved with the federal agency’s attempts to infiltrate said cult by showing her what “hardcore BDSM” is really like, all they really do is manhandle her a little roughly and make her call them master. I at least wanted to see more definite bondage, maybe some whips and chains. Alas, no. I mean, at least if they’d gone for more of the BDSM thing, I’d have believed the heroine really was a submissive at heart. Instead, the men back off and decide they can’t use Carly in that way. So, yeah, how exactly is that going to help when she infiltrates the cult?

The plot itself, aside from the BDSM cult aspects, was not only boring but seriously paint-by-numbers. Every plot development might as well have been advertised in blinking neon lights. At one point, I was sending incredulous emails, to a very patient friend of mine, in which I predicted every exciting twist. I was never, ever wrong.

Plus, what’s not boring and paint-by-numbers is patently ridiculous. A federal agency doesn’t have enough manpower to bring down a cult without the help of the sons of its leaders? You have got to be kidding me. They don’t have enough trained professional female agents and have to resort to sekretly submissive school secretaries to infiltrate the cult when it starts up again? Please. Tell me another one. Furthermore, lots of nameless victims of domestic violence being willing to put their lives in the hands of an obvious psychopath like Cassandra and overlooking the fact that she practically has “I am fucking crazy!” tattooed on her forehead? My credulity is strained to the point of pain here.

As for the characters, well, we have Carly, who is a school secretary and sekret submissive. If a woman like her truly exists outside of Romancelandia, I think she should be taken to someone’s lab for reprogramming. Carly is wholesome, despite her sekret submissiveness, and yet, she describes herself as not being like other girls. I’m not sure what that means in this context, exactly, but considering that the other female characters in this book are a psychopathic nutjob trying to pass her evil organization off as a shelter for victims of domestic abuse and the nameless women who are stupid enough to fall for it, I can believe that. Given the other women we see, Carly really is a beacon of intelligence and bravery… except, you know, when she’s TSTL, which happens a lot. Oh, and Carly talks like a woman about four times her age. (I don’t know when I’ve ever heard a woman under 50 actually refer to a group of men as “fellas”. And Carly does. A lot. So much so that it got to be somewhat distracting, because every time she did, I kept thinking, ‘Nobody talks like that!’)

Carly is well-nuanced in comparison to Jon and Night, though. Jon and Night both have potential for being unique characters, but they don’t quite reach it. The only things that differentiated the two of them were their hair color and the different ways in which they expressed the terrible emo darkness in their soul. In fact, they both express the fact that each has half of the other’s soul. WTF does that even mean? To me, it reads like the kind of shortcut where the author doesn’t need to make her characters actual, you know, individual people, so in the end I get the impression that Carly has ended up with two manbots instead of two men. Here again, I would have liked a bit of audacity.  These boys are really, really good friends, but they are as close as brothers. If the author had made them actual brothers, I would have rolled my eyes, but she doesn’t. If she’d made them hot for each other, I’d have liked them a little more, but she doesn’t.  So, again, she treads the safe middle ground of not offending anyone’s sensibilities.  And because I didn’t like any of these people, I felt distanced from them during the sex scenes, and was mostly bored.

Also, the characters routinely refer to their relationship as a ménage. I know this is such a little thing to nitpick about, but I hate when people in contemporary erotic romance do that. I am not an expert on polyamory, but I have friends who are involved in multiple-partner relationships. None of them have ever referred to said relationship as a ménage. A threesome, yes. I’ve even heard triad. But ménage? No. Just. Fucking. No.

I know there are other Duckies on the site who love them some Mari Carr. But this book, with its overly silly plot, its underwhelming characters, and the paint-by-numbers feel has convinced me she is not for me. I can’t even recommend this book for fans of the author. It’s that awful.

Grade: F

Summary:

Jon Walker and Night Thomas lived their childhood in a cult. They embraced the lifestyle, and it was there that they were trained as BDSM Masters. Only when the cult was infiltrated by undercover agent Reilly did the boys learn of the cult’s seedy underside, and help to destroy it.

Nearly fifteen years later, Jon’s job as a high school teacher — and his lust for the school’s gorgeous secretary, Carly — bring him close to the normal life he’s always craved. Just when that life is within his grasp, Reilly returns. An incarnation of the cult has resurfaced with Jon’s evil mother at the helm, and Reilly wants Jon and Night to go undercover to stop Cassandra Walker once and for all.

Shocked by his mother’s return and his BDSM past come back to haunt him, Jon is terrified of Carly discovering his dark secrets. Including the darkest of all — his complex relationship with Night, and his unrelenting urge to share Carly with his best friend.

Read an excerpt.

Sandy M’s review of Bonded by Anne Wesley Hardin
Contemporary Erotic Romance eBook released by Red Sage Sept 2008

Well, I finished this book a couple of days ago and still have no idea what to say about it.  I almost didn’t finish the darned thing, but then decided I should give it a chance, you never know, maybe it will get better.  Maybe it’s one of those tongue-in-cheek things that starts out so silly you roll your eyes with every word.  I’m now sorry I gave it a chance.

Three friends are taking a weekend at the “Castle” where they can live out their fantasies, a place where actors will don whatever persona is necessary to give the women what they want, sexual or otherwise.  Okay, I can live with that.  But once two of the women are settled with their fantasy men and the third is taking the night easy with a book in her room because her hero called in sick, the book goes downhill at a very rapid pace.

Sela tells herself she doesn’t need a man. She has Charlie.  Her vibrator.  And she proceeds to use “him” with gusto.  This was the one of the silliest scenes in the book, especially when the owner of the place, who has decided to take Sela down a peg or two for her nervous but disparaging comments about the “Class A joint” on arrival, walks in on her during her rendezvous with Charlie — and her reason for naming the thing is ridiculous.

The scene and dialogue that follow are some of the same silliness, and not a bit of it was sexy or romantic in any sense of the word.  The words the author chose to use in the sex scenes and the way she worded those scenes just didn’t work at all.  Made it all sound like a medical convention than down-and-dirty sex with a stranger.  But the word usage continues throughout the book, words that just bring the wrong picture to mind no matter the situation.

Daniel Bond is the owner who takes exception to Sela’s remarks about his business and decides to “handle” her himself.  Although the Castle is a place where sex is not necessarily a part of the fantasy being lived, we, of course, know it can happen and these two go at it fairly quickly.  Dan slips into three different hero personas during the weekend, one of which is himself, the one that Sela doesn’t care for because of all she’s heard about him.  He wants her to want him for himself and not “Jorge” or “Randolph,” though she had fun with those “men” during their time together.

He’s determined to keep seeing her after she goes home, but she’s learned the truth and decides to exact her revenge by putting together a cheesy ad campaign for his business ventures.  She’s supposedly an intelligent woman, makes loads of money at her job, but she uses the workplace for an act of revenge?  Just doesn’t cut it for me.  The man didn’t do anything to her that would cost her personally or financially, but she decides to humiliate him in the boardroom.  Doesn’t make one bit of sense.

Even the supposed witty banter and snappy comebacks between the characters were sappy and irritating.  The only place in the book that any sentimentality at all was when Sela explained to Daniel how her husband perished in the September 11th attacks.  By this time, though, I was so disappointed that not even something as sad and heartfelt as that should have been could save anything about this book.  Even Sela’s friends keep the truth of Daniel’s identity from her until she figures it out for herself. Some friends.

This book just left me flat and cold.  The characters aren’t people I’d like to know.   The storyline has been done before and we aren’t given anything new or different to keep it interesting.

Grade: F

Summary:

W hen Sela Wilson requested a gothic hero during Fantasy Weekend at a luxury hotel, she didn’t expect to be stuck with the worst actor ever. Daniel Bond, womanizing, billionaire hotelier, didn’t expect to have to go under cover to play the part, nor did he expect Sela to ditch him for a dildo. But soon, his offer to fulfill all her sexual fantasies has him peeking out from under his mask, and finding that only Sela can coax out the real man he is inside.

Read an excerpt.

Shannon C.’s review of Never Too Old by Carol Lynne
Contemporary romance eBook released by Ellora’s Cave 15 Aug 08

Well, now I can say that I’ve read a Carol Lynne book. That may be the nicest thing I have to say in this whole entire review. I’ve read it and I don’t wish to ever have the experience again.

As the title suggests, Never Too Old is about an older man and his much younger lover. The way the book carries on about Joe’s age, I half expect him to start reminiscing about his days hanging out with Fred and Barney at the slate quarry in Bedrock. Sadly, this did not happen. However, lest the reader forget about Joe’s age, we are reminded that he is 56. He has a 56-year-old cock. Having sex with 26-year-old Holly will probably cause a heart attack. Are you getting the idea that there’s an age difference that the characters have to deal with? Because I’m not sure I am, yet.

Holly is fairly blah. Since this is obviously part of a series, I suspect she got introduced in some other book you could not pay me to read, and so she comes across as very flat, a vessel for Joe’s sexual urges. There is some guy who’s been stalking her though, although his motivations for doing so don’t really carry enough weight, and the suspense subplot, instead of ratcheting up tension, just seems to bog things down even more.

The writing style in general also bugged me. I felt it was very superficial, with characters roughly sketched in instead of fully developed. The result was that I didn’t particularly care about any of these people or their issues, and the romance (and, consequently, the many, many sex scenes) was just boring.

I think this could have actually been a decent story, if written by a different author. Possibly one who thought more about character motivations and consistency, and one who knew how to write a suspenseful subplot. Since that is not the case here, the best that can be said for the book is that it is boring. At its worst, it is laughably bad.

Grade: F

Summary:
This book features characters from Necklace of Shame, though it can be read as a stand-alone.

A widower of ten years, fifty-six-year-old Joe is finally interested in a woman besides his late wife. The problem is, Holly is twenty-six years old. Joe knows Holly is attracted to him but the age difference seems too much to overcome.

To Holly, small-town doctor Joe has always seemed like the perfect man. She’s spent her life looking for someone who could measure up to him. Despite their age difference, Holly finds Joe to be the sexiest man in town, and Holly is ready to unleash her fantasies with him.

Joe has his own fantasies. Despite his misgivings, he’s ready to explore the sensual side of himself with Holly. He just hopes her heart is in it as much as his own.

Read an excerpt.

Gwen’s review of Insatiable Desire (The Demonborn, Book 1) by Rita Herron
Contemporary paranormal romance released by GCP Forever 26 Aug 08

This is the first of a new series for Herron.  The next, Dark Hunger, comes out in 2009.  It’s about a man born of a demon and his fight to squelch his “bad blood” from a horribly abusive father.  It explores his irresistible and unwanted attraction to a local grief counselor (and resident psychic), Clarissa.   It’s part horror, part thriller, part paranormal romance, and I hated it. 

I don’t say that very often – hating a book – but I’m afraid this was one of them.  I heard from other people that Herron’s regencies are very good, though I haven’t read any that I recall.  I don’t doubt she’s a talented writer, it’s just none of that talent seemed to gel in this entry.  I trolled around, reading reviews of this book here and there, and the few I found were positive, so I seem to be in the minority.  I’m willing to concede that this book just wasn’t my cuppa tea, though I had a lot more problems with it than just “tea”.  A lot more than a typical “D” review, so I had to give it an F.

To begin with, the hero is not just an anti-hero, he’s not just tortured – he’s actually not a very nice person.  The first scene in the book is him screwing the daylights out of an anonymous woman and hating her and himself for it. Then, through most of the book, he fantasizes about screwing any warm hole he can find.  Thank goodness one of the holes happens to be the heroine.  However, just because he refrains (barely) from screwing another anonymous one, didn’t mean he didn’t come close.  Sorry – that’s a deal-breaker for me in a romance.

The heroine, Clarissa, is kind of a non-entity.  We’re not told much about her other than she’s a psychic from a family of psychics.  We know her mom committed suicide.  But that’s about it.  Clarissa knew the hero when they were children, and other than that, we know nothing about her.  I need more than that to identify with such an important character.

Because the hero is an ass and the heroine is underdeveloped, I totally didn’t believe in the love story.  For a variety of reasons – none of which are reasonable – the h/h spend most of the book actively avoiding each other.   They refrain so much that by the time they actually do come together, just when I should have been whooping it up glad for the union, I simply rolled my eyes.  The h/h sex was steamy but unsatisfactory – I didn’t feel the ‘lurve’.

The next problem I had was how graphic the horror elements were.  I like a good fright – LOVE thrillers like Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta novels – but Insatiable Desire goes just a step or two too far.  Herron gives us details about the murders and the poor victims (as spirits) that I, frankly, could have done without, so some of it seemed gratuitous.  I’m not a prude when it comes to blood and guts, but I like it to have a purpose.  All the overkill (heh) did was squick me out.

Adding insult to injury, I felt the paranormal elements were repetitive and unimaginative.   Those that were described were confusing – I couldn’t tell what it was that the hero was doing when he was supposedly using his powers.  These elements – Zion’s powers, Pan and his shenanigans, and the hero’s abilities – had me rolling my eyes.  A lot.  Again, I just didn’t believe in them or see their purpose.

The next problem I had was how obtuse several of the characters seemed to be, and, as a result, how slow the plot moved along. You know how when you’re watching one of the Halloween movies and you yell at the characters on the screen, “DON’T OPEN THAT DOOR!” Well, this book has a lot of that.  The characters kept trying to figure out who was committing all the murders and yet they seemed to dither around doing a lot of nothing.  There was no real crime solving, no real analysis.  Just a lot of shuttling from one location to another with seemingly no plan or purpose.  Suddenly one character would seem to show up at a location with no reason to be there.  It was odd and confusing.

And can I bring up one small thing that bugged me several times?  I couldn’t tell what kind of chairs people were sitting on.  Chairs in the Sheriff’s office, for example – they’re described as “cane back,” then I read “wood slatted.”  Which one were they?  And souldn’t they have been metal or plastic?  It’s a small thing, but it kept pulling me out of the story.

So, the character development was uneven, the story arcs confusing, the details weren’t well thought out, and a lot of eye-rolling at critical points.  All this adds up to a very bad grade from me.  I do wish it had been better.  I’m sending this book on to another reviewer – perhaps it will fit them more.  I’m willing to try Herron again, though I doubt it will be this series – maybe one of her historicals.

Grade: F

Summary:

CAN SHE DARE TO TRUST HER HEART

Plagued by graphic visions and the desperate cries of murder victims, psychic Clarissa King will do anything to stop the brutal killer targeting her hometown — even work alongside the dangerously sexy FBI agent who thinks she’s a fraud. He’s the one man who sparks a hunger she never imagined possible – and the one man she should fear…

WHEN HIS SOUL BELONGS TO THE DARK?

Vincent Valtrez knows how to get inside a serial killer’s mind. But with a dangerous past and a secret to keep, he wants nothing to do with this gorgeous psychic – especially since just the thought of her luscious body ignites a dark, irrepressible desire he’s determined to keep at bay. When the killer they seek turns out to be demonic and otherworldly, Vincent learns his connection to the murderer is more than just hunger and prey. Will the darkness inside Vincent claim him…or will he save Clarissa – and himself – from the evil that threatens them both?

Read an excerpt.

Liviania’s review of What She Craves by Lacy Danes
Erotic historical romance single-author anthology released by Aphrodisia 1 Mar 07

I remember this cover from a “bad covers competition.” I can see why it was nominated – too much contrast, terrible hair, the weird red wash, the nipple showing, the odd pose. (Just look at his lower hand!) The cover doesn’t do much to depict the contents, as I would never look at it and think, “I bet this is set in the nineteenth century.” Of course, at the same time it describes them pretty well. Bad.

Lust’s Vow

Hannah and her dead husband had a terrible sex life (while he was alive). She followed ye olde advice of “lie back and think of England” and it turned out he wanted something more active. Not that she worked on this with him. He just had mistresses instead. But now, armed with knowledge from erotic texts, she’s prepared to learn how to please a man. She starts by observing a ménage a trois in secret. How she knew just where to go is a mystery.

Then, Kenneth Walker, whom she gave a handjob to before she got married, discovers her masturbating to the sight. He hasn’t seen her in years and didn’t know she’d been widowed, but all these years he’s been secretly obsessed with the girl who jerked him off despite the large amount of kinky sex he’s had in the intervening years.

The plot is terrible, the sex fairly silly (Hannah leaks fluid like a broken car part and doesn’t mind someone just sticking a finger in her anus despite her inexperience), and the premise icky. This isn’t “What She Craves.” The person who talks about craving is Kenneth. Hannah’s greatest desire is to please a man. Not to please someone and be pleased in return. Just to please a man. Ugh.

Grade: F

Checkmate

This is the best story of the bunch. Dominatrix Cora actually prefers to be a submissive, but was hurt badly by a lover. She’s kept herself on the other side to prevent it from happening again. But now she’s finally giving in. Rupert Roland wished to hire her in the past, and is surprised to find her at a party thrown by his society. There’s not much plot, as is fitting for erotica, but what plot exists is coherent. There’s a brief lesbian scene, which might bother some readers. The bit that bothered me was Cora using a large marble dildo. Hard, cold stone? Not sexy.

Grade: C+

Night of the Taking

Jessica just arrived in town, in time for the Festival of Catus, where catmen and women (called Felis singularly, Catus plural for some reason) round up virgins for a ritual, since they can’t reproduce without virgin humans. It turns out Jessica is destined to be the queen. Abysis, the future king, can only get an erection and orgasm with her. Despite this, the Catus ritual (as illogical as the one in Lust’s Vow) gives the other males a chance to take her instead. That’s really poor planning. In fact, most of the other males try to take Jessica.

Coon wanted to provoke him. As would Haven the next male before him, but Haven would push him farther, he always did.

No, Coon and Haven aren’t given motivations. To add to the illogical, the last three queens apparently didn’t enjoy sex. What’s the point of a mystical soulmate who doesn’t like sex? Other couples only thought their mystical hoo-ha sucked. The paranormal elements as a whole are terribly used. The sheer purpose of the Catus being catpeople is so they can have a bizarre ritual.

Grade: F

Lacy Danes has potential, but these stories suffer from terrible plots and paper thin characters. I don’t expect erotica to be great literature but I do expect it to make some sense. Her subsequent work may show improvement, as this was her debut, but I recommend avoiding What She Craves.

Overall Grade: D-

The Summary:
In first time author Lacy Danes’ sizzling erotic stories, adventurous women are willing to do anything, risk everything, and break all the rules for a taste of sensual bliss…
A beautiful courtesan skilled at pleasing others finds a man who can satisfy her hidden desires… At the season’s most decadent orgy, a prim widow learns how to give-and receive-the ultimate pleasure… In a mysterious erotic ritual in a small English village, a young woman is chosen by a wickedly seductive green-eyed male to be his mate-and his queen…

Checkmate
Courtesan Cora Durand longs to find a man to satisfy her own hidden desires. Rupert Roland has dreamed of having beautiful, defiant Cora at his carnal mercy,and when each gets their wish, the outcome is pure ecstasy….

Lust’s Vow
Hannah Rosworth’s late husband claimed that she was too sexually inexperienced for his tastes. But Kenneth Walker, an infamous rake, can see the fire beneath her sedate exterior. And at the season’s most decadent orgy he’ll show her how to give — and receive — the ultimate pleasure…

Night of the Taking
At the Festival of Catus in a small English village, local virgins take part in a mysterious, erotic ritual. Jessica can hardly believe she’s been chosen, but the irresistible green-eyed male who claims her will use any wickedly seductive means to rove that she is his mate — and his queen…

Read an excerpt here.

Shannon C.‘s review of Phantom by Lyndsay Randall
Historical paranormal romance released 27 May 08 by Love Spell

There’s nothing more frustrating for me as a reader than a premise that shows so much potential but ends up failing completely when it’s executed. That’s pretty much exactly what happened with Phantom, which doubly sucks because I know several TGTBTU readers were excited about this book. Read on to learn what didn’t work for me, although if you are the author, you might want to have a shot of something handy.

The premise starts out so very cool. Dax is a phantom, sharing his body with an evil creature that wants to smuggle souls. He’s literally cursed, and the only bright spot in his life is Robyn, a woman betrothed to him since birth. The conflict could have been exciting–will Dax manage not to steal her soul? How will he conquer the phantom lurking inside him? But it’s not, largely because the characters didn’t work for me, and I never really saw much growth in either of them.

Dax, for example, meets Robyn when he’s twelve and she’s seven. He becomes infatuated with her after a five minute conversation, and he thinks to himself that she smells like hope. I kept wondering what exactly hope smelled like, and then I kept picturing Robyn as played by some seven-year-olds I knew and found Dax’s infatuation creepy and misplaced. After five minutes, I wasn’t convinced she became the sole reason for him not succumbing to the darkness. Once Dax and Robyn hook up later, he spends so much time pushing her away and then finding he can’t resist her that I wanted to shout at him to make up his damn mind already.

As for Robyn, well, I didn’t share Dax’s infatuation with her. Honestly, there’s not enough to her except that she’s that lovely combination of TSTL and Mary Sue. She has special gifts, gifts that haven’t developed but which apparently help draw her to the phantom inside Dax. And she is forever tearing off after Dax even when he has good reasons for not wanting her to endanger herself. I also thought after some of the stuff she went through that she was way too quick to trust him under the circumstances. She’s also one of those characters that has stuff happening to her rather than making things happen.

Basically, I felt like both Dax and Robyn never transcended past being “characters in a romance novel”. They don’t react like normal people, they don’t talk like normal people, and the novel itself follows familiar plot patterns. The villains are predictably one-note and cartoonish and not nearly as menacing as they’re supposed to be, and when the major villain is dispatched, it’s rather anticlimactic.

I really wish I could have liked this book, and I think it will appeal to many people. But I actively disliked the characters so much that I couldn’t get invested in anything else that was going on. My advice? Try almost any other historical gothic paranormal. This isn’t even worth seeking out used.

Grade: F

Summary:

Every night at midnight Dax could start to feel the change. The curse that made him less human as the Phantom inside struggled to take over. Then he would hear the ghost riders—their pounding hoofbeats drawing ever nearer, reminding him that he was never safe. Nor were the ones he loved.

As a girl, Robyn had pledged herself to him. But that was a lifetime ago. Now she was a woman. Beautiful. Pure. Every time she was near—her soft skin, her delicate scent—the Phantom wanted to claim her, to bring her body to the greatest heights of pleasure. Then steal her soul. Dax couldn’t allow that to happen. He was supposed to be protecting her. But deep down, he knew her love could save him. If the Phantom didn’t get her first.
Read an excerpt here

Lawson’s review of Highland Knight by Cindy Miles
Contemporary paranormal romance released by Signet Eclipse 3 Jun 08

I really enjoyed Miles’ first book, Spirited Away. It was cute, light and sweet. I was far less impressed with her second book, Into Thin Air. I wasn’t too excited when Sybil gave me this one because the last one kinda made me not want to read anything else by this author. But I figured, I’d give it a try and see if the last book was just a sophomore slump and I’d enjoy this one.

Well uh, I didn’t. It was just more of the same. In fact, it seemed nearly the same plot line to Spirited Away rehashed a bit and trying to make it a little different. You’ve got the 14th century warrior that was cursed (or enchanted) and wakes up 100 years after the horrible event happens. He’s forced to stay the same through time and lives in a castle waiting for the person that can come along and figure out what happened and make him real again.

He’s got his retinue of loyal knights there with him who keep him in manly shape by continuing to use swordplay and fighting skills. Add in the plucky American heroine and there ya go. There are some differences, but it didn’t make the plot any less the same. Amelia Landry is a mystery novelist who comes to Scotland to get some inspiration and meets Ethan Munro and his knights (who are all his family, brothers and cousins) and doesn’t freak out or run away. Because even though she admits she’s a scaredy-cat about most things, she likes the rush of adrenaline.

Being a novelist she decides to write down Ethan and the knight’s story as her next book, because now her writer’s block is gone. So in writing the story and getting the information from Ethan she begins to fall for him. The twist? He’s corporeal for an hour each day at sunset and so they get to make out. For a mystery novelist it takes a long time for Amelia to get to the point where she actually starts to figure out the truth behind what happened to all the knights.

And much eye rolling ensued.

What gets to me about Miles’ books is she purposely puts obstacles in the path of the sex lives of her characters. Amelia is not a virgin, but she’s only slept with one guy and that guy was one she thought she was going to marry. He instead dumps her and moves to France. So she teases Ethan and talks about being celibate for a year, but then won’t let him get past second base. The lone sex scene in the book is, like the other two books, in the epilogue, and by then I just didn’t care.

The mystery isn’t really a mystery, because there’s the deus ex machina moment that fixes everything and gives a very ridiculous ending. The thing that got to me the most in the whole thing though, was it felt like the entire book was a fantasy of Miles’ being lived out, and she got paid for writing it. It all was a rather ick feeling, especially with the 6 foot 7 inch tall overly muscled macho alpha male Ethan always wanting to protect everyone and take charge.

For one thing, any man that tall just can’t be lust inducing for anyone less than some sort of Amazon. Okay, as someone 5 foot 1 inch maybe I just don’t want to think about the need for so much flexibility there. Add in the long hair and the loyal retinue of knights who are also thinking dirty thoughts of the heroine and it’s someone’s fantasy of male attention and what they wish could happen. Which is just ewwww. And makes it where I can’t give this book any less than an F. For the intrusion into someone’s weird fantasy, rehashed plot, and a heroine who’s only modern attribute is her disgusting addiction to Cheese Whiz.

Grade: F

Blurb:

Bestselling mystery novelist Amelia Landry journeys to the Scottish Highlands to stay in a remote 14th-century tower, hoping to re-awaken her imagination. She finds the inspiration she seeks in the ghostly form of Laird Ethan Munro—who has spent six centuries trying to discover why he is neither alive nor dead.

Ethan senses that Amelia may be the one he has been waiting for. Only she can uncover the truth behind the curse and free his heart…

Shannon C.‘s review of Stone of Cruento by Charlene Leatherman
Fantasy romance eBook published by Cerridwen Press 1 May 08

There are good books, books so wonderful I finish them with a sigh and relax into my happy place of reader bliss, books so great I want to visit the world the author has created again and again.

Sadly, Stone of Cruento is not one of these books. In fact, when I was done the only reason I reached my happy place at all was because I was relieved the book was over. Therefore, if you happen to be Charlene Leatherman, a fangirl, friend, or sockpuppet, I would advise either not reading this review or doing so with lots of fortifying booze. Also, if you want to read further, be cautioned that there are spoilers. I try to avoid spoilers, but in this case, I really can’t.

Now that I’ve stuck the disclaimer on top of this review, let me just be blunt. I hated this book. Nothing worked for me–not the characters, not the plot, not the writing style itself, and let’s forget about the romance.

The plot is a great big mess. We meet our plucky, strong-willed, resourceful and probably beautiful heroine, half-vampire Claren, who basically acts as a one-woman neighborhood watch. She lives with her best friend Tina who largely exists to provide moral support and then disappears conveniently from Claren’s thoughts for large chunks of the story, and Belgretor, an ogre who rescued her shortly after she became a vampire. Anyway, Claren can’t control the vampiric lust, so she ends up snacking on an inconvenient number of humans and comes under the attention of the vampire king, who wants a favor done. All she has to do is give the vampire king a stone trapped on an alien world and he says he’ll leave her alone. But soon Claren is embroiled in a conflict on the alien world of Cruento, along with the vampire’s viceroy, the sinfully sexy Daniel, her ogre friend and protector, and a centaur whom she ends up marrying.

Yes, kids, you read that right. Claren has not one, not even two, but three love interests. I also fully admit that the whole three men, one woman dynamic is why I requested the book for review in the first place, so, really, I have only myself to blame that it didn’t work out.

Claren herself is probably the most well-developed character of the four, so it’s rather a shame that she’s a Mary Sue. And she develops superpowers at an alarming rate throughout the course of the book. I never particularly felt that there was any conflict with her character, and she seemed entirely capable of beating down the forces of evil without breaking a sweat.

As for her men, they’re archetypes. There’s the young, hotheaded one, the beautifully arrogant sexy one, and the big dumb sweet lummox who inevitably gets smart as the book progresses. Other than that, I felt there wasn’t enough about any of them to make me identify with them, or, for that matter to find any of them particularly hot, so the romance never connected. Also, and here is where that spoiler comes in, one of them dies. He doesn’t even get a heroic death–it’s rather ignominious in fact, but it is something to keep in mind should you be wondering how the menage a quatre thing gets resolved.

The other thing about the romance that bugged me is that there weren’t really enough sex scenes that didn’t take place inside of dreams. Dream sex and weird voyeur sex is all we get, and since all of it was rather mystical, it didn’t work for me.

The plot is rather disjointed too. It feels episodic, which mostly I don’t mind, except that in this case I felt that events didn’t flow well from one to another. Also, certain key scenes were not given enough detail while we agonize for pages about other events.

The other thing I noticed was the writing style. Every sentence felt the same. They were short. They were choppy. There was a distinct feel of “Claren did this. Then Daniel did that. Then Belgretor did the other thing.” I would have killed for some more variety, even some additional punctuation, not to mention a few dependent clauses. I don’t know if this is the sort of thing, though, that most readers would notice. I was listening to the book on one of my gadgets, which reads the book with synthesized speech, so the choppiness of the writing was really noticeable and I kept hoping someone would take the author aside and tell her the advice every English teacher has given me since high school–read your stuff aloud. You might be able to solve that problem.

With characters I actively disliked, a plot that was, quite frankly, a mess, a romance I didn’t buy at all, and some stylistic issues, I’m afraid I can’t find anything to recommend about this book.

Grade: F

Summary:

Claren Maxwell felt she was misplaced, like she belonged somewhere else. Even as a vampire she was not like the others. Claren didn’t like to kill. She avoided intimacy with human men. It was too dangerous. Claren wanted to fit in. She wanted to be loved and protected. So she dreamed, but the dreams were becoming too real. She dreamt of three men. In real life she would have to choose one, right?

The three men in her dreams materialize. Belgretor, a giant of a man from Cruento, protects her. Daniel is a vampire from Earth who desires her. Jamros is a centaur from Cruento who is drawn to her by destiny. Together the four of them must find a way to stop the destruction of Earth and Cruento.

Can Claren choose between the three men she loves while saving the worlds she inadvertently put in jeopardy?

Reader Advisory: Set in the same world as Prophecy of Vithan, Stone of Cruento contains graphic sex that includes ménages à trois.

You can read an excerpt here.

Limecello’s review of Seduction 101 by Moira Reid
Contemporary Erotic Romance released by Samhain Publishing on 20 May 08

I thought that the premise of this book sounded very interesting. I’m a sucker for friends-to-lovers stories. It’s also nice, and actually refreshing, to have a heroine who isn’t a vamp. Sadly, this book was did not deliver, and I found it very disappointing.

The main (and only) female character, Julia, is an idiot. She’s willing to bend over in 4″ heels to try to get a man, but balks at wear a dress that’s low cut, she thinks her good friend is gay for five years, even though they’re coworkers and spend weekends and various other times together. They’re so very close – yet she just upped and decided he’s gay because he doesn’t brag about nailing some tail. She’s also pretentious. We’re told she’s Phi Betta Kappa twice within a few pages. There’s also nothing [that] shocking about the male fantasy of a woman making any meal for him in lingerie (or naked), yet it freaks Julia out for pages.

Another thing that bothered me was the mixing of cultures. Random points from The Art of War – Chinese-and even more random use of the word sensei - Japanese- for even less reason. Nobody goes around randomly saying sensei - not even people who speak Japanese. The similes went too far for me, the imagery was perfect… and then the sentence would continue on, and the description would become cheesy. E.g. “Eric said her name against her lips with [quiet] reverence.” But the sentence is “Eric said her name against her lips with the quiet reverence of someone speaking inside a cathedral.” Considering he’s feeling her up, it just seems wrong.

Eric, the “hero,” annoyed me too. For his part, he couldn’t decide what he was. Obviously he’s nice and sensitive – so much so that Julia thought he was gay (Yeah, I can’t get over that). But once they get together, Eric becomes something of an ass, telling her she has to submit to him, do what he says, etc. Then he tells her she belongs to him. Maybe it’s supposed to be hot – all primitive like the shifter/were-heroes, but the impression I got here, was not the same. It feels like Ms. Reid is trying too hard.

Julia supposedly knows nothing about sex, but she has no problem unzipping the Eric’s pants and grabbing him when they’re only kissing, so really, try pulling the other one. I felt that there was also a extremely unnecessary bondage scene. It didn’t add anything to the sex, or Eric and Julia’s relationship. Reading it only irritated me.

This book read like too many used clichés and badly put together catch phrases and punch lines from other books. The premise could be interesting and cute, but the story does not deliver.

Grade: F

     Summary: 

     No one knows the advertising game better than Julia-sell the sizzle, not the steak. However, selling sirloin and selling herself are two different things. When she tries to generate sizzle in a coworker, he’s more interested in paper shuffling than anything juicy she has to offer.

     Eric, her long-time best friend and co-worker, feels the sizzle all right. The sizzle of the rare and beautiful Julia…and a searing jealousy as he watches her try to seduce another man. If Julia is ready to hit the sheets with someone, he’s determined it’s going to be him. But he needs a plan. Like her clients, Julia doesn’t respond to the direct approach; she needs to learn to generate her own heat.

     So Eric cooks up his own little continuing education class. Something he likes to call Seduction 101.

     Read an excerpt here.

LauraD’s review of Guilty by Karen Robards
Romantic Suspense released by Putnam 1 Apr 08

I’ve got more than one Karen Robards title on my keeper shelf, but Guilty got tossed into the UBS box so hard and fast it scared my cat. I’m guessing others will disagree with me, but I just can’t identify with a hypocritical heroine. (Possible slight spoilers in review)

Fifteen year old Kat Kominski and her pals are having a night out, when one of them accidentally shoots and kills an off duty policeman in a robbery gone bad. They flee, and the killer is never identified or caught. Present day, “Kate White” is a single mom, and a prosecutor in the DA’s office. One of Kate’s former friends is now a career criminal, and begins blackmailing Kate. Meanwhile, hot Detective Tom Braga keeps turning up, asking Kate questions about her past and somehow making himself a part of her and her son’s lives.

I’ll just lay my main problem out straight. Kate’s a liar. At a young age, she gets caught up in a crime, and she never reports it. She goes to college, then to law school, and then (despite a goal of rapid financial success) goes to work for the D.A. Keeps lying! A criminal begins blackmailing her, so she tells more lies! To the detective! That she’s falling in love with!

Kate lies until it’s beyond stupid to keep lying, tells more lies to explain away inconsistencies, and when the truth finally comes out, she never apologizes.

Good ol’ Detective Tom has surely earned himself some grovel, but he does not get it from Kate. Poor Tom. Oh yes, did I mention that Tom has a Tragic Secret in his Past That Has Kept Him From Loving Again? Or Kate’s Eerily Mature 9 year old? Or Tom’s Big Noisy Loveable Italian Family? I could go on, but I’m tired of capitalizing.

Really, I’m sorry Karen Robards. I wanted to like Guilty. I tried to read it a second time to see if I liked it any better, but I couldn’t do it.

Grade: F

     Blurb:

     One cold November night when Kat White was fifteen years old, she and some friends held up a convenience store. In the heat of the moment, one of the others shot and killed an off-duty cop moonlighting as a security guard. Kat and her pals fled the scene in a panic, and no one was caught.

     Sixteen years later, Kat-now Kate-has built a new life for herself. Now a single mom with an eight-year-old son, she works as a prosecutor in the Philadelphia DA’s office. But her dark past rears its head when she walks into court one day and discovers that she is to prosecute Mario Castellanos, one of her friends from that terrible night.

     Kate is in a bind: even though Mario was the one who probably did commit the crime, he’s counting on Kate to make sure he’s not convicted. If she convinces the judge of his guilt, he’ll claim that she was the one who killed the off-duty cop. Before real despair sets in, Mario is found dead-in her apartment, and with her pistol. When homicide detective Tom Braga shows up to investigate the murder, Kate is far from relieved; the two have clashed since she started working for the prosecutor’s office. But when another man who knows the secret of Kate’s past gets involved in the investigation, she learns that her life-and her son’s-are in danger. Frantic, she realizes that she has nowhere to turn. Except, maybe, to Tom . . .

     Read an excerpt.

Limecello’s review of Mistress Ménage (Mistress Diaries, Book 3) by Jenesi Ash
Erotic romance short story eBook released by Harlequin Spice 1 May 08

I think I need to preface my review with the statement that I like Harlequin as a publisher. A lot. In fact, I probably spend twice as much on Harlequin books as I do on groceries. [And I buy from the site with discount codes - so imagine. Scary.]

That being said, I’m still undecided about the Spice Line. First of all, the book blurb lies [Ed.: Like a rug.]. Good thing I read that after reading the Brief. Still, I started reading this, and 1/5 through the first page, I was checking grammar. This is bad news, because I am not a grammar girl. I am the girl who told her 8th grade English teacher, “If someone held a gun to my head and told me to find the gerund in the sentence, I’d tell them to pull the trigger.” She thought I was joking.

The heroine starts out with all the depth of a sidewalk puddle. She’s full of contradictions, and frankly, not that bright. Within the first page or so, she’s bragging about being shown off, and then complaining about… being shown off. I’m not a fan of sweeping generalizations or stereotypes, so, “I always seem to take the riskiest option. I guess it’s a quality all mistresses have” rubbed me the wrong way. And while I’m generally not for taking pot shots, but I couldn’t resist this one. The author just handed it to me when Amaris thought, “I’m not going to get into this… He’s smarter and quicker than me.” No – really?

Unfortunately, I found myself mainly bored during the sex scenes. There was also a major emphasis on speed. “Demonic speed” “lightening speed” “already?” The Spice Brief was like reading a poor description of a really bad porno. The comments the characters made were exceedingly inane, and it would have been better if they had not spoken at all. There’s a twilight zone switch, and the real purpose of the “story” comes out. The first 15 pages [out of 20, mind you] were pointless. Much like gratuitous boob shots in a porno. But no, after some purely awful dialog, it ends – just when you think the story is about to get going, you find out that’s the next installment. Unfortunately, my first foray into Spice Briefs was not a good one.

My suggestion is to read the blurb, and leave it at that. It’s the best part – but here’s a spoiler: Amaris isn’t thrilled. The end.

Grade: F

Summary:

In this third installment of The Mistress Diaries, the bawdy, naughty adventures of Amaris Martin, ambitious career mistress to a millionaire, Amaris’s lover Leon loses at a high-stakes Vegas poker game, and a night with Amaris is part of the bet. Rather than being outraged, Amaris is delighted–the man who won her is very sexy…and even richer than Leon! Approaching the night as a potential job interview, Amaris is dismayed to discover the guy’s already got a mistress who’s not too keen on the ménage a trois he has in mind. But by the end of the night, Amaris is sure she’s got herself a new benefactor…until she wakes up the next morning to find his dead body in her bed, and her rival claims Amaris killed him.

No excerpt available.

Shannon C.’s review of Satisfaction Guaranteed by Isabel Drake
Contemporary romance eBook released by Cerridwen Press Jan 08

I knew going into this book that I wasn’t going to like it. After about paragraph two, I had to stop, remove my jaw from the floor, sigh and shake my head. After all, the e-mail I got from Sybil with the review copy of this book said, “It’s probably more Laura’s taste than yours.” Did I listen to Sybil? Of course not. That will teach me! So, naturally, I only had myself to blame for continuing to read.

Elizabeth Sewell wants a change in her life. Finding a man is on her list of goals, and if she doesn’t, then her mother, her sisters, even her great-Aunt Alice will try to set her up with whoever is available, which sounds about as appealing to Elizabeth as bathing in Listerine. So she decides to do what you or I would do in this situation, by which, of course I mean, that she marches herself to the office of an escort service.

Only, the escort service isn’t in that office anymore and instead she gets Jack Harley, attorney at law. Since disabusing her of the notion that she walked into the right office would mean there would be no more story, Jack decides to look on Elizabeth as a challenge, and goes along with her assumption that he is a male escort.

First of all, can I just say that Jack Harley is the kind of name only found in a romance novel? Every time I read the name, I tended to picture one of those guys who does the voice-overs for movie trailers saying it. “Jack Harley. Attorney at law.” in this big bass voice of doom.

Anyway, as has become abundantly clear I’m sure from my yattering, I couldn’t get past the initial premise. I thought Jack not telling Elizabeth who he was right away made him come off as really sleazy, and all his hand-wringing about how he didn’t lie to people like that ordinarily just made me roll my eyes and think unfair and uncharitable thoughts about his chosen profession and how, in hindsight, Elizabeth probably shouldn’t have been all that surprised.

As for Elizabeth, we’ve seen her many other times before in other books. Of course she works too hard. Of course she wants to advance in her career and doesn’t have any idea how to attract men. And of course she vacillates between bitchiness and being a doormat, so of course she drove me out of my flipping gourd. A lot of the time I felt like Elizabeth wasn’t so much a character as a place holder for the reader, which of course never works for me when it feels that obvious. She gets to live a lot of female fantasies–she gets a caring man who will bring out her feminine side who she can show off to her family.

Probably because I didn’t buy the initial premise, I had a hard time believing any of the romantic stuff between Elizabeth and Jack. There were a lot of sex scenes for a Cerridwen Press book, and I actually fell asleep reading their first sexual encounter. I wasn’t invested in the characters and didn’t particularly care about their HEA.

As for the secondary characters, most of them are stereotypes in one way or another. I expect Jack’s cousin is sequel-bait, and we have the whole gammut of uncaring bosses, evil co-workers, meddling relatives, and best friends to contend with.

I regret to say that I didn’t enjoy this book at all. With the flat characters, the premise I couldn’t get past, and my general ennui about the whole thing, this is one I can’t recommend.

Grade: F

Workaholic accountant Elizabeth Sewell needs a man. According to her well-laid-out lifeplan, it’s time to find Mr. Right and move on to the next phase of her life — married with children. The problem is, she’s been so busy working her way up the career ladder, she won’t spot Mr. Right even if he’s carrying a neon sign. So, being an organized businesswoman, she comes up with a strategy. She’ll hire a man to teach her what she needs to know to get what she wants.

Disillusioned attorney Jack Harley needs a distraction. He’s left behind a high-pressure job with a prestigious law firm in Dallas and he’s determined to get his life back on track by opening a private practice in Houston. When a sexy brunette mistakes his new office for the recently relocated escort service, he’s stunned silent by her request for a variety of men and experiences. But when she asks him if he’s man enough to uncover what turns her on, he finds his voice in time to accept the challenge.

You can read an excerpt here.

Sandy M’s review of A Beautiful Surrender by Brenda Williamson
Historical romance print released by Samhain on 27 Nov 07 (ebook release 13 Feb 07)

I nearly surrendered myself and put this book aside, but I slugged along until I finished it.  It never got any better, though. The negativity in this book is overwhelming and even though there are a couple of unfettered scenes here and there, that’s just not enough to save it. Not even close.

The hero rapidly vacillates between insulting the heroine to wanting her naked. This is supposed to be part of his plan to dupe the princess into not fulfilling the stipulations of her father’s will.  But there isn’t enough guilt or remorse from him about those actions when he begins to fall for her. His emotional vacillation happens so often that it loses impact, if there was any to begin with. There’s just no romance between them the way it’s written.

The heroine, of course, gets upset, angry, humiliated, and so on when the hero treats her in such a manner — and she still wants him, she’s still attracted to him. I never once felt the hero was arrogant. He’s just mean and wants what he wants. Even when we find out why he’s doing these things to the princess, that never lessened my feeling about him one whit.

Also, the imagery in this book is just as negative. An example:

He spit a bit of tobacco from his mouth into a potted bush. The conifer dusted in a pretty white powder of snow, now had an ugly brown stain on it.

Please. This is the hero’s action, for heaven’s sake. Couldn’t something with a little more decorum have been used? He’s not masquerading as a dirty rogue; he’s introduced himself as a duke. Even if I look past his attitude and insulting nature, he doesn’t strike me as a person that would do something like this. First, why would he spit tobacco in front of the heroine? Next, why spit it into a potted bush in her castle? This just isn’t his character up to this point. And, lastly, why give us the image of an ugly, dirty stain? Makes absolutely no sense.

The continuity in the book is also lacking. A simple example is when the two characters meet in a receiving line, the hero is close enough to the princess to be whispering his inane dialogue to her, but just a little later it’s stated he never got close enough to her to know how sweet she smelled. In addition, I always had the feeling I was reading a futuristic-set story, not just a straight historical. The names themselves (Volda, Maltar, Alluvia) of the “far-away” lands is the main example of that.

I also never felt a connection between the hero and heroine, at least not one of love. There’s plenty of lust, but there’s never anything really positive between them until the very end where it’s forced because it is the end of the book. Even the relationship between the hero’s sister and the heroine’s brother goes through a negative stage, although it’s not nearly as bad as what’s between the main characters.

Two or three times I found myself thinking, “Oh, that’s not a bad passage,” but there’s no way anything could save this book by that time. The fact that I could be pulled out of the story and think about individual passages doesn’t bode well for any book. So this read gets my very first really, really bad grade. But deservedly so.

Grade: F

Summary:

     She’s a princess desperate for a husband. He’s a duke…or is he?

     With her uncle poised to steal her kingdom, Princess Katerina must marry. Miraculously, a new handsome duke appears on the scene. His sexy charm makes her tingle from head to toe. But can she overlook his arrogance?

     The future of Dax’s country is at stake. Forced to masquerade as a duke to seduce Katerina and prevent her from marrying, he courts the princess with great success. But when someone tries to kill Katerina, his instincts are to protect the passionate lady no matter the cost.

     With Dax’s deception revealed and her life at risk, can Katerina still surrender her heart?

     Read an excerpt.

Teddypig’s review of Death by Ploot Ploot by Dara Joy
Sci-Fi erotic romance ebook novella released 2 Feb 08 by the author

First about the cover… Ugh-Gah-Lee!

Have you ever felt like no matter how hard you tried you just could not get the joke? Like when you read a book where you knew you were reading something out of a preexisting series and you probably should have read the first book and that the author is going ahead and making absolutely no attempt to clue you in on the characters or what they are supposed to be doing? Well, I am here to tell you that just freaking sucks. How can anyone care about a story if you are never introduced to the world and the people who inhabit it in the first place?

That’s really my initial response to the Dara Joy ~ Death By Ploot Ploot. Which lacks a plot plot. In my opinion this infinitesimal short story should only be read by those fans who have already bought and read Knight of a Trillion Stars and Rejar because otherwise there is absolutely no reason I can fathom to waste your money on this thing. It is so strange that there was not more of an effort made by the author to inform people of this little fact fact.

Here’s a snippet of this fun fun:

Lorgin’s brow furrowed as he thought of a way to put his current disquiet into words. “This is difficult to describe, but of late, Yaniff, I have found myself somewhat . . . ah, flammable.”
A snort came from the direction of the floor. Perhaps the younger brother is not so asleep.
Yaniff threw the Familiar a disgruntled look, and then addressed his older brother. “What mean you by flammable?” Lorgin was at the peak of his virility; he also had a fine wife. What could he be speaking of? Eyes wide, the old man thought he figured it out. Ah, that. He leaned forward and whispered, “Are you speaking of erotic desires?”

No, we are speaking of gonorrhea. That slut Deana! How dare she mess around behind my back! *Uh no… actually that might have made a better story.*

There is just no conflicts here on planet sex. There is just no action taking place amongst these horny manly men. There are however some really vague hints about the assorted characters that wander aimlessly through this excerpt and what their future holds unfortunately they were all previously introduced, from what I can guess, in some other book.

Like Lorgin, whoever he is, is gaining new levels of power and sharing them during sex with his Earth born wife Deana. The half breed brother Rejar, who ever he is, has “held within him an immense power.” Which I can only guess means that Rejar holds immense power or has a big one, that rivals all other holders of power which might be his brothers (We hope!). Maybe Lorgin is gaining on him by using a pump, I don’t know exactly.

Not to mention that all these super powers seem to be tied into their having sex which makes almost every discussion about them cringe inducing to say the least, in a so very After School Special way. I was almost happy this topic is introduced and then unceremoniously dropped like a lead brick brick.

None of this information or the characters that float by goes anywhere though, in fact all of the more interesting topics eventually get flushed altogether so that our Earth chick Deana can have fun introducing the entire planet of Paris Hilton like aliens to the Earth holiday of Valentines in the form of The Three Stooges, because you know everyone loves those Three Stooges. Need further clarification? Vacuous, vacant, void… see inane.

To top it all off Deana loves to tell really really bad jokes too so that is where the whole title of this misconceived stunted story comes from. Let’s just say I cringed over that along with many other precious moments. I was sorta surprised there were no actual singing and dancing numbers with all the vaudeville being preformed. Anyway, I feel I have spent far more time reviewing this book than Dara spent actually writing it or more likely slapping it together from scenes edited out from other better books much like the cover.

Dara, not the do-it-yourself DRM! Um, I hate to point out that there are at least 6 programs that can be downloaded for free that strip not only that particular PDF DRM format out of the file but also the name and address you have embedded while generating it. It took oh, maybe five seconds at most. That was the only interesting thing about this eBook actually.

I give this excerpt, masquerading as some sort of novella, and it’s annoying DRM a big old…

Grade: F, as in…

Blurb:

What happens when Deana decides to introduce the concept of Valentine’s Day to Aviara? You can imagine. How will the fearsome Charl warrior-knights react to the concept of ‘romance’? You can imagine. Time to rejoin old friends and take it back where it all started . . . Aviara.

DEATH BY PLOOT PLOOT!

Have fun visiting with Lorgin and Deana, their family, friends, and Familiars, and see just what is going on in the MOD universe in this hilarious, spicy, heart-warming story that advances the storyline of the Matrix of Destiny universe. (To be read with a cup or two of mir, a sense of humor. Misty eye and pot-holders optional.)

No excerpt available (you’re probably lucky).

These are reviews of five short, erotic titles from various publishers, in various flavors. They are a bit too short to review on their own without the review being almost as long as the story, so I have put together five “Lightning Reviews.” 

Read on if you’re wearing rubber soled shoes…

The Good Lawyer by Rachel Carrington
Contemporary erotic romance released 2006 by Whispers Publishing 

This is a super-short story. The fantasy is sexy and the emotion is anchored by a plot twist that I loved. Recommended for a quick erotica fix.

Grade: B+

From the back cover:

     When Deidre Manning’s days get long, she allows herself to escape into wild fantasies. Locked inside the sanctuary of her office, she enjoys more than just the satisfaction of the moment, especially once a visitor makes it a party for two.

     Read an excerpt.

Mr. Fix It by Donelle Carroll (author doesn’t appear to have her own site and this looks like her only title)
Contemporary erotic romance released Oct 06 by Wild Rose Press

Also, a super-short story. Calling up the cute repair guy for a fling is a common fantasy, I’m sure. The problem is the characterization. Obviously just a sexual encounter between strangers, the author forced a level of emotion at the end that didn’t fit. But where some more sexual tension would have benefited the story, instead we get some faltering on the leading lady’s part that does nothing for the story.

Grade: D

From the back cover:

     Looking like he just fell from Hunk Heaven, Ryan stepped into the elevator. Jill shamelessly sized him up. Building Maintenance. Handy with tools. But could he fix her broken heart?

     No excerpt available.

Sweet Shoppe: Her Wicked Warrior by Melissa Schroeder
Time travel erotic romance released Mar 06 by LooseId (Title is out of print)

This one is sexy and fun. It has some unreal marathon sex but this is an erotic title, so that’s allowed. The characters are enjoyable and I wanted them to be together. Don’t expect deep relationships or plot development. It is adult fairy tale stuff but it’s good. I got some real giggles here and there as well as some “squirm in your seat” moments.

Grade: B

From the back cover:

     Librarian Paige Turner isn’t having the best of weeks. Work has been hell, her sometimes fiancé seems only to pay attention to her when he needs research help, and on top of that, she has been losing sleep thanks to some pretty erotic dreams. So, at the end of the day, one week before St. Patrick’s Day, she stops by The Sweet Shoppe for some Irish Truffles. Before falling asleep, she wishes her dream lover were real. When she wakes up in the morning, she finds out he is.

     Seamus can’t remember exactly how he ended up in Paige’s bed. One minute he is in a battle, the next he’s in bed with the woman who has been stealing into his dreams. Instinct has him seducing her before he even knows her name, but soon he is confronted with a strange new world, and the possibility that Paige just doesn’t understand he is her soulmate.

     Paige decides to keep her warrior, but soon everything goes awry. Thanks to Seamus, her life is disrupted, her career almost ruined, her fiancé has called off their wedding, and she finds herself falling in love with Seamus. But will Paige be able to accept the changes he has wrought, or will her fear of change bring disaster for both of them?

     Read an excerpt.

The Seduction of Sean Nolan by Treva Harte
Time travel erotic romance released (unknown date) by LooseId

This story has some seriously yucky parts. She notices he’s filthy and bloody and probably has lice… and he’s dying from an infected leg wound. So of course she can keep herself from going down on him? Eeewww! The plot resolution completely out of left field and unexplained. I really can’t recommend this one.

Grade: F

From the back cover:

     Wounded and near death, Sean prayed for the thing he wanted most. “Dear God, don’t let me die a virgin.”

     When Nell appeared, she didn’t look like any angel he’d ever imagined. And she sure as heck didn’t kiss like one. But she might just be the answer to his prayers.

     Read an excerpt.

Come, Sweet Creature by Tilly Greene
Contemporary erotic romance released 2005 by Whiskey Creek Press

I saved the best for last. This story is light BDSM. It may disappoint the hard-core power exchange lifestylers. However, it is a good story for those who like sex games. There’s no humiliation, but there is titillation. I liked the characters, but, really, get this one because it’s hot… then put down a towel on your chair before you read it.

Grade B+

From the back cover:

     Jena Flyno works for Tilton Spidermach, CEO of TS Properties. As PR Director she’s got her hands full cleaning up after his debauched peccadilloes. She’s heard about his playroom and she’s not about to become his latest prey.

     Spider has been watching his lovely, but oh, so prim and proper PR lady for months. Jena is elusive and unattainable, and he has just figured out a way to ensnare her. All he needs is one little sign of weakness and she’ll be caught up in his web.

     Read an excerpt.

A while back I discovered many of you see C grades differently than we do here. I thought it was a very interesting discussion and was reminded of it while reading the 60+ comments (from mostly authors) on that thread over there.

As normal most of the authors say they don’t mind ‘reviews’ and as much as they dislike the ‘bad’ ones they understand them. They hate the ‘mean’ ones, the ‘personal’ ones, the ones with ‘agendas’ or where the reviewer is ‘out to get the author’. And many a person say they didn’t do ‘bad’ reviews because why bother.

I have often said I end up buying more books off ‘bad’ grades than A++++ ones. I tend to like many a plot that is played out for tons of romance readers because really I have only been reading romance for about 3 or 4 years. So I for one WANT all reviews, even the ones I don’t agree with. And that lead me to thinking of a book I reviewed once a upon a time, which got me wondering if I see “C” grades in a way many don’t…. what about the “F”s?

What makes a book an “F” for you? If you are an author, do you see “F” differently in your work than you do a book you read for pleasure? If you are a reviewers (be it a website, blog, amazon, newspaper or whatever), is your ‘reviewer F’ ever different than your ‘personal F’?

Is there anything that causes an auto F effect for you in a book but you would forgive if a favorite author did it? What is it? Who would it be? I admit I go into a Diana Palmer novel expecting and forgiving plot points or character traits I wouldn’t in most other authors. Elizabeth Lowell can use nicknames, really silly ones, over and over in her older (amazing) novels and I love them. I don’t expect Julie Garwood to be historically accurate (who knew she did) so I go with the flow.

Things that could be book killers in new to me authors are nothing by those I love. Is that style, voice or a literary comfort blankie?

So tell us…. what F’s you of?

Forbidden Fantasy by Cheryl Holt

Forbidden Fantasy picks up six months after Complete Abandon ends. Ian Clayton and Lady Caroline Foster were two secondary character in Complete Abandon. And well I liked them! Ian was a bastard, in more way than one and Caro was in a really hard spot that could bring out the bitch in anyone.

So when I saw the summary for this book I got all happy, happy, joy, joy. I tossed out my ‘read no more Holt’ rule and WANTED this book.

And I couldn’t have been more disappointed. It is like Cheryl Holt is channeling really bad Thea Devine historicals (Gwen said to explain… Devine has a gift for icky, soapy, sordid family secrets) Where did Ian and Caro go? Who were these people?

Every character… felt like a paper character, they never get a pulse or become more than words on a page. It is like you are reading a very badly thrown together play. Ian, who I loved before when I met him, even if he was a sneaky, bastard who was lying to everyone was suddenly an icky bastard. Caro was something out of a bad book. She is showing up unannounced at a man’s home, staying out all night, asking to be ruined, than saying no to Ian and her family was so bad Thea Devine. And I am not even talking about the father telling the mother he was divorcing her so he can marry his mistress. Hell I don’t know if there was a sane person in the bunch.

I didn’t care if they got their HEA. In fact I rather didn’t want them too. And these are people who I had wondered about for years. So really the only person at fault here is me because I soooooooo should have known better. I keep saying no more Cheryl Holt so I will not have to be disappointed again. But I never ever learn my lesson.

It could be St Martin’s is evol and has me sooooooooo pegged (because it is of course all about me) and they know just the cover and blub to throw at me to make me toss out my promises to myself. Or Cheryl Holt has such yummy summaries but her writing no longer work for me. Or her writing has changed. Maybe it is a ‘it’s not you it’s me’ (tm kristiej). I think this is a good possiblity because Mrs G made the Devine comment with the first book and I liked it! Or maybe it was just a bad book.

Anyone read it yet? I saw it is already out at walmart. I really think this book and the four new reissues are going to do well. So what gives. Why don’t I like her anymore?

Grade: F

SHE SOUGHT LESSONS IN DESIRE…

From girlhood, Lady Caroline Foster knew what her future held: marriage to an esteemed viscount, followed by a dignified high-society life. A sedate existence perhaps, but certainly preferable to her current state – jilted, humiliated, and then hastily bartered off to a man old enough to be her grandfather. Dreading the marriage, Caroline seeks advice from her ex-finance’s illegitimate brother, whose potent sexuality has always intrigued her…

AND HE WAS THE CONSUMMATE TEACHER
Ian Clayton can scarcely believe that the woman he’s coveted from afar is boldly seeking sexual instruction. A true gentleman would turn her away, but the yearning he feels for Caroline surpasses anything he’s ever known. Soon their encounters become more heated, more daring… and more dangerous. For someone will stop at nothing to end their illicit affair and destroy a fantasy that is coming blissfully, brazenly to life…

oh but saying all that…. I sort of want this which is a reissue of an old holt

Allison Masters is depressed. All she ever wanted to do with her life was please her father. As the only child of a wealthy hotel magnate, she’s spent years learning the business and trying to succeed at his side so that she could one day take over at the helm of the massive international corporation. So desperate was she to win his approval that she even became engaged to the man he thought she should marry.

But, after catching her fiancee in bed with her secretary, her life is in a shambles. She raised such a ruckus over the discovery that her father decided she needed some time to cool down. He’s banished her to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to run the family’s exclusive mountain resort for six months.

She hates everything about the famous cowboy community, especially country western singer, Harley “Beau” Beaudine, who has come out of retirement to play nightly shows at their small inn. To Allison’s ultimate dismay, he’s the most handsome, most sexy man she’s ever encountered, but he’s also the most rude, egotistical, obnoxious, and overbearing. And a disgusting womanizer to boot — one who hits on every female he sees.

Gwen Reviews some truly bad, or truly so-so, books
Various types of romances from three different publishers

As most of you bloggers know, writing a review post is a labor of love.  It’s time-consuming and requires no small effort.  It’s a true pleasure to write a review post for a book you love, or a book you think others may love (but perhaps you only liked).  Sometimes it’s also a pleasure to write a review post for a book you hate – you want to warn others and, hey, if we’re honest with ourselves, being snarky can be fun in small doses.

So this post has short reviews for six books that fit somewhere in between “love” and “snark.”  Six books that don’t deserve a whole post of their own, but also don’t deserve to be completely ignored – for good or, heh heh, bad.

Here goes nuthin’…

Review 1:  Taboo – Taking on the Law by Cheyenne McCray
Erotica eBook published 27 Apr 07 by Ellora’s Cave



This novella is about a woman who, after a laughably bad day, is pulled over by the town sheriff – a sheriff who is a former boyfriend, is supposedly into BDSM (along with his roommates), and who has a serious hard-on for our heroine.  Go here for the book blurb and excerpt.

This book is terrible on several levels: the characterizations are awful, the sex scenes are laughable, and the premise is so flawed I think I saw the San Andreas in there somewhere.  I mean, the sheriff having sex on the side of the road may not be that unusual, but in broad daylight, outside, and right on the side of the road?  Nuh uh.  As hot as that scene may be in my fantasies, it was just stupid in this book and I was never able to suspend my disbelief long enough to enjoy the eroticism.

Nevertheless, ignoring for a moment the truly silly relationship between the hero and heroine, let’s look McCray’s superficial and, to be honest, insulting treatment of the Dom/sub lifestyle.  While it’s not my cuppa tea, the reasons behind a Dom/sub choice are often profound and, from what I gather, have more to do with emotions than simple sexual titillation.  Ms McCray fails to see that and abuses the premise beyond all rationale.  (For what I think is a more honest view into this lifestyle, check out the third story in Jaci Burton’s “Wild, Wicked, & Wanton“.)

This novella was simply porn that really wasn’t worth the effort to read.

Grade: F

Review 2: Spin Devil by Red Garnier
Erotica eBook published 1 May 07 by Ellora’s Cave



This book is about friends who meet again at a class reunion and rekindle relationships.  The title refers to a “spin the bottle” game where they use a stuffed devil instead of a bottle.  Read the book blurb and excerpt here.

This story, a.k.a. piece of offal, uses gang rape as an acceptable means of seduction.  ‘Nuff said, I think.  Don’t bother with this one.

Grade: F-

Review 3: Naughty Nuptials – Tentacles of Love by Margaret Carter
Paranormal erotic romance eBook published 30 May 07 by Ellora’s Cave



This short story is about a young couple celebrating their engagement by visiting the groom-to-be’s brother.  This brother lives in the attic of a remote house that has the appearance of being abandoned.  The groom-to-be also has a secret to reveal to his proposed bride.  Read the blurb and excerpt here.

This book wasn’t as bad as the others I’m reviewing here, but all it got from me was a “meh” so I didn’t feel like bothering with a full review.  It’s a cute story with some rather silly, bizarre elements.  If you like a little fantasy/sci-fi with your erotic romance, this is the story for you.  Just don’t expect much.

Grade: C-

Review 4: Whisper of the Blade by Anya Bast
Paranormal erotic romance published 16 May 07 by Ellora’s Cave



I dislike when someone qualifies their opinion before they give it.  I think everyone should stand by what they say – good or bad.  Even so.  Let me start this opinion piece by saying that I really like Anya Bast’s work.  I’ve never before been disappointed by it.  But, then I read this short novel and that changed.  It left me wanting.  Oh, and I hate the cover.

The book’s premise is an alternate plane of existence where extrasensory Talents can be found.   Emmia, our heroine, is an empath and a Justice Mercenary – a kind of judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one.  She is hired by one of our heroes, Quinn, to find out if the other hero, Magnus (another empath), is guilty of murder.  There’s some nice emotional development and hot sensuality, all wrapped up with an interesting story.  Good so far.

There some seriously steamy scenes between Quinn and Emmia, Emmia and Magnus, Quinn and Magnus, and then between Quinn, Emmia, and Magnus.  That’s all fine and good, but somewhere among all the hot, hot sex scenes, we lose the story.  Emmia seems to forget why she’s there – to judge Magnus.  The resolution to the murder mystery literally falls on top of the sex-crazed trio. There’s no Nancy Drew moment.  How disappointing.

Grade: C-

Review 5: A Much Younger Man by Veronica Wilde
Erotic romance eBook published 1 Feb 07 by Liquid Silver Books



This book’s pemise is, wait for it, an older woman who meets a younger man.  They supposedly fall in love and have an HEA.  Read the blurb and excerpt here.  Sybil reviewed it here.

This book just skeeved me out.  It wasn’t the younger man and older woman thing.  I kind of dig that.  I mean, who doesn’t want a young hunk warming their sheets.  What skeeved me out was how emotionally immature both the man and woman were.  I mean, what half-way smart 33 year old woman would let a 22 year old guy (who still lives with his parents) take erotic photos of her with a camera-phone?!  DUH!  How stupid can you get?  And she’s a 4th grade TEACHER!!  Ewww.

Couldn’t the author have picked a more appropriate couple?  The story would have been so much better with just ten more years on both characters.

Grade: D-

Review 6: The Stranger by Elizabeth Lane
Historical romance to be published 1 Jul 07 by Harlequin Historicals



Sybil will probably hate me for including this book in this dump post, but I can’t help it.  I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em.

This book’s premise is a “stranger” arrives on a widow’s ranch and helps her do repairs for food and a dry place to sleep.  They come to depend on each other, love each other, all while managing to overcome some common traumatic events.  She doesn’t know he’s one of the drifters who, 5 years earlier, was involved in her husband’s murder.  Read the book blurb and excerpt here.

This wasn’t a horrible book, but it wasn’t a terribly good one either.  Several of the plot elements were driven home again and again and again and again.  And again.  I got sick of reading about how she would hate him once she found out who he really was – enough already.  I also felt that Caleb’s characterization was inconsistent and he was portrayed as a bit of a coward on more than one occasion – very unattractive.  Too many trite plot devices were used (kid gets sick and is nursed back, hero gets sick and is nursed back, flood, wanted man, rich rancher wants the heroine, etc.)  I yawned big and wide a couple of times while reading this book.

Grade: C-

That’s all folks. For now…

Sybil’s Review of To the Ends of the Earth by Elizabeth Lowell
Contemporary Romance by Avon 01 May 1998

Posted 1/30/5 in live journal (I don’t have too many book posts in my lj but there are a few I want to move over)

I read my first Elizabeth Lowell book that I didn’t like. le sigh, that makes me sad. I haven’t read any of her newer books since I am not much into romantic suspense novels but her historical novels are just about the best evah. Her Only Series is the reason I fell in love with westerns.

To the Ends of the Earth was just bad. Bad, bad, bad and made no sense what so ever. Cat is working herself to death to put two teens (her twin sister and brother) through med school and because her grown mother can’t balance a checkbook. ::blink:: take the fucking thing away from her and make the kids take out a few loans. The whole idea is, if she can just make it to January when her mother marries some rich dumbass, all will be fine. I understand the book was written in the 80′s and updated and re-released in the 90′s but please.

And the hero… he is scarred and wounded from his first marriage (as all hero’s are that have been married before) so he has sworn off women. Well other than to fuck them. So whores and mistresses he gets but mutual sex based on pleasure or feelings isn’t something he understands. I am sorry, after you have mind-blowing sex with someone you think you have feelings for and they offer to pay you – find the door. Quick. She didn’t – and he offered AGAIN. He pretty much spent the book pissed off she had to work and waiting for her to ask him for help money wise. And omg -the end of the book is awful, how EL got a HEA in this is beyond me. The whole thing is like a car wreck you can’t understand you are watching. So back to the UBS with this book.

Then again Elizabeth Lowell has made an art form out of hero’s treating their heroines like shit and then somehow making it work. At least for me, she crossed that line in this book and I just couldn’t see it. But that can’t be said for everyone since AAR gave it a DIK review.

Grade: F

A WOMAN OF THE WORLD: Photographer Cat Cochran has been to exotic places most people only dream about — but all she wants to do is settle down and get her life in order. One last assignment and she can put her past behind her — forgetting about her heart’s disastrous misadventures as she loses herself in the natural beauty she has so far only glimpsed through a camera’s lens. But first she must photograph the mysterious and elusive ship designer T.H. Danvers and his awesome creations.

A MAN IN A MILLION: Travis Danvers is dangerous — a millionaire with an athlete’s body; an enigmatic charmer capable of breaking down Cat’s well-constructed defenses with a buccaneer’s arrogance and flourish. She knows she must resist him, for experience has taught her that pain is the eventual price of the pleasure to be found in the arms of such a man. But caught in the waves of a sensual sea, Cat hears sirens whisper seductively, telling her to abandon all caution; to trust and love Travis with all her soul, and to ride with him on the winds of forever.