Sandy M’s review of The Bridesmaid Chronicles by Karen Kendall, Kylie Adams, and Julie Kenner
Contemporary Romances released by Signet Jun-Sep 2005

I’ve had this series for a while, thinking I’d get to it soon, but, of course, never doing so. My 16-year-old niece visited me last month, the niece who, unfortunately, doesn’t want anything to do with reading, the niece I’ve been trying to get interested in reading a number of times during those sixteen years. The niece who actually picked up a book while in my home during her visit, actually read it, liked it, and shocked the heck out of me. Then she wanted to read this series. So I told her if she’d hang on, I’ll get the series read and reviewed, and then it’s hers for the taking. The series actually started out well and I thought my niece would also enjoy it. But my enjoyment didn’t last long. I’m hoping hers lasts longer.

First Date (Book 1) by Karen Kendall
Released 7 Jun 05

In this first book we’re actually introduced to the bride, Julia Spinelli, though it’s her sister’s book, and we don’t get Julia’s story until the fourth book in the series. It’s Julia wedding that is the connection among these four heroines. Sydney leaves her work and overbearing father behind to check out Julia’s fiance and why they’re getting married after knowing each other for only a month.

This guy has to be up to something, maybe lusting Julia’s money. Their dad, as classless as he is, has made the bucks opening his cheap inns all over the country, including the one in Texas that Julia is now managing. A prenup is in order, even if her sister doesn’t want it.

Alex is the groom’s best friend and he’s been coerced into keeping Sydney busy so she can’t interfere any more in Roman and Julia’s relationship. But that favor soon turns into something Alex doesn’t mind doing at all. Sydney may see herself as the brainy sister compared to Julia’s beauty, but he sees her in a whole different light. She’s witty, intelligent, and beautiful to him. She even knows how to handle his mother, who is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s, but Sydney needs to learn when to help and when to let go.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit. Alex is a true Texan cowboy with a great sense of humor to play off the normally low-key Sydney. She does at times go overboard on the interfering — and her sister lets her but Alex doesn’t — so her heart is in the right place even when it’s the wrong time. This is my first book by Karen Kendall and I liked her writing a lot. I would definitely read more of her books.

Grade: A

Summary:
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Meet the sister of the bride. Sydney Spinelli has her heart set on stopping the wedding between her little sister and her Texas boyfriend of one month! The only problem is, her heart is getting distracted by the groom’s sexy best friend . . .
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Read an excerpt.

First Kiss (Book 2) by Kylie Adams
Released 5 Jul 05

After such a terrific start to this series, this is where it stumbled – big time. Instead of Texas we’re in New York where Kiki, sister of the groom, lives and plays. She’s a former beauty queen, now an actress still trying to make it big. She’s also a very shallow and selfish person, one that I hardly liked at all.

Two friends share the spotlight with her in this book, and this is the first of the silliness that did the story no favors, one friend’s name is Suzi-Suzi. I don’t know, that bugged the hell out of me when reading.  Next are the antics that Kiki gets into, one of which is she takes over Julia’s wedding preparations without even asking, making the most awful suggestions, and the other is the main part of the story and how she meets the hero.

While shopping with her friends, they stumble upon a popular married Hollywood couple who are expecting their first child. A chain of events ends with a member of the paparazzi snapping a suggestive pic of Kiki and the husband. This, of course, is front page news, accusing Kiki of being a homewrecker, and the media then hounds her every step. She ends up at The Affair, a club of sorts where you can literally go to to have an affair.  Okaaaay.  The place is run by Fab, who is often in the tabloids himself, always with a different beauty on his arm every time.

Kiki wiles her way into one of his suites to let the fervor over her notoriety blow over and they end up spending time with each other. There is an instant attraction between them and Fab would like to explore that. He puts up with such ridiculousness from this woman. Even the sexual banter didn’t work due to her attitude. The actual love scenes themselves were good, mainly because Fab is involved. I did like his character, what I got to see of it. He’s not in this book very much, making it more chick lit-y than romance. And I really don’t care for chick lit all that much. Hence, my dislike of the book, I guess.

Of course, things eventually work themselves out, Kiki and Fab fall in love and decide to get married. Not without Kiki fobbing off all of her friends on Fab, giving them jobs in his organizations without even asking him. Even at the end the woman is full of herself. The only reason the grade for this book isn’t lower is Fab, the few times he had interaction with anyone. Other than that, I could have done without reading the darned thing.

Grade: D+

Summary:
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She’s always the bridesmaid, never the bride. But unlike that Jersey girl her brother is marrying, at least former Miss Texas and out-of-work actress Kiki Sonntag can save her brother’s wedding from bad taste. Too bad Kiki can’t save herself from a nasty tabloid scandal. Until it blows over, she’s hiding out in Manhattan’s hippest new hotel and enjoying some perks from its playboy owner….
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No excerpt available.

First Dance (Book 3) by Karen Kendall
Released 2 Aug 05

I was happy to see that Karen Kendall wrote this third book in the series. After the disaster of the second book, I needed a good one to keep me going. I did get it here. We’re back in Texas, thank goodness, where wedding preparations are still going on when the bride’s best friend, Vivien, a Manhattan divorce attorney, makes it to Fredericksburg to help out. I really liked Vivien. She’s, of course, very independent and intelligent and has a soft spot for Greyhounds, saving abused ones every chance she gets.

She has reservations about being in Texas again since that’s where JB Anglin, the groom’s best friend and attorney, lives and practices. The last time she saw JB, she’d just booted him out of their hotel room where they’d had the most incredible sex. Obviously Vivien has commitment issues. And JB now has issues with Vivien. They try to put those issues aside, though, for the sake of the happy wedding couple, but things don’t go as planned. They’re constantly thrown together by the bride asking them to do errands for her, but it’s JB who’s out for revenge, waiting for his turn to kick Vivien of his bed.

When the time comes, however, he’s not able to do it. And Vivien does her best to stay the night, but arguments commence, feelings are hurt, and things go downhill fast. Imagine the make-up sex, though. I really liked this couple. Though they had issues, they still had some fun together, tried to keep the humor upfront, and do a fairly good job until they realized their true feelings one another. That was another hurdle to get over, but they did it admirably. We still get a lot of interaction with the bride and groom and Sydney and Alex from the first book. Thank goodness Kiki is still in New York.

I liked being back with a Texas cowboy who wants to share his way of life with the heroine, who sincerely tries to work through her problems to be with him, especially when he agrees to help out with the Greyhound work that is so close to her heart. Even when these two were at odds, they thought about the other and what they could do for them. Definitely a couple worth reading.

Grade: A

Summary:
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Manhattan’s top female divorce attorney a bridesmaid? Stranger things have happened. The bride’s best friend, Vivien Shelton has seen the ugly side of love—and alights in Texas with the perfect wedding present: an iron-clad pre-nup. But the groom’s good-ole-boy lawyer is itching for a fight—especially one with Vivien, a woman he has tangled with in the past . .
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Read an excerpt.

First Love (Book 4) by Julie Kenner
Released 6 Sep 05

Finally we come to the wedding couple who have been prominent figures throughout each book up to this point. Well, maybe not in the disaster of Book 2, but close enough. Julia and Roman fell in love very quickly, which is what brought her sister to Texas to begin with. He’s nearly broke, sinking all of his money into the family winery while hoping everything works out. That’s exactly why Sydney thought he was after Julia for her money.

But after falling in love so quickly herself and getting to know Roman more, Sydney now realizes he’s a good man and her sister is lucky to have him. It’s Julia herself who is now having doubts. She thought they knew enough about one another to get married, even though she’s never told Roman more about her parents. He does a little about them, considering their fathers have a shaky past. Though she loves her mom and dad, they are quite classless and tacky, and the scenes that get this point across are actually pretty hilarious and priceless.

On top of this, Roman doesn’t seem to listen to Julia when she tells him what she wants and likes when it comes to the important things between them. The next she knows the entire wedding is on a downhill slide and it’s five days until the big day.  They both have secrets they’ve never shared, feeling those secrets would be the deal breaker in their relationship. but when they finally come clean, only more doubt settles in. Choosing to postpone the wedding, Julia feels it’s better to wait, to really get to know each other, but will their love survive a longer engagement?

While I did enjoy this book, I was a little surprised at the direction it took after Julia being so stalwart in the first three books on how much she loves Roman and knows him plenty enough to get married.  I kind of felt I’d wasted my time in all the previous reading. But I ended up being okay with it all because of the way Roman took care of things and gave me a fairly good ending. The other characters are still present a good part of the book, excluding Kiki – thank goodness! – so I’m pretty happy overall with this last book in the series.

Grade: B

Summary:
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Just as bride-to-be Julia Spinelli is about to throw the swankiest wedding Fredericksburg, Texas, has ever seen, in roll her Jersey parents in all their tacky glory—and out roll her hopes for happily ever after. If she can’t convince her father that her fiancé is head over heels for her and not her trust fund, the wedding is off….
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No excerpt available.

Overall Grade: B

Overall I liked this series, with the exception of you-know-what. All four books have now been passed on to my niece, so it will be interesting to get her take on them. I have a feeling, however, that Kiki is going to be her favorite character. Goes to show what a difference a few decades in age is.

Shannon C.’s review of Bloody Mary: Jacqueline Daniels Mysteries, Book 2 by J.A. Konrath
Mystery fiction released by Hyperion 16 Jun 05

Even though I’m still not a big mystery fan, I really enjoy J.A. Konrath’s Jack Daniels books. They are by turns funny and dark, and even though if I think about the books too long I am left feeling depressed, I still keep reading because tough-as-nails police lieutenant Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels is a character I’ve come to really root for.

In this second installment of the Jack Daniels mysteries, Jack finds herself trying to catch a killer who just may be a fellow cop on the Chicago police force. In the midst of all this, her ex-husband comes back into her life, she insists on her mom moving back in with her, and she still has to deal with the pest that is Harry McGlade, her former partner. In the meantime, Jack’s partner, Herb, is dealing with a midlife crisis of his own.

I really love what Konrath is able to do with Jack, and in this book, we actually see her at her most vulnerable, which is a bit of a challenge considering the fact that she does try to be stoic. In this book, I definitely got a better sense of who she was as a person, and I thought that her confusion over her love life and her worries for her mom were great.

The mystery here is as compelling as it was in the first book. We know right away who the killer is, but rather than stick with the formula he used in the last book, Konrath has this case pan out entirely differently, thus causing more psychological turmoil for poor Jack.

My quibbles with Bloody Mary were the same ones I had with Whiskey Sour. I thought the violence was a bit over the top. I hate how every book ends with Jack getting a proverbial slap in the face for her troubles, although at least this time she actually got the glory for solving the case and dealing with the killer. The killer himself crossed the line into cartoonishly over the top a few times for me, too, which made the climax just a bit less hair-raising than it otherwise might have been.

However, despite my quibbles, I think I liked this book just a shade more than I liked the last one and am looking forward to seeing what else Mr. Konrath has in store for Jack and Herb and their friends.

Grade: B+
Read my review of Whiskey Sour, the first book in the series, here.

Summary from the author’s website:
Start with a tough but vulnerable Chicago cop. Stir in a psychopath with a unique mental condition that programs him to kill. Add a hyperactive cat, an ailing mother, a jealous boyfriend, a high-maintenance ex-husband, and a partner in the throes of a mid-life crisis. Mix with equal parts humor and suspense, and enjoy Bloody Mary – the second novel in the funny, frightening world of Lieutenant Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels.

When Jack receives a report of an excess of body parts appearing at the Cook County Morgue, she hopes it’s only a miscount. It’s not. Even worse, these extra limbs seem to be accessorized with Jack’s handcuffs.

Someone has plans for Jack. Very bad plans. Plans that involve everything and everyone that she cares about.

Jack must put her train wreck of a personal life on hold to catch an elusive, brilliant maniac—a maniac for whom getting caught is only the beginning…

Read an excerpt here.

Shannon C.’s review of The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler
Young adult fiction released by Candlewick Press 1 Jun 05

You know those stereotypes about bloggers being nerds who have nothing better to do than sit there and make fun of people on the Internets instead of, y’know, getting out there and having a life? That’s me, except I don’t live in my parents’ basement and I am perfectly capable of carrying on a normal conversation outside the Internets. But I have always been and still am a fat girl. My weight has been an issue for me all my life, and I know I’m not the only one who has ever suffered from weight-related anxiety. So I was curious to pick up this book when I learned it was about a fat teenager living in trendy Manhattan. And I found that I loved Carolyn Mackler’s storytelling. The book is honest–sometimes brutally so–but it really resonated with me.

Virginia Shreves is considered the odd duck in her family. Her parents are both successful workaholics, (her mom is even a popular teen psychologist), her brother Byron is the big man on Columbia University’s campus, and her sister Anais is currently in the Peace Corps. Virginia alone feels like the ugly duckling, the defective model. She’s always been heavy, she doesn’t share any interests with either of her bright, overachieving siblings, and her best friend, Shannon (which is a great name for a best friend, IMHO) has moved all the way across the country. When disaster strikes, the relationship Virginia has with the members of her family is strained, and Virginia has to figure out who she is and who she wants to be.

I’ll be honest. If I’d been reading a physical book, I would have chucked it very hard against the wall when I first started, after I read this passage.

The Fat Girl Code of Conduct

by Virginia Shreves

1.Any sexual activity is a secret. No public displays of affection. No air-kisses blown across the cafeteria. No carefully folded notes passed in the hall. No riding the moped in public.

2. Don’t discuss your weight with him. Let’s face it. You both know it’s there, so don’t start bemoaning your body and pressure him into lying, i.e., “What are you talking about? You don’t look fat at all.”

3. Go further than skinny girls. Find ways to alert him to this, such as slutty comments peppered into the conversation. If you can’t sell him on your body, you’d better overcompensate with sexual perks.

4. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever push the relationship thing. Everybody knows that guys hate discussing relationships, so make it easy on him. Same goes for dates to movies and school dances. Bottom line: Let him get the milk without having to buy the cow.

If it hadn’t been 3 in the morning when I read this, and if I hadn’t been staying over at my parents’ house (where, sadly, there is no Internet I can access from which to blog) I’m pretty sure I would have shouted, “Excuse me? What the hell kind of message is that to be sending to our teenagers?” But then I thought about why I reacted the way I did, and realized that it’s because for a lot of overweight girls, that is the way they actually think. I know people in real life who have said a variation on points 3 and 4 who are in their twenties. And after a while I started to appreciate that Ms. Mackler is, like Virginia, not sugar-coating things.

The book continues to be brutally honest, and it’s clear there are no easy solutions to the questions it presents. Virginia herself is also very honest with the readers about what she’s thinking and feeling. I wanted to smack her a few times, but in the end, she resonated perfectly and I cheered for her when she finally took those steps toward independence and self-actualization.

Over the summer, I have been taking a children’s literature course, and during that time I’ve come to realize how incredibly easy it is to mess up writing fiction for a younger audience. I don’t know how much this book resonates with actual teenagers, but it worked very well for me and I definitely recommend it to women of all ages.

Grade: A

Summary:

Virginia thinks the world of everyone but herself…………

Virginia Shreves has a larger-than-average body and a plus-size inferiority complex. She lives on the Web, snarfs junk food, and obeys the “Fat Girl Code of Conduct.” Her best friend and stuttering soul mate, Shannon, has moved to Walla Walla, Washington. Froggy Welsh the Fourth has succeeded in getting his hand up Virginia’s shirt, but she lives in fear that he’ll look underneath.

Then there are the other Shreves. Mom is an exercise fiend and a successful adolescent psychologist. Dad, when not jet-setting, or golfing in Connecticut, ogles skinny women on TV. Older siblings Anais and Byron are slim, brilliant, and impossible to live up to.

Delete Virginia, and the Shreves are a picture-perfect family. . . until a phone call changes everything.

You can read an excerpt here.

The Marriage Bed was bad. Not horrid. Not throw against the wall…. never read this book… put garlic around your neck to keep it away bad. But not good, it could have been so much better.

I shall blog about it tonight.