Aunt Rowena sez:

moved...

2011-03-20T16:14:00.001-07:00

On a whim, I moved this entire blog over to my Wordpress account. Not sure why - maybe just to see if I could, and I could and I did.

China Rose by Marsha Canham ***

2011-03-17T22:13:00.002-07:00

Sigh. A burst bubble. This is the lowest rating I have given a Marsha Canham book!

Oh, there was some swashbuckling, and talk of ships. But it was mostly a rather odd tale of 3 brothers. China Rose is the heroine, pledged by her late father to marry the eldest brother, Ranulf Cross. She arrives 2 weeks before the wedding, a country miss not at all sure why she is betrothed to this gentleman. He and his 2 younger brothers don't seem to get along at all - the middle one, Justin, is usually at sea; Eugene, the youngest, just seems to sort of fade into the background. The brothers have a terrible family secret: their father went down with a ship bound for France, seemingly a traitor, and the family fortune was lost.

Well, nothing was as it seemed, and really, the oldest and youngest brothers were really quite madmen and unpleasant in the extreme. Silly China Rose runs off with Justin, but that seemed out of the blue to me. There were even hints that maybe Justin wasn't actually related to Ranulf and Eugene, but that thread was never followed.

I just never got into it - I found all three brothers pretty unlikeable and China herself paled in comparison to Canham's other heroines. blah. But I didn't dislike it, so 3 stars it is.

Bound by the Heart by Marsha Canham ****

2011-03-14T21:28:00.004-07:00

I really liked this book, but when I compare it to her books I've given 5 stars, it doesn't quite make it to that. It's hard to be even slightly objective when giving stars to books - I sorta go with my gut. I really liked it, maybe even loved it but... hesitate to give it the same 5 stars as others she wrote!

In this swash-buckling, bodice-ripping American privateer meets British heroine who takes his breath and heart away tale, the privateer is Morgan Wade. Well, that's not his real name - he stopped using his father's name (Granville? I think). He rescues Summer and Michael Cambridge, both children of the current governor of Bridgetown in the Caribbean when their ship sinks during a wild storm (think: hurricane). Summer will do anything to save Michael, but she's haughty and stands up to Captain Wade, assuming he will ransom them. Wade actually plans to return them, but must stop at his piratey hideaway to fix the ship.

Summer is engaged to a British Naval officer who has a severe case of bloodlust for Wade. Ah, this was the first time Canham has shut the door on a love scene - right before Wade sends the Cambridge children back, he takes Summer into his arms and disappears into her bed chamber. Then we are back in Bridgetown, where Summer and Winfield get married. However... Winfield KNOWS what really happened.

Now for the ROMANCE READER ALERT: she has a Secret Baby who turns out to be Wade's; Winfield KNOWS again; Wade secrets the secret baby away to lure Summer back to him because, dammit, he's a Besotted Pirate; Summer goes, intending to take the baby back and go back to Winfield; but she doesn't. And Adultery Occurs.

Then there's a major pirate chase-about, lots of pirate and British Navy deaths, Michael stows away to join Summer; Wade finally gets to face off against the awful, wife-beating Winfield and almost dies but is saved by his half-brother and best friend, and the rest of them lived happily ever after. 4 stars. PS it's possible Winfield became clam fodder.

Penelope and Prince Charming by Jennifer Ashley **

2011-03-13T17:28:00.002-07:00

I really enjoyed Jennifer Ashley's The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie and so downloaded to my Kindle app another Ashley book, either for cheap or for free. It's so unlike Madness that I had to consult Fantastic Fiction to be sure it was the same author and not just similar names.

OK, I get the whole "fairy tale" part, what with Prince Charming and all. There's even a fictional country where Prince Charming is Prince. And there's a prophecy that he will find the Nvengarian Princess in some small village in England, wearing the Nvengarian ring and lo and behold, there's Penelope's mother with the ring. Of course, she's too old for Charming (whatever his name is -lots of odd Nvengarian names) so she passes the ring on to practical Penelope. And of course, Penelope resists his charms because she's sooo so practical except when she is not resisting and they are boinking like bunnies ALMOST because if they do it before the Nvengarian rituals, they might break the prophecy.

I did read the whole story but sheesh, it was pretty silly and nothing like the prose and emotions in Madness. 2 stars.

The Wind and The Sea by Marsha Canham *****

2011-03-13T14:40:00.003-07:00

I do love me some swashbucklin' Marsha Canham pirate romance! And this one is classic - non-stop wind in the hair, pirate-heroine as fierce as the gentleman hero, salt crusted secondary characters, lots of violence and courage and spies and tussling between the sheets - arrrrr!

Courtney passes as young boy Curt until Adrian, the British lieutenant hero, rips her bodice, er, man's shirt to reveal - whoops! - creamy flesh. Courtney's father and his partner are thought caught and hung on the Barbary Coast, but Courtney feels they are still alive and she must avenge the wrongs done to them by these British pigs, well, at least except for when she's tussling between the sheets with her avowed enemy and captor, Tall Blonde and Handsome Adrian of Virginia.

There's so much spying and intrigue - an alleged spy amongst the pirates who sold them out the to British, an alleged spy amongst the Brits who is selling them out to the pirates, the Arabs, the French and anyone else who will pay a little coin for government secrets. There's some misdirection - was the second lieutenant the spy, or just bragging? And the code word Seawolf - could Courtney's father have been the traitor?

Wow - Canham really evokes Errol Flynn movies she imagines with her prose, surrounding you with the howling wind and salty sea air and lust and death and intrigue and... It's definitely bodice-ripping, 5 star entertainment!

Notorious Pleasures by Elizabeth Hoyt ****

2011-03-06T21:22:00.002-07:00

This is book 2 in the Maiden Lane series - Hoyt seems to thrive on series. I liked it - really - but having come off of reading 3 Julie James contemporary romances in a row this weekend, it wasn't nearly as much fun.

In this one, Lady Hero Batten (Hero?) is the heroine who is promised to Lord Mandeville. She meets his notorious brother Griffin at their engagement ball, where Griffin is banging some other woman. And go figure, she ends up with Griffin. Well, it's a sort of complicated tale, with the Maiden Lane Home for unfortunate orphans in the background, and there's gin distillers and informants and Hero's brother trying to arrest all the distillers, and Griffin IS a distiller.

The one thing that sorta irritated me about the story was how easy Hero was - I mean, considering she was raised as the sister of a Duke, you'd a thought she could resist a man at least once, but no, she was boinking like a bunny every time she got near Griffin, including at a ball. But there you have it, it's how Hoyt saw the story. I also thought it wrapped up rather neatly, really too neatly, all things considered, but I still enjoyed it and decided to go with 4 stars rather than 3. I dunno, I use my gut to decide these things.

I'm stuck now - no more books to read, and still 1 1/2 hours left in the boring audiobook I've sworn to complete... I can't believe I got books from PBS and Amazon and read them all.

A Lot Like Love by Julie James *****

2011-03-05T20:44:00.002-07:00

Help! Either I have no life or I read/skim too fast - two Julie James books in one day! Truth is, both - I don't have a life and I loved these books so much, I couldn't read fast enough!!

This one is related to Something About You by characters, making it Book #2 in a series of sorts - the hero and heroine from the first book playing minor character roles. Plus, YAY! there is an excerpt from Book #3 and the hero is Kyle! Oh wait, plot:

No lawyers! ::Shock:: Hero is FBI undercover agent Nick McCall, masquerading as Nick Stanton, aka Tall, Dark and Smoldering date of heiress and wine store owner Jordan Rhodes. It's slightly complicated: Jordan's twin brother Kyle shut down Twitter with a DoS attack and is now in prison as a result; FBI needs to get into a classy party that Jordan is invited to, so they offer to reduce Kyle's sentence if she lets an FBI agent accompany her. And it's related to the plot of Book #1 with original bad guy Roberto Martino, now behind bars.

The H/H don't know each other before she is brought into the FBI, so they don't have a We Hate Each Other history, but they manage to annoy each other a little anyway. She's the daughter of a man who made it big in the computer industry - as in, Billionaire - while he's from a slightly lower class Brooklyn background, so there is the element of Not Exactly Made for Each Other.

And Ms. James is ramping up the heat in her books big time. Big. Time. Jordan and Nick start out with sexual innuendos early on, and the chemistry is thick and there is no pussy-footing around. She paints a really terrific character portrait - both characters are smart, sassy and well developed by her prose. It's funny to me that I can sorta see them and experience what they are feeling from their thoughts, but I don't actually have faces for them. But I like them both very much!

She's also ramping up the suspense/thriller plot - not that the reader doesn't know who the bad guys are, they do - but still, having the bad guys get badder does also ramp up the adrenaline while reading. I like it! No, I love it! 5 stars

Something About You by Julie James *****

2011-03-05T14:03:00.004-07:00

Something about Julie James' books... They're like mini-oreos, I just keep popping them in my mouth and enjoying! When I started this one, I thought maybe I should space them out. After all, how many lawyer-heroines could I read about in a row? A lot, apparently!

This one has a lawyer heroine (Assistant US Attorney) and an FBI hero - and once again, they are mortal enemies. Rightly so - since she put the kibosh on a case he had spent 2 years undercover on, and then he called her rude names on national tv. Now they're flung back together after she hears a murder in the hotel room next door.

This one had a more serious, thriller-ish spin to it since she is a witness to a crime. Even so, James' trademark humor (yeah, 3 books in) was there - keeping me pinned to the futon, turning pages to get it all in, laughing and on the edge of my seat, as much as one can be on a futon. Even with lawyer-heroines and we-hate-each-other similarities in the plotlines, the stories are all different - not even related by characters.

Can't wait til they come out in audio - and I really can't wait for the dreadful Balogh/Flosnik audiobook I'm trying to finish to be over. It's been almost 2 weeks of misery because I can't bring myself to spend large chunks of time listening to Flosnik's iceberg narration and Balogh's interminable introspective questions... waaaah.

Practice Makes Perfect by Julie James *****

2011-03-05T09:12:00.004-07:00

What a fun read this was! I decided not to wait to see if it came out in audio, like the first book "Just the Sexiest Man Alive", and got the next 3 books from Amazon. (long wait lists on PBS!)

This plot pits 2 lawyers, associates in their firm, against each other. Payton and J.D. joined the firm at the same time (I had no idea this was called a Class or Year, like school, in law firms - how odd). Now they are told that only 1 of them will be made partner because of cutbacks.

From the first day they met, they established a rivalry when something Payton said to J.D. was interpreted as an insult, and they've spent 8 years hating one another and playing tricks and otherwise trying to trip up the other. Payton was raised by a single hippie vegan mom, and Payton herself is vegetarian and liberal; J.D. comes from Old Money, Republican and traditional in every way. Of course, the chemistry between them is so electric it's funny that everyone but them is aware of it. Payton is set up with blind date Chase, the Perfect Man, so like her that she always feels comfortable with him - but not chemistry.

James puts them in the most hysterical spots - I found myself laughing out loud several times. And she builds the tension slowly, so slowly, that it takes almost to the end of the book before you even get a glimmer of hope they'll resolve their differences. I kept wondering how they would pull the relationship together in light of the threat that one of them would have to leave the firm, and I loved the resolution! OK, maybe those "realists" will say it would never happen that way in real life - let them eat cake and stop reading romantic comedy! 5 stars

Fair Play by Deirdre Martin ****

2011-03-02T20:57:00.002-07:00

This is the 2nd book in the NY Blades series, and I'm enjoying it pretty much. She doesn't use the humor of Rachel Gibson (another hockey-romance-series author), just the light chick-lit-ish style of contemporary romance. In this one, Janna's best friend Theresa is the heroine. Theresa is Italian-American-Brooklyn-born-and-raised, and feels she has escaped to Manhattan and left that lifestyle behind. Her parents want her to marry a nice Italian-American-Brooklyn boy and live down the block; she wants to restrict her Brooklyn time to her monthly Sunday lunch visit.

Michael Dante was also featured in the first book, as one of the Blades. He and Theresa met at a bar where she also met one of the other team members who subsequently assaulted Theresa and almost raped her. It caused some tension in book 1, since Theresa and Janna were roommates. In book 2 it continues to cause tension and trauma for Theresa, who hasn't dated since that incident. Michael has had a crush on her since the first meeting, and tries to wear her down and agree to go out with him. He even knows her parents - yeah, he's Italian-American-Brooklyn and lives down the block. But she can't get past the shadow of the near-rape when she gets close to him, so she pushes him away.

It was an entertaining read, not too overly emotional or anything, despite the seriousness of her state of mind. There's also a side story of a big company trying to buy out Janna and Theresa's small business that had a fairly predictable ending. I'm enjoying the series so far, nothing great, but good writing and enjoyable stories.

Body Check by Deirdre Martin ****

2011-02-27T19:49:00.003-07:00

Martin is a new-to-me author whose work has been favorably compared to some of my favorites, usually Susan Andersen and Rachel Gibson. This series is the mythical NY Blades hockey team, and their captain Ty Gallagher is the first hero in book #1, Body Check.

Janna MacNeil is his worthy opponent/heroine - a hot shot, persistent terrier of a PR person, hired to help make the Blades team seem a little more respectable in the eyes of the media.

I liked Martin's style pretty well, although there were a couple of eye-roll moments for me (which I just overlooked) in the way the characters thought and reacted. Of course, at first Ty wants to just ignore her, but she gives him her "I'm going to be the pebble in your shoe, the annoying song you just can't get out of your head" speech, and she proceeds to do that all through the book. They bicker bicker bicker then...

I find myself looking at page numbers when the first intimate scene comes up - I figure around 100 pages into the book is reasonable for them to meet and develop a relationship. I think this one was right on target at page 97. There were a couple of plotlines that I had seen before - her family played a big part in the story, including a younger brother who idolizes the hockey captain, and sisters she always felt outshined her. All in all, a solid 4 star book by the end.

Mercy by Julie Garwood, ****

2011-02-27T19:40:00.003-07:00

The second book in the Buchanan-Renard series, this one features Justice Dept attorney Theo Buchanan and brilliant backwater surgeon Michelle Renard. Another of those backwater-bayou Louisiana towns is the setting.

Buchanan is in New Orleans giving a speech when his appendix ruptures, and speech-attendee Dr Renard rushes him to the hospital and saves his life. When her father asks him to come to Bowen, Louisiana to go fishing, he is intrigued with Michelle enough to take him up on it.

That's merely the setup for the romance behind the thriller. As it turns out, Michelle was supposed to have received some very damning evidence against 4 white-collar thieves in a special delivery envelope, but dropped the envelope unopened in the hospital to attend to an emergency. The thieves hired Monk, a hitman, to get the envelope and take her out before she could turn the evidence over to the police. They didn't count on a Justice dept employee and his FBI friend Noah Clayborne to be in Bowen with Michelle and her father as well.

I found it to be a fairly exciting and entertaining read - I knew who (most of) the characters were, so there wasn't really a mystery. And Theo was pretty much one of my favorite types of characters, the besotted hero. 4 stars.

Speaking of Audiobooks 2011 Challenge

2011-02-27T10:51:00.004-07:00

Here is the page with the categories.

As of Feb. 27, I have completed 6.

Pick an audiobook that received a DIK grade at AAR in print format.
Summer At Willow Lake by Susan Wiggs, read by Julia Gibson

Tempt yourself to find a series that grabs hold and won’t let go by listening to the first in a series.
I started The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig, read by Kate Reading, and it's wonderful! I'm already on book 4.

Listen to another listener’s romance favorite. You can find many of our listeners’ favorites in our Favorites and Romance Audio Bests by Author columns.

Listen to a book recommended in a previous Speaking of Audiobooks column (and following discussion). All columns and following discussions include a significant number of recommendations but two columns stand out – Favorites and Romance Audio Bests by Author

Listen to a new-to-you author.
Thigh High by Christina Dodd, read by Natalie Ross

Listen to a romance sub-genre you usually avoid. Do you find yourself listening to the same type of book? Challenge your tired old preferences and discover a whole new world.

Listen to a romance book released in 2011. Watch our monthly new release columns for suggestions.

Listen to an abridged audiobook. Abridged doesn’t have to mean cut up with favorite passages missing.

Listen to an audiobook that has been languishing in your to-be-listened (TBL) pile. Whether your TBL pile consists on CDs on your shelf, downloads on your MP3 player, or a book you have on your library list – just do it.

Relisten to a favorite book. Relistening to favorites is not only an affordable audio option, it is also a great way to while away the time.

Give a less-than-favorite narrator a second chance.
I've been giving Anne Flosnik chance after chance on the Balogh series - her romance readings are just not doing it for me. Grrrr.

Share in your listening – listen to a book someone else chooses for you. Ask for suggestions in any Speaking of Audiobooks column or check the thread we have going over at our Romance Audiobook message board at AAR.

Borrow a book from a friend or your library.
Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor by Lisa Kleypas, read by Tanya Eby

Listen to a new-to-you narrator.
Amanda Ronconi, reading Trouble In High Heels by Christina Dodd

The Deception of the Emerald Ring by Lauren Willig *****

2011-02-21T18:30:00.001-07:00

The Deception of the Emerald Ring by Lauren Willig

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am soooo loving this series! It's a romp - it's a chick lit wrapper around a historical romance - it's brilliantly performed by Kate Reading - and it's a nice long series!

In this one, we have Jeff, who was Richard's (the Purple Gentian) colleague in France when Richard met his heroine, Amy. When Jeff returned to England, he fell head over heels smitten for his love, Mary Alsworthy. In fact, he began to write (dreadful) poetry non-stop in the second book in the series.

In this, book 3, he and Mary plan to elope. Ok, Mary says "We elope or else". He receives an important missive right when he needs to pick her up, so he sends his coachman to get her. Mary's younger sister, Lettie - the logical one, the one who keeps the family from debtor's prison - finds out and tries to stop them to keep them from further ruining the Alsworthy family's reputation.

Only, in a manner that works best in romantic comedy, the driver sees Lettie coming to give Jeff a piece of her mind, thinks it's Mary, and throws her in the carriage which is soon met by Jeff, who pulls her into a heart-stopping kiss. Unfortunately, Mary had figured out that she needed to be compromised to be sure he didn't back out, so she apparently arranged for witnesses - and that compromised Lettie instead!

Meanwhile, Eloise, in current time, goes on a blind date where she sees Colin for the first time since they parted at his country estate...

If I didn't have so much fun with this book, with the whole series, I might quibble about the plotline of Lettie and Jeff falling in love so quickly, with Jeff forgetting Mary right away, and Lettie admitting that she had a crush on Jeff and maybe she was in the wrong of it to have gone out to stop the elopement. That part didn't exactly work for me. It just was a minor disappointment.

Wild Man Creek by Robyn Carr ****

2011-02-19T18:34:00.003-07:00

Wow, this is getting to be a very long series! This is number 12 in the Virgin River series, and I've read all but 1 so far. (OK, I dnfed one too.) I liked this one above average - 4 stars - but none of them have quite matched the first one, Virgin River, for me.

In this one we have 2 sort of newcomers to Virgin River - Colin Riordan, whose brothers Luke, Sean and Aiden have lived in Virgin River and are now married to the women they met here. (Jack says it's something in the water.) Colin is recently recovered from his helicopter crash, his addiction to pain meds and a short stint in jail for illegal drugs.

Heroine Jillian Matlock returns to Virgin River where she spent a vacation week a year ago. She's come to lick her wounds from a bad experience at work: she had an affair with a co-worker who then sued the company for her sexual harrassment of him. She's always been driven, ambitious, corporate, and she finds it hard to slow down and smell the roses - but she soon realizes she can slow down enough to GROW the roses. She is able to transfer her work ethic to gardening, and takes it on like a Corporate CEO, tilling, planting, weeding an organic garden as part of a business plan to sell produce to 5 star restaurants.

As with all of the books, there are always other characters - wrapping up the previous book's couple with a wedding or a child or something, bringing in Jack and Mel and Preacher, and introducing another back story. In this case, the secondary couple isn't another love match, but the result of one: a young fellow claiming to be Jack's love child from 25 years before.

And without even reading the blurb for book #13, I picked up on it right away: Jill's sister Kelly is going to fall for the newest resident with a surly teenaged daughter.

The books are pretty dang predictable, beyond the obvious HEA for the Main Couple, but she writes so well that I just sit there and pretend I'm another of the gossipy Virgin River residents, listening to someone talk about what's going on in Virgin River today. Gotta go, I'm meeting the gang for poker at Jack's Bar tonight...

A Rake's Guide To Seduction by Caroline Linden ****

2011-02-19T18:19:00.005-07:00

This is the third in the series about the Reece family, and the heroine is Celia Reece, half sister to twins David and Marcus of the previous books. Celia is having her Season in London to find a husband.

Hero Anthony Hamilton is a childhood friend of the Reece brothers, and has now made a reputation for himself as a complete rake. Partly it's true, and partly it's a myth based on Anthony's having business dealings with several women - widowed and married - that are mistaken as amorous trysts. He has to do this because his father has cut him off. However, when he meets Celia again as a young woman, he decides he wants to woo her - too late, though, because she has already become betrothed.

Blah, blah, Celia is unhappy with her husband, 3 years go by, the husband catches pneumonia and dies, and she spends one more year in mourning. So - 4 years later...

She comes back into society, and Anthony is still there, having now made his own fortune and wanting to woo her. But her brothers and her mother are dead-set against it, him being a rake and all.

OK, OK, my review makes it sound as if I didn't like it - actually, I've read another book and now can't recall my thoughts on this one except I recall liking it pretty well (like just shy of 4 stars?). I really need to write these right after I read it!!

Summer at Willow Lake by Susan Wiggs ****

2011-02-18T19:00:00.001-07:00

Summer At Willow Lake by Susan Wiggs

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the first in the Lakeshore Chronicles, which I started on book 5 or so (Marrying Daisy Bellamy). I liked that one enough to start at the beginning.

Wiggs writes in the style of Robyn Carr and Barbara Delinsky - romance that borders on women's fiction in that, while there is a Main Couple, there are so many family members and friends that the story is woven around a community more than a couple. Small town citizens and extended families come together around a central theme, and the Heroine and Hero are a part of that larger picture. The different stories in the series continue to build on the community created, just as Carr does in Virgin River, and Delinsky did with Lake News.

The narrator was Julia Gibson - a narrator that had the bad luck of following Anna Fields/Kate Fleming in Susan Elizabeth Phillips' books. She's not bad - she manages to read the narrative well enough, and do passable male characters. She has a pleasant voice - she's just not an audiobook superstar like Fields, or Davina Porter, or Barbara Rosenblat. That hasn't kept her from having an impressive list of works, however.

Oh, I liked her voice ok, and the story was entertaining. I imagine I'll eventually read the whole series too - 4 stars.

Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor by Lisa Kleypas ****

2011-02-13T19:30:00.001-07:00

Christmas Eve in Friday Harbor by Lisa Kleypas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am fully convinced that I only like Lisa Kleypas' voice in contemporaries. I have tried 7 or 8 or so of her historicals, both in print and audio, and found them to be pretty run-of-the-mill, but I liked the Travis series and I liked this little cupcake of a book too.

The narrator is Tanya Eby, who has an impressive number of books on Audible even though I can't say for sure I've heard her before. She's good - she manages to give each character a distinctive voice and personality, and she reads the narrative parts well too. That sorta reads as a kind of "and she's nice too" - I guess what I mean is, while she's no Davina Porter or Barbara Rosenblat, whose talents rival the wonderful authors they read, she's a very capable and easy to listen to narrator.

The story is short - around a 4 hour listen, about half of what I expect a regular book to be - which is why I say "cupcake". It's a plot I've read before: heroine runs a toy shop, hero is a single parent. Still, between Kleypas and Eby, I admit I teared up more than once during the story. Not only is there a cute little kid, but there's an ugly dog too! (Jennifer Crusie, your plot was stolen!!) If you're in the mood for short and sweet, get this one and Bob's yer uncle!

The Trouble With Valentine's Day by Rachel Gibson *****

2011-02-12T19:33:00.000-07:00

I know I've done more re-reads of this books since 2008, but for my own Valentine to myself, I stayed in bed and read this book today. Pure indulgence and lots of fun!

My original review from June 19, 2008:

I am so relieved to say I loved this book! This is my second Rachel Gibson book, the first being the AAR Top 100 See Jane Score. I liked See Jane Score ok, but not that much and definitely not "Top 100". I felt like it was a Susan Andersen-wannabe without the sass and smarts. The Trouble With Valentine's Day has sass and smarts to burn - and it's damn funny too!

Heroine Kate has just left her job and her life in Las Vegas to move in temporarily with her grandfather Stanley in Gospel, Idaho. Her grandmother died 2 years ago, and Stanley has been depressed. He's running the small town grocery he and Melba ran for decades, and it seemed a good opportunity for Kate to help out. Well, she's helping herself out too - after a string of bad relationships and a really bad experience on the job, she's feeling a little rudderless. She had to stop for the night at a ski resort on the way because of the weather. It's Valentine's Day, she's alone at the bar feeling a little blue and a little in her cups when a good looking guy sits next to her and orders a beer.

What the heck. She's always fantasized about picking up a hunky guy in a bar - what could it hurt? She'll never see him again anyway. She makes her move.

Rob is on a ski trip with buddies, and left the slopes early because of his knee. Rob's a former Seattle Chinooks hockey player who had an accident - but not on the ice. He was married, has a 2 year old daughter, and, well, he sorta played around too. On an out of town trip, he picked up a rink bunny who turned out to be psycho - and she hunted him down and shot him. He almost died and it ruined his knee, his hockey career and his marriage. To recuperate from his illness and get out of Seattle, he moves to Gospel, Idaho, where his mother lives. She's a nurse and helps him with his physical therapy. And while he's there, he vows never to pick up strange women for sex again.

He goes into the bar at the resort, sits next to a good looking woman and orders a beer. And wouldn't you know it, she propositions him. WTF? He tells her flat out he doesn't sleep with women he meets in bars and leaves as quickly as possible.

Well, Kate is mortified - crushed - horrified - embarrassed. But, she figures she'll never see him again anyway - that is, until she's working in Stanley's store one day, and he calls her over to meet the guy who runs the sporting goods store across the street - Rob.

Rob plays it cool and pretends they haven't met - and she is confused but relieved. OK, maybe it was dark in the bar or he was drunker than even she was.

Gentlemen, start your engines because now we have the makings of 2 people trying to avoid the inevitable: the chemistry of love! Kate is outspoken and liberal in a small town where it takes decades to be considered a native, and gets tongues wagging with her talk and her attempts to change the little grocery. She's also wary of the feelings she has - she knows she's always drawn to the Bad Boy/Mr Wrong type, and resists as much as humanly possible.

Rob is also attracted to her, but has the additional complications of his ex-wife, always hinting at reconciliation, and his daughter. As well as that issue of not sleeping with women who might turn out to be psychos. In fact, he hasn't dated any woman that anyone in town knows of, which starts some speculation about his sexual preferences, which turns into a rumor that he's gay - inadvertently started by Kate!

It's funny and touching too - I really felt Kate's insecurities and as well as her need to stand on her own two feet. Rob feeds her insecurities too, with his conflicting messages - he makes it clear she turns him on and then he makes it doubly clear he has no intention of acting on it. While I understood his point of view, I felt Kate's reaction to his messages. I hurt with her.

Eventually, with many ups and downs, they manage to come to a truce of sorts, which mainly means now they can act on their desires. But Rob is no closer to forging a true relationship with Kate - he's pretending they have a Friends With Benefits type thing going on. Once that topic is brought up, in front of the ex-wife who makes a surprise visit, Kate is out the door, broken hearted and ready to flee. This is the part where I felt the most like I was being dragged over rocks, along with Kate's heart. There's a secondary romance in the book - Rob's mother and Kate's grandfather - which forces them together again, and forces Rob's hand as well. Come on Rob, it's time to put up or shut up!!

I found Gibson's writing in this book wonderful and touching and funny and true. 5 stars.

The Masque of the Black Tulip by Lauren Willig *****

2011-02-12T16:53:00.004-07:00

The Masque of the Black Tulip by Lauren Willig

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Once again, I'm totally enthralled with the work of Willig read by Kate Reading, this one being book 2 in the Pink Carnation series. It appears that each of the books has a historical-romance-within-the-story that is neatly tied up by the end, while the wrapper, the contemporary story of Eloise, is left open and unresolved.

In this one, the Purple Gentian - now unmasked - is happily married, while his best friend Miles and his younger sister Henrietta are showing a tendre for each other. Miles is tasked by the War Office with doing some espionage to help find a French spy in England, and Henrietta has been sent a note from Jane to do the same. As they each try to figure out the identity, they end up thrown together - and compromised - and are quickly married off.

In this book, it's as if Willig discovered alliteration, which uses to great effect - over and over - throughout the book. Once again, I laughed and groaned at silly but clever references, well-done puns and hysterical situations. And once again, at the end is a note about historical accuracies and inaccuracies which I think well cover all those crazy nay-sayers on Audible (which are really mostly on book 1).

The Lady Most Likely... by three authors ****

2011-02-12T12:39:00.003-07:00

This was a joint effort by three authors - Connie Brockway, Julia Quinn and Eloisa James. Since I like all three authors, I was prepared to like it - and I did. It is a piece of Regencey fluff, with the story of three couples brought together by one man's search for the mother of his "heir and spare".

Hugh Dunne, Earl of something-or-other, has had a close call with death and decides it's time to settle down and get married. His married sister puts together a list of eligible ladies, inviting him and the ladies and some others to a house party so that he can choose, woo and propose, and get on with his love of horses.

Of course, with Julia Quinn involved, you know it will be funny, so there are several comic turns as two of the ladies get snatched up by Hugh's best friends. Each of the three men find love not in unexpected places, but right under their very noses - two of them with women they have known all their lives.

It made for an entertaining read, although it was hard to keep track of who was whom when I was just reading a few pages every night before falling asleep! Still, I'm giving it 4 stars for fun.

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig *****

2011-02-07T21:11:00.002-07:00

The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a lark! I haven't laughed this much with an audiobook since - well, ever! The writing is witty, the narration is incredible and anyone who quibbles about [clears throat, and using stentorian tones, says] "historical inaccuracies" - well, devil take them! It's fiction! and it's funny as hell!

It's a story-within-a-story, so there's a wrapper of contemporary, wherein an American scholar, Eloise, is researching her dissertation about British spies during the Napoleonic era. As she reads the documents about the spies, the story slips into 1803, where Amy Balcourt is trying to become a member of the League of the Purple Gentian, the, ahem, fictional successor to The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Narrator Kate Reading is a marvel - she manages to slip from American Emily into the Regency British and French and back with supreme ease. Her inspired acting - complete with various sounds - made this wonderful story a treat!

The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie by Jennifer Ashley *****

2011-02-03T18:48:00.003-07:00

I really loved this book - the "madness" is what we call Asperger's Syndrome today, a condition which is similar to autism, without the difficulty with language and intellectual development.

Unfortunately for me, I waited too long to write my thoughts about it - so I'll just leave it with 5 stars.

The Touch of Fire by Linda Howard ***

2011-01-30T17:22:00.000-07:00

This is an older Linda Howard, now out on Audiobook, narrated by Natalie Ross. I liked Natalie Ross as narrator, but the story itself never really rose above "just ok". It's a western, where the heroine, Annie, is a doctor in a small Western mining town - the only place that would have a woman doctor in post-Civil War America. Rafe McCae is on the lam, being hunted by several bounty hunters, when he's injured. He goes to Doc Parker, and he ends up kidnapping her and taking her hostage - sorta. She doesn't really go willingly, and he is sorta mean to her, but it turns out he's really a lawyer from New York City ("git a rope") who is being pursued to cover a governmental scandal. It was ok - not great, not bad.

Money, Honey by Susan Sey ****

2011-01-29T19:48:00.004-07:00

Finally finished this - it may have been the only print book in January (actually it was the fourth, but who's counting?)! I have been knitting so much and listening to audiobooks well into the night, so that by the time I go to bed I'm too tired to read more than a few pages, and that makes it hard to keep up with the story.

This is a contemporary Good Girl Cop/Bad Boy Thief romantic suspense - the heroine is FBI Special Agent Liz Brynn, a by-the-book woman who met up with Patrick O'Connor years back when he turned himself in to save his sister. Patrick came from a long line of thieves - all in the family - and to keep from going to jail, spent some time working for the FBI as an informant to Liz. He's back - several years later - and it's not clear to Liz or the FBI whether it's really to help his sister with a counterfeiting problem or to hook up with an old crime buddy and pull another heist. The FBI reels him in to help on the counterfeiting scheme, hoping to catch him with the other bad guy as well.

The old sparks between Liz and Patrick are back - and Patrick pushes Liz hard to give in. Except when she does, he's suspicious. Is she using him or does she really want him?

There's a slight taste of Eve Dallas and Roarke here (In Death): Liz is the polyester-suit wearing hardass, and Patrick the rich and debonair former thief. Sey's writing is almost old-time-film-noir, with Liz as the private eye and Patrick the femme fatale. Everything seems fast paced, and exaggerated - "fury buzzed in her ears like a swarm of killer bees" "Self-disgust dripped cold and slippery into her gut", and Patrick calls her "Liz. Darling." every time he speaks to her. I could imagine it being narrated by a Humphrey Bogart style voice.

I liked it pretty well, 4 stars, and I think I'd have liked it even better if I got to read it in 3 or 4 sittings instead of 20 pages a night for 2 weeks!

Days of Gold by Jude Deveraux ***

2011-01-27T19:12:00.001-07:00

Days of Gold by Jude Deveraux

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm giving this 3 stars as in "I liked it" but not more than 3 stars. However, the narration by Davina Porter was definitely 5 stars! In fact, she may have saved the book for me. I'm a sort of on-again, off-again Jude Deveraux follower - I love some of her books, and hate some. I did not particularly like A Knight in Shining Armor.

This one starts in 1766 Scotland, with a young, orphaned British heiress living with an uncle who won a Scottish keep in a game of cards with the original laird. Edelean finds herself in a number of scrapes - falling in love with a young British fellow who tries to scam her fortune; her uncle tries to marry her off to one of his old cronies, again for the fortune. She ends up being smuggled out of Scotland with her gold and the most recent laird, Angus MacTern, and the two of them cross the ocean disguised as man and wife, with false names.

Once in America, more - well, misunderstandings, some standard Deveraux story twists, a stint in the army for Angus, more scrapes for Edelean who finally creates her own business. Truly, with Davina Porter reading the story, I'm convinced it was much more likable than if I had read it in print. Her wonderful Scots accents and warm British accents are so delightful (and having listened to literally dozens of hours of her voice I feel I can say that!). I'll say this: Deveraux is no Gabaldon!

Still, it was an enjoyable (enough) listen.

Trouble in High Heels by Christina Dodd ****

2011-01-23T17:13:00.001-07:00

Trouble in High Heels by Christina Dodd

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a fun romp! It's the first in the Fortune Hunter series, and I read #3 first, and found it just ok. The genre must be suspenseful romantic comedy because it had moments of each.

Brandi had just moved to Chicago - in the winter - to be closer to her fiance Alan. She also just got a job with a prestigious law firm in Chicago, which she would start in just a few days. While having trouble getting settled in, what with frozen water pipes and a mistake in her furniture order, she received a call from Alan: he'd just gotten married in Las Vegas. In revenge, she pawned the engagement ring and spent it all on getting ready for a big charity ball she would now be attending alone. The revenge plan: pick up a man and spend the night forgetting all about Alan.

Roberto was that man: an Italian count rumored to be an international jewel thief. He was perfect except for one small detail she learned on her first day at work: she was his lawyer.

The narrator is Amanda Ronconi, a new-to-me narrator with 19 listings at audible.com. I liked her regular reading voice and her female characters a lot, her male voices and especially her Italian-accented male voices somewhat less. The gravelly/throaty voices and not-very-authentic foreign accents didn't work for me very well.

I think this story has the absolute best grovel scene I've ever read, and the last 20 minutes or so were pretty funny as I imagined what the scene looked like.

Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips*****

2011-01-22T17:47:00.004-07:00

Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved it! I was very happy with the new narrator, Shannon Cochran, too - she almost rises to the level of Kate Fleming/Anna Fields, and although I haven't done a re-listen to the earlier books in a while, I felt like her voices were close enough to the originals.

This is Ted and Meg's book, although when you start, it's Lucy Jorik from First Lady as the bride. Lucy's best friend Meg seems to be the only one who can tell that Lucy and Ted aren't the love-match everyone thinks, and encourages Lucy to follow her heart. Lucy does exactly that - jilting Ted at the altar! Of course, Meg is such a blunt screw-up that she ends up taking the blame, which everyone in Wynette, including Ted, heaps on her. Meg, whose parents have cut off the money to force her to take responsibility, realizes she's stuck there with no money, forced to work at whatever she can find and live out of her car until she can repay the hotel. Over the next several weeks, Meg experiences what Ted's mother Francesca did in her own story (Fancy Pants) - the growth of self-esteem from doing a job well.

It really was such fun to revisit all the citizens of Wynette and the original stories - I was almost disappointed when Lady Emma was mentioned reading Beatrix Potter because I expected her to be reading Daphne The Bunny books! Of course, that was a completely different series, but then how did Glitter Baby, What I Did For Love and First Lady get into the golf series??

I did have the slightest quibble with Cochran's narration - I mean, really I liked it a LOT, and I felt like she followed in Anna Fields' footsteps well. I even thought she sounded a little bit like SEP herself, having heard her in online videos. There were some passages that seemed to drone on and on that she could have livened up somewhat, but overall her voice suited the story well. I'm not sure if I had read the other stories right before this that her other characters would have fared all that well - hearing them sound different might not have worked, but they did seem to match well enough what was in my head.

Let Sleeping Rogues Lie by Sabrina Jeffries ***

2011-01-20T07:45:00.000-07:00

Got this in audiobook for a "mini review" for the Speaking of Audiobooks at AAR. Didn't like it any better in audio - narrated by Justin Eyre, who I did like. What follows in my original review here from April 2009:

I can't believe I read this one out of order!! It's actually #4 in the series after Beware A Scot's Revenge which I read last.

This one was just average/mediocre - the whole setup/premise was a little too contrived for my taste. First, the prim schoolteacher and the rake are the protagonists - (yawn) - and the prim schoolteacher has a dark secret she cannot reveal about her father, and wants to use the rake to get the resolution, so she arranges for him teach Rake Lessons at the school (this is the School For Heiresses series) to prove he can be a responsible guardian. Yes, if you are thinking "WTF?" like I was, then we agree on the premise: it's inane. It's something about his being desperate to be the guardian of his niece to protect her from his aunt - so desperate, he'll teach the lessons; meanwhile, Ms Prim Schoolteacher is also desperate, hence her convincing Mrs. Harris to allow his niece to attend if he'll prove he's responsible.

Because of her so-called "dark secret", she pretty much lies throughout to the rake - and yet she expects him to be honorable?? Once she finally gets what she wants - well, whatever, it sorta became The Big Misunderstanding - meanwhile, he's immediately attracted to her like he has never been before to any other woman, in spite of his reputation and vast experience. Doesn't that get old after a while? So he has to have her, whatever it takes and...

Jeffries writes an enjoyable enough story but this one pushed my "so what" buttons, hence the 3 stars.

Thigh High by Christina Dodd ***

2011-01-16T19:06:00.002-07:00

This is another of my "mini review" books I did for AAR's Speaking of Audiobooks - it was just a 3 star listen, but the first in the series was better - Trouble in High Heels - so I do plan to read the others. The review:

Thigh High by Christina Dodd

Narrated by Natalie Ross

When Jeremiah “Mac” MacNaught goes undercover in New Orleans for the bank he owns, he’s got a major lust-on for his bank’s employee Nessa Dahl but he’s also convinced she’s behind the annual Mardi Gras robberies, something he finds detestable. Nessa is working hard to help her eccentric great-aunts get out of debt, which is hard to do when her immediate boss is almost as difficult to work for as the bank’s owner. She’s assisting Mac (in disguise as the insurance inspector) in solving the robberies.

I rate narrator Natalie Ross a cut above run-of-the-mill, and her southern accents are generally good. I really enjoyed her narration of a Linda Howard favorite, After the Night, also set in Louisiana. She articulates Thigh High’s characters with age and gender-appropriate voices, even if I do have a quibble with some pronunciations and out-of-place or overdone local accents (I lived in south Louisiana). But these aren’t just characters, they are Characters. That being said, when a narrator is faced with the aunts from Arsenic and Old Lace, how else could she go about creating them in audio?

Christina Dodd is a new-to-me author and I wondered if her style in writing this Romantic Suspense was intended to be beyond-quirky comedy, or more like Linda Howard, whose realistically drawn characters are often in extremely humorous situations. I did laugh out loud a few times, but generally, the story veered sharply away from realism with the antics of heroine Nessa’s aunts. Was it comedy or tragedy? Suspense or allegory? Even after it was over, I couldn’t make up my mind. But the combination of intermittent humor with stock characters, love scenes that seemed without sufficient motivation, and a creepy villain not associated with any of the ongoing conflicts had me confused and kept this story from rising above a C for story.

Narration: B

What A Rogue Desires by Caroline Linden *****

2011-01-16T10:06:00.003-07:00

I love a Besotted Hero!! And finally, a book in the series that makes me glad I glommed it.

This particular hero is the Evil Twin from What A Gentleman Wants, David Reece. In that book, he is the very epitome of a rake, spending his fortune on debauchery and drunkeness, leading his friends astray at every turn, and ending up being tended by a virtuous vicar's widow in a small town when his carriage is overturned during a race and his leg is severely broken. Even then, when he seems to be on the verge of a Come To Jesus moment, he -well, what is the opposite of repents? and plays a dastardly joke on the widow and his identical twin, the Duke of Exeter. Of course, in Romancelandia, all is well and the duke and the widow have a HEA.

In this one, the Come To Jesus moment revisits him, and he is tasked with keeping the family business going (you know, whatever it is dukes have to do) while his brother and new wife tour the Continent on their honeymoon. But Linden doesn't reform David quickly - he is sorely tested in the first days when his horse goes lame, delaying his return to London and putting him in harm's way. The public transport he is forced to take is robbed, and the signet ring his brother had made for him stolen. The ring is a sort of talisman for him, the symbol of his adulthood and the responsibilities he knows he should shoulder, and he does everything he can to get it back.

The first order of business is to grab the thief, which in this case turns out to be our lovely heroine, Vivian. Linden builds a credible background for her as the half-Irish orphan raised as a Dickensian pickpocket, now in the company of highwaymen. On impulse, David virtually kidnaps her and holds her captive, trying to bully the information about his ring out of her.

This is where the beauty of the story unfolds - he has finally met his match, which isn't so uncommon a theme in romance. What makes it unique is the journey - and this is where authors can shine or can follow the lemmings into the sea. Linden shines in creating a believable relationship - a woman wary of the power David holds, both physically and as a "gentleman" of the ton; a man determined to show everyone he can be as responsible as his brother, but who fails and fails in this at every turn. She has them slowly (well, not really that slowly but at least not overnight!) come to know each other as human beings, and during this process David falls head over heels in love, becoming ever the besotted hero. The small things that bring joy to Vivian become important to him and he wants nothing more to continue to bring her joy.

Even the final conflict works very well into the story - it comes from moments laid out earlier in the book, even in the previous book, that fall into place. I didn't feel "where did that come from?" when it happened, neither did I feel "I saw that one coming 5 miles away".

I finished this at 3 am this morning, big old grin on my face but too tired to jump up and write a review. Now here it is. 5 stars!

Seducing An Angel by Mary Balogh ***

2011-01-13T21:44:00.003-07:00

Seducing an Angel by Mary Balogh

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Listening to Flosnik read Balogh about the Huxtables is getting on my last nerve. Between the plodding, metronome-timed-sounding narration and the (author's) characters' annoying habit of waaaaay-too much introspection in the form of multiple questions in a row and over-analyzing what-ifs, I've had it up to here [imagine my holding my hand at top of head level] with this combination!

This, the 4th in the 5-book series, is Stephen's story, and he is the angel in question, and the seductress is an alleged axe murderess. He's rather goody-two-shoes and wishy-washy, all in all; she's a widow (remember the axe murder part?) who needs a protector. She sets her sights on him as the one...

Balogh describes the heroine's seductress voice as her "velvet voice" and Flosnik developed an even more annoying tone for that, if you can believe it. But Stephen (hero) and Cassandra (heroine) seem to be fated to be together. Her alleged murder-by-axe is really the most ton-shocking behavior of the 4 siblings, out-doing even the fellow who jilted his bride on the wedding day by running away with her sister-in-law. But things are never quite what they seem, are they?

I think Flosnik has either improved some since book 1, and even there she was not quite as annoying as her Lowell and Garwood medievals, or I am getting slightly accustomed to her plodding, metronome speaking tempo. However, there were still long portions that I talked out loud to her and Balogh: Stop it!

I'm still wondering if it's because I have to listen to Flosnik read it or if Balogh has got a very overdone, tiring way of using character's inner monologue to really beat a dead horse every several pages or so. The character thinks: perhaps I should have worn the red dress. If I had worn the red dress, then he would have seen me and I wouldn't have had to search him out. But perhaps it would have been better for him not to see me, so wearing the gray dress was the better way. Unless wearing the gray dress was what caused her to run into me, so perhaps I shouldn't have worn the gray dress, and should have worn the red dress instead. But perhaps the green dress....

(no, it was never about a dress, but it does go on and on and ON AND ON ad nauseum .)

And questions: Did he think of me? Was it just me imagining him thinking of me? Or was he just looking out the window? And if he was just looking out the window, does he ever think of me? Or could I be fooling myself that he thinks of me?

AD NAUSEUM

I did, I spoke outloud to the audiobook: "NO NOT AGAIN!" I would say when this happened for the umpteenth time. The ending was ok - it almost made me give it a half star more.

What A Woman Needs by Caroline Linden ***

2011-01-12T22:08:00.002-07:00

I actually finished this last night, and now - sheesh - cannot remember much of it. To be honest, it took a long time to read it, a few pages in bed every night for days and days, so I guess it wasn't that great. This is, I believe, Linden's first book, not in the series I started over xmas.

On reading the book blurb, I'm now remembering: Stuart Drake (the hero) has been cut off from funds by his father, who thinks him a ne'er-do-well because of some gossip that got out of hand. Instead of trying to straighten that out, he decides to purchase an estate that will earn money. Unfortunately, he has a mortgage payment to make before the farm brings in any cash, so he decides he will try to marry a rich heiress to tide him over. He is, after all, a gentleman, and will inherit once the old man kicks over, and he's good looking and all that. He's something of a catch. He's almost got one reeled in, except that her guardian aunt - ancient beast that she is - doesn't approve.

Then he meets said ancient beast.

Charlotte (the heroine) is now the only family left for Susan, even though she doesn't consider herself much of a role model. When she was young, she was seduced by an older man and when found, her father sent her packing. She never returned home, traveled Europe, married an Italian, and basically lived a rather decadent life for a woman who is actually only about 30. Now that her older brother has died and left his daughter an orphan, she wants to turn over a new leaf and raise her right - and keep her away from fortune-hunting libertines like Stuart Drake!

The she meets said Stuart Drake.

Well, there's some immediate attraction followed by righteous anger, and young Susan's hopes to marry Stuart are dashed. Then Susan leaves a note that she has run away to get married, but it isn't with Stuart. So Charlotte and Stuart end up joining forces to find her, and well, it's a different plot for me but somehow either because I was too tired to read much at one time or because it wasn't that interesting, I just took too long to finish it. I would open the book at night and try to remember what the story was and who the characters were (I ended up going back several pages one night) before I took up reading from where I left off. There was quite a lot going on - if Susan eloped, with whom?? and if not, was she abducted? and a sort of confusing side plot of why Stuart's father really cut him off, and an Italian opera singer, and some fake antiquities, and...

3 stars, not bad, just not that great either

At Last Comes Love by Mary Balogh ***

2011-01-09T21:25:00.004-07:00

At Last Comes Love by Mary Balogh

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Book 3 of the Huxtable Quintet series, on audio, all narrated by Anne Flosnik. What did I think?

I think Flosnik has picked up a little speed in her narration, which makes it eminently more listenable, and there weren't as many scenes for her to be overly emotional (excepting Duncan's mama, who was always emotional). Without the breathy emotional scenes, it wasn't as irritating as Book 2 where she embarrassed me by..., well, read my review.

I think Flosnik's narration has not enhanced the experience of this series, and I wonder if I had read it, if I might have enjoyed it more. But it's too late - now I have her voice in my head.

I think the introduction of domestic violence and sexual depravity into the story might have given it more depth and emotion except I felt inured, and I think that's associated with hearing Flosnik read it. Jo Goodman uses these in pretty much every story, and she still manages to evoke an emotional response in me every time.

I think the gossip-forced-marriage conceit has run its course in this series - surely not everyone in the family will be forced to marry someone they just met and do not even particularly like. Or maybe they will. The 5th book is about cousin Con, where there's apparently a mystery to solve (I think it's Why Does Elliott hate Con?), which I hope makes it a different and potentially better story.

I think I'd rather hear Barbara Rosenblat or Davina Porter read the last 2. Alas, it is not to be. 3 stars all around - not awful but not great.

BELOW IS MY ORIGINAL REVIEW before I went over to Goodreads and wrote my smaller review:

I'm still wondering if Flosnik's funny accent thing she does might be coloring my experience in this series. I have liked other Balogh stories but in this one - well, if the heroines don't stop going on and on and on and ON about the same damn things over and over, I'm just gonna have to whoop one of them! This time it's Margaret, the oldest Huxtable, who keeps thinking and saying "But it's all my fault because I was the one who lied...", over and OVER AND O V E R . grrrr. So many times I found myself actually talking out loud to the characters!

This was another of those "there's a scandal that forces them to marry" conceits, just like the last one in the series. In addition, Margaret's own true love from 12 years ago returned, widowed, and was interested in her and she even admits she might still be in love with him. But does she give him a chance? NO! Really! We are to be led to the conclusion that he was never the right one for her, but meanwhile I kept thinking, she could at least talk to him. She decides to lie to him, which is really where the "over and over" stuff starts - she keeps reminding everyone and his dog that because she lied to Crispin, it was all her fault that Lord Sheringford ended up the focus of gossip that forced them to marry.

Once again, Flosnik's voice comes into question, because then Sheringford and Margaret get into these long-winded preachy conversations that seemed so unrealistic that I let my mind wander so I didn't keep talking to them - out loud, fer chrissake. Would I have felt differently about the prose if I just let the words go in through my eyes to my brain, instead of filtering them through Flosnik's odd voice into my ears?

Ah, a plot: Margaret lies to Crispin to keep from looking pathetic, saying she has a fiance. She actually thinks she'll accept old whatshisname's proposal this year, except guess what: whatshisname got tired of waiting for her, and nabbed another eligible woman. Now Margaret, truly on the shelf at 30, is desperate for a fiance. She runs from the ballroom and smacks right into Duncan, Earl of Sheringford, who is also desperate to marry so he can keep from getting cut off from his funds. He jokingly/seriously says to her: shall we dance, and then get married and live happily ever after? And she accepts.

Oh, wait, then she finds out about his past: 5 years ago he jilted a woman and ran off with that woman's sister-in-law the day of the wedding, living with her in sin until she died 4 months ago. Then, blah blah blah, yada yada yada, we have to have several dozen pages of conflict where Margaret can't decide if she will actually marry Duncan, stringing him along. Of course, there's a perfectly plausible reason why he did what he did - but it would be a spoiler to tell it.

They get married (as you knew they would), there's more conflict, then HEA. 3 stars.

Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips: EXCERPT

2011-01-08T11:43:00.002-07:00

OK, I am SO looking forward to this! The narration of Chapter One is EXCELLENT - her tone is just right for SEP's voice, and the characters are wonderful! This is Ted Beaudine and Meg Koranda's story - with Lucy Jorik as a secondary character.

January 18...

Then Comes Seduction by Mary Balogh ***

2011-01-07T22:02:00.006-07:00

Then Comes Seduction by Mary Balogh

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm conflicted about this book. I wrote a longer review on my blog. Basically, narrator Anne Flosnik is finally starting to read at a normal pace (yay!) but also showed signs of being too involved. She embarrassed me during the wedding night consummation scene!! And not because it was that hot, mind you - it was because she got as involved as our heroine supposedly did! I don't mind hearing a hot love scene narrated well, but I do mind feeling like I'm eavesdropping on a private moment.

Beyond the narration, though, the storyline had me confused and frustrated. I kept waiting for our lovely heroine to develop some backbone and stand up to the hero for his rakehell ways, and when she finally (sort of) did, it was too little, too late, and the narrator got so emotional I felt the need to pass her a tissue.

My basic conflict about the series is this: would I have enjoyed it more if I had read it? I just can't decide if Flosnik's narration changes the way the story unfolds or not. I never felt the development of love between the protagonists.

And yet, I didn't hate it, so it gets stuck in 3 star hell - mediocre, ok, liked it well enough, yawn.

(what follows is my first pass on reviewing it, only in this blog:)

I'm just not sure what to make of this book. Let me make a list...

Good: Flosnik read faster. She wasn't nearly as plodding and, well, obnoxious, as in other books I've heard her narrate. That made for a much, much better listen.

Bad: She really got into the emotions of the characters. Frankly, I thought she was going to fake an orgasm during the wedding night consummation scene. And I wanted to pass her a handkerchief when Katherine started wailing in the woods, she seemed so upset herself.

That leads me to the next part of my review. Was this plot hard to follow or what? First, we have the drunken rake, making a completely ridiculous wager about our heroine, Katherine. Second, we have Katherine, a completely green naif, just wandering into the dark woods alone with him and letting him almost slide into home base in a matter of minutes. She thinks maybe she has missed out on love because she hasn't allowed herself to feel danger. This makes me think she goes willingly into the dark with said rake (our hero, Jasper). Nope, she was just too naive and stupid to make sense of what she was doing. He decides at the last minute, completely out of character and for no reason that I can make any sense of at all, to throw the wager and lose, leaving her gasping for release and practically begging him to keep going.

Now, I thought, she will become the clever heroine and make him want her. Nope. They are separate for 3 years.

OK, NOW there will be a reason for them to actually fall in love. They flirt a little, and just when you think they will start to fall in love BAM! Spoiler? A ninny of a character somehow creates a scandal which brings about their having to marry, even though now she hates him. Or something.

Was this meandering storyline because of the narration, or was it actually a meandering storyline?

Now they are married, and on the wedding night - where the poor narrator got so involved I was almost embarrassed - another wager creeps in, and they agree to remain celibate after The First Consummation as part of the wager. (WTF?) I just want to mention that, considering she was still (technically) a virgin, not much was made of it - like, uh, the stuff you think of with virgins. And despite his love-making technique of a couple of kisses then The Main Course, she got quite involved (or at least the narrator did). The next time they make love - her second time, 3 or 4 weeks later - she is a practiced rider, if you get my drift. (shakes head) Again, not much in the way of foreplay for this rakehell. Just git 'er done. Yee haw.

Plot: rake almost ravishes innocent heroine, but doesn't; 3 years go by, and they meet again; no one, including either of them, knows why they continue to be seen together but dang if that doesn't make a scandal, which produces a forced marriage; heroine spouts a lot of long winded psychobabble about why he is like he is; there's some whiny, mean distant relatives involved that create additional conflict; the book ends without any real resolution of that storyline, but the hero and heroine have each professed love (and are already married). The End.

In spite of my snarky review, I didn't hate it. I just didn't really love it, and when it ended, I thought: wait a minute, what about CHARLOTTE? (maybe I fell asleep and missed that resolution) So, 3 stars, and it has occurred to me that maybe I should speed up the player for the next book to really get Flosnik's storytelling going at a clip.

First Comes Marriage by Mary Balogh ***

2011-01-03T22:13:00.000-07:00

First Comes Marriage by Mary Balogh

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm listening to the Huxtable Quintet series in order, so that I can do an actual review of the new release of #5. I've liked the handful of Baloghs I've read to date, but have mixed feelings about narrator Anne Flosnik, so I approached this task with not a little trepidation.

As a setup for a series, there was a lot of introduction to do - meet all of the Huxtables, and probably some of their future mates, although the first book deals with Vanessa, the widowed middle daughter, and Elliott, Viscount something-or-other in line for a dukedom. We learn that the 4 Huxtable siblings have been living in near poverty in a small village, and that the youngest, Stephen, has become an earl much to the surprise of everyone. Apparently the Huxtable grandfather was estranged from his family and no one ever thought Stephen might be in line for the title. Elliott is the guardian of the Stephen as the new earl.

Flosnik's narration wasn't nearly as off-putting as some of her Julie Garwood and Elizabeth Lowell medievals, thank gawd, but somehow I kept wondering if I might have enjoyed reading in print more. She has a sort of plodding way of narrating, almost as if someone has asked her to slow down, or read by metronome. She did use different voices for the characters, with her Margaret/eldest daughter voice being the low gravelly voice of a much older woman, and even Vanessa's voice pitched too low for being all of 24. The story itself, in the midst of changing the Huxtable way of life and meeting everyone, had very little in the way of actual conflict - it's a marriage of convenience that takes a long time to develop into a HEA, and not a particularly convincing one at that.

At least Flosnik didn't do that awful, dramatic dragging out of final syllables like she does in Garwood and Lowell - whew! Still, 3 stars - ok, not great, that's for both the story and the narration.

Marry Me by Jo Goodman ***

2011-01-01T20:00:00.003-07:00

Goodman is one of my very favorite authors, and her A Season To Be Sinful is one of my all-time favorite books, so she's an auto-buy for me. Luckily, this time it was a free download on Kindle that I read on my iPhone!

Goodman's American Western historicals have a different feel about the prose that doesn't touch me the way her Regencies (and other European time periods) do - the characters don't seem to be as richly or deeply drawn. This one follows Never Love A Lawman, and includes Wyatt and Rachel from the story. (I looked for my review but apparently didn't write one, although I rated it 5 stars in Bookpedia.) Cole Monroe is a big city doctor in charge of his teenaged sister Whitley when she sends an application letter under his name to Reidsville, Colorado. Reidsville is looking for a doctor, and Whitley is determined that Cole needs to leave the hospital where he is working under the man who would have been his father-in-law if the engagement hadn't been broken.

As the new doctor, Cole goes around to the "outliers" to make their acquaintance and let them know he's available if they need medical help. The opening of the story introduces the reader to the ne'er-do-well Abbot family with 3 no-good sons, one of who still lives at home with the old man. As it turns out, the youngest son, Runt Abbot - from a family of actors - has been acting all this time and has the entire town fooled, since he's a she: Rhyne. Cole discovers this when he finds her hemorrhaging during a miscarriage.

After that big and well-placed surprise is revealed, it gets purty predictable: he has to take her in to recuperate, and then she stays on as Whitley's mentor and the housekeeper and then... boy meets girl, blah blah. Since the title is MARRY ME, I sorta expected it to take longer to convince her to marry him - but by 2/3 of the way in, they're married. Then the real conflict is played out - something foreshadowed earlier, where Rhyne's father becomes even more of a villain than he was for beating her til she miscarried. (Goodman's heroines often have abusive pasts.)

So - it was ok, nothing earth shattering, didn't move me or make me laugh the way her other books have. Cole, like Wyatt in NLAL, is a beta hero, content to let Rhyne take her time and realize their shared passion. I was entertained, nothing more. 3 stars.

Crazy For You by Jennifer Crusie ***

2010-12-31T21:25:00.000-07:00

Crazy For You by Jennifer Crusie

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had read this book a few years back, and found it to be a mediocre/ok read. The heroine decides she is in a dead-end relationship that she had no control over, so she leaves; the hero is Nick, her former brother-in-law who is also her best friend AND he's carried a torch for her for years and years. The Dead End Relationship fellow is the crazy one - he becomes a stalker of sorts, acting out all kinds of weird behaviors that show he is losing touch with reality.

It's typical Crusie - a weird/ugly dog, a cast of odd characters that actually enhance the story, and some scorching hot scenes. Since it came out as audio, I figured it would pass the time well for me. Unfortunately, I listened to it while on vacation and didn't take time to make any notes, therefore I cannot recall even if I liked the narrator! Dayum. But I have to make a little review for myself as proof I read it, since if I don't, I'll mess up and re-listen and wonder why it seems familiar.

Here's my original review from November 2008.

Damn. I really wanted to like this book. I was so in the mood for a light, funny, hot, quick read, and after reading the various reviews on AAR (4 reviewers, 2 posted - 1 DIK and 1 C) I was sure I would really enjoy this.

But it wasn't as good as I wanted.

The story revolves around Quinn, a 35-year-old single woman teacher needing a change in her life. I guess before the book starts, she already has a reputation for rescuing stray dogs. However, she has always found homes for them, until the one that pops up in the beginning.

See, she's been living with Bill - ok minor rant, to have both the boyfriends' names so similar (Nick and Bill) confused me for a a few dozen pages - anyway, she's been living with Bill for 2 years. He's referred to as a Viking, 6'5" tall, the beloved high school coach. He just won't stand for a dog - not to mention their apartment lease doesn't allow dogs. But she's decided she's keeping the dog no matter what...

Nick is actually the hero here - Nick is Quinn's former brother-in-law, married briefly to Quinn's sister Zoe, but divorced about 20 or so years ago. There's a number of related characters in this small town: Nick's brother Max who is married to Quinn's best friend Darla, Quinn's parents, Quinn's sister Zoe, various teachers, students and other folks. Nick has apparently been Quinn's best friend all this time - I gathered they saw each other every day somehow (which, well, seemed a little odd to me, but there you are).

Bill starts a downward spiral when Quinn makes it clear she's keeping the dog - he slips the first few inches when he takes the dog to the pound. That event is the first domino to fall - Quinn moves out, and her example starts a number of other events. Her parents make some changes; Darla and Max make some changes; Nick starts thinking about her as more than a friend.

OK - so what's not to like? Well, let's see: Bill was creepy. Way creepy. Quinn was often an idiot, and even more often a hypocrite. When she thinks "yes" and then says "No" and then follows with how what she wants is honesty, I just cringed. Hello?? How honest was it to think yes and say no?? And after being assaulted by Bill on several occasions, she couldn't be talked into calling the police? HELLOOO?

And what did Darla and Quinn want from Max and Nick? They sure had me wondering. Those guys bent over backwards from what I could see, and that wasn't enough. If Darla couldn't be clear about what she wanted, how could she expect Max to do what she wanted? That kept driving me crazy too.

One AAR reviewer pretty much panned the book - and I have often disagreed with this reviewer. The DIK reviewer actually had me going when she referred to "the feeling the book leaves me with when I've finished reading it." I thought, YESSS that's how I rate books too. But this book left me flat. I was so disturbed by Bill's actions and Quinn's inability to call the dang police that I had a hard time enjoying the story.

That's about it. I so enjoyed the first 3 Crusie's I read (Welcome To Temptation, Bet Me and Anyone But You) that I just felt puzzled the whole time, wondering when I was going to start laughing and getting into the story. Wondered it all the way to the end. Damn.

3 stars/mediocre.

Smooth Talking Stranger by Lisa Kleypas ****

2010-12-31T20:42:00.000-07:00

Smooth Talking Stranger by Lisa Kleypas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

OK, this is just downright embarrassing. I'm pretty sure I already listened to this on audio once. But I don't have any review, or listing of it in my Bookpedia, or anything to prove it. I did read the first 2, got them from the library. I got this one from the library. All the way through it just seemed awfully familiar. And even now, I couldn't say with 100% guarantee that I did read it, but I think...

Alright, this is the 3rd in the Travises series by Lisa Kleypas. I actually do not like her historical romance writing style at all, despite having slogged through 5 or more of them to prove it to myself. But I do like her contemporary voice - and it's fun too that she sets the books in Houston, where I have lived most of my life.

Jack is the middle Travis - son of a wealthy River Oaks family who made their money in making money and, oh yeah, oil. Jack is a playboy by all accounts, and when he's named as the possible father of the heroine's infant nephew, Ella (aka The Heroine) finagles a confrontation. Jack is attracted to Ella, which is probably why he agrees to a paternity test that never happens. The sister admits Jack is right - she never slept with him. Jack and Ella pair up to find the real father, and he worms his way into her life and her heart while doing so.

The series uses 3 different narrators - Renee Raudman for book 1 (and she's good) and Emily Durante for this book. She's good too - she also narrated book 1 of the Bride's Quarter by NR. I probably need to take some paper along on vacations so I'll make notes about the books I read - it's bad enough that I'm sure I must have already read this, but to forget to list/review it this time and read it a 3rd time would really make me visit the Alzheimer's doctor.

4 stars - not a keeper type book, but a very enjoyable read.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins **

2010-12-31T20:10:00.000-07:00

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I am definitely not the audience for YA and listening to The Hunger Games reinforced that notion for me. In a Big Way. It wasn't made any easier to have a narrator with a sing-songy reading pattern that about drove me nutz (since we were in a car listening to it on CD, this is a sort of pun).

We tried to finish it before arriving at the Xmas lodge in North Carolina where our hosts' adult children had suggested we have a discussion of it. All of them seemed to have been enthralled by it; of the 4 of us in the car, 2 felt it wasn't good, 1 thought it was OK, and the 4th was prepared to listen to the entire trilogy. In fact, the 3 of them said I was too picky about narrators - HAH! as if! - because they didn't notice the boring reading until I pointed it out.

When one of the characters that I felt invested in was offed, I turned to another audio book and left them to deal with the gruesome, futuristic/Mad Max plot where children are made to kill each other for food as a spectator sport. What I did hear - the beginning and the ending - reinforced my feeling that there's too much teen angst and playing out of pre-teen fantasies in YA for me to get interested. Then there's that MESSAGE thing - I don't need no stinking message.

A good writer can take any plot device, any characters, and involve me in the journey - I think. Maybe if Linda Howard or Suzanne Brockmann or Diana Gabaldon wrote YA, I'd like it. But so far, Twilight and The Hunger Games has left me wanting something else.

I didn't hate it so I'm going with 2 stars.

A Man To Die For by Suzanne Brockmann ***

2010-12-31T19:50:00.001-07:00

A Man to Die For (Silhouette Intimate Moments #681) by Suzanne Brockmann

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not my favorite Brockmann - this was a mediocre and somewhat dated book that was marred by a mediocre narration by Blair Windsor. Since I was simultaneously being forced to listen to The Hunger Games, truthfully I can't remember exactly what it was I didn't like about Windsor's reading - not enough differentiation between character voices; and considering the hero is Hispanic and says several Spanish phrases, surely a narrator who can reasonably pronounce Spanish would have been a better choice. She wasn't as bad as The Hunger Games, though. The plot conceit - undercover cop takes heroine hostage trying to protect her even though she doesn't believe he's the good guy but there's Chemistry - wears thin pretty quickly, and frankly I had a hard time figuring out when they managed to fall in love unless Stockholm syndrome can be attributed. Or the Soul Mate theory (where everyone has one and they were each others) which really only works well in fantasy for me.

But it kept my ears from hearing the middle part of The Hunger Games, which is a good thing and better than sticking my fingers in my ears and singing lalalalalalalal to make it go away.

What A Gentleman Wants by Caroline Linden ****

2010-12-26T20:51:00.004-07:00

From time to time, I find a reference in some forum or review blog that makes me want to read the book, and in this case it is a series. Caroline Linden is a new-to-me author and this one is the first in a series, although not the first book by Ms. Linden.

There are several often-used conceits in the book - the hero Marcus is a Duke and has a ne'er-do-well identical twin brother, robbed of the title and wealth by only a few minutes. The heroine Hannah is a commoner, the widow of a vicar, with a 4-year-old child. The bad twin drinks, has a race through the small village and crashes. He must be tended by Hannah, of course, and decides to marry her (no love is ever professed - he's just trying to be kind and save her). Right at the last minute he changes his mind and signs the papers with his brother's name instead. So, now it's also a marriage of convenience. To The Duke. With Consequences for Revealing The Truth because of the beloved stepmother and younger sister who is on the verge of Her Season. Big Sigh. How many overly done plotlines can we cram into one story?

Still, it was fun enough to read - not comic, but not dark - and not overly eye-roll-inducing. In fact, it managed to keep me up reading til 4 am while snowed-in over the Xmas holidays in a mountain lodge, so I must have liked it well enough. I'm going with 4 stars, even though I truly cannot remember much about how I felt about it now. Dang - I really need to keep notes.

True Love and Other Disasters by Rachel Gibson ****

2010-12-20T14:24:00.000-07:00

True Love and Other Disasters by Rachel Gibson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This wasn't my most favorite Rachel Gibson in print, but I'm a big fan so when I saw the audio release, I had to get it! The narrator is new-to-me Susan Bennett, who has 14 listings at audible.com. She was great! I thought she had just the right kind of voice for this genre, and although her range wasn't that great, she managed to give each character a separate, recognizable, consistent voice. The story is in the Seattle Chinooks/NHL series, and one or 2 of the other series characters make an appearance. Short, fun - if you're a Gibson fan, spend the credit!

below is my original review from May, 2009:

This book is one of many that involve Gibson's fictional Seattle Chinooks hockey team players, the first of which is... maybe Simply Irrestible? It includes See Jane Score as well, even though on Fantastic Fiction, True Love et al is listed as Chinook series #1 (that is just plain wrong!). In Simply Irrestible, Chinooks owner Virgil Duffy is left at the altar when Georgeanne runs away and gets together with Chinooks player John Kowalsky, who leaves a little souvenir behind (think Secret Baby plot). In See Jane Score, Jane is a journalist hired to be a temporary sports writer traveling with the team. In TLAOD, Virgil Duffy's widow Faith inherits the team and gets together with Chinooks captain, Ty Savage (pronounced sah VAH zhe, not savage).

So this is at least Book #3. [note: at Goodreads, it's called Book 4!]

OK, the plot has already been laid out: Faith is a former stripper and Playmate whom Virgil married as purely a trophy wife - he was too old and ill for consummating the marriage. However, she felt loved and protected, and he left her a lot of money in addition to the team. Of course, she was hated by his other family members, especially his son Landon who expected to get the team when Daddy died.

Now, think about Susan Elizabeth Phillips and It Had To Be You - blonde bombshell inherits a sports team without knowing dick about sports. Even the word Bimbo appears in the book cover blurb. The team circulates Faith's Playboy spread, and the players crack a lot of rude jokes at her expense. She fully intends to sell the team to Landon until he shows what an asshole he is - then she reneges on the deal, and steps in to try to run it herself, with the help of her loyal assistant. Yeppers, there's a lot of similarities here. There's even travel by airplane - but no Mile High Club initiation.

I did like this story well enough but it had some of those Rachel Gibsonisms that I don't like - she needs a better editor. She seems to repeat herself - no, I didn't mark any specific examples, but as I read, I kept thinking, "didn't she already say that?" as though she didn't go back over her work and pick out similar phrasing and wording while she wrote. Of course, that might have cut her word count by 10% or so, too, so maybe she was under some kind of contract and in a hurry. I dunno. But I wanted a tighter story. Authors: don't hit me over the head with what they're thinking, please.

Gibson does have a knack for steamy love scenes, I must say. And although her alpha hero was surly and rude some of the time, he did not really come off as an asshole as much as just someone who was surly, and sometimes rude. Maybe that doesn't make sense! But I didn't really have the urge to slap him like I have with, say, many of Elizabeth Lowell's heroes and even 1 or 2 of Linda Howard's. Ok, more than 1 or 2...

There's a slimy secondary relationship between Ty's father and Faith's mother that was really written to be creepy and not at all likable. I wanted to wash my hands after reading about those 2 moochers. And a dog - Valerie's dog - yuck, not notable at all.

So I'm calling it a 4 star read, because I did enjoy reading it, but not 5 star because I didn't love reading it.

Dark Lover by J.R, Ward ****

2010-12-18T19:25:00.000-07:00

Dark Lover by J.R. Ward

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had already read this in print, and then got it for cheap at an audible.com sale on audio. I liked it okay (4 stars) in print, and I know a lot of people love the whole Black Dagger Brotherhood series, so I figured if the audio caught my interest, maybe I'd search out the rest in audio.

About an hour in, I started to wonder if this narrator, Jim Frangione, was going to grow on me or drive me crazy. In the end, it wasn't actually either. He had a gruff sort of narration voice, like a Sam Spade mystery, and didn't do much to differentiate between characters. In fact, it was more like he was just reading it aloud and not really "voice acting". But that almost worked for me by the end (not that I'd classify him as a great narrator, but not as bad as I feared.)

I'm still not particularly drawn in by vampire stories, and after determining the rest are not available at the library, I'm not going to pursue the series. I do have at least #2 in print, so if I am searching for a book to read, it might get read...

Here is my original review of the print version from April, 2009:

============

I read this for the AAR Top 100 of 2007 challenge I'm participating in - even though I'm not exactly into vampire romance (after a disastrous encounter with some Feehan audio books). It's hard to follow the world-building of paranormals sometimes, and when there's entire species to deal with - with rules and lingo and even whole languages to understand and follow. This one even had a glossary in the front, which I consulted several times.

Plus, even though there are only 6 members (well, 7 if you count Darius) of the Brotherhood, they had nicknames and such, and even by the end I wasn't 100% clear who was who. Which one was Hollywood, anyway?? Wrath. Wrage. Phury. Zsadist. Tohrment. And one more. Oh yeah, Vishous. (and Butch, human cop, who gets sorta sucked into their lives - pun intended, they didn't actually suck human blood, heh heh.)

Even so, I can see the allure - the guys are all super-tough, beyond alpha, leather clad bad boys. Bigger than life. Vampires and ass-kickers too. Humans play a very small part in this story - the really bad guys (because, face it, the vampires aren't exactly Superman, touting truth, justice and the American way...) are the "lessers" italicized because it's a Vampire word, not the word lesser as in "less than". They are also undead, and are sworn to kill the Vampires. I sorta get the idea they aren't doing it to be evil but because they are mortal enemies. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

Wrath is the king of the vampires, and he's given the charge of helping a half-human, half-vampire woman, Darius's daughter Beth, go through the "transition" from human to vampire. I guess when they're half-breeds, it's not clear until Vampire Adolescence whether they'll transition or not. But Wrath, like all vampires, has keen senses and can smell Beth, her emotions, even that she is going to transition.

Of course, there's that soulmate thing with vampires too - there's the One "shellan" which is sorta like wife/soulmate. And hey, vampire males can have more than one, but they're territorial so shellans only have one "hellbren" which is the male version. Sorta like polygamists - sux, huh??

So while we learn the story of Wrath and Beth, we also meet all the Brothers and learn about them (as I said, I was pretty much confused about who was who) so we are prepared for the followup stories, of which the next 3 are also Top 100s at AAR in 2007.

I liked her writing - she makes the vampires out to be headbangers with tattoos, and it works. While they all have slight accents, they still speak American slang, carry a lot of weapons and are mostly looking to kickass all the time. Beth is pretty normal - she was raised in the foster system, didn't know she was half-vampire, but has her own apartment, a cat, a job at a newspaper. She's completely unaware of even the existence of vampires and lessers.

Well, I'm not sure I made any sense on this - the story was suspenseful, confusing, hot - Wrath had a serious jones for Beth, making him a fairly besotted hero by the end (but not all the way through so I'm not tagging it). The heroes were bad and the bad guys badder. And some loose ends to get you to read the next books. 4 stars. Serial Challenge, Spring 2009 Challenge and AAR Top 100 Quest.

The Spymaster's Lady by Joanna Bourne ****

2010-12-10T12:52:00.000-07:00

The Spymaster's Lady by Joanna Bourne

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had already read this in print, and liked it - 4 stars. The narrator, Kirsten Potter, was new to me, and I think I would give her a B/B- for this narration. Her reading in general was pretty good, and the French accent she gave Annique worked for me most of the time. She had a few mispronunciations that so struck me I physically shivered when she said them, notably "LeBlanc" where she put such emphasis on the final C. The C would not be pronounced in French; in fact, the name Leblanc is fairly common in Louisiana where the C is also not pronounced, sounding more like "luh-blah(n)". (The N would not really be pronounced, just sort of nasalized.) Another word that made me grind my teeth was gendarmes: the French would not pronounce the final S. OH, and Francois, the man she considered making love with (or was it him considering it with her?), would surely not like being given a woman's name: Francois would not have the S pronounced like the name Francoise.

OK, I'm being nitpicky but still - she went so far with giving Annique a French accent/pattern of speech (which, with Bourne's lyrical, French-patterned prose, she really had to do!) that having those kinds of things just spoiled the mood for me. It also seemed her voice got sort of scratchier by the end (or was it scratchy the whole time?) and that made Annique sound older. If I were rating this on narration only, I would have to lower it to 3 stars, maybe 3.5, but the story was wonderful and so I'm back to 4!

Below is my review of the print version from July, 2010:

This is a series that has had a lot of buzz in the past couple of years, so it's been on my radar to read. Since there is a new one in the series, it's risen on my list and I got the first 2 books, and am on a waiting list for the new one.

The heroine of Lady is Annique, a spy in her own right. She's 19 or 20 but has spent her entire life in the service of France because her mother and father were also spies, and raised her as such. She possessed a special gift - a photographic memory - which meant she could be trusted with maps, notes, photos that needed to be transmitted to the top spy via her memory. She's smart, she's wily, she's resourceful - I kept thinking of her as 19th c Lisbeth Salander (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). She can throw knives; she can see in the dark; she can run like the wind. She's on a final journey, she figures, since there are several people who want her last big secret, and her mother and father are both dead.

Into her path comes Grey, the British Spymaster. She releases him from the cellar of the bad guy, and now their lives are entangled in oh so many ways, because Grey is the British Spymaster, and therefore her sworn enemy. And they are both attracted to one another - and he and she play a game of cat and mouse throughout the story, with him allowing her to lead him to the endpoint of her journey where he is hoping to learn the location of the secret everyone knows she possesses.

It seemed that much of the book was told from her (3rd person) POV, with a taste of how she would think in French, cleverly done with grammar mimicking the French way of speaking. The reader is also introduced to Grey's cohorts - Adrian and Doyle, also British spies. They make an engaging team, filling in strengths and making it more fun and oh so slightly more credible.

I really didn't see the final twist before it was revealed or how it affected the ending, so it was a surprise to me and I thought it made for a unique and interesting plot. Plus, from my vantage point, Grey was all besottedness and protection and I thought that made the ending very romantic. I just love a besotted hero! 4 stars - not a keeper but a wonderful story all the same.

Just The Sexiest Man Alive by Julie James *****

2010-12-05T22:54:00.002-07:00

Just the Sexiest Man Alive by Julie James

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

THIS WAS A GREAT BOOK! I was tempted into it by The Group (the Speaking of Audiobooks group), and partway in I admit I was sorta shaking my head, thinking No, it's too much like that inner fantasy we all had as impressionable pre-teens that some celebrity would think we could be best friends if we could just meet them in person. But no, the author - and bless her, the narrator Karen White - had such a great voice for this story. The tone almost bordered on snarky, but never really crossed the line. Our heroine, Taylor, was a smart, sassy and sarcastic lawyer, and that smart, sassy and sarcastic tone drove the entire story. It wasn't about a fantasy celebrity realizing he could fall in love with a non-Hollywood woman - it was about a woman staying true to herself and still managing to find herself in incredible circumstances. The more caught up Taylor got in the Hollywood scene, the funnier the story became, until at the end I was laughing out loud non-stop! But it's not over-the-top, or farce - it's just funny situations and a heroine that always has a better come-back than anyone else. The last line left me laughing for several minutes!

The narrator really nailed the tone and tenor of the story - I'm going to have to find other books she's narrated, cuz she's good! (apparently I'm not her only fan; her bio indicates she's narrated over 40 books)

Taylor is a hot-shot young lawyer from Chicago, on loan to her firm's LA office for a big case in her specialty, employment law - specifically sexual harassment in the workplace. Coincidentally, hot-shot actor and Sexiest Man Alive Jason Andrews has asked her firm to let him spend time with a lawyer as research for an upcoming film, and Taylor has to juggle a womanizing, bad-boy actor with a $30M lawsuit in the few months she is assigned to LA. She immediately takes a dislike to the playboy and pretty much manages to one-up him at every turn. Next thing you know, she's The Mystery Woman, seen only from the back in photos with the Sexiest Man Alive.

Jason is at first annoyed, then amused and then challenged by Taylor. The more time he spends with her, the more interested he becomes. However, being a Man, he manages to make more than his fair share of relationship mistakes, especially considering their relationship is pretty much strictly business in Taylor's mind. Enter the runner-up for every title Jason holds, pretty boy Scott who is out to topple Jason from his throne - and things start to really get complicated.

Coming Undone by Susan Andersen **

2010-12-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

Coming Undone by Susan Andersen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

AUDIO BOOK REVIEW When I read this in print - the 4th in a series that I had really liked - I rated it 2 stars. I thought it seemed too forced, the reactions of the characters not realistic, PJ's character especially being obnoxious. But I got this audiobook free at the library, so I decided to give it a try, since I usually like Susan Andersen's writing. Nicole Poole as narrator gets a sort of B+ on this one from me. She managed to infuse some realism into the story and raise it to 3 stars - hearing it in her voice, rather than just in my head, smoothed some of the reactions. It still felt forced, and Andersen's use of similes in this book got old after the first 4 or 5 dozen. I get it, that's supposed to be how southerners talk, right? (insert wry smile here)

Back to the narration: Poole was good, mostly, but she did have a few times where her pauses seemed to come in the wrong places, as if maybe she hadn't really read it before doing the recording and paused at the end of a page only to take back up on the next one. Her PJ voice was ok, her Jared voice pretty good, her Esme voice - well, minor character, so never mind; her Nell, Hank and Eddie voices all pretty mediocre - but consistent. She also narrated 2 of Rachel Gibson's Author Friends series, and I really liked her voice on those. Maybe she's better with better material!

My first read was in print, June, 2008. Here's that review:

Maybe I'm cursed. Maybe it's the moon.

I didn't much like Coming Undone. And I'm devastated to admit it.

Here I've been starting every one of my reviews of Andersen's books with Another Winner - but now, well, it ain't. And coming on the heels of my not much liking the latest Julia Quinn, it makes me question my very existence. Could it be me??

Coming Undone is the 4th installment in her Marine series, which was supposed to be a trilogy about these 3 former Marine buddies, Coop, Zach and John. Then Andersen decided to write the last one for John's brother-in-law Jared and his buddy PJ who appear in the third book.

I mentioned in that review that some time needed to go by because, after all, PJ was only 13 in that book. Andersen decided she could make it be 15 years that had passed, so the hero and heroine are fully grown up. Which makes it sometime in the future? Her note in the book admits she is using a known soap opera gimmick, where a child is born, then a year or so later, the child is a teenager.

She lost me at about page 20. First, we get a prologue putting Jared into the situation: PJ is now a country music star, and her recording company has hired Semper Fi Security to provide security for her on her upcoming tour. John, head of Semper Fi, chooses Jared to be the one. So now we know Jared is working for John, and that's about all we know.

Then we find PJ, who hasn't really disappeared as the tabloids are saying, but has just decided to take a road trip and hasn't checked in with anyone. PJ has just recently fired her manager - her no-good bitch of a mother - for embezzling, and the old lady is ratting her out to the press with a bunch of lies. I guess we're supposed to imagine the studio fell for the lies and that is why they hired Semper Fi, to keep PJ on the straight 'n' narrow. So, enter Jared. PJ is delighted to see him - it's been 15 years since their 2 week friendship on the streets of Denver, and they didn't keep up after that. Wait, wait, she's only delighted for a minute then she's pissed and the next thing you know, she's let the air out of his tires and split.

WTF?

OK, wait: here is the assignment: per John, "Wild Wind Records retained us to find your old friend Priscilla Jayne." Then he says: "...mission is going to be two-fold. First to locate... Then to accompany her on her tour to make sure she doesn't disappear again."

So, yeah, it sounds like they don't trust her. But I guess we're supposed to remember how she just reacts off the cuff before thinking, like she did at 13. Or something.

Anyway, whatever the reasoning, I didn't follow it. She does everything possible to shake Jared off her trail. And so there's this immediate antagonism. And I just didn't buy it - I didn't buy the way she immediately jumped into his arms when they first met either. I didn't find either reaction reasonable or credible.

Basically, for the first half of the book, he tries to be reasonable and professional with her, and she does everything she can to get him away or in trouble or whatever. She tells a hotel manager he's a stalker. She convinces a bartender to have the bouncer throw him out of a bar where she performs. She lets her band members think he's a nuisance.

He spends a lot of his time reminding himself he's a glacier - and that includes after they finally decide to act on their attraction (attraction? didn't see it coming, did ya?). He's a big cold glacier who - damn him - insists on providing his women with multiple orgasms before succumbing to his own. What a jerk, huh? Well PJ thinks so - because he's so cold and calculating.

She should read Loving Evangeline by Linda Howard if she thinks Jared was cold and calculating. He doesn't begin to reach the level of that hero.

Let's see - I kept plodding onward, thinking maybe, just maybe, I'd get more invested in their story. Andersen does her "we-don't-know-whose-POV-we're-dealing-with" tactic (as well as her including-hyphenated-phrases-to-a-new-level device) to introduce a fanatic. This one's going to show PJ some old tyme religion if she doesn't straighten up. So just when Jared decides his work is done, we get a warning from the psycho, and his job changes from watchdog to protector.

Then, let's see, yada yada yada, blah blah blah, oh yeah, the secondary romance. We have to out an ugly duckling. Nell is a song-writer/manager. They sure seem to have a tiny little crew - 2 musicians, Nell and PJ are it (oh and the bus driver). It seemed inadequate, using my theater background for comparison. Anyway, Nell is not thin, doesn't wear makeup and dresses blandly. And she has a crush on 1 of the 2 musicians. Of course, duh, he (Eddie) only dates young bimbos, and the other musician (Hank) is the one with the hots for her. So - let's take Nell shopping, and let's get her some better clothes and makeup so someone will notice her.

To be honest, I wanted Jared to make a sort of play for Nell. He did compliment her but maybe PJ would have been a leeeetle bit more aware if... OK, so Andersen didn't play the jealousy card. But I needed something to get me interested. Now we have our swan Nell - and Eddie asks her if she lost weight. This crushes the life out of her crush - meanwhile Hank is bowled over. One thing eventually leads to another and Hank and Nell finally get hot and heavy. Just to be sure, later in the story Eddie almost sees the light, asks her out and she turns him down. OK, whew, got that outta our systems, huh?

OK, where was I? Oh yeah. I gave up and went to bed, thinking maybe if I finished it today I'd be happier. The stalker is finally revealed through some sloppy PI work - really, Jared, what took you so long? And he makes a move at the one time Jared lets down his guard. Jared manages to rush in at the last minute, and in her frenzy PJ tells him she loves him.

Whoa. (like we didn't all expect this, even if there wasn't quite enough evidence to actually say we saw it coming). That brings his guard up. OH NO MR BILL! Jared can't trust anyone but the Marines and his family!! And especially not PJ who left him without a trace after their 2-week ordeal 15 years ago when she was 13!!!

And on top of all this inanery, what in the world does this phrase in the epilogue mean: "a brunette with pale skin, red lipstick and a striking white streak in her black hair" Hello - is she brunette "a person with dark (brown) hair" or is her hair black? (it's Ronnie, from Book 1, of course - it's black). Arg.

OK look, I can't give it 2 stars. Really, I just can't - can I? Because, I mean, maybe it's ME. Maybe it's because I bought it full price instead of swapping it on PBS. Maybe it's the phase of the moon (half). By the way, they both admit they love each other, and the epilogue is their wedding shower, in case there was any question of a HEA.

Otherwise Engaged by Suzanne Brockmann ***

2010-11-20T07:36:00.002-07:00

Otherwise Engaged by Suzanne Brockmann

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The third of the Sunrise Key trilogy, it was pretty much just "ok" although it was interesting to have a book address issues of dealing with a hearing-impaired child, and the relationship of the child to the story. I thought our heroine was a bit more stubborn than necessary about almost everything, so that was annoying for me. And, ok, I read time travel so why finding the whole paparazzi element unrealistic I'm not sure! Unfortunately it was necessary to drive the plot, and I had a hard time buying it and their ways of dealing with it.

The narration by Susan Boyce was slightly over a 3 star - she didn't differentiate much between the hero/heroine voices, although it was easy enough to tell who was whom. I wouldn't avoid her but wouldn't seek her out either - not inspiring, but not annoying either.

This story deals with Sunrise Key's Billionaire Preston Seaholm, Fantasy Man Magazine's Most Eligible Bachelor. Yes, that one attribute makes reporters from all over the globe stream to the tiny town of Sunrise Key to follow his every move and catches him in clinch with new resident Molly Cassidy.

Molly is the widow of some famous writer who didn't really love her enough, we learn as the story goes along. They had a child, now 10 years old, with an unnamed degenerative hearing loss syndrome - a loss that will produce profound deafness by the time the kid is 20. Preston wants to buy the dilapidated mansion Molly has inherited, and therefore makes several increasingly large offers, and stubborn Molly turns them all down: she wants to remodel it and turn it into a B&B, even though she has no resources of her own (aka $) to do this.

To get the paparazzi to leave them alone, they somehow decide to pretend to be engaged. Unfortunately, not only does it just get the paparazzi more involved, they both feel the SoulMateElectricity in each other's company, so... blah blah blah, "let me give you all the money in the world and also let's boink" he says, "money can't buy me love even though my body wants to boink you" she says. They dance, literally, emotionally and physically, around the issues and then HEA. 3 stars, max.

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2010-11-18T18:18:00.002-07:00

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Kiss and Tell by Suzanne Brockmann ***

2010-11-17T20:36:00.000-07:00

Kiss and Tell (Sunrise Key Trilogy, #1) by Suzanne Brockmann

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a fairly quick listen, and the narrator, Susan Boyce, is good, if you don't mind her not-exactly-English-accent she gives the British hero. I'd already read the second in the series, because it was released earlier. It's sort of early-Brockmann, and is a little different from her later series like Troubleshooters both in tone and plot. The whole fiance thing got on my nerves, and there's a scene where I thought the heroine was going to be the death of the dang horse while she threw a hissy fit. I was actually yelling THE HORSE! THE HORSE! while I drove! Still, I liked it.

Plot setup: girl returns to childhood home for the holidays where her brother and his best friend are; she's always fought with his best friend; she has a meaningless life with a fiance she doesn't love in NYC; you fill in the plot here.

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Strange Bedpersons by Jennifer Crusie *****

2010-11-15T07:33:00.000-07:00

Strange Bedpersons by Jennifer Crusie

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another book I'd already read and enjoyed that I had to hear on audio! It's like comfort food, macaroni & cheese - you know you'll enjoy it and feel good at the end. Narrator Madison Vaughn brings a nice, cynical tone to the characters that fits them to a t. It's an "opposites attract" sort of theme, along the lines of Dharma and Greg - she was raised in a commune and works at nonprofits, he's a Yale-educated lawyer trying to make partner. It's filled with Crusie's trademark witty banter, and Vaughn made me laugh out loud with Nick's secretary Christine's dialogue. There's some slight intrigue, a tiny mystery, but nobody dies - just some fun characterizations and a zany story. Yes! a reason to keep reading.

Below is my original review of the print book, a couple of years back.

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I finished this late last night - and felt a pretty good 5-star glow after it was over. Of course, now in the light of day, it seems a little different, so I'm thinking it was more like a 4.5...

The basic plot is a sort of Dharma and Greg relationship except that in this case Tess isn't nearly as open-minded and happy as Dharma. I find Nick to be a lot like Greg though - besotted (a besotted hero?) with Tess, and sticking to his own principals while being really more open-minded than Tess about their differences.

She was raised on a commune by hippie parents. She continues their traditions by working as a teacher at a nonprofit foundation that runs a tutoring program for disadvantaged children, and also by protesting the ills of the world, and in general trying to fix everyone and everything. Living according to her principals, she shops at thrift stores, lives in a low-income area and in general you get the idea she's trying to minimize her footprint on the world.

Nick was raised in a middle-class, blue-collar family, but attended an Ivy League law school and is now a Republican lawyer hoping to make partner in a small family law firm, of which he is not family. He's ambitious but actually not in a cut-throat way. I think is says volumes about his scruples that he refused to make love with her in a public parking lot because it's against the law! OK, so it also shows him to be a little straight-laced and maybe even stuffy - but he is a lawyer, after all, so not breaking the law seems like a good idea - especially when he points out his bedroom was less than 10 minutes away. And it speaks volumes for her that, after he refused the car and suggested the bedroom, she refused him altogether. She's not really as open-minded and liberal as she thinks she is.

The verbal sparring in the book was pretty funny - I laughed out loud several times during the short read (about 250 pp) at the antics. Nick has a dilemma - a famous author the firm is wooing has specifically asked the lawyers to attend a weekend house party with spouses, and neither Nick nor his buddy Park are married. He goes to Tess - even though now they are no longer dating - and asks her to do this for him as a favor, and to get Park a date too. Tess is truly conflicted - her body is trying to override her mind about Nick, and she is really attracted to him. She keeps trying to tell herself their relationship cannot work because they are so diametrically opposed on so many issues, but she likes him as a friend so she obliges and goes, along with her best friend Gina.

Tess finds herself giving in to Nick on several issues - one of them is her trying to run everyone's lives. After the weekend, Park and Gina start a relationship, but Park is too lily-livered to stand up to his father and continues to show up at family affairs with a different woman, one his parents hope he'll marry. After he leaves Corinne, he heads to Gina - but he doesn't let either woman know. Tess would normally have told Gina, but for Nick she butts out - an action that later comes back to bite her.

Tess has a hard time realizing what is truly in her core values that she must do for herself, and what are the issues she can bend or compromise on where Nick and others are concerned. Nick is more sure of himself, although he does lean on his Superwoman secretary Christine for help - and she is the true hero in the book, in my eyes!! She is the one who finally makes the difference for the two of them.

It was a fun story and a great ending. If you are looking for short, hot, funny - this is it. 5 stars.

Kiss of the Highlander by Karen Marie Moning ****

2010-11-13T20:12:00.000-07:00

Kiss of the Highlander by Karen Marie Moning

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I had read book one in this series by audio back in March of this year, and decided it was ok, but not worth pursuing. I have read many reviews praising Phil Gigante as narrator, especially on this book, so I indulged when it came up for sale at Audible.com.

I like Gigante's voice well enough, although I agree with those who wish he would stop using his odd falsetto for women's voices. His Scots accent for the hero is good, his voice basso and yummy, but why did it sound as if some of the characters were Irish? And why did Gwen sometimes have almost a Scots accent? I think he's a little bit inconsistent with his voices. I think if I was enjoying the story more I wouldn't have nitpicked.

Moning's style of writing this series is somewhat reminiscent of Sandra Hill's humor - sort of over-the-top, almost a parody of romance that I think takes a certain mood to appreciate. Sometimes I do, sometimes I think "enough already". I made it to the end, I had a laugh or two, and I think I'm done with Moning's Highlanders now.

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Veil of Night by Linda Howard - the audio version ***

2010-11-12T07:05:00.001-07:00

Veil of Night: A Novel by Linda Howard

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The 3-star review is for the AUDIO of the book, since I might have liked it even more in print but the narration was so inconsistent and sometimes awful. Clarinda Ross (the narrator) might be a good actor - her character voices are good - but either she just cannot read books out loud or she had very, very bad direction. Her narration (the stuff between the good character voices) was sing-songy with odd, disconcerting short pauses. I forged ahead with the audiobook anyway, but I think I need to read it in print now to really appreciate it. Her narration earned maybe 1 1/2 or 2 stars, but since the story seemed good, I'll go with 3.

The story was a familiar theme with me, since I'm just now reading the end of Nora Roberts' Bride series - Jaclyn is a wedding planner! She's in business with her mother, and she's dealing with the Bridezilla to end all Bridezillas - a young woman who has managed to pretty much piss off everyone in her path. She's not just wishy-washy - she's mean! Everyone was probably imagining inventive ways to off her when she actually gets offed - with kabob skewers. With kabobs still on them. Ewwww.

The detective on the case is our hero, Eric, who coincidentally had a memorable one-night-stand with Jaclyn the night before the murder. Small town. This sorta puts some distance between Jaclyn and Eric - she's thinking, how could he accuse me of murder? and he's thinking, how can I get her back into bed?

There was a nice cast of characters - the other women working the business, a couple of funny wedding scenarios that I think will be funnier when I read them to myself.

People, this is LINDA HOWARD - her books deserve the best! I have to repeat what I read on Audible.com: Was Joyce Bean busy??

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Faking It by Jennifer Crusie *****

2010-11-07T11:00:00.000-07:00

The audio book of this is narrated by Aasne Vigesaa, who also narrated Welcome To Temptation - and she is good! It was just as much fun in audio 2 years later, and I probably laughed even more to hear the lines spoken out loud. Highly recommended! The review from November 2008 of the book:
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What a romp! First of all, I had no idea that this was a sequel of sorts to Welcome To Temptation - the hero is Sophie's brother Davy Dempsey, con man extraordinaire. So that was a welcome surprise. And it also featured Clea from the same book - you know, the porn star who dragged Sophie and Amy to Temptation to make her video there.

The book features 2 families involved in deception - in addition to the Dempseys, there's the Goodnights. The Goodnight family has been involved in art galleries, art, painting - and forgeries - for centuries. Now they run an art gallery in Columbus, Ohio, but it's not doing so well, so Tilda (the actual heroine of the book although there are a ton of characters/family members) helps make ends meet by painting murals - more forgeries, usually, of famous paintings.

Tilda and Davy meet in Clea's closet one night: Davy's there to hack into Clea's computer to get back the $3 million his money manager embezzled from him and gave to Clea, Tilda's there to steal a painting inadvertently sold to Clea that is a forgery Tilda painted. Davy doesn't get his money and they almost get caught, so he sends her home with a promise to get the painting for her. Of course, he hasn't yet revealed his name or even his face to her at this point, although they've shared some hot kissing in the closet...

I don't think I can even begin to describe the lunacy that makes up this plot! It was a laugh-a-minute as we meet all the characters: Tilda's sister Eve, who is also alter-ego Louise - who works at a gay nightclub with her ex-husband Andrew and father of their teenage daughter Nadine; Andrew's current love, Jeff who is a lawyer; Gwen Goodnight, the matriarch who works Double Crostic puzzles and runs the gallery; Clea and her latest mark, Mason, who is actually more interested in Gwen; Ford, the hit man hired to kill Davy; Simon, Davy's partner-in-crime; and of course, Steve the dachsund aka Notable Pet. Oh, and Thomas-the-caterer and Davy's father, Michael Dempsey... well the list goes on and on, as we follow the trials and tribulations of keeping the forgeries and cons secret.

It was fast paced and filled with hysterical lines and innuendos and music titles and people who weren't what you thought and weren't where you thought - I found myself going back a page or 2 more than once to follow a reference I missed as I read. In the midst of all this, Davy and Tilda grew a real relationship - good thing, since they were sleeping together every night - that was touching and fun and all things good. They even get a nice HEA, no faking.

5 stars - it's a longer book (400+ pp) but a fast read nonetheless, as long as you are paying attention!

Savor the Moment by Nora Roberts ****

2010-11-05T21:51:00.002-07:00

Savor the Moment by Nora Roberts

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the 3rd in a series about 4 women who grew up together and are now in a wedding business together. Laurel McBane, the chef of the group, has always had a thing for Del Brown "of the Connecticut Browns", which implies, as she says, that he's not just rich - but wealthy. Del is the brother of one of the 4women, so he was always around. Unfortunately for her, he always considered her another sister. So she had to take control and show him she wasn't!

La Nora writes such wonderful stories, and she excels in celebrating the friendships of women. I have not glommed her work (who could keep up with her?) but have read quite a lot - often I find her books wonderful, and occasionally I find them not so great. This one falls somewhere in between. The story is good, the characters fleshed out, if a little too good to be true. But where was the conflict? Well, it was all in Laurel's head and once Del figured it out, he fixed it. The End. OK, it was a sweet, romantic end, but... I guess I was in the mood for more than 2 minutes of angst. It smacked of Emma and Jack's story - a sort of made-up conflict that didn't really make you wonder if they could resolve it. While I was thinking, "is that it??", it was already resolved.

Angela Dawe has officially made my Rising Star Narrator list - she seems to be a very busy voice actor, with 39 listings on Audible.com, all released in the last year. I sense her readings will become better and better as she gets more experience and her voice matures, too. Yay! Truly, a narrator can make or break the audio book, almost without regard for the quality of the story itself! More Angela Dawe!

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Fast Women by Jennifer Crusie ****

2010-11-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

Re-read as audio book in 2010 - originally read as paperback in Nov 2008- review follows:

I'm on a pretty serious Jennifer Crusie glom, mostly because I picked up a Lot of her books on eBay this month. She's got a definite style - witty, rapid-fire banter, women who fix things, Notable Pets - and this book has it all. It's a murder mystery too (and now that it's over, I'm still not clear on who killed which of the many bodies that showed up!)

The main heroine is Nell - a recent divorcée whose husband left her for a younger woman after 22 years of marriage. She's still in the walking-dead stage, something anyone who's been there might recognize - lost a lot of weight and still in denial about what happened. The opening scene (which is hysterical) has her sitting in the office of the main hero, Gabe, a PI looking to hire an office manager. While he talks on the phone, she manages to single-handedly and inadvertently wreck his office, complete with breaking a window and putting a hole in the carpet - I was laughing out loud the whole time.

Gabe's baggage is pretty heavy too - he's still sleeping with his ex-wife, they have a college-aged daughter, and their businesses are right next door to one another. His PI business has been around since before he was born, when his dad ran it. His father died some years back, but nothing has changed - the decor, the clientele - all leftover from the 1950s.

Nell starts to change all that the instant she gets the job, and meets resistance at every turn from Gabe and even from his cousin/partner Riley somewhat. But when Nell realizes the former secretary (that she replaced) swindled them out of $5k+, and then is found dead in a freezer, things start to, well, heat up - which is kinda funny since many of the deaths involve a freezer...

As usual for Ms Crusie's stories, there's a whole slew of characters including Nell's best friends Suze and Margie, who are also related to her by marriage, and whose families are also major clients of Gabe and Riley's agency. There's Gabe's side of the aisle as well - ex-wife Chloe, daughter Lu, clients Trevor (Margie's father), Jack (Suze's husband) and Budge (Margie's SO). Once again, a scorecard would come in handy to keep track of who's who. At one point, Nell points out she's slept with everyone at the table except her ex-husband's new wife in a crowd that includes the ex-husband, Gabe, Riley and Suze. Sorta boggles the mind and was another very funny scene to boot.

Oh, Notable Pet mention: Marlene (think Dietrich), formerly known as SugarPie, is the long-haired dachsund Nell stole from the ex-husband of a would-be client because the client thought the dog was being mistreated. It was Nell's first bad decision...

While the hunt is on to figure out what the former-now-deceased secretary was looking for and who killed her, there's an ongoing power struggle between Nell and Gabe that develops, albeit realistically slowly, into a relationship. Of sorts. It takes a while to form and grow and develop a life of its own.

So, it was a murder mystery that was also a romp (seems a little odd, no?) and I'm going with 4 stars.

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audio book notes: the narrator is Sandra Burr and she's good in other books I've listened to - however, I finished this a couple of days ago and did not make any notes. Ooops, who can remember after a couple of days??

Trust Me On This by Jennifer Crusie *****

2010-11-03T18:16:00.003-07:00

Trust Me on This by Jennifer Crusie

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another winner for Crusie - fast paced story and dialogue, read by Angela Dawe who is quickly becoming a favorite narrator for me. Crusie herself calls it a "screwball comedy" - there are mistaken identities and con men and undercover cops and a bunch of staid and not-so staid college professors all holed up in a hotel for a four-day convention that ends up being not very conventional at all. Crusie even manages to introduce a dog into the story - after she finished writing it, because the publisher decided to put one on the cover! I found myself laughing out loud several times during this relatively short read - it definitely goes into my list of re-listens.

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Interestingly, it seems I can post my Goodreads reviews here! (see above!) However, I try to write short reviews there, and here is where I can rant and rave and go on and on cuz it's just me.

The plot: journalist heroine Dennie (I had a hard time with this being a woman's name) is looking for a break, something to break her out of her rut in the bridal/women's section of the paper. When she learns a famous marriage-guru's own marriage is on the rocks, she heads to a convention where the woman is speaking, hoping to get an interview. Coincidentally, undercover cop hero Alec heads to the same convention, expecting a serial con artist to appear.

The con artist appears, and - based on a tip - Alec assumes Dennie is working with the con man. The two are stuck in this hotel, him trying to trip her up so she'll turn state's evidence on the con, her trying to get to his aunt because she's a friend of the woman she hopes to interview; however, neither will own up to the other what they are actually doing. Both have honed their charming ways, so there's a fair amount of time each is trying to charm information out of the other - and the other recognizes the methods! Dennie picks up pretty quickly that Alec is not the dumb farm-boy he pretends to be so she'll sell him swamp land; Alec starts to think maybe she's not the con's bimbo associate after all.

The secondary romance (over at Goodreads they are calling it the May/December romance - I think it's more like early/mid December, considering she's 62 and he's 58...) is fun and much faster paced than the slow build of Alec and Dennie. There's even a tertiary romance that's pretty funny, all things considered. OK, it was only 4 days but still... I really enjoyed it! 5 stars!

Angel Creek by Linda Howard ***

2010-11-01T23:12:00.000-07:00

AUDIO: I got this from the library, with narrator Natalie Ross. I like, or have liked, Ross as a narrator, but she either cannot do justice to this property, or she cannot rise above it, cuz I thought her narration was pretty dang mediocre on this book, which is also pretty dang mediocre (or worse). The audio of this book didn't make the story any better.

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My Review from August 2008
First off - I got this in a Large Print 2-for-1 book from PBS. Yay! But I have to warn anyone who gets this book: Angel Creek is the second in the series, but for some reason it's the first in the book. Silly me, I didn't figure that out before reading them. It doesn't entirely ruin it, but there is a character in A Lady of the West who appears in Angel Creek, so if you read it first like I did, you'll know a spoiler going into A Lady...

Second off - holy moly. OK, it is Linda Howard, but it's early Linda Howard and although her writing chops were still great, man - it's - well - the men are not just alpha, they're complete assholes and I would have to say what they do pushes forced seduction so close to rape there'd be a hung jury or a conviction if the women pressed charges, ok? Hence my 3 stars because if the writing wasn't good, this would have been a 2 star or maybe even a DNF. She has these men just forget that No Means No - in their world, No means OK, I want it even though I think I don't. Bad. Oh yeah baby like that.

I tried to tell myself it was a Western thing, hard life, yada yada. But I mean. These men just said: "gimme" and took.

In this story, we have Luke - he's the owner of the Double C ranch, with no family left, and rich. We have Dee - no family left for her either, but all she has is her family ranch, not money - and Angel Creek, the best and sometimes only source of water in the region. We have a sorta bad guy - he's not really evil, but he's not all good either, named Kyle, and he's also a rancher with a big investment in land and cattle. We have a gently bred banker's daughter, whassername. And we have Luis Fronteras - he's a drifter from the first story, A Lady of the West. And we have a whore with a heart of gold, Tillie. Are you keeping track, here?? Get out a scorecard.

It seems everything traces back to something that happened 10 years ago, for every character. After the 4th or 5th time I saw the phrase "10 years ago" I kept thinking, what exactly was it about 10 years ago? It would have taken a calculator and some notepaper to figure out what year it was set in - some time after the Civil War (10 years?), but isn't exactly named - just references to what happened some time before.

Luke and whassername have a completely unspoken non-agreement. He figures she is what he needs as a wife if he ever decides he needs one. She is 25 - practically a crone - and figures she'll end up saying yes if he ever asks because where in the hell is she going to find a man to father children before her eggs dry up? Kyle and Tillie go way back - and also sometimes go upstairs for a poke - but Kyle wants to give Luke a run for his money, so he sorta almost pursues whassername. Maybe I should look up her name in the book. Kyle also pursues Dee because if she'd marry him, he'd have more/better water for his cattle. He also offers to buy Angel Creek.

Dee's a stubborn independent woman who shoots anyone who comes on her property, except, uh, Luke. Luke decides to sorta woo her a teensy bit, just for the land, mind you - except hot damn she's an exciting piece of flesh!! So - well - the bastard takes advantage of her when she's down and sort gets her all wanting him and stuff. Damn. He does start to realize that bonking Dee and marrying whassername might not be the best idea he ever had...

Luis wants whassername. Bad. He, of all the men in both books, is a gentleman for all he's a half breed or maybe full breed Mexican drifter gunslinger. He, of all the men in both books, treats his women right (and bonks them silly before offering for their hands... hmmmm....)

The big Turning Point is when Kyle goes crazy and lies to his men, telling them Dee will allow his thirst-crazed cattle onto her land. When they herd them over there, wouldn't you know that she's standing there with a gun, shooting at them? They all go nuts, wanting blood and rape and pillaging. Luis take Dee's side, runs to Tlllie, tells Tillie to get Luke to come save Dee, and then goes back to help Dee protect her property. Whassername doesn't even find out til the next day.

OK - did you need that scorecard to keep that straight??

The writing is good, the story is ok, the men are abominable and practically unforgivable. 3 stars, and only recommended to those (1) who happen to already own the book and (2) have nothing better to do or (3) are determined to read everything LH ever wrote.
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audio notes: Natalie Ross did such a fine job on After The Night, which I have listened to 2 or 3 times, that I really expected her to make this one work for me, even though I hadn't thought much of this book 2 years ago. She does voices very, very well - but her narrator voice was just sort of sing-songy and not interesting. I just didn't like it that much, but then I hadn't like the story that much when I read it either.

It Must Be Love by Rachel Gibson ***

2010-11-01T21:21:00.003-07:00

This is one of the last books by Rachel Gibson I hadn't yet read - surely by now I'm almost completely caught up in glomming her backlist!

This one didn't have much new or fun to offer - the copyright date was 2000, and in internet years that's about 1 billion, but in romance novel years, it's maybe only 20 or so. Really, the internet and everything related to it - ipods/mp3 players, smart phones, etc - date contemporary books so quickly!

I'm not sure why I wandered off course - nothing about the plot was really too dated. It's the Dharma and Greg scenario - she's (slightly) into the New Age stuff, making her own relaxation and massage oils with essential oils, and slightly believing in karma and not really believing in Fate, and trying vegetarianism but lapsing. Gabrielle Breedlove runs her own small business with a partner, Kevin, and is suspected of participating in a burglary ring that is ripping off art and antiques and fencing them.

Joe's the detective assigned to follow her every cute little move to see if he can catch her fencing the goods. Unfortunately she's on to him - except she assumes he's a stalker, and drops him with a can of hairspray. Then she becomes his confidential informant, so he poses as her - oh, gee, how about BOYFRIEND? and hangs around her shop trying to catch Kevin.

Yeah, they're opposites-attract, and there's an okay plot, and of course I like Gibson's writing pretty good, so it's a 3-star, okay read. Not going in my favorites list or anything, but it's... okay.

Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie *****

2010-10-24T09:58:00.002-07:00

What a fun story this was! It's a Romantic Comedy Ghost Story With Kids, as Crusie herself describes it in a very funny interview with Susan Elizabeth Phillips. And I listened to it and the narrator, Angela Dawe, was wonderful! She has a youthful narrator voice - not child-like, but not too mature, which is nice; however, she did all voices, all ages, wonderfully, consistently, so that you were never unsure who was talking.

There is one thing about Crusie's writing - she does write "he said" and "she said" a lot which doesn't bother me when reading, but when hearing it, it gets redundant. Ok that's my only criticism. I guess other authors leave out the "he said" "she said" when there's a long dialogue, or maybe they use different verbs, like "she sighed" or "he intoned". I like "he murmured" - that's my favorite. Hey, at least this narrator didn't "heh heh" every time that one annoying character did it - the narrator just read what Crusie wrote and didn't try to add sound effects!!

The heroine is Andie - she left her ex-husband North 10 years ago, after a passionate courtship, whirlwind wedding and 1 year of wedded... boredom. He got so involved in the family business he all but forgot about her. They divorced, and she spent the next 10 years wandering - looking for a place to light. She finally meets the man who adores her, and although she hasn't said YES to his question, figures it is time to flush North from her mind so she can wed this new guy in peace.

North has a couple of problems, and when Andie shows up to give back all the uncashed alimony checks he sent her, he decides to ask her help. She agrees to spend 1 month with his new wards, 8 and 12 years old, for $10,000 - all she has to do is get them ready to move from their ancient, moat-surrounded and haunted house, something 3 previous nannies have not been able to do. Oh, yeah, one of his problems IS Andie - he's never really gotten over her.

Crusie writes great characters - Andie's mother is a tarot-reading hippie, North's mother is a ball-busting-bitch, North's younger brother is a ne'er-do-well womanizing rogue who manages to involve a career-climbing tv journalist, a parapsychologist and a whole bunch of other characters in the shenanigans which involve ghosts, death, and moving on. Of course, there are also the children - they're both a little odd, having to deal with ghosts in their everyday lives, but normal otherwise, once Andie reaches out to them.

And in addition to a Happily Ever After for Andie and North, there's a sort of trailer at the end - another HEA? Or a cliff-hanger? It was so much fun, and I ended up sitting up half the night, playing Sudoku (or is it Soduko?) and listening because I couldn't put it down. (should have been knitting - xmas is coming!!)

It seems I've heard Angela Dawe before - she narrated the 2nd in Nora Robert's Bride Quartet, which I've read, and the 3rd, which is in my TBR list. I give her a 4.9-star because, frankly, she's got to stand in line behind my absolute favorites: Anna Fields/Kate Fleming, Davina Porter, Barbara Rosenblat - and it may be a few years of experience for her to reach their 5 star status! The book is 5 stars - I loved it!

Let Me Be The One by Jo Goodman ****

2010-10-16T13:15:00.003-07:00

I read this first in April 2008, along with the other 3 in the Compass Club series, but didn't write full reviews. I merely commented that I liked them all about 4 stars, but not as keepers. So when I found them for free downloads of audio books at the library, I figured - what the heck - I'll listen to them as well.

I think the 4 star rating stays. I did enjoy it, but not as a favorite; I will probably listen to all 4 but plan to measure them out and not do them back-to-back.

The story is of 4 friends from school, as adults it's the Regency era I believe. The boys all have potential titles, each of which has a "direction" in it: North, East, South, West. In this one, the hero has come into his title - Earl of Northam. He meets Elizabeth Penrose while at a house party, and pursues her.

Libby, although the daughter of an earl, has a sordid secret that keeps her from going out on the marriage mart. Since revealing it would be a spoiler, I'll just say she figures she'll never experience love _again_. She has a disfiguring limp and isn't much for the marriage mart niceties like painting and needlework.

Of course, the Compass Club adult men are all now spies - or something - it's just implied; there is also a Mystery of the Gentleman Thief, a cat burglar who is not only stealing jewels during grand galas but has also managed to obtain traitorous papers. Northam is on a mission to uncover the thief's identity and get the papers back. How can Libby help?

Because all 4 books happen at about the same time, we hear of the other 3 men and just teensy parts of their stories during this book.

The narrator is Virginia Leishman. She has a wonderful, very proper-sounding British accent (acquired as a child, having been raised in England, per Audiofile magazine online) that worked well with the story.

4 stars

Cutting Loose by Susan Andersen **(*)

2010-10-16T06:24:00.000-07:00

My first review of this book from 2008 was of the paperback, and it is the first in a trilogy, so now that I've read the second (the third hasn't been published and might not be) AND the audio of this one, I'm going to go ahead and give it a 3rd star to bring it to the "it's Ok but mediocre" level.

so here's the first review:
--------------------------------

arg. One of my favorite authors, and this new release is a stinker.

I think it's a combination of things that I really don't like:

(1) I don't like the voice of this book. Too... too much jargon, too much hard to follow banter that doesn't sound like people really talk. And jeez, this guy Dev - come'on - no guy thinks like this, do they??
2010 audio comment: the "voice" of the book is slightly easier to listen to, even if the narrator isn't that good.

(2) Forced - we're forced to read all this odd psychobabble about Jane the heroine and her parents and how because they're so dramatic, she's the complete opposite. We're forced into believing these 3 women are best friends forever - it's a trilogy of women thing. I have liked the 3-women premise before but this time I just don't get it. Which one was the "blond friend" anyway? Couldn't she have just referred to them by their names?
2010 audio comment: now that I have read the second book in the trilogy AND heard this audiobook, it really was easier to keep track of the women since I wasn't able to skim. The psychobabble was still reaching though.

(3) Oh puhleez, the villain! Give me a f*cking break. I skimmed most of his scenes.
2010 audio comment: still think the villain doesn't come across as a 3 dimensional, potentially real person - still too comic-book-ish for me, especially given this one doesn't have Andersen's great humor

(4) The storyline - the women inherit a mansion from a rich old woman? It just didn't ring true.
2010 audio comment: I still find this storyline implausible. But then, I read time travel, so I guess I'll go with the leap of faith.

There was more. Do Americans of Irish descent actually call their fathers "Da"? Maybe, but then their speech pattern was a little... Irish... too so were they actually Irish? Or just stereotypical?
2010 audio comment: the narrator - who wasn't great - did not give them any Irish accent and the "Da" seemed out of place. Aunt Eileen's brogue wasn't good either.

I started to give this 3 stars. I did in fact read the whole thing, after all. But then as I thought about it, I realized I. Did. Not. Like. It. (that is a direct reference to the book by the way.) So even though I've loved so many of Andersen's books, I just can't find it in me to like this one.

But it's worth a credit on PBS where some hapless fool, uh I mean some other member has it wishlisted. And hey - there's even a review there from someone who did like it. Go figure.

OK, I'll do a little bit of description.

Three women, friends from elementary school. Heroine: Jane - parents third-rate actors, overly dramatic, quasi-alcoholic. BFFs Ava and Poppy - one is blonde, one is red-headed, one is rich, one is Darma from Darma and Greg - but who can remember which is which? Not me.

Irish American family, 4 brothers running a construction business; 2 are married, 2 single; 1 is undergoing chemo, so our hero Devlin comes home from his usual life of sailing yachts overseas to help out the family business.

The women inherit a Seattle mansion. Jane is a junior curator at a museum that inherited jewels and clothing from same deceased. The 3 BFF women hire the Irish American fellows to renovate.

Dev and Jane have instant across-the-room chemistry, then have hot monkey sex, then - oh noes! - fall in love.

Meanwhile a really really evil bad guy steals things from the mansion.

OK, see where it is going? Neither do I.

2 stars.
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2010 Audio Comments - yeah, I can give it a qualified 3 stars, but the narrator wasn't great. She wasn't AWFUL but her reading was sing-songy, and her men's voices - especially considering how low her own voice as narrator is - were done as if they were teens in the middle of changing voices. She used a sort of hoarse sound for Dev, the hero. And I'm afraid she didn't give Andersen's attempt at sounding like 20-somethings (20+10 in this case) any credence - she just read it like she read the narration, so the excess of jargon fell flat. Didn't work in my head reading it; didn't work in my head hearing this narrator speak it. Maybe it calls for a 20-something who talks like that to read it.

thank goodness for free library downloads

The Proposition by Judith Ivory *****

2010-10-10T16:56:00.001-07:00

I read this book about 2 years ago, and wrote the following review. I recently got the audio with narrator Steven Crossley, who was superb! Audio notes, such as they were, at the end:

ORIGINAL REVIEW FROM OCTOBER 2008:

Ah, I'm in love! With this book! It was soooo wonderful and fun, and, hmmmm, it reminded me in many ways of Ms. Ivory's other book, The Indiscretion, which I also loved. In fact, since I listened to the marvelous Barbara Rosenblat read The Indiscretion, I kept hearing her in my head for this book as well. What fun!

The premise is similar but not the same in the 2 books. In this book, there's both a Pygmalion (think My Fair Lady) element and a Cinderella element, with both the hero and the heroine cast in the role of Cinderella.

Our heroine, almost 6-feet-tall Edwina, is an orphan and a spinster. When her father died, when she was 17, he left no male issue so his title (Marquis, I believe) went to a second cousin, Xavier. Xavier was a mean old bastard who pretty much threw Edwina out, although she did manage to keep a place to live. She supports herself as, of all things, a linguist, mostly by teaching young women how to behave and speak for their coming-out into the bon ton. She's a little gawky, and bookish, and thin, and thinks of herself as all that and less. She really suffers from a lack of self-esteem.

Mick first sees only Edwina's legs, from a prone position in a women's shop, where he is doing his job - ratcatcher. He can see under the screen where she is changing, and he's entranced. Later, through a little mixup, he is chased into the tea room next door where the folks chasing him manage to completely trash the place, chasing after him and his rat-catching ferret. A pair of twin brothers step in to save the day - although no one can understand Mick because of his thick Cockney/Cornish accent (which intrigues Edwina), the brothers decide Mick would make an excellent bet - can he, or can he not, become a proper gentleman under Edwina's tutelage? They pay off the tea room owner and the folks chasing Mick, and proceed to make The Proposition: They will pay Mick 120 pounds, all of Edwina's expenses, and buy him clothes if she can take him to the Uelle Ball in 6 weeks and pass him off as a viscount.

And wouldn't you know, the fanciest ball around, the most coveted, and it's given by mean ol' cousin Xavier too?

Of course, Edwina is interested. Mick is, well, maybe interested. So they bite - and Mick moves into Edwina's home so they can spend 12 hours a day getting him polished. He brings along his helpers - his faitherful rat terrier Magic, who is truly a Notable Pet, Freddie the aging ferret, and his other dogs and ferrets that he needs to run his ratcatching business.

Over the course of the 6 weeks, Ivory paints a delightful tale of Mick and Winnie (his pet name for her) as their relationship morphs from teacher and student to friends to his teaching her... Well, it's truly marvelous as they both grow and change into their new roles as more than friends. At one point, Mick takes Winnie to his side of town where they dance for hours in a pub and she truly learns to let down her hair and enjoy life.

Meanwhile, there's a question of the true identity of the twin brothers who started the whole thing, and the real reason behind The Proposition.

And also meanwhile, there's the underlying problem of Mick falling in love with Winnie but realizing he isn't her station, and will never be. Winnie suffers from the same problem - she is fast falling in love with the handsome ratcatcher, but she's not even sure she recognizes this new person, Michael, that she is creating.

When they finally, finally make it to the ball.....

Ya gotta just read it to find out. Right there at the end is a dash of suspense and intrigue and I sat at the edge of my seat wondering, wondering. Then there's a nice long and satisfying epilogue with a very funny ending. I loved it!

5 stars!

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So, as I've said before, there's only one thing better than a favorite book - it's a favorite book read by a fabulous narrator! Steven Crossley did such a marvelous job with Mick's and Winnie's voices - he used the tone of the character in the narration from his or her POV - he has a wonderful way of using pauses to great effect (see my review of Mackenzie's Mountain new narrator, who just sort of barreled through without pausing). I love the story so much, and loved his voice and his narration! 10 stars!

Mackenzie's Mountain by Linda Howard ****

2010-10-10T11:59:00.003-07:00

I just did a sort of marathon listening - Judith Ivory's The Proposition, Linda Howard's Mackenzie's Mountain - unabridged, and Susan Andersen's Skintight. Mackenzie's Mountain is the only one I read before blogging, so have no existing review. I did have a review of A Game of Chance, one in the series of Mackenzies, in which I rated Mackenzie's Mountain 3 stars, and mentioned it might have been because I only read it in abridged audio.

Apparently there was a new, unabridged version made recently, and only available on MP3 CD. This was a challenge to get onto the iPhone, involving importing into iTunes and converting and stuff, but it is only 1 CD because MP3s are already compressed.

I'm giving this 1 more star because it did make a better story in unabridged, although frankly there were a couple of parts where I thought - why is a teacher better at detective work than their police? Or rather, why do they believe her theory (which is correct) when it's so out-of-the-blue? One of those assumption things - if the guy has freckles, he must be fair-haired, therefore the dark hair it appears he has must be a wig therefore he's gunning for Wolf and Joe.

This is about Mary, old-maid spinster teacher (she's all of 29 and it's probably the 1980s!! gasp!) who moves to a tiny burg in Wyoming to teach at their tiny school. She realizes that one of the former students who dropped out had a spectacular school record, so she hunts him down. It's Joe Mackenzie, half-breed son of Wolf Mackenzie, another half-breed. His mother was also half-breed, but she's dead. Wolf was wrongly imprisoned for rape, and released when the real rapist was caught, but the townfolk are still scared of him and consider him a dirty Indian/rapist. His son Joe also suffers because of this.

Of course, being one of Howard's earlier-to-middle books, he was very Possessive and Agressive, but not quite the asshole of Loving Evangeline. She was pretty spunky, even if it was laughable that a 29-year-old would consider herself an old maid. They face down the town and another rapist (wow, that's a lot of rapists in a town of less than 200...) and get married and start having more kids. There are books about Joe, Zane, the daughter (which I haven't read and cannot recall her name) and Chance, who is adopted. It's a pretty popular series among romance readers.

The new narrator is one I hadn't heard of - someone online commented they couldn't believe someone new was chosen to narrate this "romance classic" and I have to agree. Christina Traister sounds like, with a lot more experience, she might become an OK narrator. She used a distinctive, southern-accented voice for Mary who is from Savannah, Georgia, that was ok. Her voices for Wolf and Joe were done with an attempt to make them lower, but with no accent of any kind. Her other various voices were ... ok... Her narration was bland, using very little inflection. In my humble opinion, she needs to learn the value of pauses - like, uh, pause between sections, first of all. She just kept reading as if she didn't realize there was a shift in POV or time or something. She didn't use the character's voice at all when in POV - just a straight, I'm trying to put you to sleep voice.

I guess it's better that she didn't get all breathy and excited while reading Howard's hot and steamy scenes. But maybe some kind of inflection, feeling, something in her narrator voice would add to the experience - not just the hot and steamy experience, but the experience of hearing the book! And some pauses - not just between sections, but also for emphasis, for conveying meaning.

so I'd give her reading maybe 2.5 but the story 4.

Skintight by Susan Andersen *****

2010-10-10T06:38:00.000-07:00

Audio booked it! Got it from the library and finished it up this morning - still a 5 star story!

FROM JUNE 2008:

Another winner from Ms Andersen! This is my 6th book of Andersen's, and so far I'm having a blast. Her writing is witty, interesting, hot - plotlines work for me - characters fully developed (if a little zany) - I'm enjoying them all immensely!

Skintight takes place in Las Vegas where heroine Treena is a dancer in a show. A Show Girl from a steel mill town in the east, where she grew up in a big, happy-enough family, feeling like the outsider because she had bigger dreams than marrying out of high school and staying there. She worked her way up in the world, paid for her own dance classes and made it big. As part of her backstory, she marries a much older man who, as it turns out, was dying from cancer. He was rich - but lost it all to the costs of health care - and died within months of their marriage.

His son, Jackson "Jax Gallagher" McCall is out to steal back what should have been his: a priceless autographed baseball now in Treena's possession. As it turns out, although it was not left to Jax in his father's will, Treena always intended to find him and give it back because she knew that's what his dad wanted. But Jax wasn't around - he wasn't there when his dad was dying, he didn't attend the funeral, and she's never met him - so she's in no hurry.

Jax comes to LV as a professional poker player in a tournament and has a plan: he'll introduce himself to his dad's widow with his professional name (Gallagher), seduce her so he can gain access to her house, find the ball after he's boffed her senseless, and skeedaddle. His backstory is that his mother died when he was young, and his dad raised him - poorly. He was a geek - a big, tall, brainy, scrawny geek - and his dad seemed to want an athlete. He skipped 3 grades in school, went to MIT at 14, but always felt like the outsider (see a pattern here??) and never felt he lived up to his dad's expectations.

Now he's a big, tall, brainy, built professional poker player with plenty of money. Unfortunately, under the influence of alcohol, he bet the baseball in a poker game to a fellow who is determined to get it by force if necessary. Hence the plan - he figures his dad's widow is a money-grubbing gold digger bimbo, and that his plan will work when he wows her with his money. In his mind, there's no point in just asking for it because she would never give it away. But he miscalculated - a big problem for a mathematical genius poker player!

There's a fun secondary romance that is almost unnecessary, but fills in the "built family" aspect - 2 middle-aged single neighbors who finally give in to their attraction for each other. They act as mother and father in her "built family" of neighbors who drop in and give advice and get in the way. The whole "built family" aspect is important to Jax in making him feel home for the first time in his life, contributing to his feeling of well-being with Treena. For me, this part makes the characterization of their relationship whole - it isn't just a lust attraction, but the whole package, and they develop a friendship outside the bedroom that is very realistic.

Of course, Andersen writes bacon-sizzling hot love scenes too, which doesn't hurt. I got a kick out of the obligatory "sex against the door" scene when he realizes he was rushing her, and tries another tactic. While she appreciates that, she decides she still wants the door aspect and manages to finagle it later.

And there's the other neighbor, another dancer, leading her way into her own story - Just for Kicks, next on my TBR list.

I enjoyed the hell out of this book - 5 stars and a keeper for sure. I re-read the AAR review for it - I like to see how other people characterize the books I read. Sometimes I feel they put what I felt into words better than I can, but in the case of this review, we diverged. That reviewer felt the whole identity deception on Jax's part messed up the story for her - it was out of character, and she didn't like waiting for the Big Reveal. I felt like Andersen made the slip-up of betting the ball very believable - no matter how one feels about one's parents, the death of a parent does affect most people, and Jax was affected and reacted. I felt waiting for the Big Reveal was part of the suspense of the novel (what will happen next?) and I also felt the way Treena discovers his identity was very realistic.

There ya go, different strokes for different folks. After all - if he could have just ASKED for the ball, there would be no story and we would have been short-changed.

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Audio notes: the narrator is Johanna Parker, who reads the Sookie Stackhouse series. She's good - not grrrreat (Barbara Rosenblatt, Davina Porter, Anna Fields), but really good. I thought she did a fine reading on this book, giving each character his or her own, consistent voice. 5 stars.

Tell Me Lies by Jennifer Crusie ***

2010-10-03T19:12:00.002-07:00

This is another of the Crusie-audio-glom I did this past week, and finished this one today. It was going along pretty well (especially after I sorta DNFed What the Lady Wants) for the first, oh, maybe half of the story. I was enjoying Crusie's wit and writing, and her characters. Then it turned dark and confusing and frankly I felt the heroine kept making really, REALLY bad decisions so it turned out to be only 3 stars by the end.

OH - plus there's adultery. That's not a deal-breaker for me anymore, but it is for some. And - well, technically, what she does isn't adultery, because SPOILER

LOOK AWAY IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW

her husband was already dead, although she didn't know it.

Well, he was committing adultery too - we think. Actually, maybe he wasn't, but...

This is the story of an unhappy wife whose husband is up to no good - probably cheating on her - and she is planning to divorce him after she finds what she considers pretty good evidence. After all, 5 years ago he had cheated on her.

Maddie lives in Frog Point - a small town where everyone knows everybody else's business within 10 minutes of it happening. She grew up there, and married a local boy, and they have an 8-year-old daughter. 20 years earlier, when she was 18, she did have a one-night-stand with the town bad boy, but came to her senses and never saw him again.

Her mother lives down the street, as does her best friend and her family. Brent - the cheating husband - has family there too - his dad is mayor and hopes for Brent to follow in his footsteps.

Lawd, I hate small towns - I really do - and this is one where it really is portrayed as Not A Good Thing, as opposed to Virgin River (Robyn Carr) and other romance novel small towns.

The One Night Stand Bad Boy comes back to town - C.L. Sturgis. He's apparently carried a torch for Maddie all these years, but the real reason he came to town is because he's some hotshot ACCOUNTANT (woooooo, we know how sexy hotshot accountants are!) who is looking into potential fraud being done by - BRENT the cheating husband.

There's a lot of misdirection - C.L. sees The Best Friend with The Cheating Husband at the bowling alley; the next door neighbor lady who is getting a divorce might have had an affair with The Cheating Husband; and other stuff like that pointing to different people with a bone to pick with Brent. Meanwhile, C.L. and Maddie have the hots for each other, The Cheating Husband punches Maddie in the face twice and then disappears, Maddie's car is rear-ended and totalled, and...

It's a long confusing story, and I liked it at first but then, I dunno, it seemed a lot darker and less humorous as it went on, and Maddie kept making a lot of stupid mistakes, including finding a LOT of damning evidence in her safe deposit box then LEAVING IT THERE and returning the key to its original place at home. ???? OK, maybe taking the child's passport and destroying it was good, but how about destroying the airline ticket as well? Hello?

The narrator was Joyce Bean. She's a pretty good narrator who has done several of Linda Howard's books, but - ok, she has just a slight touch of tongue thrust or something, the barest hint of a lisp. I think the first book I heard by her was Linda Howard's Death Angel and as I recall, I wasn't that happy with her in that book either but the story was so wonderful I soon forgot all about her voice.

oh yeah and there was a dog. The End. 3 stars.

Head Over Heels by Susan Andersen *****

2010-10-01T18:10:00.000-07:00

What makes a great book even better? An audio book of it - read by Kate Fleming/Anna Fields! Yay! I located a set of cassettes of this out-of-print audio book, and digitized them as I knew I'd want to listen more than once. Since digitizing is a 1x deal, I also listened to it.

here's my original review from 2008:
---------------------

Ok, I keep calling her books "another winner" - what the heck, they are! Head Over Heels has some of Andersen's stock plot lines and character attributes, but it doesn't make me feel like she's writing the same story over and over.

Our heroine is Veronica, an interior decorator who lives in Seattle. She's just arrived in her home town of Fossil, in East Washington state, having just learned about her sister's murder that occurred a month ago while she was out of the country on business. Both their parents are also gone, and Veronica has inherited the family business, a bar called the Tonk, her sister's home and at least temporary custody of her niece, 6 year old Lizzy, because Lizzy's father has been accused of the murder and is currently on the lam.

When Veronica goes into the bar to meet the current manager/bartender and see how things are going, she gets a rush of why she wanted to leave all those years ago: in her own personal memory of her upbringing, her father was a party-guy and her mother worked too hard to please him, both running the bar. She and her sister worked in the bar until she left town - her sister had been running it ever since. She hated the bar and working there, and wants to just sell it and take Lizzy with her back to her life in Seattle.

Our hero is Cooper Blackstock, who is doing a little undercover by working as the current manager/bartender for the Tonk, not letting on to anyone that Eddie, Lizzy's father, is his half-brother. As far as Coop is concerned, Eddie is innocent even if he did run, and he wants to see if he can figure out the killer's identity. Coop's backstory: 13 years in the Marines and currently a best-selling author under a slight pseudonym, James Lee Cooper (his first name really is James).

Of course, the chemistry between Ronnie and Coop is pretty immediate, and it isn't all good chemistry - they're fighting like cats and dogs right off the bat. A friend, Marissa, had been taking care of the bar for Ronnie while trying to locate her, and hired Coop and also leased him the upstairs room in the sister's house - so now he's living with Ronnie and Lizzy.

Meanwhile - we get the scary killer's POV but only vague clues to his identity as little pieces of the puzzle begin to come to light. Apparently the sister had an affair with someone famous or upstanding in the community, and fingers are pointing around. Whoever it is is feeling pretty cocky about how he has fooled everyone.

There's a cute secondary romance between Marissa, who is widowed, and Kody the refrigerator guy who has a thing about women with kids. This plot device has shown up before: Kody's sister has a son, and she sleeps around. Kody has seen the nephew get attached to all these men who then up and leave her - and him - and he has sworn off girlfriends with kids to avoid this situation for the kids' sakes. So, he'll go out with her, and sleep with her when the kids are away, but he doesn't want to ever meet the kids. Once she figures out he has a problem with her kids, she drops him. It's interesting how Andersen maneuvers the dialog so when you read it you see what each one is saying and also how the other misunderstands the motives. Ah, remember it's a romance, and they manage to get together and straighten it all out.

Meanwhile, Coop is looking for any clues, and Ronnie is falling in love - but, oops, someone recognizes Coop and spills the beans about his relationship to Eddie in front of Ronnie. There goes that whole trust thing! Coop, sensitive Marine that he is, does some serious courting - flowers, gifts, you name it (he loves Lizzy's new cat; he's great with kids; he probably even eats quiche) - and manages to get back in her good graces. Whew - good thing too, because he has fallen head over heels for her! (get it??)

But Coop has one secret left untold, about his occupation (best selling author). From her perspective, he's a drifter without ambition, just like her dad. She imagines a life with him will be like her parents, and she doesn't want that. So she asks him to tell her exactly what he does for a living so she can deal with it. But Coop is stubborn - he grew up never being good enough for his mother, and he doesn't want to tell her - he wants her love unconditionally, without it being based on what he does for a living. He's concerned she won't love him for who he is when she realizes he's making big bucks on his books. She even tells him that it doesn't matter what he does but it does matter that he won't tell her - but they are both stubborn and hold out, causing a major rift.

Well - they hold out until the killer is revealed and kidnaps Ronnie. Then all bets are off. As soon as she's released, both are ready to forgive anything and everything. Ya know, I think even then I'd have been a leeetle teensy more put out about what his secret was than she was, though!! OK, hard to say since I wasn't kidnapped. Maybe that clouds the judgement.

Lots of laughs, pretty hot love scenes - I rate it 5 but not the same 5 as others of hers. There I go with that whole rating thing - it's higher than a 4 for me, but maybe 4 3/4 is what I need for this one. I loved it but not as much as the last 2 of hers I read (Skintight and Just for Kicks).

Added in 2010: ok, the audiobook is flawless (now that I digitized it and removed all the repeated sentences...) and raises it from that 4 3/4 to a definite 5 - Kate Fleming was an amazingly brilliant narrator and really made this one shine! (but I still feel Coop owed Ronnie a major apology for holding out on his career...)

Random Thoughts - audiobooks on cassette

2010-09-29T21:38:00.001-07:00

In my search for more audio books, I have been using the AAR audio book blog to see what other people have/know. One commenter on the blog mentioned an unabridged recording of Susan Andersen's Head Over Heels - a favorite author, a favorite book - read by Anna Fields - a truly favorite narrator! I could only find it in cassette, however, so I had been researching the ease of converting cassettes to MP3s. After futzing around with the solutions I had found online, purchasing a $20 Walkman-esque cassette recorder from Radio Shack, and using what appeared to be the correct cable to hook it up to both my Mac and my Toshiba with no results, I went back to Radio Shack and explained the situation. I figured they would maybe test my cable, or just sell me a better cable, or maybe even offer a different solution.

I was right: they offered a different solution, to the tune of $70 more dollars. It's a device, with cords and adapters, that hooks up cassette players and other audio equipment to a computer using USB. Dang, and for the $100 I spent, I probably could have gotten a nice USB cassette deck and not had all this surface-filling clutter.

The box indicated it worked with Windows 7 and XP but didn't list Mac. That doesn't usually slow me down, because often those devices also work with Mac; if not, I had my trusty Toshiba netbook. Lo and behold, I hooked it up, and it showed up in the devices lists, and Audacity was able to hear it and record it!

Then, I was able to delete the annoying "this is the end of the cassette" parts, delete the excess noise/hiss from the tape (I hope - sounded good on the computer but I haven't done the earbud test yet), export to an MP3 and add to my iTunes library! Oh, just the first tape, 45 minutes per side, of 7. It records at 1X speed, so I listened to it while it recorded (knitting, on the futon). I was reminded again how enjoyable Anna Fields makes every story she reads! It's a keeper for me, so I'm sure I will listen to it more than once - otherwise, I coulda just listened to it on tape and been done with it. But now my audio book world is open!

I wonder if I still have any cassettes anywhere - or did they get left behind in a move...

The device is by xitel and it's called Inport Pro on the box, although googling "inport pro" to see if anyone successfully used it on a Mac brought Zero - 0 - results. How often does googling produce NO result? But using only the word "Inport" and adding xitel produced several, none of which clarified whether or not it would work on Mac OS 10.whatever I have (the latest - Snow Leopard). IT DOES! in case anyone got here googling that inport + xitel + mac. I plugged the USB port into my hub, the other side into The Device, one end of the Incredibly Long Cable with RCA plugs they include in the package to The Device, the other end to the adapter they included for the mini-plug that goes into the cassette player.

The Radio Shack cheap cassette player actually does not have reverse, if you can believe that - you can turn it over and FF if you need to go back. Weird.

So for some reason I couldn't figure out, doing as the many online tutorials I found said - plugging the cassette directly to the computer's audio input - did not produce a recording on either the Mac or the Toshiba, although the Toshiba did recognize the cable as being plugged in. It might have been some setting I missed, but after a few hours of diddling, one gets weary. And Frustrated Beyond Belief. $70 seemed a small price to open my audio book world to older recordings!! Well, no, it's a big price, but maybe what I mean is "I'm worth it".

Getting Rid of Bradley by Jennifer Crusie ***

2010-09-27T18:29:00.003-07:00

I shoulda known that glomming J Crusie audio books wasn't necessarily going to be a good idea - sooner or later I had to find one that didn't rate 5 stars, and this was it.

The story and humor and writing were all classic Crusie but for some reason, they didn't work for me. There was the annoying sister - was she older or younger? I dunno, but she kept trying to run Lucy's life. There was the obligatory dog(s) - all strays, all with one or more weird traits. The usual "he's/she's not my type" type of relationship.

And I do want to put in here - recently I've read a few teacher heroines, and the assumption seems to be that teachers, especially of younger children, are thought of as saintly and prudish. My experience with teachers says this is about the opposite of the truth, so I'm not sure where authors get this idea!

Lucy has just divorced Bradley Porter, a man she met, married and divorced in a fairly short period of time. She came in and caught him entertaining a woman - a woman who told her she and Bradley had been having an affair. She immediately threw him out and her annoying sister got her a lightning fast divorce, after which Bradley seems to disappear.

Lucy runs into Zack, the cop on the case of an embezzler named John Bradley, when Zack hears Lucy tell her sister she is going to "get rid of Bradley" meaning his stuff. Zack assumes the worst, and Lucy does as well, assuming he is a mugger. She promptly beats him up with her book bag and runs off.

Of course, Zack is our hero, so he has to chase her down and move in with her to protect her, since it appears - to Zack's instincts - someone is trying to kill her.

Oh, going any further will just start to introduce spoilers, so suffice to say - surprise - they fall in love, and there's some obstacles and there's a HEA.

The narrator is Elenna Stauffer. She has an ok voice for narrating - she is able to tell the story pretty straight-forward-ly and interestingly. Her sister voice was odd - why would Lucy's sister have a Brooklyn accent when Lucy doesn't? Her other male voices weren't horrible, but somehow she managed to do only one voice worse than the hero's, and that was Bradley's voice which was damn awful. I think Zack's was higher pitched and younger sounding than Lucy's, though. She tried to give him some kind of a raspy voice, which made it sound more like he was going through voice change. In general, she has a good voice for story-telling, so maybe she'll learn how to produce male voices at some point.

I guess that probably made my rating go down too, so I liked it ok - 3 stars - but it's a disappointment to love 2 in a row then... this...

Manhunting by Jennifer Crusie *****

2010-09-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

Hey, CindyW - I finally got around to listening to it on audio too! and I'll just repeat my review here and add a note about the audio at the end:

first read was in 2008:

This was a terrific, short, light, fun read!

Kate has a plan. She's a 35-year-old career woman who's been engaged 3 times in 3 years - but never manages to make it to the altar. With the help of her best friend Jessie, the plan is to go to a golf resort and find her life partner. Her requirements: tall, dark and successful.

She manages to meet men right at the start: Lance, who she shoved in the pool for being a little too grabby; Peter, who got rushed to the hospital for heart palpitations when she caught him cheating at golf; Donald, who got a fork in the hand when he tried to stop Kate from eating; Nick, who fell off a cliff into poison ivy for... well, just a nice kiss on a hike! (and whatshisname that got kicked by a horse?)

Meanwhile, she spends her early mornings fishing with the resort owner's brother Jake, who keeps trying to rescue the men she's inadvertently maiming, and who warns her not to get involved with the locals since it's such a small town... and she's sending all the men to the hospital.

Jake's a former tax attorney who gave up life in the fast lane to move home to the small town where the resort is, in order to both finance and help his brother with the resort. Jake is a sort of silent partner - he now handles all the outdoor maintenance type work on the grounds, and fishes, and shies away from women like his ex-wife who values the fast life and big money.

Although it does only take place in 2 weeks, the relationship that builds between Jake and Kate feels real and believable, with them starting out just being friends. They both admit it - he doesn't fit in her plan, and she's the kind of woman he has no use for. When the feelings finally come to the forefront, they're both actually a little surprised, although no one else is.

The major conflict is how to compromise for a long-term relationship: she's on a career fast track (admittedly, not one of her choosing or that she particularly likes) and he's semi-retired from work at all. Plus he's commit-phobic as well. So after a long buildup and a fast relationship, they have to now face a future where one or both have to make some changes or live without each other.

I enjoyed it quite a lot, and rated it 5 stars, although I don't consider it one I'd save in a fire.

------------
The narrator of the audio is Renee Raudman, and she was wonderful!

The Exile by Diana Gabaldon ***1/2

2010-09-25T07:51:00.002-07:00

I got my copy in the mail 2 days ago, but was too engrossed in both an audio book and knitting to actually sit down and read it. It's a graphic novel, see, so it requires sitting with good light and strong readers and poring over it.

I finally did this last night - like comic books, it can be done in one sitting the first time. I had already seen early sketches and read all the updates on Gabaldon's website as it was being created, so there were no major surprises. I already knew it was from Outlander, it was a "new" story told from Murtagh's POV.

There actually was a new twist stuck in that was resolved inside the story that put a sort of answer to a couple of unanswered (although frankly never actually pondered by me) situations. And it was fun to have drawings of everyone. Hoang the illustrator did some great work with the characters and the settings.

But I'm not that enthusiastic about it. I'm not sure if it's about graphic novels - I tried to sort of familiarize myself with them when this concept was first announced, and looked through but never actually finished some of the novels I had available to me at the time. What I didn't expect was how different the characters looked in different frames. Body shapes changed, a lot. Faces changed completely - sometimes it was only the hair that made me realize who it was. In his trying to have the related characters look like family, as they are described, I found myself wondering who was whom in many of the pictures. First, Murtagh was a pleasant surprise, and I felt the most attractive of all the characters. In my mind, he wasn't as good looking as the fellow Hoang drew! But he also looked enough like Jamie that I kept thinking maybe he was Dougal, Jamie's uncle. Then Dougal appears, and Murtagh and Dougal were different enough usually to pick out (mostly in the hairstyle). Other characters - random men in kilts - were fuzzy enough to be anyone, so I was never clear in those scenes who they were. But Jamie and Claire's faces also changed so much from frame to frame that it was disconcerting. Maybe that's a graphic novel thing, but it was off-putting for me.

So, the story was pretty much what we already knew, with a couple of twists. The overall look was good. But the changes in Jamie's and Claire's faces - not their expressions, but the fact that they looked like completely different characters - were just enough to make me just put it down and be done with it, instead of wanting to go back and go over favorite frames and re-read it and share it with the world.

Ah well. 3 1/2 stars. Liked it. Probably shoulda just stayed on the PBS list for it, but I think I'll keep it - it wasn't really that expensive.

The Cinderella Deal by Jennifer Crusie *****

2010-09-24T19:00:00.003-07:00

I feel like I've been in an audio book slump. I've been doing a lot of re-listens; I have a few audio books in my library that I just can't bring myself to even start - every time I think I'll start, I just can't do it; I've listened to some new ones and some that I've already read the book that I just didn't like. Wahhhh, whine whine whine. I've DNFed two audio books in the past month! I started a Dorothy Garlock - free from the library - and after maybe an hour or so, decided the dang narrator was just too dramatic for the story. Lots of inflection issues and drama - and right when the hero was being described, I just turned it off.

So when I perused the AAR All About Audiobooks column and came across a discussion of Jennifer Crusie books, I thought - hey, I like many of her books, let's listen to some more of her audio books. The reviews at Audible weren't very encouraging, but I picked up The Cinderella Deal for a pretty low price and jumped in.

What a fun story! It's a sort of Dharma and Greg-ish plot, except they aren't in love at the beginning. The hero, Linc Blaise, is a logical, orderly teacher trying to get a new position at a college in his home state. When the department head indicates they would be more interested in a married man, Linc lies and says he has a fiancee. The department insists he bring the fiancee along to the interview, and he has to come up with someone who will fit the bill.

Linc's downstairs (or is it upstairs?) apartment neighbor is Daisy - she's not exactly Dharma, but she's a free spirit who quit her teaching job to follow her painting passion. In addition, she's a story teller and sells her handmade jewelry - but none of this is quite enough to support herself, and at 34, she's almost run through her savings and is at the end of her rope financially.

Linc thinks that (1) because she lies for a living (as a story teller) and (2) she has a nice Little House on the Prairie look, she will fit the bill as his pretend-fiancee. When he offers to pay her $1,000, Daisy accepts because she figures it's a no-brainer - she gets the infusion of cash she needs for about 24 hours of acting.

Daisy's a hit with the college, and Linc gets the job - case closed, relationship over. Of course, they both think the other is attractive but so far from their usual boy/girlfriend-type that they don't even pretend an actual relationship after the 24 hours is over. Months go by, Linc moves to the college town and runs into his first obstacle: the department head won't go for the story that Linc and Daisy broke up and insists he go get her and they get married. Then the fun starts.

The banter is some of Crusie's best, in my opinion. I laughed out loud several times at Daisy's and Linc's dialog and inner thoughts. Even the implausible situation seemed plausible enough - Daisy was just thinking she needed a change in her life when Linc shows up to ask her to be his pretend bride for 10 months, and they do live for a few months in separate bedrooms, never acting on their attraction.

It's a fun, heartwarming story with an emphasis on Daisy's finding herself and in the process helping Linc find himself as well, and I really really loved it! I read an interview in which Crusie says that TCD is an earlier book that later she re-wrote for an editor, Strange Bedpersons. I'd already read SB, and while similar, it is a completely new book!

and maybe - just maybe I'm out of my audio book slump. We'll see - Crusie's Manhunting (which I've read but not heard) is next.

5 stars - oh, and the narrator was good too! Susan Boyce - not sure if I've heard her before, but I liked her.

Love Only Once by Johanna Lindsey - DNF

2010-09-22T19:59:00.004-07:00

I'm struggling not to DNF this audio book. This is only my second Lindsey book (and I wasn't that taken with the first one), so I was willing to give her books another try or two, and it seems a lot of folks really like this series (The Malorys).

I got the audio book free from the library - thank gawd because I'd be really pissed to have wasted an Audible credit on this book. The narrator is Laural Merlington, who has 193 listings on audible.com. I recognized her name as she also narrates some Elizabeth Lowell books, and I think I've even listened to some of them. It's not that she cannot narrate books - it's that her British accents are beyond dreadful, and if she goes "heh heh" in my ears one more time when the author has written "he chuckled" or "she giggled" I'm likely to throw the iPhone across the room. Which would not be a good thing for the iPhone and so totally not its fault. Jesus H Christ, woman! Your "heh heh" is about the most obnoxious thing I've heard since that awful narrator of the 1st two of Christine Feehan's Dark series said Car - path -ian (rhyming it with bath) a couple hundred times (along with all her other wrong pronunciations). I cringe when Merlington says anything that implies a laugh from a character, knowing I will next hear it - "heh heh". ARGGG.

Now, I can't decide if this is Lindsey's or Merlington's fault, but the so-called heroine of this book, Miss Regina/Reggie/Reagan (??) might as well also be called Scarlett O'Hara. Twiddle dee dee, I'll just worry about that tomorrow. She's spoiled and headstrong and seemingly way too wise for all of her 19 years and FRANKLY I DON'T GIVE A DAMN. And Ms Merlington's Regina voice is petulant and high-pitched and pouty and might as well be Scarlett O'Hara too.

The so-called hero is at least as obnoxious. I say he's an alcoholic. He's constantly foxed - well, as constantly as a hero who has been gone a big part of the book can be. He was drunk when he accidentally kidnapped Lady R the first time (ok, it was his first time to kidnap her, but her third kidnapping in her life, soon to be followed by a fourth); he was drunk when he ran into Captain Hawk; he was drunk when he poured out his soul in whatever part of the tropics he was in. He's violent. He's a ruthless cad, a seducer/ruiner of multiple virgins - I'm sorry, this main male protagonist doesn't have an ounce of the character of most romance novel heros. Give me whatshimname from Linda Howard's Death Angel (I really loved that book, but the hero was a paid assassin, so he wasn't exactly an angel).

and wait - isn't this a Malory novel? The spoiled Regina is a the daughter of a deceased Malory woman, so technically she isn't a Malory at all, although she's been raised by her [several] Malory uncles. And I'm troubled by the fact that her uncles all dote on her so much, even though at least one of them has other children her age. Where the hell are they?

I kept listening, along with cringing and wondering why I am bothering. I felt the need to write some of these complaints down, and now that I've re-read what I've written, I am going to go ahead and DNF this one. At least with Lisa Kleypas, I just didn't find her books as great as others said - I didn't actually hate them. I think I'll stop trying to understand why I don't like certain authors - surely 2 books is enough to decide. The end.

Princess Charming by Jane Heller ****

2010-09-18T12:46:00.003-07:00

This was the other Jane Heller I read this week - also that romance/chick lit style, first person POV, mostly about the heroine and her best friends and with a side dish of romance.

The friends - 3 women who met when going through their mid-life divorces - were on a Caribbean cruise, apparently spending the exes' money as often as possible, based on the list of vacations they had taken together. During a storm on the ocean, the phone lines get crossed, and our heroine Elaine hears a conversation between an apparent hit-man and his employer in which he tells the hit-man he better kill his ex-wife. Elaine already has a reputation for blowing things out of proportion and panicking over nothing, so she says nothing to her friends about it, but tries to convince the ship captain and local authorities at every stop that someone is in danger.

The hero is Sam, an insurance salesman on the cruise who becomes romantically involved with Elaine. He and some other characters - I mean that both in the "book" way and in the "he's a character" way - are the women's table mates for the duration of the cruise.

The zany mishaps of the 3 divorcees and table conversations of Table 186 make up most of the humor of the book, and I did laugh out loud several times. Heller's love scenes fade to black once the kissing starts, but she does create real tension for her protagonists even if she doesn't let us share it. And if you like older protagonists - at 45, she might have been the oldest heroine I'd read about in a while (ok, Family Blessings by LaVyrle Spencer was the other).

4 stars for the laughs

Name Dropping by Jane Heller ****

2010-09-18T12:36:00.004-07:00

I had picked up two Jane Hellers in hardback from the local Goodwill over a year ago, and decided to read them just this past week. The 3 Heller books I've read have been good - a little more on the chick lit side of romance than my usual fare, with first person POV and a love story mixed in with a story of personal growth and some best friends.

In Name Dropping, kindergarten teacher Nancy Stern just found out that a semi-famous journalist, also named Nancy Stern, had moved into her apartment building in Manhattan. She discovered this when she started receiving invitations by mail to some very chic parties and even to the White House. She also got phone calls for Ms Stern, all of which she reported to the "right" Nancy Stern - except for one.

When Bill called for a blind date at the insistence of a mutual friend (of the "right" Nancy), the Wrong Nancy was so intrigued with his voice that she lied and pretended to be the other one. They went on a date, she lied and lied and felt the magic sparks of true love so much that she forgot to ever own up to her identity. After about 3 dates, she decided that just breaking up with him was going to be easier than revealing that she had been lying all this time. Then, however, the Real, semi-famous Nancy was murdered in her apartment, and everything changed.

Bill worked for a jewelry store - well, he told her he was the manager of the store. And when she went there, to show him a brooch given to her by one of her rich young charges, he was there and told her it was probably paste but he would test it. Was it paste?

OK, there I get into spoiler territory. Was he the manager? Not gonna say. It was a fun romp, lots of Heller's style of humor and her best-friend sidekicks, with this murder-mystery going on in the background. I enjoyed it, going into it knowing it was not what I usually like but still...

4 stars

Burning Up by Susan Andersen ****

2010-09-18T12:20:00.003-07:00

Andersen is one of my favorite contemporary romance authors. She writes upbeat, fun and often funny plots, with fully fleshed out characters, and some of them have become Save From the Fire keepers for me.

This one was good, I really liked it but it never quite crossed into keeper status. For one thing, it seemed like she was trying too hard to use that Deep POV that Suzanne Brockmann uses/describes - getting so truly into the head and thoughts of the character that even the narrative uses their style of speaking, as if we were actually hearing their thoughts. This became almost too cutesy for me - as if everything the protagonists thought was at a level-5-high-anxiety, practically from page 1. Like Andersen was trying too hard. I dunno. It bothered me.

But I liked the characters pretty well - Macy was the misunderstood girl who in high school had been wrongly accused of being easy, and still carried the reputation and the scars from that. She had made something of herself as a star of music videos (I guess it ages me that I didn't even realize there were stars in music videos other than the musicians) but that didn't stop the local crowd, still stuck in Dumfukville, er I mean Sugarville, from hating her. Everywhere she went, people still talked about her, behind her back and even in her face. (man, I'm glad I don't go back to my small home town!)

Gabe was the new fire chief, big, buff and also with a past - a mother who left him in foster homes, a wild teenager who managed to straighten up and become a true hero. It was a little unsettling to find out he had a steady date in Sugarville - Grace - and I knew Andersen wasn't going to have our hero cheat, so she was going to have to kill off Grace somehow. She managed to do it by introducing one more character, a rock star friend of Macy's. That also gave Gabe some competition even though Rock Star and Macy were really like sister and brother. Oh - she didn't actually kill Grace, but she did have Gabe break up with her so he could pursue Macy, which worked for Grace since she was far more attracted to the Rock Star anyway.

The other plot swirling around was some dumpster and abandoned home fires that were starting to smack of arson - a sort of background mystery plot that gave Gabe something to do while Macy was in town.

It wasn't much of a mystery - mostly she concentrated on getting Macy and Gabe together and letting them get accustomed to their new feelings. She writes hot getting-together scenes, and that includes the tension building ones where one of our protagonists comes to his or her senses before they get too far. She included a couple of kids and a kindly Auntie Em and Uncle Henry (not their real names) to round out the family. Her books are big on creating families from the friends and neighbors when the hero or heroine have no immediate families of their own.

It was a pretty quick read, although I did skim a little too much and missed some details that made me go backtracking. I Liked It A Lot 4 stars!

Ten Things I Love About You by Julia Quinn ****

2010-09-07T16:35:00.003-07:00

This was another case of my finishing it on vacation and not writing the review right after reading, and now... In my mind, in the car, after finishing the audio book, I wrote this review as 5 Things I Loved About Ten Things, and 5 Things I didn't Love.

Well:

1) I loved that the hero is the secret author of the book that is read in It's In His Kiss starring Miss Butterworth
2) I loved that they even said the line "pecked to death by pigeons" from this novel which made me sputter with laughter
3) I loved that I laughed out loud several times during the read, including when they named his books.
4) The witty dialogue was so much more reminiscent of other Julia Quinn books I loved and re-read from time to time, and not so much of the last 3 which were not keepers for me.

I can't remember any of the others, including the things I didn't love. Annabelle is the heroine - from a large but impoverished family, and as the eldest daughter, she feels obliged to enter into a marriage of convenience that will bring much needed funds in for her brothers and sisters. Sebastian is the hero - he's the nephew and heir apparent of the Earl who wants Annabelle, mainly because he is in need of an heir - any heir except Sebastian.

Oh, I remembered something I didn't love - Annabelle's grandmother. Ish, she was such a bad role model! But I guess she had to be to fit into the whole story. The Plot: Annabelle meets Sebastian, accidentally, in the garden during a ball, while trying to get away from the ancient Earl and his roving hands. They kiss... and then Annabelle and Sebastian go about falling in love while he keeps his books a secret and she tries to keep away from the Earl.

Anyway, it was light and mostly funny, and I'm glad I ended up spending my audible credit on it after all. I first got it from the library, but it expired and I only got about 2 hours into the book before it locked me out!

Wicked Intentions by Elizabeth Hoyt *****

2010-09-07T16:17:00.004-07:00

The whole purpose of my blogging my "reviews" of books is for me to remember later that (1) I did read the book and (2) how I felt about it and maybe even (3) a plot synopsis. When I wait even a day after reading a book - even one I loved - sheesh, I cannot remember a thing about it.

In this case, I remember that I was thinking it was just an ok read until a certain point, and then thinking how much I loved it. And then I finished it - on vacation, where my internet connection was spotty, and the computer I had with me was the Netbook - so I decided to wait til I got home to write. and dang if I can hardly even remember the plot, much less the turning point and why I changed my mind.

Ok, actually I do remember something about the plot. The heroine, a Mrs Dews, first name Temperance, runs an orphanage in an awful neighborhood in London with her brother. There's a sister named Silence, married to a sea captain, and 2 other brothers and maybe some more siblings, but only the 2 of them work at the orphanage (brother and Temperance). Mrs Dews is a widow and her thoughts imply that she has some deep dark secret in her past, possibly relating to her husband.

The hero is Lazarus, Lord Caire, who, we are told repeatedly, has unusual sexual appetites. He is searching for the murderer of his mistress, a woman who apparently would indulge unusual sexual appetites. I remember waiting to find out what these unusual appetites would be, and we learn that he ties her up and puts a blindfold on her. Or, as it is later described, "the rope and hood" which I just didn't think was exceedingly unusual. I expected something truly different - not sure what - paddling? buttseks? all of the above? Considering how we are lead to believe he is truly depraved, I was hard pressed to consider tying her up that outrageous. (In fact, I thought learning Temperance's secret was more shocking.)

Caire decides to employ Mrs Dews to help him in her neighborhood since he is a Lord and she is a resident. He is also attracted to her, and she lets us into her thoughts by admitting she's attracted to him as well, which she considers part of her awful secret.

There was something towards the end where Caire makes a realization about his inability to let anyone touch him because it causes him pain that I think might have been my turn-around. Unfortunately, I read the review at AAR to see if I could recapture my thoughts - but reading it, although it was a B review (that is to say, not a bad review), completely screwed up my own thinking about the story. What I liked, the reviewer didn't, and now I'm completely lost and will either have to re-read it to figure it out, or just let it go.

Maybe it will come out in audio and I'll get to experience it again that way. For now, I'll just say I liked it 5 stars worth and get on with my life.

Sleeping Beauty by Judith Ivory ****

2010-08-31T18:46:00.004-07:00

This was one of my first forays into romance novels, and I got it as an audio book - almost exactly 2 years ago! I don't recall liking it all that much, even though my original rating was 4 stars, so I figured I would revisit it now to see if it had changed.

I didn't make any notes about it or review it at all, but this time it struck me that the narrator, Violet Primm, must be Davina Porter. I mean, it's just not that possible for a woman to so completely copy everything about another's voice for a 10-12 hour audio book, it just isn't! The speaking patterns, the pronunciations, everything about her voice screamed Davina Porter - and since I have listened to 5 of the 7 books in the Outlander series at least 4 times (I don't own the other 2 in audio) as well as 4 of the books in Alexander McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie series, I think I can recognize her voice! (that would several hundred hours of this woman's voice directly in my ears, mind you) In fact, I found 2 other references from people online saying exactly the same thing.

Some of Ivory's other books are favorites, but - 4 stars notwithstanding - this one isn't. I think it's sort of a 3.5 star. Of course, the narration was superb, so that didn't count against it! But the storyline - even if it was fable-based - just didn't "speak" to me. OK, it is supposed to be Sleeping Beauty. I found it hard to think of Coco as a Sleeping Beauty. For one thing, she was an extremely poor French child who was ruined by her employer and then tossed out on her ear, to raise her child alone. It soon became obvious to her that her charms were best used to make money, so she became a courtesan. (a very lucky woman to be able to do that in her teens - although perhaps we are supposed to believe first she was just a common prostitute?) In fact, she became a very well-known courtesan and then at some point married well, to man who gave her son his name.

The hero is James, a young scholar just returned from an ill-fated journey to Africa where he was the only survivor of his rather large contingent of scholars. He is lauded for his scholarly efforts, invited to all the best parties, has private meetings with Queen Victoria and is given a rather high post at Cambridge. He also had humble beginnings but will soon have an earlship, or is it earldom, bestowed on him. But the politics at play here go against his own wishes - to leave the Africans who helped him survive and their gold alone.

I listened very hard and paid close attention to the story to see if it would be better, seem a little different this time. Coco was in no way sleeping, or hidden away from the world, so I still didn't find the Sleeping Beauty metaphor. Oh, and there was this disparity in their ages - Coco a worldly 37, and James a naive, wet-behind-the-ears 29, who even admits that Coco is only his 4th sex partner. Oo la la, you would think she had some things to teach him.

He does seem to have a problem with the fact that apparently she has already slept with most of the men he knows - his mentor, the bishop, various other dons at the college. Yeah, frankly, I can see where this would be a problem. I kept trying to do that math in my head - it's been more than a decade since she slept with men for money; her son is 22; she has just turned 37; she was married to someone who gave him a name (when was that?); she's been a widow for, if I recall correctly, 3 years. So, she gave birth at age 15; she stopped sleeping around at age 27 when the child was 12, but when was she being a courtesan and entertaining the Duke of Wales and when was she married?

So the story is, James and Coco meet at the dentist - he becomes besotted with her, not knowing a thing about her past since he's been in Africa - then he learns about her past - then she tries to shoo him away - and he's having to deal with the politics of people accusing him of wrong-doings associated with the Africa trip - and... then they do get together and then there's some things that keep them apart and then... they go to France? I dunno.

It was a little too disjointed for me. Then there is the ending. I read some complaints that it was done too quickly, ended too abruptly. Au contraire - once he publicly declared his love, I was ready for a short epilogue and then the HEA statement, not 3 more chapters of blah blah blah.

I think that was my last re-read of this book, and I'll save my Ivory re-reads for The Indiscretion and Untie My Heart. Oh, and probably The Proposition.

The Paid Companion by Amanda Quick ***

2010-08-28T11:52:00.002-07:00

I picked this up in hardcover for maybe $1 at a Goodwill store in BR. Now, I have 3 shelves and more of books to read, and why I decided to choose this one this week, I dunno. I think I've read 2 other Amanda Quick books (looking... yes), months ago.

It was, in a short word, OK. There was some funny stuff, and the hero and heroine were slightly outside the norm of romance protagonists. Not much, but slightly. She (Elenora) was the daughter of some titled fellow who died, then the uncle raising her gambled away her worldly goods. So she ended up needing to find work, and what do gently raised but now impoverished women do? Become Paid Companions, generally to elderly women.

He (Arthur) was a titled fellow albeit eccentric-leaning whose young just-out-of-the-schoolroom fiancee had run away with another fellow. As it turns out, Arthur arranged for it, being pretty much bored with the idea of sharing his life with this particular naif. When his great-uncle is murdered, he must go to London to solve the murder. But how does one keep all the marriage-minded mamas at bay without a fiancee? One hires a Paid Companion to pretend to be the fiancee so everyone will leave him alone while he sleuths.

He heads to a Paid Companion Agency where Elenora is searching for her second employer, they meet and ... Both of them being logical to a fault, they agree to terms and go about their business arrangement. And in the acts of pretending and of solving the murder, they fall in love and live Happily Ever After.

Really.

This is why it only gets 3 stars. The premise seems interesting enough - I'm happy to buy almost any premise as long as the journey the author takes me on is well done. OK, the writing was fine. The editing was transparent - I didn't notice any misspellings, any historical inaccuracies, any major grammatical no-nos. But the journey itself was just... OK. The almost-ending plot device of "no, I don't want him to offer marriage just because he's ruined me" really ended it for me. That device needs excellent well-placed motives and writing to work, and this story didn't have those.

The murderer wasn't that hard to figure out. The madman's POV wasn't compelling. The H/H relationship was fun, and I saw the growth, but it wasn't enough to sway me into another star.

3 stars.

Infamous by Suzanne Brockmann ***

2010-08-27T19:38:00.002-07:00

I got this on audio, thinking it was perhaps a re-release of an older book (seems I read something online that implied that?) But when the year 2010 was mentioned in the book, I decided it must be a new book - and sure enough, it is.

I have also been reading, for a while, about all the former Brockmann fans who haven't forgiven her for a few things, one of which was in the Troubleshooters series when she paired up a hero and heroine that everyone was disappointed about. There had been 2 men and 1 woman sorta dancing around getting together as background characters in several books, and when the book for that woman was written, well, a lotta folks just didn't like who ended up being her hero. Personally, I didn't care. I liked that book as well as the others in the series, and plan to keep reading them.

And then there's the folks that feel she pushes her own "political" agenda about gay rights in her book. I'm not sure what she says is what I would consider "political" but yeah, she has an ongoing gay character who got his own book and his own hero in Troubleshooters, and uses some ink to speak out for gay rights through the characters.

My own opinion is that Brockmann writes well, her mystery-thriller-SEAL stories make great reading, and I've been happy with the audiobooks too, even when she uses 2 narrators, one of whom is Patrick Lawlor.

Now my opinion about the audiobook of Infamous.

She does spend a leeetle too much time ramming her gay rights agenda down our throats. I hadn't really noticed it before, but I think even if I hadn't read that (and not agreed until this book) I would have been aware. One gay character with one monologue about gay rights are ok is fine. Hell, 20 gay characters and one monologue about gays are ok is fine. But that second riff on how it's ok to be gay, and "I knew this guy.... blah blah blah and he's gay and"... I got it. I. Get. It. OK OK OK!! That's #1.

This story uses a made-up historical event that vaguely smacks of the shoot out at the OK Corral. It's supposed to be something all children are taught about in school, and everyone knows how the sheriff was this incredible hero who killed 7 in one blow, but his wife was abducted and murdered anyway, poor fellow. Then there's the Bad-to-the-Bone Bad Guy who is bad bad bad (booooo!) Kid Gallagher, the murderer. Our heroine, Allison Carter - historian - has written at least one book about the Shining White Hatted Sheriff and his nemesis (boooooo!) Kid Gallagher, and is now serving as historical accuracy consultant on the set of the umpteenth movie about this subject.

OK, here's my problem #2 - Allison. She's this HISTORY PROFESSOR who really, really hates the Bad Guy. She's not the least bit objective about this story. Her facts do not seem to come from original documents and her research came across as shoddy.

Let's meet our Hero - AJ Gallagher. Gallagher. Yes, turns out he's the great-grandson of Kid. Kid died at the ripe old age of 101, when AJ was 10. AJ lost his dad in Vietnam. AJ served his country in Afghanistan or Iraq, where PTSD turned him into an alcoholic who left the service with a mental discharge. Then he starts seeing Kid as a ghost, a ghost who sends him to Jubilation Arizona to change Allison's mind about her book. Because as it turns out, she has the facts wrong - the Sheriff was Bad, and Kid was the True Hero at the shoot out.

Here comes my problems #3 and #4 - the narrators. First: I did like Lawlor in her other books, and he was ok in this one. Kid speaks in 1st person POV - which usually works for me. But Lawlor used the same exact voice for both Kid and AJ, so I had to listen hard - if he used "I" then it was Kid, otherwise it was AJ. Very, very confusing. And his other voices - well, the gay character had affected speech, the stereotypical lisp. Both narrators used that affectation. Hmm. And the female narrator spoke like she was on speed. At one point I wondered if I had accidentally turned on the 2X speed function. Then there was her Minny Mouse on helium voice at the beginning. (were they paying her by the word?? I don't think I can even talk that fast!)

There was some mention (from Allison's point of view) that AJ had a slight Western drawl - and she used it at first, but Lawlor never did. It was as if all he had was 2 voices - his regular voice and his gravelly voice. Lawlor's voice doesn't quite capture tall, dark and handsome for me - his pitch is a couple of notes too high for me, but truly in the TSS I thought he was great at capturing the thrill and excitement of those dangerous adventures. Not so in Infamous.

OK - you have to take a leap of faith and go with the ghost part. AJ can see and hear him, but no one else can. Was it his PTSD? His alcoholism? Or a true ghost? Her world-building for ghosts was not exactly convincing but I went along anyway. When the ghost touched people, they felt a sort of cold shock. The ghost was able to zoom around and solve all the problems. And at the end, when he... well, spoiler territory. Very Deus Ex Machina.

There were too many plot contrivances for me. The bad guys were 2 dimensional, the actor on drugs with a keeper seemed overdone and unrealistic, the FBI couple too... something, the stupid movie set details didn't ring true for me. And Allison was a bitch - she seduces AJ, although it wasn't as subtle as seduction - she JUMPS AJ then accuses him of lying to her and such. Sheesh. His POV told us he was going slow; her POV told us she was instantly hot to trot. So why is she getting mad at him as if he forced her?

Brockmann, however, still managed to make it a story I had to finish and even enjoyed a few scenes in - I really do like her writing voice, even if I rolled my eyes several times over the details that just didn't add up for me. That's why, in spite of my having so many issues with the story and with the narration, I have to give it a 3 - mediocre, but I didn't dislike it.

Mine Till Midnight by Lisa Kleypas ***

2010-08-23T17:35:00.002-07:00

OK, what is wrong with me? I've read 7 - count 'em, 7! - of Kleypas's historicals and I do not like her writing. Do. Not. So, why do I keep torturing myself and trying to read them?

I dunno. But somehow I got caught up in the excitement of one of her series - HISTORICAL - and decided to try it, from the beginning, on audio. Free audio, I might add, since I did download it from my library.

Bleh. Meh. It's ok, but nothing great. This is the first book in her Hathaway series, about a group of orphaned siblings whose eldest somehow inherited a title that included a run-down estate and very little money. The next in line wasn't Madeline but (sheesh, what was her name...) - oh right, Amelia, who is the actual Adult (in her own mind) who must take care of the bunch. Then there's Wynn, and Poppy and Beatrix. I assume there's a book for each, not that I'll actually find out since I WON'T BE READING HER AGAIN (I'm trying to promise myself).

I really believe Kleypas is the first author of all the popular authors out there that I really just can't get into, and I keep thinking it must be a character flaw within myself. I mean, can all those thousands, maybe millions of fans be wrong, and me right? Maybe.

And, to make it worse, I did like the contemporaries by Kleypas - it's just the historicals that leave me yawning and wondering when it will be over. I give them 3 only because I did manage to finish them. Oh, maybe I should change it to 2.

The narrator for this book was Rosalyn Landor. I can't say whether I've listened to her before (without doing some research) and she had a sort of odd vocal thing that drove me to distraction, mostly with the hero Cam (half Gypsy who sweeps Amelia off her feet). I guess she was trying to do a Brit/Romany accent thing, and instead it sounded like maybe he had asthma or something. There was what seemed to be a big puff of air behind several of the opening consonants, like maybe he was coughing. You know how people say something in a cough? That was almost what it was like. Her girl-voices were good, and - I don't know her own nationality - her American character accent was good. She read in a British accent. But Cam - well, I didn't like it.

There was a story - you know, Amelia can never marry because she has to take care of everyone, and Cam wants her so he boinks her thinking she'll see that they HAVE to marry, but noooooo, that doesn't persuade her. There's a bit of quasi-paranormal when the dead fiancee of the brother appears twice as a sort of vision, and once as a cold wind. There's Wynn, weak from scarlet fever (think Beth in Little Women, only Wynn didn't die - at least not in this book); there's a 15-year-old (Poppy? Beatrix?) who SCAMPERS (right). and the eldest, whatshisname, who pines for the dead fiancee and tries to off himself but instead they exorcise the ghost. Hmm, a house fire, some boinking, some more boinking (alright, already, haven't they boinked enough?)

So, yada yada, blah, blah, blah, boink boink, ghost woooooooo, boink boink, yes I'll marry you. The end. almost 3 stars.

The Burning Point by Mary Jo Putney ***

2010-08-22T19:03:00.003-07:00

This is Putney's debut contemporary, and to me it had the feel of those "best seller" contemporaries in the 80s and 90s, especially the lifestyle of the heroine's family - rich, debutantes, money, power. It appears to have been the first story in a trilogy "circle of friends" which is what the heroine, Kate, and her 4 best friends from school call each other.

The topic that keeps the hero and heroine apart is a fairly serious one that many romance readers found too controversial - spousal abuse. Generally, in romance, the heroine leaves the abuser and finds the hero, who helps her overcome it. In this case, the hero IS the abuser. Patrick Donovan grew up poor and abused, and apparently Putney considers his problem "impulse control" - Kate and Patrick marry young, he becomes obsessed with her, keeps her from her friends and whacks her when she's late or does anything else that upsets him. Especially if he's had a drink.

Kate leaves him but only tells one best friend and her brother why - oh, her brother's gay, and so both she and her brother are disowned at this point. The two of the flee to San Francisco, and her parents "adopt" Patrick, who becomes her father's right hand man/surrogate son. By the way, Patrick also thinks the gay brother is abominable. What a hero (NOT).

OH and the family business is blowing up buildings, something Kate has always wanted to be involved in, but Big Daddy doesn't approve of women in the field.

Ten years pass, and Big Daddy dies in a job-related accident. His will stipulates that Kate and Patrick have to give their relationship another try or neither of them gets the family business.

Aren't you just panting to find a copy? Somehow I fell into the trap of reading someone else's take on it and thinking it might be interesting. I already knew about the spousal abuse angle, and the post I read implied Putney had handled it very well. Maybe in that person's opinion, but not in mine. I think the most unforgivable part was the end where Kate decides SHE has the same kind of violent lack of impulse control in her that Patrick had in him just because she - twice - defended herself by hurting the attacker. Somehow that came across as her justification for forgiving Patrick.

So, we have a divorced couple getting back together, a dead father manipulating from beyond the grave, the gay brother, the Circle of Friends, and the family lawyer who was originally engaged to Mother but Mother broke it off when she met Manipulative Man. Lawyer went on to marry and love someone else who is now gone, so they are the perfect couple for our secondary romance.

Was that enough for a story? No, because there's also a possible bad guy messing with the family business.

I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it, so I gave it 3 stars.

To Desire A Devil by Elizabeth Hoyt ***

2010-08-14T20:20:00.004-07:00

Hoyt is starting to be an on/off author for me - I really liked the first couple I read but now ...

and part of that might be the narrator, Anne Flosnik. My first encounter with Flosnik was the audiobook The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, and frankly I thought she was brilliant in that book. I actually began to seek out books with her narrating, and as I listened to them, I started to wonder what was wrong.....

I noticed, for instance, at AAR the audiobook blogger doesn't seem to like her, and comments indicate agreement. After slogging through a Julie Garwood medieval she narrated, and then today this book, I think Flosnik has some weird idea about narrating historicals and or romance, because ICK her voice is annoying as hell on these, and I thought she was truly great in Vanishing Act. She does this thing with the word "her" especially at the end of sentences where she pronounces it "huhhhhhhh" and holds it for a count of 8. Every time. Every. Time. AARRRRGGG. Now I'm in agreement with AAR.

Plus the book was only middlingly good - the last in the series and I just couldn't get that interested in the last soldier. Hoyt's fairy tale chapter headers have completely lost their appeal for me. This one is Reynaud St. Aubyn, who was believed killed by Indians during the French and Indian wars in the colonies. His sister Emmeline marries a colonist in the first book (or maybe the second) in the series. The heroine is Beatrice, the niece of the man who took Reynaud's title and lands as next of kin (but she's not related by blood to Reynaud...). Reynaud is fighting to get his title and lands back; Beatrice is fighting to get a bill passed by parliament and to have her uncle treated well after he's stripped of the title. And there's still the mystery of the traitor that betrayed the British to the French during the war.

But all in all, I'm still giving it 3 stars because I didn't hate it (but Flosnik's voice was pretty dang annoying). Don't think it'll be up for a re-listen.

After the Parade by Dorothy Garlock ****

2010-08-14T20:10:00.002-07:00

This is book 4 in a series of which I only read books 3 & 4. This one is really unusual for romance - it's the second book about the same characters, Johnny and Kathleen Henry. At the end of book 3, With Heart, we know they will be getting married in 1938.

Now it's 7 years later, and Johnny is coming back a hero from WWII. But there's a catch - before he left, he and Kathleen had a baby girl who was born deformed and died within 48 hours. After her birth, Johnny told Kathleen he couldn't give her children and advised her to get a divorce. Then he enlisted - and the 2 didn't correspond at all during the 4 years he was overseas.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've only read one 2-book series with the same hero/heroine like that, the Marsha Canham book that takes place around the time of Culloden. (I'm not counting books like the In Death series) But the Canham book literally stops in the middle of the story and then takes up again just days later, and the 2 haven't had a falling out.

A lot of the book I was sorta torn - her writing style, perhaps meant to mimic a speaking style of the time, kept making me blink. I'm not sure how I'd describe it except to say that she always used:

"I've not got any bread"

instead of

"I haven't got any bread"

and it's such an odd way of speaking. Did people all talk like that in Oklahoma? Or is that just the author's way?? Dunno.

Also, she had more 2 dimensional bad guys, and another psycho/sicko in the mix, sorta like the previous story. I started to wonder if Kathleen was going to be Pauline in the Perils of Pauline!

Yeah, then I got to the end, and got all weepy for Johnny and Kathleen getting back together FINALLY. So I had to go and give it 4 stars.

With Heart by Dorothy Garlock ****

2010-08-14T20:01:00.004-07:00

This book is a little different from the romance books I usually read because it's historical, set in the 1930s USA during the depression. It's actually the 3rd book in a series, but worked well enough as a stand alone in a 2-book collection.

In this one, Kathleen Dolan - a writer/journalist - moves to a small town in Oklahoma where she has invested in the small-town newspaper. She meets Johnny Henry and the two of the spend the book trying to avoid falling in love. Johnny's problems are multiple -he's a "half breed" (actually, I think he's only a quarter because when his father is revealed, I recall he was a half breed). His mother was a whore and his father just a kid sowing his wild oats, who didn't even know until many years later that he had fathered a child with this woman.

In addition to the attraction between the 2, the book has a number of other memorable characters and a scary suspense story involving the town doctor. Not real scary, and I figured the mystery out pretty early on.

I liked it pretty good, and kept reading past the end so I could learn "the rest of the story" because the second book is also different. I give it 4 stars, mainly because I did care for the characters. I didn't love it though because the bad guys were really just caricatures, not fully fleshed out human beings with faults.

Beastly by Alex Flinn ****

2010-08-10T22:17:00.005-07:00

This is a paranormal YA book with A Message, but it's done in an entertaining way that keeps it from being too preachy. I read it (audio) for 2 reasons - 1, I've known the narrator since he was a child, and 2, the movie is coming in a few months and I like to read the book before I see the movie.

Chris was great as narrator - as I knew he would be - giving different voices to each of the characters, and overcoming what I think would be a major challenge for narrators: several sections of internet chat room dialogue. He managed to make that part comprehensible, so kudos because having to read each character's name before each chat line while conveying that they are writing, not speaking, is surely a stumbling block. Chris does have a good, deep, fully adult voice in the book, even though I still see him as an adolescent so I found his adolescent voice believable if sometimes a little annoying (on purpose, I assume).

This is sort of a Beauty and the Beast story, but told from the Beast POV.

The "hero" of the book, written in first person POV (other than the chat room speak), is teenager Kyle Kingsbury. Kyle is a BMOC - he's going to be crowned Prince of the Prom or Homecoming or whatever, and he's good looking, rich, loved by all, and looks down on anyone who isn't good looking, rich and loved by all. He angers a new student at his private school - someone who doesn't fit into his crowd and who turns out to be a witch. (dang, I hate it when that happens) To bring Kyle down to size, she turns him into a beast - an awful, scary, ugly, hairy creature who must earn the luv of a good woman (rather, girl - he's a teenager after all) within 2 years or remain the beast forevah.

Kyle learned his obnoxious behavior from his father, a news anchor who stresses the importance of good looks over all other considerations and never really has time for his son. Or his ex-wife, who took off years ago (or maybe she died - but there's no mom in the picture now). Now Kyle has to learn to live on his wits - and in his Beast form, he learns that all his relationships (mostly at school) were as shallow as he was. He basically has to completely rebuild his life, even taking on a new name, to earn his way back to having his body back.

I can see from the movie trailer that the FX look good but hey, instead of hairy, he's bald, no hair, and has some growth on his face that is sort of tattoo-ish. Hmmm. Anyway, I must say, I was concerned Beastly was going to have the same kind/amount of teen angst that Twilight had, and so I prepped myself for it. Knowing there was going to be A Message, I think I set my expectations rather low, but it truly did rise above that. Beyond The Message content was some pretty fun world-building (in the chat rooms, with the mermaid, the frog and ... the others) and some real-world relationship building, and not just with the One Who Can Save Him. It wasn't just that he had to learn A Lesson By Himself, it was almost more a journey started by stripping him of everything he knew, and forcing him to rethink everything he had learned. Aw, maybe that doesn't make sense, but I was so glad that Twilight/teen angst thing was not emphasized that I enjoyed it more than I expected to.

So, 5 stars for Chris and 4 stars for Beastly.

Strangers in the Night by Linda Howard ***

2010-08-10T21:56:00.004-07:00

This is 3 short stories (novellas?) written by LH in the 1990s but only recently released by audible.com in audio, narrator Laural Merlington.

I guess the first story should have alerted me that this wasn't going to be as good as I'd hoped. Generally, I'm a big LH fan - my absolute favorite book right now is To Die For, and among my top favorites are After The Night, Death Angel - oh, too many to count. But hey, there are a couple of duds, and now I can add these three stories to that list. Yeah, I rated them 3 stars, because, I don't know, I didn't hate them, just... blah.

I can't even recall the first story now, and I only started the audiobook yesterday. All three have a strange man coming into the lives of our heroines in mysterious ways and falling madly in love within about 2 minutes, then pledging loyalty to death do they part before 24 hours. The first one was something about the 2 of them having known each other forever, literally, then dreaming about each other, then meeting each other in real life/today. The narrator got so caught up in the story, her drama was way over the top and I wanted to ask her to calm down and lower her voice.

The other 2 didn't seem to have... wait, no - I started to say no paranormal element, but no, story #2 did have a woman who could see auras and also had a sort of vision thing happening too. And that living off the land thing in Alabama, no electricity and all that? Sorry, but it's hot as hell and humid too, and so I just couldn't buy that one either. Oh, they are thrown together on an island and the bad guy takes their boats, so what the hey, they boink all night.

The last one, the heroine takes in the frozen stranger, warms him with her body heat then, what the hey, they boink all night. But - oh - noes - could he be a murderer? You'll have to read it to find out. Naw, I won't put you through it: spoiler, no, he's not the murderer, but because they boinked all night she thinks she's probably pregnant, and he's so happy he proposes right then and there.

3 stars for the narrator cuz she wasn't as hysterical in the last 2 stories.

But I recommend skipping it or getting it from your local library.

Honor's Splendour by Julie Garwood *****

2010-07-31T23:50:00.000-07:00

FIRST READ IN NOVEMBER 2008, now as audio book. Below is my first review and at the end I made some notes about the audio book.

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Isn't it funny how the very end of a book can change your mind about your rating? I was truly liking it all the way through, and then the ending grabbed me and left that afterglow I require for a true save-it-from-a-fire keeper.

This is one of Garwood's medieval romances, set in England in 1099. Lady Madelyne is at the home of her brother Louddon when Duncan, Baron of Wexton, comes to kidnap her in retribution for Louddon's rape of his sister Adela. The baron is captured and is left to freeze to death, tied to a post, when Madelyne frees him. She takes him into a building to help him warm up and holds his freezing feet to her body - a pivotal moment early in the book, when she shows her generosity of spirit and begins unwittingly to win him over. She intends to let him go and escape from Louddon herself, but Duncan takes her with him, telling her she belongs to him.

Over the next several days, Madelyne travels with Duncan and his men back to his home, and he keeps her close and under his protection but vows not to seduce her, a vow he keeps although he sleeps next to her every night. At one point, Madelyne is wounded in battle, right near Duncan's home, and she spends several days in a fever, not knowing what she is doing or saying, and Duncan stays nearby the entire time.

On a forum, there is a current thread about besotted heroes - although Duncan doesn't recognize and acknowledge his love for Madelyne until much later in the book, his actions are those of a besotted hero. His alpha-ness does not extend to forcing seduction in any way, and he's protective of her in all ways. Madelyne recovers and goes on to win the hearts of Duncan's brothers and sister as well, and she also makes a lot of changes in their home and their way of living, so that soon all the servants and vassals are also under her spell. Duncan arranges for a priest to come and wed them, so that Madelyne will not have to go back to her abusive brother.

There are still many obstacles in the way of their eventual HEA - Louddon the brother is the cause of most of them. They have to travel to London to meet with King William II and Louddon is apparently quite thick with the king. He tries to convince the king he was ambushed by Duncan who then kidnapped his sister as revenge, and that he did not do anything to Duncan's sister Adela. Well, if I were to list all the obstacles, I will meander into spoiler territory - suffice it to say, none of the obstacles involves any misunderstandings between Duncan and Madelyne, and that in itself is refreshing.

It's an AAR Top 100 for 2007, and now that I'm done, I know why! 5 stars

====July 2010 ====audio book====
I finished the audio book today. The narrator is Anne Flosnick - I loved her reading of The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, and have looked for her other readings. However, somehow her reading of this one was just a little odd to my ears. Maybe she was trying to capture the essence of a medieval romance which is different from Esme Lennox - after all, that was more a contemporary mystery, no romance at all. Something about the way she said "her" - huhhhhhhhh - dragging it out for long seconds - really seemed overly dramatic. Of course, not just that one word, but using that style of being overly dramatic and really enunciating and holding out syllables in that very high-British style - I dunno, it wasn't as pleasing as her Esme Lennox reading, I'm afraid.

But I did still love the ending.

Fall 10 Readers of Romance Challenge

2010-07-31T21:06:00.002-07:00

Yay! I'm going back to my challenges! Ok here's the list:

THE CHALLENGE:
1. Comfort Read. (could be reread a favorite, revisit a favorite author, a beloved genre Your Mac-n-Cheese read)

2. Spooky Book for Halloween (could be paranormal in nature, or ghost story type theme, or spooky setting)

3. Read a book with an animal on the cover. (doesn’t have to be the main character on the cover, but a animal somewhere on the cover)

4. Read a book with a name in the title.

5. Book with Hero who is Military/Police/Fire-rescue. (love a man in uniform!!!)

6. Book with disabled or plain hero/heroine (some ex. Can be found at www.likesbooks.com/lessthan.html)

7. Read a book that was free or borrowed. (includes PBS, or library books, or borrowed from a friend.)

8. Read a book that is part of a series.

9. Read a book, where the hero/heroine is in the limelight. ( for ex. An actor, artist, musician, politician, etc. for ideas try www.likesbooks.com/limelight.html )

10. A book where the couple are reunited. (http://www.likesbooks.com/reunited.html)

11. Reader’s Choice 1

12. Reader’s Choice 2

13. Reader’s Choice 3

14. Read a book where someone has Amnesia (www.likesboook.com/feign.html)

15. Revisit one of the previous Challenge Authors: Read a book by (pick one) Johanna Lindsey, Lisa Kleypas, Lori Foster, Linda Howard, Julia Quinn, Christina Dodd.

Movie: 27 Dresses ****

2010-07-31T19:26:00.004-07:00

This movie wasn't really on my To See list until I read a thread on the upcoming movie of the books by Janet Evanovich which feature the character Stephanie Plum. I've never read them, but there's the usual brou-ha-ha over Katherine Heigl as the lead (no one ever likes the choices for characters they've already read about and come to imagine in their minds!)

So I pushed it to the top of my long-neglected Netflix queue, and watched it tonight. I really liked it! That's 4 stars, not 5 - mainly because, while I really did like it, it didn't grab me and make me want to revisit it several times.

In it, Heigl's character is Jane - always a bridesmaid, never a bride. It seems Jane's mother died when she was young, and she grew up feeling like she needed to take care of younger sister Tess and eventually her boss George and 27 of her friends in whose wedding she was a bridesmaid. Always saying "yes" to anyone who she thought needed her help. Plus, she did have a love affair with the wedding itself!

Her one secret obsession is with journalist Malcolm Doyle, who writes the Commitments section of the paper. She finds his romantic stories of engagements and weddings so beautiful, she clips and keeps them all.

Her boss (George) is her perfect ideal of a man. He's everything she's ever wanted in a man, with one exception: he only sees her as his assistant. Oh, he loves her as his assistant. He loves what she does. But he doesn't see her as a woman at all. In fact, when younger sister Tess comes to stay, suddenly he thinks he has found his perfect ideal of a woman - in Tess! Dang.

Jane runs into Kevin (James Marsden - he truly has a great romantic hero look) at a wedding she keeps slipping out of to attend another wedding. She even hires a cab for the night to ferry her back and forth between the 2 so that no one misses her. Kevin is intrigued - what is up with this woman dashing into and out of the wedding - so he follows her to the cab and gets an eyeful as she changes bridesmaid outfits in the back of the cab. Now he is even more intrigued and spends a lot of time annoying her by calling and following her around.

Well, it was a cute little romantic comedy in which we learn that Kevin - Kevin DOYLE that is - has a pen name, Malcolm. It takes Jane a long time to see Kevin as anyone other than an adversary trying to ruin her life by making her learn the value of saying NO to her friends once in a while. And the ending epilogue with the 27 brides was perfect!

Yeah, I laughed and smiled and felt for poor Jane - her friend Casey was the only one who seemed to realize what she was going through! and so in the end, I felt I needed to add my review to my blog in case I forget what the plot was and try to rent it again!! I thought Heigl was good, and since I haven't read the Stephanie Plum books, I'm all for her getting the role!! (maybe I'll break down and read them, although they are really chick lit - she never settles for a particular guy.) and James Marsden is so cute - no, he's handsome in a romance-novel way - so he was fun as the hero.

My Lord and Spymaster by Joanna Bourne ***

2010-07-26T18:59:00.002-07:00

This is the second book in what is apparently a trilogy (The Forbidden Rose being the 3rd) about spymasters. I was a little disappointed that the hero and heroine of the first book, The Spymaster's Lady, weren't even mentioned. In this one, the cohorts of the first Spymaster (Grey), Adrian and Doyle, are featured, and now Adrian is the Head of or Chief of or whatever Grey was of the British Intelligence. I guess Grey retired.

I also didn't have a good feel for how much later it was - there was still talk of Napoleon and secrets and traitors, so I figured it wasn't much later. So where were Grey and Annique??

The heroine of this one is Jess, and she, like Annique from the previous book, was raised poor and had to fend for herself. She was abandoned as a child - or else she thought she was, but her father was in prison, or... something (shaking head) - and raised by Lazarus in the worst part of London - think a mean cross between Dickens's Fagin and Bill Sikes, with the emphasis really on villainy. At about age 8, her father returns for her and spirits her off to Russia, where somehow they become rich and are now in shipping. In London. Well, smuggling, but that's nitpicking.

Her father has been thrown into - well, whatever the house on Meeks Street is, not really a jail, but the British Intelligence, by the hero of the book, Sebastian (therefore now Jess's sworn enemy). Sebastian is also in shipping and dabbles a bit in intelligence (of the spy variety) and has come up with evidence that the senior Whitby is Cinq, a notorious traitor who also sank one of Sebastian's ships. Sebastian also had a hard life as a child, the bastard of a titled person who somehow - really, you have to read it - inherits the title, the house and the various relatives who live with him. And now he, like Jess, is wealthy and hard working and all things good.

Jess and Sebastian spend a lot of time lusting after one another as well as trying to best each other on their sneaky skills - each breaks into the other's property and snoops about, each trying to prove the other is Cinq. Eventually they have to prove someone else besides Jess's father is Cinq so they can get together.

I dunno, hot on the heels of the charming Annique, I just couldn't buy into Jess's story. Another hoyden, who invented accounting (or so it seemed) at age 16, running her father's business completely by 20, yada yada yada. We learned about her thieving and pickpocket skills, and her bag of tricks. Frankly, I'm not a big fan of ferrets - they stink - and I kept thinking about how she had that one on or around her all the time. Every time the hero thought of how she smelled, I kept expecting him to hold his nose over the pervasive smell of ferrets. (He does mention it once, calling it musky.) Maybe the author has never been around ferret owners, who - really - smell like their animals pretty much all the time in my experience. And it isn't a nice smell.

So, Jess and Sebastian keep looking for Cinq, and lusting after one another, and he keeps promising her they'll end up in bed, and she keeps saying nonono, and... then when Cinq is revealed and she somehow wants to help cover for him... OK, I just found it all so-so.

3 stars - it was ok, not unlikeable but not nearly as charming and romantic as the previous book.

Son of the Morning by Linda Howard ****

2010-07-18T07:20:00.000-07:00

I read this book and reviewed it almost 2 years ago, and today I finished it on audio book. So, here's my original review, and then I'll comment on the audio book:

from August 2008

Here's another of my subjective 4 star books - it's Linda Howard, it's an AAR Top 100 - I liked it ok, so maybe it should have been 3 stars but... I'm so wishy-washy because I liked it more than "average" or "mediocre"!

The story involves Grace St. John - an average woman with a good career, a loving husband, and a loyal brother, who loses it all in one evening when she realizes she is inadvertently caught up in the enormous power struggle between Good and Evil. She translates ancient documents for a living, for a Foundation that is Evil - "Lucifer thou Son of the Morning" is the quote from the Bible, I believe. The Foundation Director is the current embodiment of All Things Evil, and he is looking for documents Grace has in her possession that will help him locate the source of the power he seeks.

The documents in question were written by the Guardian in the 14th century - a Guardian who, while not the embodiment of All Things Good, is the person charged with protecting the Big Secret. Or Secrets. He's the last of the Knights Templar and he has the relics and the documents hidden in his Scottish castle. The Big Secret includes (or is?) the recipe for time travel, and once Grace starts working on translating it while on the lam from the Foundation Director, she begins to dream of the Guardian.

Grace is truly a wonderful heroine - she's really all things good, and normal, and average, until she witnesses the murder of her husband and brother by the Director. Then she is all things cunning and wary - she uses her considerable skills in reasoning and translation and problem-solving, and turns them into street-smarts to avoid being caught. For a year.

Several reviewers have remarked that the book really does have 2 heroes - one is her wonderful husband, who died lying to the Director, protecting her so that Grace wouldn't be caught. In all her thoughts and all the flashbacks, he is loyal, and loving, and her true soulmate. The other hero is the Guardian himself, Niall - who shares Grace's dreams. Literally.

When Grace finishes translating the documents, she decides that to avenge her brother's and husband's deaths, she must do whatever it takes to keep the Director from getting whatever it is Niall is guarding. The documents she has only point to where the Treasure is. Grace follows the recipe for Time Travel and shows up in Niall's world to move the Treasure so that the Director won't find it.

There was a lot of anguish and heartache in the story - the deaths at the beginning, her year of hiding from the police and the Director, having to use all her wiles to find underground employment, to remain disguised and hidden. The Director was truly a bad, bad man - evil in every possible way. Niall, the medieval Scots warrior, was also bigger than life - tall, big, possibly immortal - although he wasn't All Things Good or the least saintly, he was alpha to the max. I had a hard time buying the concept that Grace would be enough Woman for him after his exploits, I'm afraid - even if she was supposed to be his match. He just didn't strike me as true soulmate material.

But hey - another one on the AAR Top 100 checked off the list. I might manage it this year after all, if I can veer away from glomming more Linda Howard and Nora Roberts and - hey, I need to read more Jennifer Crusie, and I have a couple more Jo Goodmans to go, and...

Sooo many romances, so many bills to pay that require me to work instead of read 24/7...

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OK the audiobook. Well, while I still feel the book is around 4 stars, I think the audio is closer to 3 stars. The narrator is ok, but either she has an odd way of speaking or the audio itself is off. Every word, every sentence,there's a sort of mini-explosion or elevation of sound and then it backs off, like her opening consonant is loud but the rest of the word is soft. After a while, I got used to it, even though it did continue all the way through. Maybe the microphone was off, I dunno. Plus she had a sort of quaver in her voice when it was dramatic that I really found annoying. But her voices were good, and different, so she wasn't awful - just not great. Plus, after listening to Davina Porter narrating the Outlander series, while this narrator's Scots accent was pretty darn good, I cringed when she said pronounced plaid to rhyme with "add" instead of "aid" the way Porter says it.

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson *****

2010-07-17T10:51:00.003-07:00

WOW! what a ride! The trilogy ended, leaving me bereft of the rest of the story of Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomqvist...

There were several sub-stories in the 3 books - the various relationships among the characters - but I felt like there were 2 major story arcs. 1st, in book 1, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, there was the mysterious disappearance of Harriet Vanger, ending with what happened to her; then partway through book 1, Lisbeth Salander became the focus of the 2nd arc. The title of the 1st book in Swedish translates to Men Who Hate Women, and that title does apply to both arcs - both Harriet and Lisbeth were targets of men who hate women, and their stories are similar. But once Lisbeth's story started, it eclipsed Harriet and carried through the rest of book 1 and didn't end until the bitter epilogue of book 3.

When the 2nd book ends, we are left with Salander having been buried alive, digging her way out and attempting to kill her father by smashing an axe into his face. She's been shot in the head - and Blomqvist finds her and Zalachenko, both hovering between death and life. It's the first time the Lisbeth and Mikael have seen each other since book 1, when she decided she was in love with him and saw him with Erika. Their paths have crossed electronically many times - and Mikael has tried to contact her in person, but she decided she couldn't live with the pain of letting herself feel love and refused to see him.

She and Zalachenko are both in the hospital - only 2 doors apart, as it turns out - and both fighting for their lives. Lisbeth has had the bullet removed from her brain, but hasn't awakened from the surgery. How Zalachenko managed to survive an axe to the face, I don't know, but it's the survival of daughter and father that push all three books and the 2nd story arc. Both are seemingly invincible, as though that were some kind of gene. In fact, his son, Niederman, is actually invincible in that he has a rare affliction that keeps him from feeling any pain - at all. So maybe it is genetic... It's almost Star Wars/Darth Vader-esque, except that Lisbeth is far from being Luke Skywalker, out to save the world and his mother.

Meanwhile, while Salander and Zalachenko fight for their lives, Blomqvist is out fighting for truth, justice and the Swedish way - he's managed to get into Salander's apartment to use her computer, and is on the verge of unraveling the secret police's dirty secret - the rogue group of covert operators who have spent the past 25 years covering up the trail of death and destruction caused by the man they think is more important than Swedish security, the Russian defector Zalachenko. Piece by piece, their world is uncovered - by Blomqvist, by Milton Security, by the local police and finally by the secret police themselves. It's a story so convoluted and fantastic that I was on the edge of my seat most of the time I was listening to it, and often had to just turn it off and rest. It speaks both to the human flaw of thinking oneself Godlike and above the law and the way we are taught to follow authority : the innermost members of "The Zalachenko Club" are so convinced they know best and are right that they worked themselves into an unsolvable puzzle of how to continue to keep their secrets. They are so convincing in their lies, they manipulate everyone around them into buying into the secrets and the lies and... And the truth is so incredible that Blomqvist had a difficult time getting anyone to listen.

It was very, very intense and so well-thought out, I can't even imagine what Larsson's writing process was like. Did he map out the various schemes and characters, or just write as it came to him?

After the story of Zalachenko ends, the epilogue picks up and slowly ties up the various loose threads - how does one go on after a life that has been spent under the the guardianship of the state, a life spent hating authority and struggling to break free... and is now free? Of course, we are left wanting more. I wondered, since Larsson's plan was to write several books, but only finished 3 before he died, if there was another story cut from the book during editing?

Anyway - wow - great series, must be read in order - incredibly talented narrator, Simon Vance - and I loved both the first 2 movies, and I'm anxiously awaiting the release of the last one!

5 stars

Patience by Lisa Valdez ***

2010-07-15T20:12:00.005-07:00

Patience was a book a lot of people didn't have patience for - the author had some... issue? and the book wasn't released for several years after the original release date. Or something like that. There was so much controversy - her first book, Passion, had so much buzz that readers were anxiously anticipating the next in the series. Readers posted all over the romance forums how tired they were of waiting. They swore they wouldn't read it. I'm trying to figure out why it mattered when the book was released, but couldn't get into the fray.

I liked Passion very much, in spite of its near-erotica content that seemed pretty fantastical. Valdez managed to surround the frequent-sex-with-an-incredibly-well-endowed-stranger-in-a-public-place with a touching and human love story that touched my heart. I wasn't put off by the length of time it took for the book to be available. But I was put off by her inability to touch my heart again. The bones of the story were ok - after I made it through the eye-rolling opening scenes where there was so much throbbing pulses and pulsing throbs and hardening and thickening and dripping I felt like I needed a shower - I thought the characters had fairly believable stories. We already knew about Matthew's story: he learned his biological father was not his mother's husband and therefore he was literally a bastard in Passion. His former-future-father-in-law was so upset he went way out of his way to ruin Matthew financially after refusing to let his daughter marry him.

Patience's story was more hidden, both from us the readers and from Patience herself. She had sublimated her feelings of being abandoned as a child when her mother died, and channeled them through playing the cello. She took her music teacher's advice too literally, and decided she could never marry.

That didn't keep her from playing bondage and submission sex games with Matthew - as long as he left her maidenhead intact, she was ok with it. (?)

Yeah, there we go: back to a concept similar to stranger-sex-in-public. I tried to keep an open mind. I tried to go with the flow. But I never got to the point where I understood and let it happen and make sense. It was just a lot of hardening cocks and dripping sexes (only she liked to use grittier terminology) filling the nights while he tried to figure out why she resisted marriage by spanking her and punishing her for not obeying him. I think after it was over, I sorta saw the connection: the games fulfilled her need for boundaries and her need to feel wanted. Or something.

It isn't clear to me what the problem was that postponed the release of Valdez's book. I read that she had writer's block; I read that she was so overwhelmed by reader feedback and trying to deal with it (by changing the book?) that she couldn't finish the story. And I haven't yet read any reviews, so I don't actually know how well this one was received.

I went with a 3 star rating because it wasn't really awful, but it wasn't anything special either. It could have used some editorial oversight - really, the repetitive use of throbbing and pulsing and such was not good writing in my opinion.

Naked Edge by Pamela Clare ****

2010-07-04T22:36:00.005-07:00

wow - I think this might be the first time I started and finished 2 books in one day! (ok, I'm 30 minutes into the next day, but if I'd started reading earlier...)

This is actually the 4th book in the I-Team series and - gasp! - I haven't read books 1-3 yet. I wanted to - but I had a Barnes & Noble gift card, and they only had this one, so... I'd been meaning to do a Pamela Clare glom after reading 2 others (different series) so I figured I would just go ahead.

This is a contemporary, and it didn't take long for me to pick up that the I-Team of the series is a journalistic team, not a Navy SEAL or similar. The heroine, Kat, is one of the journalists, and her background is Navajo. She grew up on the rez in Arizona, but has left to make a living in Denver. As it turns out, her father was not Navajo and was not married to her mother, something that shamed her mother so much she never accepted her, and she was raised by her grandmother.

The hero is Gabe, who apparently appeared in earlier books. Gabe is a Mountain Parks ranger, and a "rock climbing god". After the prologue, we meet Gabe doing what he figures he does best - boinking and leaving a woman. He's not the marrying kind. (well, what contemporary hero is?) Kat and Gabe first meet when she falls into his life - literally, because she fell off a cliff he was climbing. They meet again when he is called to the scene of what appears to be a crime, only to see her being dragged out of a sweat lodge by her hair. Some local cop has decided the religious ceremony is breaking some local law.

Kat decides to follow up on the issue, writing a story about the Indian protest that follows, and pointing out the various laws already in place to protect Native Americans and their religious freedom. But that move gets her some death threats, and is soon followed by the suspicious death of one of the Indian elders. Clearly, something is rotten in Denver...

Kat has already told Gabe that she is a virgin and plans to wait until she meets her Other Half (aka soulmate) and gets married. She is not going to be one of his conquests. He lets her know right off the bat, though, that he's interested but not the marrying kind. (oh yeah, and as I said, what contemporary hero is?) But the two of them are thrown together in the mystery of who is behind the death of the elder when someone takes shots at them while they investigate.

We follow the 2 of them (with their buddies from earlier stories) through the investigation and mystery until they are forced to hide out in the mountains near Vail in a small cabin, while their buddies and the police try to find the killer.

I enjoyed the story very much, and at one point I was close to tears, thinking the author might have actually gone too far and killed one of the characters... And I gasped with shock near the end at what did happen. But at the end, I confess the epilogue just went on and on and made this particular happily ever after too sweet for even my taste. OK, everyone who needed being saved was saved, and the only character who dies was a bad guy - alright? (sorry, spoilerish) And they each confessed to loving the other. I didn't need another couple of dozen pages of the next year, as cloyingly cute as it was. Really.

It wasn't going to be a 5-star anyway, even as much as I liked the story and the characters. But it almost slipped to a 3... (oh, and my copy had about 4 almost blank pages! sheesh! I ended up reading them from the Look Inside page at Amazon!)

His at Night by Sherry Thomas ***

2010-07-04T14:06:00.003-07:00

I'd been looking forward to the 4th book by the author of Delicious and Private Arrangements. Sherry Thomas' first 2 books reminded me of the style of authors Jo Goodman and Loretta Chase. They seem to all use wordplay to bring the story to life - rich, full characters and descriptions, with an underlying sophistication and humor. This style is still evident in His at Night but somehow the story itself didn't rise to the occasion for me.

Lord Vere is the elder brother of Freddie, a character from the previous novel Not Quite A Husband. He pretends that an accident in his teens included a head injury that rendered him an idiot while he is actually a spy in the service of the British Crown, around the turn of the last century. His idiocy - mainly he blathers on and on and on about subjects he knows nothing about - is the cover that allows him to do his work.

Elissande is a desperate woman, trying to escape the horrors and abuse of her uncle. Desperate enough, it seems, to trap an idiot into marriage, although it almost goes beyond even what she would do to save herself.

So - we have the cliche of the forced marriage, because she puts herself in a compromising position with him so that he'll marry her and save her. He is immediately attracted to her, but sees through her smiles to the scheming witch she is, or rather, appears to be. He wants to remain as far away as possible, and lets her know it fairly early on - he'll spend whatever it takes for an annulment as soon as she is safe.

Of course, there is also a mystery around the circumstances of her uncle - why is he under the scrutiny of the Crown if he is actually a successful diamond miner? What would make someone like him be considered for murder or blackmail?

And poor Freddie, left by his love in the previous book, turns to his best gal friend - a woman who has done everything she knew to throw herself into his path and get him to see her as a woman, and not just a childhood friend.

So, Vere slinks about investigating the uncle, Elissande quickly picks up on the truth about Vere's intelligence, the uncle is b-b-b-bad to the bone, and Freddie takes a while to wake up and smell the coffee.

It was ok - I liked it, 3 stars, but it just didn't carry me away to exotic locales (ok, now I'm quoting that voiceover in Harlequin audio books). At least I have several more books to start - and maybe even finish! - this holiday weekend!

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson ****

2010-07-03T12:20:00.003-07:00

I got this audio book on recommendation from my sister. It's the first in the series by Stieg Larsson, a Swedish author who unfortunately died before finishing the series. In it we are introduced to a large, rather confusing cast of characters. (Made more confusing by the similarity of names, all Swedish of course)

Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist and editor of The Millennium, a monthly magazine. He is sent to jail for libel over an article he has written about the Wennerstromm affair - a large, international financial fraud scheme. Even though the court found his article libelous, he knows he is on to something bigger and scandalous, and he doesn't want to give up on the research. After he is released from prison, he is hired by an elderly gentleman who wants Mikael to find out the truth about the disappearance of his niece Harriet decades before. Vanger promises to help him with the Wennerstromm research as an incentive.

Meanwhile, and my memory is a little clouded, somehow Milton Security becomes involved and Armansky, the director of the firm, uses his best researcher, Lisbeth Salander, to do background research on Blomqvist. (Oh yeah, I just remembered - Vanger hired Milton Security to do a background check on Blomqvist!) Lisbeth is the title character in all 3 of the novels in the series - she's young, extremely intelligent with incredible hacking skills and resources, extremely anti-social and had a horrendous childhood. She was institutionalized as a teen, and is still considered mentally ill and must report to a guardian. Blomqvist and Salander manage to meet (again, cloudy recall) and she helps him in his research, both on the Wennerstromm issue and finding what happened to Harriet, who was presumed murdered.

It's an extremely engaging set of mysteries that takes Mikael on a rather wild ride, uncovering shocking and rather gory family secrets along the way. Salander herself isn't truly revealed until the last part of the book, when she uses sleuthing methods to bring down Wennerstrom, almost just because she can.

The narrator is the wonderful Simon Vance, who appears to be able to pronounce just about anything, and brings a completely different (British Isles) accent to all the Swedish characters, as well as other accents to characters like Armansky. Except for keeping up with all those names, it's easy to follow Vance's narration as a result. Just when you think the mystery has been solved - the plot thickens to mud, and you are off again on another journey!

I'm now about 1/3 of the way through book 3, and it gets easier and easier to keep up with the characters, but harder and harder to follow the intricate web of the mystery! In fact, I was slack-jawed at the part I listened to last night - it came out of nowhere, and although earlier I had thought it could happen, how it happened was a complete shock! I can't say for sure until I'm finished, but it seems there is one underlying mystery across all the books that have nothing to do with Harriet Vanger or the Wennerstrom affair.

My sister commented that after she finished book 3, she was sorry to see it end and she would miss Salander. I'll have to comment on that after I'm done, since I have so much more to go!

It's a great 4 star read for me, a mystery/thriller/suspense type book.

A Summer in Sonoma by Robyn Carr ***

2010-07-03T12:00:00.002-07:00

I loved Virgin River, and have kept up with the series, and even read the earlier series that linked in, the Valley one (can't remember). I generally like Carr's characters and writing, although one of the VR series left me cold and so far is a DNF. (I do still have a bookmark in it.)

This book is closer to women's lit than romance - 4 childhood girlfriends, now adults, and their lives and loves. Each one has a different challenge to face - two are single, two married. Julie is married to her childhood sweetheart, but is overwhelmed by their difficulty making his two paychecks stretch to cover their family of five, even frugally. Beth is a single doctor, facing a reappearance of cancer - during the first cancer, her fiance left her. Cassie makes all the wrong choices in men - during her moratorium on dating, she hangs out with the completely wrong kind of guy, or so she thinks. Marty's husband Joe doesn't listen to her, and she thinks her marriage might be over.

I enjoyed reading it, finished it in 2 sittings, but somehow the voice of the book bothered me. She gave almost every character in the book a POV at some point, but every voice was the same. They all sounded the same to me. Well, in my head - it wasn't an audio book. Maybe it's the constant switch from POV to POV, but it just seemed overdone. While each character seems different on the outside, all their thoughts seemed the same - the same voice, the same... I dunno, it just wasn't very riveting or interesting. I enjoyed it but it didn't leave a lasting impression - I just got to the last page and was done. The End.

In fact, I had a hard time figuring out how the 4 friends stayed close with lives so different and needs so different. Julie has to couch dive for pennies to feed the kids - how in the world does she even find time to get together with the others? And Beth, an OB/GYN - Cassie an ER nurse - how can they make their schedules mesh? I dunno. I did find myself understanding Cassie and Marty a little more than Beth (I kept thinking of her as Beth from Little Women...) or Julie. I don't need to feel like I can walk in the shoes of the heroine to enjoy the book - I've enjoyed plenty of books where the heroine was nothing like me at all. But I guess I do need to understand her, care about her.

So, Julie and Billy end up in crisis from their lack of money and another unexpected pregnancy inspite of birth control; Cassie spends a lot of time with the Not My Type guy, but in her head she's pretty much putting him down; Marty fantasizes what her life would be like with an old boyfriend; Beth faces chemotherapy. Yeah - pretty different challenges.

Well that is my take. Women's fiction, ok read, 3 stars. The End.