Not Another Bad Date by Rachel Gibson *****

A RE-READ ON AUDIO (notes at the end) FEB 2010 first read June 2008

Funny, I was reading Devil's Bride by Stephanie Laurens, but had to make a trip to town where I found Not Another Bad Date by Rachel Gibson at Wal Mart. Then, on the way home, the van broke down and we had to wait 1.5 hours for AAA - so I picked up the Gibson book and couldn't put it down!

It sure was more fun to read than Devil's Bride has been so far...

Not Another Bad Date is the 4th in the Author Friends series. I've read books 2 (I'm In No Mood for Love) and 3 - (Tangled Up in You) and liked both a lot. The last author in the series is Adele - the one whose boyfriend Dwayne has become a semi-stalker, leaving bits and pieces of their lives together on her doorstep the past 3 years since they broke up. Apparently he was a great boyfriend until he suddenly told her she had a fat ass, and that abruptly ended the relationship.

And since then, every date she's gone on has been bad, bad, bad. Sometimes it will be good - right up to the door, and them WHAM-O he'll say something stupid, like the Fat Ass remark and it's over.

Now - to be perfectly honest - every time the Fat Ass thing was mentioned in Books 2 and 3 I thought, how shallow can this woman be? In fact, to be really, completely honest, it just dawned on me as I wrote the comment a couple of paragraphs above that it was part of a pattern. A pattern I just caught on to. A pattern that is the very structure and raison d'etre of this book. (duh)

See, Devon Hamilton-Zemaitis had just been killed in a car accident. She's waiting in line at the Pearly Gates to see St. Peter when she's introduced to a former (also dead) teacher who tells her she has a chance to earn her wings, as it were. In a matter of speaking. She hasn't exactly qualified - yet - for Heaven. She has an issue or two that need, well, clearing up. She is told she can give a gift to someone (read: Adele) to make up for her past transgressions - so she does. But it isn't exactly something nice.

Zach Zemaitis is the widower left behind with his 10-year-old daughter when Devon dies. Zach and Devon didn't always get along that well - she didn't cotton to moving around the country when Zach got a new job as a pro football player, so she stationed herself in her Texas home town, and let him come visit whenever he had the opportunity.

It's Adele's home town too. She grew up with Devon, and the 2 had a very adversarial relationship from first grade on. Adele was devastated by Zach at University of Texas when he wooed her, took her virginity and then unceremoniously dumped her for Devon. After that, Adele moved in with her grandmother in Boise, Idaho, where she met her other author friends, and has lived there since. But her sister, whose life Adele always thought was blessed, has troubles - she's 6 months pregnant and her husband left her and their 13-year-old daughter for his much-younger assistant. The sister moves back to their home town and asks Adele to come help her out. And then, the sister develops dangerously high blood pressure and must spend the next 3 months in the hospital, so Adele must stay - in the home town - to take care of her sister and niece.

Lemme explain the timeline: it's now 2008. 14 years ago, in 1994, she was at UT with Devon and Zach. Devon died in 2005. Ok, got it? Oh - and Devon and Zach's daughter is also 13 now.

OK - so, it's been three years since Devon died. It's also been three years since Adele broke up with Dwayne and has been having atrociously bad dates. There's a connection here that took me a while to glom onto. Now I've spoiled it for anyone reading, but maybe you'll enjoy the story more knowing there is a connection, if you can just figure it out... (OK, if you read the AAR review, that reviewer comes to the point and gives it away - maybe if I'd read it before I read the book, I would have figured it out sooner. I won't link it - you make up your own mind.)

Adele figures she's cursed. It's not a coincidence, by the way, that Adele writes fantasy - each of the authors gets a little of her own back in her story. Maddie, true crime writer, writes of her mother's murder in Tangled Up In You. Clare, romance writer, gets her true hero in I'm In No Mood For Love. So when Adele meets up with Zach, after trying to dodge him for days - hard to do when her niece is now Zach's daughter's best friend - she gives in to the passion, figuring her Bad Date curse will keep her from developing another relationship with him.

Adele just doesn't know what the true gift Devon gave to her was when given the chance to earn her wings - and Devon has no idea either that sometimes you don't get what you expect when you wish for something! When the first gift doesn't work out the way Devon wants, she gives her another one that is sure to get the job done - except that, once again, it doesn't turn out quite the way she planned. She hadn't counted on one thing: Zach's true feelings for Adele.

OK slight spoiler alert - the gift isn't spelled out at first, but it ain't something nice. It takes Devon a while to figure out how to use her gifts to get into Heaven. And when she doesn't do it right, she gets a little taste of her own version of Hell - the first one being having to work at Wal Mart. Heh heh.

Lucky for Devon, she is allowed one more gift at the end to earn her way to her own idea of Heaven. Although I first balked at the epilogue being about Devon, and not about Zach and Adele, after reading it I laughed out loud - it was PERFECT! And now I'm wondering if Devon played any part in my having picked up the book and being forced to read it after the van broke down...

It was a truly fun ride, and Zach and Adele were terrific in their roles of hero and heroine. Zach was an alpha hero with heart - he almost qualified for beta status as the Nice Guy. Adele was gutsy without having any of those annoying feisty heroine traits - she knows her own mind, and sticks to her guns for all the right reasons. And might I add that Gibson can write a hot scene when she's on her game, which seems to be consistently on! 5 stars.

AUDIO VERSION - I was happy to find this and Tangled Up In You on audio at audible.com and glommed the 2 - if only they'd done all 4! The narrator, Nicole Poole, is a wonderful new find for me! There are complaints in the reviews at audible.com - the sound of her sucking in a breath is pretty loud and sort of annoying at first. I quickly got over it because she is really a great narrator - her voices and accents are wonderful and distinct, and I found myself thinking of Anna Fields as she read. OK, she's not really as good an actor as Anna Fields (aka Kate Fleming) or Barbara Rosenblat or Davina Porter - but she's a close second behind that group of talented narrator/actors. I searched her books on audible - she also read Coming Undone by Susan Andersen (whose style is similar to Gibson), but I wasn't that crazy about that book when I read it (the 4th in a series) so I dunno if I'll get it or not. I will look for her narrations, though, cuz she was good! She definitely gets 5 stars on her own merit, in my book!

AAR's Best of 2008 Quest

OK, another challenge for me: the winners of the Best of 2008 at AAR. I have read 9.

I have this theory that I need to sort of "catch up" with romance readers in general before voting in these types of polls, which is one reason I am reading all the AAR Top 100 of 2007. Since I really only started reading in the genre a little less than 2 years ago, I feel like I need to have read a lot of the popular books and authors to get an idea of how things stack up. Do I like books more (or possibly less?) after having read a number of those books considered the best? Do I gain a better understanding of what is good and what isn't? Or do I still react the way I would if I just picked it up, having never read a romance before?

I dunno. But I do feel I can give a better review and comparison if I have more books under my belt.

So without further ado, here is the list:

Best 2008 Romance Novels (from AAR)

Best Romance The Spymaster's Lady, Joanna Bourne
Best Contemporary Romance Blue-Eyed Devil, Lisa Kleypas - 5/10/2009 ****
Best Romantic Suspense Death Angel, Linda Howard - 9/1/2008 *****
Best Paranormal Romance Lover Enshrined, J.R. Ward
Honorable Mentions - tie Dark Desires after Dusk, Kresley Cole
Mine to Possess, Nalini Singh
Best Historical Romance Set in the U.K. The Spymaster's Lady, Joanna Bourne
Honorable Mention Private Arrangements, Sherry Thomas - 8/5/2008 ****
Best Historical Romance Not Set in the U.K. Your Scandalous Ways, Loretta Chase - 7/7/2008 *****
Funniest Romance Not Another Bad Date, Rachel Gibson - 6/25/2008 *****
Honorable Mentions – tie Like No Other Lover, Julie Anne Long
The Lost Duke of Wyndham, Julia Quinn - 6/11/2008 ***
Just One of the Guys, Kristan Higgins
Biggest Tearjerker Blue-Eyed Devil, Lisa Kleypas 5/10/2009 ****
Honorable Mention Broken Wing, Judith James - 3/3/2009 ****
Best Love Scenes (in a Mainstream Romance) - tie To Seduce a Sinner, Elizabeth Hoyt - 2/24/2009 ****
Your Scandalous Ways, Loretta Chase - 7/7/2008 *****
Honorable Mention To Taste Temptation, Elizabeth Hoyt - 1/25/2009 ***
Best Debut Author Sherry Thomas
Best Series Romance A Most Unconventional Match, Julia Justiss
Best Chick Lit/Women's Fiction Just One of the Guys, Kristan Higgins
Honorable Mentions – tie Queen of Babble Gets Hitched, Meg Cabot
Remember Me, Sophie Kinsella
Best Erotica Wicked Burn, Beth Kery
Honorable Mention Dangerous Secrets, Lisa Marie Rice
Best Romance Short Story From This Moment On in It Happened One Night, Candice Hern
Honorable Mention Spellbound in It Happened One Night, Mary Balogh
Guiltiest Pleasure Romance Lover Enshrined, J.R. Ward

Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas ****

First read and reviewed on 8/5/08 and now I've also listened to the audio!

ORIGINAL REVIEW

This is another of the books I lucked into while on my road trip this summer, by foraging through a bag of books destined for charitable donation. It's Ms. Thomas' debut novel, apparently, and wow! it's a great book made even better knowing it's her first!

The story is told in alternating times - first, we learn about how perfect the marriage of Gigi and Camden is in 1893, given they live on 2 different continents, and have been apart for 10 years - since the day after the wedding. But it isn't as perfect as it might seem, and Gigi is petitioning for divorce. Meanwhile, we are brought up to date through a series of flash-backs in 1882/83 into how they met and why they wed, and eventually we learn what brought them to the brink of disaster they teeter on in 1893.

When Camden comes back to face Gigi, he has one condition for the divorce: he wants an heir. Of course, this flies in the face of what Gigi wants, since she is all but promised to a new man, a younger artist who adores her.

But we are shown through their original meeting, courting, wedding and disastrous parting that what they each think they want and want they truly desire are at odds one with the other, because the chemistry that brought them together is still there. Now if they can only get over the wrongs done to each other...

I loved the author's writing style and her character development, and the only thing that kept it from being a full 5 star read for me was my inability to 100% buy into the original deceipt and his reaction to it. After all, although he has pledged his love to another woman, he hadn't actually seen that woman in over a year - and that woman has already made it clear he and she could never marry. And he clearly changed his affections when he met Gigi. His (over)reaction was not to changing his affections, but to how Gigi maneuvered him.

Yes, I did feel he had every right to feel betrayed and even horrified at the lengths to which Gigi went to get his proposal (after she had already proposed to him, and had been turned down.) She did it not for political or financial purposes, though, but for unexpected love. I had trouble fully grasping that a 15 year old Gigi could finagle the original marriage to the cousin who died, as well as an 18 year old Gigi doing what she did to trick Camden. And without the steps she took and the reaction Camden had, of course, there would be no story, so one does need to just go along with it. Well, maybe I'm not making any sense - I did love the book, but in comparison to my usual 5-star-read-feeling, this one rated a 4. Maybe 4 1/2.

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On re-reading by audio, I liked it even better. Somehow the narrator brought out the characters and made Camden's reaction seem more rational than when I first read it. After all, she had maneuvered both him and his cousin into marriage, theoretically just to get a dukedom. Since she didn't confess when she had the opportunity, he was crushed because he was so in love with her and he thought she wasn't really in love with him at all. It was an ego-buster, for sure.

Blue-Eyed Devil by Lisa Kleypas ****

Yes, it's raining pigs and ice cream floats are free in Hell. I liked another Lisa Kleypas! I'm guessing it's her contemporary semi-women's fiction-slash-romance style that I prefer VASTLY to her mediocre Regency historicals which needed major editing and a dash of interest.

This is the second in the Hardy Cates series, and once again it's told in first person entirely from the heroine's POV. Haven Travis is the youngest child and only daughter of Churchill Travis from book 1, Sugar Daddy. She had a rich, privileged upbringing in Houston's swanky River Oaks community (which is seriously posh and exclusive) but always felt a little ashamed of the conspicuous consumption and the over-use of privilege to get ahead. She considered herself something of a rebel and a feminist, and while she was away at college in the northeast, met a fellow Texan, Nick, who became her first husband.

Her father warned her that Nick was no good, and threatened to cut her off if she married him - just the right button to push to send her into Nick's arms. There was one encounter with Hardy Cates - Haven thought it was Nick when she first started kissing him in a dark corner of a party.

Good as his word, her father did cut her off, and Nick and Haven moved to Dallas where they tried to support themselves. Quickly Nick began showing his true colors - he was manipulative and soon became abusive, first emotionally and then physically. Within 2 years, he had beat her up more than once. When he kicked her out on a cold night, barefoot, no purse or money or ID, she walked to a pay phone and placed a collect call to her oldest brother, Gage, who sent someone to pick her up and get her to Houston.

Once in Houston, she wanted to make her own way without (too much) help. Several times I wanted to wring her neck and tell her to just let them help her a little, but I have to admit she stayed true to character. She refused an offer to be the manager of the downtown building Gage (or the family?) owned, accepting the manager's assistant position instead. The manager was brought over from another property and ended up being as manipulative and abusive in her own way as Nick had been. And Haven, true to form, just took it, didn't tattle, didn't ask for help.

When Hardy finds out Haven has divorced her husband and is living in the building, he leases an apartment there and takes up where they left off - the kiss at the party a little over 2 years before. Everyone in Haven's life, even her best friend, the bisexual playmate from her childhood (male... what was his name?), warns Haven to watch out for Hardy. Hardy had betrayed Liberty in the first book by using some information she innocently revealed to him against the Travis family, so there is an element of a family feud between the Travis men and Cates, although they all respect him.

The descriptions of Haven's slow slide into trusting Nick and then his use of emotional manipulation to control her into thinking his behavior is normal are chilling and no doubt true to life. For women who swear they would never stay with an abuser, listening to his reasoning, his begging forgiveness and promising never to hurt her again might make them rethink their holier-than-thou position. Abused women don't ask for their situation, and they don't stay because they want the abuse to continue. Haven had to rebuild her life and learn to trust again, and this is where Hardy Cates shines as a true romance novel hero.

I'm sticking by the women's fiction genre again - with a dash of romance - because once again the heroine has 2 men, and although you soon realize Hardy will play a bigger part later, once again he's separated from the heroine for a big part of the book. It's more about Haven, about her life and how she reacted to her upbringing and how she survived Nick's abuse. 4 stars.

Oh, I meant to add: I listened to it on audio. This is a different narrator from the first book. This narrator has a different approach, one that was very, very dramatic - almost too much. Her Texan/southern accent is quite a lot thicker and more pronounced than someone who actually grew up in River Oaks would really have - a girl Haven's age would have gone to the best private schools, and would have had a more cultured, rich-girl Texan accent, regardless of her parents' speech. But somehow it still worked for me. It was a dramatic tale, after all. She managed to whimper and sound scared and hurt when appropriate, and to sound contrite when speaking to her husband and her boss and even her father. I liked it, even though I sometimes winced when she went a little over-the-top.

Slave To Sensation by Nalini Singh ****

I had been putting off reading this book, even though it was on the AAR Top 100 of 2007, because of its genre: paranormal. So many people are really into her series about Psy and Changelings roaming the Earth 100 years from now, with humans.

Now that I've read it, I can say I enjoyed reading it but... do not feel compelled to keep reading the series. Hmmm, weird, I know.

The Psy are theoretically the most powerful - they run the government and such. They can communicate through the PsyNet, sorta like the Internet only with their minds. Changelings are part human/part animal - basically what other authors call shape-shifters. They exist in packs and fight amongst each other and against Psy. And humans are just, well, humans.

The Psy, starting 100 years earlier (ok, in the 1970s) decided to eliminate all emotions from their behavior with a program called Silence. Psy children are taught to tightly control all emotions, and are therefore cold and robotic. They also have other talents/skills/gifts like telekinesis and telepathy and such.

When Psy Sascha Duncan realizes her mind is going, she knows she will be destined to Rehabilitation, a fate worse than death. She struggles with her apparent lack of power- even though she is the daughter of one of the most powerful Psy - trying to maintain a hold. She meets Changeling/leopard Lucas Hunter in a business deal between the Psy and his pack, of which he is the alpha member.

The story revolves around a serial killer, presumed to be a Psy, who has now maimed, raped then killed 8 changeling women around the country. The changeling packs are getting together to find the killer and bring him to justice. Sasche finds out about the plan and basically determines to help them, as they have helped her come to terms with what ends up being her powerful gift - something the Psy have tried to eliminate.

And in the process, Lucas realizes she is his destined mate, against everything he's learned about the Psy.

It's an interesting read, and I liked the characters well enough. However, it didn't really change my mind that much about the paranormal romance genre - it still takes an effort to learn the world-building elements and remember who is whom and how they operate. An effort that doesn't engage me that much, as it turns out, at least not right now.

So I'm giving it 4 stars and posting it back on the WL at PBS.

Broken Wing by Judith James ****

This is the debut novel for this author, and it got a lot of buzz from the romance readers with blogs, making it highly coveted on PBS! I finally, after 5 months on the waiting list, got to Number 1 and got it, and have now read it. At last!

I must say, I liked it a lot, but I'm a little baffled by the buzz. It didn't make it to my keeper list. It didn't get me worked up, or make me cry or even get me choked up. I found it an enjoyable story, with unusual protagonists and unusual situations. The book needed a good proofreader - the author seems to like commas a lot, but they are not always where they should be - often in the wrong place, and sometimes needed where they are not. There are some grammatical errors that really should have been caught by someone before it was printed. All in all, it wasn't as perfect a love story as I was hoping for, as the buzz made me anticipate, and grammar errors popped me out of the story regularly. (When the story is good, I think maybe I don't notice these things as much...)

The hero, Gabriel, is a truly wounded and tortured fellow. He was raised in a brothel in Paris, used as a prostitute by both men and women. As an older teenager, he protected a young child sold, as he was, to the brothel, for 5 years, at which time the boy's family located him. The boy refused to be parted from Gabriel, so his older brother paid the Madame for Gabriel, paid Gabriel to be the boy's companion, and took him back home to England.

The boys' sister is Sarah. She's an unconventional woman - she wears pants and rides horses astride and all manner of odd things like this. She was married to a decrepit old earl - she escaped from the earl after 1 week of marriage, and took to the seas with her erstwhile cousin Gypsy Davey, looking for her younger brother. The earl died, leaving her wealthy in her own right.

Sarah and Gabriel have an immediate attraction, but Gabriel is too wounded to know how to treat a lady, how to be with women in any other way than as a paid gigolo. Sarah befriends him, and slowly helps Gabriel out of the hard shell he has built up to protect what is left of his soul. As their friendship grows, slowly, over time they fall in love. Sarah is willing to take it further but doesn't want him to feel used - for Gabriel, sex is something sordid, done for pay, and he needs to learn how to relate to a woman as a lover.

Eventually he is able to do that, and they do become lovers - something too shocking for her older brother, who threatens Gabriel with death. Gabriel realizes he needs to make something of himself before he can marry and support Sarah, and goes off with Gypsy Davey privateering, to earn enough to be worthy of her.

Well - you know it can't just be a bed of roses, and when Gabriel is knocked overboard in a storm, you realize there's more hardship ahead for him. Will he ever make it back to Sarah, as a whole person, worthy of her love? This is what keeps him going and motivates him for months. But he feels he's lost his soul in the process. So not only is he battling physical foes, he has to battle himself and find his own redemption.

I read this anticipating a truly emotional, heart-wrenching story, and because it didn't meet those expectations, I rated it 4 stars. OK, maybe 4.5 - there was a lot of swashbuckling adventure. I also read it for the Spring 2009 Challenge, as something rated 5 stars on Cindy W's shelf. I know it's her new favorite book, and the favorite of several who read and reviewed it! It also fits my A To Z Challenge, for author J.

To Seduce a Sinner by Elizabeth Hoyt ****

This is the 2nd in the Soldiers Series, Hoyt's second series (after the Prince series) - and like the Prince Series and the first in the Soldiers, it opens with a part of a fairy tale at the beginning of each chapter. This time I didn't follow the connection between the tale and the story, but that's ok because I liked the story this time.

The hero in this story is Jasper, Lord Vale, Emeline's first fiancee in book 1, and Sam's compatriot in his search for the traitor from 6 years earlier in the American Colonies. Sam and Emeline have now married and moved back to the colonies, and Lord Vale in on the threshold of marrying his second fiancee when she too leaves him at the altar. While he sits there in the church, hung over and pondering his dilemma, Melisande comes in and offers to wed him.

It seems Melisande had met Jasper years before, through Emeline, but he doesn't remember her. She, however, remembers him, since it was love at first sight for her. Well, not exactly first sight - she saw him as others did, a sort of playboy/rake/rogue, until she discovered his tender side (unbeknownst to him, she observed a private moment).

He agrees to wed her, but even after the marriage, he stays away from her as much as possible because he believes himself to be unworthy - of her, of any woman really. His PTSD from the incident in the Colonies still haunts him, enough to drive him to continue the search for the traitor. Melisande chips away at his hard shell, slowly, to get to the sensitive fellow underneath.

I liked the tone, the voice of this story better than the previous one (To Taste Temptation). Jasper's hidden insecurities made more sense, and Melisande was a more credible and likable heroine for me. Interestingly, the book blurb indicates that Melisande keeps her husband at a distance - in fact, I found it was Jasper keeping her at a distance, and her pursuing him. She did have secrets she didn't want him to learn, but he was the one who was keeping her distant, refusing to stay overnight in her bed.

So I'm going with a 4 star rating - I liked it, a lot. It's in the Serial Challenge and the Winter Challenge (book published in 2008). And Melisande has a featured dog, a Notable Pet, named Mouse (he's a rat terrier).

To Taste Temptation by Elizabeth Hoyt ***

I consider myself a fan of Elizabeth Hoyt's work because I read her first trilogy and really liked it. I found her "voice" fresh and interesting, and the conceit of using a fairy tale (that she created, not a regular tale in children's books) was fun.

This time I found the fairy tale thing, well, almost annoying. I mean, been there done that. And the story, while I liked it ok, wasn't one I found compelling and moving. In fact, I managed to find other things to do and dragged it out over several days, even waiting to read the last several pages...

The hero Sam is an "untamed" fellow, raised in the wilds of the American colonies - it's 1760s I believe - and was a tracker or some such with a British unit in the French and Indian wars several years before. He served with the heroine's brother, who was killed in an Indian ambush that the hero believes was a sell-out by one of the British troops. Sam has come to England to track down this traitor and... well, I wasn't really sure what he planned to do with him, except that he may have wanted to clear his own name, since everyone thought he had run away to save himself. He did run - to get help and ransom for the British officers that were being held.

The heroine is Emeline, a lady who also chaperones young women entering society. Sam brings his sister along as a cover, so he has a reason to get close to Emeline and also to get invited to certain balls and soirees in search of his traitor. He originally thinks the traitor is Jasper, Emeline's fiance, but when he discovers Jasper is not, he and Jasper join forces.

I dunno... something about the tone of the book just didn't work for me. Sam was all alpha male, in control, except he had this PTSD thing going on with crowds - when he smelled men's sweat, he imagined himself back in the war and had anxiety and panic attacks. And Emeline was this very tightly coiled, very respectable widow with a hidden passionate nature. All very melodramatically portrayed, and mostly I kept thinking she was a bitch with a stick up her behind. Whenever I read something like this, I wonder if it's me, if it's my current mood - I'd been putting off reading it, even though everyone has been raving about it, and I sorta forced myself to go ahead and start it. And I liked it ok, but not a lot. I wonder if I had waited until I wanted to read it if I would have liked it better?

Well, I'll never know the answer to that. 3 stars - it's in my Serial Readers Challenge, my A To Z challenge and the Winter 2008 challenge.

Death Angel by Linda Howard *****

I have this book on audio from audible.com - it's not my first Linda Howard on audio, but my first with Joyce Bean as narrator. I have to say right upfront that for the first several minutes I thought I would have to stop and read it instead. I found her narration stilted and unnatural - she over-enunciated so many words that I wasn't sure I could stand to listen to it for 10 hours.

However, Linda Howard is such an incredible story-teller that before long I was drawn into the story, and the nuances of Ms. Bean's awkward narration disappeared into the background. (shockingly, 3 of the 4 current reviews on audible.com noted how great this narrator was... ???) Well, Joyce Bean wasn't dreadful, like the narrator for the first of the Feehan Dark series, but she's no Anna Fields. Personally, if I was allowed to give professional criticism, I'd say lighten up on those T's and D's, and try to make the flow of the narration less stilted and more like natural speech. But who am I? Just another listener.

The story centers around the major theme of the redeeming power of love. The h/h are both anti-heroes - Drea is the mistress of a drug lord, Rafael, thinking she is using men to get what she needs by playing the bimbo; "the Assassin" is just that - a killer-for-hire. The Assassin demands that Rafael give him Drea in lieu of payment - just for one afternoon. Rafael agrees, and leaves Drea heartbroken and sick, feeling worthless and crushed that she meant so little to him. The Assassin manages to make her even more confused, however, in a 4-hour stint that completely breaks her down because she loses control and actually enjoys - no - craves him. Although by the end she is begging him to take her with him, he tells her "once was enough" - and leaves a completely shattered woman, desperate to change her life.

Drea isn't the bimbo everyone believes her to be, however, and she's always had a plan for taking care of herself as soon as she had gotten what she needed from Rafael. She leaves him the next day, and in the execution of her plan, also manages to steal a large amount of his money - a sort of "up yours" gesture. When he figures out he's been had, he hires the assassin to do his job: kill her.

At this point we learn the assassin's name: Simon. He doesn't accept the job right away - first he sees if he can track her down. He admires her courage and her ability to stay one step ahead of him. He was not sure whether he would have taken the job - or her life - if fate hadn't stepped in and taken it from her in an accident. Once he's convinced she's dead, he takes her ID and calls 911. Although he proves to Rafael she is dead, he hadn't accepted the job and so doesn't accept payment either.

But he can't seem to shake her from his life and decides to locate her grave. He needs closure. Instead, he's shocked to learn that Drea actually survived the accident.

Now going by her nickname Andie, she realizes that she was never the one in power or in control of her life as she had thought, but that she had allowed men to use her. Her near-death experience forces her to face the truth of her way of life. Now she needs to reclaim her life and seek redemption for her past. Although she still has the original $2 million she stole from Rafael, she decides to fly under the radar, with a job that pays cash, living on what she makes, and use the money some way that will bring her redemption.

Then Simon is revealed to her by a flash of lightning during a storm - he's been watching her. As the reader, we know he's been her guardian angel, but to Andie he's still the relentless assassin who has found her and plans to finish the job he started. Although he had never planned to reveal himself, once again divine intervention plays a role, and now the two of them must face both their fears. And Andie must find her redemption and reason for her second chance.

Well - I loved the suspense, the skillful story-telling, the powerful transformation Andie undergoes from feeling worthless to finding her power within, and especially Simon's own redemption, because he had so much further to go than she did. Rafael's ending almost caught me unaware - it seemed to come out of nowhere but then made perfect sense after it happened.

I would rate the narration 3 stars for mediocre. I can't blame Linda Howard for that, though, so Death Angel gets 5 stars from me.

Your Scandalous Ways by Loretta Chase *****

This book was just released recently, and has been on all the romance discussion boards and blogs. The AAR Review gives it an A with DIK status and I have to say, I am in complete agreement with this reviewer. Others are still using words like "disappointed" and "meh" (whatever that means) - which just goes to show that it takes all kinds, and everyone is different!

The heroine is Francesca Bonnard, a divorcee turned courtesan, living in Venice. She was married well and young through the "marriage mart" but it turns out he was bad news, with a series of mistresses and bad political choices. In a naive effort to get him to pay attention to her, she has an affair which causes the breakdown of the marriage and the disastrous divorce. She manages to find evidence of his treason in letters that she takes with her and taunts him with over the years. There are 2 camps that want these letters - the camp that wants to out him as a traitor and ruin his political career, and the camp that wants to destroy the letters so he can move up.

When we meet James Cordier, our hero, we know he is there to get the letters but it isn't clear which camp he is in. He's a master spy, master jewel thief, master mimic and 2nd son - he thought he was at the end his spy career until pressed into service one last time to get the letters.

He first meets Francesca at the opera, in disguise as a servant, and realizes right away the charm and appeal she has for all the men in her life. She is currently between lovers, and is stringing along a series of men, waiting to see which one will be her new protector.

Francesca has been using her wiles to attract men for 5 years - skills she learned from a madame in France. She is independent and strong - character traits she honed from her experience with men abusing her trust, mainly her father and her first husband.

From the start there is a chemistry between James and Francesca, but what makes their story different is that both have had lots of experience with lust and sexual chemistry and the use of sex as a weapon or a ways to an end. They go into their relationship with eyes wide open, knowing (or assuming) each is only good for one thing. She teases him and leads him on only because she assumes he could not afford her services, and he plays along because he is only looking for the letters. What they don't see until they are both in the thick of it is how their relationship has evolved, how their teasing and intrigue has changed, and how they have both fallen so deeply in love, against both their better judgements. In fact, in a conceit I love, he realizes it and voices it first and often.

Chase's writing skill is unmatched in my experience - she manages to write layered, complex stories that are still light and funny and witty and romantic and steamy and still ring true. I almost wrote "unique" and I guess "unmatched" isn't exactly right either. The other author who writes like this is Jo Goodman, but they aren't the same and they don't write the same style or the same stories. It's just their abilities to craft words into experiences that are similar, and unlike any other authors I've read. Not sure if that makes sense... I sure don't have that talent.

5 stars and a definite keeper (although I'm so tempted to grab a PBS credit by swapping mine out....)

The Lost Duke of Wyndham by Julia Quinn ***

I didn't like it.

I'm bummed. Julia Quinn is one of my favorite authors, although admittedly I haven't loved everything she's written. But this time I just didn't like it. However - I can't bring myself to actually rate it less than 3 stars because... I'm not sure why not. I didn't hate it.

The hero is Captain Jack Audley. We meet him when he stops a carriage to rob the occupants - dowager Duchess of Wyndham and her companion Grace. The dowager immediately recognizes Jack as the very likeness of her son, dead 29 years. He robs her of a ring which is the twin of one he wears, which proves to him he's related as well. And he admits to Grace his name was once Cavendish, the family surname.

Grace has been the dowager's paid companion since her parents died 5 years ago, leaving her not much but a good upbringing. Her choices were minimal at the time - marry her awful cousin who inherited the property, or...? Even though the dowager is pretty much dreadful from the word go, Grace is grateful because... ok, not sure why, because frankly I'm not sure the cousin option could have been much worse. At least she doesn't have to sleep with the duchess, right?

Somehow I think we're supposed to feel the immediate spark betwixt Jack and Grace during the robbery. The dowager shoves Grace at Jack to hold at gunpoint while she retrieves her reticule from the carriage, and... And... I think that is when we are all supposed to realize they are soul mates.

The next day, Jack finds himself sorta looking around the ducal holdings from afar, just out of curiosity, and there's Grace, several football fields away - but of course, being soul mates, their eyes are drawn to one another and... And... Next thing you know, the dowager has kidnapped Jack. See, she's decided he's definitely the offspring of her dead son which makes him legally the Duke - a title currently being held by Thomas, her other grandson.

Thomas is a likable enough fellow - in fact, he's the hero of the sequel. He's the usual Quinn duke - he fulfills his responsibilities, he knows all the tenants and all that, he's got this fiancée to whom he's been betrothed literally since birth but hasn't set the wedding date, he's got a mistress somewhere, he's almost like a brother to Grace. The fiancée is Amelia, younger sister to Grace's best friend Elizabeth. Amelia is the heroine of the sequel, so we know she's going to get her HEA.

So we now have this obstacle - is Jack the legitimate son of John Cavendish, the dowager's favorite son? And if so, can he marry Grace since she's not of the nobility? They must all journey to Ireland to find the marriage records (nobody ever mentions then finding his birth record to prove he was born of them, by the way...).

Jack spends some time thinking and dreaming about his past to reveal his backstory. His father went to Ireland, married an Irish girl, they had Jack then drowned on their way to England, leaving infant Jack behind with her sister. Jack was raised with his cousins in a happy household, denied nothing, everything was fine. It's not like he ever knew his parents, and he gets a great family to boot. But he has a secret (ok, he's dyslexic - really it wasn't that big a deal and meant zero to me when revealed) that made it impossible for him to get a good education. Instead he joined the military, and I guess he fought in the Napoleonic wars alongside his cousin, who died in battle. Yeah, yeah, guess what, he feels completely and thoroughly responsible for killing his cousin the same as if he'd done the deed hisself.

This part really had me scratching my head. First he thinks he killed his cousin, so he doesn't want to go to Ireland to face his aunt and uncle. That leads me to believe he has not yet faced them since the death. Nope, he took the body home and they buried him in Ireland and had a funeral and everything - so how does he decide he can't face them when he already HAS faced them?? In fact, I guess we're supposed to realize this is why he became a highwayman, out of his great guilt. No - wait - maybe he became a highwayman to be Robin Hood, because it's also revealed that he gives all the takings to disabled soldiers or families left fatherless by dead soldiers.

Oh yeah, don't forget about Grace - well, I think we're supposed to realize how much Grace and Jack are meant to be together while the story unfolds. I missed that part. And I think it might have been the writing.

Short sentences. Lots of them. Lots of short sentences and short paragraphs, repeating the same things. Over and over.

Three word sentences in 2 line paragraphs which say what the sentence before said, repeated. Over. And. Over.

And over. (With lots of parenthetical asides.)

Like it was written by an ADD mind. Wait - maybe that's it - Jack was ADD with dyslexia.

I didn't hate it - I didn't feel the need to toss it in the air - there weren't a lot of typos and grammar errors (ok, there was one place I was positive she meant to say Jack but wrote Grace, and then there was that sentence that had Grace waiting for the awaited something-or-other that nearly had me banging the book against the wall...).

I don't think I can read it again. It's on the Wish List at PBS so I guess I'll post it and share it with someone else. Look, I did my part - I paid (almost) full price for it, which is something I haven't done for a hard copy of a book in a long time. (I did buy it at Walmart, so that sullies the issue slightly.)

I'm thinking maybe 2.75 stars which I'll put as 3.