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

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 Proposition by Judith Ivory *****

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!

-------
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 ****

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.

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

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.


======

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.

Son of the Morning by Linda Howard ****

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...

-------
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.

See Jane Score by Rachel Gibson *****

RE-READ ON JUNE 5, 2010

I read this book about 2 years ago, and gave it 4 stars (really 3.5) and wrote a review saying it just didn't measure up. But I've been in a sort of reading drought. I haven't been keeping up with what's new and out there to read, and what is in my TBR just isn't getting me interested, so I've been doing a lot of re-reads. Re-reads are comforting - the mac-n-cheese of reading. You already know you love it and it will make you feel good. I picked up See Jane Score because I'd been wondering if maybe I didn't give it a fair chance.

Well, I was right. That is, I did not give it a fair chance! My re-read was a completely new take on the story. My review is still right - the facts are there. We don't really get into Luc's mind much. And I missed a major piece on Jane - the fact that she seems to sabotage her relationships as a way to keep from getting close.

I even laughed at myself for the comment about being raised by her father so she missed out on makeup and dressing. Yeah, I did not get those skills from my mother - in fact I don't have those skills at all. I guess she has a point - she didn't have a mother to get them from. I did, but that mother didn't pass them on (or didn't have them either).

It wasn't the same type of prose that SEP or Susan Andersen write; it's not even exactly the same prose that Gibson writes in other books. But she still knows how to draw characters, flaws and fears and all, and infuse the story with wit and pathos and emotion. And sheesh, the sexual tension when all they do is kiss and grope a little - whew! (Not that they don't do more, later in the book, mind you!)

So, below the line is my original review. The plot is the same, but this time I did love it - and I'm going with 5 stars this time around.

----------------

I really wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did. Maybe it's just because I wanted it to be more like Susan Andersen, or Susan Elizabeth Phillips, and she just didn't measure up.

See Jane Score came to my TBR pile as an AAR Top 100 book. Doing my background work on it (making sure it wasn't a part of a series - well, it is, but I couldn't figure out how, so I read it as a stand-alone) I decided it sounded like something I would like, a la SEP and Andersen. A hockey player hero and a plain Jane heroine (named Jane) who isn't so plain, who get thrown together by circumstance. The circumstance forces Jane to learn about hockey as she goes along, and there's even a pre-game ritual thrown in (It Had To Be You, anyone?).

And, well, Gibson doesn't write like Anderson or SEP. I kept wanting her to dig deeper into Luc's POV - like author Suzanne Brockmann - and let me really feel what Luc is feeling. Maybe she did and Luc is just not that interesting?

Luc's backstory: he's a goalie, recently recovered from knee surgery and pain meds addiction, and recently got custody of his half-sister whose mother died. He has a reputation with journalists who've detailed not only his addiction, but his exploits with women, most of which apparently is fabricated.

Jane's backstory: mother died of breast cancer when Jane was 6, father raised her almost as a boy so she's not interested in dressing up or wearing makeup. (?) Since these aren't really skills I got from my mother, I didn't exactly follow this logic, but whatever. She only wears black and gray because she doesn't know how to match colors. So she's not a girly-girl (she sure cries alot though, shades of A Knight In Shining Armor!), she's short and not well endowed.

The circumstance: she's a journalist who gets offered a position writing a sports column about the hockey team and traveling with them for the season. She isn't a sports writer and has to learn about the sport - they pick her on purpose for publicity reasons (I think, although that aspect is never mentioned again ) because she writes a dating column. Now she has to be the only woman in the dressing room after the game, and the only woman traveling with the team - and they all decide to shut her out. Of course, after a while this gets old, she brings them luck and now they like her.

Luc starts looking at her, but even when Gibson writes from his POV, we know very little about what he is feeling until later when he admits he is attracted to her. They both decide the attraction is a bad idea - her because she wants to keep her position professional, him because - well, I think because he doesn't think she's his type plus he wants to concentrate on his game and his sister is a distraction. Or Something Like That. I may have to read it again - you'd think having just finished it less than 12 hours ago, I could remember.

So they avoid - then they get together -then they avoid. We really feel more of Jane's side - and she is hurt when he avoids her, thinking he was just using her for a one-night stand. Eventually we get his side, which was... oh, the complications, and his not wanting to feel or admit his attractions, and then he does. Oh wait - I almost forgot her porn persona, Honey Pie - that was the Big Secret/Big Misunderstanding part. She writes a porn column under a pseudonym, and only 3 people know it's her - but all the hockey players read the column. Early in the relationship - real early - she writes it about him, but it isn't published til later. So we know it's coming, but it doesn't really affect their relationship til the very end. I cringed when I read the column, because she wrote a scene that actually did happen, almost word for word, between the 2 of them. I was surprised no one figured out it was her, since she even described the dress she wore in front of the entire team. She made no secret of his identity in the column either - a hockey player called Lucky... But not only did no one figure out she was involved (they did realize it was about him), even Luc assumes someone overheard the 2 of them - he cannot imagine she wrote it. When she tells him the truth, he feels betrayed because he trusted her, so they have to get over that right at the end. By the way - I wondered if everyone realized that it was a fictional column? After all, she did leave all her lovers in comas. So did anyone think that whoever this Honey Pie was actually screwed Luc into a coma?

I did have some laughs, and I grinned a few times at a clever turn or 2. But I wanted more - I wanted to feel what I feel when Andersen or SEP tell me a story - and I didn't. Should I read more? If this is her best, though, I just don't know if I can take it. I'm gonna go with 4 stars because it's a 3 1/2 - I liked it more than just "average" or "mediocre" but not nearly as much as I wanted to. I guess it's relative.

To Have and To Hold by Patricia Gaffney ***

This is the 2nd in the series, and the one that got AAR Top 100 status. And I guess I shouldn't be too surprised to say: I didn't get why... Not that I usually disagree with the list. I often find books and authors I love. But not this one, and not some of the others either, which just reinforces that old "everybody's different" thing.

This one is about the new heir to the village titled property after Geoffrey died, his cousin Sebastian. I wasn't clear about why Sebastian and not his father inherited. Whatever. Sebastian was jaded and promiscuous and bored. He came to Wyckerley and assumed the seat of magistrate along with 2 other citizens, where he first met Rachel Wade, the heroine.

Rachel had recently gotten out of prison where she served 10 years for murdering her husband after 1 week of marriage. Apparently the sentence was light because her husband had abused her - she wasn't hanged, after all. But prison sapped everything out of her - her family pretty much disowned her, and she learned the hard way that just taking the prison abuse and shutting down your emotions was the only way to survive. But she had been picked up for vagrancy, having nowhere to go, and the court was thinking of sending her back to jail.

Sebastian decides he needs a new housekeeper anyway, and she's pretty to look at and he plans also to bed her, so he offers to be her guardian.

It's this last part that really took the joy out of the story for me. Look, even if she did acquiesce, I say it's rape for him to put her in the position of having to have sex with him. More than once, and meanwhile he's still the same old jaded, bored, rotten fellow. He even invites his jaded, bored, rotten friends over and pretty much subjects her to quite a lot more abuse at their hands before something snaps and he decided maybe his actions haven't been exactly humane. Mind you, that doesn't stop him from continuing to seduce her, but now maybe he has feelings. Maybe even for her.

I kept waiting for the author to show me the slow change in both of them, since I knew they were the h/h of the story. I kept thinking there would be a slow series of scenes where she begins to realize he's changed and that she can trust him. Even towards the end, when his mission in life is to make her come (now there's a worthy goal), he decides that the best way to do that is to restrain her by tying her wrists over her head. I dunno, that scene didn't make me feel any warmth toward him. And Rachel? Yeah, she did decide she had feelings for him, but I never did know why - he was a bastard of the highest degree, and I never felt the change in her even though I read about the change in him.

Then there's another of those incredible coincidental endings - if the author hadn't ended book 1 with a couple of well-timed coincidences, maybe I could have bought this one. But, well, it just didn't work for me for a letter to come out of nowhere right when it was needed - almost too late! - and for Sebastian to arrive in the nick of time, in a rainstorm no less. And Rachel, the dummy, to resist in principal to a solution that would have kept her out of jail again when more than once she had thought she would kill herself before she would go back to jail.

Again, the verbiage was well-written, but the story itself just didn't elevate itself to Top 100 status, even if I'd only read 99 books ever. I'm going with 3 stars because I liked it ok, but it seems almost like 2 stars because I expected so much more.

AAR Top 100 2007: Challenge, or Quest?

All About Romance is a website for Romance readers, with a ton of reviews, a forum, a newsletter, lots of author interviews and a poll that appears to be maybe bi-annual where readers submit their favorite romance novels, and the votes are tallied and a list is born.

The AAR Top Romances for 2007 follows. I decided to try to read all (or most?) of them, and have been slowly whittling away on them. Currently, I have read 88, and have eliminated some of them because I either don't like the author or the genre. I may read those anyway.

A more formal challenge has come about through the Readers of Romance Challenge group on Shelfari, and so there are several of us "keeping track" and trying to read them all before the next list is polled in 2009. I figured for me it's an interesting way to see what others think are great books, and to find new authors and sort of stretch my reading wings a little. I marked the ones I've read in Red; the ones in my TBR pile in Green and the ones I don't plan to read will be marked through thusly. I've also put my own personal rating - * = did not like it to ***** = loved it - after the ones I've read. The year it was originally published is also included.

1 - Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase - Eur Hist - 1995 - *****
2 - Dreaming of You - Lisa Kleypas - Eur Hist - 1994 - ***
3 - Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - Classic - 1813 - **
4 - Outlander - Diana Gabaldon - Time-Travel - 1991 - *****
5 - Flowers From The Storm - Laura Kinsale - Eur Hist - 1992 *****
6 - Slightly Dangerous - Mary Balogh - Eur Hist - 2004 - TBR
7 - Devil In Winter - Lisa Kleypas - Eur Hist - 2006
8 - Bet Me - Jennifer Crusie - Contemporary - 2004 - *****
9 - Welcome to Temptation - Jennifer Crusie - Contemporary - 2000 - *****
10 - The Viscount Who Loved Me - Julia Quinn - Eur Hist - 2000 - ****
11 - Lover Awakened - J.R. Ward - Paranomal - 2006
12 - Mr. Impossible - Loretta Chase - Eur Hist - 2005 - ***
13 - The Duke and I - Julia Quinn - Eur Hist - 2000 - ****
14 - It Had To Be You - Susan Elizabeth Phillips - Contemporary - 1994 - ****
15 - Lord Perfect - Loretta Chase - Eur Hist - 2006 - ***
16 - Romancing Mr. Bridgerton - Julia Quinn - Eur Hist - 2002 - ****
17 - The Bride - Julie Garwood - Medieval - 1989 - ***
18 - Mr. Perfect - Linda Howard - Contemporary - 2000 - *****
19 - Naked In Death - J.D. Robb - Futuristic - 1995 - ***
20 - A Summer To Remember - Mary Balogh - Eur Hist - 2002 - ***
21 - Nobody's Baby But Mine - Susan Elizabeth Phillips - Contemporary - 1997 - ****
22 - Dream Man - Linda Howard - Romantic Suspense - 1995 - *****
23 - The Raven Prince - Elizabeth Hoyt - Eur Hist - 2006 - *****
24 - Paradise - Judith McNaught - Contemporary - 1991 - *****
25 - As You Desire - Connie Brockway - Historical - 1997 - *****
26 - MacKenzie's Mountain - Linda Howard - Contemporary - 1989 - ****
27 - Dark Lover - J.R. Ward - Paranormal - 2005 - ****
28 - The Secret - Julie Garwood - Medieval - 1992 - ****
29 - Son Of The Morning - Linda Howard - Time-Travel - 1997 - ****
30 - Lover Eternal - J.R. Ward - Paranormal - 2006
31 - Devil's Bride - Stephanie Laurens - Eur Hist - 1998 - *
32 - A Knight in Shining Armor - Jude Deveraux - Time-Travel - 1989 - ***
33 - Heaven, Texas - Susan Elizabeth Phillips - Contemporary - 1995 - ****
34 - To Have and To Hold - Patricia Gaffney - Eur Hist - 1995 - ***
35 - Almost Heaven - Judith McNaught - Eur Hist - 1990 - ***
36 - Match Me If You Can - Susan Elizabeth Phillips - Contemporary - 2005 - ****
37 - The Shadow and The Star - Laura Kinsale - Historical - 1991 - *****
38 - Cry No More - Linda Howard - Contemporary - 2003 - *****
39 - A Kingdom of Dreams - Judith McNaught - Medieval - 1989 - *****
40 - Over the Edge - Suzanne Brockmann - Contemporary - 2001 - *****
41 - Sea Swept - Nora Roberts - Contemporary - 1998 - *****
42 - Ravished - Amanda Quick - Eur Hist - 1992 - *****
43 - Then Came You - Lisa Kleypas - Eur Hist - 1993 - **
44 - To Die For - Linda Howard - Contemporary - 2005 - *****
45 - Something Wonderful - Judith McNaught - Eur Hist - 1988 - ***
46 - This Heart of Mine - Susan Elizabeth Phillips - Contemporary - 2001 - ****
47 - The Serpent Prince - Elizabeth Hoyt - Eur Hist - 2007 - *****
48 - Suddenly You - Lisa Kleypas - Eur Hist - 2001 - **
49 - The Proposition - Judith Ivory - Eur Hist - 1999 - *****
50 - Honors Splendour - Julie Garwood - Medieval - 1987 - *****
51 - Saving Grace - Julie Garwood - Medieval - 1993 - *****
52 - Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - Classic - 1847 -
53 - When He Was Wicked - Julia Quinn - Eur Hist - 2004 - *****
54 - Persuasion - Jane Austen - Classic - 1818 -
55 - All Through The Night - Connie Brockway - Eur Hist - 1997 - ****
56 - It Happened One Autumn - Lisa Kleypas - Eur Hist - 2005
57 - Born In Fire - Nora Roberts - Contemporary - 1994 - ***
58 - Thunder and Roses - Mary Jo Putney - Eur Hist - 1993 - **
59 - Kiss An Angel - Susan Elizabeth Phillips - Contemporary - 1996 - *****
60 - Out Of Control - Suzanne Brockmann - Contemporary - 2002 - *****
61 - After The Night - Linda Howard - Contemporary - 1995 - *****
62 - Lady Sophia's Lover - Lisa Kleypas - Eur Hist - 2002 - ***
63 - The Secret Pearl - Mary Balogh - Eur Hist - 1991 - *****
64 - Once and Always - Judith McNaught - Eur Hist - 1987 - *****
65 - More Than A Mistress - Mary Balogh - Eur Hist - 2000 - *****
66 - Untie My Heart - Judith Ivory - Eur Hist - 2002 - *****
67 - See Jane Score - Rachel Gibson - Contemporary - 2003 - ****
68 - The Rake - Mary Jo Putney - Eur Hist - 1998 -
69 - Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon - Time-Travel - 1992 - *****
70 - Perfect - Judith McNaught - Contemporary - 1993 - *****
71 - Whitney, My Love - Judith McNaught - Eur Hist - 1985 - ****
72 - The Duke - Gaelen Foley - Eur Hist - 2000 - *****
73 - One Perfect Rose - Mary Jo Putney - Eur Hist - 1997 -
74 - Shattered Rainbows - Mary Jo Putney - Eur Hist - 1996 -
75 - The Windflower - Laura London - Historical/Pirate - 1984 - *****
76 - Dream A Little Dream - Susan Elizabeth Phillips - Contemporary - 1998 - *****
77 - Frederica - Georgette Heyer - Classic - 1965 - ****
78 - Passion - Lisa Valdez - Eur Hist - 2005 - 9/14/08 *****
79 - Voyager - Diana Gabaldon - Time-Travel - 1994 - *****
80 - The Lady's Tutor - Robin Schone - Eur Hist - 1999 - TBR
81 - Morning Glory - Lavryle Spencer - Amer Hist - 1990 - *****
82 - Worth Any Price - Lisa Kleypas - Eur Hist - 2003 - ***
83 - Winter Garden - Adele Ashworth - Eur Hist - 2000 - ***
84 - My Dearest Enemy - Connie Brockway - Eur Hist - 1998 - *****
85 - Where Dreams Begin - Lisa Kleypas - Eur Hist - 2000
86 - Devil's Cub - Georgette Heyer - Classic - 1932 - **
87 - Gone Too Far - Suzanne Brockmann - Contemporary - 2003 - *****
88 - Anyone But You - Jennifer Crusie - Contemporary - 1996 - *****
89 - For My Lady's Heart - Laura Kinsale - Medieval - 1993 - ****
90 - Rising Tides - Nora Roberts - Contemporary - 1998 - *****
91 - Lover Revealed - J.R. Ward - Paranormal - 2007
92 - Open Season - Linda Howard - Contemporary - 2001 - *****
93 - Born In Ice - Nora Roberts - Contemporary - 1996 - *****
94 - Ransom - Julie Garwood - Medieval - 1999 - ***
95 - Venetia - Georgette Heyer - Classic - 1958 - ***
96 - Miss Wonderful - Loretta Chase - Eur Hist - 2004 - ****
97 - Ain't She Sweet - Susan Elizabeth Phillips - Contemporary - 2004 - ****
98 - The Notorious Rake - Mary Balogh - Eur Hist - 1992 - ****
99 - The Prize - Julie Garwood - Medieval - 1991 - ***
100 - Slave To Sensation - Nalini Singh - Paranormal - 2006 - ****

UPDATE October 12, 2008:

I decided to get a little more organized about getting these books - see, I have to read series in order, so if they are part of a series, I try to find them all and read them before moving on. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised that SEVERAL of them are Wish-listed at PBS, and some of those are truly Hard To Find. I've marked the Hard To Find ones above, and have wishlisted them myself. Plus, I did some searching on eBay and Half.com and Amazon marketplace (with a nod to Barnes & Noble's Authorized Sellers, who cannot even begin to compete). I guess I should have started looking for all the books a little sooner! I may have to break down and try the library as well.

I'm still not completely organized - I have to do some research on Mary Jo Putney, plus I haven't even attempted to get the older books (Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Georgette Heyer) yet.

Some random observations:

I think when I started this quest I had read almost 30 just on my own, not being aware of this list.

(1) I don't like Lisa Kleypas' writing. I read 6 books by this well-loved and -lauded author, and they are not my cup o'tea. So I stopped. Too many books, too little time. (Of course I'm still reading them, it's an obsession to finish this Quest!) [edited to add: I actually read another one, so I've read 7 - still not impressed.] [edited Nov 2009 to add: I actually do like her contemporaries! shock!]

(2) I may have lost all interest in vampire romance after listening to the first 2 audio books in Christine Feehan's Dark series. In my oh-so-very-humble opinion, the narration was awful. Dreadful. The worst. Shouldn't have been paid. Really, the woman needs a dictionary for pronunciation, not that it would have helped her lack of narrating talent. So for the time being I've summarily stopped reading vampire books - but maybe I'll try, later, someday, to read them.

UPDATE OCTOBER 20 2008

I have also added a post for The Romance Reader's Top 109 Romance Novels, and included in that which ones appear on both lists, and which ones I have read. I, uh, actually plan to include any on that list that do not appear on this one to my quest.

UPDATE January 2009 : it occurred to me to add the links to my own reviews here on the blog. Duh! So I'm working on it, however, I did read several of them before I started the blog and don't have reviews.

The Windflower by Sharon and Tom Curtis *****

The Windflower was written under the pen name Laura London, but the actual authors are a husband and wife team named Sharon & Tom Curtis. The Windflower is on the Top 100 of 2007 at All About Romance, and according to the author of the review there, "one of the most beloved historical romances" - and it's got pirates too!

As I started reading it, to be honest, I thought it was a joke. The prose is so overwhelming as to be quite deep purple, in my opinion. Indeed, when one of the metaphors was how Merry recovered from something or other and was likened to an upholstered chair, I laughed out loud - it was indeed a joke. Were these two authors laughing at the reading public, trying to see how far they could go with lush, never-ending sentences, layered adjectives, parenthetical phrases galore?

No, I guess not. It took me a while - and it's a long book, for romance: right at 500 pages - to get into the mood and the essence of the book. Yes, I do believe they tried to push the very limits of what the romance reading public would tolerate, and in doing that, apparently exceeded their goal while at the same time pleasing the hordes. Yes, by the time I got to the end, I was thoroughly in love with both Devon and Merry, and Cathcart, and Cat and even Morgan Rand. However, Morgan comes across as something of a "deus ex machina" - I mean, not exactly out of the blue, but the coincidences of his participation really stretch the imagination.

I would almost call the book pure fantasy - it even starts with Merry's recurring dreams of a unicorn. This unicorn is so sexually blatant in her dreams - his horn "poised and thick". After they stared at each other in one dream, she thinks, "He wants me to ride him." Oh, honey, does he ever! The pirates, the ones the AAR reviewer calls "the most realistic to be found in romantic fiction" are about as realistic as Hansel and Gretel's witch. They are a merry lot, with intriguing pasts, and they come to love and cherish Merry, who - yes, it's true - remains a virgin til her wedding night some many moons later. Oh, yes, very realistic. For fiction. Pure and total fiction, with no basis in fact at all.

But it's loads of fun too - swashbuckling adventure almost as wonderful as Marsha Canham's (but not quite). The virginal heroine doesn't start out brave and courageous, wanting to protect all mankind. In fact, she's scared out of her wits all the time, constantly thinking "this is it!" about her virtue and her very life. Although she grows to love Devon, she's always scared of him - it does come across as Stockholm Syndrome, saved only by her fascination with him at the beginning of the book, before he's become her captor. Devon, our devilish rakehell of a pirate, is, of course, a duke who likes to play at pirating with his bastard half brother the real pirate. Rand, the real pirate, is widely implied to be a sodomizer - lots of speculation about his beautiful boy pirates who accompany him, including Devon. Maybe he's supposed to be bi-, though, as he's always wanting a woman too.

The characters are richly drawn, if you can blast your mind through the prose with multiple adjectives, adverbs, clauses and other grammatical excesses. But you have to take several leaps of faith with the authors - could a gently-bred 18-year-old virgin actually survive 2 weeks stranded with a corpse on a deserted Caribbean island? How coincidental could it be that Rand had been in love with Merry's mother and (SPOILER ALERT) always intended for Devon and Merry to marry, even though it supposedly was an accident that she was brought aboard The Black Joke (heh heh, Black Joke, get it)?

Ok, plot redux: there's our American heroine Merry - already described - who is forced to go to England with her maiden aunt accompanied by a British officer, during the second war America had with England (of 1812-1815). Because of a series of events, she is moved into the officer's cabin and he sleeps on deck. Devon sends Cat (boy pirate) to steal something from the officer, and he steals Merry as well. Merry is a talented artist who draws portraits for her brother in support of the war effort, including a quite accurate one of Devon, so she is determined to keep her real identity a secret from him forever. Therein the conflict between the two - he assumes she's the officer's mistress and wants details, and she assumes if he finds out who she is and what she did, her brother and she will both be killed.

Lots of intrigue and swashbuckling ensues as Merry is kept aboard The Black Joke (heh heh) for months, and attempts 2 or 3 very credible but almost fatal escapes. She learns to dress in men's clothing, and the pirates teach her all kinds of things over the months before Devon decides enough is enough, and hauls her off to England, apparently to face trial. But over the course of the story, the only thing realistic is their growing relationship (if you discount the whole Stockholm Syndrome thing, that is) so that when it finally, FINALLY - and I mean they make you wait and wait and WAIT and build tension til you could SCREAM with it - finally they get to the declarations of love and the HEA, with only one more, rather scary conflict to resolve in the last dozen or so pages. At last, HEA.

The AAR reviewer mentions that there are several people hoping for a sequel. The book is so out of print as to be practically impossible to get, so I don't think anyone should hold her breath for that. I don't know if I could swashbuckle my way through more of their writing, myself.

Still, one more on the AAR Top 100 of 2007 down, and still a few to go - and I enjoyed it in the end, and give it 5 stars/favorite if not "keeper" status. Hmmm, no notable pets, and I wouldn't call Devon besotted, although I wondered how Raven and Cat managed, because I thought they were both besotted with her and yet they kept their distances.

Venetia by Georgette Heyer ***

This is another of the "classic" romances written by Georgette Heyer before I was born [oops, published 1958 - 3 years after I was born, sorry!]. Her stories have been hit or miss for me - and part of it is the obscure language she uses, the jargon, slang maybe, that makes it next to impossible for me to follow what the heck the characters are talking about. The story was engaging enough but... what the heck are all those weird references?

Venetia is "on the shelf" at the grand old age of 25. She is the middle child - with an older brother, off at war, and a younger brother, Aubrey, with a hip deformity. Her father has recently died, and her mother has been out of the picture for years, after her parents - *gasp*- divorced when she was young. She is now the mistress of their family home, with 2 suitors in the area calling on her from time to time. One is Edward, who is a know-it-all, and the other who is younger than Venetia and thoroughly besotted.

Into Venetia's life comes Jasper - the rake from a nearby home who has been gone from the area for years - and by accident. Well, Aubrey's accident. He's closer to Jasper's home, so he goes there to recuperate, and Venetia visits him everyday. Jasper and Venetia develop a friendship. Venetia is outspoken, a blue-stocking, and apparently good looking as well (if you stick with the story long enough, it becomes clear) and Jasper decides perhaps this time he's in love.

It's shocking for Venetia to visit Jasper's home, and even more shocking for him to visit her home since there are no chaperones - even though they pretend he's come to visit Aubrey. Eventually, Jasper starts to declare himself to Venetia but gets thwarted. There are a couple of twists and turns - the older brother marries and sends his meek wife and odious mother-in-law to their family home; Venetia goes to London to get away from the odious mother-in-law; she learns the truth about her mother; and in the end, Jasper (on his 4th attempt) gets to ask Venetia to marry him, which is where the story ends.

It took me several days to wade through the story (I think I finished 2 audio books in the duration). OK, so perhaps her characters' manner of speaking is more authentic than Regencies written today, but if I can't understand it, how can I read it? I don't feel the least bit more educated because I've read books with weird slang and jargon.

It's an AAR Top 100 of 2007, so at least I get to check that off.

Rising Tides by Nora Roberts *****

First reviewed July 2008 when I read it - I have now listened to it on audio book as well!

ORIGINAL REVIEW

I have now finished the trilogy and love them all, although Sea Swept is still my favorite. Maybe it was Cam's personality, or maybe it was the freshness and newness of just meeting all the characters, but that one grabbed me and ran with it and left me breathless and smiling and - but not quite happy because it does leave the mystery open!

Ethan has been secretly in love with local girl Grace for years. I had a hard time figuring out the Quinn brothers' ages - I guess they were all about the same age? But he was about 7-8 years older than Grace, and first noticed her when she was only 14 and still officially jailbait. That, coupled with his fear that he was bad blood, has kept him from acting on the relationship even though Grace is now 23, divorced and has the cutest baby ever to grace the pages of a novel. That Nora - she writes men, she writes women - she even writes toddlers to perfection.

Grace is trying to make ends meet - all the time. As a single mom, it's tough. It's tougher still when you have parents nearby that you feel didn't lend their support when you needed it, so you refuse to ask again. Growing up, Grace wanted to be a dancer, but when push came to shove and it was time to go to NYC and give it a try, Daddy put his foot down. After years of dance lessons, he felt it was time for her to get realistic and stop dreaming. I never did get a feel of whether she actually had the talent and motivation to make it - that part is sorta skipped over. But when Daddy cut the dance funding, she was going to do it on her own - but met the baby's father and married him instead when she got pregnant. Speaking of skipped - that's what the baby's father did before the baby was even born.

Ethan was pretty much an asshole to Grace a lot of the times - more than seemed judicious, more than seemed necessary and more than I liked. He was protective, but he didn't seem to want to discuss it with her, he just made wild and crazy ultimatums and accusations about her jobs and her life. So what if she worked in a bar, so what if she flaunted her body a little to get better tips - that's how it's done. It seemed a little weird to me that he kept offering to pay for things, like getting her car fixed and such, when they had no relationship other than she was the Quinn housekeeper and they were friends.

Meanwhile, the story of Seth continues and we learn more about his upbringing and get more tantalizing clues about his mother.

Ethan has to think he's dreaming when Ray Quinn appears to him as he did to Cam - eventually Ethan accepts Ray's presence and guidance, which I found to be a great addition to all 3 books. Ethan's main hurdle is overcoming his fear of himself - he has spent all these years thinking he was genetically off and couldn't have a relationship for fear of exposing his bad side or passing on his bad seed. He needed to look around, wake up and smell the goddam coffee!! Lucky for him, Grace was a kind of take-charge girl who pushed him to figure it all out.

While it wasn't quite as good for me as Sea Swept, it's still a 5-star keeper. Now I have to find Seth's story - and see what secret he'd been hiding from us!

Anyone But You by Jennifer Crusie *****

I first wrote this on 9/17/08 - now I've listened to the audio book - great narrator (Susan Erickson) and it's just as much fun the second time around!

Original Review from 2008:

Whee! It was short but fun. I have a new "love" - love books with cute pets! This one ranks right up there, although the dog in NR's Tribute might have been even cuter...

OK I did that thing where I read another book and now can't recall all the details. Let's see: we have a just-turned-40 woman, Nina. She's divorced from her life as a rich lawyer's wife and living in a tiny apartment in a new life and new job, but she needs some/one/thing warm at home with her, so she gets a dog. She's thinking perky puppy, but somehow decides a part-beagle-part-bassett named Fred fits the bill instead.

She lives upstairs from Alex, a just-turning-30 ER doctor in a family of specialized medicine doctors who is getting a lot of familial pressure to stop goofing off and declare a specialty and get married.

Nina teaches Fred to go down the fire escape through her window for his outdoor forays, and he manages to go in the wrong window - and Alex brings him home. She's immediately taken with this good-looking youngster but put off by her attraction to a much younger man. She decides he's 25 and from his own description, hasn't settled down and found a career, so isn't really her type. He's attracted to her too - but she makes it clear she's not available to him.

Alex is secretly longing for a woman who will just stay home and watch movies with him - but mostly dates ambitious women looking for a doctor husband. Nina is also trying to get back into dating - but the gray hair stiff who natters on about his life isn't as attractive as her downstairs neighbor...

Then - there's Nina watching movies upstairs with Fred. Pretty soon, Alex is spending a lot of time at Nina's watching movies but not acting on his desire for Nina.

Eventually, Nina and Alex must face their desires and decide whether or not to act on them. It was fun and funny and heart-warming, nobody died, no suspense and a great dog. 5 stars!

Frederica by Georgette Heyer ****

Heyer's works, dating from 1920 - 1975, are considered classics in the Romance genre, and this one is one of 3 of her titles on the AAR Top 100 of 2007 list. I read one of them, Devil's Cub, which made me wonder what the fuss was about. But then I read another, The Corinthian, which changed my mind and I rated it 5 stars.

I consider this a 4-star read, or maybe 3.75. I did find myself laughing out loud at some of the antics. But the style of writing, and the jargon, are so convoluted that I found myself mostly lost in the prose. I have no clue if how she wrote (clause, after clause, after clause, separated by commas, making you lose the subject some 3 dozen words before) was supposed to be indicative of 19th century thinking, and I also have no clue where in the world all those odd words and phrases come from. I haven't seen any of them in any other of the historicals I've read. And the exclamation marks! After almost every sentence! It made my eyebrows rise! Time after time! Very tiring!

In this one, a young woman of 24 (Frederica Merriville) is the eldest of 5 children, and she was practically their mother and their father since their parents' deaths some years before. She is determined to give her younger sister Charis a London season because Charis is uncommonly beautiful. She sees herself as on the shelf, long in the tooth, over the hill, way past marriageable age. One brother, Harry, is of age and considered the younger children's guardian, but really he is still quite young and not at all responsible. The other 2 are schoolboys, Jessamy and Felix, who are constantly getting into scrapes.

Frederica asks Vernon, Marquis of Alverstoke, to help sponsor Charis into society as a very distant cousin who knew her father. Frederica is really a dear, and very funny and resourceful, and Vernon finds her amusing. Thinking to nettle his sisters with Charis's beauty when his nieces are so plain, he agrees by holding a ball for his nieces and inviting the Merriville sisters.

Really, Frederica gets into as many scrapes as Felix and Jessamy, and Vernon finds himself more and more attending to them - more and more amused - and realizes slowly that Frederica is the one woman he cannot live without. But it takes to the second to last page in the story for that realization to be said aloud, and even then it is said by one of his sisters!

While I did find lots of humor in the story, especially at first, and in the antics of the Merriville's mongrel ("Baluchistan hound" - definitaly Notable Pet!), the language and prose dropped it out of 5 star rating. The length - almost 400 pages - made slogging through the language even more tiresome. Well, if you're a Heyer fan, you'll probably enjoy it. If not, and you aren't doing an AAR Top 100 quest, I wouldn't be in a hurry to locate a copy to read.

4 stars.

Sea Swept by Nora Roberts *****

I wrote this review 7/12/08 when I read it. I've now listened to it on audio and have some additional notes at the end.

Oh that Nora! She is good!! This is the first in a 3 or 4 book series (started out as 3 but I'm thinking there's a 4th now?) about the Quinn brothers - Cam, Phillip and Ethan - all adopted as troubled adolescents by Ray and Stella Quinn.

The hero of Sea Swept is the oldest, Cam. He's a guy who likes things fast. Fast women, fast cars, fast boats. He left home and has been traveling the world in the company of all things fast - not spending much time with his now widowed father in their small hometown in Maryland on the coast. When we meet Cam, he's just won some boat race and is in the midst of getting a hot French model into his bed when he gets the news that Ray has had a car accident and isn't going to make it. He drops that model fast and heads homeward.

The mystery of the series centers on Ray and his newest foster kid, Seth. There's rumors around - that Seth is Ray's biological child from a dalliance with a student while Stella was still alive. To top it off, Ray has paid the child's mother large sums of money, and in his car is a blackmail letter from her demanding more. Ray drove the car into a telephone pole for no apparent reason - other than maybe suicide. On his deathbed, he gets a promise from each of the grown sons to take care of Seth.

The heroine is Anna Spinelli - she must be a Gemini, because during the day she's a buttoned up social worker who's been assigned to the Quinn case, but during the evening she's a hot-blooded Italian babe. She also has a troubled past which led her to social work. She and Cam have instant chemistry - and I like Anna because she doesn't beat around the bush or try to hide her attraction. She lets Cam know she's interested too - but Seth comes first.

This book practically drips testosterone from the pages, Cam is such an Alpha. But he's hiding his marshmallow core from everyone but Anna - she sees him develop a relationship with Seth that's protective and supportive and understanding, when Cam himself isn't even aware of it. And she falls head over heels for him, until she decides she will never break through his tough-guy shell. He'll always be a rambling man and she's just another of his hot conquests, and she pulls back.

Roberts writes funny, hot, drama, mystery - you want it, she gives it to you in spades. I haven't read a ton of her work (who could keep up? The woman is prolific!) but I haven't yet found her to be repetitive or boring, criticisms I've seen in Romance forums and blogs.

The mystery of Ray's death isn't solved in this book so I'm now halfway through Rising Tides, Ethan's story. I haven't yet figured Ethan out - he's a tougher nut to crack than Cam, but I'll report back.

This is an AAR Top 100, so I'm checking it off my challenge list. 5 stars for me.

----- end of original review -----

I got this as a download audio book from the library in May 2009. The narrator is good. And I have a slightly different take on Anna Spinelli this time - she's a manipulating, nervy bitch!! I felt like Cam was as open as he needed to be with her, and she jumped all over Cam for what I think was NOT a good reason!! But I still enjoyed the book and will be listening to the others as well. It fits the Spring 2009 Challenge as a book from one of the first romance authors I read, and also fits the Serial Readers Challenge 2009.

Flowers From The Storm by Laura Kinsale *****

WOW! What a moving, wonderful, inspiring, unique romance this was! I can definitely see how it makes the Top 100 time and time again - it's a classic and it's truly unique, and so incredibly well written. It's also longer than the "usual" romance novel, well over 500 pages.

The back cover blurb is cleverly written to hide the true conflict - the Duke of Jervaulx, Christian, suffers a massive stroke near the beginning of the book, is declared insane and must struggle to regain his position in the world. The blurb only says he's "lost to the world" so that the reader learns what is going on as it happens. He has symptoms for several days ahead of time - his arm is stiff and unmoving, he has headaches, he forgets important details of his daily life - and in a duel, just as the other fellow shoots, he blacks out completely. Of course, in those days (sometime in the 1820s - it was close to 1828, around the time King George appointed Wellington Prime Minister) stroke victims were thought to be lunatics because they could not speak or if they could, it didn't make any sense. Christian's own reaction to his predicament was violent, so he was locked up in an asylum.

Maddy Timms is a Quaker who lives with her blind, ailing father. Mr. Timms is a brilliant mathmetician - as is Christian, and he has been corresponding with Christian about a particular theorem. Maddy delivers the correspondence to Christian, but neither she nor her father have ever met him. But she's read about him - he's notorious in all the gossip sheets for his bed-hopping and profligate behavior. Of course, she has a completely negative opinion of him, without ever having met him - typical of rigidly religious people, no? She does actually recognize that trait in herself and she admonishes herself to be more... well, perhaps open-minded is the word I mean here. But Quakers and non-Quakers are not to mix and mingle.

Maddy and Christian meet before he has his stroke, at a mathmatical society meeting where he and her father present a paper, to great acclaim. They take note of each other that day - the day before the stroke. When he has the stroke, he is pronounced dead - and with that, her dreams of her father's advancement die as well, since Christian had promised him a fellowship at a college. It's by chance that she and her father then move to help out her cousin Edward, who runs... wait for it... an asylum. Yes, the asylum where Christian is chained to his bed.

Maddy, who has been struggling with her faith, decides that helping Christian is God's mission for her, since she seems to be the only one who can communicate with him and who understands him. And throughout the book, it is only when she is strong in her conviction to help Christian that she is truly happy, and when she has doubts that standing by him is the right thing to do that she is conflicted and unhappy. Is Christian the Devil, tempting her? Or are the Friends who try to convince her to renounce their relationship the ones who are wrong?

Christian's POV is told from his muddled mind, and it's incredibly effective in putting you inside his head. He's treated as a violent imbecile, and in his own mind, as things come back to him - slowly, and never completely, he struggles with reaching out and regaining his position. He comes to depend on Maddy, but there's more there - he recognized her from the beginning as being something other than the Quaker front she presented and tried so hard to maintain. He sets out to humiliate her through seduction, to prove a point to his muddled self, but soon realizes that he needs her, he depends on her, she is his strength and his courage and his only way to his own personal salvation. If only Maddy could believe that. It was a struggle that had my heart aching almost the whole time I read it...

I did have some unanswered questions at the end - did Durham set up all the chases and conflicts, and if so, was it for some nefarious purpose? Was Durham simply doing whatever it took to get what Christian needed, or were the brothers-in-law lying to Maddy to get her to leave Christian, and therefore make him vulnerable to them? You'd have to read it to see what plot points I refer to, but these charges were never fully explained, mainly because we only saw Maddy's and Christian's POVs, and never anyone else's. I guess I wonder mainly because it seems to change Durham's character and motives in my mind.

It's a true 5 star read - and if I hadn't borrowed it from the library, it would be a true keeper! I guess when I'm moved to read it again, I'll get my own copy.

The Duke by Gaelen Foley *****

I read this book because it's on the AAR Top 100 of 2007 and I have a quest to read them all. To be perfectly honest, about 1/3 of the way in, I was thinking this was a 3-star/average read. Frankly, the writing style wasn't particularly stellar, the way I like 5 star reads to be. If another character crossed his arms over his chest, I was gonna scream. I was envisioning all these people with their hands on their opposite shoulders - how else does one cross one's arms over one's chest??

And also, there was the idea that a gentlewoman who had been raped once could become a worldly courtesan in just a few weeks - and still not have had sex any other time than the brutal rape - and yet she was highly sought after, with no experience whatsoever. She must have been quite an actress, is all I can say. It just stretched my personal credibility somewhat.

Of course, the author finished the story with such a bang, that by the time she was done, I had already decided to go up to 4 stars and then maybe even 4.5. Since I don't use 1/2 star ratings here, I just went ahead and gave it 5 stars and can totally understand that some feel it's a true keeper. (I did not put it in my keeper shelf, however.)

To be honest, although the story blurbs indicate it is a story about a duke and a courtesan, it's very important to realize that Belinda Hamilton didn't start out a courtesan, and indeed did not want to be a courtesan. She felt that was her very last resort - at a suggestion of a lowly prostitute, who told her she was beautiful enough to be one. She was penniless, having been abandoned by her boyfriend, and her father had been thrown in jail by another titled gentleman (Dolph) who was obssessed with having her, and so sought to ruin her so he could.

The Paragon Duke of Hawkscliffe was for all intents and purposes a saint. He had raised his younger siblings, of whom only 1 was fully related, the other 3 were by-blows from his mother's affairs. He had one true love who died young, married to another, that he only loved from afar. He was a Tory by birth but felt personally responsible for righting injustices that were really only espoused by the rival party, the Whigs. Nary a scandal was associated with Hawk... until...

His lady love's widower, the elderly Earl of Coldfell, led Hawk to believe the young woman was murdered - and by his nephew, Dolph. Yes, the same Dolph who is also besotted with Belinda, enough to ruin her so she would be in his clutches. He's an evil, evil man!! Allegedly anyway.

As revenge, Hawk presents Bel with a proposition: he will be her protector for 2 months for some enormous sum; she will go along with the ruse to help him get a confession from Dolph; Hawk will not require her services in bed. WTF?? Well, as it turns out, it's the perfect arrangement for Bel since she is all but a virgin, and scared of men to boot. And he's such a paragon - how could he press her for sex?

As time goes by, they do grow a serious attraction one for the other, and Bel - harlot that she is - does step up the intimacies without actually getting a home run for a while, if you catch my drift. Hawk is totally, deeply falling in love with her BUT he is still conflicted, and part of him still sees her as a money-grubbing social-climbing high-priced whore. And face it: he's a duke and cannot marry someone of her station, either as the poor gentlewoman or the high-priced courtesan.

Eventually he realizes he must marry elsewhere, and he must break it to Bel. At this point, she's regained her self-esteem and sense of worth. Plus she did make one rule when she became a courtesan - she would not have a married man as her protector. Keep in mind, she's only had sex with 2 men - the rapist, and Hawk by this point, so she's still pretty inexperienced except for her lessons in Hawk's bed.

This is when it really started to tug on my heartstrings in a big way. He was so fully besotted but still had his honor and could not imagine marrying Bel or not marrying at all either. She stuck to her principles, though, and when she learned he was to marry, she left him. (this was after confronting Dolph about the alleged murder of Coldfell's wife)

There were a couple more plot twists which I had figured out pretty early on, and then not only a HEA but a major grand gesture that was really quite heartwarming. Yes, Lord Hawk groveled like the worm he was.

As it turns out, this is the first book in a long series - which I started to suspect as we met various of Hawk's siblings and they were introduced as if we might learn their story later. Plus it fits the Spring 2009 Challenge as a book from the AAR Top 100. 5 stars.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen **

OK - this is a classic in the Romance field, actually written during the Regency period that so many favorite Romance novels take place.

It's also on the AAR Top 100 of 2007 (and other years as well), so it fell in my TBR list. I decided to listen to it in audio book form when my March audible.com credit became available. First, I looked at the free online websites for audio books - it is, after all, many years out of copyright at this point. The only one I found was read by a young woman in an American accent - a few seconds into it, I decided I'd rather pay. Then I went on Audible.com only to realize there are so many versions, I would have trouble deciding. I did 2 things: I looked for reviews that praised the narrators then did the sample listenings from 4 versions I picked from those, and basically I chose one at random, since I couldn't decide.

The version I chose - for anyone interested - was narrated by Josephine Bailey. I'm trying to decide if hers was a good narration or not. Frankly, it's hard to decide since the language is so obscure, and I had so much trouble following the story. Multiple negatives turned into possible positives. Things insinuated which I couldn't understand. I think Ms. Bailey probably did a good rendition. She did manage to use a different voice for most of the characters (her Jane and her Elizabeth seemed awfully similar - her Lydia mostly higher pitched and louder than Jane/Elizabeth - her male voices different from females).

The thing is, I could not figure out when it was that Mr. Darcy (whatever was his first name?) decided he was madly in love with Elizabeth. And I guess it's supposed to be ironic that the pride Mr Darcy is accused of is what kept Elizabeth from considering him anything other than... not worthy? A bad sort of fellow? Her pride, I mean, not his, is what kept her from... whatever.

Maybe if I had actually read the words, I could have spent more time allowing my brain to find the meaning of them. As they flowed into my brain in Ms. Bailey's voice, I found myself mostly frowning and wondering what the hell she just said.

So - did I dislike the recording, or the story? Unfortunately, they are at this moment the same. I have only the recording of the story to go by - and I did not like the mental calisthenics I had to go through to figure out what was being said. I guess I need the contemporary American translation to understand it.

So sue me. 2 stars.

For My Lady's Heart by Laura Kinsale ****

This was a hard book to read and digest, with much of the dialogue written in a sort of pseudo-Middle-English-speak to give it the flavor of medieval thought and speech. In addition, the author used different forms of English to convey speech in Italian and French. I felt like my brain was being taxed the entire time.

Also, it was so hard to feel anything positive for the heroine. Melanthe was English by birth, but married into an Italian family at age 12, to a man many years older, and then a widow. There were 3 Italian families represented - I think - as being enemies each of the other, and many of the characters were aligned with one of the 3, Riata, Monteverde (Melanthe's husband) and Navona.

Allegreto Navona is a youth of 16 traveling with Melanthe to England so that she could claim her father's lands and then return to Gian, his father, to be his wife. Allegreto is an assassin and is also portrayed as a eunuch so that he can stay close to Melanthe at all times, even in bed. (How she never knew the truth, I'm not sure...)

The hero is Ruck, an English knight - the Green Knight - who swore his loyalty to Melanthe when he and she were just 17. He was accompanying his wife Isabelle to become a nun, when Melanthe - already a princess - saved his life by telling the religious leaders he wasn't chaste, that he was staring at her and having lustful thoughts about her. Although he had loved Isabelle, he didn't understand her - she was portrayed as either having a gift or being insane, having visions and prophecies. By not being chaste enough for the religious leaders, he wasn't allowed to join his wife - which eventually saved his life.

It was all pretty confusing, to be honest. 13 years go by, and Ruck has managed to become an anonymous knight - something about not having proof of his birth/ownership of his father's property since everyone in his family died in the plague. He was concerned if he said where he was from and what his name was, it would come to the attention of the king that his family's lands were without owner and they would be taken. He meets Melanthe again, and again swears his loyalty to her - only this time he announces it so everyone knows (whereas before this, it was just in his own heart and mind).

Melanthe, in truth, is scared to death of everyone, and mostly for good reason. Her husband taught her not to trust anyone, and from him she learned to be aloof and disdainful in manner, as a way to save herself. She pits her servants one against the other as a way to keep them from harming her, and for them to be ever afraid of her and each other. When Ruck leads a small party of her servants and her into England, she pretends to be struck with the plague - and she and Ruck are abandoned by the entire party. At this point, when it's just the 2 of them, she is alternately in his debt and falling for him, and playing him for a fool. It was very hard to feel sympathy for her, even though you were meant to believe she was constantly in fear of her life even from Ruck.

They make their way not to her lands, but to his, where for a time they live as husband and wife, an idyllic life where she is loved by his people and seems to have relaxed and started to enjoy life. Unfortunately, Ruck is now never sure when she is telling the truth, and when she is acting (aka Lying). He keeps thinking that she will want to leave and go to her own lands and people - and therein lies his mistake. When he sends a youth to her property to see if it's safe, the youth is caught up in the web of intrigue to find her and bind her to Gian Navona again.

So not only was it hard to read because of the language issues, it was hard to be sympathetic for this lying, wheeling-and-dealing heroine who pretty much shot herself in the foot everytime she opened her dang mouth! Poor naive Ruck was truly led on a not-so-merry chase to save her from everyone including herself.

I think I would classify Ruck as a Besotted Hero - after all, he was able to remain celibate for 13 years in his pursuit of her! And even not knowing her, not understanding her, he never gave up on her, and followed her into the snake pit that was her home, where Gian and Allegreto and Cara and nameless others meant her harm - and from where she did everything she could to push Ruck away, meaning to save him again. He was more faithful, more patient than any hero I've read about so far. For that, and for the artistry of the prose (as hard as it was to digest) I give the story 4 stars. It's the first in a 2-book series (Serial Reader's Challenge) and it's an AAR Top 100 of 2007 which also puts it in the Spring 2009 Challenge under that category!

When He Was Wicked by Julia Quinn *****

This is one of my first romance novels, and also one of my first audio books - and I've listened to it several times. Simon Prebble is the narrator - he can read the phone book in my ear any day! I just love his voice so much.

This is book #6 in the Bridgerton series - which I read in order after reading books #6 and 7. Books #1-5 are not on audio, unfortunately. This is Francesca Bridgerton's story, and it's the darkest and most serious of the series. Quinn is known for her humor, and although there are humorous moments, the subject is not humorous. Michael Sterling, we learn in the first paragraph, has been in love with Francesca since the moment he met her - the week of her marriage to his cousin John. He remains best friends with both John and Francesca for the first 2 years of their marriage, keeping up his reputation as London's most notorious rake, all done to hide his true feelings.

Not only does John have Francesca's love, he's also the Earl, with all the family holdings and money - his father and Michael's fathers were twins, but John's father was born first. They are each only children, and Michael was raised in John's home because his own parents died.

So when John dies of an apparent aneurism, in the first chapter, Michael stands to inherit everything - everything, that is, except the woman he loves, because he cannot bring himself to let her know of his feelings. He feels such guilt that he may have wished this to happen. He spends 4 years in India, letting Francesca continue to run all the estates as the Countess, trying to forget her or at least get over her.

After 4 years, they each have an epiphany of sorts: She wants a baby, and realizes she must remarry. He tires of India, and returns to England to take up his position as the Earl. When he returns, and she confides in him her wish to have children, he then realizes he must face losing her again.

She also comes to a realization: she finds him handsome, attractive, and it shocks her that her best friend, John's best friend, would be attractive to her. She isn't really expecting to have love again, and is hoping her new husband will at least be someone she likes as father of her children. But the lust she feels suddenly for Michael scares her.

Leave it to Colin Bridgerton to force Michael to admit his feelings for Francesca (if you're a Bridgerton fan, you will know why I say this). Convinced he must act, he begins the seduction.

The "wicked" part of the story is that, before John died, Francesca was always asking Michael to confide his wicked ways to her. He knew she liked to hear what he did, and that she got a secret thrill from learning what he did, who he was with. He never really told her all - he was a gentleman after all - but he uses this proclivity in his seduction of her. She must face what he has already discovered: John is gone forever, and her love for Michael is different and separate - and perfectly reasonable.

I liked all of the Bridgertons' stories, some more than others, but this one is my favorite, maybe because it was my first so I didn't already have a preconceived notion of what Quinn's stories were usually like. It's in the AAR Top 100 of 2007, and it's also a series (Serial Readers Challenge) and fits my A To Z Challenge.

The Shadow and The Star by Laura Kinsale *****

Wow.

That is my first gut reaction to this book. It's a new favorite for me - the sensual writing, or maybe I mean sensory - or - the picture she paints is so vivid, so touching, in the book.

I wrote a few paragraphs about this book right after finishing it, then I read Lisa Kleypas' review on AAR. Of course, being an author, she manages to write a wonderful summary of the book and its high points without even going into much detail of the story, and I felt I needed to revise my own review as too wordy and not nearly sufficiently descriptive. (It's ironic that I'm not really of fan of Lisa Kleypas' books...)

Basically it's the story of a tortured hero, Samuel, who was rescued from a childhood of sexual abuse by a wealthy British family living in Hawaii in the mid 19th century. Samuel mentors with the family's Japanese butler in martial arts and Japanese ways of living and thinking. As Kleypas points out, the training is a way of healinb - but one area of his life, the sexual side of him, is too dangerous for him to reveal or even experience. While he's aware of the feelings, he suppresses them as too violent.

His heroine is prim and proper Leda - she lives in genteel poverty but while she's naive in the ways of things between a man and a woman, she's worldly in the ways of Society. When she catches Samuel in the act of stealing items from rich people, he gets her to help him - he's actually on a campaign to expose child prostitution, by hiding the stolen objects in houses of ill-repute and sending the police there to find them.

He manages to hire Leda as his personal secretary, and enlists her help in courting the woman he imagines he's loved most of his life - Kai, the daughter of his benefactors. But his love for Kai is chaste - he builds a house for him and her, but builds her a separate bedroom - his fantasy of love and marriage with Kai does not include sex. When confronted with the truth - Kai will want children - he's horrified but tries to go forward. Meanwhile, his lust/attraction to Leda builds, and because he has imagined that she is actually a courtesan, he steals into her room one night to indulge his seamier, sexual longings.

It's obvious from the story that both of them are virgins - well, he is a virgin in the sense that he has not, as an adult, chosen to have sexual relations before this encounter. When his benefactors insist he marry Leda, he does so reluctantly. Leda, it seems, is the one who brings true healing to him, though.

The story is told in flashbacks, one chapter in the present, one chapter in the past, revealing Samuel during his years in Hawaii, undergoing his training and his relationship to Kai as a child.

There's a suspenseful ending, with the Japanese trying to get back the last item stolen in England, as well as a truly satisfying HEA. I know I'll want to read this one over and over, because of the wonderful way the words sorta washed over me while I read it. Her convincing portrayal of Samuel's childhood in Hawaii, what he was thinking and longing for, made his character real and gave the story its depth.

5 stars and a keeper