I know I've done more re-reads of this books since 2008, but for my own Valentine to myself, I stayed in bed and read this book today. Pure indulgence and lots of fun!
My original review from June 19, 2008:
I am so relieved to say I loved this book! This is my second Rachel Gibson book, the first being the AAR Top 100 See Jane Score. I liked See Jane Score ok, but not that much and definitely not "Top 100". I felt like it was a Susan Andersen-wannabe without the sass and smarts. The Trouble With Valentine's Day has sass and smarts to burn - and it's damn funny too!
Heroine Kate has just left her job and her life in Las Vegas to move in temporarily with her grandfather Stanley in Gospel, Idaho. Her grandmother died 2 years ago, and Stanley has been depressed. He's running the small town grocery he and Melba ran for decades, and it seemed a good opportunity for Kate to help out. Well, she's helping herself out too - after a string of bad relationships and a really bad experience on the job, she's feeling a little rudderless. She had to stop for the night at a ski resort on the way because of the weather. It's Valentine's Day, she's alone at the bar feeling a little blue and a little in her cups when a good looking guy sits next to her and orders a beer.
What the heck. She's always fantasized about picking up a hunky guy in a bar - what could it hurt? She'll never see him again anyway. She makes her move.
Rob is on a ski trip with buddies, and left the slopes early because of his knee. Rob's a former Seattle Chinooks hockey player who had an accident - but not on the ice. He was married, has a 2 year old daughter, and, well, he sorta played around too. On an out of town trip, he picked up a rink bunny who turned out to be psycho - and she hunted him down and shot him. He almost died and it ruined his knee, his hockey career and his marriage. To recuperate from his illness and get out of Seattle, he moves to Gospel, Idaho, where his mother lives. She's a nurse and helps him with his physical therapy. And while he's there, he vows never to pick up strange women for sex again.
He goes into the bar at the resort, sits next to a good looking woman and orders a beer. And wouldn't you know it, she propositions him. WTF? He tells her flat out he doesn't sleep with women he meets in bars and leaves as quickly as possible.
Well, Kate is mortified - crushed - horrified - embarrassed. But, she figures she'll never see him again anyway - that is, until she's working in Stanley's store one day, and he calls her over to meet the guy who runs the sporting goods store across the street - Rob.
Rob plays it cool and pretends they haven't met - and she is confused but relieved. OK, maybe it was dark in the bar or he was drunker than even she was.
Gentlemen, start your engines because now we have the makings of 2 people trying to avoid the inevitable: the chemistry of love! Kate is outspoken and liberal in a small town where it takes decades to be considered a native, and gets tongues wagging with her talk and her attempts to change the little grocery. She's also wary of the feelings she has - she knows she's always drawn to the Bad Boy/Mr Wrong type, and resists as much as humanly possible.
Rob is also attracted to her, but has the additional complications of his ex-wife, always hinting at reconciliation, and his daughter. As well as that issue of not sleeping with women who might turn out to be psychos. In fact, he hasn't dated any woman that anyone in town knows of, which starts some speculation about his sexual preferences, which turns into a rumor that he's gay - inadvertently started by Kate!
It's funny and touching too - I really felt Kate's insecurities and as well as her need to stand on her own two feet. Rob feeds her insecurities too, with his conflicting messages - he makes it clear she turns him on and then he makes it doubly clear he has no intention of acting on it. While I understood his point of view, I felt Kate's reaction to his messages. I hurt with her.
Eventually, with many ups and downs, they manage to come to a truce of sorts, which mainly means now they can act on their desires. But Rob is no closer to forging a true relationship with Kate - he's pretending they have a Friends With Benefits type thing going on. Once that topic is brought up, in front of the ex-wife who makes a surprise visit, Kate is out the door, broken hearted and ready to flee. This is the part where I felt the most like I was being dragged over rocks, along with Kate's heart. There's a secondary romance in the book - Rob's mother and Kate's grandfather - which forces them together again, and forces Rob's hand as well. Come on Rob, it's time to put up or shut up!!
I found Gibson's writing in this book wonderful and touching and funny and true. 5 stars.
Showing posts with label Rachel Gibson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rachel Gibson. Show all posts
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Monday, December 20, 2010
True Love and Other Disasters by Rachel Gibson ****
True Love and Other Disasters by Rachel GibsonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This wasn't my most favorite Rachel Gibson in print, but I'm a big fan so when I saw the audio release, I had to get it! The narrator is new-to-me Susan Bennett, who has 14 listings at audible.com. She was great! I thought she had just the right kind of voice for this genre, and although her range wasn't that great, she managed to give each character a separate, recognizable, consistent voice. The story is in the Seattle Chinooks/NHL series, and one or 2 of the other series characters make an appearance. Short, fun - if you're a Gibson fan, spend the credit!
below is my original review from May, 2009:
This book is one of many that involve Gibson's fictional Seattle Chinooks hockey team players, the first of which is... maybe Simply Irrestible? It includes See Jane Score as well, even though on Fantastic Fiction, True Love et al is listed as Chinook series #1 (that is just plain wrong!). In Simply Irrestible, Chinooks owner Virgil Duffy is left at the altar when Georgeanne runs away and gets together with Chinooks player John Kowalsky, who leaves a little souvenir behind (think Secret Baby plot). In See Jane Score, Jane is a journalist hired to be a temporary sports writer traveling with the team. In TLAOD, Virgil Duffy's widow Faith inherits the team and gets together with Chinooks captain, Ty Savage (pronounced sah VAH zhe, not savage).
So this is at least Book #3. [note: at Goodreads, it's called Book 4!]
OK, the plot has already been laid out: Faith is a former stripper and Playmate whom Virgil married as purely a trophy wife - he was too old and ill for consummating the marriage. However, she felt loved and protected, and he left her a lot of money in addition to the team. Of course, she was hated by his other family members, especially his son Landon who expected to get the team when Daddy died.
Now, think about Susan Elizabeth Phillips and It Had To Be You - blonde bombshell inherits a sports team without knowing dick about sports. Even the word Bimbo appears in the book cover blurb. The team circulates Faith's Playboy spread, and the players crack a lot of rude jokes at her expense. She fully intends to sell the team to Landon until he shows what an asshole he is - then she reneges on the deal, and steps in to try to run it herself, with the help of her loyal assistant. Yeppers, there's a lot of similarities here. There's even travel by airplane - but no Mile High Club initiation.
I did like this story well enough but it had some of those Rachel Gibsonisms that I don't like - she needs a better editor. She seems to repeat herself - no, I didn't mark any specific examples, but as I read, I kept thinking, "didn't she already say that?" as though she didn't go back over her work and pick out similar phrasing and wording while she wrote. Of course, that might have cut her word count by 10% or so, too, so maybe she was under some kind of contract and in a hurry. I dunno. But I wanted a tighter story. Authors: don't hit me over the head with what they're thinking, please.
Gibson does have a knack for steamy love scenes, I must say. And although her alpha hero was surly and rude some of the time, he did not really come off as an asshole as much as just someone who was surly, and sometimes rude. Maybe that doesn't make sense! But I didn't really have the urge to slap him like I have with, say, many of Elizabeth Lowell's heroes and even 1 or 2 of Linda Howard's. Ok, more than 1 or 2...
There's a slimy secondary relationship between Ty's father and Faith's mother that was really written to be creepy and not at all likable. I wanted to wash my hands after reading about those 2 moochers. And a dog - Valerie's dog - yuck, not notable at all.
So I'm calling it a 4 star read, because I did enjoy reading it, but not 5 star because I didn't love reading it.
Monday, November 1, 2010
It Must Be Love by Rachel Gibson ***
This is one of the last books by Rachel Gibson I hadn't yet read - surely by now I'm almost completely caught up in glomming her backlist!
This one didn't have much new or fun to offer - the copyright date was 2000, and in internet years that's about 1 billion, but in romance novel years, it's maybe only 20 or so. Really, the internet and everything related to it - ipods/mp3 players, smart phones, etc - date contemporary books so quickly!
I'm not sure why I wandered off course - nothing about the plot was really too dated. It's the Dharma and Greg scenario - she's (slightly) into the New Age stuff, making her own relaxation and massage oils with essential oils, and slightly believing in karma and not really believing in Fate, and trying vegetarianism but lapsing. Gabrielle Breedlove runs her own small business with a partner, Kevin, and is suspected of participating in a burglary ring that is ripping off art and antiques and fencing them.
Joe's the detective assigned to follow her every cute little move to see if he can catch her fencing the goods. Unfortunately she's on to him - except she assumes he's a stalker, and drops him with a can of hairspray. Then she becomes his confidential informant, so he poses as her - oh, gee, how about BOYFRIEND? and hangs around her shop trying to catch Kevin.
Yeah, they're opposites-attract, and there's an okay plot, and of course I like Gibson's writing pretty good, so it's a 3-star, okay read. Not going in my favorites list or anything, but it's... okay.
This one didn't have much new or fun to offer - the copyright date was 2000, and in internet years that's about 1 billion, but in romance novel years, it's maybe only 20 or so. Really, the internet and everything related to it - ipods/mp3 players, smart phones, etc - date contemporary books so quickly!
I'm not sure why I wandered off course - nothing about the plot was really too dated. It's the Dharma and Greg scenario - she's (slightly) into the New Age stuff, making her own relaxation and massage oils with essential oils, and slightly believing in karma and not really believing in Fate, and trying vegetarianism but lapsing. Gabrielle Breedlove runs her own small business with a partner, Kevin, and is suspected of participating in a burglary ring that is ripping off art and antiques and fencing them.
Joe's the detective assigned to follow her every cute little move to see if he can catch her fencing the goods. Unfortunately she's on to him - except she assumes he's a stalker, and drops him with a can of hairspray. Then she becomes his confidential informant, so he poses as her - oh, gee, how about BOYFRIEND? and hangs around her shop trying to catch Kevin.
Yeah, they're opposites-attract, and there's an okay plot, and of course I like Gibson's writing pretty good, so it's a 3-star, okay read. Not going in my favorites list or anything, but it's... okay.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Nothing But Trouble by Rachel Gibson ****
I've been reading a fair amount again, but this is the first time in months that I've just sat down and read an entire book in one sitting. And it's the first new book I've read in a while too - although I have listened to some new audio books.
First the review - I actually did a recent re-read of Rachel Gibson's See Jane Score because it was the first book of hers that I had read, and I wasn't that impressed. Since then I have become a true fan, and mostly like everything else I've read - which is almost everything she's written. I even liked See Jane Score better the second time around!
This is another of the fictional Seattle Chinooks hockey team that is featured in See Jane Score. Team Captain Mark Bressler had a bad auto accident that has left him too disabled to ever play hockey again, and also left him bitter and angry as a result. When the team goes on to win the Stanley Cup under the captainship of a rival player (Ty Savage of an earlier book), Bressler is about at his lowest. He's run off every home health care worker the Chinooks has sent him - until a Chinooks admin worker sends her unemployed sister, Chelsea.
Chelsea is an actor. Well, an out of work actor, whose best parts so far have been in teen slasher movies where she's the first one slashed. She's decided to take a break from the Hollywood scene and spend some time in Seattle with her sister Bo, who works for the Seattle Chinooks. She takes the job working for Mark Bressler with the carrot of a $10,000 bonus if she can stick it out 3 months. Since she's had a lot of experience with bad jobs and worse employers, she figures she can take anything for a bonus that size! But it's not easy, even when she's chanting "$10,000" over and over to herself. Bressler is a tool, just as she figures out early on.
It's not a new twist on an old theme - it's just a straightforward plot where the 2 start out adversaries but her stubborn streak keeps them together, and they turn the relationship around. Even the necessary almost-at-the-end conflict is pretty dang predictable. But I like Gibson's voice, her style, her characterizations. No Nobel-prize-worthy prose here, just a story with some funny dialog and some heart-felt moments that I enjoyed enough to sit there and read for several hours. Chelsea chips away at the ice surrounding Mark's soul until he realizes she makes his life worth living, and Mark brings out the love Chelsea's been missing in her own life.
Sister Bo is featured as the secondary love interest with a co-worker, metrosexual Jules, but they are pretty minor characters, actually. Mostly we get the story from Chelsea's and Mark's POVs which are narrowed to mainly their own feelings.
I enjoyed it - maybe less than a full 4 star read, but still... Yeah, fun stuff.
Mostly I've been doing a lot of re-reading - Marsha Canham, Loretta Chase, among others. I have read the newer Robyn Carr/Virgin River series, but they don't reach the level of the first one, even when I do enjoy them. (One is looking to be a DNF mainly because the characters irritate the hell out of me.)
First the review - I actually did a recent re-read of Rachel Gibson's See Jane Score because it was the first book of hers that I had read, and I wasn't that impressed. Since then I have become a true fan, and mostly like everything else I've read - which is almost everything she's written. I even liked See Jane Score better the second time around!
This is another of the fictional Seattle Chinooks hockey team that is featured in See Jane Score. Team Captain Mark Bressler had a bad auto accident that has left him too disabled to ever play hockey again, and also left him bitter and angry as a result. When the team goes on to win the Stanley Cup under the captainship of a rival player (Ty Savage of an earlier book), Bressler is about at his lowest. He's run off every home health care worker the Chinooks has sent him - until a Chinooks admin worker sends her unemployed sister, Chelsea.
Chelsea is an actor. Well, an out of work actor, whose best parts so far have been in teen slasher movies where she's the first one slashed. She's decided to take a break from the Hollywood scene and spend some time in Seattle with her sister Bo, who works for the Seattle Chinooks. She takes the job working for Mark Bressler with the carrot of a $10,000 bonus if she can stick it out 3 months. Since she's had a lot of experience with bad jobs and worse employers, she figures she can take anything for a bonus that size! But it's not easy, even when she's chanting "$10,000" over and over to herself. Bressler is a tool, just as she figures out early on.
It's not a new twist on an old theme - it's just a straightforward plot where the 2 start out adversaries but her stubborn streak keeps them together, and they turn the relationship around. Even the necessary almost-at-the-end conflict is pretty dang predictable. But I like Gibson's voice, her style, her characterizations. No Nobel-prize-worthy prose here, just a story with some funny dialog and some heart-felt moments that I enjoyed enough to sit there and read for several hours. Chelsea chips away at the ice surrounding Mark's soul until he realizes she makes his life worth living, and Mark brings out the love Chelsea's been missing in her own life.
Sister Bo is featured as the secondary love interest with a co-worker, metrosexual Jules, but they are pretty minor characters, actually. Mostly we get the story from Chelsea's and Mark's POVs which are narrowed to mainly their own feelings.
I enjoyed it - maybe less than a full 4 star read, but still... Yeah, fun stuff.
Mostly I've been doing a lot of re-reading - Marsha Canham, Loretta Chase, among others. I have read the newer Robyn Carr/Virgin River series, but they don't reach the level of the first one, even when I do enjoy them. (One is looking to be a DNF mainly because the characters irritate the hell out of me.)
Saturday, June 5, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
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!
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!
Tangled Up In You by Rachel Gibson ****(*)
RE-READ ON AUDIO (notes at the end) - first read in June 2008
I'm happy to say I liked this one quite a lot. Really, I should not have let See Jane Score scare me off Gibson, because I've liked everything since that.
However, caveat alert, I think I need to read some historical romance for a while because the scenarios are starting to seem alike and it's confusing. This plot had elements of both Susan Andersen's Head Over Heels and Linda Howard's After The Night, enough to make me start wondering if I'd already read the book. Not to say it was a rip-off, just that the elements were there.
There's a family bar (like Head Over Heels) only the owner is the hero, not the heroine. Mick owns 2 bars in town, and one of them has been in his family for generations. I did spend a few minutes wondering who owned and ran the bar from the time Mick's father was killed when he was 5 until the time he returned from a stint in the military 25 years later...
There's a love triangle that ended in murder involving his father and mother and her mother (like After The Night) and it concerned the father threatening to run off with the other woman instead of just having an affair (also After The Night). Since the father had so many affairs for so long, this is supposed to be unusual (also After The Night). Maybe if I hadn't just read the other 2... But there's one other element, Mick's need to protect not only his sister but his vulnerable and fatherless nephew that smacks of Andersen's writing in several books as well as Howard's After The Night. It's a universal enough scenario that, again, I don't feel it's a rip off, but it still made me keep thinking, have I read this before??
The heroine is Maddie, a true crime writer, who is moved to write the story of her mother's murder after discovering her mother's diaries. Maddie was only 5 when it happened, and her own memories are faded and distorted. But reading the diaries brings her mother's life more into focus. She buys a house in the small town where the murder occurred and moves there to start her research. She decides to use her pen name instead of her own name to keep her identity a secret - even from Mick, and even knowing it's a mistake.
Mick is immediately drawn to Maddie from her first appearance in his bar. It's not the bar where her mother was murdered - she can't bring herself to go into that bar yet. But it's a small town, and he soon learns why she is in town - to stir up memories of something he doesn't want to think about. He wants her to stop it and leave town. (After The Night, anyone?) But he also badly wants to know what she tastes like since she uses all these food-scented body products... and he can't seem to stop himself from getting just a taste.
Maddie's been celibate for 4 years, and every time he goes for a little taste, she wrestles with her conscience but gives him a little more each time. She knows once she reveals her true identity, he'll leave her alone. But she can't seem to stop, that is she can't stop letting him have a little more each time. So she just keeps rationalizing that she'll tell him next time...
The sister is a sort of loose cannon. She seems to have inherited her mother's mental issues - depression and maybe other psychoses. She seeks out Maddie and tells her some things, in an effort to be sure that Maddie reports it fairly - or rather, that she not make out Mick's mother to be mentally ill, even though she was. She gives the impression she knows more than she's telling, although she was only 10 when it happened.
This is one review at AAR that reflects exactly how I felt about this book - the plotline is serious but the writer still manages to infuse it with humor as well as passion. Her love scenes are hot enough to burn your fingers while reading. And her HEA is rewarding and satisfying. I'm thinking it's between 4 and 5 stars for me.
----
Just finished this and the 4th in the Author Friends series on audio - if only books 1 and 2 had also been released! As I wrote about Not Another Bad Date, the narrator, Nicole Poole, is a new narrator for me, and she's good! Really good - like almost as good as Anna Fields or Barbara Rosenblat! Her voices and accents are done well and consistently and her acting (via the narration) is great. It's a true talent to be able to read/narrate a story, doing all the voices and being convincing through acting only with the voice - no body language, nothing visible to help you. Anyway, I'll be on the lookout for more books by Ms Poole. The narration is definitely 5-star worthy.
I'm happy to say I liked this one quite a lot. Really, I should not have let See Jane Score scare me off Gibson, because I've liked everything since that.
However, caveat alert, I think I need to read some historical romance for a while because the scenarios are starting to seem alike and it's confusing. This plot had elements of both Susan Andersen's Head Over Heels and Linda Howard's After The Night, enough to make me start wondering if I'd already read the book. Not to say it was a rip-off, just that the elements were there.
There's a family bar (like Head Over Heels) only the owner is the hero, not the heroine. Mick owns 2 bars in town, and one of them has been in his family for generations. I did spend a few minutes wondering who owned and ran the bar from the time Mick's father was killed when he was 5 until the time he returned from a stint in the military 25 years later...
There's a love triangle that ended in murder involving his father and mother and her mother (like After The Night) and it concerned the father threatening to run off with the other woman instead of just having an affair (also After The Night). Since the father had so many affairs for so long, this is supposed to be unusual (also After The Night). Maybe if I hadn't just read the other 2... But there's one other element, Mick's need to protect not only his sister but his vulnerable and fatherless nephew that smacks of Andersen's writing in several books as well as Howard's After The Night. It's a universal enough scenario that, again, I don't feel it's a rip off, but it still made me keep thinking, have I read this before??
The heroine is Maddie, a true crime writer, who is moved to write the story of her mother's murder after discovering her mother's diaries. Maddie was only 5 when it happened, and her own memories are faded and distorted. But reading the diaries brings her mother's life more into focus. She buys a house in the small town where the murder occurred and moves there to start her research. She decides to use her pen name instead of her own name to keep her identity a secret - even from Mick, and even knowing it's a mistake.
Mick is immediately drawn to Maddie from her first appearance in his bar. It's not the bar where her mother was murdered - she can't bring herself to go into that bar yet. But it's a small town, and he soon learns why she is in town - to stir up memories of something he doesn't want to think about. He wants her to stop it and leave town. (After The Night, anyone?) But he also badly wants to know what she tastes like since she uses all these food-scented body products... and he can't seem to stop himself from getting just a taste.
Maddie's been celibate for 4 years, and every time he goes for a little taste, she wrestles with her conscience but gives him a little more each time. She knows once she reveals her true identity, he'll leave her alone. But she can't seem to stop, that is she can't stop letting him have a little more each time. So she just keeps rationalizing that she'll tell him next time...
The sister is a sort of loose cannon. She seems to have inherited her mother's mental issues - depression and maybe other psychoses. She seeks out Maddie and tells her some things, in an effort to be sure that Maddie reports it fairly - or rather, that she not make out Mick's mother to be mentally ill, even though she was. She gives the impression she knows more than she's telling, although she was only 10 when it happened.
This is one review at AAR that reflects exactly how I felt about this book - the plotline is serious but the writer still manages to infuse it with humor as well as passion. Her love scenes are hot enough to burn your fingers while reading. And her HEA is rewarding and satisfying. I'm thinking it's between 4 and 5 stars for me.
----
Just finished this and the 4th in the Author Friends series on audio - if only books 1 and 2 had also been released! As I wrote about Not Another Bad Date, the narrator, Nicole Poole, is a new narrator for me, and she's good! Really good - like almost as good as Anna Fields or Barbara Rosenblat! Her voices and accents are done well and consistently and her acting (via the narration) is great. It's a true talent to be able to read/narrate a story, doing all the voices and being convincing through acting only with the voice - no body language, nothing visible to help you. Anyway, I'll be on the lookout for more books by Ms Poole. The narration is definitely 5-star worthy.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
I'm In No Mood For Love by Rachel Gibson *****
A Re-Read first posted June 21, 2008 - still love it!
I'm starting to think I shouldn't have started reading Rachel Gibson with See Jane Score, an AAR Top 100 book I read as part of my self-imposed challenge. See Jane Score just didn't do it for me, but now that I've read 2 more, I'm really liking her books!
I like to read reviews of books after I have read them - and often I find they put into words sentiments I couldn't quite express. However, the AAR review of I'm In No Mood For Love was so totally different than my own feelings that I can't even believe we read the same book! I loved the whole book - that reviewer hated the first half, and liked the second half.
The heroine is Clare - a 30-something single romance novelist whose engagement has just been broken because she caught her fiancé having sex with someone else. The Sears repair man. In her own words, she watched:
Sebastian is now a renowned journalist. Sebastian's parents were divorced and as a child he lived with his mother who moved around a lot and had a string of bad relationships. He spent summers with his dad, and pretty much made a living hell of Clare's childhood, just being a typical boy - she followed him around like a puppy and he taunted her, played tricks on her, and the final blow was his telling her the truth about sex when he was 12 and she was 10. This last one pushed her uptight frigid mother into laying down the law: he was no longer welcome on her property where her dad lived. This was a blow to him, and he didn't get to see his father very much after that as a result. So he harbors some bitterness about the incident as you can imagine.
Sebastian's mother has recently died - she had a fall and died of an embolism. This really shakes him to the core, losing the one person in his life who was always there for him. It pushes him to rekindle the relationship with his father, so he goes back to visit.
He's in the hotel bar where Clare has been drinking and as a favor, he helps her up to her hotel room, and then decides to watch some tv. When she wakes up, he leads her to believe they had sex all night (but they didn't). She's mortified - and a day or so later, she realizes she not only needs to be tested for HIV but should also tell him to do so as well.
Now we have two characters, sexy Sebastian - reeking of testosterone, all-man especially in comparison to her ex-fiancé, and Clare - looking quite a lot better than she did at age 10 - drawn to each other by the sexual chemistry, but pushed apart by both their situation (her mother is his father's employer) and their inabilities to commit to another person. They finally reach a point where they decide they are Friends With Benefits - and Gibson shows her forte with some hot benefit scenes.
Clare, however, isn't really a person who can have ongoing hot sweaty sex without commitment, even though she thinks she is succeeding on that score. And Sebastian is haunted by a feeling he is missing something, something his mother looked for and finally found: a feeling of being home. He decides to stop taking international stories so he doesn't have to travel as much, and wonders if getting a dog will fill the void. Clare is finally pushed to the realization that she wants more - and that pushes Sebastian out of her life.
I guess the AAR reviewer never went through this like I did. Although I'm nothing like Clare in most ways, I felt deeply what she went through in her relationships - always the bridesmaid, never the bride. A string of men who would never love her - including, she thinks, Sebastian. Gibson created realistic, 3 dimensional characters - people who have a void in their lives that they cannot understand, and because they cannot understand it, they cannot fill it. Thank goodness it's a Romance, so they finally come to their senses!
And Gibson's writing in this book is clever and funny - I found myself laughing out loud, and going back to re-read passages more than once to laugh all over again.
I really liked this book and I'm giving it 5 star/favorite status.
I'm starting to think I shouldn't have started reading Rachel Gibson with See Jane Score, an AAR Top 100 book I read as part of my self-imposed challenge. See Jane Score just didn't do it for me, but now that I've read 2 more, I'm really liking her books!
I like to read reviews of books after I have read them - and often I find they put into words sentiments I couldn't quite express. However, the AAR review of I'm In No Mood For Love was so totally different than my own feelings that I can't even believe we read the same book! I loved the whole book - that reviewer hated the first half, and liked the second half.
The heroine is Clare - a 30-something single romance novelist whose engagement has just been broken because she caught her fiancé having sex with someone else. The Sears repair man. In her own words, she watched:
...while the man who fixed her Maytag the day before road her fiancé like a cowboy.Yeah, that's some way to end a relationship. She wakes up the next day in a hotel room with a hangover, and she's not alone. She ponders the times this has happened to her before - ending a bad relationship with an all-night drunk and indiscriminate sex with a stranger - and then realizes the man in the room is no stranger, it's the son of her mother's full-time live-on-the-property gardener, whom she knew as a child but hasn't seen for 20+ years. Sebastian Vaughan.
Sebastian is now a renowned journalist. Sebastian's parents were divorced and as a child he lived with his mother who moved around a lot and had a string of bad relationships. He spent summers with his dad, and pretty much made a living hell of Clare's childhood, just being a typical boy - she followed him around like a puppy and he taunted her, played tricks on her, and the final blow was his telling her the truth about sex when he was 12 and she was 10. This last one pushed her uptight frigid mother into laying down the law: he was no longer welcome on her property where her dad lived. This was a blow to him, and he didn't get to see his father very much after that as a result. So he harbors some bitterness about the incident as you can imagine.
Sebastian's mother has recently died - she had a fall and died of an embolism. This really shakes him to the core, losing the one person in his life who was always there for him. It pushes him to rekindle the relationship with his father, so he goes back to visit.
He's in the hotel bar where Clare has been drinking and as a favor, he helps her up to her hotel room, and then decides to watch some tv. When she wakes up, he leads her to believe they had sex all night (but they didn't). She's mortified - and a day or so later, she realizes she not only needs to be tested for HIV but should also tell him to do so as well.
Now we have two characters, sexy Sebastian - reeking of testosterone, all-man especially in comparison to her ex-fiancé, and Clare - looking quite a lot better than she did at age 10 - drawn to each other by the sexual chemistry, but pushed apart by both their situation (her mother is his father's employer) and their inabilities to commit to another person. They finally reach a point where they decide they are Friends With Benefits - and Gibson shows her forte with some hot benefit scenes.
Clare, however, isn't really a person who can have ongoing hot sweaty sex without commitment, even though she thinks she is succeeding on that score. And Sebastian is haunted by a feeling he is missing something, something his mother looked for and finally found: a feeling of being home. He decides to stop taking international stories so he doesn't have to travel as much, and wonders if getting a dog will fill the void. Clare is finally pushed to the realization that she wants more - and that pushes Sebastian out of her life.
I guess the AAR reviewer never went through this like I did. Although I'm nothing like Clare in most ways, I felt deeply what she went through in her relationships - always the bridesmaid, never the bride. A string of men who would never love her - including, she thinks, Sebastian. Gibson created realistic, 3 dimensional characters - people who have a void in their lives that they cannot understand, and because they cannot understand it, they cannot fill it. Thank goodness it's a Romance, so they finally come to their senses!
And Gibson's writing in this book is clever and funny - I found myself laughing out loud, and going back to re-read passages more than once to laugh all over again.
I really liked this book and I'm giving it 5 star/favorite status.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Sex, Lies and Online Dating by Rachel Gibson *****
FIRST POSTED JULY 2, 2008 which is when I first read this. I just did a re-read (March 23, 2009) and loved it as much, maybe more!
This is the first in her Author Friends series, based on 4 women authors living in Boise, Idaho. I've already read books #2, 3 and 4. You can read them out of order, but in a way I'm sorry I did, because this book sets up the other books so nicely!
In Sex, Lies and Online Dating, we meet Lucy, the mystery writer. She is penning a novel about a female serial killer who meets her victims online and kills them with erotic asphyxiation. She's knocked off 3 victims in her story so far, and for research she is dating men she meets online. Her online persona is a nurse, but she does use her real name. She's managed to meet some guys whose attributes she uses in her book, but she needs one more...
Hardluvnman - I loved this handle!! Our hero is detective Quinn, also undercover on this mission - but his mission is to find Breathless, a woman who is actually murdering men using Lucy's plot MO. Although he's tall, dark and dangerous, his cover is he's a plumber whose wife died and he's trying to move on. There's an instant chemistry between them, but Quinn needs to keep it professional since after all, he is wearing a wire.
Lucy doesn't normally meet the men a second time, but Quinn pursues her since she is now the #1 suspect in the case. After a couple of dates, he gets a look at her work-in-process and nearly faints, because her character is killing the men in exactly the same way as the real life Breathless.
The one part I had a hard time with was when he invites her to his home as bait, to get her to try to kill him - the reader knows the house is wired for video and audio. He seduces her - pushes her HARD even though she's already said it's too soon. Knowing there are 2 detectives watching, I just skimmed this hot scene, almost as if I was embarrassed for her. No - I was embarrassed for her. And later in the book, when he finally reveals the truth to her, she was justifiably mortified along with me.
The book was funny, and also touching - I figured out the mystery killer a little sooner than her identity was revealed, but it was still a good suspense. I loved both the hero and the heroine - and I laughed out loud when early in the book, Lucy wonders why Clare is the only one who doesn't realize her fiance is gay!! (that's inthe next book in the series)
5 stars, a keeper! I say this in almost every Rachel Gibson review I write, but I'm so glad I gave her books a second chance. The first one I read, the only one that made the AAR Top 100, was See Jane Score. I actually gave it a 4 - but I was disappointed because I didn't feel it was as good as I was expecting. Since then I've liked (almost) every other book of hers I've read, quite a lot more than See Jane Score even when I also rated them 4 stars. Maybe it's just me.
This is the first in her Author Friends series, based on 4 women authors living in Boise, Idaho. I've already read books #2, 3 and 4. You can read them out of order, but in a way I'm sorry I did, because this book sets up the other books so nicely!
In Sex, Lies and Online Dating, we meet Lucy, the mystery writer. She is penning a novel about a female serial killer who meets her victims online and kills them with erotic asphyxiation. She's knocked off 3 victims in her story so far, and for research she is dating men she meets online. Her online persona is a nurse, but she does use her real name. She's managed to meet some guys whose attributes she uses in her book, but she needs one more...
Hardluvnman - I loved this handle!! Our hero is detective Quinn, also undercover on this mission - but his mission is to find Breathless, a woman who is actually murdering men using Lucy's plot MO. Although he's tall, dark and dangerous, his cover is he's a plumber whose wife died and he's trying to move on. There's an instant chemistry between them, but Quinn needs to keep it professional since after all, he is wearing a wire.
Lucy doesn't normally meet the men a second time, but Quinn pursues her since she is now the #1 suspect in the case. After a couple of dates, he gets a look at her work-in-process and nearly faints, because her character is killing the men in exactly the same way as the real life Breathless.
The one part I had a hard time with was when he invites her to his home as bait, to get her to try to kill him - the reader knows the house is wired for video and audio. He seduces her - pushes her HARD even though she's already said it's too soon. Knowing there are 2 detectives watching, I just skimmed this hot scene, almost as if I was embarrassed for her. No - I was embarrassed for her. And later in the book, when he finally reveals the truth to her, she was justifiably mortified along with me.
The book was funny, and also touching - I figured out the mystery killer a little sooner than her identity was revealed, but it was still a good suspense. I loved both the hero and the heroine - and I laughed out loud when early in the book, Lucy wonders why Clare is the only one who doesn't realize her fiance is gay!! (that's inthe next book in the series)
5 stars, a keeper! I say this in almost every Rachel Gibson review I write, but I'm so glad I gave her books a second chance. The first one I read, the only one that made the AAR Top 100, was See Jane Score. I actually gave it a 4 - but I was disappointed because I didn't feel it was as good as I was expecting. Since then I've liked (almost) every other book of hers I've read, quite a lot more than See Jane Score even when I also rated them 4 stars. Maybe it's just me.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Daisy's Back In Town by Rachel Gibson *****
I'm about to finish my (slow) glom of Rachel Gibson, with only 2 more in her backlist that I haven't read. This was a glom that almost didn't happen, because the first one I read was an AAR Top 100 from 2007, See Jane Score, and frankly it just didn't interest me that much. (Go figure, I gave it 4 stars too...) I felt like it was a Susan Andersen-wannabe - a contemporary, humorous, quasi-Chick-Lit-ish, but missed the mark. However, I had already ordered more of her stories, so I read them and discovered that while Jane didn't interest me, others of her books did! Then the glom began...
I think what happened with Jane was that the hero just didn't engage my heart as much. The writing was good, the story interesting, Jane's journey was credible but Luc was a little too - distant I guess. Cool, maybe. I just didn't get him. Maybe I should re-read it to see if I will feel differently.
This story started off rough for me. First off, I do try to overlook grammar errors and typos but sometimes they just reach out and pinch me. And when they add up, I just feel pinched and cannot enjoy the story. I'm not exactly the High Priestess of Grammar or anything, I'm just one of those annoying people who managed to remember a lot (but not all) of those grammar things they shoved down our throats in elementary school. I clearly remember wondering what on earth I would be able to do with the skill of diagramming sentences... and now I know. Distant remnants of that skill haunt me while I read for pleasure.
Right on the second page: the word "past" spelled "passed". "Passed" is a conjugation of the verb, where "past" - well, here is an explanation from a google search:
Then there was the spelling of dates, like in that same sentence, instead of using numerals. Sigh. Those are no biggie, except it wasn't used consistently and wasn't used correctly all the time either. And then a character name misspelled - spelled as Kribs except in one instance where it was spelled Cribs. Hello - this is what proofreaders should catch. And those things pop me out of a story.
The plot is an interesting one: 3 children growing up together, 2 boys and a girl, all the same age, in the same grade, in the same small town. The heroine grows to love them both as friends, but later, when both boys are in love with her, she has to make some sort of choice. Other authors have broached this subject in differing ways - I think first of LaVyrle Spencer's Twice Loved, which tore my heart into tiny pieces and truly, even with a sort of HEA, left it clear that there was no possibility of a true HEA for everyone.
Gibson's story takes a different angle. Early on, the 2 boys (Jack and Steve) agree that, in order to keep the friendship between the 2 of them, neither one will pursue Daisy as a girlfriend. They both go on to date other girls, and Daisy dates other boys. Through a twist of fate, Daisy is stood up for the senior prom just a few months before graduation, and Steve tells Jack - who wasn't even planning to go to the prom. Steve already had a date. Jack takes Daisy, and they both realize that there's chemistry too strong between them to deny it any longer.
Just as both boys had developed feelings for Daisy, she had feelings for both of them - different feelings, but both strong. For Jack, she had always felt overwhelmed, strong feelings that seemed dangerous, and for Steve it was something sweeter, more controllable. She and Jack hide their relationship from Steve, planning to tell him right before he leaves for college - or better, maybe after he leaves and the 2 of them are left behind.
Then Jack's parents are killed, and he pushes Daisy away in his grief, asking for some time apart to sort out his feelings. She's young and confused and scared - because she's pregnant with Jack's child. Afraid he no longer loves her, she goes to her other best friend, Steve. Steve does the unthinkable - he asks her to marry him, and then he takes her away with him to college. They tell Jack they are married, and then they leave and never return.
Steve does one more unthinkable act: he develops brain cancer and dies 15 years later. Daisy waits a few months, and decides it's time to deliver a letter Steve has written to Jack and reveal the truth about what happened. Their son Nathan knows; Daisy's family knows; only Jack doesn't know he has a 15 year old son, raised by Steve and Daisy.
I know a lot of people hate the Secret Baby conceit in romance. And it is awful in real life, it's just unforgivable to take a child away from his father and never tell him. Somehow, after a truly rocky beginning of the story, though, I began to see it from Daisy's 18-year-old perspective. She actually did love Steve, even if it was different from how she loved Jack. She thought Jack no longer wanted her, and that she and the baby would be better off with Steve, and she managed to convince herself of that, up until Steve's illness.
The biggest obstacle wasn't telling Jack the truth, however. The biggest obstacle was for Jack to overcome his anger at Daisy and Steve for taking Nathan away from him. Daisy realized that until Jack forgave her, and Steve, any new relationship between her and him was doomed.
The part of the story where Jack finds out about Nathan, and then begins to develop a relationship with him was the most heartwarming of all. It's easy enough for romance authors to create the hero/heroine relationship - after all, that's what the story and the genre is about. You know the saying, "If the kids are alive at 5, I've done my job"? Well, if the hero and heroine get naked, do it and fall in love before the end, the romance author has done her job. Pretty much, anyway.
But when the author has you caring about the secondary relationships, like a father and son, then you know she can spin a web around you and have you wrapped up in her world.
So she did it - and for that I should give her 5 stars. But all those typos and grammar thingies - plus how annoyed I was getting with Daisy not getting to the point during her original 12 day stay - dropped it into 4.5 territory. OK, I just realized I usually do round up, so dangit, I'll go with 5 stars.
I think what happened with Jane was that the hero just didn't engage my heart as much. The writing was good, the story interesting, Jane's journey was credible but Luc was a little too - distant I guess. Cool, maybe. I just didn't get him. Maybe I should re-read it to see if I will feel differently.
This story started off rough for me. First off, I do try to overlook grammar errors and typos but sometimes they just reach out and pinch me. And when they add up, I just feel pinched and cannot enjoy the story. I'm not exactly the High Priestess of Grammar or anything, I'm just one of those annoying people who managed to remember a lot (but not all) of those grammar things they shoved down our throats in elementary school. I clearly remember wondering what on earth I would be able to do with the skill of diagramming sentences... and now I know. Distant remnants of that skill haunt me while I read for pleasure.
Right on the second page: the word "past" spelled "passed". "Passed" is a conjugation of the verb, where "past" - well, here is an explanation from a google search:
The past tense and past participle of pass is passed: They passed (or have passed) our home. Time had passed slowly. Past is the corresponding adjective (in centuries past), adverb (drove past), preposition (past midnight), and noun (lived in the past).I know, I know, it's obnoxious of me to point it out, but hey - in my brain, it's obnoxious that it PASSED the proofreader with that error on the SECOND PAGE! "He moved passed a nineteen-seventy..."
Then there was the spelling of dates, like in that same sentence, instead of using numerals. Sigh. Those are no biggie, except it wasn't used consistently and wasn't used correctly all the time either. And then a character name misspelled - spelled as Kribs except in one instance where it was spelled Cribs. Hello - this is what proofreaders should catch. And those things pop me out of a story.
The plot is an interesting one: 3 children growing up together, 2 boys and a girl, all the same age, in the same grade, in the same small town. The heroine grows to love them both as friends, but later, when both boys are in love with her, she has to make some sort of choice. Other authors have broached this subject in differing ways - I think first of LaVyrle Spencer's Twice Loved, which tore my heart into tiny pieces and truly, even with a sort of HEA, left it clear that there was no possibility of a true HEA for everyone.
Gibson's story takes a different angle. Early on, the 2 boys (Jack and Steve) agree that, in order to keep the friendship between the 2 of them, neither one will pursue Daisy as a girlfriend. They both go on to date other girls, and Daisy dates other boys. Through a twist of fate, Daisy is stood up for the senior prom just a few months before graduation, and Steve tells Jack - who wasn't even planning to go to the prom. Steve already had a date. Jack takes Daisy, and they both realize that there's chemistry too strong between them to deny it any longer.
Just as both boys had developed feelings for Daisy, she had feelings for both of them - different feelings, but both strong. For Jack, she had always felt overwhelmed, strong feelings that seemed dangerous, and for Steve it was something sweeter, more controllable. She and Jack hide their relationship from Steve, planning to tell him right before he leaves for college - or better, maybe after he leaves and the 2 of them are left behind.
Then Jack's parents are killed, and he pushes Daisy away in his grief, asking for some time apart to sort out his feelings. She's young and confused and scared - because she's pregnant with Jack's child. Afraid he no longer loves her, she goes to her other best friend, Steve. Steve does the unthinkable - he asks her to marry him, and then he takes her away with him to college. They tell Jack they are married, and then they leave and never return.
Steve does one more unthinkable act: he develops brain cancer and dies 15 years later. Daisy waits a few months, and decides it's time to deliver a letter Steve has written to Jack and reveal the truth about what happened. Their son Nathan knows; Daisy's family knows; only Jack doesn't know he has a 15 year old son, raised by Steve and Daisy.
I know a lot of people hate the Secret Baby conceit in romance. And it is awful in real life, it's just unforgivable to take a child away from his father and never tell him. Somehow, after a truly rocky beginning of the story, though, I began to see it from Daisy's 18-year-old perspective. She actually did love Steve, even if it was different from how she loved Jack. She thought Jack no longer wanted her, and that she and the baby would be better off with Steve, and she managed to convince herself of that, up until Steve's illness.
The biggest obstacle wasn't telling Jack the truth, however. The biggest obstacle was for Jack to overcome his anger at Daisy and Steve for taking Nathan away from him. Daisy realized that until Jack forgave her, and Steve, any new relationship between her and him was doomed.
The part of the story where Jack finds out about Nathan, and then begins to develop a relationship with him was the most heartwarming of all. It's easy enough for romance authors to create the hero/heroine relationship - after all, that's what the story and the genre is about. You know the saying, "If the kids are alive at 5, I've done my job"? Well, if the hero and heroine get naked, do it and fall in love before the end, the romance author has done her job. Pretty much, anyway.
But when the author has you caring about the secondary relationships, like a father and son, then you know she can spin a web around you and have you wrapped up in her world.
So she did it - and for that I should give her 5 stars. But all those typos and grammar thingies - plus how annoyed I was getting with Daisy not getting to the point during her original 12 day stay - dropped it into 4.5 territory. OK, I just realized I usually do round up, so dangit, I'll go with 5 stars.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Lola Carlyle Reveals All by Rachel Gibson
hmmmm... I'm conflicted about this book. Didn't love it, didn't hate it.
Lola is our heroine - she's a former underwear model who is now designing underwear and running her own underwear empire. She's a recovered (or is it recovering?) bulimic who is still referred to as fat in tabloids. The whole "reveals all" title is a reference to the fact that there are some embarrassing photos taken by her ex that he is now showing on the Internet - and she wants the photos gone. She is hiding from her life, with her rat of a dog (it's a Miniature Pinscher), in the Bahamas when she falls asleep on a yacht, is left there alone - and our hero Max commandeers it for his escape.
Max is one of those covert operators, a former Navy seal who gets called in by the government to do their dirty work from time to time. Highly trained, big, bad and dangerous. A loner. He was in the Bahamas on some drug cartel work that went real bad - they beat the shit out of him, and he killed some guys, including the Head Guy's son. He's a bruised and broken mess when he gets onto this supposedly empty yacht to escape.
We didn't have love or even chemistry at first sight in this story. Well, Max recognizes the underwear model and feels some lust, but Lola is horrified and repelled. In my opinion, she is bimbo material and did several stupid things, including shooting a flare gun that set the yacht's burnable materials on fire and melted others - rendering the yacht dead in the water too many miles out to sea for any quick rescue.
So I spent the first part of this book, in my afterglow from loving True Confessions so much, thinking it was a really lame story and I did not like Lola at all. I'm sure it's my own prejudice, but the whole bulimic recovery thing just didn't work for me - I couldn't find myself feeling any pity for her or the rat of a dog. I did, however, develop tender feelings for poor Max after a while - anyone with broken ribs who would jump into the sea to save the rat of a dog is a good person.
They did go through some harrowing experiences together, and while I kept feeling like Lola made more and more bad decisions, Max thought she was courageous. Huh? Just goes to show, he was already falling in love with her and couldn't see her faults, I guess.
But the harrowing escape from dangerous drug runners was nothing compared to what Lola put Max through afterwards - she actually made him attend her family reunion. Wow - that is true love on Max's part. And that was during the weekend he spent at her house - and wait a minute - nothing sexual happened between them. I was stunned.
My one big laugh out loud moment was a reference to Gibson's True Confessions: in the aftermath of Lola's disappearance, one tabloid publishes a report that she'd been abducted by aliens and was living in a small wilderness town in the Northwest. (That was Lola's favorite story.) See, the heroine of True Confessions wrote alien stories for a weekly tabloid, and... ok go read that book because it's a lot funnier and a lot more romantic too.
The ending of the book - their getting together afterwards in real life and trying to work out some sort of relationship - vaguely redeemed it for me, so I'll give it... I'm torn between 3 and 4 stars. I'll go with 4 stars only because I sorta have to almost not like it to give it 3 stars.
One more thing about this book: WHERE WAS THE EDITOR?? There are a bunch of typos in this book that are really slap-you-in-the-face wrong and should have been edited out. I'm not talking about her use of grammatically incorrect phrases - which I think she uses well as a break-the-rules kinda thing. Those work in this book as a way of making a point - and she uses them over and over, so it becomes a sort of recognizable pattern. No, I'm talking about verbs in the wrong tense, and misspelled words. Lots and lots of them. About using the word "gunnel" when it's "gunwale" (and she did use "gunwale" as well). Things an editor should have corrected.
Ok maybe it should get 3 stars. But I'll put 4, to be sorta consistent, because I did like it more than others I rated 3.
Lola is our heroine - she's a former underwear model who is now designing underwear and running her own underwear empire. She's a recovered (or is it recovering?) bulimic who is still referred to as fat in tabloids. The whole "reveals all" title is a reference to the fact that there are some embarrassing photos taken by her ex that he is now showing on the Internet - and she wants the photos gone. She is hiding from her life, with her rat of a dog (it's a Miniature Pinscher), in the Bahamas when she falls asleep on a yacht, is left there alone - and our hero Max commandeers it for his escape.
Max is one of those covert operators, a former Navy seal who gets called in by the government to do their dirty work from time to time. Highly trained, big, bad and dangerous. A loner. He was in the Bahamas on some drug cartel work that went real bad - they beat the shit out of him, and he killed some guys, including the Head Guy's son. He's a bruised and broken mess when he gets onto this supposedly empty yacht to escape.
We didn't have love or even chemistry at first sight in this story. Well, Max recognizes the underwear model and feels some lust, but Lola is horrified and repelled. In my opinion, she is bimbo material and did several stupid things, including shooting a flare gun that set the yacht's burnable materials on fire and melted others - rendering the yacht dead in the water too many miles out to sea for any quick rescue.
So I spent the first part of this book, in my afterglow from loving True Confessions so much, thinking it was a really lame story and I did not like Lola at all. I'm sure it's my own prejudice, but the whole bulimic recovery thing just didn't work for me - I couldn't find myself feeling any pity for her or the rat of a dog. I did, however, develop tender feelings for poor Max after a while - anyone with broken ribs who would jump into the sea to save the rat of a dog is a good person.
They did go through some harrowing experiences together, and while I kept feeling like Lola made more and more bad decisions, Max thought she was courageous. Huh? Just goes to show, he was already falling in love with her and couldn't see her faults, I guess.
But the harrowing escape from dangerous drug runners was nothing compared to what Lola put Max through afterwards - she actually made him attend her family reunion. Wow - that is true love on Max's part. And that was during the weekend he spent at her house - and wait a minute - nothing sexual happened between them. I was stunned.
My one big laugh out loud moment was a reference to Gibson's True Confessions: in the aftermath of Lola's disappearance, one tabloid publishes a report that she'd been abducted by aliens and was living in a small wilderness town in the Northwest. (That was Lola's favorite story.) See, the heroine of True Confessions wrote alien stories for a weekly tabloid, and... ok go read that book because it's a lot funnier and a lot more romantic too.
The ending of the book - their getting together afterwards in real life and trying to work out some sort of relationship - vaguely redeemed it for me, so I'll give it... I'm torn between 3 and 4 stars. I'll go with 4 stars only because I sorta have to almost not like it to give it 3 stars.
One more thing about this book: WHERE WAS THE EDITOR?? There are a bunch of typos in this book that are really slap-you-in-the-face wrong and should have been edited out. I'm not talking about her use of grammatically incorrect phrases - which I think she uses well as a break-the-rules kinda thing. Those work in this book as a way of making a point - and she uses them over and over, so it becomes a sort of recognizable pattern. No, I'm talking about verbs in the wrong tense, and misspelled words. Lots and lots of them. About using the word "gunnel" when it's "gunwale" (and she did use "gunwale" as well). Things an editor should have corrected.
Ok maybe it should get 3 stars. But I'll put 4, to be sorta consistent, because I did like it more than others I rated 3.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
True Confessions by Rachel Gibson *****
Ahhhhh - another great book by Rachel Gibson! A 5-star keeper for sure.
Hope is our heroine - she's a freelance writer. Well, ok, she writes stories about aliens abductions and Bigfoot for a weekly tabloid, but hey - she knows it's fiction, and she's good at it. She's had a sort of run-in with a dwarf, the model for Mickey the Magical Leprechaun, and she's also having serious writer's block, which motivates her boss at the paper to send her on a 6 month sabbatical of sorts, to Gospel, Idaho. However, she keeps her employer a secret mainly because people try to give her story ideas - it's easier just to be vague about who she writes for.
Gospel's sheriff is Dylan - he grew up in Gospel, and left after high school for the big city lights of LA, where he was a homicide detective for several years. But he wasn't happy in LA, and he got custody of his young son and moved back home - leaving the kid's momma in LA, working as a TV actor.
Gospel is a small town where gossip rules and weirdness is a virtue, by the way. Truth is stranger than fiction here - Hope soon realizes no one would believe her if she wrote about the actual residents!
Hope has some other secrets she's not quick to share with strangers - one is her 7 year marriage to an LA plastic surgeon which ended when he divorced her for her best friend, who was 5 months pregnant with his child. Since Hope had a hysterectomy at age 21 (which he knew), that was the only way he would have children, and she figured they were better off divorced.
Dylan has a secret too - no one knows that the actress in the popular Christian show has an illegitimate son who is being raised by his father - the two never married. If their secret is revealed, she could lose her audience, so mum's the word on Adam's mum.
Of course, there's sparks all over the place when Hope and Dylan get together. Dylan is the most eligible bachelor for 70 miles - he's single, straight and has a job - so the women in town are pretty open with their admiration. He's not keen on starting anything with any of them, including Hope - a conviction that pretty much goes out the window whenever he gets within 10 feet of her. She's not keen on starting a relationship either - for one thing, it would be temporary, and she's not one for sex without commitment. But she loses her conviction to stay away every time he loses his...
The story has so many laugh out loud moments - all the odd characters in Gospel, and Hope's ongoing conviction that she (who writes stories about aliens) is the only normal person around. The buildup of the sexual tension between Hope and Dylan is gripping - Gibson's story grabs you and makes you think this is it, then throws an obstacle in that douses Hope, Dylan and the reader with a blast of ice water. Then there's Dylan's son Adam, who hates all the women throwing themselves at his dad, but develops a relationship of his own with Hope, not seeing her as going after his dad. Adam is holding on to the fantasy, however, that his mom (the angel on TV) and dad will get back together.
The sizzling hot love scenes are pretty wonderful, and being inside Dylan's head when he's thinking about Hope had my eyes rolling back in my head in lust, I'm afraid.
But what really got me was the true emotions I felt while reading the story - how caught up I got in Hope's head when she thinks Dylan has rejected her and is feeling nothing. So, yeah, I laughed, I cried, I felt - and I think this had the most romantic moments of any book I've read so far. When Dylan tells Hope he had to show her the most beautiful spot in the world because it reminded him of her, welllll I about melted away.
Yep, it's a 5 star keeper/re-reader for me.
Hope is our heroine - she's a freelance writer. Well, ok, she writes stories about aliens abductions and Bigfoot for a weekly tabloid, but hey - she knows it's fiction, and she's good at it. She's had a sort of run-in with a dwarf, the model for Mickey the Magical Leprechaun, and she's also having serious writer's block, which motivates her boss at the paper to send her on a 6 month sabbatical of sorts, to Gospel, Idaho. However, she keeps her employer a secret mainly because people try to give her story ideas - it's easier just to be vague about who she writes for.
Gospel's sheriff is Dylan - he grew up in Gospel, and left after high school for the big city lights of LA, where he was a homicide detective for several years. But he wasn't happy in LA, and he got custody of his young son and moved back home - leaving the kid's momma in LA, working as a TV actor.
Gospel is a small town where gossip rules and weirdness is a virtue, by the way. Truth is stranger than fiction here - Hope soon realizes no one would believe her if she wrote about the actual residents!
Hope has some other secrets she's not quick to share with strangers - one is her 7 year marriage to an LA plastic surgeon which ended when he divorced her for her best friend, who was 5 months pregnant with his child. Since Hope had a hysterectomy at age 21 (which he knew), that was the only way he would have children, and she figured they were better off divorced.
Dylan has a secret too - no one knows that the actress in the popular Christian show has an illegitimate son who is being raised by his father - the two never married. If their secret is revealed, she could lose her audience, so mum's the word on Adam's mum.
Of course, there's sparks all over the place when Hope and Dylan get together. Dylan is the most eligible bachelor for 70 miles - he's single, straight and has a job - so the women in town are pretty open with their admiration. He's not keen on starting anything with any of them, including Hope - a conviction that pretty much goes out the window whenever he gets within 10 feet of her. She's not keen on starting a relationship either - for one thing, it would be temporary, and she's not one for sex without commitment. But she loses her conviction to stay away every time he loses his...
The story has so many laugh out loud moments - all the odd characters in Gospel, and Hope's ongoing conviction that she (who writes stories about aliens) is the only normal person around. The buildup of the sexual tension between Hope and Dylan is gripping - Gibson's story grabs you and makes you think this is it, then throws an obstacle in that douses Hope, Dylan and the reader with a blast of ice water. Then there's Dylan's son Adam, who hates all the women throwing themselves at his dad, but develops a relationship of his own with Hope, not seeing her as going after his dad. Adam is holding on to the fantasy, however, that his mom (the angel on TV) and dad will get back together.
The sizzling hot love scenes are pretty wonderful, and being inside Dylan's head when he's thinking about Hope had my eyes rolling back in my head in lust, I'm afraid.
But what really got me was the true emotions I felt while reading the story - how caught up I got in Hope's head when she thinks Dylan has rejected her and is feeling nothing. So, yeah, I laughed, I cried, I felt - and I think this had the most romantic moments of any book I've read so far. When Dylan tells Hope he had to show her the most beautiful spot in the world because it reminded him of her, welllll I about melted away.
Yep, it's a 5 star keeper/re-reader for me.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Simply Irresistible by Rachel Gibson ***
I'm still trying to figure this book out. The review on AAR says it's "one of the funnier books I've read this year. It's witty and has some really side-splitting dialogue."
Maybe we read different books. Was this a comedy? Or drama? There wasn't any suspense - no murders - no hidden treasures - no horror. But, funny?
First off, too many details. Forgettable details. Resistible details. A prologue where we find out the heroine Georgie is dyslexic. That her mother left her to be raised by her grandmother. That she isn't considered very bright and should go to charm school to get a husband. A first chapter that serves as prologue #2 where we learn that indeed she went to charm school and has now snared an old, rich fiancé who coincidentally owns a certain hockey team - but doesn't really want to marry him. That she now has a centerfold-worthy body that she thinks is fat. That our hero John is a hard-drinking sumbitch hockey player (for a certain hockey team) that leaves his boss's wedding early and finds the centerfold body in his car asking to be rescued.
That John's father died when he was young. That his mother had 2 jobs so he was raised by his grandparents. That John had a disastrous first marriage to a woman he got pregnant but didn't love, the baby died and his wife committed suicide and he found her body, 1 year ago. That John had a disastrous second marriage to a stripper that lasted less than 24 hours, 6 months after his first wife's suicide.
That Georgie doesn't like sex but uses her charm school wiles and her body to get what she wants from men because that is all she knows. That Georgie is at the end of her rope financially and emotionally - maxed out credit cards, no friends or relatives to fall back on, nowhere to go - and that she's hoping to charm John into keeping her around for a while.
Whew. What a lot of baggage for both of them. Meanwhile, I'm thinking, is this supposed to be funny? Because I'm just not finding humor in a dead baby and dead mother, or in a desperate bimbo and alcoholic athlete either. I kept wondering if I needed to create a cheat sheet to keep track of all the details. Well, one thing leads to another: he takes her to his house to call friends (of which she has none), after a couple of drinks she charms him into bed instead of telling him the truth, somehow miraculously she falls in love during the night, and he - out of the goodness of his hockey-loving heart - buys her a plane ticket home (where she has no one) and leaves her at the airport. Heart broken and...
Well - that was just the first 2 chapters. Fast forward 6 years and, oh, 9 months... Yep - the Secret Child plot is stuck on top of all the other details. My head started spinning. Georgie never left Seattle - she managed to find a job, and now she is co-owner of a catering company, and I had to add all the details of the other owner's life to my cheat sheet. Mae's gay twin brother died, and... well to be honest, none of her backstory and almost none of her story made a lick of sense or added anything to the book. Something about hating athletes because they made fun of her gay twin brother.
OK, Georgie catered a charity event - she's avoided all sports events to keep from running into John - and whooops, as it turns out, John donates to charity. He sees her, runs her down where she, Cinderella-like, drops her purse, leaving her checkbook behind for John to use to run her down again. He shows up at her house, all innocence and light and curious. She's in the shower - but daughter Lexie lets him in to wait because she figures he isn't a stranger because she's seen him before, signing autographs at her school.
Here's a plot device I've seen mumbly-some-odd times before: he recognizes her as his daughter because she looks so much like him, and asks her age, and counts backwards 6 years and 9 months...
Now we start having some Big Misunderstandings. Start a new cheat sheet. He just wants to get to know his daughter - she's afraid he'll lead Lexie on, then get tired of being a dad and stop coming, breaking Lexie's heart. He tells her he'll contact a lawyer if she doesn't let him see her - she overhears a message from his lawyer, leading her to assume he's planning to take custody (or something) when she thought he wasn't going to contact the lawyer. He's a multi-millionaire offering to help with support; she doesn't want his money because she can support them herself on her less-than-adequate earnings.
See - she really is a bimbo.
The second half of the story, where John ends up falling in love with his daughter, is touching, and redeemed the book for me. I really almost just didn't finish it after about chapter 3 because it was getting so ridiculous trying to figure out where we were going on this journey. Was it about bad or negligent parenting and how that shaped their relationship? No, not really. Was it about the obstacles of overcoming dyslexia and becoming self-sufficient? No, that wasn't really a factor at all in the story except for telling us about it in the prologue and chapter 1.
Oh, did I mention the part about how he could lose his job for messing with his boss's fiancée? Well - yeah, that was on his mind 6 years and 9 months ago, and now is an issue again, because the boss is still around although he's now married to someone else.
We do get to see John make a turn-around in his feelings - how his experience shaped his feelings toward Georgie, and he does make a nice recover in the end. With that, I found I can give the book 3 stars. But it's pretty resistible. Sigh.
Maybe we read different books. Was this a comedy? Or drama? There wasn't any suspense - no murders - no hidden treasures - no horror. But, funny?
First off, too many details. Forgettable details. Resistible details. A prologue where we find out the heroine Georgie is dyslexic. That her mother left her to be raised by her grandmother. That she isn't considered very bright and should go to charm school to get a husband. A first chapter that serves as prologue #2 where we learn that indeed she went to charm school and has now snared an old, rich fiancé who coincidentally owns a certain hockey team - but doesn't really want to marry him. That she now has a centerfold-worthy body that she thinks is fat. That our hero John is a hard-drinking sumbitch hockey player (for a certain hockey team) that leaves his boss's wedding early and finds the centerfold body in his car asking to be rescued.
That John's father died when he was young. That his mother had 2 jobs so he was raised by his grandparents. That John had a disastrous first marriage to a woman he got pregnant but didn't love, the baby died and his wife committed suicide and he found her body, 1 year ago. That John had a disastrous second marriage to a stripper that lasted less than 24 hours, 6 months after his first wife's suicide.
That Georgie doesn't like sex but uses her charm school wiles and her body to get what she wants from men because that is all she knows. That Georgie is at the end of her rope financially and emotionally - maxed out credit cards, no friends or relatives to fall back on, nowhere to go - and that she's hoping to charm John into keeping her around for a while.
Whew. What a lot of baggage for both of them. Meanwhile, I'm thinking, is this supposed to be funny? Because I'm just not finding humor in a dead baby and dead mother, or in a desperate bimbo and alcoholic athlete either. I kept wondering if I needed to create a cheat sheet to keep track of all the details. Well, one thing leads to another: he takes her to his house to call friends (of which she has none), after a couple of drinks she charms him into bed instead of telling him the truth, somehow miraculously she falls in love during the night, and he - out of the goodness of his hockey-loving heart - buys her a plane ticket home (where she has no one) and leaves her at the airport. Heart broken and...
Well - that was just the first 2 chapters. Fast forward 6 years and, oh, 9 months... Yep - the Secret Child plot is stuck on top of all the other details. My head started spinning. Georgie never left Seattle - she managed to find a job, and now she is co-owner of a catering company, and I had to add all the details of the other owner's life to my cheat sheet. Mae's gay twin brother died, and... well to be honest, none of her backstory and almost none of her story made a lick of sense or added anything to the book. Something about hating athletes because they made fun of her gay twin brother.
OK, Georgie catered a charity event - she's avoided all sports events to keep from running into John - and whooops, as it turns out, John donates to charity. He sees her, runs her down where she, Cinderella-like, drops her purse, leaving her checkbook behind for John to use to run her down again. He shows up at her house, all innocence and light and curious. She's in the shower - but daughter Lexie lets him in to wait because she figures he isn't a stranger because she's seen him before, signing autographs at her school.
Here's a plot device I've seen mumbly-some-odd times before: he recognizes her as his daughter because she looks so much like him, and asks her age, and counts backwards 6 years and 9 months...
Now we start having some Big Misunderstandings. Start a new cheat sheet. He just wants to get to know his daughter - she's afraid he'll lead Lexie on, then get tired of being a dad and stop coming, breaking Lexie's heart. He tells her he'll contact a lawyer if she doesn't let him see her - she overhears a message from his lawyer, leading her to assume he's planning to take custody (or something) when she thought he wasn't going to contact the lawyer. He's a multi-millionaire offering to help with support; she doesn't want his money because she can support them herself on her less-than-adequate earnings.
See - she really is a bimbo.
The second half of the story, where John ends up falling in love with his daughter, is touching, and redeemed the book for me. I really almost just didn't finish it after about chapter 3 because it was getting so ridiculous trying to figure out where we were going on this journey. Was it about bad or negligent parenting and how that shaped their relationship? No, not really. Was it about the obstacles of overcoming dyslexia and becoming self-sufficient? No, that wasn't really a factor at all in the story except for telling us about it in the prologue and chapter 1.
Oh, did I mention the part about how he could lose his job for messing with his boss's fiancée? Well - yeah, that was on his mind 6 years and 9 months ago, and now is an issue again, because the boss is still around although he's now married to someone else.
We do get to see John make a turn-around in his feelings - how his experience shaped his feelings toward Georgie, and he does make a nice recover in the end. With that, I found I can give the book 3 stars. But it's pretty resistible. Sigh.
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