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!
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
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.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
His Lady Mistress by Elizabeth Rolls ****
I downloaded the free Kindle for iPhone App and have read a few books on the iPhone. It's pretty small but still, it's easy to hold and easy enough to read, and there's a bunch of FREE books as well as very inexpensive ones!
That being said, I downloaded this one for free, not expecting much (the free ones aren't always very good) and it was good! I hadn't read Rolls before, I'm not even familiar with her work at all, but it was actually better than I expected from something free from Amazon. I just read the review at All About Romance, and dang if now I don't feel guilty about liking it, since, yeah, some of the points the reviewer made are valid.
I think, besides being FREE, what made me like it was the ending when he's so besotted. I just love a besotted hero - although, I guess he doesn't really fit the prototype of a besotted hero who worships the heroine and always loved her from the beginning. So, now I'm not making much sense.
The heroine is Verity - who is now, Cinderella-esque, living as a servant in her aunt and uncle's home. (Oh, that's it - I love Cinderella stories!) There's a reason, which isn't really revealed until the end, why they are so mean to her - beside just being mean people. They've even made her change her name, I guessed at the beginning just to keep people from realizing she was related to them.
Years earlier, at 15, Verity had watched her father be buried in an unmarked grave, having committed suicide. An unnamed stranger had come to oversee the burial, and helped her plant flowers on the grave, then disappeared the next day. She's always kept him in her dreams and fantasies - then, lo, who should appear at a house party given by her aunt and uncle?
Max, now an earl, has really come to see how the young waif from that night fared. He had served under her father in the war, not being first in line for the earldom, but his older brother died, and he was born 30 minutes before his twin brother - now crippled - so he gets the title. However, his parents always blamed him for the twin being crippled and his mother made him promise he would never marry and/or produce an heir so the twin could get the title. Yeah, as if.
ok that plot point was pretty weak.
Verity (under her new name) attracts Max (she knows who he is; he doesn't know who she is) and he offers to keep her as his mistress to get her away from the awful family, who has told him Verity is dead. She turns him down, then changes her mind when she decides it would be a way to escape. Then, ooooops he discovers she is Verity and the fun begins. She doesn't want to be his mistress, she just wants to escape. He can't believe he deflowered his captain's daughter and decides they must marry but he can't boink her anymore because he promised Mama he wouldn't have children.
It seems to me, if he doesn't die before the twin, he's the earl forever anyway.
But really, it was all their misunderstandings - not The Big Miz - that actually I found realistic and liked. Rolls writes it very well, even if it's frustrating for them to so misunderstand each other. Verity has developed such a fantasy about Max, but Max has to take time to realize his own feelings towards her. There's the lust and chemistry, but then he also admires her courage and her tenacity. He does fall in love with her in time and that's the part I liked!
and the twin really didn't believe he deserved the earldom or that Max was the reason he was crippled, so that was a silly plot point.
OK I'm still going with my gut - 4 stars.
That being said, I downloaded this one for free, not expecting much (the free ones aren't always very good) and it was good! I hadn't read Rolls before, I'm not even familiar with her work at all, but it was actually better than I expected from something free from Amazon. I just read the review at All About Romance, and dang if now I don't feel guilty about liking it, since, yeah, some of the points the reviewer made are valid.
I think, besides being FREE, what made me like it was the ending when he's so besotted. I just love a besotted hero - although, I guess he doesn't really fit the prototype of a besotted hero who worships the heroine and always loved her from the beginning. So, now I'm not making much sense.
The heroine is Verity - who is now, Cinderella-esque, living as a servant in her aunt and uncle's home. (Oh, that's it - I love Cinderella stories!) There's a reason, which isn't really revealed until the end, why they are so mean to her - beside just being mean people. They've even made her change her name, I guessed at the beginning just to keep people from realizing she was related to them.
Years earlier, at 15, Verity had watched her father be buried in an unmarked grave, having committed suicide. An unnamed stranger had come to oversee the burial, and helped her plant flowers on the grave, then disappeared the next day. She's always kept him in her dreams and fantasies - then, lo, who should appear at a house party given by her aunt and uncle?
Max, now an earl, has really come to see how the young waif from that night fared. He had served under her father in the war, not being first in line for the earldom, but his older brother died, and he was born 30 minutes before his twin brother - now crippled - so he gets the title. However, his parents always blamed him for the twin being crippled and his mother made him promise he would never marry and/or produce an heir so the twin could get the title. Yeah, as if.
ok that plot point was pretty weak.
Verity (under her new name) attracts Max (she knows who he is; he doesn't know who she is) and he offers to keep her as his mistress to get her away from the awful family, who has told him Verity is dead. She turns him down, then changes her mind when she decides it would be a way to escape. Then, ooooops he discovers she is Verity and the fun begins. She doesn't want to be his mistress, she just wants to escape. He can't believe he deflowered his captain's daughter and decides they must marry but he can't boink her anymore because he promised Mama he wouldn't have children.
It seems to me, if he doesn't die before the twin, he's the earl forever anyway.
But really, it was all their misunderstandings - not The Big Miz - that actually I found realistic and liked. Rolls writes it very well, even if it's frustrating for them to so misunderstand each other. Verity has developed such a fantasy about Max, but Max has to take time to realize his own feelings towards her. There's the lust and chemistry, but then he also admires her courage and her tenacity. He does fall in love with her in time and that's the part I liked!
and the twin really didn't believe he deserved the earldom or that Max was the reason he was crippled, so that was a silly plot point.
OK I'm still going with my gut - 4 stars.
Freefall by Joann Ross ***
My first experience with author Joann Ross was a Louisiana bayou series (Blue Bayou and the Callahan Brothers) and I liked them. However, I didn't read any more by her until a new release came up, I believe it was #3 or #4 in a series, and it sounded good. I got the new release but never read it as I prefer to read series in order and I was moving and...
I downloaded Freefall, the #1 in this series, from audible.com and finally got around to listening to it this weekend. It was pretty good and maybe I'll get around to reading or listening to the rest of them, eventually.
This is the High Risk series, and Freefall's hero is a Navy SEAL (surprise, surprise) who left the service and is picking up the pieces of his life after a particularly bad clusterfuck in Afghanistan where most of his team - not just a SEAL team, but Rangers and Marines too - were killed. Zach's back in his hometown of Swann Island, South Carolina.
Our lovely heroine is also a quasi-resident, or former resident of Swann Island - Sabrina Swann, as it happens. Her father and mother were artsy types who traveled the world, leaving Sabrina in hotels and boarding schools all over Europe, and her grandmother's home on Swann Island, Swannsea (spelling?) is really the only place she considered home. She spent a few summers there, and during her pivotal teen years had the biggest crush on Zach. She had a terrific job, running a fabulous hotel in Florence, Italy, when BOOM a terrorist blows up the hotel, and Sabrina decides to take a hiatus and return to her roots to recover mentally. Unfortunately, her grandmother died a few months earlier and Sabrina comes back to take care of the estate.
In the midst of all this, some unnamed horrible serial killer is keeping young women caged somewhere and after treating them as slaves, murders them and moves on to the next one.
There's a secondary romance going on - best friends both to each other growing up and to Zach and Sabrina, Tatiana and Nate (he's former Marine and the sheriff now) are an ongoing romance during the story. Some of these plot points were so incredibly similar to a book I'm reading on my iPhone/kindle and another book I just read that I kept getting confused - the new sheriff being the son of the old sheriff, SEALS, girls being raised by grandmothers, all that!!
Frankly, I think authors should be more careful about names in their stories - Zach, Nate, Quinn, John - those names all ran together in my head, and I spent a fair amount of time wondering which was which while I listened. You can't really reference back during audio books to see which character said what.
It's a murder mystery background to a finding-love-again romance foreground. There's immediate chemistry between Zach and Sabrina, now that she's no longer jailbait. He's the contractor working on her grandmother's historical old home, and there's that SEAL thing going on, and his best friend the sheriff is involved, and, well, they find peace, love and the killer at the end.
The narrator was ok - she did voices well, and managed to get a different voice going for each character, but she did have an odd quirk or 2 that kept her from really being great. For one thing, those syrupy southern accents on everyone tired me out after a while. Everyone except of course Sabrina who did not grow up around there. The narrator, in my opinion, needed to stop emphasizing the letter T so much and to enunciate her vowels a little better. The words "during" and "enduring" sounded like "doring" and "endoring", as a fer instance. Those things can really mess up a good story for me - the narrator can make an OK book fabulous and a fabulous book just OK. That being said, I think the book was probably just OK even if Barbara Rosenblat had read it to me. Somehow that old hack of bringing in a second characer with murder on his mind to confuse you about who the real murderer wasn't very refreshing. The minute that fellow's motive was revealed, it was obvious he wasn't the serial killer, but just another character out for revenge.
So *** three stars for a much-used plot, much-used characters, confusing names and an OK narrator.
I downloaded Freefall, the #1 in this series, from audible.com and finally got around to listening to it this weekend. It was pretty good and maybe I'll get around to reading or listening to the rest of them, eventually.
This is the High Risk series, and Freefall's hero is a Navy SEAL (surprise, surprise) who left the service and is picking up the pieces of his life after a particularly bad clusterfuck in Afghanistan where most of his team - not just a SEAL team, but Rangers and Marines too - were killed. Zach's back in his hometown of Swann Island, South Carolina.
Our lovely heroine is also a quasi-resident, or former resident of Swann Island - Sabrina Swann, as it happens. Her father and mother were artsy types who traveled the world, leaving Sabrina in hotels and boarding schools all over Europe, and her grandmother's home on Swann Island, Swannsea (spelling?) is really the only place she considered home. She spent a few summers there, and during her pivotal teen years had the biggest crush on Zach. She had a terrific job, running a fabulous hotel in Florence, Italy, when BOOM a terrorist blows up the hotel, and Sabrina decides to take a hiatus and return to her roots to recover mentally. Unfortunately, her grandmother died a few months earlier and Sabrina comes back to take care of the estate.
In the midst of all this, some unnamed horrible serial killer is keeping young women caged somewhere and after treating them as slaves, murders them and moves on to the next one.
There's a secondary romance going on - best friends both to each other growing up and to Zach and Sabrina, Tatiana and Nate (he's former Marine and the sheriff now) are an ongoing romance during the story. Some of these plot points were so incredibly similar to a book I'm reading on my iPhone/kindle and another book I just read that I kept getting confused - the new sheriff being the son of the old sheriff, SEALS, girls being raised by grandmothers, all that!!
Frankly, I think authors should be more careful about names in their stories - Zach, Nate, Quinn, John - those names all ran together in my head, and I spent a fair amount of time wondering which was which while I listened. You can't really reference back during audio books to see which character said what.
It's a murder mystery background to a finding-love-again romance foreground. There's immediate chemistry between Zach and Sabrina, now that she's no longer jailbait. He's the contractor working on her grandmother's historical old home, and there's that SEAL thing going on, and his best friend the sheriff is involved, and, well, they find peace, love and the killer at the end.
The narrator was ok - she did voices well, and managed to get a different voice going for each character, but she did have an odd quirk or 2 that kept her from really being great. For one thing, those syrupy southern accents on everyone tired me out after a while. Everyone except of course Sabrina who did not grow up around there. The narrator, in my opinion, needed to stop emphasizing the letter T so much and to enunciate her vowels a little better. The words "during" and "enduring" sounded like "doring" and "endoring", as a fer instance. Those things can really mess up a good story for me - the narrator can make an OK book fabulous and a fabulous book just OK. That being said, I think the book was probably just OK even if Barbara Rosenblat had read it to me. Somehow that old hack of bringing in a second characer with murder on his mind to confuse you about who the real murderer wasn't very refreshing. The minute that fellow's motive was revealed, it was obvious he wasn't the serial killer, but just another character out for revenge.
So *** three stars for a much-used plot, much-used characters, confusing names and an OK narrator.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Caine's Reckoning by Sarah McCarty **
I went back and forth in my head about the rating for this. I figure 3 stars is "eh, ok" but the more I thought about it, 3 stars is "I liked it" and I really didn't. I mean, I didn't hate it. I finished it. But I didn't really like it.
I got it on audio, and that may or may not have colored my rating. The narrator was ok - I'd give her 3 stars. She had a southern accent thing going on - I'm not sure I've listened to anything by her before, so I don't know if that's her normal speech pattern or something for the book. Everyone had a southern accent. That's ok, it was Texas (decades ago - not sure exactly of the era, but "long ago", 19th century. Even those of Indian blood had the southern accent. Go figure.
I knew McCarty's work is a little more raw and explicit than mainstream, although I wouldn't say it's "romantica" (romance + erotica) so much as just, well, more explicit. I was expecting that. Somehow, though, it became almost pedantic. Ok, we're gonna spread some lips here, and there's gonna be some juicy bits and "cream" and then he's gonna have to taste her and at this point, I'm thinking, get it over with and let's get back to the story. It wasn't really sexy - more like a primer in ways to describe foreplay and sex in books, with lots of words that quickly became icky triggers for me, even though in other books they don't bother me. OK, call it a pussy - a few times, maybe. But in every other sentence it started to give me an eye twitch.
The heroine Desi started out feisty and someone who could take care of herself, then when she got a little cleaned up, she was this weird prudish girl who had been raised rich with not a care in the world, and thought so many things were not proper. And here she'd been a captive of comancheros and then used as a whore for several months - talk about not proper. And then - spoiler alert - turns out she likes a little rough stuff after all, which seemed sort of weird since she'd been so abused for so long. I had a hard time keeping up.
Since it is the first book of the Hell's Eight, of course we had to meet the other 7 (Caine being #1) and their sweet feisty elderly female caretaker (yeah, she's younger than I am, so elderly, huh?) who keeps them all honest and cleaned up. And her man. And the dog. That all took a while.
I dunno, I listened to the whole thing, and decided the bad guys were really really evil and bad (boooo!! hisssss!) and the good guys were incredibly good (yay! whoo hoo!) in a sort of cartoony way. If you like erotic romance, fully described bodily fluids, butt seks and eye candy covers mixed with 19th century Texas Rangers, go git it. I'll save my audible.com credits, though, thank you very much.
I got it on audio, and that may or may not have colored my rating. The narrator was ok - I'd give her 3 stars. She had a southern accent thing going on - I'm not sure I've listened to anything by her before, so I don't know if that's her normal speech pattern or something for the book. Everyone had a southern accent. That's ok, it was Texas (decades ago - not sure exactly of the era, but "long ago", 19th century. Even those of Indian blood had the southern accent. Go figure.
I knew McCarty's work is a little more raw and explicit than mainstream, although I wouldn't say it's "romantica" (romance + erotica) so much as just, well, more explicit. I was expecting that. Somehow, though, it became almost pedantic. Ok, we're gonna spread some lips here, and there's gonna be some juicy bits and "cream" and then he's gonna have to taste her and at this point, I'm thinking, get it over with and let's get back to the story. It wasn't really sexy - more like a primer in ways to describe foreplay and sex in books, with lots of words that quickly became icky triggers for me, even though in other books they don't bother me. OK, call it a pussy - a few times, maybe. But in every other sentence it started to give me an eye twitch.
The heroine Desi started out feisty and someone who could take care of herself, then when she got a little cleaned up, she was this weird prudish girl who had been raised rich with not a care in the world, and thought so many things were not proper. And here she'd been a captive of comancheros and then used as a whore for several months - talk about not proper. And then - spoiler alert - turns out she likes a little rough stuff after all, which seemed sort of weird since she'd been so abused for so long. I had a hard time keeping up.
Since it is the first book of the Hell's Eight, of course we had to meet the other 7 (Caine being #1) and their sweet feisty elderly female caretaker (yeah, she's younger than I am, so elderly, huh?) who keeps them all honest and cleaned up. And her man. And the dog. That all took a while.
I dunno, I listened to the whole thing, and decided the bad guys were really really evil and bad (boooo!! hisssss!) and the good guys were incredibly good (yay! whoo hoo!) in a sort of cartoony way. If you like erotic romance, fully described bodily fluids, butt seks and eye candy covers mixed with 19th century Texas Rangers, go git it. I'll save my audible.com credits, though, thank you very much.
Friday, January 8, 2010
An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon *****
SPOILER ALERT if you don't want any details, don't read - and yes, I refer to some things that happen in my review, so there are spoilers.
This is the first Outlander book I listened to on audio first. Usually I read it first, then do the audio but the audio came out at the same time, so I just went ahead and listened. Davina Porter is such a wonderful narrator, that I didn't have any trouble following along. But now I'm having that THING you get with Outlander - you know, where you need to go back and really look again at something that happened earlier in the book. I really need to learn to use bookmarks on my ipod (is that possible? must google)
Of course, it was wonderful. A long, winding road of a story, going back and forth between times and dates and eras and countries. It's a story that keeps putting poor Claire and Jamie in danger's way - even when you know Jamie will find her and save her, or she him. Now we also have to worry about Roger and Bree - and Jem and Mandy! (and Ian and Rollo too) Lord John and Willie play big roles in this, and it will help a reader to have read all the Lord John books to keep up with various references.
Knowing a little American history would be helpful too - I grinned at Claire's trying to remember helping Bree with American history so she could remember when certain things happen. That would be me - shaking hands with Benedict Arnold and trying to remember exactly what he did when that makes him so infamous today!
The Revolutionary War is fully underway throughout the book, and Willie is an officer for the British side, making his Papa Lord John proud. He undergoes some harrowing experiences and gets in a scrape or 2 - he is only 19 or so at the time. Lord John is approached by a mysterious stranger - who is no stranger to him at all. There's a mystery, though. I cannot even recall if the mystery is fully resolved. It's almost a Lord John story-within-the-Claire/Jamie-story.
Jamie and Claire are determined to get to Scotland, presumably for Jamie's printing press, but also to finally return young Ian to his parents, more than 10 years after he was abducted by pirates. He's so different now - part Mohawk, very independent. But Ian and Jamie are both pressed into service for the rebels, and Claire travels along as company surgeon until they can make their way to a ship headed east.
Bree has a new job as an engineer near their Lallybroch home, and Roger stays home with the kids, doing various ongoing restoration, studying local music and even getting involved in the community after the local kids hear Jem give a great Gaelic curse. Gaelic is a dying language, and most of them don't know it - so Roger starts a class. But there's another mysterious stranger in the book, this time in current day Scotland - and he's no stranger either!
The closer you get to the end of the book, the faster things start - well, falling apart. Yes, J&C make it to Scotland (surely every fan has already read the famous Laoghaire scene?), but then - oh no! Fergus' son needs surgery in America, and old Ian is dying in Scotland, and Jem goes to spend the night with a trusted friend but is his father really trustworthy, or... is Jem being forced by him to time travel?
For a while it seemed as if there were going to be this one particular huge cliffhanger with Jamie and Claire - I prepared myself for it, but while it was resolved, there were issues now that Jamie is going to have to really prepare himself for... Let's just say that old plotline, the hero misses the ship and the ship sinks, makes an entrance at some point... and what would you do if you were Claire. Except you are not Claire, you're Omnipotent and Know All. Ew. (Jamie's fine, don't worry. But will he bitch slap John for what happened while they all thought Jamie lost at sea?)
And yes, a cliffhanger or two are dangling at the end - did Roger go too close to the stones? Will they find Jem?
Once again Gabaldon and Porter take me on a fantastic adventure and I really loved every minute. 4 more years! but 5 stars
This is the first Outlander book I listened to on audio first. Usually I read it first, then do the audio but the audio came out at the same time, so I just went ahead and listened. Davina Porter is such a wonderful narrator, that I didn't have any trouble following along. But now I'm having that THING you get with Outlander - you know, where you need to go back and really look again at something that happened earlier in the book. I really need to learn to use bookmarks on my ipod (is that possible? must google)
Of course, it was wonderful. A long, winding road of a story, going back and forth between times and dates and eras and countries. It's a story that keeps putting poor Claire and Jamie in danger's way - even when you know Jamie will find her and save her, or she him. Now we also have to worry about Roger and Bree - and Jem and Mandy! (and Ian and Rollo too) Lord John and Willie play big roles in this, and it will help a reader to have read all the Lord John books to keep up with various references.
Knowing a little American history would be helpful too - I grinned at Claire's trying to remember helping Bree with American history so she could remember when certain things happen. That would be me - shaking hands with Benedict Arnold and trying to remember exactly what he did when that makes him so infamous today!
The Revolutionary War is fully underway throughout the book, and Willie is an officer for the British side, making his Papa Lord John proud. He undergoes some harrowing experiences and gets in a scrape or 2 - he is only 19 or so at the time. Lord John is approached by a mysterious stranger - who is no stranger to him at all. There's a mystery, though. I cannot even recall if the mystery is fully resolved. It's almost a Lord John story-within-the-Claire/Jamie-story.
Jamie and Claire are determined to get to Scotland, presumably for Jamie's printing press, but also to finally return young Ian to his parents, more than 10 years after he was abducted by pirates. He's so different now - part Mohawk, very independent. But Ian and Jamie are both pressed into service for the rebels, and Claire travels along as company surgeon until they can make their way to a ship headed east.
Bree has a new job as an engineer near their Lallybroch home, and Roger stays home with the kids, doing various ongoing restoration, studying local music and even getting involved in the community after the local kids hear Jem give a great Gaelic curse. Gaelic is a dying language, and most of them don't know it - so Roger starts a class. But there's another mysterious stranger in the book, this time in current day Scotland - and he's no stranger either!
The closer you get to the end of the book, the faster things start - well, falling apart. Yes, J&C make it to Scotland (surely every fan has already read the famous Laoghaire scene?), but then - oh no! Fergus' son needs surgery in America, and old Ian is dying in Scotland, and Jem goes to spend the night with a trusted friend but is his father really trustworthy, or... is Jem being forced by him to time travel?
For a while it seemed as if there were going to be this one particular huge cliffhanger with Jamie and Claire - I prepared myself for it, but while it was resolved, there were issues now that Jamie is going to have to really prepare himself for... Let's just say that old plotline, the hero misses the ship and the ship sinks, makes an entrance at some point... and what would you do if you were Claire. Except you are not Claire, you're Omnipotent and Know All. Ew. (Jamie's fine, don't worry. But will he bitch slap John for what happened while they all thought Jamie lost at sea?)
And yes, a cliffhanger or two are dangling at the end - did Roger go too close to the stones? Will they find Jem?
Once again Gabaldon and Porter take me on a fantastic adventure and I really loved every minute. 4 more years! but 5 stars
Hot Pursuit by Suzanne Brockmann *****
I've been a Troubleshooter (TSS) fan since I picked up a book (not the first in the series) on the used book table, and have read them all - last 2 or maybe 3 on audio. I love the way the audio is done for the series: a woman reads all the sections written from a female point of view, and a man reads all the male pov. Brockmann uses several characters' pov to illustrate the story, including, like Linda Howard, the unknown perp's. The narrators are great, too - at the top of my list of great narrators.
If you don't know Brockmann or the TSSeries, you need to know she bases the books around a loosely knit group of men who started out as a SEAL team, and the women (who can't be SEALS) and as the series grew, added a couple of FBI agents, a local law enforcement officer or 2, and various other military and law-enforcement men and women. Each book generally focuses on one couple, with at least 1 other secondary romance, but the plot itself is not about the relationship as much as it is about solving a crime or facing a war/battle and how the characters react to it and to each other. At the beginning of the series, some of the secondary romances involved older couples - from and/or during World War II as flashbacks, and how they were faring now.
It's so layered - characters situations changing, characters being added, that while it might be possible to read as a stand-alone and not know all the characters, I like much more that it's more like an extended family. When she brings up inviting Rick Alvarez and his wife Annie, you remember them from Florida where Rick was local law involved in finding Sam's first wife and daughter. Many of the characters are now involved in a personal security firm called Troubleshooters, while others are still SEALS and FBI agents. They marry, they have kids, they live dangerous lives, they have great friendships - yeah, that would be my life in my dreams!!
In Hot Pursuit, an old nemesis from an earlier story reappears - The Dentist, known for viciously butchering his victims to death and taking their teeth. He's got a thing for Alyssa Locke, and he has a brilliant plan to seduce her to him by revealing himself for the first time in 2 years, knowing she'll be on the case, so he can kill her. Alyssa gets called by Savannah to come help a friend, a local politician who has received some threats. Alyssa takes Sam and baby Ash on site, and Jules joins them, bringing Robin. A number of other familiar characters are there - Dan Gillman, Izzy - yeah, child bride Eden gone, but Izzy still loves her, and some others. Dan takes the secondary romance this time - seducing the politician's best friend and office manager Jen. Everybody figures it's a good 2-week vacation, giving a politician some defense lessons and installing some security.
Lots of clues and characters and incidences are thrown in to keep you on the edge of your seat, and maybe someone else figured out the identity of The Dentist early on, but I sure didn't - in fact, that final scene even had me wondering if I was wrong, even though it was pretty clear who it was. Alyssa's Spidey senses were all out of whack - I guess having a baby will do that even to SuperWoman. Alyssa's the most kickass Troubleshooter female character there is, so when even she is fooled... yeah, her ol' cowboy Sam has to do a little CaveMan near the end (his favorite role, I think - especially since he's being such a good daddy). We got a little bit of the old Sam-and-Alyssa chemistry in bed too. Whew - nuff said. When they hated each other, though, there was a lot more tension.
Brockmann lets Dan be a complete asshole to Jen - he's so manipulative I was rolling my eyes. Was he always that way? I have a plan to go back and re-read the whole series some day anyway, so I'll find out then. He works Jen into letting him be her 2-week boyfriend, no strings attached, while everyone is still in the "this security job is going to be a vacation" mode, before anyone realizes there's a serial murderer involved. She lets herself fall, hook - line - and sinker - even while her brain is saying "don't go into the basement alone!!" (wait, that's a horror movie)
Then the adrenaline starts pumping - and, well it's another great one in the series! It was great to catch up on all the characters, even just the brief mentions (I wondered if the mentions got paid less than the main characters...) Except for the identity of The Dentist and locating all his victims, nothing is resolved in the story. Jen rejects Dan; we don't hear about Ken Carmody's health; Savannah wasn't brought up again; Alyssa and Sam are still together and we don't learn if she'll go on the President's team to Afghanistan; ditto Jules and Robin (with Jules tagged for the same team). Ok, just wait for the next book!
5 stars - audio book
If you don't know Brockmann or the TSSeries, you need to know she bases the books around a loosely knit group of men who started out as a SEAL team, and the women (who can't be SEALS) and as the series grew, added a couple of FBI agents, a local law enforcement officer or 2, and various other military and law-enforcement men and women. Each book generally focuses on one couple, with at least 1 other secondary romance, but the plot itself is not about the relationship as much as it is about solving a crime or facing a war/battle and how the characters react to it and to each other. At the beginning of the series, some of the secondary romances involved older couples - from and/or during World War II as flashbacks, and how they were faring now.
It's so layered - characters situations changing, characters being added, that while it might be possible to read as a stand-alone and not know all the characters, I like much more that it's more like an extended family. When she brings up inviting Rick Alvarez and his wife Annie, you remember them from Florida where Rick was local law involved in finding Sam's first wife and daughter. Many of the characters are now involved in a personal security firm called Troubleshooters, while others are still SEALS and FBI agents. They marry, they have kids, they live dangerous lives, they have great friendships - yeah, that would be my life in my dreams!!
In Hot Pursuit, an old nemesis from an earlier story reappears - The Dentist, known for viciously butchering his victims to death and taking their teeth. He's got a thing for Alyssa Locke, and he has a brilliant plan to seduce her to him by revealing himself for the first time in 2 years, knowing she'll be on the case, so he can kill her. Alyssa gets called by Savannah to come help a friend, a local politician who has received some threats. Alyssa takes Sam and baby Ash on site, and Jules joins them, bringing Robin. A number of other familiar characters are there - Dan Gillman, Izzy - yeah, child bride Eden gone, but Izzy still loves her, and some others. Dan takes the secondary romance this time - seducing the politician's best friend and office manager Jen. Everybody figures it's a good 2-week vacation, giving a politician some defense lessons and installing some security.
Lots of clues and characters and incidences are thrown in to keep you on the edge of your seat, and maybe someone else figured out the identity of The Dentist early on, but I sure didn't - in fact, that final scene even had me wondering if I was wrong, even though it was pretty clear who it was. Alyssa's Spidey senses were all out of whack - I guess having a baby will do that even to SuperWoman. Alyssa's the most kickass Troubleshooter female character there is, so when even she is fooled... yeah, her ol' cowboy Sam has to do a little CaveMan near the end (his favorite role, I think - especially since he's being such a good daddy). We got a little bit of the old Sam-and-Alyssa chemistry in bed too. Whew - nuff said. When they hated each other, though, there was a lot more tension.
Brockmann lets Dan be a complete asshole to Jen - he's so manipulative I was rolling my eyes. Was he always that way? I have a plan to go back and re-read the whole series some day anyway, so I'll find out then. He works Jen into letting him be her 2-week boyfriend, no strings attached, while everyone is still in the "this security job is going to be a vacation" mode, before anyone realizes there's a serial murderer involved. She lets herself fall, hook - line - and sinker - even while her brain is saying "don't go into the basement alone!!" (wait, that's a horror movie)
Then the adrenaline starts pumping - and, well it's another great one in the series! It was great to catch up on all the characters, even just the brief mentions (I wondered if the mentions got paid less than the main characters...) Except for the identity of The Dentist and locating all his victims, nothing is resolved in the story. Jen rejects Dan; we don't hear about Ken Carmody's health; Savannah wasn't brought up again; Alyssa and Sam are still together and we don't learn if she'll go on the President's team to Afghanistan; ditto Jules and Robin (with Jules tagged for the same team). Ok, just wait for the next book!
5 stars - audio book
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