What A Woman Needs by Caroline Linden ***

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

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

Then he meets said ancient beast.

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

The she meets said Stuart Drake.

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

3 stars, not bad, just not that great either

At Last Comes Love by Mary Balogh ***

At Last Comes Love by Mary Balogh

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips: EXCERPT

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

January 18...

Then Comes Seduction by Mary Balogh ***

Then Comes Seduction by Mary Balogh

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Comes Marriage by Mary Balogh ***

First Comes Marriage by Mary Balogh

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


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

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

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

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

Marry Me by Jo Goodman ***

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

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

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

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

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

Crazy For You by Jennifer Crusie ***

Crazy For You by Jennifer Crusie

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


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

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

Here's my original review from November 2008.

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

But it wasn't as good as I wanted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3 stars/mediocre.