Wednesday, January 20, 2016
2016 TBR Challenge: The Bridge by Rebecca Rogers Maher
Henry and Christa have the opposite of a "meet cute." They meet on a tower of the Brooklyn Bridge where they have each gone to commit suicide. Each of them feels sure they're making the right decision for themselves, but that they other should live. They strike a bargain---they'll spend 24 hours together trying to change each others' minds. They agree that each one will choose 3 things to show the other, and so they embark on a strange sort of date. As the day goes by they learn about what brought each of them to the bridge. Henry has suffered from severe depression for more than half his life. Medication and therapy have made it possible for him function but the struggle has left him exhausted and the resulting "half life" no longer feels worth the work. Christa survived breast cancer two years ago, but it cost her dearly. When the cancer returns she doesn't have the resources for another fight.
This is a tricky story for me to review. On one hand, I liked and cared about Henry and Christa and enjoyed the bond they formed. It was certainly easy to root for them. I liked Maher's writing and admire her willingness to tackle a difficult subject and stretch beyond the usual boundaries of romance. Taken purely as a kind of fairy tale The Bridge is a compelling story and I enjoyed it very much.
On the other hand, the psychology is problematic. I could write an essay on it that would be longer than the novella itself, but I'll limit myself to one thing----for a seriously depressed person the decision to commit suicide or not doesn't hinge on whether they love someone else enough. Falling in love doesn't fix mental illness and I wish this story didn't create the impression that it could.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Death By Darjeeling by Laura Childs
Theodosia Browning used to be an advertising exec, but she gave up the rat race & bought the Indigo Tea Shop in Charleston, SC. She runs it with the help of two employees, Drayton, an older man who is the shop’s resident tea expert, and Haley, a college student who does the baking for the shop. Haley’s friend Bethany occasionally helps out when they’re especially busy.
The shop hosts the refreshments for the neighborhood's annual charity event, the Lamplighter Tour. As the evening is winding down, much-hated local developer Hughes Barron is found dead with a tea cup in front of him and the evidence suggests that he was poisoned. Theo takes a dislike to the Detective in charge of the case and when Bethany seems to be on the suspect list Theo decides to investigate on her own. She soon has a list of suspects, but very little hard evidence. Then strange things begin to happen and it seems that Theo may be next on the killer’s hit list.
I have read and enjoyed my share of cozy mysteries involving sleuths whose day jobs have nothing whatsoever to do with solving crimes and I realize that they require a fair amount of suspension of disbelief. Even so, I think that in order to work there needs to be a plausible reason why the main character ends up investigating a murder. In this case I didn’t see any good reason for Theo to get involved.
Theo does feel protective of Bethany, but she wasn’t singled out for investigation. It certainly didn’t seem that the Detective was going to railroad her into to prison or anything. In fact, aside from Theo’s dislike of his manners there was nothing obviously incompetent about Detective Tidwell, so I saw no reason for her to believe he wouldn’t solve the case without her interference. There's talk about people staying away from the tea shop because of the poisoning, but that made no sense to me and felt as if was thrown in simply to manufacturing a reason for Theo to take matters into her won hands.
I also had issues with the resolution of the case. The identity of the killer felt like it was pulled out of thin air. Person X did it only because, based on the information presented, you had no reason to suspect Person X . I did like that Theo didn’t actually figure it out. Instead her cluelessness causes the killer to make a mistake and get caught. Given Theo’s lack of any investigative experience and generally random approach to the process it made sense that she never got things quite right.
Of course, Detective Tidwell didn’t look at it that way. After the killer has been arrested he assures Theo that it was her good work cracked the case. Because the cops always appreciate amateur sleuths and give them words of encouragement so that they’ll continue to investigate with no authorization in case a future mystery pops up. I rolled my eyes, but basically waved it off as a set up for their interaction in future books. Tidwell’s praise fits in with Theo’s generally level of popularity though. All the men seem to love her. She meets several men in the course of the investigation and ends up stalked by one and dating another.
Not that Theo is perfect. Childs describes her by saying that she’s not fat, but neither is she thin. She’s a size 10, after the holidays she's sometimes even a 12. Can you imagine? [/sarcasm] I’m in favor of authors writing characters who don’t look like super models, but I think it’s generally best to avoid mentioning a specific size or weight. All that does is make some percentage of the audience want to smack some sense into the writer and that’s not good.
In addition to the character and plot issues I had three general complaints about the writing. The first was the tendency to refer to many of the characters, including the victim, by both their first and last name every single time they were mentioned in either dialogue or description. I know that using both names for people you don’t know well is a bit of a Southernism, but it felt overdone and was annoying. The 2nd problem was that, even for the somewhat formal South, some of the dialogue felt very stilted. The 3rd problem was the odd head hopping. The overwhelming majority of the book is told in the 3rd person, limited to Theo’s POV. However, every now & then there was a paragraph or two from another character’s POV. It was both odd and annoying.
On the plus side, the book does a nice job evoking Charleston and the surrounding Low Country. It’s been many years since I was there last and this book served as a nice substitute for a visit. I also liked the facts about tea sprinkled throughout the book. It wasn't too heavy handed and since I love tea, I found the information interesting. Unfortunately neither of those positives countered the negatives.
Grade: C-
Will I read the next book in the series?: Probably not. In order to enjoy a cozy mystery series I have to really like the main character and I just didn’t warm to Theo. I didn’t hate it though and the library does have all the books, so if I get desperate for reading material at some point in the future I might give Gunpowder Green a try.
Where Are You Reading Challenge: South Carolina
The shop hosts the refreshments for the neighborhood's annual charity event, the Lamplighter Tour. As the evening is winding down, much-hated local developer Hughes Barron is found dead with a tea cup in front of him and the evidence suggests that he was poisoned. Theo takes a dislike to the Detective in charge of the case and when Bethany seems to be on the suspect list Theo decides to investigate on her own. She soon has a list of suspects, but very little hard evidence. Then strange things begin to happen and it seems that Theo may be next on the killer’s hit list.
I have read and enjoyed my share of cozy mysteries involving sleuths whose day jobs have nothing whatsoever to do with solving crimes and I realize that they require a fair amount of suspension of disbelief. Even so, I think that in order to work there needs to be a plausible reason why the main character ends up investigating a murder. In this case I didn’t see any good reason for Theo to get involved.
Theo does feel protective of Bethany, but she wasn’t singled out for investigation. It certainly didn’t seem that the Detective was going to railroad her into to prison or anything. In fact, aside from Theo’s dislike of his manners there was nothing obviously incompetent about Detective Tidwell, so I saw no reason for her to believe he wouldn’t solve the case without her interference. There's talk about people staying away from the tea shop because of the poisoning, but that made no sense to me and felt as if was thrown in simply to manufacturing a reason for Theo to take matters into her won hands.
I also had issues with the resolution of the case. The identity of the killer felt like it was pulled out of thin air. Person X did it only because, based on the information presented, you had no reason to suspect Person X . I did like that Theo didn’t actually figure it out. Instead her cluelessness causes the killer to make a mistake and get caught. Given Theo’s lack of any investigative experience and generally random approach to the process it made sense that she never got things quite right.
Of course, Detective Tidwell didn’t look at it that way. After the killer has been arrested he assures Theo that it was her good work cracked the case. Because the cops always appreciate amateur sleuths and give them words of encouragement so that they’ll continue to investigate with no authorization in case a future mystery pops up. I rolled my eyes, but basically waved it off as a set up for their interaction in future books. Tidwell’s praise fits in with Theo’s generally level of popularity though. All the men seem to love her. She meets several men in the course of the investigation and ends up stalked by one and dating another.
Not that Theo is perfect. Childs describes her by saying that she’s not fat, but neither is she thin. She’s a size 10, after the holidays she's sometimes even a 12. Can you imagine? [/sarcasm] I’m in favor of authors writing characters who don’t look like super models, but I think it’s generally best to avoid mentioning a specific size or weight. All that does is make some percentage of the audience want to smack some sense into the writer and that’s not good.
In addition to the character and plot issues I had three general complaints about the writing. The first was the tendency to refer to many of the characters, including the victim, by both their first and last name every single time they were mentioned in either dialogue or description. I know that using both names for people you don’t know well is a bit of a Southernism, but it felt overdone and was annoying. The 2nd problem was that, even for the somewhat formal South, some of the dialogue felt very stilted. The 3rd problem was the odd head hopping. The overwhelming majority of the book is told in the 3rd person, limited to Theo’s POV. However, every now & then there was a paragraph or two from another character’s POV. It was both odd and annoying.
On the plus side, the book does a nice job evoking Charleston and the surrounding Low Country. It’s been many years since I was there last and this book served as a nice substitute for a visit. I also liked the facts about tea sprinkled throughout the book. It wasn't too heavy handed and since I love tea, I found the information interesting. Unfortunately neither of those positives countered the negatives.
Grade: C-
Will I read the next book in the series?: Probably not. In order to enjoy a cozy mystery series I have to really like the main character and I just didn’t warm to Theo. I didn’t hate it though and the library does have all the books, so if I get desperate for reading material at some point in the future I might give Gunpowder Green a try.
Where Are You Reading Challenge: South Carolina
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
2011 TBR Challenge: Defending the Rancher’s Daughter by Carla Cassidy
This is book 2 in the Wild West Bodyguards series about the West family and their business, Wild West Protective Services. A friend gave these to me a couple years ago and they just never floated to the top of the TBR until now. Unfortunately at some point book 1 in the series, Protecting the Princess, disappeared. I decided to break my usual rule and start with book 2, which turned out not to be a problem.
Kate Sampson’s father, Gray, was killed in a fall from a horse and since then Kate has had the sense that things aren’t right on their ranch. She can’t accept that Gray’s death was truly an accident and when it seems that someone is trying to kill her she realizes that she needs help. The only person that she can think to call is Zack West. She’s known him since she was a child and he was a confused teenager befriended by Gray. Kate and Zach never got along. She resented the time her father spent with Zach and he thought she was a spoiled drama queen. Their last meeting was particularly acrimonious and Kate isn’t anxious to renew acquaintances, but she knows that Zach loved her father and she’s counting on him wanting justice for Gray’s murder.
Zach’s last protection assignment went terribly wrong and he’s quit Wild West Protective Services and returned to the family ranch to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. Kate’s call for help comes as an unwelcome surprise, but he can’t bring himself to tell her no. Gray’s death hit Zach hard and he feels that he owes it to his friend to help his daughter. Zach figures that he’ll go through the motions and sooth Kate’s fears and that will be the end of it. Then he finds evidence that Gray really was murdered and finds himself back on protective duty. Spending so much time in close contact with Kate leaves him wondering if she’s still the same resentful child he once knew or if she’s really grown into a woman worth knowing. As the danger on the ranch increases and Zach is unable to find any leads he starts to worry that he may never get the chance to find out.
I’m not a fan of romances where the h/h have a significant difference in age and first met when the heroine was a child. That always feels a little skeevy to me, even when there’s no objective reason to feel that way. Once I got past that factor I found myself liking Kate and Zach. They’re each carry a lot of baggage. As much as she tries Kate just can’t stop resenting the time Zach spent with her father. In Kate’s eyes Zach had his own large, loving family and still insisted on taking the attention of her only parent. Zach has no idea that she feels that way. He simply remembers her acting like a brat and would just as soon forget it. They get to know and like each other in the present, but the past is still looming in the background. The big air-clearing fight and its resolution worked for me.
The mystery of Gray’s death and the attempts on Kate’s life worked less well. My usual complaint with category length suspense is that the mystery is solved too quickly. In this case the problem was just the opposite. The mystery carries over to later books in the series and the only way to extend it was to have Kate and Zach totally fail to ask the obvious questions about the crime. That was especially a problem for the character of Zach. He has years of experience and is considering a career in law enforcement, so having him make such an obvious error does him no favors. It was especially jarring because in other ways he comes across as smart, which is what you would expect for someone who did the sort of protective work that he did. The problem didn’t ruin the book for me, but I would have given it a higher grade if Ms Cassidy had found a way to allow Zach to be smarter.
Grade C+
Will I read the next book in the series?: Yes. It's already in my TBR and I liked this one well enough to read about the next West brother.
Where Are You Reading Challenge: Oklahoma
Kate Sampson’s father, Gray, was killed in a fall from a horse and since then Kate has had the sense that things aren’t right on their ranch. She can’t accept that Gray’s death was truly an accident and when it seems that someone is trying to kill her she realizes that she needs help. The only person that she can think to call is Zack West. She’s known him since she was a child and he was a confused teenager befriended by Gray. Kate and Zach never got along. She resented the time her father spent with Zach and he thought she was a spoiled drama queen. Their last meeting was particularly acrimonious and Kate isn’t anxious to renew acquaintances, but she knows that Zach loved her father and she’s counting on him wanting justice for Gray’s murder.
Zach’s last protection assignment went terribly wrong and he’s quit Wild West Protective Services and returned to the family ranch to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. Kate’s call for help comes as an unwelcome surprise, but he can’t bring himself to tell her no. Gray’s death hit Zach hard and he feels that he owes it to his friend to help his daughter. Zach figures that he’ll go through the motions and sooth Kate’s fears and that will be the end of it. Then he finds evidence that Gray really was murdered and finds himself back on protective duty. Spending so much time in close contact with Kate leaves him wondering if she’s still the same resentful child he once knew or if she’s really grown into a woman worth knowing. As the danger on the ranch increases and Zach is unable to find any leads he starts to worry that he may never get the chance to find out.
I’m not a fan of romances where the h/h have a significant difference in age and first met when the heroine was a child. That always feels a little skeevy to me, even when there’s no objective reason to feel that way. Once I got past that factor I found myself liking Kate and Zach. They’re each carry a lot of baggage. As much as she tries Kate just can’t stop resenting the time Zach spent with her father. In Kate’s eyes Zach had his own large, loving family and still insisted on taking the attention of her only parent. Zach has no idea that she feels that way. He simply remembers her acting like a brat and would just as soon forget it. They get to know and like each other in the present, but the past is still looming in the background. The big air-clearing fight and its resolution worked for me.
The mystery of Gray’s death and the attempts on Kate’s life worked less well. My usual complaint with category length suspense is that the mystery is solved too quickly. In this case the problem was just the opposite. The mystery carries over to later books in the series and the only way to extend it was to have Kate and Zach totally fail to ask the obvious questions about the crime. That was especially a problem for the character of Zach. He has years of experience and is considering a career in law enforcement, so having him make such an obvious error does him no favors. It was especially jarring because in other ways he comes across as smart, which is what you would expect for someone who did the sort of protective work that he did. The problem didn’t ruin the book for me, but I would have given it a higher grade if Ms Cassidy had found a way to allow Zach to be smarter.
Grade C+
Will I read the next book in the series?: Yes. It's already in my TBR and I liked this one well enough to read about the next West brother.
Where Are You Reading Challenge: Oklahoma
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Danger In A Red Dress by Christina Dodd
After the disaster with Tongue in Chic I considered cutting my losses, but I had a generally positive impression of Gabe so I decided to give this one a try.
Note: This book was the final installment in both the Fortune Hunters series, and another Dodd series, The Lost Texas Hearts. There were a few things that made it obvious that this book tied to a second series, but that didn’t affect my ability to follow the story.
Hannah Grey is a home care nurse in desperate need of a job when Carrick Manly hires her to take care of his mother at Balfour House, the family home in Maine. Hannah is initially thrilled to have the job, but it doesn’t take her long to suspect that something is very wrong. Melinda Manly is a very difficult patient and she and her son do not get along at all. Hannah is also disturbed by the change in Carrick’s attitude. He soon makes it clear that Melinda has something he wants and he expects Hannah to help him get it. When she refuses Carrick frames Hannah for crimes that he committed. When she isn’t able to get anyone to believe that she’s innocent she goes on the run.
When the police aren’t able to locate Hannah Carrick turns to his half-brother, investigator Gabe Prescott, for help tracking her down. While Gabe is following Hannah he starts to suspect that the case is not what it seems, which leaves him torn. His background has left him so desperate to think well of his biological relations that he can’t bring himself to doubt Carrick’s story, but he’s strongly attracted to Hannah and finds it difficult to believe that she’s a dangerous criminal. He tries to get close to enough to Hannah to find the truth, but only succeeds in falling in love with her without telling her who he really is or why he’s with her.
When Hannah discovers the truth she decides that there’s no one she can trust and the only hope she has of ever getting her life back is to return to Balfour House on her own and find proof to clear her name. Gabe is then forced to chose between believing the brother he only recently found and the woman he’s fallen for. In the process he finds out the truth about his long-lost biological father.
I liked both Hannah and Gabe more than I liked the preceding pairings in the series. I found their issues, both individually and jointly, fairly believable and reasonable. Hannah made one bad decision and her whole life fell apart. It’s understandable that she has trust issues and that she hates thinking that she has made another error in judgment. Gabe is forced to deal with the fact that he’s dragging around more issues from his childhood than he had realized. All of that worked for me. I also liked the fact that in the end Gabe’s whole family comes through for him and helps him fix the mess he made with Hannah. It was a bit cheesy, but I liked Gabe enough that I didn’t care.
The other good thing about this final installment in the series is that it actually got me interested in Nathan Manly’s disappearance and I wasn’t bored by the resolution.
Grade: C.
So, the 4 books in this series are tied together by the mystery of the disappearance of Nathan Manly and the fact that all 4 heroes lied about their identities. The mystery was OK, but the parade of lying wasn’t a good thing. Neither was the lack of credibility in most of the plots and the annoying behavior of most of the characters.
Series Grade: D
Note: This book was the final installment in both the Fortune Hunters series, and another Dodd series, The Lost Texas Hearts. There were a few things that made it obvious that this book tied to a second series, but that didn’t affect my ability to follow the story.
Hannah Grey is a home care nurse in desperate need of a job when Carrick Manly hires her to take care of his mother at Balfour House, the family home in Maine. Hannah is initially thrilled to have the job, but it doesn’t take her long to suspect that something is very wrong. Melinda Manly is a very difficult patient and she and her son do not get along at all. Hannah is also disturbed by the change in Carrick’s attitude. He soon makes it clear that Melinda has something he wants and he expects Hannah to help him get it. When she refuses Carrick frames Hannah for crimes that he committed. When she isn’t able to get anyone to believe that she’s innocent she goes on the run.
When the police aren’t able to locate Hannah Carrick turns to his half-brother, investigator Gabe Prescott, for help tracking her down. While Gabe is following Hannah he starts to suspect that the case is not what it seems, which leaves him torn. His background has left him so desperate to think well of his biological relations that he can’t bring himself to doubt Carrick’s story, but he’s strongly attracted to Hannah and finds it difficult to believe that she’s a dangerous criminal. He tries to get close to enough to Hannah to find the truth, but only succeeds in falling in love with her without telling her who he really is or why he’s with her.
When Hannah discovers the truth she decides that there’s no one she can trust and the only hope she has of ever getting her life back is to return to Balfour House on her own and find proof to clear her name. Gabe is then forced to chose between believing the brother he only recently found and the woman he’s fallen for. In the process he finds out the truth about his long-lost biological father.
I liked both Hannah and Gabe more than I liked the preceding pairings in the series. I found their issues, both individually and jointly, fairly believable and reasonable. Hannah made one bad decision and her whole life fell apart. It’s understandable that she has trust issues and that she hates thinking that she has made another error in judgment. Gabe is forced to deal with the fact that he’s dragging around more issues from his childhood than he had realized. All of that worked for me. I also liked the fact that in the end Gabe’s whole family comes through for him and helps him fix the mess he made with Hannah. It was a bit cheesy, but I liked Gabe enough that I didn’t care.
The other good thing about this final installment in the series is that it actually got me interested in Nathan Manly’s disappearance and I wasn’t bored by the resolution.
Grade: C.
So, the 4 books in this series are tied together by the mystery of the disappearance of Nathan Manly and the fact that all 4 heroes lied about their identities. The mystery was OK, but the parade of lying wasn’t a good thing. Neither was the lack of credibility in most of the plots and the annoying behavior of most of the characters.
Series Grade: D
Tongue in Chic by Christina Dodd
The weather was still terrible and I was still desperate, so I convinced myself that the slight improvement was the start of a positive trend and moved on the book #3.
Meadow Szarvos' grandmother was a famous painter who took her baby daughter & escaped a stifling marriage to a wealthy man. Before she died she told Meadow that she had left her masterpiece behind when she ran. That painting never went on the market so Meadow assumes that it is still be in the house. Her mother is desperately ill, and Meadow needs money for her treatment so she decides to break and steal the painting. She has no experience as a thief, but nevertheless has no trouble getting into the house. A state of the art security system doesn’t even slow her down, but she’s completely stymied by the fact that the painting is no longer hanging over the mantle. Apparently it had never occurred to her that it might have been moved in 60+ years.
While she’s trying to decide what to do she’s caught by Devlin Fitzwilliam, the new owner of the house. She trips trying to get away and bangs her head, then in an attempt to escape responsibility for the break in she claims that the head injury has given her amnesia. Because Meadow is just that hot Devlin calls her bluff by pretending that she's his long lost wife. Meadow wants to stay in the house so she can search for the painting, so she decides to play along. Devlin keeps the lie going because he wants to get into Meadow's pants. They're both lying and they each know that the other is lying, but neither can do anything about it without admitting to their own lie, so they both just go right on lying. Meadow keeps pretending to have amnesia and Devlin keeps pretending that they're married. He even starts telling other people that Meadow is his wife. Naturally they end up in bed and the sex is phenomenal. Afterward they’re lying in bed and Devlin does something to annoy Meadow and she responds by giving him a “purple nurple”. Seriously. She not only pinches him hard enough to bruise, she refers to it as a “purple nurple”. What adult does that? At that point I realized that even if I was snowed in for a week I’d never be desperate enough to continue reading this story and “WTH?” became DNF.
Grade: DNF
Meadow Szarvos' grandmother was a famous painter who took her baby daughter & escaped a stifling marriage to a wealthy man. Before she died she told Meadow that she had left her masterpiece behind when she ran. That painting never went on the market so Meadow assumes that it is still be in the house. Her mother is desperately ill, and Meadow needs money for her treatment so she decides to break and steal the painting. She has no experience as a thief, but nevertheless has no trouble getting into the house. A state of the art security system doesn’t even slow her down, but she’s completely stymied by the fact that the painting is no longer hanging over the mantle. Apparently it had never occurred to her that it might have been moved in 60+ years.
While she’s trying to decide what to do she’s caught by Devlin Fitzwilliam, the new owner of the house. She trips trying to get away and bangs her head, then in an attempt to escape responsibility for the break in she claims that the head injury has given her amnesia. Because Meadow is just that hot Devlin calls her bluff by pretending that she's his long lost wife. Meadow wants to stay in the house so she can search for the painting, so she decides to play along. Devlin keeps the lie going because he wants to get into Meadow's pants. They're both lying and they each know that the other is lying, but neither can do anything about it without admitting to their own lie, so they both just go right on lying. Meadow keeps pretending to have amnesia and Devlin keeps pretending that they're married. He even starts telling other people that Meadow is his wife. Naturally they end up in bed and the sex is phenomenal. Afterward they’re lying in bed and Devlin does something to annoy Meadow and she responds by giving him a “purple nurple”. Seriously. She not only pinches him hard enough to bruise, she refers to it as a “purple nurple”. What adult does that? At that point I realized that even if I was snowed in for a week I’d never be desperate enough to continue reading this story and “WTH?” became DNF.
Grade: DNF
Monday, January 17, 2011
Thigh High by Christina Dodd
This is the second book in the Fortune Hunters series. I disliked the first one so much that I normally wouldn’t have bothered with the second, but I was snowed in and desperate, so I waded in.
Every year during Mardi Gras season two people in elaborate disguises rob a bank in New Orleans. The press has dubbed the pair the Beaded Bandits, but aside from speculation about their costumes the robberies aren’t getting much attention. The amounts taken by the Bandits have been small and they’ve never hurt anyone, so the case is a low priority for the FBI. The NOPD is so overwhelmed during Mardi Gras that they aren’t able to give the robberies much attention either.
Jeremiah MacNaught is the owner of the bank whose branches are being robbed. He hates thieves, not being in control and being made to look like a fool and he’s determined to stop the robberies even if it means solving the crimes himself. He has one suspect, an employee in one of his banks named Ionessa Dahl. He’s convinced that Ms Dahl is the “inside man”, feeding information to the Bandits to help them plan the robberies. With Mardi Gras season once again in full swing it’s only a matter of time before the Beaded Bandits strike again and Jeremiah decides to go undercover in his own bank to get the proof he needs to have Ms Dahl arrested. His problem is that in person Ionessa Dahl is even more attractive than she seemed in the security videos of the robberies and Mac quickly finds himself loosing his objectivity.
Nessa Dahl has no idea that she’s a robbery suspect. Years ago she made an error on the job that allowed a teller to steal $500, but as far as Nessa knows the only consequence of that mistake is her inability to get promoted. She can’t get work at any other bank in New Orleans and she can’t leave the city, so she simply continues to work hard and hope to someday move up to a better position. She needs the promotion not simply for professional pride, but because she supports her two elderly aunts who raised her after she was orphaned as a child. Money is so tight that they’re had to take in borders and Nessa desperately wants to be able to send them all packing. She believes that the longed-for promotion has finally come through, only to be informed that she’s actually been assigned to act as a go-fer for the insurance investigator who’s in town to work on the case of the Beaded Bandits. She resents the menial work, but that doesn’t stop her from wanting to get to know Mac much better.
Like its predecessor, this book had some serious problems with both of the main characters and with the plot. If your name is Jeremiah MacNaught and you want to go undercover in a business that you own it seems to me that you should think of a better fake name than Jeremiah Mac. The fact that no one commented on the similarity between the two names made it seem like the entire bank was staffed by the dimwitted. Still, I could have overlooked Jeremiah’s lack of an original pseudonym. I was also willing to play along with the idea that he was half in love with Nessa after watching her on the security videos of the robberies and fell the rest of the way in love with her after spending only one day with her. I was not willing to believe that he proposed marriage before telling Nessa who he really was and was then surprised that she was furious and broke the engagement when she found out.
I thought breaking the engagement was perfectly reasonable, but I had other issues with Nessa and found her a little hard to take at times. Her constant remarks about how rude Yankees are certainly got old long before the book was finished and in some ways she was perilously close to being a Mary Sue. The main problem being that she seems to know everyone in New Orleans and the only people who don’t love her are evil. Her boss in particular is so broadly drawn that she’s almost a cartoon.
It didn’t help that Nessa never took any effective steps to deal with the evil boss. The book attempts to explain her lack of action by saying that she didn’t have any choice, but I didn’t really buy that. I also found it annoying that everything about Nessa’s home life is either clichéd or overly cute. Her aunts are classic Eccentric Southern Ladies and they have a faithful family retainer in the form of an African American housekeeper who apparently never had any life separate from her employers. The boarders are all “colorful”, and everyone in New Orleans knows the Dahl House and is dying for an invitation to their famous annual Mardi Gras party. (Get it--- Doll House. Dollhouse. How precious.)
The most problematic aspect of the book was the resolution to the case of the Beaded Bandits. To avoid spoilers I’ll just say that I was not charmed by the fact that everyone except Mac was willing to frame a dead man for crimes he did not commit in order to let the real Bandits off the hook. The dead man wasn’t a good guy, but a frame is a frame and that’s really Not OK. Considering the NOPD’s well-publicized problems with corruption it seemed especially poor form to portray the Chief of Police as being in on the frame up.
The subplot about the relationship between the books’ heroes was no more interesting to me in this book than it was in Trouble in High Heels.
In the end I liked this book more than Trouble, but only because I found Mac & Nessa less annoying than Brandi and Roberto and I didn’t feel like Nessa’s mistakes were an insult to professional women everywhere.
Grade: C-
Every year during Mardi Gras season two people in elaborate disguises rob a bank in New Orleans. The press has dubbed the pair the Beaded Bandits, but aside from speculation about their costumes the robberies aren’t getting much attention. The amounts taken by the Bandits have been small and they’ve never hurt anyone, so the case is a low priority for the FBI. The NOPD is so overwhelmed during Mardi Gras that they aren’t able to give the robberies much attention either.
Jeremiah MacNaught is the owner of the bank whose branches are being robbed. He hates thieves, not being in control and being made to look like a fool and he’s determined to stop the robberies even if it means solving the crimes himself. He has one suspect, an employee in one of his banks named Ionessa Dahl. He’s convinced that Ms Dahl is the “inside man”, feeding information to the Bandits to help them plan the robberies. With Mardi Gras season once again in full swing it’s only a matter of time before the Beaded Bandits strike again and Jeremiah decides to go undercover in his own bank to get the proof he needs to have Ms Dahl arrested. His problem is that in person Ionessa Dahl is even more attractive than she seemed in the security videos of the robberies and Mac quickly finds himself loosing his objectivity.
Nessa Dahl has no idea that she’s a robbery suspect. Years ago she made an error on the job that allowed a teller to steal $500, but as far as Nessa knows the only consequence of that mistake is her inability to get promoted. She can’t get work at any other bank in New Orleans and she can’t leave the city, so she simply continues to work hard and hope to someday move up to a better position. She needs the promotion not simply for professional pride, but because she supports her two elderly aunts who raised her after she was orphaned as a child. Money is so tight that they’re had to take in borders and Nessa desperately wants to be able to send them all packing. She believes that the longed-for promotion has finally come through, only to be informed that she’s actually been assigned to act as a go-fer for the insurance investigator who’s in town to work on the case of the Beaded Bandits. She resents the menial work, but that doesn’t stop her from wanting to get to know Mac much better.
Like its predecessor, this book had some serious problems with both of the main characters and with the plot. If your name is Jeremiah MacNaught and you want to go undercover in a business that you own it seems to me that you should think of a better fake name than Jeremiah Mac. The fact that no one commented on the similarity between the two names made it seem like the entire bank was staffed by the dimwitted. Still, I could have overlooked Jeremiah’s lack of an original pseudonym. I was also willing to play along with the idea that he was half in love with Nessa after watching her on the security videos of the robberies and fell the rest of the way in love with her after spending only one day with her. I was not willing to believe that he proposed marriage before telling Nessa who he really was and was then surprised that she was furious and broke the engagement when she found out.
I thought breaking the engagement was perfectly reasonable, but I had other issues with Nessa and found her a little hard to take at times. Her constant remarks about how rude Yankees are certainly got old long before the book was finished and in some ways she was perilously close to being a Mary Sue. The main problem being that she seems to know everyone in New Orleans and the only people who don’t love her are evil. Her boss in particular is so broadly drawn that she’s almost a cartoon.
It didn’t help that Nessa never took any effective steps to deal with the evil boss. The book attempts to explain her lack of action by saying that she didn’t have any choice, but I didn’t really buy that. I also found it annoying that everything about Nessa’s home life is either clichéd or overly cute. Her aunts are classic Eccentric Southern Ladies and they have a faithful family retainer in the form of an African American housekeeper who apparently never had any life separate from her employers. The boarders are all “colorful”, and everyone in New Orleans knows the Dahl House and is dying for an invitation to their famous annual Mardi Gras party. (Get it--- Doll House. Dollhouse. How precious.)
The most problematic aspect of the book was the resolution to the case of the Beaded Bandits. To avoid spoilers I’ll just say that I was not charmed by the fact that everyone except Mac was willing to frame a dead man for crimes he did not commit in order to let the real Bandits off the hook. The dead man wasn’t a good guy, but a frame is a frame and that’s really Not OK. Considering the NOPD’s well-publicized problems with corruption it seemed especially poor form to portray the Chief of Police as being in on the frame up.
The subplot about the relationship between the books’ heroes was no more interesting to me in this book than it was in Trouble in High Heels.
In the end I liked this book more than Trouble, but only because I found Mac & Nessa less annoying than Brandi and Roberto and I didn’t feel like Nessa’s mistakes were an insult to professional women everywhere.
Grade: C-
Trouble in High Heels by Christina Dodd
This is the first book in the Fortune Hunters series.
Brandi Michaels has just graduated from law school and moved to Chicago to be with her fiancée and start a job with one of the city’s most prestigious law firms. She hasn’t even started unpacking her boxes when her fiancée calls from Vegas to inform her that he just married his girlfriend because she’s pregnant, and by the way he needs Brandi’s engagement ring back so he can give it to the new Mrs. Brandi hangs up on him and decides to wash that scumbag out of her hair by buying a killer dress and shoes and picking up a hot guy at the charity party she’s scheduled to attend. There she meets the perfect one night stand, an incredibly sexy Italian count named Roberto. She goes back to his hotel and has such a wonderful time that she ends up spending the weekend. She goes home Sunday night thinking that Roberto was an enjoyable interlude and she’ll never see him again. Unfortunately for her, when she arrives at her new job she discovers that Roberto is a client. He’s accused of committing a number of high profile thefts and she’s been assigned to the group working on his defense.
Brandi knows that she should tell her boss that she can’t work on Roberto’s case, but she doesn’t want to admit that she slept with him without really knowing who he was. She’s very aware that people at the firm believe she only got her job because the senior partner is an old family friend and she doesn’t want to give them more reason to doubt her intelligence and skill as a lawyer. Roberto wants to be near her so he encourages her not to say anything and Brandi decides to throw ethics to the wind and to keep quiet about their association, even though she knows it will cost her her career if anyone finds out. She ends up not only working on the case, but assigned to babysit him 24/7, which results in Brandi being drawn into Roberto’s rather mysterious behavior. Is he guilty? Once Brandi starts falling in love, does she really even care?
I really wanted to like this book, but just couldn’t. There were simply far too many problems problems both of the main characters and the plot.
Thanks to her emotionally abusive father, Brandi is rather insecure about her intelligence and she’s anxious to be taken seriously for her legal skills, but she constantly behaves in an incredibly unprofessional manner. She knows that her colleagues have serious questions about how she got her job and that they’ll be attending the charity party, but she still decides that it makes perfect sense to use the party as a place to pick up a hot guy. That’s like hooking up at the company Christmas party---not a good idea. If that was the worst thing she did I probably wouldn’t have minded, but it wasn’t.
Someone breaks into her apartment the night before her first day at her job. As a result of dealing with the police and trying to clean up, she has trouble getting it together in the morning. She's not dead, so she really should still have been on time for her first day. Instead she arrives late and full of excuses. She then gets snippy with her new coworkers at her very first meeting and commits the aforementioned major ethical breech within a half hour of her tardy arrival. She totally blows her first assignment and then instead of letting her boss know what happened she goes to lunch with Roberto without bothering to call the office. In other words, she simply disappears for hours on her first day of work.
At lunch she orders garlic kielbasa with onions & sauerkraut so that her breath will be so bad that Roberto won’t hit on her and tempt her back into bed with him. Again, this is the middle of her first day at a new job. Presumably she is planning to return to the office for the afternoon where she will once again be in contact with the coworkers who already dislike her. Under those circumstances stinking up the joint is not a smart move and she needed to find another way to control her hormones.
When her boss calls her and expresses his displeasure with Brandi’s performance and disappearance she responds by going off on him. Instead of apologizing for being 4 hours late getting back to the office she acts like she’s doing the firm a favor by working at all because her apartment was broken into the night before and she really needs to be home cleaning. She also throws in the fact that she’s upset because her fiancée dumped her. Way to set the cause of workplace equality back about 30 years. After all, who could possibly expect a woman to be professional and responsible on her first day at a new job when she could be cleaning and crying over a man? When her boss reacts poorly to Brandi’s insubordination she threatens him with a gender based discrimination suit. Because that doesn’t trivialize the real discrimination faced by women, at all.
At that point I would normally have simply tossed the book aside and given it a hearty DNF. Unfortunately, the promised snow had arrived and I was stuck in the house and desperate for reading material, so I forged ahead. Things did not improve.
Roberto’s dialogue was so riddled with clichés that I spent most of the book thinking that he was putting people on by acting like a stereotypical snotty, titled European. Sadly, that was not the case and he really did talk and act that way. That’s definitely not my idea of hero material. Things got worse when he took it upon himself to chide Brandi about her relationship with her mother. Roberto barely knew Brandi, he didn’t know her mother at all and he knew nothing about their history and yet he felt perfectly entitled to chastise Brandi like child. Brandi did have things to work out with her mom, but it was not Roberto’s place to stick his nose in, especially in such a condescending way There is no amount of sexy that can make up for that.
The plot wasn’t any better than the characters. Nothing about Roberto’s case made any sense. People kept talking about the fact that the CIA was after him. He was accused of stealing jewels, not spying or industrial espionage. Unless the items stolen are state secrets, theft is not the CIA’s bailiwick, so the repeated mentions of Agency involvement made me highly doubtful about the quality of Ms Dodd’s research. Of course that was nothing compared to the ridiculous circumstances that lead to Brandi being placed in charge of Roberto. That plot point was nothing more than a cheap way to force them to spend more time together so that Brandi could get involved with Robert’s Mysterious Secret and meet his grandfather.
To say one positive thing about the book, the 20 or so pages involving the grandfather were sort of charming. Not exactly original, but charming. If the whole book had had the same tone as that chapter this review would be going much better. Oh well.
The book left no cliché unused, including the tango scene and the sex in an elevator scene (which doubled as the “sex because they think they’re about to die” scene). The truth about Roberto’s Mysterious Secret was exactly what you would expect it to be. Naturally Brandi had no clue right up until the big reveal and then got very angry at Roberto for not telling her before. The method that Roberto used to beg for Brandi’s forgiveness was incredibly dumb. It involved him showing up at her office in the middle of a work day in a ridiculous costume and getting her coworkers in help him propose to her. The happy couple then celebrated their engagement by locking themselves in the conference room and having sex, proving that getting her HEA in no way improved Brandi’s standards of professional conduct.
A plot point about Roberto’s biological father was introduced during the big reveal and ties this book to the rest of the series. By then I was far too annoyed to be intrigued.
Grade: D
Brandi Michaels has just graduated from law school and moved to Chicago to be with her fiancée and start a job with one of the city’s most prestigious law firms. She hasn’t even started unpacking her boxes when her fiancée calls from Vegas to inform her that he just married his girlfriend because she’s pregnant, and by the way he needs Brandi’s engagement ring back so he can give it to the new Mrs. Brandi hangs up on him and decides to wash that scumbag out of her hair by buying a killer dress and shoes and picking up a hot guy at the charity party she’s scheduled to attend. There she meets the perfect one night stand, an incredibly sexy Italian count named Roberto. She goes back to his hotel and has such a wonderful time that she ends up spending the weekend. She goes home Sunday night thinking that Roberto was an enjoyable interlude and she’ll never see him again. Unfortunately for her, when she arrives at her new job she discovers that Roberto is a client. He’s accused of committing a number of high profile thefts and she’s been assigned to the group working on his defense.
Brandi knows that she should tell her boss that she can’t work on Roberto’s case, but she doesn’t want to admit that she slept with him without really knowing who he was. She’s very aware that people at the firm believe she only got her job because the senior partner is an old family friend and she doesn’t want to give them more reason to doubt her intelligence and skill as a lawyer. Roberto wants to be near her so he encourages her not to say anything and Brandi decides to throw ethics to the wind and to keep quiet about their association, even though she knows it will cost her her career if anyone finds out. She ends up not only working on the case, but assigned to babysit him 24/7, which results in Brandi being drawn into Roberto’s rather mysterious behavior. Is he guilty? Once Brandi starts falling in love, does she really even care?
I really wanted to like this book, but just couldn’t. There were simply far too many problems problems both of the main characters and the plot.
Thanks to her emotionally abusive father, Brandi is rather insecure about her intelligence and she’s anxious to be taken seriously for her legal skills, but she constantly behaves in an incredibly unprofessional manner. She knows that her colleagues have serious questions about how she got her job and that they’ll be attending the charity party, but she still decides that it makes perfect sense to use the party as a place to pick up a hot guy. That’s like hooking up at the company Christmas party---not a good idea. If that was the worst thing she did I probably wouldn’t have minded, but it wasn’t.
Someone breaks into her apartment the night before her first day at her job. As a result of dealing with the police and trying to clean up, she has trouble getting it together in the morning. She's not dead, so she really should still have been on time for her first day. Instead she arrives late and full of excuses. She then gets snippy with her new coworkers at her very first meeting and commits the aforementioned major ethical breech within a half hour of her tardy arrival. She totally blows her first assignment and then instead of letting her boss know what happened she goes to lunch with Roberto without bothering to call the office. In other words, she simply disappears for hours on her first day of work.
At lunch she orders garlic kielbasa with onions & sauerkraut so that her breath will be so bad that Roberto won’t hit on her and tempt her back into bed with him. Again, this is the middle of her first day at a new job. Presumably she is planning to return to the office for the afternoon where she will once again be in contact with the coworkers who already dislike her. Under those circumstances stinking up the joint is not a smart move and she needed to find another way to control her hormones.
When her boss calls her and expresses his displeasure with Brandi’s performance and disappearance she responds by going off on him. Instead of apologizing for being 4 hours late getting back to the office she acts like she’s doing the firm a favor by working at all because her apartment was broken into the night before and she really needs to be home cleaning. She also throws in the fact that she’s upset because her fiancée dumped her. Way to set the cause of workplace equality back about 30 years. After all, who could possibly expect a woman to be professional and responsible on her first day at a new job when she could be cleaning and crying over a man? When her boss reacts poorly to Brandi’s insubordination she threatens him with a gender based discrimination suit. Because that doesn’t trivialize the real discrimination faced by women, at all.
At that point I would normally have simply tossed the book aside and given it a hearty DNF. Unfortunately, the promised snow had arrived and I was stuck in the house and desperate for reading material, so I forged ahead. Things did not improve.
Roberto’s dialogue was so riddled with clichés that I spent most of the book thinking that he was putting people on by acting like a stereotypical snotty, titled European. Sadly, that was not the case and he really did talk and act that way. That’s definitely not my idea of hero material. Things got worse when he took it upon himself to chide Brandi about her relationship with her mother. Roberto barely knew Brandi, he didn’t know her mother at all and he knew nothing about their history and yet he felt perfectly entitled to chastise Brandi like child. Brandi did have things to work out with her mom, but it was not Roberto’s place to stick his nose in, especially in such a condescending way There is no amount of sexy that can make up for that.
The plot wasn’t any better than the characters. Nothing about Roberto’s case made any sense. People kept talking about the fact that the CIA was after him. He was accused of stealing jewels, not spying or industrial espionage. Unless the items stolen are state secrets, theft is not the CIA’s bailiwick, so the repeated mentions of Agency involvement made me highly doubtful about the quality of Ms Dodd’s research. Of course that was nothing compared to the ridiculous circumstances that lead to Brandi being placed in charge of Roberto. That plot point was nothing more than a cheap way to force them to spend more time together so that Brandi could get involved with Robert’s Mysterious Secret and meet his grandfather.
To say one positive thing about the book, the 20 or so pages involving the grandfather were sort of charming. Not exactly original, but charming. If the whole book had had the same tone as that chapter this review would be going much better. Oh well.
The book left no cliché unused, including the tango scene and the sex in an elevator scene (which doubled as the “sex because they think they’re about to die” scene). The truth about Roberto’s Mysterious Secret was exactly what you would expect it to be. Naturally Brandi had no clue right up until the big reveal and then got very angry at Roberto for not telling her before. The method that Roberto used to beg for Brandi’s forgiveness was incredibly dumb. It involved him showing up at her office in the middle of a work day in a ridiculous costume and getting her coworkers in help him propose to her. The happy couple then celebrated their engagement by locking themselves in the conference room and having sex, proving that getting her HEA in no way improved Brandi’s standards of professional conduct.
A plot point about Roberto’s biological father was introduced during the big reveal and ties this book to the rest of the series. By then I was far too annoyed to be intrigued.
Grade: D
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Paradise County by Karen Robards
Alexandra Haywood is struggling come to terms with her father’s suicide and care for her orphaned 15 year-old half sister, Neely, while sorting out the tangled business affairs Charles Haywood left behind. She hits a serious snag when she attempts to sell her father’s beloved thoroughbred operation, Whistledown Farm. The farm’s manager, Joe Welch, has a contract and refuses to accept being fired. Joe has worked hard to make Whistledown Farm successful and won’t give it up without a fight. Not only does he love the horses, he’s a single father who needs the income and stability in order to make a home for his three children. He also just doesn’t like Alex very much. Charles bragged about his perfect daughter so much that Joe was sick of her even before she announced that she was taking away his livelihood.
The conflict between Alex and Joe is complicated by the attraction they feel for each other, revelations about Charles Haywood’s business dealings, family drama and mysterious occurrences at the Whistledown house that lead them to suspect that something is badly amiss in the idyllic Kentucky horse country. Soon bodies start to turn up and everyone is left wondering who can and cannot be trusted.
I chose this book because I was in the mood for a romantic suspense, but I think I would have enjoyed the story more without the suspense elements. I liked Joe & Alex and I enjoyed their relationship, but they had more than enough challenges to fill a book without involving a serial killer. Joe is a loving and competent dad, but single parenting is hard. His oldest son is a good kid, but he’s also well into the difficult teenage years, his younger son has a raging case of middle child syndrome and his daughter is getting to the age where not having a mother is a real problem. Joe’s father Carey lives nearby and should provide Joe with support, but instead his alcoholism makes him just one more person for whom Joe feels responsible. Joe is attracted to Alex, but he hasn’t had a serious relationship since his ex-wife left and he already has a lot on his plate, so he’s not sure if he can take on a (former) rich girl or if he even wants to try.
Alex has doubts of her own about pursuing the attraction she feels toward Joe. She’s already had one bad experience with a man who couldn’t handle her new financial reality and Neely is an incredible amount of work. She has been both spoiled and neglected her entire life and she’s grown into a very difficult young woman. Coping with her moods and acting out while trying to grieve for her father and adjust to a life without an endless supply of money may be more than Alex can manage.
I was interested in that story and would have read it quite happily. I can’t say the same about the serial killer storyline, the subplot involving Joe’s ex-wife, or the inclusion of a few supernatural elements. I think that without the suspense aspects of the plot this would have been a solid B, but I have to judge the book the author wrote, not the book I wish she had written, so
Grade: C-
Where Are You Reading Challenge: Kentucky
The conflict between Alex and Joe is complicated by the attraction they feel for each other, revelations about Charles Haywood’s business dealings, family drama and mysterious occurrences at the Whistledown house that lead them to suspect that something is badly amiss in the idyllic Kentucky horse country. Soon bodies start to turn up and everyone is left wondering who can and cannot be trusted.
I chose this book because I was in the mood for a romantic suspense, but I think I would have enjoyed the story more without the suspense elements. I liked Joe & Alex and I enjoyed their relationship, but they had more than enough challenges to fill a book without involving a serial killer. Joe is a loving and competent dad, but single parenting is hard. His oldest son is a good kid, but he’s also well into the difficult teenage years, his younger son has a raging case of middle child syndrome and his daughter is getting to the age where not having a mother is a real problem. Joe’s father Carey lives nearby and should provide Joe with support, but instead his alcoholism makes him just one more person for whom Joe feels responsible. Joe is attracted to Alex, but he hasn’t had a serious relationship since his ex-wife left and he already has a lot on his plate, so he’s not sure if he can take on a (former) rich girl or if he even wants to try.
Alex has doubts of her own about pursuing the attraction she feels toward Joe. She’s already had one bad experience with a man who couldn’t handle her new financial reality and Neely is an incredible amount of work. She has been both spoiled and neglected her entire life and she’s grown into a very difficult young woman. Coping with her moods and acting out while trying to grieve for her father and adjust to a life without an endless supply of money may be more than Alex can manage.
I was interested in that story and would have read it quite happily. I can’t say the same about the serial killer storyline, the subplot involving Joe’s ex-wife, or the inclusion of a few supernatural elements. I think that without the suspense aspects of the plot this would have been a solid B, but I have to judge the book the author wrote, not the book I wish she had written, so
Grade: C-
Where Are You Reading Challenge: Kentucky
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Happy New Year
Obviously I totally abandoned reviewing in 2010 (it was a weird year), but I didn’t stop reading. I actually read 274 books, which is a good number for me. I prefer round numbers though, so my goal for 2011 is 275. To encourage myself I’m doing several challenges this year.
The TBR challenge, hosted this year by Wendy the Super Librarian. There’s a theme for each month and while going off theme is definitely allowed under the challenge rules I’m going to try to stick to them.
Literary Escapism’s New Author challenge. My goal is to read 50 new fiction authors this year.
I’m doing two of the challenges hosted by J Kaye at Home Girl’s Book Blog:
100+ challenge. For me the issue is not reading 100+ books. I read enough that even in a slow year I read more than 100 books. My issue is reviews (see: the 1 lonely review I posted in 2010), so I’m using this challenge to push myself to write 100 reviews this year. Most of them will be for books I actually read this year, but I'll also review a few books I read last year. For books read in 2010 I'll only post reviews if I particularly liked the book, if it was by a new-to-me author, or if it was part of an ongoing series.
Support Your Local Library challenge. I love public libraries and always have. These days I’m appreciating them even more than usual though. Things being what they are, my book budget is tiny and I rely on the library for most of my reading. I signed up for the 100+ library book challenge not to push myself to borrow more books, but as a way to advertise and support the wonderful work libraries do. Seriously, libraries yah!
Last but not least I’m participating in the 50 State Challenge that Sheila is hosting at Book Journey. I expect this one to be the trickiest for me. Some states will be easy peasy, others not so much. I also have some doubts about my ability to get my map to work because sometimes I’m a total computer dork. I think it will be fun to try though, so I’m really looking forward to this one.
I’m also setting a couple of additional goals for myself. First, I want to read 50 nonfiction books this year. My nonfiction reading was very light in 2010 (grad school burn out) and I want to get back to it. My second personal goal is to read or reread more literary fiction. I’ve been reading almost nothing but genre the last few years (also at least partially grad school related). I love genre and I don’t feel like it’s a waste of my time or that it’s all mindless or any of the other criticisms that some people level against it. However, I would like to be reading more lit, so I’m giving myself a goal of reading or rereading at least 25 books that are “serious” fiction. I probably won’t do detailed reviews for most of them, but I’ll note them on the blog for tracking purposes.
The TBR challenge, hosted this year by Wendy the Super Librarian. There’s a theme for each month and while going off theme is definitely allowed under the challenge rules I’m going to try to stick to them.
Literary Escapism’s New Author challenge. My goal is to read 50 new fiction authors this year.
I’m doing two of the challenges hosted by J Kaye at Home Girl’s Book Blog:
100+ challenge. For me the issue is not reading 100+ books. I read enough that even in a slow year I read more than 100 books. My issue is reviews (see: the 1 lonely review I posted in 2010), so I’m using this challenge to push myself to write 100 reviews this year. Most of them will be for books I actually read this year, but I'll also review a few books I read last year. For books read in 2010 I'll only post reviews if I particularly liked the book, if it was by a new-to-me author, or if it was part of an ongoing series.
Support Your Local Library challenge. I love public libraries and always have. These days I’m appreciating them even more than usual though. Things being what they are, my book budget is tiny and I rely on the library for most of my reading. I signed up for the 100+ library book challenge not to push myself to borrow more books, but as a way to advertise and support the wonderful work libraries do. Seriously, libraries yah!
Last but not least I’m participating in the 50 State Challenge that Sheila is hosting at Book Journey. I expect this one to be the trickiest for me. Some states will be easy peasy, others not so much. I also have some doubts about my ability to get my map to work because sometimes I’m a total computer dork. I think it will be fun to try though, so I’m really looking forward to this one.
I’m also setting a couple of additional goals for myself. First, I want to read 50 nonfiction books this year. My nonfiction reading was very light in 2010 (grad school burn out) and I want to get back to it. My second personal goal is to read or reread more literary fiction. I’ve been reading almost nothing but genre the last few years (also at least partially grad school related). I love genre and I don’t feel like it’s a waste of my time or that it’s all mindless or any of the other criticisms that some people level against it. However, I would like to be reading more lit, so I’m giving myself a goal of reading or rereading at least 25 books that are “serious” fiction. I probably won’t do detailed reviews for most of them, but I’ll note them on the blog for tracking purposes.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Man Behind the Cop by Janice Kay Johnson
Bruce Walker became a cop so that he could protect the defenseless. He grew up in an abusive home and he's determined to help as many victims and put as many criminals in jail as he can. He's also determined not to follow in his father's footsteps. He knows that abused children can become abusers themselves. He's seen it not only in his work, but with his two brothers. Bruce feels that the only way he can end the cycle of abuse in his family is by maintaining absolute control of himself and avoiding relationships.
His determination is tested when he meets Karin Jorgenson while working on a case. They feel an immediate connection that they both want to pursue, but Bruce can't bring himself to let down his guard. As a therapist working with abuse victims Karin understand the dangers posed by abusers, but she trusts her own judgment about Bruce. The question is whether or not Bruce can learn to trust her, and more importantly himself. He wants to try, but the case that brought them together may ultimately pull them apart.
This book had a lot going on. The obstacles that Bruce and Karin face aren't trivial. This isn't the same old same old where the hero is avoiding relationships because one woman done him wrong and now he just can't trust females. He's a control freak with a lot of unresolved issues. He knows that he can't have a meaningful relationship if he doesn't let down his guard, but he's so fearful of his past that he's paralyzed. Karin believes in him, but she can't make his choices for him and if she wants to be his lover she can't allow herself to fall into the role of being his therapist. I think that would have been plenty of conflict, especially for a category-length book, but Man Behind the Cop included not one, but two significant subplots.
The first is the case the brings Bruce and Karin together. One of Karin's clients was murdered by her abusive husband who then took their children and went on the run. Bruce is worried that the man may kill the children and feels that it's his responsibility to find them in time. The second subplot involves a crisis with Bruce's Little Brother, Trevor. Bruce has been Trevor's Big Brother for several years. His mother is an addict and his father is out of the picture because of past abuse so Bruce is the only stability that he has. When Trevor's mom goes missing and is presumed dead his father comes back into his life, claiming to have cleaned up his act. Bruce has to decide if he should step back and give the two a chance to form a bond, or stay close to protect Trevor from further harm.
For me all of this added up to an interesting book about Bruce's journey, but it didn't really work for me as a romance. All the time spent on Trevor and the hunt for the kidnapped children left too little time for Bruce and Karin as a couple. I was left feeling that I hadn't seen enough of them together to believe that their issues had been resolved in the time frame of the book, which only spanned a few weeks. The book was well written and involving, so I would be interested to read more of this author's work to see if they work better for me as romances.
Grade: B-
His determination is tested when he meets Karin Jorgenson while working on a case. They feel an immediate connection that they both want to pursue, but Bruce can't bring himself to let down his guard. As a therapist working with abuse victims Karin understand the dangers posed by abusers, but she trusts her own judgment about Bruce. The question is whether or not Bruce can learn to trust her, and more importantly himself. He wants to try, but the case that brought them together may ultimately pull them apart.
This book had a lot going on. The obstacles that Bruce and Karin face aren't trivial. This isn't the same old same old where the hero is avoiding relationships because one woman done him wrong and now he just can't trust females. He's a control freak with a lot of unresolved issues. He knows that he can't have a meaningful relationship if he doesn't let down his guard, but he's so fearful of his past that he's paralyzed. Karin believes in him, but she can't make his choices for him and if she wants to be his lover she can't allow herself to fall into the role of being his therapist. I think that would have been plenty of conflict, especially for a category-length book, but Man Behind the Cop included not one, but two significant subplots.
The first is the case the brings Bruce and Karin together. One of Karin's clients was murdered by her abusive husband who then took their children and went on the run. Bruce is worried that the man may kill the children and feels that it's his responsibility to find them in time. The second subplot involves a crisis with Bruce's Little Brother, Trevor. Bruce has been Trevor's Big Brother for several years. His mother is an addict and his father is out of the picture because of past abuse so Bruce is the only stability that he has. When Trevor's mom goes missing and is presumed dead his father comes back into his life, claiming to have cleaned up his act. Bruce has to decide if he should step back and give the two a chance to form a bond, or stay close to protect Trevor from further harm.
For me all of this added up to an interesting book about Bruce's journey, but it didn't really work for me as a romance. All the time spent on Trevor and the hunt for the kidnapped children left too little time for Bruce and Karin as a couple. I was left feeling that I hadn't seen enough of them together to believe that their issues had been resolved in the time frame of the book, which only spanned a few weeks. The book was well written and involving, so I would be interested to read more of this author's work to see if they work better for me as romances.
Grade: B-
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
2009 TBR Challenge for October: The Keep by F. Paul Wilson
October Challenge: Horror
It's April 1941 SS Officer Erich Kaempffer is a man on his way up. He's preparing to begin a plum assignment setting up a new death camp in Ploiesti, Romania. After serving for a year at Auschwitz he feels confident that he's the right man to increase efficiency by building the new camp and he's looking forward to the task.
Unfortunatley for Officer Kaempffer he has made enemies on his quick rise through the ranks of the SS and there are those who would love to see him fail. As a result he is given a mission to complete before going to Ploiesti. He must take two squads of his einsatzkommandos and check on an Army unit sent to guard an isolated pass in the Transylvanian alps. The unit was sent to occupy an ancient stone structure overlooking the pass, which the locals refer to as the Keep. It should have been a routine, even boring, assignment but within a week of their arrival their leader, Captain Klaus Woermann, sent a disturbing message to headquarters. It read only:
Kaempffer has a negative history with the Army officer and looks forward to succeeding where Woermann has apparently failed. However, when he arrives at the Keep he finds that something is indeed killing the men and it does not seem to be human. Rumors are running rampant that the killer is a vampire. The already desperate situation is made worse by the fact that the two officers are barely able to tolerate each other and there is almost no concrete information available about the history of the Keep.
The local innkeeper finally suggests that they bring in Professor Theodor Cuza, a scholar who has spent time at the Keep and knows the history of the region. Woermann enjoys the irony of the fact that their only hope is a Jewish professor, but he worries about what Kaempffer will do if Cuza is unable to provide the answers they need. He's especially concerned about the fact that Cuza is in such poor health that his daughter Magda must travel with him. The Keep is a military barracks and even under the best of circumstances it's no place for a lone woman. Tensions are already incredibly high in the Keep and the two newest residents may make the complex situation impossible to control.
Unbeknownst to the people at the Keep there is one more player in the unfolding drama. A man with red hair and blue eyes knows what has awakened in the Keep. He'll travel thousands of miles to meet the destiny he knows awaits him, and possibly more that he does not expect. The question is whether he'll arrive before it's too late to prevent the evil from spreading beyond the pass.
I went through a Steven King phase in high school, but since then I've read very little horror, so I initially thought about selecting a random book from my TBR for this month. Then I remembered that I'd gotten several recommendations over the years for F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack series and decided to finally give it a try. The Repairman Jack books are an offshot of a series known as The Adversary Cycle, and The Keep is the first book in that series so I decided to start there.
I felt that The Keep did what I think a good horror novel should do. It created atmosphere, suspense and a sense of the creepy and made me want to keep reading to find out what would happen. I liked the idea of 20th Century evil pitted against much older evil and the ways that evil finds to manipulate the humans for it's own purposes. Unfortunatley some of the characterization wasn't as good as I would have liked. A couple of the key characters fell flat and there's a romantic subplot that didn't work as well as it needed to. One other thing worth noting is that the body count remains fairly low until near the end of the book. That was fine with me since I don't like a lot of blood and gore, but I know some horror fans don't agree and would likely find this disappointing.
Grade: B
Will I read the next book in the series?: Yes. I found this book interesting enough to be curious about where the story goes next. Also, the next book in The Adversary Cycle is The Tomb, which is where Repairman Jack makes his first appearance.
It's April 1941 SS Officer Erich Kaempffer is a man on his way up. He's preparing to begin a plum assignment setting up a new death camp in Ploiesti, Romania. After serving for a year at Auschwitz he feels confident that he's the right man to increase efficiency by building the new camp and he's looking forward to the task.
Unfortunatley for Officer Kaempffer he has made enemies on his quick rise through the ranks of the SS and there are those who would love to see him fail. As a result he is given a mission to complete before going to Ploiesti. He must take two squads of his einsatzkommandos and check on an Army unit sent to guard an isolated pass in the Transylvanian alps. The unit was sent to occupy an ancient stone structure overlooking the pass, which the locals refer to as the Keep. It should have been a routine, even boring, assignment but within a week of their arrival their leader, Captain Klaus Woermann, sent a disturbing message to headquarters. It read only:
Request immediate relocation.
Something is murdering my men.
Kaempffer has a negative history with the Army officer and looks forward to succeeding where Woermann has apparently failed. However, when he arrives at the Keep he finds that something is indeed killing the men and it does not seem to be human. Rumors are running rampant that the killer is a vampire. The already desperate situation is made worse by the fact that the two officers are barely able to tolerate each other and there is almost no concrete information available about the history of the Keep.
The local innkeeper finally suggests that they bring in Professor Theodor Cuza, a scholar who has spent time at the Keep and knows the history of the region. Woermann enjoys the irony of the fact that their only hope is a Jewish professor, but he worries about what Kaempffer will do if Cuza is unable to provide the answers they need. He's especially concerned about the fact that Cuza is in such poor health that his daughter Magda must travel with him. The Keep is a military barracks and even under the best of circumstances it's no place for a lone woman. Tensions are already incredibly high in the Keep and the two newest residents may make the complex situation impossible to control.
Unbeknownst to the people at the Keep there is one more player in the unfolding drama. A man with red hair and blue eyes knows what has awakened in the Keep. He'll travel thousands of miles to meet the destiny he knows awaits him, and possibly more that he does not expect. The question is whether he'll arrive before it's too late to prevent the evil from spreading beyond the pass.
I went through a Steven King phase in high school, but since then I've read very little horror, so I initially thought about selecting a random book from my TBR for this month. Then I remembered that I'd gotten several recommendations over the years for F. Paul Wilson's Repairman Jack series and decided to finally give it a try. The Repairman Jack books are an offshot of a series known as The Adversary Cycle, and The Keep is the first book in that series so I decided to start there.
I felt that The Keep did what I think a good horror novel should do. It created atmosphere, suspense and a sense of the creepy and made me want to keep reading to find out what would happen. I liked the idea of 20th Century evil pitted against much older evil and the ways that evil finds to manipulate the humans for it's own purposes. Unfortunatley some of the characterization wasn't as good as I would have liked. A couple of the key characters fell flat and there's a romantic subplot that didn't work as well as it needed to. One other thing worth noting is that the body count remains fairly low until near the end of the book. That was fine with me since I don't like a lot of blood and gore, but I know some horror fans don't agree and would likely find this disappointing.
Grade: B
Will I read the next book in the series?: Yes. I found this book interesting enough to be curious about where the story goes next. Also, the next book in The Adversary Cycle is The Tomb, which is where Repairman Jack makes his first appearance.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Nameless by Debra Webb
When Vivian Grace seventeen she was kidnapped by a serial killer known as "Nameless" and was forced to kill him in order to escape. She has worked hard to get past that experience and to make a life for herself protecting other victims. She's now a rookie FBI agent determined to succeed at her job and advance in the Bureau. She already feels somewhat thwarted in that ambition because her mentor arranged to have her sent to the Birmingham field office instead of the higher profile assignment she requested. He's concerned that a Vivian's past makes her too vulnerable to work high profile cases, but there's nothing he can do to protect her when a local kidnapping turns into exactly the kind of high pressure case he'd hoped to shield Vivian from. In spite of his wishes, and her own nightmares, Vivian is determined to save the kidnapped child. To do that she reaches out for help from an agency legend.
FBI agent Ryan McBride focused all his attention on his work as a hostage negotiator. He had a perfect record, working on the most difficult cases, until a kidnapping went horribly wrong and the young victim was killed. As a result McBride was made the scapegoat for his boss' mistake and lost his job. His response was to go to Key West and crawl into a bottle and three years later he still hasn't crawled back out. When Vivian shows up on his doorstep his first impulse is to send her away, but when he hears the details of the case he's unable to resist returning to the job he was never quite able to let go. Soon he and Vivian find themselves drawn into a puzzle created by a psychopath determined to play on both their pasts to win a game where he's the only one who knows the rules.
This is yet another suspense novel that devotes a chunk of the book to the killer's POV. I would have been much happier without that, but it all in all it wasn't too bad and the rest of the story was interesting enough that I was still able to enjoy the book. The disgraced former agent out to redeem himself and the former victim looking to prove herself are both common character in suspense novels so both Ryan and Vivian could easily have come across as tired cliches, but I found them both interesting.
I think that was partially because the situation had more layers and shades of gray than are sometimes present in this kind of book. For example, the bureaucracy wasn't painted as all bad and the rogue hero as all good. It's made clear that Ryan's former boss screwed him over, but it's also clear that he made that easy to do by pushing too hard and breaking too many rules. Vivian's boss is a a jerk, but he's genuinely dedicated to his job and doesn't allow his reservations about Ryan to interfere. Even Vivian's mentor isn't all bad. He does manipulate her career for his own selfish reasons,but he's also right about her needing to deal more effectively with her past. The only thing that really disappointed me was the ending, which hinged on tying several thread of the story together in a way that was far too convenient for my tastes.
Grade: B-
FBI agent Ryan McBride focused all his attention on his work as a hostage negotiator. He had a perfect record, working on the most difficult cases, until a kidnapping went horribly wrong and the young victim was killed. As a result McBride was made the scapegoat for his boss' mistake and lost his job. His response was to go to Key West and crawl into a bottle and three years later he still hasn't crawled back out. When Vivian shows up on his doorstep his first impulse is to send her away, but when he hears the details of the case he's unable to resist returning to the job he was never quite able to let go. Soon he and Vivian find themselves drawn into a puzzle created by a psychopath determined to play on both their pasts to win a game where he's the only one who knows the rules.
This is yet another suspense novel that devotes a chunk of the book to the killer's POV. I would have been much happier without that, but it all in all it wasn't too bad and the rest of the story was interesting enough that I was still able to enjoy the book. The disgraced former agent out to redeem himself and the former victim looking to prove herself are both common character in suspense novels so both Ryan and Vivian could easily have come across as tired cliches, but I found them both interesting.
I think that was partially because the situation had more layers and shades of gray than are sometimes present in this kind of book. For example, the bureaucracy wasn't painted as all bad and the rogue hero as all good. It's made clear that Ryan's former boss screwed him over, but it's also clear that he made that easy to do by pushing too hard and breaking too many rules. Vivian's boss is a a jerk, but he's genuinely dedicated to his job and doesn't allow his reservations about Ryan to interfere. Even Vivian's mentor isn't all bad. He does manipulate her career for his own selfish reasons,but he's also right about her needing to deal more effectively with her past. The only thing that really disappointed me was the ending, which hinged on tying several thread of the story together in a way that was far too convenient for my tastes.
Grade: B-
Season of Storms by Susanna Kearsley
In the 1920's Italian playwright Galeazzo D'Ascanio wrote a play called Il Prezzo for his mistress, the beautiful English actress Celia Sands. Il Prezzo was expected to be D'Ascanio's dramatic masterpiece but it was never performed because Celia disappeared the night before it was scheduled to open.
Decades later Galeazzo's grandson, Alessandro 'Alex' D'Ascanio, has decided to finally stage Il Prezzo. Working through the family Trust he's restoring Il Piacere, his grandfather's estate on Lake Garda, and intends to have the play performed at the outdoor theater on the grounds. He believes he has found exactly the right lead---a struggling young English actress named Celia Sands.
The role could be her big break, but Celia is reluctant to accept a job that's offered to her only because of her name. Her mentor Rupert has been hired to direct Il Prezzo and he persuades her that the opportunity is too good to pass up. The two of them go to Italy and take up residence at Il Piacere along with the rest of the cast. Rehearsals go well and everyone involved soon has high hopes for the opening. However, events soon seem to be mirroring the first attempt to stage Il Prezzo and Celia begins to fear that someone or something doesn't want to the play to open.
I think that I expected this to have a stronger romantic element than it did. Celia and Alex do have an attraction, but it's not center stage in the story. Once I adjusted to that I was able to enjoy the book for what it is---an involving Gothic puzzle. The pace is fairly slow, but the story never seemed to drag and it held my attention all the way to the end.
Grade: B+
Decades later Galeazzo's grandson, Alessandro 'Alex' D'Ascanio, has decided to finally stage Il Prezzo. Working through the family Trust he's restoring Il Piacere, his grandfather's estate on Lake Garda, and intends to have the play performed at the outdoor theater on the grounds. He believes he has found exactly the right lead---a struggling young English actress named Celia Sands.
The role could be her big break, but Celia is reluctant to accept a job that's offered to her only because of her name. Her mentor Rupert has been hired to direct Il Prezzo and he persuades her that the opportunity is too good to pass up. The two of them go to Italy and take up residence at Il Piacere along with the rest of the cast. Rehearsals go well and everyone involved soon has high hopes for the opening. However, events soon seem to be mirroring the first attempt to stage Il Prezzo and Celia begins to fear that someone or something doesn't want to the play to open.
I think that I expected this to have a stronger romantic element than it did. Celia and Alex do have an attraction, but it's not center stage in the story. Once I adjusted to that I was able to enjoy the book for what it is---an involving Gothic puzzle. The pace is fairly slow, but the story never seemed to drag and it held my attention all the way to the end.
Grade: B+
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Firestorm by Iris Johansen
When Kerry Murphy was a young girl a house fire killed her mother and left her in a coma for two years. Her experience gave her the ability to telepathically sense fires, and connect with fire victims. Her used her talent to become a firefighter, but after a friend died in a fire she was no longer able to bear the responsibility of fighting them day to day. She now works as an arson investigator and uses her dog Sam as a cover for her unique talent. She's proud of the life she's built for herself and considers herself at ease with her talent, but she has few close relationships and suffers from horrible nightmares.
Brad Silver has problems of his own. He saw his brother, a U.S. Senator, and sister-in-law burned alive in their limousine. They were the victims of a madman named James Trask. Trask had been the head of a secret government research project to create controlled firestorms. It wasn't until the project was canceled that anyone realized that Trask had become obsessed with his creation and by then it was too late to stop him. He's now an out of control pyromaniac, using his invention to blackmail the President. Trask has vowed that he won't stop killing government officials until his demands are met.
Like Kerry, Brad has special abilities. Unlike Kerry his skills don't center around fire. Instead Brad is able to act as a “controller” for others psychics. He feels that with his help Kerry could make a connection with Trask and help locate him before anyone else is killed. Kerry doesn't agree. He tells her that in exchange he can help her finally get over the loss of her mother. Kerry values her independence and wants nothing to do with Silver or any other psychics, so she initially refuses. However, when she inadvertently makes a connection with Trask he becomes obsessed with her and attacks her brother and his pregnant wife. In order to protect her family Kerry changes her mind and agrees to partner with Silver and the two of them race to stop Trask before he strikes again.
This was a psychological thriller with paranormal elements. On the positive side, the premise of this book was interesting and I basically liked the characters and their interaction. The one thing I did think was odd was the way Kerry kept giving Brad a hard time for being prickly. Considering what her personality was like I felt like that was a definite case of the pot calling the kettle black and that Silver should have called her on it.
On the negative side a fairly large chunk of the book was devoted to Trask's POV and I'm tired of that. These days it seems like almost every suspense and mystery book I read spends almost as much time inside the killer's head as that of the main character(s) and I'm over it. I have much more interest in how the mystery is solved than in getting the details of yet another fictional version of homicidal craziness.
Grade: B-
Will I read the next book in the series?: Yes. I'm interested enough in Kerry & Silver to try the next book.
Brad Silver has problems of his own. He saw his brother, a U.S. Senator, and sister-in-law burned alive in their limousine. They were the victims of a madman named James Trask. Trask had been the head of a secret government research project to create controlled firestorms. It wasn't until the project was canceled that anyone realized that Trask had become obsessed with his creation and by then it was too late to stop him. He's now an out of control pyromaniac, using his invention to blackmail the President. Trask has vowed that he won't stop killing government officials until his demands are met.
Like Kerry, Brad has special abilities. Unlike Kerry his skills don't center around fire. Instead Brad is able to act as a “controller” for others psychics. He feels that with his help Kerry could make a connection with Trask and help locate him before anyone else is killed. Kerry doesn't agree. He tells her that in exchange he can help her finally get over the loss of her mother. Kerry values her independence and wants nothing to do with Silver or any other psychics, so she initially refuses. However, when she inadvertently makes a connection with Trask he becomes obsessed with her and attacks her brother and his pregnant wife. In order to protect her family Kerry changes her mind and agrees to partner with Silver and the two of them race to stop Trask before he strikes again.
This was a psychological thriller with paranormal elements. On the positive side, the premise of this book was interesting and I basically liked the characters and their interaction. The one thing I did think was odd was the way Kerry kept giving Brad a hard time for being prickly. Considering what her personality was like I felt like that was a definite case of the pot calling the kettle black and that Silver should have called her on it.
On the negative side a fairly large chunk of the book was devoted to Trask's POV and I'm tired of that. These days it seems like almost every suspense and mystery book I read spends almost as much time inside the killer's head as that of the main character(s) and I'm over it. I have much more interest in how the mystery is solved than in getting the details of yet another fictional version of homicidal craziness.
Grade: B-
Will I read the next book in the series?: Yes. I'm interested enough in Kerry & Silver to try the next book.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The Loner by Geralyn Dawson
Logan Grey is a Range Detective, tracking some the worst criminals in Texas. He lives alone and has no intention of ever changing that. Because he seems to have a talent for sensing impending trouble, newspapers dubbed him “the luckiest man in Texas” but he knows better. When he was just a boy he was the sole survivor of a flash flood that killed his whole family and left him to be raised in an orphanage. That set what he sees as the pattern of his life---when there's trouble he escapes harm, but those around him often do not. Logan doesn't consider that lucky at all and refuses to even consider having a family of his own that he could lose to misfortune.
One day while he's waiting for a meeting at the local bank his sense for trouble tells him to get out, but before he can act on it he's caught in the middle of a robbery attempt. He's surprised and intrigued when a female hostage helps him thwart the robbers. He wants to get to know her better but by the time the situation is sorted out, she's gone.
Caroline Kilpatrick was happy to help prevent a bank robbery, but she's furious with Logan for not recognizing her from their childhood. Logan was her first love and her first kiss. Far more importantly, he was the man she married and slept with, not realizing that he had been hired by her father to participate in a fake wedding ceremony in order to gain access to Caroline's inheritance. Logan left town after their one night together and as a result he never knew that their marriage was in fact valid, that she was pregnant with his child and that two months later her father died, leaving Caroline alone and destitute.
For many years Caroline had no idea where Logan was, so she struggled to provide for their son Will on her own. By the time she learned his whereabouts she had made a life for herself and no longer wanted to have anything to do with Logan, so she never contacted him about Will. Eight years later things have changed. Ben, the man who has been more of a father to her than her actual father ever was, has gone missing. He went to Black Shadow Canyon looking for information about a murder and hasn't been heard from since. The canyon is a notorious hideout for outlaws so Caroline knows that she needs help and Logan is just the man for the job. However, she has no reason to believe that he'll voluntarily help her search for Ben, so she devises a plan. She tells him about Will and says that the boy has been taken to Black Shadow Canyon.
Logan is stunned to find out that he's a father and has no idea what to do about Caroline, but he's determined not to let his son down. Caroline refuses to be left behind, so the two of them set out on the difficult journey to the canyon. They quickly find that the emotions between them, and their tentative efforts to reconnect, are almost as difficult to manage as bad weather and outlaws. The real question is what Logan will do when he realizes that Caroline lied to him. Will he forgive her and make a home with her and his son, or will he return to his solitary life?
It was difficult for me to like either Logan or Caroline. Logan's willingness to go along with the lie told by Caroline's father was bad. It was worse for him to sleep with her believing that their marriage was a sham and knowing that he would be leaving the next day. The only excuse he had was that he was young and, as an orphan with no prospects he was desperate for the money to make a start in life. Caroline didn't even have that excuse for the lie she told Logan. She knew where he was for eight years and never contacted him to tell him about Will until she needed to use the information to trick Logan into helping her. That would have been justifiable if Will had actually been the one in danger, but Ben was a grown man who made his own choice to go on a dangerous trip. I understand that Caroline loved Ben and thought of him as family, but I don't think that made it acceptable for her to manipulate Logan into helping him, especially since she was well aware that Logan didn't have warm feelings for Ben. Logan definitely had his faults, but I found Caroline much more frustrating and annoying.
In addition to my problems with both the main characters I also felt that the circumstances that resulted in them being married were sort of ridiculous and some of the dialog rang false. In the end I wasn't able to get past those things, which made it impossible for me to enjoy what might otherwise have been an interesting plot.
Grade: C-
One day while he's waiting for a meeting at the local bank his sense for trouble tells him to get out, but before he can act on it he's caught in the middle of a robbery attempt. He's surprised and intrigued when a female hostage helps him thwart the robbers. He wants to get to know her better but by the time the situation is sorted out, she's gone.
Caroline Kilpatrick was happy to help prevent a bank robbery, but she's furious with Logan for not recognizing her from their childhood. Logan was her first love and her first kiss. Far more importantly, he was the man she married and slept with, not realizing that he had been hired by her father to participate in a fake wedding ceremony in order to gain access to Caroline's inheritance. Logan left town after their one night together and as a result he never knew that their marriage was in fact valid, that she was pregnant with his child and that two months later her father died, leaving Caroline alone and destitute.
For many years Caroline had no idea where Logan was, so she struggled to provide for their son Will on her own. By the time she learned his whereabouts she had made a life for herself and no longer wanted to have anything to do with Logan, so she never contacted him about Will. Eight years later things have changed. Ben, the man who has been more of a father to her than her actual father ever was, has gone missing. He went to Black Shadow Canyon looking for information about a murder and hasn't been heard from since. The canyon is a notorious hideout for outlaws so Caroline knows that she needs help and Logan is just the man for the job. However, she has no reason to believe that he'll voluntarily help her search for Ben, so she devises a plan. She tells him about Will and says that the boy has been taken to Black Shadow Canyon.
Logan is stunned to find out that he's a father and has no idea what to do about Caroline, but he's determined not to let his son down. Caroline refuses to be left behind, so the two of them set out on the difficult journey to the canyon. They quickly find that the emotions between them, and their tentative efforts to reconnect, are almost as difficult to manage as bad weather and outlaws. The real question is what Logan will do when he realizes that Caroline lied to him. Will he forgive her and make a home with her and his son, or will he return to his solitary life?
It was difficult for me to like either Logan or Caroline. Logan's willingness to go along with the lie told by Caroline's father was bad. It was worse for him to sleep with her believing that their marriage was a sham and knowing that he would be leaving the next day. The only excuse he had was that he was young and, as an orphan with no prospects he was desperate for the money to make a start in life. Caroline didn't even have that excuse for the lie she told Logan. She knew where he was for eight years and never contacted him to tell him about Will until she needed to use the information to trick Logan into helping her. That would have been justifiable if Will had actually been the one in danger, but Ben was a grown man who made his own choice to go on a dangerous trip. I understand that Caroline loved Ben and thought of him as family, but I don't think that made it acceptable for her to manipulate Logan into helping him, especially since she was well aware that Logan didn't have warm feelings for Ben. Logan definitely had his faults, but I found Caroline much more frustrating and annoying.
In addition to my problems with both the main characters I also felt that the circumstances that resulted in them being married were sort of ridiculous and some of the dialog rang false. In the end I wasn't able to get past those things, which made it impossible for me to enjoy what might otherwise have been an interesting plot.
Grade: C-
Friday, September 25, 2009
The Fifth Victim by Beverly Barton
Genny Madoc is a psychic who lives in the Smokey Mountains, just outside the town of Cherokee Pointe, Tennessee. One night she has a horrible vision of a young woman being sacrificed on a ceremonial alter. She calls her cousin Jacob, who's the town sheriff, for help but he isn't able to reach the girl in time. No one in Cherokee Pointe has ever seen anything like this murder and they have very few clues until FBI agent Dallas Sloane arrives and offers his assistance.
He's come to Cherokee Pointe because the murder resembles a number of others that he's been investigating. Dallas is convinced that he's on the trail of a serial killer who kills five victims in close secession and then moves on to a new location. In each group of five the first four victims are chosen at random, only the fifth victims are similar. This makes it difficult to see the pattern and Dallas' colleges are convinced that he's imagining things. His beloved niece was the fourth victim in one of the groupings and people are convinced that grief has warped his judgment. The murder in Cherokee Pointe is the first in a new grouping, which gives Dallas the best chance he's had to catch the killer.
Dallas believes that the murder is the only reason he's come to Cherokee Pointe, but Genny knows there's more. She had a vision of Dallas too, and she knows that he's her soul mate. What she doesn't know is how that will change her life, whether or not she'll be able to explain things to Dallas and how he'll feel about it if she does. Genny's concerns about the future multiply when she realizes that she has formed a link with the killer and that he has chosen her as the fifth victim. It will take both Genny's abilities and Dallas' skill to stop the killer before he completes his pattern and slips away again.
I chose this book in part because of the location. I've been to the Great Smokey Mountains and the area is beautiful, but I rarely see it used as a book setting. I also thought the premise was interesting and had great potential. Unfortunately the book failed to live up to that potential. Dallas worked well as the driven, skeptical hero, but Genny was another story.
Genny is the standard cliched psychic whose gifts are conveniently limited in exactly the way needed to drive the story. She's also a Mary Sue. Everyone loves her and she sees the best in everyone. She even uses her gifts to charm wild animals, including a wolf who she feeds by hand. At one point animals save her from the bad guy in a scene that read like an extremely violent version of a Disney cartoon. Animals helped Snow White clean house for the seven dwarfs, made a ballgown for Cinderella---and saved Genny from a homicidal maniac. I rolled my eyes so hard I'm lucky they didn't stick like that. The romance between Genny and Dallas didn't improve the situation. I'm not fond of stories about predestined love and instant connection. I don't enjoy it when a couple is seemingly in love for no reason whatsoever and this was definitely one of those stories.
The secondary plot took up a lot of the book and it was also unsatisfying. Genny's best friend Jasmine is a successful businesswoman in Cherokee Pointe. She owns the local motel and a restaurant and club. Her love life isn't doing nearly as well as her businesses. Years ago she was involved with a boy named Jamie, the scion of the local gentry. Because Jazzy's family was poor his family saw her as trash and forbade the relationship. Jamie wouldn't risk his inheritance to marry Jazzy, so he left her behind when he went away to college. He still likes to use her as a booty call whenever he returns home for a visit though. Jazzy always turns him down, but then gives in when he persists.
The problem with that isn't really that it makes Jazzy look dumb for allowing herself to be used. I understand how she could get stuck on Jamie and be unable to resist him, even as he goes through a string of fiances. The problem is that Jazzy admits that the attraction isn't just sexual. She also likes Jamie for his money. She justifies this because she grew up poor and now wants the good life. I can understand that, but it still makes her seem at best mercenary and at worst like she's trying to trade sex for cash. That makes her objections to people thinking of her as trashy or treating her like she's a whore a little problematic.
For me all of these character issues overshadowed the thriller plot, which didn't turn out to be anywhere near as compelling as I had expected. The slight paranormal twist did little to lift the villain above run of the mill. In the end this book simply failed to live up to it's premise.
Grade: D+
This is the fist book in a trilogy. I picked up all three books at the library at the same time so even though this one was bad I decided to try the next one to see if the series would improve.
The Last To Die is Jazzy's story. Genny has a vision of Jamie being murdered and the crime being a threat to Jazzy. She doesn't want to believe that her friend could kill her ex, but the vision isn't clear and she can't be sure. Genny knows that Jamie doesn't believe in her gift and won't heed any warning that she would give him. She does warn Jazzy to stay away from him at all costs and she, Dallas and Jacob create a plan to keep Jazzy safe. Unfortunately their plan fails and when Jamie is murdered Jazzy has no alibi. Her friends then have to solve the murder in order to keep her from going to prison for a crime she didn't commit.
I suspected the book would be a DNF when the big plan to protect Jazzy completely failed to do the obvious---never leave her alone. I tried to overlook that, but couldn't overlook some major problems with the real killer. To avoid spoilers I'll simply say that a person suffering from the severe mental illness Ms Barton describes couldn't possibly devise an intricate plan to commit murder, act normal enough to lure Jamie to his death and carefully avoid leaving trace evidence at the scene.
It's a shame that The Last To Die wasn't a better book because the hero, Caleb McCord, was really good. He just wasn't good enough to carry the rest of the mess.
Grade: DNF
He's come to Cherokee Pointe because the murder resembles a number of others that he's been investigating. Dallas is convinced that he's on the trail of a serial killer who kills five victims in close secession and then moves on to a new location. In each group of five the first four victims are chosen at random, only the fifth victims are similar. This makes it difficult to see the pattern and Dallas' colleges are convinced that he's imagining things. His beloved niece was the fourth victim in one of the groupings and people are convinced that grief has warped his judgment. The murder in Cherokee Pointe is the first in a new grouping, which gives Dallas the best chance he's had to catch the killer.
Dallas believes that the murder is the only reason he's come to Cherokee Pointe, but Genny knows there's more. She had a vision of Dallas too, and she knows that he's her soul mate. What she doesn't know is how that will change her life, whether or not she'll be able to explain things to Dallas and how he'll feel about it if she does. Genny's concerns about the future multiply when she realizes that she has formed a link with the killer and that he has chosen her as the fifth victim. It will take both Genny's abilities and Dallas' skill to stop the killer before he completes his pattern and slips away again.
I chose this book in part because of the location. I've been to the Great Smokey Mountains and the area is beautiful, but I rarely see it used as a book setting. I also thought the premise was interesting and had great potential. Unfortunately the book failed to live up to that potential. Dallas worked well as the driven, skeptical hero, but Genny was another story.
Genny is the standard cliched psychic whose gifts are conveniently limited in exactly the way needed to drive the story. She's also a Mary Sue. Everyone loves her and she sees the best in everyone. She even uses her gifts to charm wild animals, including a wolf who she feeds by hand. At one point animals save her from the bad guy in a scene that read like an extremely violent version of a Disney cartoon. Animals helped Snow White clean house for the seven dwarfs, made a ballgown for Cinderella---and saved Genny from a homicidal maniac. I rolled my eyes so hard I'm lucky they didn't stick like that. The romance between Genny and Dallas didn't improve the situation. I'm not fond of stories about predestined love and instant connection. I don't enjoy it when a couple is seemingly in love for no reason whatsoever and this was definitely one of those stories.
The secondary plot took up a lot of the book and it was also unsatisfying. Genny's best friend Jasmine is a successful businesswoman in Cherokee Pointe. She owns the local motel and a restaurant and club. Her love life isn't doing nearly as well as her businesses. Years ago she was involved with a boy named Jamie, the scion of the local gentry. Because Jazzy's family was poor his family saw her as trash and forbade the relationship. Jamie wouldn't risk his inheritance to marry Jazzy, so he left her behind when he went away to college. He still likes to use her as a booty call whenever he returns home for a visit though. Jazzy always turns him down, but then gives in when he persists.
The problem with that isn't really that it makes Jazzy look dumb for allowing herself to be used. I understand how she could get stuck on Jamie and be unable to resist him, even as he goes through a string of fiances. The problem is that Jazzy admits that the attraction isn't just sexual. She also likes Jamie for his money. She justifies this because she grew up poor and now wants the good life. I can understand that, but it still makes her seem at best mercenary and at worst like she's trying to trade sex for cash. That makes her objections to people thinking of her as trashy or treating her like she's a whore a little problematic.
For me all of these character issues overshadowed the thriller plot, which didn't turn out to be anywhere near as compelling as I had expected. The slight paranormal twist did little to lift the villain above run of the mill. In the end this book simply failed to live up to it's premise.
Grade: D+
This is the fist book in a trilogy. I picked up all three books at the library at the same time so even though this one was bad I decided to try the next one to see if the series would improve.
The Last To Die is Jazzy's story. Genny has a vision of Jamie being murdered and the crime being a threat to Jazzy. She doesn't want to believe that her friend could kill her ex, but the vision isn't clear and she can't be sure. Genny knows that Jamie doesn't believe in her gift and won't heed any warning that she would give him. She does warn Jazzy to stay away from him at all costs and she, Dallas and Jacob create a plan to keep Jazzy safe. Unfortunately their plan fails and when Jamie is murdered Jazzy has no alibi. Her friends then have to solve the murder in order to keep her from going to prison for a crime she didn't commit.
I suspected the book would be a DNF when the big plan to protect Jazzy completely failed to do the obvious---never leave her alone. I tried to overlook that, but couldn't overlook some major problems with the real killer. To avoid spoilers I'll simply say that a person suffering from the severe mental illness Ms Barton describes couldn't possibly devise an intricate plan to commit murder, act normal enough to lure Jamie to his death and carefully avoid leaving trace evidence at the scene.
It's a shame that The Last To Die wasn't a better book because the hero, Caleb McCord, was really good. He just wasn't good enough to carry the rest of the mess.
Grade: DNF
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Uncertain Magic by Laura Kinsale
Roderica Delamore is a nineteen-year woman with the ability to read the thoughts of other creatures, human and animal. She doesn't share her gift with those outside her immediate family, but others can tell there's something different about her. Because of the unease the ability causes and the toll it takes on her Roderica has already resigned herself to a life of isolation. She longs for a normal life, with a husband and children of her own, but knows that she's destined to be a spinster, cared for only by her parents and siblings. The only satisfaction she has in her life is using her ability to help her father with his horses. She has no reason to believe that will ever change until she meets Faelan Savigar.
Faelan is known as the Devil Earl. He's rumored to have murdered his father when he was a child and to have grown into a man who leaves ruined maidens and defeated dueling opponents in his wake. The rumors might normally have given Roderica pause if it hadn't been for a trait that mattered far more to her---she can't read Faelan at all. She sees this as her one chance for happiness and strikes a deal with him for a mutaully beneficial marriage. Roderica will get the family she wants and Farlan's remote estate will allow her to limit her exposure to the outside world. In exchange Faelan will get the money he needs to restore the estate, which has fallen into disrepair.
What Roderica doesn't know is that Faelan has been experiencing blackouts and fears that he may be losing his mind. There are hours and sometimes days that he can't remember and violence always seems to happen around the missing hours. As Roderica, and Faelan grow to know and care about each other Faelan feels unworthy of her love and tries to protect her from the darkness in his life. Roderica refuses to believe that Faelan is evil and struggles to help him discover what forces are at work in his life. Her efforts are complicated by both her brother, who is determined to save her from her husband whether she wants him to or not, and by Faelan's best friend, whose involvement in politics may cost them all their lives.
This book is set in the early 18th century. It opens in England, but the action quickly moves to Faelan's estate in Ireland. Given the set-up this story could easily have been cliched, but Kinsale's writing saves it from that. Both Roderica & Faelan were fully realized characters and their growing relationship held my attention. I did find it frustrating that they spent so much time floundering rather than simply talking with each other openly. I could understand why they each felt the need to keep secrets, but there were still a couple of times when I found myself thinking, “Oh for Pete's sake would you two just have a conversation already?” Fortunately it never went far enough to be a Big Misunderstanding, so it didn't effect my enjoyment of the book.
There were two things about the book that I really didn't enjoy though. First was the fact that we did not get to see the villain punished at the end of the book. It was implied, but didn't happen on screen. Given everything the person did to Faelan I will admit that I very much wanted to see the guilty party get the appropriate comeuppance. There's also an odd twist near the end of the book where the story veers farther into the paranormal than I expected, even given Roddy's mind-reading ability. The problem wasn't that the scene was poorly written, it's just that it felt out of place in a book billed as an historical rather than a paranormal.
Grade: B
Faelan is known as the Devil Earl. He's rumored to have murdered his father when he was a child and to have grown into a man who leaves ruined maidens and defeated dueling opponents in his wake. The rumors might normally have given Roderica pause if it hadn't been for a trait that mattered far more to her---she can't read Faelan at all. She sees this as her one chance for happiness and strikes a deal with him for a mutaully beneficial marriage. Roderica will get the family she wants and Farlan's remote estate will allow her to limit her exposure to the outside world. In exchange Faelan will get the money he needs to restore the estate, which has fallen into disrepair.
What Roderica doesn't know is that Faelan has been experiencing blackouts and fears that he may be losing his mind. There are hours and sometimes days that he can't remember and violence always seems to happen around the missing hours. As Roderica, and Faelan grow to know and care about each other Faelan feels unworthy of her love and tries to protect her from the darkness in his life. Roderica refuses to believe that Faelan is evil and struggles to help him discover what forces are at work in his life. Her efforts are complicated by both her brother, who is determined to save her from her husband whether she wants him to or not, and by Faelan's best friend, whose involvement in politics may cost them all their lives.
This book is set in the early 18th century. It opens in England, but the action quickly moves to Faelan's estate in Ireland. Given the set-up this story could easily have been cliched, but Kinsale's writing saves it from that. Both Roderica & Faelan were fully realized characters and their growing relationship held my attention. I did find it frustrating that they spent so much time floundering rather than simply talking with each other openly. I could understand why they each felt the need to keep secrets, but there were still a couple of times when I found myself thinking, “Oh for Pete's sake would you two just have a conversation already?” Fortunately it never went far enough to be a Big Misunderstanding, so it didn't effect my enjoyment of the book.
There were two things about the book that I really didn't enjoy though. First was the fact that we did not get to see the villain punished at the end of the book. It was implied, but didn't happen on screen. Given everything the person did to Faelan I will admit that I very much wanted to see the guilty party get the appropriate comeuppance. There's also an odd twist near the end of the book where the story veers farther into the paranormal than I expected, even given Roddy's mind-reading ability. The problem wasn't that the scene was poorly written, it's just that it felt out of place in a book billed as an historical rather than a paranormal.
Grade: B
Monday, September 21, 2009
Sweet Release by Pamela Clare
Alex Kenleigh is a rich English shipbuilder. As the heir to the Kenleigh business and fortune he commands the family finances and he's responsible for his younger brother, Philip. For years Alex allowed Philip to do whatever he pleased and as a result his drinking and womanizing have gotten out of control. Alex is finally forced to cut him off, leaving him with only a minimal allowance until he behaves more responsibly. The night after he makes this decision Alex's coach is attacked and he's badly beaten. Another man's body is then substituted for his and Alex is sold into a 14 year indentured servitude and shipped to Virginia identified as a criminal named Cole Braden.
Cassie Blakewell is running her family's plantation alone. Her mother is dead, her younger brother is just a child and her father is suffering from mental problems brought on by the death of his wife. In 1730's Virginia it's incredibly difficult for a woman to manage by herself, but Cassie is determined to hold onto the the land until her brother comes of age and can take over. There are both creditors and rivals who would try to take over the plantation if they knew that Cassie's father was incompetent. In order to prevent that from happening Cassie has hidden her father in a small cabin in the nearby swamp and told everyone that he's traveling on business and has left her in charge while he's gone. If Cassie is unable to keep the plantation, or her story, going her family's holdings will be seized and sold to pay off debts, leaving her family with no home.
Cassie has very limited money, but she has to have more hands to so when a ship carrying slaves and bondsmen docks nearby she attends the sale. There she sees that one of the bondsman is obviously too ill to stand, let alone work, but the traders are still beating him in an attempt to force him to obey their orders. As an act of charity Cassie buys his indenture. She also buys a slave who befriended the sick man on the voyage. She assumes that the ill man will die, but once he's off the ship and receiving medical care he soon recovers his strength. His memory of how he came to be on the ship remains hazy and he's furious that people believe that he is a criminal named Cole. He insists that he is Alex Kenleigh, but has no way to prove it. Cassie agrees to allow him to send a letter to England, but while they're waiting for a response, which will take months to arrive, he will have to work.
Alex has no problem working. In fact he finds that he enjoys the physical labor far more than he had enjoyed being trapped in an office since the death of his father left him in charge of the family business. He can't be content though because he's drawn to Cassie and she still believes that he's a convicted despoiler of women. Cassie feels the attraction too, but doesn't know what to believe about Alex's identity. He doesn't act like a criminal, but with so much at stake she can't risk making a mistake. Still, it's difficult for Cassie to resist Alex when he proves kind to her and the people for whom she is responsible, and helpful with the running of the plantation.
Cassie would be willing to simply carry on while waiting for news from England, but her life is complicated by the attentions of a neighbor who wants to marry her and won't take no for an answer. Geoffrey is being pushed by his father, who wants the Blakewell land, and by his own lust for Cassie. He becomes jealous of Alex and schemes to get rid of him. Because of their positions in society neither Cassie nor Alex have the power to stop him and word of Alex's true identity may arrive too late to save him from Geoffrey's plot.
I liked both Alex and Cassie. I especially felt for Cassie's struggle to carry a huge burden on her own in a society that didn't recognize her abilities. There were some things that kept me from being able to fully enjoy Alex and Cassie's story though. This was Pamela Clare's debut novel and it had the kind of pacing problems that seem common in first novels. The middle of the book is a bit slow and then the end piles all sorts of problems one on top of the other. In fact there is so much drama that the end seems to go on and on. Those flaws weren't disastrous, but they did make other problems more noticeable.
Clare obviously researched the time period carefully and includes plenty of period detail. I was especially interested in the way she was able to point out that in certain ways indentured servants were actually treated worse than slaves. However, in spite of the historical detail, under the surface the book has a very modern sensibility. Men stay with their wives during childbirth. The good characters are kind to their slaves, who are happy with their lot. The bad characters beat their slaves and are thought badly of because of that. This reminded me why I tend to have problems with romances set in the pre-Civil War South. On one hand it's jarring when characters are anachronistically progressive. On the other hand I have no desire to read a book where the hero and/or heroine are happy slave owners. I understand the reality of that, but I don't want to deal with it in my romance fiction.
Grade: C+
As a result of my mixed feelings I'm not sure that I'll read the other two books in this trilogy: Carnal Gift, which is the story of Cassie's brother Jamie, and Ride the Fire, which features Alex & Cassie's son Nicholas.
Cassie Blakewell is running her family's plantation alone. Her mother is dead, her younger brother is just a child and her father is suffering from mental problems brought on by the death of his wife. In 1730's Virginia it's incredibly difficult for a woman to manage by herself, but Cassie is determined to hold onto the the land until her brother comes of age and can take over. There are both creditors and rivals who would try to take over the plantation if they knew that Cassie's father was incompetent. In order to prevent that from happening Cassie has hidden her father in a small cabin in the nearby swamp and told everyone that he's traveling on business and has left her in charge while he's gone. If Cassie is unable to keep the plantation, or her story, going her family's holdings will be seized and sold to pay off debts, leaving her family with no home.
Cassie has very limited money, but she has to have more hands to so when a ship carrying slaves and bondsmen docks nearby she attends the sale. There she sees that one of the bondsman is obviously too ill to stand, let alone work, but the traders are still beating him in an attempt to force him to obey their orders. As an act of charity Cassie buys his indenture. She also buys a slave who befriended the sick man on the voyage. She assumes that the ill man will die, but once he's off the ship and receiving medical care he soon recovers his strength. His memory of how he came to be on the ship remains hazy and he's furious that people believe that he is a criminal named Cole. He insists that he is Alex Kenleigh, but has no way to prove it. Cassie agrees to allow him to send a letter to England, but while they're waiting for a response, which will take months to arrive, he will have to work.
Alex has no problem working. In fact he finds that he enjoys the physical labor far more than he had enjoyed being trapped in an office since the death of his father left him in charge of the family business. He can't be content though because he's drawn to Cassie and she still believes that he's a convicted despoiler of women. Cassie feels the attraction too, but doesn't know what to believe about Alex's identity. He doesn't act like a criminal, but with so much at stake she can't risk making a mistake. Still, it's difficult for Cassie to resist Alex when he proves kind to her and the people for whom she is responsible, and helpful with the running of the plantation.
Cassie would be willing to simply carry on while waiting for news from England, but her life is complicated by the attentions of a neighbor who wants to marry her and won't take no for an answer. Geoffrey is being pushed by his father, who wants the Blakewell land, and by his own lust for Cassie. He becomes jealous of Alex and schemes to get rid of him. Because of their positions in society neither Cassie nor Alex have the power to stop him and word of Alex's true identity may arrive too late to save him from Geoffrey's plot.
I liked both Alex and Cassie. I especially felt for Cassie's struggle to carry a huge burden on her own in a society that didn't recognize her abilities. There were some things that kept me from being able to fully enjoy Alex and Cassie's story though. This was Pamela Clare's debut novel and it had the kind of pacing problems that seem common in first novels. The middle of the book is a bit slow and then the end piles all sorts of problems one on top of the other. In fact there is so much drama that the end seems to go on and on. Those flaws weren't disastrous, but they did make other problems more noticeable.
Clare obviously researched the time period carefully and includes plenty of period detail. I was especially interested in the way she was able to point out that in certain ways indentured servants were actually treated worse than slaves. However, in spite of the historical detail, under the surface the book has a very modern sensibility. Men stay with their wives during childbirth. The good characters are kind to their slaves, who are happy with their lot. The bad characters beat their slaves and are thought badly of because of that. This reminded me why I tend to have problems with romances set in the pre-Civil War South. On one hand it's jarring when characters are anachronistically progressive. On the other hand I have no desire to read a book where the hero and/or heroine are happy slave owners. I understand the reality of that, but I don't want to deal with it in my romance fiction.
Grade: C+
As a result of my mixed feelings I'm not sure that I'll read the other two books in this trilogy: Carnal Gift, which is the story of Cassie's brother Jamie, and Ride the Fire, which features Alex & Cassie's son Nicholas.
Gabriel's Ghost by Linnea Sinclair
After a decade piloting interstellar patrol ships, Captain Chasidah “Chaz” Bergren, was climbing the ladder of the Federated Fleet. Then she was accused of ignoring orders, leading to the deaths of 14 of her crew. She was convicted based on manufactured evidence and sentenced to life on Moabar, a remote prison planet from which no one ever escapes. Chaz has no idea who set her up and in her brutal new surroundings she has no time to try to figure it out. Things take a turn for the worse when she's forced to kill a guard in self-defense and she finds herself face to face with something even more frightening---a ghost from her past.
Gabriel Sullivan is a mercenary and smuggler who supposedly died two years ago. Instead he's on Moabar to rescue Chaz in exchange for her help getting to the bottom of a plot that threatens the Empire. Someone is secretly breeding jukors, vicious creatures that were outlawed years ago because they're uncontrollable. Gabriel needs Chaz to help him stop the practice before it decimates Imperial space. He has information that the secret lab is on Marker, Chaz's home planet, and he needs her knowledge to find and destroy the lab. The mission means putting their lives on the line, but Chaz figures that she has nothing to lose. She didn't count on the fact that Gabriel is far more than the charming criminal she always knew him to be. He has secrets he's afraid to share with anyone, but as the attraction between him and Chaz grows he finds himself wanting to try. Chaz finds that her growing feelings for Gabriel may place her in far greater danger than what she faces from the jukors or her unseen enemies.
This is the second book that I've read by Linnea Sinclair and I liked it as much as I liked the first. It deals with many of the same themes as Games of Command. There's an outsider who has to hide his difference and a heroine with whom he has a long running competitive relationship & who he secretly loves long before she loves him. There are also questions of trust, not only between the hero and heroine, but with the larger power structure.
This isn't merely a rehash of Games though. Gabriel and Chaz are interesting characters in their own right and they have a complicated relationship. Through most of their time together Gabriel insists on keeping his secrets and demands that Chaz not ask him any questions. That was understandable, but still unfair of him and Chaz was both willing to simply trust him and aggravated by the need to. That created a dynamic in their relationship that was compelling to read.
Grade: A-
Gabriel Sullivan is a mercenary and smuggler who supposedly died two years ago. Instead he's on Moabar to rescue Chaz in exchange for her help getting to the bottom of a plot that threatens the Empire. Someone is secretly breeding jukors, vicious creatures that were outlawed years ago because they're uncontrollable. Gabriel needs Chaz to help him stop the practice before it decimates Imperial space. He has information that the secret lab is on Marker, Chaz's home planet, and he needs her knowledge to find and destroy the lab. The mission means putting their lives on the line, but Chaz figures that she has nothing to lose. She didn't count on the fact that Gabriel is far more than the charming criminal she always knew him to be. He has secrets he's afraid to share with anyone, but as the attraction between him and Chaz grows he finds himself wanting to try. Chaz finds that her growing feelings for Gabriel may place her in far greater danger than what she faces from the jukors or her unseen enemies.
This is the second book that I've read by Linnea Sinclair and I liked it as much as I liked the first. It deals with many of the same themes as Games of Command. There's an outsider who has to hide his difference and a heroine with whom he has a long running competitive relationship & who he secretly loves long before she loves him. There are also questions of trust, not only between the hero and heroine, but with the larger power structure.
This isn't merely a rehash of Games though. Gabriel and Chaz are interesting characters in their own right and they have a complicated relationship. Through most of their time together Gabriel insists on keeping his secrets and demands that Chaz not ask him any questions. That was understandable, but still unfair of him and Chaz was both willing to simply trust him and aggravated by the need to. That created a dynamic in their relationship that was compelling to read.
Grade: A-
Exit Strategy by Kelley Armstrong
Nadia is a disgraced former cop who now runs a runs a lodge in rural Canada. She enjoys being an innkeeper, but the lodge isn't yet making enough money to support her. In order to make ends meet she works as a hitwoman for the Tommissini crime family. They pay well, don't lie to her and she knows that all the targets are bad guys. This allows Nadia to feel like she's still on the correct side of the moral line she was raised to believe in. Her only contact with other hitmen is with her mentor, a man she knows only by his professional name—-Jack.
When someone begins killing unconnected victims and leaving pages from the book Helter Skelter as a calling card the authorities suspect that the killer is a professional. The question is, why would a hitman kill so many seemingly random victims.? To get answers they begin arresting hitmen on any charges they can find, hoping to locate the killer or someone with information about him.
Jack realizes that this is very bad for business and asks Nadia to work with him and a small group of other hitmen to track down the killer and eliminate him before they all end up in jail. Nadia understands the stakes and feels like she owes Jack, so she agrees. In order to protect her real identity she takes the professional name Dee and travels around the country with Jack, working with other hitmen and using her rusty police skills to track down the killer.
The strength of this book is the characters. I have a certain fondness for stories about hitmen and I found both Nadia and Jack interesting. Not exactly likable, but interesting. Much more of Nadia's back story is revealed than Jack's and it paints a picture of a complex and difficult woman. For example, after the incident that cost Nadia her job most of her friends and family turned their backs on her and she resents that. Her anger would be reasonable if it weren't for the fact that the incident involved Nadia killing a suspect in cold blood. How did she expect people to react to that? Did she expect them to believe it was some sort of accident or mental breakdown? If so, she's expecting her loved ones to believe a lie, because she knows that isn't what happened. It's unclear if she's faulting them for not believing a lie or for not pretending to believe it, or for minding that she murdered someone and basically got away with it. The book seems to imply that Nadia herself isn't sure. That isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I found it interesting.
Unfortunately, the suspense plot was much less intriguing than the characters. The killer was pretty much who you would expect, his motivation was pretty much what you would expect and I didn't care much about any of it. As a result the book tended to drag. It's fairly long, and felt even longer because I never became absorbed enough by the story to read quickly.
Because I liked the characters I plan to read the follow up, Made to Be Broken. I'm willing to do that in part because, at least as of now, Armstrong doesn't seem to have any plans to write a longer series. If she does write more books about Nadia the plots will have to be much stronger for me to continue reading past the second book.
Grade: C
When someone begins killing unconnected victims and leaving pages from the book Helter Skelter as a calling card the authorities suspect that the killer is a professional. The question is, why would a hitman kill so many seemingly random victims.? To get answers they begin arresting hitmen on any charges they can find, hoping to locate the killer or someone with information about him.
Jack realizes that this is very bad for business and asks Nadia to work with him and a small group of other hitmen to track down the killer and eliminate him before they all end up in jail. Nadia understands the stakes and feels like she owes Jack, so she agrees. In order to protect her real identity she takes the professional name Dee and travels around the country with Jack, working with other hitmen and using her rusty police skills to track down the killer.
The strength of this book is the characters. I have a certain fondness for stories about hitmen and I found both Nadia and Jack interesting. Not exactly likable, but interesting. Much more of Nadia's back story is revealed than Jack's and it paints a picture of a complex and difficult woman. For example, after the incident that cost Nadia her job most of her friends and family turned their backs on her and she resents that. Her anger would be reasonable if it weren't for the fact that the incident involved Nadia killing a suspect in cold blood. How did she expect people to react to that? Did she expect them to believe it was some sort of accident or mental breakdown? If so, she's expecting her loved ones to believe a lie, because she knows that isn't what happened. It's unclear if she's faulting them for not believing a lie or for not pretending to believe it, or for minding that she murdered someone and basically got away with it. The book seems to imply that Nadia herself isn't sure. That isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I found it interesting.
Unfortunately, the suspense plot was much less intriguing than the characters. The killer was pretty much who you would expect, his motivation was pretty much what you would expect and I didn't care much about any of it. As a result the book tended to drag. It's fairly long, and felt even longer because I never became absorbed enough by the story to read quickly.
Because I liked the characters I plan to read the follow up, Made to Be Broken. I'm willing to do that in part because, at least as of now, Armstrong doesn't seem to have any plans to write a longer series. If she does write more books about Nadia the plots will have to be much stronger for me to continue reading past the second book.
Grade: C
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)