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1. ****½ Hunter's Moon by C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp. Contemporary paranormal romance. Wow--really excellent story, and beginning of a series. In the first place, it's extremely unusual to read a romance written in first person. And when that first person is the hero? Unheard-of. I'd like this book just for that alone. But then the story was good, too. A werewolf who's a mob assassin falls in love with a woman who hires him to kill her.

2. **** The Return of Rafe MacKade by Nora Roberts. Contemporary romance. Re-read. I'm a little tired of the heroes who are always getting in physical fights. I guess it's supposed to show how manly they are, but it just makes me think they're idiots. And not in an indulgent way. I'm also a little tired of romance characters who either "don't want a relationship" or assume it's going to end. And then there's dumping the whole relationship because of one misunderstanding. Bah. We won't mention the dream with the two corporals. Except to say that I really, really, don't like dream sequences in books. At all. I'm still waiting for the exception to that one. Still, the ghosts in this one were okay (yes, I know--gasp, shock, amazement)--it was all just feelings, cold spots, seeing a room the way it used to be--that works fine for me. And of course the red leather skirt & pool scene is a classic.

3. Summer Love.
   • ** "Straight from the Heart" by Janelle Taylor. Contemporary romance. O. M. G. If this were a play, I'd say the actors were chewing the scenery. Horribly overdone. It's an okay premise--the hero's law firm represented the heroine's ex-husband in a custody battle, and a mutual friend sets them up to be stranded in a cabin together. But the story goes downhill from there. Every reaction is exaggerated--frex, at one point the hero throws his head back and laughs... at something mildly amusing. And what was up with the "wheat bread"? Am I missing something? They've got bread, and it's mentioned multiple times, and there's only one kind of bread, but every time it's mentioned it's always "wheat bread." Really started to drive me nuts. We won't mention the exclamation marks.
   • *** "Summer Fantasy" by Jill Marie Landis. Contemporary romance. TV screenwriter's agent sends her to Kauai to relax and get over writer's block. The handsome Hawaiian B&B owner is the hero. The descriptions were very nice. I saw the "twist" coming from the first assumption the heroine made about the hero. Too much Fred (authorial intrusion) took away from the story. And the heroine... first, she's a the pinnacle of her profession at age 25. I thought we'd given that up in the 80s. And then she's all hot for the hero, so she's hostile toward him, comes on to him and then gets mad at him for responding.
   • *½ "Early in the Morning" by Stella Cameron. Paranormal romance. WTF moment #1: we have a couple who's on the eve of getting married, and they've--or rather she's--just now decided they ought to discuss sex. WTF moment #2: so he repeatedly changes the subject, avoids the question, and finally accuses her of being sex-obsessed. WTF moment #3: she doesn't actually dump his sorry butt. I have zero problem with a couple deciding to wait until marriage for sex. But I do think it's something they would/should discuss before, you know, the night before the wedding. And his reaction? That really doesn't bode well for a happy marriage. WTF moment #4: we get the reason for his reluctance--his ex-wife told him he wasn't any good in bed. Isn't that pretty much standard? Don't an awful lot of divorcing people accuse their exes of being bad in bed? WTF moment #5: the aliens show up. And.... Oh, god, I can't go on. It gets worse from there, if you can believe it. It's a complete mess. What the aliens want, how they communicate, how the couple plans to get away, and then how things change at the end--none of it makes any sense. Okay, I've got to add one last WTF moment because I just can't believe it: WTF moment # whatever: they don't want to have actual sex where the aliens can observe them. BUT they have no problem with getting completely naked and having oral sex.
   • ***** "Sultry" by Anne Stuart. Western historical romance. This is why I bought the book. And it made it worth it. Stuart's an exceptional author. From the first page, I felt myself relax and sink into the story of a saloon owner and the town's new sheriff. She packed a ton of story into a novella length, and I still didn't feel rushed or like things were left out. Emotional, lush, descriptive, even suspenseful. She makes it look so easy. Quite possibly, the contrast between this story and the others in the anthology account for a half a star here, but it deserves it for being stuck in a book with duds.

4. ****½ No Ordinary Man by Suzanne Brockmann. Romantic suspense. The serial-killer thing is getting kind of old, and I didn't think the initial part of the romance was that convincing--chemistry may well be the answer IRL, but I like something more solid in a romance novel. In fact, for the first half of the book, it was a solid 4 stars. Then Brockmann ratchets the story up a notch--several notches, and I'm really wondering who the killer is, and even so I know it can't be the hero (I'm not dumb--this is a Harlequin Intrigue--heroes are never serial killers in Harlequin Intrigues), I can feel the heroine's fear & distress at being only 99.9% sure that he's not, which was really well done.

5. ****½ The Marketplace by Laura Antoniou, w/a Sara Adamson. Erotica. I was really quite pleasantly surprised by this story of the training of four would-be slaves. It was on the order of Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty books, but focused more on the characters of the slaves than on the sex (as compared to the Rice books--there's still plenty of sex & kink). Anyway, a surprisingly complete read.

6. ***½ The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke. Science fiction. Not a bad story about humans colonizing other planets, and an encounter between those from the first wave and those from the last wave, but nothing much happens. And I admit, I was turned off by the author's note at the beginning of the book which pretty much said that everybody else claiming to write science fiction is really writing fantasy, and he's the only one who writes real science fiction. Get over yourself, already. Bah.

7. **** Immortal in Death by J. D. Robb. Futuristic romantic suspense. Not one of my favorites of the series--I'm not sure if it's because of all the little nits that bugged me, or if I noticed all the little nits because it's not one of my favorites. Frex: the biggest thing is that I can't buy that Eve, no matter how great a cop she is, would be allowed to head a murder investigation when her best friend is the primary suspect. Eve uses magnolias to describe one character's voice and another character's skin, yet doesn't recognize petunias. There's no reason for Leonardo to wonder if he's killed someone when he wakes up, other than to provide a red herring. Roarke admits sleeping with Pandora, yet elsewhere, Pandora's described as only sleeping with men who are easily manipulated. And of course the irritating "that's so first millennium" line, when you know they're not talking about 1 - 1000 A.D. Also, even though I've read this probably a dozen times, I still get the characters mixed up. And Eve's reaction to the revelation from her personal life was just goofy. I buy that she'd have trouble coming to terms with it, but the specifics didn't make a lot of sense. The mystery was pretty decent--the new drug, the overkill murders, but there wasn't much development on the relationship side, either, which is probably another reason for liking this one a bit less.

8. ****½ So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams. Science fiction. Morning read with the boys. Arthur's back on the reconstituted Earth, and finds a girlfriend. Still hilarious, but I missed the other characters and the traveling around in space.

9. **** Honor's Splendour by Julie Garwood. Historical romance. This is a book I'd classify as a guilty pleasure. Not in the sense that I'd hide it from anyone else, but in the sense that though I realize it's not very good, I enjoy it anyway. In this case, the heroine is just too naive to be believable, but it makes the book very funny anyway. As long as I ignore the little voice in my head that says she should be able to learn something eventually. Her naivete makes sense at first--she was raised by elderly priests--but it goes on too long, and she doesn't seem to learn anything. Still, as I said, it's very funny. There's adventure and romance, and a heck of a lot of humor, but it's one of those books that I have to turn off my internal critical reader to enjoy.

10. ****½ Tiger Eye by Marjorie M. Liu. Contemporary paranormal romance. Wow. Now I see what everyone was raving about. This is one of those books I was hesitant to read because there was just so much hype about it. And again, the hype was well-deserved. It appears to be the start of a series about characters with a wide variety of paranormal and/or psychic abilities. The heroine, an artist with a psychic affinity for metal, is in China on vacation, where an old woman convinces her to buy a puzzle box, which, when she opens it, contains a shape-shifting warrior who's been cursed to be a slave to the owner of the box. The magi who cursed him is now after both of them, and there's an assassin after her as well.

11. ***** Speaks the Nightbird, Vol. 2: Evil Unveiled by Robert McCammon. Horror. Second half of the book. Nicely intense, great characterization.

12. *****+ Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher. Contemporary fantasy. Re-read. It's even better the second (well, 4th, sort of) time around. It's not only polished, it... hmmm. what's more than polished? Every single word's just right, and it means something, and it echoes off something else. Okay, could be I'm sappy because of Mother's Day, or because of the inscription (I got it signed--yay!), but damn, it's a good book. Just when you think he can't get any better. Also, Best Use of a Pitcher of Ice Water in a Work of Fiction, ever.

13. *** The Pride of Jared MacKade by Nora Roberts. Contemporary romance. Re-read. Quite possibly it's the contrast with the last 3 books I read, but every time I read this, I never like Savannah, and at least this time around, I don't like Jared either. She doesn't have just a chip on her shoulder--it's the entire rock. And he's a hypocritical Neanderthal. She's nasty and rude, and thinks the worst of people (or at least of men) before she even meets them, and I can't find anything in her to relate to. He apparently thinks any woman he deigns to be interested in should be a virgin, or at least a victim. I didn't believe the romance--all I saw was that they had the hots for each other. I didn't understand the rush--that demand for immediate trust and complete disclosure of every event in her entire life 5 minutes after they meet (yes, I'm exaggerating, but not much). I was not remotely amused or sympathetic when she destroyed a couple thousand dollars worth of his belongings because she was pissed off at him. The three stars are because there are some genuinely good parts. Like when Jared talks to Bryan before asking Savannah to marry him. But on the whole, really not one of Nora's better efforts.

14. ***** Dreams Made Flesh by Anne Bishop. Fantasy. The missing romances for Lucivar/Marion and Daemon/Jaenelle, and a couple of short bits. Loved revisiting everyone. I was a little worried it would be hard to get back into the world, but it wasn't--this was much easier reading, except for the short bit about Saetan, and, perversely, I missed being slightly confused. Still, I love these characters, love the world, and really did not want to put this down, did not want it to end.

15. *** Tickled Pink by Rita Rudner. General fiction. I like her humor, but it doesn't seem to translate well to fiction. Or maybe just not this piece of fiction. Two young women, a dancer and a model, meet in a women's hotel in New York. The story follows them over several years as their dreams start coming true, are shattered, and change. Not a horrible story, but not great, either.

16. **** Powers of Detection, ed. by Dana Stabenow. Mystery, sf/f. As with most anthologies, it's a grab bag. Some of the stories were good mysteries. Only a couple of them were the kind of short stories that are one small step up from poetry in the navel-gazing, see-how-clever-I-am category that makes me hesitant about the whole idea of short stories. I bought this one for the Anne Bishop story, and didn't even plan to read it shortly after Dreams Made Flesh. Fate loves me. Anyway, the Anne Bishop story was worth it--the others--the good ones, that is, were just frosting.

17. **** Room Service by Beverly Brandt. Contemporary romance. I love this author's writing, but boy, did she make things hard on herself with this one! The prologue sets up the heroine as a spoiled rich girl whose father's just cut her out of his will. Suddenly penniless, she finds herself unable to pay a several-thousand-dollar hotel bill, and ends up taking a job in housekeeping at the hotel to pay it back and to save up enough money to hire a lawyer to break her father's will. My only problem with this story is that I wanted more. I wanted to see more of her conflicted feelings about her father, more of her struggling to accept that she has to earn money at least temporarily, more of the developing emotional connection between herself and the hero, the manager of the hotel. I get that it's a light story, so you don't want too much angst, but this author's pulled off that feat before, so I expect more.

18. ****½ Elphame's Choice by P.C. Cast. Fantasy. Yikes. No pulled punches on this one. I can't believe she.... Okay, no spoilers, but I suspect that's one of the things that makes this "fantasy with romantic elements" rather than paranormal romance. It takes place 2? 3? generations after Goddess by Mistake, in the same world. The heroine is half-human, half-centaur--looks a bit like a satyr, but horse instead of goat, and is the descendent of the couple in Goddess by Mistake. She's the goddess incarnate, but all she's ever wanted is to be treated like an ordinary person. All her life, she's been pulled to this castle ruin, so she, her brother, and a bunch of misfits set about restoring it, and they build a community and a home along with a fortress. She also finds her life mate, also a hybrid, but he's half-human, half-Fomorian--a sort of winged vampire, a demonic race that was believed to have been exterminated. So she's torn between her new friends & responsibilities and her heart, and he as well is torn between his heart and a prophecy that claims her sacrifice is all that can save his people from succumbing to the madness of their demonic forefathers.

19. **** Rapture in Death by J.D. Robb. Futuristic romantic suspense. Re-read. This is about the point in the series that, whenever I'm re-reading, I get tired of it. I can't put my finger on why, either. It might be that I feel the mind-control stuff isn't well-explained, or maybe it just squicks me. But geez, poor Mavis! She took a beating in Immortal, and now she gets trampled on again. Could be that's part of it, too. Or maybe it's just me.

20. ***** Sister of the Dead by Barb and J.C. Hendee. Fantasy. This series keeps expanding rather than just presenting the same kind of story over and over. Here we learn about Magiere's origins, and there are some painful and emotional developments. No black and white characters--even the villains have motivation and are sympathetic. Some questions are answered, but more arise.

21. **** Ties That Bind by Kathryn Shay. Contemporary romance. I had a really hard time getting into this book. The first couple of chapters had 5 separate POVs, and a lot of backstory, and it was hard to attach to any of the characters and care about them. Which bothered me, because I generally love this author's books, and find them intense and emotional. Part of the problem, admittedly, was that the book is about a divorced couple, and that immediately made me less sympathetic. Without that, the backstory & multiple POVs might not have bothered me so much. Then, too, the heroine... I really could not relate to her. But once the story kicked in, I did get hooked. A divorced couple of lawyers is named as the reason for a prison inmate's suicide, and the allegations could ruin both their careers, so they're forced to work together to figure out who implicated them and why, causing latent sparks to burst into flame and a lot of resistance from their new significant others. Kathryn Shay never hesitates to tackle tough subjects in her books, and this is no exception--we see how the divorce and subsequent reunion affected all 5 people involved, and they're all realistic, 3-dimensional people: no caricatures, or anyone who's all good or all bad, and they all have very human, very believable reactions.

22. ***½ Queen of Sorcery by David Eddings. Fantasy. I had a rough time getting into this--didn't care overmuch about the characters, too many names introduced in too short a period to distinguish them, contradictions (though, to be fair, the contradiction that bothered me most--saying magic was too exhausting to use casually, and then proceeding to do just that--appears to have been deliberate). The repeated ploy of the main character asking for clarification only to be told it was none of his business, or something he didn't need to know got very, very tedious. Which could also have been deliberate, to show how frustrated he was getting, but the only way you can do that without irritating the readers as well is to let the reader in on some of the secrets. Instead, it just looked like the author didn't know the answers either. The last third of the book went a little faster, but I read this over 4 days. Unheard-of for me, particularly for a book that was only 300+ pages. It was just too easy to put down, and I was never really interested in picking it up again.

23. ****½ The Heart of Devin MacKade by Nora Roberts. Contemporary romance. Re-read. Odd. I don't like victim heroines, and I don't like the way Nora does paranormals, and this story is very similar to Rising Tides (Ethan Quinn's story), yet I liked this one much better than the first two. Go figure. Part of it, I'm sure, is that I was just so tired of reading the same book for 4 days that I was bound to like whatever I read next. The fact that Cassie was a victim did make me feel a little distant from the story, and ****spoiler****completely breaking off a relationship because of a 10-year-old's unfounded fears (note: I'm not saying he didn't have a reason to be afraid of his father--I'm saying that his fear of Devin in particular was unfounded, particularly since he already liked and trusted Devin before the question of marriage came up) is really stupid. I totally get putting the kids first, but not even giving him 24 hours to get used to the idea? Stupid.**** Still, I think Nora did an amazing job, particularly for a category romance, in portraying these characters. They were very believable. And Devin may have been slow to let Cassie know how he felt, but at least he wasn't the silent type.

24. ***** Last Girl Dancing by Holly Lisle. Romantic suspense. There might be some problems--this is a serial killer story, after all, and I did guess whodunit pretty early on, but that doesn't seem to matter. Holly Lisle's writing just sucks me in anyway. A young dedicated cop gets a chance to make it into the elite homicide squad if she helps solve a series of stripper killings. The downside is that her career, which is her whole life, is on the line. Because of her dance background and her undercover experience, she's asked to go undercover as a stripper. And to work with a psychic. And she really hates psychics. There are excellent reasons for everything, but the backstory is doled out naturally, in small doses--you don't get a big "this is who she is and why she's doing this" speech right up front, and the same goes for the hero. Just fabulous writing. This is only the 2nd book of Holly Lisle's that I've read, but I'm slowly collecting the rest, which are sf/f, but since it was the writing I was so enthralled by, I expect I'll like them, too.

25. ****½ Undead and Unpopular by MaryJanice Davidson. Contemporary fantasy. A fun, fast read, as expected. And I liked it a smidgen better than Undead and Unappreciated. Betsy has a couple of real dilemmas in this one--a friend has a serious illness, and a foreign vampire dignitary turns out to have killed another of Betsy's friends.
    

Labels: 1.5 stars, 2 stars, 3 stars, 3.5 stars, 4 stars, 4.5 stars, 5 stars, 5+ stars, books

// posted by Darla @ 5/31/2006 03:50:00 PM 2 comments

Butterfinger

They call you sticky fingers for a reason!

Labels: quiz

// posted by Darla @ 5/28/2006 12:00:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: about me

// posted by Darla @ 5/26/2006 12:37:00 PM 6 comments

Labels: TT

// posted by Darla @ 5/25/2006 03:38:00 PM 13 comments

Labels: parenting, theories

// posted by Darla @ 5/24/2006 10:15:00 AM 2 comments

You Are 27 Years Old

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

Labels: quiz

// posted by Darla @ 5/19/2006 11:54:00 AM 7 comments

Labels: TT

// posted by Darla @ 5/18/2006 09:53:00 AM 4 comments

Labels: books, tbr challenge

// posted by Darla @ 5/17/2006 05:42:00 PM 0 comments

Labels: theories

// posted by Darla @ 5/12/2006 10:27:00 PM 1 comments

Labels: TT

// posted by Darla @ 5/11/2006 10:36:00 AM 5 comments

Doing silly quizzes instead of things I ought to be doing. Oh, well. I might as well post it here:

Your Quirk Factor: 70%

You're so quirky, it's hard for you to tell the difference between quirky and normal. No doubt about it, there's little about you that's "normal" or "average."

How Quirky Are You?

Surprised me a wee bit--I mean, isn't everybody like this?

Oh.


Categories: AboutMe

Labels: quiz

// posted by Darla @ 5/09/2006 06:58:00 PM 2 comments




Thirteen Things I don't get. Tailgating. What do you think you're going to accomplish, riding someone's bumper? I promise you, it's not going to make them go faster. In fact, if they're like me, it's going to make them slow down. People who are simultaneously anti-abortion, anti-birth control and anti-government assistance. What do they expect poor pregnant women to do? Here's a thought-provoking post on the subject. Convoluted avoidance of lying. Frex: you go home for a quickie on your lunch hour that takes longer than expected, so you drive back to work via a different route that takes you past a client's place of business so that when you get back late, you can "truthfully" say, "I went past the client's." To me, this is worse than saying the same thing without the added driving, because both are lying, but the first adds hypocrisy to the lie. Why do people do this? Do they think God's going to buy their nitpicking? Capri pants. They cut off your leg right at the widest part, making your legs look both short and fat. Not a good look on anyone other than a 6-foot-tall 95-pound supermodel. Baking instructions on refrigerated cookie dough. Really, it should just come with a spoon. Depressing books and movies. Honest, I know that life can and often does suck. I don't need my entertainment to remind me. Spectator sports. Huh. Just don't get it. Celebrity gossip. I love movies, but I really do not care about the personal lives of the actors. In fact, I'd much rather not know about it. "Blood is thicker than water." I know people who look up distant relatives and feel an instant connection. I only feel a connection to those relatives with whom I have a shared history. I'm not alone here--Carl's never met his biological father, and isn't interested in looking him up. Pressuring kids to be in dozens of clubs, sports, and myriad other after-school activities under the guise of "getting into college." Unless you're trying to send them to an Ivy League school, most of this is pointless, and you're just asking for burnout before they even get to college. People who are rude to waiters. Do they think that will get them better service? The short periods of time I was a waiter when I was a teen, if a customer was rude, I tended to avoid them. Plus, isn't it just asking for spit in your drink...or worse? The overwhelming appeal of Scotland and/or Ireland. I don't have anything against these places, but why are so many Americans with no Scottish or Irish heritage so enthralled by them? What makes them so much more exciting than Belgium or Bulgaria or Brazil or Botswana? Parents who brag about how tall their kids are. You might as well brag about how they have brown hair or green eyes. Height is really not a virtue. It always makes me suspect that said kid is dumb as a rock, unpleasant, tone-deaf, and uncoordinated, but darn it, at least he's tall. Otherwise, why not brag about those things that are actually due to some effort on someone's part? Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Doug




Labels: TT

// posted by Darla @ 5/04/2006 01:27:00 PM 2 comments

1. ***** Lord of Danger by Anne Stuart. Historical romance. Master magician and master of intrigue is offered his pick of the convent-raised sisters of a man he might help to put on the throne. He picks the elder, plainer, cleverer one. The younger sister's obnoxiously thoughtless narcissism made me say WTF a few times, but the rest of the book was so good I really didn't care.

2. ****½ Master of Wolves by Angela Knight. Contemporary paranormal romance. What if a cop finds out that her police dog... is actually a werewolf, who's undercover trying to find out who killed his friend. Throw in the Arthurian vampires, some bad vampires, a fairy king, a rogue werewolf, and an overly cautious werewolf chieftan. Mix well. Stay up reading until you've finished. My only quibble is that the story is so extremely busy. A reader who hasn't read previous books in this series might well get lost.

3. ***** Ex and the Single Girl by Lani Diane Rich. Chick lit/women's fiction/romance. A little more meaty/serious than your average chick lit. PhD candidate Portia is conned into returning to her hometown for the summer, where she deals with her 'barmy' family, who refuse to explain themselves at all, her recent break-up and the sudden reappearance of her ex, her stalled dissertation, the father she hasn't seen since she was 2, a British writer she might be falling in love with, and the Penis Teflon effect that prevents men from sticking to the women of her family. I don't know how she put up with her family. I'd have washed my hands of the lot of them. Guess she's used to it.

4. ***** Hot Ice by Nora Roberts. Romantic suspense. Re-read. I always think of this as Nora's caper book. Unfortunately, I don't think this is one of the books that's being considered as a movie. Which is just as well--they're making Lifetime movies out of them, and this would make a good mainstream movie. The bored but plucky heiress, the daring jewel thief, action, adventure, crocodiles, caves, chases, drama, an evil villain and his creepy henchmen, even a pig. Somebody should contact the producers who made The Italian Job. Seriously.

5. **** Ablaze: The Story of the Heroes and victims of Chernobyl by Piers Paul Read. Non-fiction. Fascinating. The human story. A little hard to follow in places, though, because it bounced around in time.

6. **** Love and Mayhem by Nicole Cody. Historical romance. Arsenic and Old Lace crossed with a medieval Scottish romance. Lots of fun. I do think, though, that the authors' note should have been at the front of the book, because I kept thinking "what?? this is Arsenic and Old Lace! What were they thinking??" Once I read the note though, I thought it was cool and fun. Perceptions and expectations make all the difference.

7. ***** Sweet Myth-Tery of Life by Robert Asprin. Fantasy. Okay, that does it. I'm looking for this series IN ORDER. This is the second Myth book I've read, both of them from somewhere in the middle of the series, and they're hilarious, and well-written enough that I wasn't lost at all, but I really want to see how it all started and read them in order now. In this one, Skeeve's caught between a rock and a hard place: either marry Queen Hemlock, or she'll abdicate, leaving him her throne. In the meantime, he's been hired to balance the kingdom's budget. The puns are relentless, and yet there's a bunch of serious stuff in there about love, marriage, and accounting.

8. Dead and Loving It by MaryJanice Davidson. Contemporary paranormal romance.
   • ***** "Santa Claws". Scottish werewolf in town to pay tribute to the new heir runs across a woman dressed as Santa. Great blend of humor and burning-hot steam. Plus, there's a shout-out to Emma Holly, which is way cool.
   • ***** "Monster Love". Ooooh, a combo! Betsy-vamp meets Wyndham werewolf. Hot and hilarious, and daring. Not many authors can write a bondage & rape scenario and still make me root for the hero.
   • ***** "There's No Such Thing as a Werewolf". A blind werewolf doctor meets a younger woman who just has this feeling that she should be able to fly, and he can suddenly see her.
   • ***** "A Fiend in Need". Yes! Another combo! Antonia, the seer, non-Changing werewolf from Derik's Bane, and George the Fiend from the Betsy books.

9. **½ Wild Child by Suzanne Forster. Contemporary romance. I swear, these two have so many visions/flashbacks/hallucinations that they need psychiatric care. And every conversation has l o n g pauses in it while the characters reminisce and go off on tangents in their heads. Other than that, it's a pretty predictable reunion story (and to think I normally love reunion stories--shows there are exceptions to every rule) about the town bad girl coming home and the district attorney who, as a young prosecutor, had put her in jail at 16.

10. ***** Naked in Death by J. D. Robb. Futuristic romantic suspense. Re-read. What can I say about this that I haven't said before? Great beginning to a terrific series.

11. **½ The Scottish Bride by Catherine Coulter. Historical romance. I was apprehensive about this one--it had been in my TBR pile forever, and the last book I read by Coulter was pretty much unreadable. This one wasn't as bad, but you can see the development of the unreadable style--abrupt transitions and dialogue in which the characters don't seem to be actually speaking to each other, as their statements are unrelated (not an actual example, but this sort of thing: "Nice weather out today." "My dress is blue."). I wonder if it's her writing that's just continued along this path, or if it's always been like this and she has a new editor that doesn't keep it in check. Anyway, despite it being more comprehensible, there's not much of a story. This is one of those rare occasions when a full-length book would probably work better as a novella. It's ostensibly about a serious, widowed (widowered?) vicar who unexpectedly inherits a Scottish barony, travels to it, meets a woman who brings light & laughter back into his life, marries her, his congregation objects to the change in him, and he has to somehow reconcile his serious faith with his newfound happiness. It's a good premise. But the story completely loses sight of the goal. Long, long passages, chapters even, are devoted to really dull minutiae, including visiting every single couple from what has apparently been a pretty long series, and listing every one of their innumerable offspring, while the plot's off in the corner somewhere taking a snooze.

12. *** Beyond the Wild Wind by Sasha Lord. Historical romance. Possibly a mistake reading two historicals back to back. The heroine's a naval Robin Hood, who's asked her cousin, a famed warrior, to help her get back Something an outlaw took from her. The cousin wants to stay in a monastery for 2 more months, so he sends another warrior in his place, but she thinks it's her cousin. She's both too good to be true and occasionally TSTL. And he can sleep with her under an assumed name, but when it comes to saving her life, he's just too honest to lie about his name. Really made me want to *smack* him upside the head. I liked the previous books in this series much better, & will probably check out future ones.

13. ***** Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane. Mystery. Just what I needed. A complete change--no (well, okay, minimal) romance, no historical setting, and Lehane's wonderful way with words. A missing child pulls Patrick & Angie into a dark, intense story full of suspense and intrigue, with personal complications for them. Fascinating cast of characters--all varying shades of gray. Clever and chilling mystery. And the series is as much about Patrick & Angie as it is about the cases.

14. **** In the Thrill of the Night by Candice Hern. Historical romance, Regency. Group of widows decide to take lovers. Heroine is a widow who'd loved her husband but didn't realize he wasn't very good in bed. She asks her male best friend, who's just gotten betrothed, to give her pointers on finding a lover. It's a fairly common Regency plot--with the twist that the heroine's just looking for a lover, not a husband, but it's done well, and the characters are fun and convincing. Start of a series about the "Merry Widows."

15. **** Cruel and Unusual Puns by Don Hauptman. Non-fiction, humor. Dissecting them takes some of the fun out of it, and the book was limited to one type of pun (transposition puns), but it was interesting & entertaining.

16. ** The Tooth of Time by Sue Henry. Mystery. I know I liked the last book I read by her, but this one.... Nothing happened until 100 pages into the story, and since the book was only 243 pages long, that's a big chunk of the book. And even then, the death mentioned was an article in the paper, and it was just a curiosity, not something the characters were concerned about or investigated or anything. And at the end, one of the mysteries wasn't even conclusively solved. To make matters worse, the book started out in the present, went back in time a little way, then went back in time again to the start of the story. That can work, if something's actually happening, but nothing was. Prologue: look at a mountain, reminisce~~>Chapter 1: walk through some sand dunes, decide to go back to where she'd just come from, reminisce~~~>Chapter 2: a few days earlier. No suspense or anything at all to make the reader go "ooh, I wonder what brought her to this point" which is, IMO, what you need to do that sort of jumping back in time. The book was more a slice of life story than a mystery, which may indeed be what was intended, even though it's subtitled "a Maxie and Stretch mystery", and I'm trying to not let expectations color my opinion of a book, but I find slice of life stories boring. And did I mention the mystery? Not completely solved? Bah.

17. ***** Don't Look Down by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. Romantic adventure. :) I've been anticipating this book for far too long to let it sit in my TBR pile. The difference between this one and one that I really, really want to read that ends up in the TBR pile anyway is that this one is in my face daily--on the Crusie list, the Cherry boards, the He Wrote/She Wrote blog, etc. I think it probably helped that I knew about the book ahead of time--so many people seemed thrown by the collaboration. It was fast-paced, fun, exciting, hard to put down. It even had that changing-your-life stuff and the layers that Crusie is famous for.

18. *****+ Going Postal by Terry Pratchett. Fantasy. Breaking my own rule of not reading really good books back to back. I tried to pick up something a little less exciting after finishing DLD, but I didn't want to lose the high just yet. Absolutely wonderful, as expected. Vetinari hires a con artist to take over the Post Office.

19. ***** Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams. Science fiction. Morning read-aloud with the boys. Possibly my least favorite of the series--all that stuff about Krikkit might have resonated more if I knew more about the game of cricket. Still a 5-star read anyway.

20. **½ Did You Declare the Corpse? by Patricia Sprinkle. Mystery. Another mystery that starts at one time, then jumps back to the past. It's a technique that can work--like the one and only Murder She Wrote mystery I liked--but only if you give the reader a reason to care, to wonder how and why the character(s) got into the predicament you first see them in. In this case, it begins with a mystery about coffins delivered to the wrong chapel that nobody apparently ordered, and a body found in one of them, but we don't know who. Then it jumps back in time to tell us all the details of a tour to Scotland, complete with accents: a Canadian woman who ends every statement with "eh?" and the Scottish characters all find reason to say "fit ye deein'" at least once in every conversation. The tour is dull, the characters unlikeable, crimes that are eventually uncovered are just ignored at the end, and the mystery that starts the book, the coffins being delivered to the wrong chapel, is solved, but makes no sense.

21. *** Pure Chance by Julie Elizabeth Leto. Contemporary romance. Self-consciously "steamy". Frex, the heroine has an "erotic garden" that exists for no other reason than to have her pose on various parts of a marble fountain while they have sex. It was quite obviously supposed to be really daring. But cold, wet, marble? Not sexy. And also dangerous. Bah. Besides which, it has nothing to do with the story, nor does it fit with the character. I'd overlook that--way too many romances are self-conscious about the sex scenes--if the rest of the book were better. The heroine, the hero, and the man who's pressuring her to marry him used to be best buddies in school, then after a drunken and rejected pass at graduation, the h/h, both believing the other hated them, separated. Now, years later, the hero's back in town, "retired" from his military "regiment" (and would it hurt authors to do a teeny tiny bit of research??) and opening a bodyguard business, and the other friend has started pressuring her to marry him. So the heroine gets the bright idea to hire him for a bogus threat that becomes real. Complicating matters, she's vowed never to marry, and he thinks he wants to marry a woman who'll keep him grounded (both the h/h are risk-takers). Great premise, but then it doesn't follow through. First, the heroine for no good reason says she needs to hire him for "a friend." (Yes, I know this is standard when asking advice, but she wasn't asking advice, she was hiring a bodyguard.) Then their reactions flip-flop. Rather than stick to the original premise of "I want you, but you're not what I need and I'm not what you need," they're all over the place. In places, it appears that they think she's the one who wants the white picket fence and 2.7 kids, and he's the one eschewing marriage. Again, this could work if it were explored/explained. But instead, it just looks like a mess. And the motivation for the friend's proposal doesn't make much sense, either. IMO, this could have been an excellent book with a bit more editing, which is why I wrote so much about it--it's more frustrating to read a book that could have been great but wasn't than one that's just ordinary.

22. ***** Glory in Death by J. D. Robb. Futuristic romantic suspense. Re-read. Absolutely wonderful. Excellent. One of the best of the series. Deeply emotional, it's almost painful to re-read. Great balance between the romance and the suspense, and the emotions are spread out through the entire cast of the book. The characters, and not just the main ones, are well-developed, and the main characters themselves are so real in this one that it makes them seem somewhat flat in other books. Eve and Roarke go through so much emotional pain to connect, and Roarke is unusually vulnerable and human here.

23. ***** A Christmas Marriage by Dallas Schulze. Contemporary romance. In the omnibus Christmas Delivery. An excellent example of why I enjoy Dallas's books so much. She writes straightforward romance, takes the cliches and tilts them, just a bit, to make them fresh. A reunion story, one of my favorite types. A divorced couple reunites. She'd asked for the divorce because she was afraid of losing her identity, and has to learn to balance a relationship with being her own person.

24. ***** Nest by Douglas Hoffman. Fantasy. Can't say anything, but it was a fascinating world, and there was lots of intrigue--I'm a sucker for good intrigue.

25. ****½ Dear Santa by Margaret St. George. Contemporary romance. In the omnibus Christmas Delivery. Perfect example of "never say never". I still maintain that in general, kids do not belong in romance novels. But this one works. A separated couple with two kids and one on the way, with seemingly irreconcilable differences. He's a workaholic investment banker, and so was she, until they had children. Now they have plenty of money, and she wants to move back to her hometown to give the kids a more relaxed life. He wants things to stay the same in Los Angeles. He takes a long-overdue vacation and comes to stay with them in hopes of a reconciliation, while she's fallen into the workaholic trap in her new job. The role reversal causes both of them to reevaluate. The characters are very, very real.

26. **** Three Waifs and a Daddy by Margot Dalton. Contemporary romance. In the omnibus Christmas Delivery. This one gets docked a bit because I kept being concerned about the legality--I'm not sure how plausible the scenario was. Also, the title made me cringe. But aside from that, it's another excellent story. Thanks for the book, Annie! A scientist (I love brainy heroines!) wants a baby and has chosen the perfect father--an ex-football player. They have a one-night stand on a night when she's determined her chances for conception were greatest, and on the way back from the motel, they're mugged by a kid who's trying to take care of his younger siblings. She wants to avoid further involvement with him, fearing he &/or his family will try to claim her baby, but can't resist the kids who he's taken under his wing. Lots about family dynamics and loneliness.

27. **** Smoky Mountain Tracks by Donna Ball. Mystery. Search-and-rescue dogs are the theme, & the cover promises this is the first in a series. Interesting info about SAR dogs, a chilling mystery about a murder and a missing child all tangled up with small town politics, and a cast of well-developed, individual characters.

28. ***** Speaks the Nightbird, vol. 1: Judgment of the Witch by Robert McCammon. Suspense. Or mystery. It's not really horror, which surprised me from McCammon. Excellent story, though, about a magistrate and a clerk who travel to a small town in 1699 to try a witch. Most everyone in the town is convinced she's a witch, but the clerk, who's curious by nature, has a lot of questions, and things aren't adding up. Good characterization.

29. *** The Old Contemptibles by Martha Grimes. Mystery. Intriguing mystery, with members of a household getting picked off one by one and attributed to accident or suicide, but I'm just not a fan of this series. I get awfully tired of the ubiquitous precocious children. In this one, an 11-year-old girl is working as a cook, living in the household after her mother's death instead of going to live with her aunt, so she can investigate her mother's death. Uh-huh. If you go by this series, English children pretty much run things, and all the adults are idiots or obsessed by weird things or otherwise unworldly. Except for Richard Jury, of course, who sees all, knows all, and is irresistible to all women. Like I said. I just don't like the series.

Labels: books

// posted by Darla @ 5/01/2006 10:18:00 AM 5 comments