Tag Archives: romance

Review: Tempt Me at Twilight by Lisa Kleypas

Posted on by
Reply

Last Christmas my Mom handed me this book and said, “I think you’ll like this one.” I was a little skeptical. I don’t usually read romance novels (although, over the last year or so I’ve kind of gotten into them, largely courtesy of my Mom who recommends them). The point of romance seems to be exploring relationships, particularly the beginnings of romantic relationships. And, they can be a little formulaic. Two people meet. They’re perfect for each other but there’s some obstacle (sometimes that one of the participants is 100% not interested in the other.) But, they overcome those obstacles and in the end they are together. At first, I thought this is book was going to be textbook formula. It’s the third in a series that follows the Hathaways and sees the eligible folks in this family paired off. This installment starts with Poppy’s season in the London circuit. She has a beau and is all set to make it work with him (despite the fact that his father would never approve) until she is completely derailed by the dashing (and a little dangerous) hotelier Routledge. I won’t spoil it for you, but what happens next was both unsurprising and delightful.

I really liked the main characters in this novel. The relationship between Poppy and Routledge is complex and interesting. She’s just not a silly girl on the London circuit, Poppy has depth and is smart and curious. And, Routledge is a straight forward, no-nonsense business man who might be cut throat and ruthless but who also has a secret soft center. I liked the give and take between the two of them. I liked the little mysteries. I liked that the main force of the novel was basically about how two people with separate lives learn how to integrate.

In short, I was surprised by this book and I would definitely recommend it.

Review: Dark Guardian by Christine Feehan

Posted on by
2

The Carpathians are an immortal race that live off blood, like vampires.  Except, they’re not the undead.  They have souls.  The males lose all emotion and the ability to see color until they find their life mates who restore these to them.  They’re bonded forever.  
I should have stopped reading this book at the prologue and when I heard this explanation and thought, “NOPE!”  
I get that I might not be the audience for mainstream romance.  And, I get that media lets us explore situations and relationships that my interest us, intrigue us, turn us on, or whatever but that we don’t and shouldn’t do in real life.  I get that novels, not just romance novels, are an escape.  I get all of that.  
But, I can’t even think of an appropriate list of swear words to describe how terrible this novel was.  Seriously.  It was so bad that I can’t even swear at it.  
But, I can tell you what I didn’t like about it and why.

Massive Spoilers Ahead!

First, of course, was this idea that men (well, Carpathian men) are emotionless monsters that women have to save.  Nope.  Feelings are a human thing.  We all have amygdalas and emotional centers in our brains and anything that continues to perpetuate the stereotype that women are the ones that feel and men aren’t harms women, harms men, harms us all.  Second, after introducing our immortal badass vampire hunting Carpathian dudebro we’re introduced to Jaxon the heroine by looking into her life at ages 5, 10, 15, adulthood.  Jax was raised on a military base by her Mother (who wasn’t super maternal) and her father, a Navy Seal, and his Seal buddies were very involved in her life.  Until her Dad died and her Mom married his Seal buddy who then turned into an abusive pyscho and the descriptions were awful.  Psycho Step Dad then stalks our fair Jax and torments her by hurting people she loves.  Oh, but before we get there we are treated to these flashbacks where young Jax tells adults that her Step Dad is abusive and no one believes her.  I thought there was mandatory reporting of these sorts of things?  Like, if a kid tells her teacher that her Dad hits her Mom that the teacher had to tell the school and get Child Welfare involved?  Anyway, Jax grows up into an emotionally stunted police officer who has to keep everyone at arms length because Psycho Step Dad might be watching.  (At least that was a fun twist:  for once the psycho step parent wasn’t the mother.)  Then, her Carpathian dudebro inserts himself into her life, removes her from her friends and chosen family, disregards her concerns, commands her to stay in the house in the name of her safety (and gets violently upset when she disregards his commands and asserts her own autonomy), and initiates the life mate binding process without her consent and then completes it without ever explaining anything to her.  Being stalked by a Navy Seal is terrible.  Being swept up by an immortal who needs you to maintain his emotional life for him is also terrible.  
And, folks, I didn’t even get to the end.  I got the completion of the binding ritual and she started freaking out and Carpathian dudebro started mansplaining how they were meant for each other and she just needs to roll with the (irreversible) changes and I was like:
  

So, the only good choice with this book is to just not pick it up.  0/10.  Do not recommend.

I checked this book out from the Buffalo and Erie County Public Libraries.

Quick Review: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Posted on by
Reply

six of crowsIf you loved Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha series and you love crime capers then you are going to love Six of Crows.  Set after the events of her last series but this time in Kerch, a country not far from Ravka, six criminals are tasked with a suicide mission that has little to no chance of being accomplished but the pay out is good.  Kaz, Inej, Jesper, Nina, Matthias and Wylan are all flawed and interesting characters with varying degrees of criminal presents or pasts.  Each bring their own set of skills that are vital to the mission.  Inej, aka the Wraith, is a trained trapeze artist who can scale walls and quietly gather information. Jesper is a sharpshooter with a gambling problem, Nina is a Heartrender, who can kill you without even touching you.  Matthias is a convict who is part of a religious society that hunts down Grisha.  Wylan is the son of a rich merchant who likes to blow things up and Kaz is their mysterious leader.  He worked his way up in the Barrel to rule but it’s all to get revenge on the man he blames for the death of his brother.

A new drug called Jurda Panem has been developed and it strenghtens Grisha powers to impossible powers.  This could change the whole balance of the world.  How can people defend against the Grisha if they have unchecked powers? Kaz is hired by the Merchant Councils to rescue the man who created it from a Fjerdian prison that is inescapable.  Kaz goes about to assemble his team who don’t exactly get along but must work together if they are going to succeed or just survive.  This story has so many plot twists and misdirections it’s like Oceans 11.  You have to question everything you read because what you think is happening is not all that is really happening. It’s not just all the action that makes this book a good read.  It’s the characters.  They are all compelling and interesting with full backstories.  All with the exception of Wylan who is the only one not to have a chapter written from his point of view.  Probably because out of all them he’s the outsider of the group.  He’s not a criminal and he’s not from the barrel.  Kaz says he’s only there as leverage against the council and he knows how to blow things up but I think it’s more than that.  I look forward to knowing more about him. 

Matthias is a warrior who’s goal is eradicate the Grisha as he feels they are unnatural.  It’s one thing to arrest and execute Grisha in one’s own country but it takes balls to go other countries, tracking down Grisha, capturing them and bringing them back to Fjerdia and then putting them on trial and executing them.  He captured Nina but thanks to a storm she rescued him.  In attempt to save his life again, she accuses him of slave trading but things go south when he is actually thrown in jail for it.  Nina befriends some people (for lack of better term) to help get him out as she feels responsible.  Inej was captured and sold to a pleasure house until Kaz came and made her apart of his gang.  Now she’s his spy, the Wraith, but all she wants to do is go home and find her family. Jesper, a former farm boy who came to Kerch as a student and found gambling instead.  He’s also hiding things, one being that he is also Grisha.  I’m pretty sure I know another one of his secrets too.  Let’s just say, I ship Jesper and Wylan, if you get my gist.  Kaz is the most intriguing.  Coming out of nowhere to being a major player in the Barrel.  He’s smart and ruthless and more of a mystery than everyone.  He’s hellbent on revenge against the man he believes is responsible to the death of his brother but he’s  also a 17 year old boy so well, he has those annoying feelings to deal with.

So for fans of the Grisha series and Oceans 11 type movies this is the book for you. It’s fun, lots of action, lots of double dealings, backstabbing, mystery and potential romance.

Review: Landline by Rainbow Rowell

Posted on by
1

So, I can’t believe how incredibly lax I have been this past month about blogging. I finished this book awhile ago (before Beth finished A Walk in the Woods!). This was the hardest of the books that Beth assigned me to get through. (Which I think is funny. I read the easiest and then immediately started the hardest). But, it was nice to know that even if I was having trouble with it, at least I was reading a signed copy.

Georgie has always wanted to be a comedy writer and she has worked very hard over the years writing for various television shows. Now, she and her writing partner have a chance to pitch their own show. This is their dream. But, it’s Christmas and she was supposed to go to Omaha with the love of her life Neal and their two kids. He tells her not worry, they’ll go without her, she should stay and write her pitch. She stays. He leaves with the kids. A chain of events is then set off in which Georgie has to wonder about her future and her past. Did Neal leave her for good or just for Christmas? Trying to get in touch with Neal she discovers that she has a magic phone that can call Neal in the past. Well, at one particular time in the past where she was sure Neal had left her for good.

This one, my last one in my pop culture homework assignment, was so slow starting. At the beginning of the book (probably for the first fifty pages) I didn’t care about Neal or Georgie and so I wasn’t invested in their relationship. It didn’t matter to me if they stayed together or if they split. But, the further I got into the novel, the more I started really getting into the context. Georgie is thinking about her priorities and what she wants from her life. I can relate to that. In fact, this was probably hardest to read because Georgie and I are about the same age and I have also been thinking a lot about my priorities this summer. Georgie is coming to realize all of the things that she has taken for granted (that you can’t take for granted.) Neal is not my favorite paramour in literature; he’s brusque and standoffish. Without Georgie, I probably wouldn’t care about Neal (without Neal, I might care about Georgie). But, Neal and Georgie do seem to have something good in the flashbacks we are treated to as Georgie thinks about her relationship (and as Rowell provides us the context of the phone calls to the past.)

It is a neat concept: a magic phone that can call one place and time in the past. That’s pretty neat. At the Rainbow Rowell reading I went to earlier this summer someone asked about the magic phone and she said, “Who wouldn’t want a magic phone they could use to talk to a past love?” Me. I wouldn’t. But, if I had a magic phone and I could talk to my past self, man that would be sweet. Past Kate could have saved Present Kate a lot of trouble. This was my least favorite of the four Rowell books I read this summer but it was still pretty good.

And, with that, I am done with my Pop Culture Homework assignment!

Review: How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf by Molly Harper

Posted on by
Reply

Mo is a Southern woman born to hippie parents and raised in Mississippi. She’s always lived close to home and her parents have always been a huge (and kind of overbearing) part of her life. Following on the heels of a breakup she decides to back up her life and move across the country to Grundy, Alaska. There’s a romantic element to that: striking out on one’s own, becoming self-reliant, living in the wilderness. Who hasn’t considered packing themselves up and going on an adventure? Mo rents a cabin in the woods and gets herself squared away. She finds a job cooking at the local tavern after the cook and co-owner injures himself. She makes friends with the co-owners wife. And, she runs afoul of the wife’s cousin Cooper Graham who hates outsiders. He’s sure that once the first snow sets in that she’ll pack up her stuff and move back to the lower 48.

While she’s settling into becoming a townie, she has some run-ins with the local wildlife. One night she awakens to a huge wolf with piercing eyes taking down an elk. She sees the wolf again within the town limits. And, there are a few hikers who go missing after what appears to be a wolf attack. Then one night she’s confronted with an unusual sight: Cooper Graham, naked, on her porch, caught in a bear a trap. I’d say spoilers, but if you saw the cover of the book and if you’ve ever read a romance novel you know who/what Cooper Graham is. He’s the werewolf love interest. He has to come clean about who and what he is while he’s healing from the bear trap on Moe’s rug. But, now there’s this mystery: Is he responsible for the missing hikers? Could he be a killer in wolf form? Also, will he ever stop being surly so that they can get this romance off the ground?

This was book was fun and it was also very funny. I immediately liked Mo and the other townies. I also liked surly and standoffish Cooper. The mystery unraveled a little slowly but it was a satisfying ending. This is the first book of a series set in Grundy, Alaska and I’m thinking about picking up the next one.

Review: Blood and Absinthe by Chloe Hart

Posted on by
3

These three novellas all packaged into one are your standard paranormal romance fluff that is the sort of mindless fun that you’d expect from anything that can be described as “standard paranormal romance fluff”. They weren’t really well written and I wasn’t in love with any of the characters but I didn’t hate any of them either. The novellas asked nothing of me and that was exactly what I was looking for.

Plus, I got them from a book bub blast for 99 cents.

The first of the three novellas follows Liz, a faery warrior whose job it is to keep dark paranormal things out of the world. She is forced to work with her nemesis Jack (who is a vampire) to fight a particularly awful demon. It turns out that they both are crushing on each other. The next sentence is a little spoilery in account of this story was kind of formulaic. It also turns out that Jack can lend Liz his super vamp strength so that she can kill the demon if they spend one night of passion together.

The second story follows Celia, Liz’s friend, who is a mage faery and a vampire named Grant. Celia makes a discovery about the faery absinthe that all of the fae use occasionally to up their strength and connect them to their magic. She goes to Grant for protection when she realizes someone is trying to kill her. Intrigue, mayhem and romance ensue. Fun times.

The final story follows Jessica, a faery princess and Vampire assassin Hawk as they try to save magic and keep the human world from being overrun with demons and other evil faeries. There was a lot of hotness early on in this one but I’ll admit that I didn’t finish it because I was kind of bored with the whole world by this point.

I do have one bone to pick with these stories (and in romance novels in general). Sometimes, the sexy bits of these books are problematic in that they show sexual encounters that should not be considered consensual (even though we, as readers with access to the thoughts and feelings of the characters know that that the encounters are consensual). This happened at least once in these novellas: a character was under the influence of a spell or some kind of drug or was having a waking dream and got all hot and heavy with another character. In the worst of these instances, when the non-magicked/drugged/dreaming character realized that they were having sexy times with an incapacitated person they chose to pretend like the incident never happened. This led the other character to wake up and realize that it had happened and to be confused about how to go forward. When I read the novella, I found it enjoyable. But, after I had finished reading it, I felt very uncomfortable with how this had played out. I was uncomfortable because this was a terrible modeling of how people should treat each other in relationships. If you accidentally have magical faery sex with someone who thinks they’re asleep and dreaming your reaction to realizing they thought they were dreaming shouldn’t be, “Well, I’ll just pretend like this didn’t happen.” At the very least, you should make sure that they are physically and emotionally okay. (Or, you know, turn yourself in for sexual assault.) This has been an issue that has been discussed a lot recently with the release of 50 Shades of Grey. It is an important topic to critique and discuss because literature and art allow us to explore our world in a safe space. If the representations that we encounter are problematic, we need to talk about why they are problematic and how they could have been made better. I’m not saying that Chloe Hart should have written any of her scenes differently. They were hot and they served the story and the reader even if they didn’t serve the characters. But, these novellas don’t exist in a vacuum, so it is worth discussing things that make us uncomfortable.

These novellas were fine and they were quick reads but I won’t be reading anything else in the series. Meh.