Tag Archives: contemporary romance

Knitting in the City Series: Neanderthal Seeks Human, Neanderthal Marries Human & Love Hacked by Penny Reid

book review December 15, 2014 Comments: 2

Don’t worry, despite the title it’s not one of these:

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Now, you can’t unsee it either.

The Knitting in the City contemporary romance series is extremely highly-rated on Amazon and I both do and do not understand why. I don’t know what juju is in these books, but I keep re-reading the ones I have, particularly Neanderthal Seeks Human and Neanderthal Marries Human which both focus on the same couple. Re-readability is a kind of litmus test for me with this genre. I interact with the novels differently than I do other books. If one grabs me, I will reread my favourite sections and revisit the book again and again. If I really like it, such as A Kiss for Midwinter, I will read it again from cover to cover. (Note: I did this yesterday.) and not just the good bits. That does not mean what you think it means.

Knitting in the City Series

  1. Neanderthal Seeks Human – Strangely compelling
  2. Friends Without Benefits – Meh
  3. Neanderthal Marries Human – More strangely compelling
  4. Love Hacked – Pretty darn good
  5. Beauty and the Mustache – Really liked it
  6. Ninja at First Sight – quite good
  7. Happily Ever Ninja – frustrating
  8. Dating-ish: A Humanoid Romance
  9. A Marriage of Inconvenience

The heroine of Neanderthal Seeks Human and Neanderthal Marries Human, Janie, is both wonderfully quirky and highly capable. A buxom goddess, her sense of self is in contradiction to how other people perceive her. A first person narrator, she misinterprets or is oblivious to a lot of what goes on around her, experiencing the romantic self-doubt even the most together people feel. Janie is very likeable and that goes a long way. She might misunderstand, but she is smart and kind. I would have like to hear the hero’s perspective as well and the second book, Neanderthal Marries Human, incorporates it with good results.

Quinn Sullivan (Holy romance novel name, Batman!), owns a large security firm. He’s self-made and has a dubious past. Taciturn and stoic, he has many qualities that would be really annoying in real life, but are perfectly groovy in a hero. I enjoy these large, quiet protector types, even though such a creature would drive me crazy almost instantly were he real. Quinn communicates almost exclusively with his eyes, slight changes in the way he holds his mouth, and with his hands. He can’t keep them off of Janie. I cannot resist a besotted hero.

While the Neanderthal love story was sweet, the secondary plot was more dramatic in nature and a little cray-cray: Major events being dropped in and then glossed over, tons of family baggage, and things taking a turn for Too Much.

Like the Neanderthal books, Love Hacked suffered from cloak-and-dagger-and-not-really-unwilling-suspension-of-disbelief sub-plotting and benefited from a sweet relationship. The hero, Alex, was different from almost any I’ve read. Filling a usual heroine’s role, the Victim of Circumstance, he has a very difficult past, a not much less complicated present, and a heroine, Sandra (Holy not a romance novel name, Batman!), who not so much rescues him, but accepts him as he is. He is also the youngest hero I’ve ever read. He has crammed a lot into his young life and this makes the match believable.

Was that coherent? Do I care? Did I stutter? I have been working long days for the past 10 weeks (poor me) and these three Knitting in the City books have become the vodka tonics to my long day. To be perfectly honest, with some romances, – not these – this has meant skipping from the set up to when the couple first gets together. Plain escapism isn’t enough, I require full immersion and recurring familiar escapism, so I re-read. Apparently, my work brain needs to be subsumed immediately and can’t be bothered with all that lovingly crafted exposition. Revisiting books that are already familiar or have recently become so [cough]theseones[cough] fills the bill.

Question: Sandra is 28 and a practicing psychiatrist. Doesn’t that take about 12 years? Would she be done with her undergrad/medical school/residency already?

Penny Reid’s Catalogue gives an overview of her published works , some of which I recommend and some of which I dislike intensely.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

Sisters in Love by Melissa Foster

book review September 3, 2014 Leave a comment

Sisters in Love is a facile and trite contemporary romance laden with clichés and complex problems simplistically resolved. A large part of my reaction was, “Maybe I could write a whole book. Melissa Foster did. It’s not like I have to write a good book. Melissa Foster didn’t.” It’s very freeing when one thinks of it that way. The rest of my reaction was to be grateful Sisters in Love was free and to be very pleased when I finished reading it – which I did strictly for review honestly purposes and I want points for that.

The hero and heroine of Sisters in Love meet painful when he accidentally elbows her in the nose when they are in line at a coffee shop. While tending to her, she notices he is incredibly physically attractive and that he is also checking out another woman whilst helping staunch the flow of blood. The heroine is appalled, but nonetheless can’t get him out of her head. The hero can’t get her out of his either. There is nothing like a woman asking “Are you done?” while she bleeds and you are checking out someone’s chest to make a man think about his life.

Adonis-adjacent Blake is very messed up. Not messed up in a romance novel way where he just needs a good woman, no matter what Melissa Foster thinks. He’s the kind of person who has almost no close relationships and uses his looks to bang every woman he can. He is detached. He identifies himself as sleazy. He’s “that guy”. He needs therapy and likely some kind of 12 Step Program. Conveniently, the heroine, Danica, is a therapist and soon takes the new acquaintance she desperately wants to sleep with as a patient, but I’d like to put a pin that egregious violation of client/therapist ethics to tell you about this: In one of the early chapters, there is a full description of an anonymous encounter in Blake’s own store restroom. Not even his office. The restroom. It’s far more detailed than the consummation scene with Danica. That was an interesting choice on the author’s part. It’s perfectly emblematic of how messed up both Blake and the book are. An anonymous woman says, “Jawanna?” and he’s all “Sure,”  and on to ignoring the fact that the porcelain must be really cold on the “cougar’s” behind. Afterward, Blake doesn’t like what he sees in the restroom mirror and wants to stop being “that guy” which is nice. Then, he does stop with ease and minor guidance which is ridiculous.

Danica, she of the elbowed nose, is a psychologist deeply invested in her career. The reader knows this because she doesn’t get out enough and she needs a makeover. Anyway, even though she is (unfathomably) sexually attracted to the deeply messed up Blake and is introduced to him socially, she takes him on as a patient. I’m not a doctor, but I play one in book reviews, and I cannot for one second believe that this is anything less than unethical. She stops being his doctor EVENTUALLY, right before they cross the line into a physical relationship, but it’s so twisted: He’s an emotionally vacant sex addict and she’s his doctor. He starts therapy, she gives him guidance, he resists a one-night-stand with her sister and suddenly the plot is on a steam locomotive to Love Town and he is almost all better. No. NO! Their entire attraction is physical and the reader is, I suppose, obliged to fill in the blanks on their doctor/patient ethics defying emotional connection. Ugh.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

Wallbanger by Alice Clayton

book review September 2, 2014 Leave a comment

Wallbanger by Alice Clayton is a fluffy, reasonably entertaining, and quick contemporary romance. It is the first book in her Cocktail series about twenty-something professionals building careers and finding life partners. The book had very little conflict and read like a romantic sitcom: she is an interior designer and he is a nature photographer; they each have two friends that are perfect for their counterpart’s two friends; they have no money concerns despite living in notoriously expensive San Francisco.

Caroline has a noisy neighbour. The night she moves into her faboo sublet, she is awakened by the headboard next door banging into the wall behind her. It happens the next night and the night after that. The sounds of female approbation on the other side of the wall change, the banging stays the same. To make matters worse, Caroline is in a romantic and auto-erotic slump. After the umpteeth night of tauntingly disrupted sleep, she storms over and complains directly to the Wall Banger himself. He is, of course, gorgeous and amused. She is annoyed and scantily clad. Things proceed in the anticipated fashion.

While reasonably funny, Wallbanger is the first in a trilogy of books that I will not bother exploring further, although, for what it’s worth, they are highly rated on Amazon. There is no real obstacle to the characters’ relationship. A goodly portion of the novel is devoted to delaying the relationship’s transformation from romantic partners to the consummation devoutly to be wished. I estimate that a solid 25% of the book is the putting off of sex and then the sex that follows the putting off. I didn’t buy it for a second. Neither the delay, nor the cataclysmic consummation. Further, Caroline refers to her body parts in the third person, such as Brain, Nerves, Heart, and “Little Caroline”. They have trouble coming to an accord. I am Mrs. Julien’s side-eye for this narrative decision.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

The Beautiful Series: Beautiful Bastard, Beautiful Bitch, Beautiful Stranger, Beautiful Bombshell, Beautiful Player, Beautiful Beginning, Beautiful Beloved, & Beautiful Boss by Christina Lauren

book review August 12, 2014 Leave a comment

The Beautiful series is reasonably inept romance and reasonably ept erotica, although I don’t really know where the rumple in the sheet lies between the two. I would have thought that the main difference was in courtship by coitus and the point at which emotions become involved, but there are plenty of romances where sex precedes love, so it really just comes down to the level of detail. The Beautiful series love scenes were not much more explicit than a fairly typical romance other than greater frequency and the use of rougher language than I am used to. Not shocked but surprised, I am unaccustomed to certain words being bandied about, nor do I necessarily like it when they are. In an interesting twist, the books alternate between the hero and heroine as first person narrator which gives a perspective that was new and fun.

Plot Summary (All): Casual but proclivity compatible and intense sex leads to love.

Characters (All): Hardworking and successful, everyone is lithe and gorgeous.

  1. Beautiful Bastard
  2. Beautiful Bitch
  3. Beautiful Stranger
  4. Beautiful Bombshell
  5. Beautiful Player
  6. Beautiful Beginning
  7. Beautiful Beloved
  8. Beautiful Secret
  9. Beautiful Boss

Beautiful Bastard (novel)

Finishing her MBA, Chloe Mills has worked for the Ryan family for several years, but only for six months as an intern to the eponymous bastard Bennett Ryan. They have a politely hostile relationship that breaks down when they start having The Angry Sex then spar and copulate their way to togetherness. The alternating narration gives a good and necessary insight into Bennett and just how crazy he is about Chloe. He may be a bastard, but Chloe is equal to the task and he is besotted.  Despite the underwear rending (every single time) role Bennett takes in The Angry Sex, there is never, in any of these books, any suggestion that the women are anything but equal partners and the men find it exhilarating.

Beautiful Bitch

A short novella, Beautiful Bitch was simply more of Chloe and Bennett picking up one year later and then flashing back and forth to their reunion and ongoing relationship. More sex. Engagement.

Beautiful Stranger (novel)

Mercifully, the stranger of the title is singular and not plural because that’s not so romantic, but this novel is about an indulgence in anonymous sex that leads to love and a secure, sexually compatible relationship. Sara Dillon has just moved to New York City to start a new life for away from her cheating ex. Celebrating Chloe’s engagement, she meets a very tall, handsome stranger who propositions her. She turns him down, but later notices him watching her dancing and decides she likes it. They have sex against a wall of the club, then Sara walks away. No names were exchanged, but her stranger, Max Stella, is captivated. Through a series of friendship coincidences, Max finds Sara and agrees to a strictly sexual relationship with her. Their specific proclivity is exhibitionism, including photography in media res, so they indulge in a number of increasingly risky scenarios as they expand their indulgences and fall in love. Apparently.  I’m not sure exactly where the falling in love part came in, but they do and the relationship moves to the next level which, in this case, means a bed in a private home. It was rather sweet.

Beautiful Bombshell (novella)

Another novella shoehorned into the series and the one in which things veered toward farce. Bennett and Max are in Las Vegas with friends for the former’s bachelor weekend. Chloe and Sara happen to be there as well and the couples find ways to have The Angry Sex and The Public Sex in and around the party events and hoping to evade detection. It was quick, and fun, but also ridiculous.

Beautiful Player (novel)

Don’t let the hep language of the title fool you. This is the story of a rake and a wallflower, a trope I particularly enjoy. Delicious player Will Sumner is bored with hot and cold running sex. When his best friend asks him to help his younger sister get out more, Will accepts. Hanna Bergstrom is straightforward and has no filter. After their first meeting, Will spends several chapters falling in love in slow motion. His friends delight in his smitten state. A PhD student who has long been too distracted to have a social life, Hanna gets a quick makeover [eye roll] and she revels in the company of the man who was the object of her first crush.

So how do you cure a player? You go back to basics. Although not yet in love, Will and Hanna’s relationship builds slowly from reasonably tame foreplay to consummation. This book had the most relatable characters and she was a pip.

Beautiful Beginning (novella)

More “I hate you, do it HARDER!” and promises of post-coital ambulatory issues in this novella about Bennett and Chloe’s destination wedding. The travel element allows all the characters to be in close proximity and, like other final get together novels of this type, the current story is irrelevant. Max, Sara, Hanna, and Will make appearances, although I would have liked more of them. Chloe and Bennett have vowed not to have sex for FOUR WHOLE DAYS and gradually build up a head of steam for some epic The Angry Sex on their wedding night. Sometimes funny, they have skirmishes and make vulgar displays in front of their family and I was both a bit bored by it and a bit put off.

Beautiful Beloved (novella)

The central characters from Beautiful Stranger, Max and Sara, are back as well as the supporting cast. Sara was pregnant in the previous two books and this story picks up when their daughter is four months old. (Aside: Thank goodness, it’s not Chloe and Bennett having children because neither of them are parent material.) Max and Sara are as blissfully happy as ever, but their perfect union is sullied – lightly sprinkled with dust motes, really – by the lack of violently intense (hopefully public) sex in their lives. Not a lack of sex, mind you, but a lack of amazeballs sex. What follows are unsuccessful attempts to rekindle the fire of their pre-baby state with failed nights out. Gay-assistant-stereotype-George spends a night caring for the little one, then the adorable Will and Hanna, and finally Max’s brother Niall whose presence foreshadows his novel coming out in April.

I know that these books are escapist, but speaking as someone with very little money and alone on the prairie in terms of help when we had a newborn, I confess my bitterness interfered with my enjoyment of Beautiful Beloved. Max and Sara are wealthy and surrounded by potential caregivers. The only thing really stopping them from leaving the house alone is the baby quicksand all new parents fall into. There is something in Beautiful Beloved about society not wanting to see mothers as sexual creatures, as well as the conflict between the desire to go back to work and notions of being a good parent, but honestly the series just unravels its gossamer tether to reality a little more with each entry, so thematic discussions seem kind of pointless; moreover, it had a climax that left me cringing and saying, “Ew! Really? How many fetishes do these people have? Ew. WHAT? EW!” regardless of what points the authors might have been trying to make.

Beautiful Secret goes here in the reading order.

Beautiful Boss (novella)

As a quick follow up to Beautiful Player, I do wonder how many of these latter series novellas are just cashing in. I don’t begrudge the authors that, by the way, I just wish it had more of what made Will and Hanna’s full length book fun. Instead her enjoyable cluelessness turned into a stumbling block for the couple.

Beautiful Boss picks up on the eve of Will and Hanna’s wedding, trips lightly through their nuptials, and moves on to the more urgent details of their life together. Hanna has just completed a post-doc year and is crushed under the weight of offers to either teach or run a lab for prestigious universities. When was the last time, do you suppose, even the most gifted graduate had such a plethora of opportunities? She waffles through the book as Will is fantastically accommodating, but grows increasingly frustrated with her unwillingness to discuss where she thinks she’d like to end up. Sometimes, they take a break to get it on. They fight. They make a decision. Life goes on

Sidebar with a detail I LOVED: Will Sumner and Hanna Bergstrom both change their last name to the Sumner-Bergstrom. It’s unwieldly, but who cares?

The two woman writing team of the books, working under the pseudonym Christina Lauren, are pumping out these and more novels with alacrity. Like many genre writers, they have found a successful niche and know what their audience wants: lots of interesting sex which acknowledges that women have the same urges as men and enough of a plot to string things along and keep them interesting. The challenges faced by the couples are all Big Misunderstandings easily remedied, but the same can be said of many romances. The main complaint I have about the series is the constant low hum of dudebro sexism. The male characters interactions focus on insults of feminization and loss of manliness: They are whipped, their “girls” have taken possession of their testes, emotions are female and weak. The otherwise powerful women take it all in stride.  It’s the kind of casual sexism that surrounds us every day and which I hope to escape when reading these books.

Sidebar: Chloe has a gay admin who fills the “sassy gay assistant ” stereotype that the books could have done without.

Christina Lauren has a series, Wild Seasons, in the new adult romance genre which I recommend over the Beautiful books. Their writing just keeps getting better. A complete list of Christina Lauren’s catalogue can be found here.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

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The Chicago Stars Series (Most of It): It Had to Be You; Heaven, Texas; Nobody’s Baby But Mine; Dream a Little Dream; This Heart of Mine; Match Me If You Can by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

book review July 26, 2014 Comments: 3

All of the books in the Chicago Stars contemporary romance series are built around the world of professional athletes and the women who want to climb them like trees. It’s a rarefied bubble that allows for the same kind of lifestyle fantasy as the aristocratic and wealthy world of historical romance. Almost every story also features an older couple getting a second chance at love.

  1. It Had to Be You
  2. Heaven, Texas
  3. Nobody’s Baby But Mine
  4. Dream a Little Dream
  5. This Heart of Mine – only Kresley Cole has ever made me angrier
  6. Match Me If You Can
  7. Natural Born Charmer – very entertaining and I recommend it

Susan Elizabeth Phillips is a good writer with a successful formula and a long career. She’s clever and witty, but more than one of these books suffers from tropes that are outdated and/or offensive. Since Natural Born Charmer is the most recent of the series, it is the one I would recommend. I did try Call Me Irresistible and The Great Escape from her more recent collection. The former never captured my attention and the latter had a love scene involving the literal use of a licorice whip. Yowch.

It Had to Be You – 1994

Continue reading →

The Chicago Stars Series: Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

book review July 15, 2014 Leave a comment

Natural Born Charmer is a contemporary romance of the “you are everything I never knew I always wanted” variety with subplots of familial healing thrown in. Given the number of people with fractured or messed up families, I’m not surprised to see this element featured in several of the contemporary romances I’ve read. In addition to the main couple, there is a subplot featuring the hero’s parents who are also messed up and trying to find their way to stability. Natural Born Charmer has the slightly heightened reality common to romances, it’s sweet without being treacly and cacklingly funny.

Dean Robillard is gorgeous, rich, incredibly well-dressed, and gorgeous some more; to wit, “You look like an ad for gay porn.” (I’m still laughing.) A professional football player, his golden life looks perfect from the outside, but his broken relationship with his mother, his dissatisfaction, and his current road trip say otherwise. All that changes when he sees a woman in a headless beaver costume stomping down a side road. Blue Bailey (Hush, it’s a totally cool name.) is a feisty mess. A peripatetic artist, she moved from Seattle to Denver just in time to be dumped by the boyfriend she moved there to join. Alone, jobless, and broke, her car has just died and she is stuck. Claiming to be gay to make her feel comfortable, Dean offers to drive Blue first to her apartment, then to Nashville, and eventually to rural Tennessee where he is going to check on the farmhouse he is having renovated. She never leaves.

Blue and Dean are both deliciously sardonic and sarcastic. I found myself throwing my head back and laughing in the way they always describe in these books, but you don’t really believe is true until it happens to you. They also have abandonment issues and not necessarily healthy coping mechanisms, but eventually manage to figure things out. While their personal relationships are improved, they are not perfect, and there is a nice examination of what happens when children are let down by their parents, even if it is for a really good reason.

A great example of the genre, Natural Born Charmer is a very well executed and sweet read. I have already taken out three more Susan Phillips novels from my library to start working  through her back catalogue…

I have now reviewed almost every other book in Phillip’s Chicago Stars series as well, although I don’t really recommend them, but I do get tremendously angry with one of the heroines.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my list of books by author.

L’Amour et Chocolat Series: The Chocolate Heart by Laura Florand

book review February 9, 2014 Leave a comment

To borrow from a previous review:

The Chocolate Heart is book five in Laura Florand’s Amour et Chocolat series. The conceit of each novel is that an American woman is thrown into close proximity with a French chocolatier/pastry god. They fall in love quickly, get busy, and are engaged in short order. Florand provides consistently enjoyable escapism with romantic locations. The Chocolate Heart is not best of the series, that’s The Chocolate Touch, but The Chocolate Heart was certainly an absorbing and mostly entertaining read.

Summer Corey has been told all her life that she is spoiled and ungrateful. Her parents see her as property to be picked up and dropped as they see fit. The latest gambit in their cycle of attention and neglect is to give her a 4 star hotel in Paris as a Christmas gift. Their goal is to lure her back from the South Pacific island where she has been living and working as a teacher in blissful self-imposed exile. Summer must stay in Paris for three months to gain another expensive gift that she actually wants, a communications satellite something-or-other, for the island residents. She hates Paris, the hotel business, and dessert.

Luc Leroi is the charming perfectionist, and practically perfect in every way, head pastry chef at the hotel Summer has been given. He is driven and has worked relentlessly to reach the top of his profession and stay there. He’s only 30, but since he started when he was 10, it seems reasonable. He is always gorgeous and most of the time he manages to be charming, but Summer completely flummoxes him.

The Chocolate Heart has the most challenging of any of the American woman/French culinary deity combinations in these books. Summer is sympathetic, but not always likeable, and Luc is a victim of his own self-restraint. They are two wounded people hiding behind false fronts and suffering from painful miscommunication. Elements that had been successful in the preceding books reached an intensity that left me uncomfortable. Luc is so busy being in control that he becomes almost clinical and Summer is so vulnerable that it feels like she is being used. It’s not romantic, so much as really unhealthy. Florand seems to realise this, too, as the book has a lengthy “several years later” epilogue to let the reader know that Luc and Summer are in a better, healthier place.

I do not recommend The Chocolate Heart, except maybe to visit favourite characters from other books in the group. This is the complete series for those who want to know with (order of preference):

  1. The Chocolate Thief – Pretty good, it took me from 99 cents on Kindle to the complete series. (5)
  2. The Chocolate Kiss – A very good fairy tale that made me forgive the metaphor. (2)
  3. The Chocolate Rose – Excellent passion, it needed just a little more love story. (3)
  4. The Chocolate Touch – My favourite of the group, it was really sweet and intense. (1)
  5. The Chocolate Heart – The weakest of the group. (6)
  6. The Chocolate Temptation – Steamy, not quite as good, but still very readable. (4)

A complete summary of Laura Florand’s catalogue, with recommendations, can be found here.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

L’Amour et Chocolat Series: The Chocolate Temptation by Laura Florand

book review January 29, 2014 Leave a comment

Look! I found Laura Florand’s romance mission statement:

FlorandThe Chocolate Temptation is book six in Florand’s Amour et Chocolat series. I reviewed the first four books in a previous effort. I will review the fifth, The Chocolate Heart, when I can get my hands on it at my local library, as it is priced out of my willing-to-pay range*. The conceit of each novel is that an American woman is thrown into close proximity with a French chocolatier/pastry god. They fall in love quickly, get busy, and are engaged in short order. Florand provides consistently enjoyable escapism with romantic locations. The Chocolate Temptation also happens to be particularly steamy.

Patrick Chevalier is the second in a three Michelin star restaurant. Part of his role is to guide and train the patissier team and apprentices. Sarah Lin is working for a tiny stipend and is just 36 days shy of completing her six month internship. She hates Patrick. She hates him for his loose-limbed, charming calm, his seemingly effortless professional perfection, and for the gallant way he treats her which she thinks is just being “French”.  Sarah is incredibly focused and ambitious, but unable to show herself any mercy when she fails to live up to the impossible standards she sets for herself and she sees being met by the more experienced professionals around her. Patrick has been madly in love with Sarah for months and trying to surreptitiously show her without crossing any professional lines. When she tells him, “I hate you,” after a particularly bad day, he takes it as his cue to see if that intense emotion could be hiding passion instead. They are protagonists with major walls around themselves, ones that lead to a great deal of miscommunication as they struggle to come together. Sarah is a mass of insecurities, vulnerable and over-sensitive. Patrick has carefully created the illusion of nonchalance, having learned to hide his feelings after a painful childhood.

After earlier uncertainty, The Chocolate Temptation confirmed for me that Florand is indeed using fairy tale allusions in her books and this one is Cinderella with a twist. I found the denouement rushed and twee, but consistent with the overall romanticism of Florand’s work. Patrick and Sarah were both too closed off to move quickly to an emotionally healthy relationship. Why not give them time to settle in before stampeding towards marriage? The setting is modern, couldn’t they just live together for a while?

I have enjoyed all of the novels in the Amour et Chocolate series. Florand manages to repeat her framing device without quite making the characters repetitious as well. The men all show far more emotional vulnerability than I am accustomed to in romance and it is a welcome change.

A complete summary of Laura Florand’s catalogue, with recommendations, can be found here.

*If Amazon is listening, I will pay $2.99 for almost any well-reviewed romance; up to about $5.99 for a book I know to be a keeper; and full price for any author on my autobuy list, which can be found on my Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful. I also have a complete reading list of books sorted by author.

 

 

Abandoned Novel #2 – Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie

book review January 20, 2014 Leave a comment

Eleven years ago, Andie Miller and North Archer married in haste and repented at leisure. Divorced for ten years, Andie comes back into his life to return a decade’s worth of uncashed alimony cheques and let North know she is going to remarry. In a panicked stroke of genius, North offers Andie a job looking after two children of whom he is guardian. He is trying to bring them to live with him, but they have experienced a lot of trauma and need help with the transition. North will pay her enough for Andie to start her new marriage free and clear of debt.

Travelling to the out-of-the-way town where the children are living in their family home, Andie learns that the house is haunted by several ghosts. Ghosts. Ghosts that talk and interact with the residents. Not ghosts simulated by the mean housekeeper who would have gotten away with it, too, if not for those meddling kids. Ghosts. No.

But before abandoning this review much as I did Maybe This Time, this hilarious detail warrants mentioning: North’s brother remembers the first time he saw Andie and that she moved like a song was playing in her head. North said the song was “Layla”. Ten years later, the song remains the same, but North tells his brother it is now the “acoustic version”. Jennifer Crusie, you slay me.

Recommended books by Jennifer Crusie: Welcome to Temptation and Bet Me

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

Less Than Stellar Efforts

book review January 7, 2014 Leave a comment

These books are bad and mostly not in a good way.

Note: I love/hate Jennifer Ashley and I read all of her historical romances.

  1. The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie – Jennifer Ashley
  2. Lady Isabella’s Scandalous Marriage – Jennifer Ashley
  3. Many Sins of Lord Cameron – Jennifer Ashley
  4. The Duke’s Perfect Wife – Jennifer Ashley
  5. The Seduction of Elliott McBride – Jennifer Ashley
  6. The Untamed Mackenzie – Jennifer Ashley novella
  7. The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie – Jennifer Ashley
  8. Once a Duchess – Elizabeth Boyce
  9. When She Said I Do – Celeste Bradley
  10. Not My Wolf – Eden Cole novella
  11. The Warlord Wants Forever – Kresley ColeTHUNDER SEX™!
  12. A Hunger Like No Other – Kresley Cole VILE
  13. No Rest for the Wicked – Kresley Cole THUNDER SEX™!
  14. Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night – Kresley Cole THUNDER SEX™!
  15. Dark Deed’s at Night’s Edge – Kresley Cole THUNDER SEX™!
  16. Dark Desires After Dusk – Kresley Cole THUNDER SEX™!
  17. Kiss of a Demon King – Kresley Cole  THUNDER SEX™!
  18. Deep Kiss of Winter – Kresley Cole THUNDER SEX™!
  19. Macrieve – Kresley Cole (Uilliam/Chloe)  VILER
  20. Shadow’s Claim – Kresley Cole
  21. Undone – Lila DiPasqua *Worst of the Year 2013*
  22. Attracting Anthony – Amber Kell
  23. Wedded in Scandal – Jade Lee
  24. The Revenge of Lord Eberlin – Julia London
  25. An Introduction to Pleasure: Mistress Matchmaker – Jess Michaels
  26. The Lady’s Tutor – Robin Schone
  27. Penelope – Anya Wylde (Charles/Penelope) *Most Inept of the Year 2013*