Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

RITA Reader Challenge: How a Cowboy Stole Her Heart by Donna Alward

This review was written by Lindlee. This story was nominated in the Best Contemporary Series Romance category.

The summary: Clay Gregory's known Megan Briggs her whole life, and he's been plenty worried about her while she's been getting medical treatment. Now she's back home and hiding away on the family ranch. Knowing the stubborn cowgirl won't accept his help willingly, he invites her to a family wedding to help him avoid his aunt's matchmaking! He plans to remind Meg she's still the girl who can beat him in a horse race! But as she steps out in her curve-hugging red dress, her skills on a horse are suddenly the furthest thing from his mind….  

And here is Lindlee's review:

How a Cowboy Stole Her Heart starts when Megan returns home after going into remission from breast cancer. She lived in Calgary, a few hours away from home, while she was undergoing treatment. Coming back is difficult, but it is during this time that Clay and Megan’s friendship turns… read more »

RITA Reader Challenge: Warped by Maurissa Guibord

This review was written by Sarah Elsewhere. This story was nominated in the Best First Book and the Best YA Romance category.

The summary: Tessa doesn't believe in magic. Or Fate. But there's something weird about the dusty unicorn tapestry she discovers in a box of old books. She finds the creature woven within it compelling and frightening. After the tapestry comes into her possession, Tessa experiences dreams of the past and scenes from a brutal hunt that she herself participated in. When she accidentally pulls a thread from the tapestry, Tessa releases a terrible centuries old secret. She also meets William de Chaucy, an irresistible 16th-century nobleman. His fate is as inextricably tied to the tapestry as Tessa's own. Together, they must correct the wrongs of the past. But then the Fates step in, making a tangled mess of Tessa's life. Now everyone she loves will be destroyed unless Tessa does their bidding and defeats a cruel and crafty ancient enemy.  

And here is Sarah Elsewhere's review:

… read more »

RITA Reader Challenge: Doukakis’s Apprentice by Sarah Morgan

This review was written by Jenny D. This story was nominated in the Best Contemporary Series Romance category.

The summary: With her family business in crisis, Polly Prince does her best to keep calm and carry on. But hard work alone can't save her London company from a takeover by the infamously ruthless Damon Doukakis…or her traitorous body from the lethal sensuality of her boss! As his new apprentice, Polly accompanies Damon to Paris to negotiate the most challenging business deal of her life! Worse still, Polly must at all costs resist Damon in the most dangerously romantic city in the world.…

And here is Jenny's review:

A Review of Sarah Morgan’s Doukakis’s Apprentice in 250 Words Even Though That’s a Really Tiny Amount of Words

Let’s get the bad things out of the way up front:

Bad Thing #1: The title. Seriously. Is it a rule that all HPs have absurd titles that don’t match the plot?

RITA Reader Challenge: Compassion Can’t Wait by Carly Phillips

This review was written by Phyllis. This story was nominated in the Best Romance Novella category.

The summary: In Carly Phillips's Compassion Can't Wait, two high school sweet hearts are reunited years later, as if by fate, and discover that if you believe in yourself and each other, anything is possible.

And here is Phyllis' review:

This is a nice, sexy story of old flames reunited.

As a kindness to a teenage boy whose brother's suffering from advanced leukemia, the heroine, a hospital social worker, contacts her ex-boyfriend, now a star baseball pitcher, to meet the boy.

Links, News, and some WTFery

First, via Katiebabs and KatiD on Twitter: More from Plagiarism Chutzpah!

YA Author Sarah Cross has a guest blog about plagiarism and how it sucks a lot (which it does). It's not a bad post, as it discusses the different types of plagiarism.

But it's a guest post on Kristi Diehm's site, The Story Siren, where plagiarism occurred last January, and was discovered last month. Unfortuantely, this guest post, if you're keeping score at home:

1. includes as a description the exact thing Kristi Diehm did when she lifted content from fashion bloggers Beautifully Invisible and Grit and Glamour.

2. includes, as pointed out by AnimeJune, a copyrighted, trademarked, and totally uncited image from Disney's The Little Mermaid… four paragraphs north of the phrase "ARTISTS ARE PEOPLE, TOO."

3.. includes no commentary or introduction from Kristi Diehm offering context for the post, which is a breathtaking display of chutzpah, as Jane Litte described it, on its own.

4. has already attracted plenty of WTFBBQ posts in the comments

I emailed Sarah Cross about the post, to ask if… read more »

Beguiling the Beauty by Sherry Thomas - a guest review by CarrieS

Beguiling the Beauty is a late Victorian era romance that meets my geek criteria because of its use of science, specifically the study of fossils and the rise of evolutionary biology.  My husband is an evolutionary biologist, so needless to say I was thrilled when I found out that Sherry Thomas' new book has an evolutionary biologist hero.  I'm a huge Sherry Thomas fan and this book did not disappoint.  In fact, it is by far my favorite book of hers, in no small part because it features the line, "Thank you for dinner.  And thank you for the pleasure of the tetrapodichnites".

I'm trying to avoid gratuitous spoilers, but if you are super spoiler-phobic, you should stop reading this review and just start reading the book.  It's great and you'll love it.  For the rest of you, MILD SPOILERS AHEAD:

Yesterday’s News by Kajsa Ingemarsson

I'm going to do two things I rarely do. One, I'm going to write a review for a book a few hours after I finished it. Two, I'm going to post a review for a book that has been appearing in digital and paper format slowly - and I hope it is available at your preferred retailer when this review goes live. I also hope this review inspires a few libraries to add this author to their collection, as I really liked this book.

This book was originally published in Sweden (and thus, in Swedish)  in 2005 under the name Små citroner gula, which means "Small yellow lemon," if Babelfish isn't steering me wrong. It was translated into several languages, and is now available (somewhat) in the US.

Let's start with the one sad thing about this book. Tthe US cover is so horribly, terribly, no good, very bad awful.

There are no cupcakes in this book that I remember. Are cupcakes a waning fad in other countries the way they are here? Little overpriced cakes from specialty shops that individually cost as much as a dozen regular old still-delicious… read more »

Friday Videos Like Your and You’re Gotye

Via Maria Popova and Brainpickings comes this marvelous piece of NSFW grammar rap: 

Link!

I hope your weekend is wonderful for you and yours! 

Caption This Cover: HORROR EDITION Winners!

Should I infict the clown cover upon you another time? Yes, I think I shall: 

She's got pigtails and a considering expression on her face.

He's, well, if you have a clown phobia, he's the most terrifying ever. If you don't have a clown phobia, he's still kind of terrifying.

So who wins the caption that cover HORROR EDITION?

Friday Videos Think Anything Goes

I saw this on Ceilidhann's Twitter and it made me grin in a wonderfully silly way. This is the cast of Broadway's Anything Goes doing their version of One Direction: 

Link! 

It is a sad fact that I don't love musicals, so much of Broadway is lost on me, but I love Anything Goes, and I want to see it just because this cast looks like they are having SUCH a good time. 

I hope your weekend is full of all the things that make you want to sing and dance. 

Monica Jackson

Sad news today: via Twitter, Monica Jackson's daughter Amethyst announced that Ms. Jackson passed away yesterday. Amethyst said her death was due to complications from surgery.

Jackson wrote on her blog last month that her health had taken a turn for the worse and that she'd be offline for awhile as a result. Jackson was the author of several African American romances, and had self published several new books. 

I'm terribly sad to hear this news. Monica Jackson was one of the most outspoken people I've ever met online. She was not afraid to challenge anyone and anything she disagreed with. She was fearless. When I was drafting a chapter in Beyond Heaving Bosoms, trying to explain the obstacles African American authors faced in romance succinctly, trying to do justice to the topic when the topic could easily have been a book in and of itself, I asked if Monica would be willing to talk to me. She gave me her phone number, and in that conversation, I typed so fast I am amazed I could read my notes. I didn't always agree with Monica, but… read more »

Book List for WPIX 11 Viewers

Howdy folks who watched WPIX 11 news this morning and saw me give a very (very) quick run down of a list of erotic romance that might appeal to those of you who liked 50 Shades of Grey. If you'd like to watch the clip, PIX11 has it on their site now.

They asked for a selection of books that might appeal to readers who found 50 Shades erotic and compelling, so if you're looking to go book shopping, here's some shortcuts and shopping links for the books I mentioned this morning: 

Bared to You is an erotic novel that has been called "the heir to 50 Shades." It's erotic romance, emotionally intense, and features the innocent heroine and the dominating and charismatic hero - only in this book, both characters are strong. There's a lot of emotional and physical drama, and it's engrossing. Seriously, save yourself a few hours to read this book.  Jane from DearAuthor.com says she "might go out on a limb and guarantee that if you liked 50 Shades, Sylvia Day’s Bared to You will please you."

You can… read more »

Book Rant: Guess This Book!

I received the following book rant from Nali, and it's totally over The Top and back down the other side of The Top and climbing back up again. But this time - there is book rant challenge! I challenge you to guess which book this is? I'll give you a hint: it was published in the late 70s, and when I read this, I remembered reading it, and remembered the highfalutin' hilarity therein. Hang on, folks. It's wild. 

I am so glad I found your site this week. The timing, it was Serendipitous, falling into place with the convenient ease and grace of a pregnant amnesiac stumbling into the exact worse assumptions on the part of the nearest hot man. Because, otherwise, I would RIGHT THIS MOMENT be interrupting Mr. Man's weekend-gaming-relaxation-time to rant and scream about the complete and utter, aneurysm-bursting RIDICULOUSNESS of the book I picked up at the thrift store today. Since that would mean he had to take his headphones out, and they are the only things drowning out the fact that the cat is in heat… read more »

Links, and some WTFery

As the Washington Post reported, romance author Adele Dubois received a "notice of copyright infringement" from Google, which then removed a post from the Romance Books R Us blog based on the entry "ADELE + EXITOS."

The e-mail from Google stated, “Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog is alleged to infringe upon the copyrights of others.” The e-mail lists the copyright owner as Sony, the copyright work description as “Adele + Exitos” and the “location of the infringing material” as the post by Dubois, which was removed by Google Blogger.

Who instigated the complaint remains a mystery. A “sworn statement” at the end of Google’s e-mail simply says “[private]” under the signature. The statement says, “I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.”

Adele the singer has a recording contract with Columbia Records, which is owned by Sony Music Entertainment. Although names cannot be copyrighted, they can be trademarked. And Adele is trademarked, according to the Trademark Electronic Search System.

I contacted Dubois, she explained… read more »

Caption This Cover: HORROR EDITION

I apologize in advance for this cover, as I know you're all going to scream. I tweeted it last week and people were hollering at me on Twitter for hours afterward. Nightmares, twitches and phobias, all awakened by a single romance cover. 

It's so awful, I'm going to put a second silly cover beneath it to help sooth your ravaged psyche. You ready?