Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Summer Round-Up: Books What I Read While On Summer Vacation, Pt. 2

Part 1 of the Books What I Read While On Summer Vacation can be found here.

Mine Till Midnight by Lisa Kleypas (Historical Romance - European), St. Martin’s 2007
Grade: B
I went on quite the Lisa Kleypas roll this summer, and immersed myself, yea verily, in her ocean of fluffy romance goodness. Cam is a bit of a rarity for a Kleypas hero: more sunny-natured than not, and refreshingly angst-free, despite his half-gypsy, half-Irish background. Her heroine is a bit more of a standard model: enterprising young woman with impecunious family consisting of two adorable sisters, one difficult brother intent on self-destruction and one sort-of adopted Gypsy brother-ish/guardian-ish person who clearly has the hots for one of the sisters. (Set sequel-baiters to “Stun.”) Amelia attempts to resist Cam because he’s clearly Not Right For Her. Cam pursues her with raffish glee. You know the drill.

Despite the predictability, the chemistry between Cam and Amelia is engaging, and Amelia’s conflicts with her older brother and his self-destructive tendencies are handled with a somewhat more realistic edge than I’ve come to expect in… read more »

Summer Round-Up: Books What I Read While On Summer Vacation, Pt. 1

Y’all, I managed to get more leisure reading done in the past three months than I have in the past two years combined. It’s amazing what being stuck on a plane or a bus will do to one’s reading time, not to mention the one month I spent laid up in bed from a one-two whammy of a really nasty summer flu, followed by strep throat. (Lymph nodes the size of ripe plums, dudes. It was amazing.) In any case, I looked at the backlog of books I wanted to talk about, and realized I was never, ever going to write about them if I had to write my usual 1,000-1,500 word review. So what’s a girl to do? Why, review all of them at once, of course, in abbreviated blurb form. Everything’s more fun when it’s bite-sized!

So here, in approximately chronological order, are the first five of the ten books I’ve read so far this summer, and what I think of them:

Saturday Night Live-Blog: Custom Ride by K.A. Mitchell

Head on over to DearAuthor.com tonight at 9 EST/8CST for another Saturday Night Live-Blog where Jane and I face off and simultaneously read and discuss a romance. Tonight’s book is a m/m short story - we’ve decided short stories and novellas work best for the format - Custom Ride by K.A. Mitchell.

Joining us will be two additional readers: Jane’s friend Jawk and Jace, who will also be reading along and commenting to give us an allegedly authentic gay male perspective. I presume they are actually (a) male and (b) gay, since they’ll be with Jane and I’ll be far far away. I mean, she could be making the whole thing up and Jawk and Jace are actually 4’ tall screaming purple teddy bears from the state fair won during a scurrilous battle of carnival ring toss, but for now I’ll believe her. If you can’t trust romance novel review bloggers, then for God’s sake who can you trust?

Read along with us if you like - we’ll be cracking open the book, the bottles of wine (I will anyway), and the read-along… read more »

Dear Author/Smart Bitches Live Blog Read and Review

Tune in to Dear Author at 9 EST/8 CST for a live blogging read and review of Victoria Janssen’s The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover.

I think you can ask us questions while we read & review & type at the same time. So head on over and enjoy!

The Jewel of Medina: The Prologue

Sherry Jones emailed me the prologue of her book The Jewel of Medina to share with you all. I’ve read it, and I sent it to shewhohashope to gain her perspective, as she and I are of different faiths and cultures, and have differing views of the prologue and the book that it introduces. Obviously, sweeping judgments based on the prologue are as frail as sweeping judgments based on not having read the book at all, but hey, what is our site without some randomly sweeping judgments, right?

If you’d like to download the prologue and read it for yourself, a PDF is available here (please right click and download, thanks). All contents of the prologue are copyright Sherry Jones. 

My reactions are from the perspective of a reader, and someone who is, due to this controversy, very curious about Islam, Aisha, Mohammed, and this book itself. Shewhohashope, a 22 year-old student of Anthropology living in London, England, is a Sunni Muslim and rabid Heyer fan.

Lightning-Reviews: Laura Kinsale Part II

This is the second installment of capsule reviews of romance novels written by Laura Kinsale. Read Part I first, if you’re so inclined.

For My Lady’s Heart: Hot damn. Dialogue in Middle English. A story based inspired by Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. A relentlessly honorable and completely adorable hero who hasn’t had any nookie in 13 years. A dangerous, scheming princess who doesn’t know how to trust anyone, doesn’t want to trust anyone, but is thrown for a loop by a knight who refuses to let her push him away. Kinsale once again busts through romance conventions (when people make fun of romance novels as being brainless and predictable, I like to tell them about this book) and makes her characters real to you in a way nobody else can. A

The Dream Hunter: This is the only book of Kinsale’s I don’t love. I don’t hate it, but it didn’t grab me the way her other books did. Arden, the hero, is wonderful. He’s shy yet courageous, and very, very sweet. The heroine…. Oy. I don’t know, I found it hard to like her. Kinsale says that Zenia presents a role… read more »

Lightning Reviews: Laura Kinsale Part I

Damn, I can’t believe I haven’t done one of these yet for Laura Kinsale. (Or Patricia Gaffney. Or Loretta Chase. Oh, my review backlog weeps, weeps, I tells ye.) Anyway, be prepared for an ungodly number of As in a row. And maybe this can be a harbinger of good news, i.e. SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL ME THE LUCKY ONE HAS FINALLY BEEN PICKED UP KTHXBYE.

Hanyway. First up: The Early Years, Replete with Avon Ribbons

The Hidden Heart: This is Laura’s debut novel and holy crap, she does a great job. The hero, Gryphon, has suffered some pretty horrendous emotional trauma and is terrified of loving anyone again. Tess, the heroine, is one of the best Kinsale has created: strong without being annoyingly feisty, sweet, but not sickeningly so, and kind of an outsider because of her eccentric upbringing. It’s an old-school romance in that the hero and heroine are together—no, they have to separate!—no, they’re together—no, they have to separate!—no, they’re together again—but most of the other earmarks of old-school romances like purple prose and the hero raping the heroine are mercifully absent. The book’s dark core is lightened up considerably by flashes of humor.… read more »

Lightning Reviews: Frank Miller’s Sin City

I loved the Sin City novels. Loved ‘em. But when I sat down and tried to write individual reviews for them, I realized I couldn’t. I just wanted to boil everything down into pithy, snarky vignettes, with “Dwight is hot” and “I heart Marv” making up about 50% of those comments. Then I realized: well, DUH, Lightning Review time, mothafuckas!

The Hard Goodbye: You can read a more detailed review here, but basically, it boils down to: I heart Marv, the artwork blew me away, I heart Marv, the story rocks, and I heart Marv. A

A Dame To Kill For: Detailed review here (and you can totally tell I was already grasping for enough words in that review). Dwight is hot, Marv gets a decent supporting bit, and the story ruled; however, Clive Owen, while a boootiful man, was completely inadequate for his role in the movie. A

The Big Fat Kill: What is it about the idea of kick-ass prostitutes being in complete control of their turf that I find so appealing?… read more »

Lightning Reviews: Jennifer Crusie

Those of you who have seen the Lisa Kleypas Lightning Reviews (Part the First, Part the Second) know exactly what to expect from this feature. Brace yourselves, kids: Condensed snark (and copious fangirl love) for every romance novel Jennifer Crusie has published thus far.

Lightning Reviews: Lisa Kleypas, Part 2: The Mostly Meh Years

You can find the first part of the Kleypas Lightning Reviews here.

Somewhere I’ll Find You: In one word: SNORE. C-

Because You’re Mine: In three words: SNORE SOME MORE. C-

Stranger In My Arms: Yes, yes, yes, this is very blatantly a rip-off of The Return of Martin Guerre with an HEA tacked on at the end. I still loved it, incredibly contrived ending and all. Does this make me some sort of pea-brained, intellectually bankrupt fan of bodice-rippers? (Wait, isn’t that a redundancy?) Yeah, whatever. Bite me. A-

Someone To Watch Over Me: Oh great. A book involving an amnesiac who’s apparently also a whore and the Bow Street Runner who’s all pissed-off because she refused to let him get in her pants. The second bit doesn’t bother me, but brain damage so severe that it causes somebody to completely forget all of their past, including their name, would very likely causes other problems too, like, ohhhh, incontinence and general drooling idiocy. But then I guess a heroine suffering from uncontrollable ass-pee who is capable only of gurgling incoherently when spoken to is not sexy, unless you have certain types of unspeakable fetishes. Regardless of the tiresome… read more »

Lightning Reviews: Lisa Kleypas, Part 1: From Crap to HOLY CRAP THAT’S AWESOME!

Short, snarky vignettes on every published Lisa Kleypas novel to date. (Edit: Uhhh, actually, only goodly chunk of published Kleypas novels are covered in this entry, the rest are to be covered tomorrow.) Not sure how helpful this is for the reader, but savor it, y’all, this is one of the few instances of brevity from me that you’ll ever find. And of course, feel free to tell me how awesome and spot-on my opinions are or how completely full of shit I am in the comments.

Ready, set, GO!

Where Passion Leads: Kleypas’s debut novel, published in 1987, and, y’know, oy. OY. A rapist hero, a heroine so annoying I wanted to dip her in battery acid, Big Misunderstandings, and loads and loads of derring-do, a lot which did not seem necessary to the plot. Gah gah gah. D

Forever My Love: A secondary character from Where Passion Leads gets her own book, and she’s *lowers voice* French and masquerading as some impotent aristo’s sex toy, so it’s OK for the hero to treat her like shit. But it’s surprisingly entertaining. Some of it is inadvertent, like Mira rubbing herself like a horny kitten all over the hero’s very… read more »