Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

RITA Reader Challenge: The Danger of Desire by Elizabeth Essex

This review was written by Katherine This story was nominated in the Best Historical Romance category.

The summary: Captain Hugh McAlden is working on a top-secret mission to bring down enemy spies living in England. After seeing a young woman perform a brilliant bit of pick pocketing on the London streets, he impulsively decides to hire her to help him. The only name she'll give him is Meggs, and she refuses to tell him anything about her background or how she ended up on the streets. But as Hugh tries to unravel her secrets, he also finds her harder and harder to resist...

And here is Katherine's review:

This could have been a really good book, instead of just a better than average book.  It coulda been a...oh wait, it is a contender.  Who's responsible for making these nominations, anyway, and what are they drinking? Still, I liked Danger of Desire enough to read the previous book in the series, Pursuit of Pleasure, which as it happens was a… read more »

RITA Reader Challenge: Slow Dancing on Price’s Pier by Lisa Dale

This review was written by Karyn This story was nominated in the Best Contemporary Single Title Romance category.

The summary: Fifteen years ago, Garret Sorensen's family, trust, and heart were destroyed when Thea Celik betrayed him and married his brother. Now they are divorcing. Garret's ready to finally mend his relationship with his brother. But being back in Newport, Rhode Island, triggers a lot of memories-all leading back to Thea. Thea's not ready to let go of the Sorensens-even if it means being around Garret. As they cautiously circle around each other-finding themselves drawn together-they realize following their hearts could cast them adrift.  

And here is Karyn's review:

I wanted to love Slow Dancing on Price’s Pier, by Lisa Dale, or even like it a lot, I just couldn’t.

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.

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 »

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach - A Guest Review by CarrieS

If you loved Sarah's post entitled, "Where is the Hymen?" you will love Bonk.

In Bonk (which for months I've been referring to accidentally as Boink, God knows what that says about me) Mary Roach takes on the subject of what scientists do and don't know about sex, and how they know it.  I apologize for the over-abundance of long quotes here, but they are the best way to convey the flavor of the book.  Also, I'm being self-indulgent.  I read most of this book in a hospital cafeteria (Mom had a hip replacement - she's all better now).  Anyway, there I was, cackling madly over the cafeteria food, with no one to say, "Hey, you gotta hear this!" to.  I certainly wasn't going to read these passages to my mother (although given the pain medication she was getting at the time, I doubt she would have been offended).  Here's an excerpt I'm fond of from the chapter, "The Prescription-Strength Vibrator:  Masturbating For Health":

Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry

I started this book last Saturday morning while my kids were at swim lessons, and I was in a dark, humid, and loud indoor pool on uncomfortable bleachers.

I did not notice any of those things once I started reading. This book is amazing: confident and clever, funny and touching, and wonderfully done.

This book is a simultaneous story - Mayberry's Harlequin Blaze, Hot Island Nights ( A | BN | K | S | ARe ), takes place at the same time with two separate characters. Is there a name for that style of storytelling? I know Twin of Ice and Twin of Fire and the Julia Quinn duo Mr Cavendish I Presume and The Lost Duke of Wyndham employ the same method. What's it called, dovetailed stories? Hinged stories? Entwined stories? I am sure it has a proper name but darned if I can find it. Anyway.

The story opens with Violet at a formal event with… read more »

RITA Reader Challenge: Resolution by Linda Winstead Jones in The Heart of Winter

This review was written by Phyllis Laatsch. This novella was nominated in the "Best Romance Novella" category. 

The summary: When law secretary Nell Rose is snowbound with a handsome stranger, keeping her New Year's Resolution becomes nearly impossible. Why swear off men when a romantic weekend with a reclusive writer seems to be the ideal way to ring in the new year?

And here is Phyllis' review: 

A legal secretary gets stuck in a ditch in a snowstorm on New Year's Eve, just as she's making resolutions to avoid men, go back to school, etc. She trudges up to an isolated house and is let in by a famous author, who can't figure out if she's the stalker who's been sending him crazy letters.

The sparks between the hero and heroine were amazing. They really got each other, though they didn't want the same things out of life in the beginning. They acted on the attraction awfully quickly, especially since the heroine had just sworn off men. And yet,… read more »

The Governess Affair by Courtney Milan

I have a lot to say about this novella, so let's get the plot summary part done - which is not easy as a lot happens in a short space. Serena Barton was fired from her position as a governess because she was raped by the duke of Clermont, but because she didn't fight back or shout when it happened, she holds herself partially responsible. Serena is determined to be heard and seen now that she's pregnant, and decides for her own sake and the sake of the child she's now carrying, she will sit outside the duke's home and humiliate him - and cause more discord with the duke's very wealthy wife, alienating the duke from the spouse and fortune he very much needs. The longer she sits outside the duke's home in all sorts of lovely London weather, the more people will wonder, and talk, and speculate. She will cause the duke trouble by refusing to hide - especially when she begins to show.

Hugo Marshall is an employee of the duke of Clermont, known as "the Wolf of Clermont."… read more »

The Last Night by Nico Rosso - a Guest Review from Carrie S

Some people want scientific explanations for everything in fiction.  I'm not one of them.  Frankly, I prefer it if we never know why the zombies walk the earth, or how the Force works, but if the author feels he or she simply must try to explain the science of what's happening, I'll usually accept it and move on.  You can get away with a lot of bad science and as long as the characters are compelling, I don't care.  But people, this was just too much.

The premise of The Last Night, insofar as I understood it in one reading, is that a chain of devastating earthquakes worldwide destroyed all the cities.  The earthquakes, and volcanic activities, still rumble every few days.  All this seismic activity churned up the soil and unleashed previously buried microbes that infected people, turning them into "ashers".  Ashers have skin (and possibly internal organs - I wasn't clear on this) that has turned to stone (or a stone-like substance).  They have the mindless persistence of standard zombies but they can feel fear… read more »

Silver Surrender by Vivian Vaughan - A Guest Review by RedHeadedGirl

This is the first in a series of four books, and I think this is a good example of decent western romances (which I promised after the Scoundrel’s Captive debacle), and an author making the effort (and succeeding!) at not writing the same book over and over and over again (Dan Brown: take notes) (I do rag on Dan Brown a lot, don’t I?) (HE DESERVES IT).

So this series is about the Jarrett siblings- Texans all (why is it always Texas?) and great lays- except for the oldest brother.  Because he is the parental figure that raised the rest of ‘em and as we all know, parents do not have great sex.

….

Anyway, I read the first one back in my misspent youth, Silver Surrender, and always had this niggling feeling that there were clearly MORE, so when I started this venture, I found the rest of them.  And they are my very favoritist type of bubblegum reads.  Crazy, but not too crazy, likable characters, high adventure, hot sex, FANTASTIC CLOTHES.

(I’m… read more »

RITA Reader Challenge: “The Storm Within” from A Royal Engagement, by Trish Morey

This review was submitted by Qualisign, and get ready, for it is majestic. This novella was nominated in the Romance Novella category.

The summary: Dr. Grace Hunter seeks an ancient text beneath the castle of Count Alessandro Volta.

The reclusive count wasn't expecting scientist Grace to be a beautiful woman who stirs his scarred soul. Outside, a media storm is brewing, but inside the count's world the heat between them is sizzling!

And now, Qualisign's review:

Alternate title cum synopsis: “How a scar(r)y Count Count was possessed by the Cookie Monster only to be exorcized by a fame-seeking scientifically-minded Sunshine Bear with scraped-back hair” Seriously. This was horrible. And I paid for it – just so that I could review it for SBTB. AAARRRGGGHHH! It has such promise: a long-lost manuscript containing healing secrets-of-the-ages, a PhD-carrying-manuscript-curator of a heroine, a wounded hero with a title and a castle on an island with secret tunnels, caves and wicked storms. It was SO good – until I… read more »