Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

What Happens in Scotland by Jennifer McQuiston

 If I had to describe What Happens in Scotland by Jennifer McQuiston in one sentece it would be this: the hero and heroine don't really meet until page 140. Also there's a lack of shoes, but more on that later.

I really wanted to like this book. The premise is similar to The Hangover; a night of partying leads to confusion and regrets in the morning. The problem is, you can't have a romance novel where the hero and heroine are apart for 127 pages. The point of a romance novel is for them to grow and change together in order to find love. This was really just humorous historical fiction with some lovin' thrown in at the end, and that's not what I signed up for, folks.

Georgette, the very proper Lady Thorold, wakes up in a strange bed, in a strange inn, with a strange man. He’s hot, but still strange. Also her corset is hanging from the curtain rod and they’ve totally Charlie Sheened the place, broken furniture and all. She isn’t a lady who goes without a corset or… read more »

Kentucky Home by Sarah Title

Kentucky Home is a fast read that initally appealed to me in a few ways: I liked the idea of a book set in Kentucky, especially on a horse farm. I liked the description of the heroine, I liked the idea of a romance about folks starting over, and while the part of the cover copy where the heroine "wins the hearts" of the hero's family one by one gave me a pause, I wanted to read more.

Unfortunately, the book had wildly huge jumps in emotional development that I did not believe in the least, and was mostly populated by one-note characters who served a purpose to the story instead of being actual people.

Mallory Thompson gave up a lot, little by little, at the behest of her surgeon husband. If you've ever heard things about how surgeons are egomaniacal douchebags who care for no one else but themselves and their own egos, those are the elements that made up Mallory's husband. She leaves him, finally, and, posing as the fiancee of her sort-of friend Luke, arrives on his family's horse… read more »

Jane Eyre Round-Up:  A Guest Review by CarrieS

In honor of Charlotte Bronte's birthday (April 21, 1816), I present you with a Jane Eyre film and television adaptation round up.

Of course there are many adaptations I haven't listed here.  Interestingly, none of the adaptations I've seen or heard of seem very off the wall.  While Pride and Prejudice seems to adapt well to different times and places, poor Jane is firmly regulated to the Victorian Age, except in adaptations that use her story as only the loosest of inspirations.

Got your popcorn?  My apologies to Friends for blatantly ripping off their episode naming strategy, but I needed a way to keep all these straight. 

SPOILERS ABOUND as I'm assuming you've read the book already, and if you haven't you will definitely want to do that first and then read on. 

SERIOUSLY. 

READ THE BOOK BEFORE YOU READ THIS. 

MASSIVE SPOILERS. 

Let's start with:

The Bridgertons: Happily Ever After by Julia Quinn

The Bridgertons: Happily Ever After costs $9 at Barnes and Noble.  That's the sale price.  And you know what really burns me up?  The ending of Violet in Bloom, the very novella that I bought the damn book for, was a total let down.  I am so annoyed.

By now I've read so many books about the Bridgertons and their friends and their thirteenth cousins three times removed that they all blend together.  I remember liking all the books, but I'll be darned if I can remember what happened to which Bridgerton.  But I always have fond thoughts for Violet, the mother of all these crazy people.  I bought this book, which contains mostly previously published material, with one goal:  to find out what finally happened to Violet Bridgerton, best Regency Mom ever.  I can't explain how I feel about her story without spoilers, so watch out.

The Wanderer by Robyn Carr

You know how you can really like a book and enjoy it a LOT despite seeing all of the flaws? That's how I am with this book. I could explain the flaws for about an hour and fifty minutes, but I'd still end every sentence with - "...but I liked it." None of the flaws were OH HELL NO jerk-me-out-of-the-story problems, and while I bet they'd drive some readers bonkers, I was happy to accept they were there and move on.

This was comfort reading for me: no one was going to sneak up with a giant stuffed ostrich of angst and beat me over the head with it until I was weepy and covered with feathers. There were people with problems and people who were problems but I liked reading and visiting with all these people. There was some romance but mostly exploration of the people in the town, sort of a blend of what would be called "Women's fiction" (urgh) with a sidecar of romance.

Here are the things you need to know about this book -… read more »

The First Move by Jennifer Lohmann

The First Move is emotional, rich and difficult. It's also very good. The characters aren't thin or dispatches from Stock Characters R' Us. They are real people with real feelings - a LOT of feelings. Brimming with feels. Overflowing and making a mess, all these feels. They made my eyes sting -- I had a lot of empathy for the heroine and she followed me around for days after I finished.

Renia is the sister of the heroine from Reservations for Two, and she has a secret. A Big Ol' Secret. And while I'm trying my best to do the plot summary that fully captures the story, let me take a moment to snarl at the cover and the number of exclamation points in the cover copy:

An unlikely encounter…but he'll take it!

It seems like fate…or something! When Miles Brislenn spies the girl he had a crush on in high school—at his ex-wife's wedding, no less—he can't let the opportunity pass. He might not have had the courage to talk… read more »

A Royal World Apart by Maisey Yates

I picked up this book when I read on Maisey Yates’ Facebook page that she’d written a Harlequin Presents with a virgin hero. The what you say?

Most of the Presents I’ve read featured trembling, doe-eyed, virginal heroines who’ve never bothered to locate or think about their hoo-has until the hero shows up. If Yates wrote her hero in the same mold, then they’d spend half the book sitting on a king-sized bed in front of the ubiquitous fireplace staring at each other with panicked, glazed-over eyes trying to figure out what the hell they were supposed to do.

Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel

It would be a lot easier to write a coherent review for Dearly, Departed if I hadn't been up all last night reading it.  This is the first book in the "Gone with the Respiration" series by Lia Habel and the plot starts slow but once it really kicks in, WOW.

Dearly, Departed is a YA novel with steampunky Victorian science fiction and zombies and a rebel group called "punks" and a great romance tying everything together.  I have to admit that in general, my love for Warm Bodies aside, I'm really grossed out by the whole concept of zombie/human romance and I wasn't sure this book would work for me.  I'm pleased to say that I was wrong.  It's an exciting and original and touching story and I loved the romance. 

Here's the plot description as provided by the author's website:

Wolf Nip by Vivian Arend

I'm looking at the shifter genre like a swim-starved beachgoer who is pretty sure the ocean is too cold to go in, but dips a toe anyway. I kind of miss the paranormal genre, especially shifters. I don't love the insta-love and the fated pair mating with the twitching cocks, but I've read most paranormal romance from the perspective that it explores our relationship with rage, out of control anger, and fear, especially of the internal and external "other."

When we - especially women - lose our shit and get angry, it's not ok. Shame and chastisement follow. But if a shifter loses his or her shit, goes cat or wolf or bear or cougar or wombat, well, that's nature. Some of my favorite paranormal shifter romances explore without flinching the idea that there's this insatiable angry beast inside that has to be tamed or controlled or in some way balanced.

Since I was… read more »

Tin Cat by Misa Buckley

I really, really wanted to love Tin Cat, and I almost did - but it's one of those books that just can't quite pull all its components together.

Tin Cat is about Amber, a woman who owns and runs a comic book shop.  Allow me to pause and say - that is awesome, and what's even more awesome is that her shop has both male and female customers, and she has a female co-worker, and no one thinks that is weird or that the women are fake geek girls or that they exist only to be oogled.  THANK YOU. 

One year before the book begins, Amber was hit by a car and became paralyzed from the waist down.  She lives independently, drives, runs her shop, and is just basically awesome, but she has huge emotional issues due to the fact that she's only had a year to adjust to the paralysis, there was a trial in which she was viciously slut-shamed, and her boyfriend, who was already a jerk, dumped her when he discovered that the paralysis would be permanent.  So… read more »

The Host: A Movie Review by CarrieS

The Host is a movie about a person trapped in a body that has been taken over by an alien (it's also a story about an alien trapped in the body of a loud, irritating person).  In a similar manner, The Host is a really great movie trapped inside a really bad movie.

To carry the analogy one step farther, I went to the movie with the full intention to snark mercilessly and within minutes my fifteen-year-old self had completely hi-jacked my middle aged body and was totally entranced.  So all the snark you'll encounter is snark that occurred to me hours later, when I was busy being forty again (I just had a birthday, yay me).  Fifteen-year-old self thought the movie was great and despite all the snark I am about to unleash, I bet you'll fall for it too.  It has a strangely hypnotic power.

If you Google "The Host" I'm sure you'll find hundreds of spoiler free reviews.  This is not one of them.  I plan to spoil away, so if you want to avoid… read more »

Let It Be Me by Kate Noble

I was so excited about this book. After reading most of Kate Noble's previous historical romances and recommending them to people who had historical London romance fatigue, I was hopping in my chair eager to read this book. It wasn't as oh-my-gosh-good-book-sigh-for-two-hours as other books of Noble's that I've loved, but it was still wonderfully intelligent and unique historical romance. While the emotional connection between the hero and heroine sometimes disappointed me, the setting and the conflict between them, and most especially the use of music, made up the difference. This, like many of Noble's books, is an extraordinary and unique romance worth savoring.

Bridget is the younger sister of Sarah Forrester, the heroine of If I Fell, and she's been overshadowed by Sarah most of her adult life. Her debut season was a bitter experience for her, because Sarah, after reinventing herself when she was humiliatingly jilted by a duke, stole the attention from Bridget. Bridget's unhappiness from that experience was palpable, and she developed a reputation in society for being unpleasant - which cast her even more in the shade… read more »

Wrecked by Shiloh Walker

If this book were a person, and had it introduced itself to me, I would have felt exceptionally positive towards it, like a Sim™ with a whole string of ++++ above my head. I love the cover, I love the copy, I love the premise. It makes an excellent first impression.

This is a friends-to-lovers story, the kind where one of the two buddies (in this case, Zach) has Had It Bad for his best friend and has never let on - despite everyone in his immediate circle of family and friends knowing about The Bad he Has. It's a semi-permanent state of Has It Bad, but his best friend Abigale has no clue.

Zach and Abigale are best friends who go way back: they are both former child stars from a popular tv program that went off the air long ago. Neither of them really kept their Hollywood careers, though Abigale's mother, who is horrible, tried to keep Abigale's career going as best she could.

Abigale has become very hesitant to make friends or accept people, and a lot of that… read more »

Rush by Maya Banks

I was leery about reading Rush for two reasons. First, there’s a glut of less than stellar erotic romance being published due to the Fifty Shades of Grey buzz.

Second, WTF is going on with the cover? Seriously, can we talk about the cover for a second? What is that? It looks like the mysterious blue water from maxi pad and diaper ads.

Bizarre cover art aside, this was a great read. It was the sort of fun, ultra-sexy, modern romance that can eat up an entire Saturday. I have already ordered the next two books in the trilogy. Be advised, this isn’t Fifty Shades of Grey, largely because it doesn’t suck.

It’s erotica without the apology, navel gazing, or shame. If you liked Fifty, you should definitely like this book because it’s better.

The Friday Society by Adrienne Kress

The worst thing about The Friday Society is that it ends.  I'm not criticizing the ending; I'm just saying that I had so much fun reading this book that I felt considerably depressed when it was over.  It's that good.

The Friday Society is a steampunk adventure with three main characters, each of whom is a teenager.  Cora is the unappreciated assistant to a famous inventor.  She is brilliant and cranky. 

Nellie is a Magician's assistant.  She is fortunate in that her mentor does appreciate her, and she loves to perform.  She is by far the bubbliest of the women but she is also talented and intelligent. 

Michiko is a Japanese samurai who came to London in search of greater acceptance and instead is trapped as the unappreciated servant of an English charlatan.  Michiko speaks very little English, but is determined to pursue the path of samurai despite all obstacles (and there are many).  Each of the three main characters is introduced in their own chapter, and each of these chapters starts with the sentence, "And then there was… read more »