Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton - A Guest Review by Carrie S.

It could have been worse.

When people ask me if I’m “Into Star Wars”, I say, “Yes, absolutely”.  But when I say “Star Wars”, I mean, “Star Wars:  A New Hope”, “The Empire Strikes Back”, and “Return of the Jedi”.  I saw the first two prequels but am convinced they were a hallucination brought on by bad popcorn.  I’ve never seen the Clone Wars.  And I’ve never read a Star Wars novel.  But for you, dear bitches, I braved the novelization world to review The Courtship of Princess Leia.  I figured a novel about Han and Leia’s romance would either be the best thing since hyperdrive or the worst thing since Jabba the Hut’s personal appearance.  Turns out I was wrong on both counts.  This novel wasn’t irredeemable.  It had good action sequences, a fast pace, and a few hilarious moments.  But, as a romance novel, it was a big fail, because the most critical component – believable, well-developed, exciting romance - was absent.

To be honest, I’m grading this novel pretty harshly, mostly because it dangled so much potential in front of me and then whisked it away.  At the… read more »

Adventure Lover by Charlene Teglia

I bought this book after Jill Myles tweeted about it, and it reminded me that novellas, when you are supremely busy and would love to finish a story in one evening but don’t have the time, can be awesome part of the romance reading habit. They’re sort of like the dark chocolate in the dietary pyramid of romance: not a constant but excellent to add, and kinda good for you, too.

Jill runs a travel agency, and she’s noticed a sharp decline in luxury travel packages, the kind she specialized in. When research and analysis reveals the new trend in adventure vacations, which aren’t her cup of tea in the least, she puts on her big girl panties, gears up with a very specific list from her survival expert guide, and heads off to a three-day hike around some mountain lakes to experience the tour for herself, and take pictures so she can build a travel package around the trip and sell it to her potential customers.

Ryan is her guide, and from the moment they meet (ha ha ha I just typo’d “meat” SNRK) they’re supremely attracted to one another.… read more »

Love on the Rocks by Pamela Yaye

I have been monster busy and therefore craving Harlequins for reading - but this one I couldn’t get through, no matter how many times I told myself that maybe after a few more pages the book would pick up and get better. I had to stop about halfway through.

Tangela and Warrick were together for seven years before a messy and painful breakup, one that they’ve apparently never talked about. When Tangela shows up on the cover of People magazine’s weight loss issue, showing off a very trim and a very sexy confident new self, she and Warrick find themselves in each other’s worlds again, and find a second chance to fix what went wrong.

Unfortunately, a whole mess of a lot went wrong before I even got to the middle of the book.

An Unlikely Setup by Margaret Watson

Sometimes, a romance is like a souffle. It’s all delicate and airy: there’s some fat and egg white for structure, and it’s sweet and light, and it can be satisfying, if not the most rib-sticking, satisfying thing you’ve ever eaten. But sometimes, because it’s a souffle, one little thing will break it, and the whole puffy thing that until that moment was fun and simple and pleasing will collapse while you stare in horror because there is NO WAY THAT JUST HAPPENED.

An Unlikely Setup was following the path of one of my new favorite forms of category romance plot: girl returns to small rural town and finds community, home, and a really hot guy with a supremely excellent bum. Hot Bum is Quinn, who runs the local pub, and returning girl is Maddie, who has recently inherited the local pub building and a house from her godfather. She’s in deep financial trouble after losing her job as a reporter because she thought flipping houses would work as a way to earn money quickly - even borrowing money from her best friend’s IRA - and when the bottom fell out of the housing… read more »

Lessons From a Scarlet Lady by Emma Wildes

Lessons from a Scarlet Lady is a romance that features protagonists in a rather different way. Brianna is a newlywed duchess who wants a more passionate marriage. She finds a used copy of Lady Rothburg’s Advice, a book so salacious and so frank in its discussion of sex and sexual power that it was banned - so Brianna promptly brings it home to read so she can try to seduce her husband and crank the homefires to burning hot damn. The Duke, Colton (Colton? Is that really a historical English name?), is shocked to his dukely toes by his wife’s bedroom behavior, and finds himself fascinated by his bride when he’d expected to go back to his pre-marital routine of work, work, a little more work, and additional work. Meanwhile, among Brianna’s friends is a young woman named Rebecca, who has it mighty big and bad for Colton’s brother, Robert. Robert has a bit of a reputation, and has no idea Rebecca exists, but that doesn’t stop her from turning down several marriage proposals last season, much to her parents’ displeasure.

I loved that the narrative featured both an unmarried couple… read more »

Accidental Cinderella by Nancy Robards Thompson

Lindsay Bingham is a small town girl who finds herself in St. Michel, a small European country similar to Monaco, as a bridesmaid to her friend Sophie, who is marring the crown prince of said country. At the wedding, she meets the gaze of one hot celebrity chef, Carlos Montigo, and the attraction is immediate. As Carlos goes off to fetch champagne for them both after a short but charged conversation on the balcony, another man, a television producer, asks her to dance and drops an amazing opportunity in her lap: television show hostess for his newly-purchased cooking network. Sophie, the princess of the previous book in this series, has pulled some strings for her best friend.

Lindsay used to be in television. Now she’s a receptionist at a job she assures herself is important, and she doesn’t want to get back into the television life, especially after it (ominous moment ahead) cost her so much in the past. But upon realizing that her job really isn’t all that (heads up! rapid change of priority and plot and understanding of the main character!) she turns the car around (she’s… read more »

Manhunter by Loreth Anne White: A Guest Review by Test Driver Karen

Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit I’m kind of biased to like this book to begin with as it TAKES PLACE IN CANADA, OMG.  Seriously, Harlequin, I’ve read two books set in Canada from you guys in the last couple years.  Can we get some more Can-Con up in here, already?  Are there no opportunities to have Canadian cops/ex-military/CEOs/playboys/cowboys/insert hero trope here?

Also, I’ll admit to a

complete addiction

slight bias for angsty law-enforcement types.  This may or may not have something to do with

Jack Bauer being my TV boyfriend

my being a fan of a few suspense/mystery series featuring that type.

So with that out in the open, let’s move on to what other people should like about the book, shall we?

RCMP Staff Sergeant Gabe Caruso hasn’t been the same since his fiancee was murdered by a serial killer he captured a year before.  Still dealing with the guilt and grief, he accepts a posting to the remote Yukon town of Black Arrow Falls, where he meets Silver Karvonen, expert tracker and owner of a hunting lodge.  Silver has her own emotional trauma that… read more »

Bound to Please by Hope Tarr - Test Driver Review

Test Driver Hapax purchased this book from the Harlequin bookstore as “part of a historical bundle that I wanted to read for the other authors.” Hapax asks that I let y’all know the review is spoilerific, so proceed with caution.

This was my first experiencing in actually sitting down and trying to READ an e-book.

Dear Saint-Jerome-and-his-slavering-lions, just drool me to death Right Now.  The pain…

And I can’t blame the Sony for this one.  I’m fairly certain, in fact, that the e-reader is the only reason I kept paging through, because I wanted to read the next book in this Blazing Bundle, and Sony, in its generosity, didn’t provide me the option of jumping around the table of contents.  So flick through I did, 700 pages of engorged print for my aged and increasingly baffled eyeballs.

The opening had some promise, actually. Our barely pubescent Heroine, Brianna MacLeod, the feisty tomboy with the obligatory untamed red hair and flashing green eyes, has a veritably unique Meet Cute with an even younger hero, lanky dark-haired grey-eyed Ewan Fraser, who admired the vigorous manner in which she relieved her bladder in… read more »

Talking With the Dead by Shiloh Walker

This was a free Kindle download from Sam Hain (distant cousin to Sam Adams) and since it was three dots long (the length of a book on the Kindle is depicted by a series of dots beneath the title in the contents section of the device) I figured it would be a quick read for me.

Let me say outright: there were a lot things that frustrated me about this story, but Shiloh Walker’s writing is not one of them. Despite the elements that I’ll get to in a moment, I’ll be looking for Walker’s books in the future because her writing is SOLID. The narrative voice was unique and inviting, and often underscored the subtle language differences between the hero (a Southern man) and the heroine (an Indiana sheriff). The plot was tight, with growing and ebbing tension.

Caught Running by Madeleine Urban and Abigail Roux

I received an email from a reader who said, “I am interested in you reviewing a personal favorite of mine…. I’m eager to hear your thoughts about a book that, in a very short time, I’ve come to love.” Such a simple endorsement caught my attention, and I read it in a marathon session that ended with me straddling a running treadmill, unable to accept that I’d clicked “next page” and there WAS NO NEXT PAGE. It was over! And I was left with no more of a wonderfully sweet (in a good way) romance, though I was consoled by a hefty dose of “Just finished a good romance euphoria.”

Caught Running is a gay romance (it’s also pretty and witty). In a nutshell (hur): science geek with big giant brain reconnects with laid back PE teacher who coaches high school baseball team. Science geek + sports jock + zesty attraction = WIN!

The longer version: Brandon teaches science at the Georgia high school he attended as a kid. Jake was in Brandon’s class, was an all-star athlete, and has also returned to that same high school as the PE teacher and… read more »

Delicious by Sherry Thomas

The trouble with stories wherein one party is betrothed to another is that the jilted   person must either be unspeakably awful, or really wonderful but not quite right for the protagonist. It’s a tough balance. Unspeakably awful calls into question the judgment of the protagonist, and you can’t have a reader wondering if the hero or heroine is secretly a complete idiot for having chosen that turnip head in the first place. If the jilted party is pretty spiffy in his or her own right, there’s the risk that their relative spiffyness will cause the protagonist to pale in comparison, or cause the one what does the jilting to look like a complete arse with no moral compass much less a sense of decency or honor.

To my happy pleasure and vexing frustration, despite having had exactly 3.5 hours of sleep the night before, Sherry Thomas’ Delicious kept me reading when I would have loved to have mashed my face against the bulkhead and slept.

Dark Lover by J.R. Ward

I blogged obliquely about this book two years ago. I am a judgmental douchebag—I admit this up front. But as Sarah noted in her review at Romancenovel.tv: I’M OUTIE? A massive thug says “I’m outie”?

No. For the love of everything Alicia Silverstone, no.

And this particularly choice turn of phrase always kills me when I look at the first page: “advanced degrees in violent crime.”

Pray tell, sirrah: Where, perchance, may I obtain an advanced degree in violent crime? No, before we even address that burning question: what would an advanced degree look like? Would an MFA be a Masters in Fuckin’ yo Ass (up)? Can you get PhD’s in, say, Violating Your Parole Like A Dumbshit, or Roid Rage (with specializations in Pointless Property Damage or Kicking The Crap Out of Your Girlfriend), or Mini-Mart Robbery Gone Bad?

And I won’t even go into the names, because really, that’s like shooting fhish in a bharrehl.

For these reasons and more, I avoided reading the book. Look, I told myself, if a book can give me about three hours’ worth of riffing material from… read more »

Lover Revealed by J.R. Ward

Coffee Room, Black Dagger Brotherhood soundstage, 4:00 pm. 15 minute break per union regulations.

Marissa: Man, I am beat.

Butch: Me, too. This “your angst, my angst” thing is way tiring, you feel me?

Marissa: Frankly, I’m a little tired of feeling you. You’re all up my skirt with lust ahoy and then in the next chapter, if it’s not about some blonde baby powder monster man, you’re freaking out about your own worth or some shit, so you get drunk and you blow me off.

Butch: Hey, that’s how it’s written.

Marissa: I’m just saying, if I were an actual woman, I’d have kicked your ass to the curb by now with this, “I want you so much my balls are on fire but I’m not worthy of you” routine. You go get drunk off your ass and whine for awhile while I consider my perfect yet lonely life? Boring.

Butch: What can I say? I’m a sensitive man beneath a crusty exterior, both of which are intimidated by your beauty and perfection.

Marissa: Perfection? Please! I’ve… read more »

Lord of the Fading Lands, and Lady of Light and Shadows, by C.L. Wilson

I’m sure you’re all tired of my griping about series books and how I get to the end and realize it’s not quite over - and turn into a whiny pissypanted pain in your ass reviewer. So what did I do when I realized that Lord of the Fading Lands was a series? I waited until I had the second book, Lady of Light and Shadows and read them back to back. Ha! Even though the series continues past book 2, I at least have a more complete story arc to reflect on.

Because Lord and Lady are really two halves of one book, the plots blend into one another in my brain. And in my brain they are resting happily, giving me plenty to stew on as I think back on the story. The two books contain fragments of a Cinderella story mixed with other legends and tales. The layering of myths, themes, and pieces of fairy tales and archtypes is both familiar and unique, and in… read more »

Dear Sister from Francine Pascals’ Sweet Valley High, by Kate Williams

There is no shortage of items in this book that make me either want to (a) chuck it at a wall (b) laugh until I hurt myself, or (c) question why on earth I wasted so much of my parents’ money buying these stupid books.

But first, let me take you down memory lane with the opening description that pretty much marked the start of any Sweet Valley High book: When people in the sunny town of Sweet Valley, California, saw a five-foot-six gloriously attractive young girl with sun-streaked blond hair and sparkling blue-green eyes, they knew it was one of the Wakefield twins, but they couldn’t always be sure which one.

Only thing missing in the standard description - which appears on page 1 for God’s sake - is a mention of how the twins are a “perfect size six.” A river of dark, murky, growling ire runs through me every time I think about how many girls, myself included, were tortured by the idea that unless they met that ideal figure and description, they were not “perfect.”

But I’m not… read more »