Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

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 »

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 »

Shameless by Tori Carrington: A Guest Review by Test Driver Tina

Once, long ago, I had a guy friend ask me out to dinner.  Now, we were pretty much “just friends”, but I thought he was sweet and cute and I enjoyed his company, so I happily agreed to what sounded rather date-like (especially since he told me to dress “nice”).  Off we went, with him telling me that where we were going was a “surprise”.  Then we pulled up in front of a church.  I asked him why we were stopping and he said he needed to run in really quick and asked if I would mind coming along.  Once inside, as he was guiding me down an aisle to a pew, I realized that he’d tricked me into attending his Wednesday night church service.  Surprise!  And it wasn’t just any kind of church service—it was the type of church service where the entire front row knelt on the floor, swaying back and forth, yelling “Amen!” at random intervals the whole time!  Towards the end of this two-hour long service, the pastor asked if there was anyone new to the church attending that evening.  My former friend all but pushed me up out… read more »

The Playboy Sheikh’s Virgin Stable Girl by Sharon Kendrick

I read this book because not one but two different people emailed me and said, to wit, “OMG you have to read this it is HILARIOUS. Like Pregnesia Hilarious.”

One reader said,

“I just had to draw your attention to a stunning read. It’s so bad, it transcends the line between bad and good and becomes rather excellent….

I can highly recommend Kendrick’s latest. Honestly, she’s usually one of the authors that I like - I kind of enjoy the hyper-realism of her stories, and I know what I’m getting. But, for me, this tipped over from presents into parody. It’s truly an experience.”

Then, she quoted The Line, the one line in this book that makes it a Must Read. The money quote that is so ridiculous, you can’t even believe it, and you have to read it over again to make sure you didn’t hallucinate. And THEN, it gets better from there!

How could I not read it?

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 »

Bite Me by Melissa Francis

AJ has the hots for Ryan, but as the story opens, Ryan’s dad is about to marry her mom, and so now it’s all icky stepbrotherlust. Whoa.

Could have stopped there - plenty of conflict. But no, there’s more!

AJ is a vampire and she can’t tell anyone. Not even Ryan knows. And she’s able to live among humans with a great deal of subterfuge. While she has some problems controlling her fangs and lust for havoc and blood, she’s pretty much totally covered. She has younger siblings, and Ryan has younger siblings, and even though the sibs never snack on her hemopopsicles by accident (where does she hide them?), it’s all paranormal Brady bunch up in there.

Could have stopped there - plenty of conflict. But no, there’s more!

Weird shit starts to happen. AJ and Ryan have a falling out and Ryan acts like a total priss ass diva (more on that not-heroic behavior in a minute) and then this random Scottish housekeeper moves in and starts hanging window boxes and cooking up a storm. And yes: there’s “dinna” and “wee lad” and a mention of how one… read more »

He Calls Her Doc by Mary Brady

I loved the setting, the premise, and the possibility of this book: a general practice physician takes over the local clinic in the small Montana town she grew up in, and has to deal with the townspeople seeing her as a local girl and not a doctor, the sexism that forces some folks to refuse to see a female doctor, and the hot, burning attraction for a former flame, the brother of a very close friend who has conveniently moved back to town as well.

I hoped that the incredibly dull title (He may call her Doc. I call that title a dispatch from the Boring Department. What’s up with that one, HQN?) would not indicate a dull read, because crossing smalltown Montana with medical drama and romance? Could be awesome! And while it wasn’t dull, it was underdeveloped and, upon finishing it, seemed unfinished because the little questions that drove the plot forward were unanswered. I hate when I finish a book and have more ‘But what about…?“s than I know what to do with.

Oleander House by Ally Blue

I downloaded this book as a free Kindle offer from Sam Hain and read it while commuting. Even on the bus at 6am I was creeped out at the start of the novel. It was creepy, bizarre and in the beginning it gave me goosebumps. By the end, my eyebrows were permanently raised.

Oleander House has a terrible history. The current owner is sure something is haunting the place (no shit Sherlock) after an unseen creature bites a young child touring the house as a local historic property, and the bite becomes infected with an unknown substance, killing the child a few days later. Prior to that, several violent deaths spot the house’s history, coupled with catatonic survivors who die shortly after they are discovered surrounded by ripped body parts and covered with blood. Haunted much? Sure. I’m surprised the CDC hasn’t blown the place up.

Enter Sam Raintree. He’s a new hire at Bay City Paranormal Investigations, a small business specializing in ghost hunting owned by Bo Broussard. Bo’s team is hired to live in the house, figure out what’s haunting it, and potentially get rid of it, whatever it… read more »

Just Wicked Enough by Lorraine Heath

When I wrote last week about reading a paperback and compared that experience to The Kindle-Ade, this is the book I was talking about. I grabbed this book as fast as I could because I had to complete the Act of Congress that it takes to move my posse around on the weekend and make sure I had something to read in the car.

Just Wicked Enough is a American heiress/impoverished lord historical, and I believe the second of a trilogy, or possibly a quartet, though according to Heath’s website the last two books are “on hold.” Michael Tremayne, Marquess of Falconridge (predatory animal + geographical feature FTW!), auctions himself to a pack of rich American men with eligible daughters, and wins the hand of Kate Rose, who is headstrong, rather bookish, addicted to chocolate, utterly unfamiliar with Mr. Falcon and his Ridge, and - surprise! - according to the terms of the marriage, in complete control of the purse strings of their union. The terms of the bid was in the multi-millions, so if Kate had her druthers, she probably could have bailed out Fannie and Freddie and gone back… read more »

The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones

Thanks to a very kind person dove into her bookstore’s ARC stash, I had a few days to read The Jewel of Medina. I needed more than a few days, though, because it was hard to get into, and harder to get through, despite my being a rather fast and furious reader. In a nutshell: I was underwhelmed.

First, a note: when I discuss ‘Aisha’ or ‘Mohammed’ in the context of this review, I am fully aware that to those readers who are Muslim, these are real and revered people who ought not ever be fictionalized. Please understand: I am attempting to discuss the characterization in the context of this novel, so if I say “Aisha acted like a complete hosebeast,” I mean the character, not the prophet’s wife. I realize that for anyone who is Muslim, the separation is next to impossible. I humbly ask that you keep in mind that for me, a person who is not Muslim and who knows diddly-poo about Aisha from the get-go, the religious figure and the fictional character as portrayed in his book are two very separate concepts. 

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

To say I was angsty as a teenager is something of a majestic understatement. I was miserable, for a host of reasons. And I had suitably angsty intense relationships with really awful, unsuitable, self absorbed guys who were interested more in screwing with my already ruffled emotions than they were any genuine efforts at being a couple. One particular guy was an absolute waste, and I am horrified that I spent so much time trying to make this fool happy.

Reading Twilight reminds me heavily of my angsty teen self, and how ridiculous it was that I expected rainbows and happiness when, let’s be honest, teenagerdom is pretty fucking miserable all around. It makes me think of a really old, navel gazing Alanis Morissette song wherein she says, “You were plenty self-destructive for my tastes at the time/ I used to say, the more tragic the better.” Yeah. That about sums up my teen years, and this book.

I’m still reading this thing, persevering to the end, trying to figure out what all the fuss is about, why so many people absolutely adore this book to the point that they… read more »

Decadent by Shayla Black

(Warning: Massive spoilers for this book lie under the fold, as well as a link to a LOLPORN photo. Read on at your own peril.)

Reading Decadent deafened me.

Have you ever had that experience before? You finish reading a book and you feel just a bit numb. Your brain is ringing the way your ears do when leaving a venue with a terrible sound system, after watching a band that’s far too fond of playing very loudly and not nearly fond enough of playing with skill. I haven’t read too many novels that do that to me, so I attempted to analyze why Decadent inspired that reaction, and what I finally figured out was this:

The book was written in such a way that its ideal narrator was the Summer Blockbuster Guy.

“This summer… An innocent beauty learns the price of earning the love she thinks she wants… is finding love in a place she never expected.”

“This summer… A hardened soldier of fortune discovers that gaining the girl of his dreams… means letting go of the girl in his past.”

“This summer… A girl becomes a woman… and learns she can preserve her virginity… by having anal sex… read more »

The Boss’s Virgin by Charlotte Lamb

I started reading Charlotte Lamb’s last novel, The Boss’s Virgin, at about 9:00 pm last night. At 10:30 I was 75% finished with it, and could barely make myself put it down. The words are like the crazy glue with my fingers.

And my unstoppable yen to keep reading grows despite the following list of absurdities:

1. Not only are there an abundance of punishing kisses (ow) but there’s a great deal of insistence on the part of the Insane Hero that she likes it: “You little liar! You love it when I kiss you!” That pretty much sums up the hero, that sentence right there.

Devil’s Embrace by Catherine Coulter

I'm currently at page 216 of a book that I had to talk about it to someone.  I first tried to talk with my husband about it, but he doesn't read romances and can't really get into a conversation about the merits (or lack there of) of one.  So I emailed Candy and Sarah to see if they'd read it.  Neither of them has, but Sarah thought that my take on it might be of interest, so here we are.

The book is Devil's Embrace, by Catherine Coulter.  According to the back of the book, it was originally published in 1982.  Also, according to the back cover, Coulter "updated it stylistically, edited it, trimmed it just a bit, and the art department designed a splendid new cover that magically includes some of the original artwork."  I will say now that I've never read the original, so I don't know how much of what I have to say only pertains to this reissued version.  I also want to firmly establish the fact that I like Coulter's writing a great deal and own… read more »

Dark Obsession by Amanda Stevens

I’m categorizing all my category (har!) reviews under the heading “1001 Ways to Eat Crow” because I’m reading a monster truck shitload of category romance right now, averaging about 75% of a book per day. I read fast. And I’m enjoying them. For the most part. This is an exception. But either way, I’m reading quickly enough that my usual monster session of navel-gazing in a review will have to be trimmed by a good bit for the category binge I’m on now. Avast - here begin ye shorte reviews!

In a word, this book was Yawntastic. It has such a great setup,  but the plot and the characterization were so limply executed. A horror writer’s sister is murdered, and a vampire hero has to save her, protect her from potentially risen sister, and eradicate the bad guy vampire dude what’s doing the killing. The heroine writes books that scare even the hero, yet in the course of the story she’s firmly a wuss on the border of TSTL. I was repeatedly told she authored some scary, chilling books but saw no evidence of… read more »