Bitchin' Blog Posts
: Guest Review
October 17, 2011 | Monday | 13 Comments
Y’all know I can’t resist a geek/romance crossover, so I had to check out Hero, a YA novel about a gay teen superhero that involves a love story. It was solidly written, painful, and touching, and although I haven’t the foggiest idea of what it’s like to be a gay teen it had the feel of honesty to it. However, it wasn’t very much fun. That’s not surprising, because it deals with some very painful topics. Not every love story or superhero story has to be fun. Personally, though, I want my romance to have some joy, and I want…
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September 19, 2011 | Monday | 16 Comments
Boy, I gotta hand it to Carina Press. I’ve only read three of their eBooks (on my laptop, because I have no e-reader or smart phone, insert tears of self-pity here). None of the three was what I would call a classic work of literature that will be treasured through the ages, but DAMN have they been fun! Alas, while this stared off as super fun, it fell completely apart near the end. Still, points to Appleton for creating a great sense of place(s) and a loving tribute to the pulp science fiction magazines and gritty westerns of the past.…
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August 08, 2011 | Monday | 26 Comments
I received the following guest review submission from Betty Fokker while I was working on my own review for the book. So I’ve included both here for your reading pleasure. No, no, don’t thank me. It’s that Fokker’s fault. Making Waves is about a surly, pissed off guy named Alex who is screwed over by the company he’s worked at for years. Those pensions-worth-nothing, sorry-you’re-broke, nothing to show for decades of labor stories? He’s one of those, along with his crew of former coworkers who (a) also got screwed over and (b) know, much like Alex, that the big boss…
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August 03, 2011 | Wednesday | 48 Comments
This all you need to know. Hot and Steamy: Tales of Steampunk Romance is neither hot, nor steamy, nor romantic. It contains short stories that work more like sketchy idea pitches than like fully realized stories, the romances are perfunctory and either depressing or unbelievable (or, in many cases, both) and worst of all the collection is boring. I normally read one book every one to three days depending on length, content, and other commitments, and it took me almost two weeks to force myself to finish this because I. Was. Bored. I was really excited when this anthology came…
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July 06, 2011 | Wednesday | 42 Comments
RedHeadedGirl is back, because there were… oh, I'll let her tell you. This is another request- Mari requested it AGES ago, and, well, it’s a classic Southern Rebel Boy meets Independent-Minded Northern Miss, sparks fly. And a whole bunch of other crap happens, too. SO MUCH CRAP. Including unexpected zombies. UNEXPECTED ZOMBIES IN MY CIVIL WAR HISTORICAL. It is not like peanut butter and chocolate. It is really not. Now, to be fair, these are voodoo!zombies, not braaaaaaaaaaains!zombies, but still. Unexpected zombies. Our heroine is Barbara, who lives in Sandusky, Ohio, and is the daughter of a doctor who’s with…
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June 25, 2011 | Saturday | 9 Comments
Every now and again I post Book Rants, where people email me for many, many kilobytes about a book that set their pants on fire in a bad way. Today I have a guest review that is mostly in the form of a Book Squee, lest you think we don’t squee enough around these here parts. Tina C. would probably flail her arms and jump up and down if forced to give this review out loud. Tina wrote, I just finished a book, Warped, by Maurissa Guibord, that I downloaded from our local library. It is a YA, which I…
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June 14, 2011 | Tuesday | 15 Comments
Another guest review from Carrie S, who loves sci fi romance, and things steampunk as well. I love steampunk sooooo very much. Something about all those gears and goggles and mad scientists running around in improbable corsetry just enchants my very soul. So, I was very excited to read The Twisted Tale of Stormy Gale, by Christine Bell. Given the subject matter of a time traveler with a fondness for The Wizard of Oz, a character named “The Loony Duke of Leister”, and steampunk elements galore, I was hoping it would be a lot of fun. Given the brevity of…
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June 12, 2011 | Sunday | 46 Comments
Taking a slight break from our steady diet of high-fiber romance (what? Sure it is. If you’re reading paper books, that’s fiber. And if you’re reading digitally, you’re eating air. Either way, healthy!) Carrie S. has a review of a nonfiction book. And now for something - completely different: I was at the library when I saw this book, A Covert Affair: Julia and Paul Child in the OSS. Well, who doesn’t love Julia Child? I was so excited that I got little heart shapes in my eyes, like a cartoon animal in love. Paul and Julia had such an…
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June 02, 2011 | Thursday | 8 Comments
Anne tackled this Novel with Strong Romantic Elements for the RITA® Reader Challenge. Thanks, Anne! Plot Summary time! A young woman plunges from a Las Vegas sightseeing helicopter, landing in the Pirate’s lagoon in front of the Treasure Island Hotel in the middle of the 8:30 Pirate Show. Almost everyone writes her off as another Vegas victim. But Lucky O’Toole smells a rat. She’s head of Customer Relations at The Babylon, the newest, most opulent mega-casino and resort on the Strip, so she’s got a lot on her plate: the Adult Film industry’s annual awards banquet, a spouse-swapping convention, sex…
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May 02, 2011 | Monday | 59 Comments
Once Upon a Time, there was no urban fantasy. Then, there was Emma Bull and her novel War For The Oaks. Take note, Bitches, this is how to popularize (and, in fact, she’s widely credited as having invented) a genre. If you like urban fantasy, urban paranormal romance, and pretty much anything else that involves supernatural creatures in a city, you owe a big thank you to Emma Bull. Lord knows, I personally owe a big thanks to Emma, without whom I would not have spent the last 24 years saying things like, “A big rock”, “hanging arse up in…
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March 24, 2011 | Thursday | 25 Comments
Hello Geeks, it is time once again for my monthly review of something geeky and romantic. This month I read Across the Universe, to determine whether or not it is a Romance Novel, capital R, capital N, by which I mean a story in which the love story is the main focus and a happy ever after is reached. I was drawn to this novel for two reasons. First, it’s a fairly new release that got a lot of buzz when it came out in January of this year. Second, it just screams “Teen Angst Romance”. The front cover has…
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January 06, 2011 | Thursday | 44 Comments
My much awaited copy of One Con Glory arrived on the same day that I was supposed to be preparing for my daughter’s seventh birthday party. Let me give you some context here. This is my only child. She is a girl so beautiful that I can’t believe she’s real, a kid who can take on five boys at recess during a spirited game of Star Wars and whup them all into submission while wearing pink sparkly tennis shoes that light up. So, when the book arrived in the mail, I did what any good mommy would do and set…
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January 05, 2011 | Wednesday | 34 Comments
This is another I Read This To Push It On The Unsuspecting Bitchery. It’s older, and not totally a romance, but it is a favorite of mine. It takes place in Feudal Japan, and is a version of the story of the 47 Samurai. I remember someone in the comments of… something… asking if both characters in Impulsive were Asian, and that’s it’s rare to get both main characters to be a minority. So here we are (although I planned to do this one long before that conversation even happened). Cat is the daughter of a daimyo and…
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October 20, 2010 | Wednesday | 47 Comments
>RedHeadedGirl is back, this time with a review of a romance from so far back, and so far gone in the WTF department, she calls it “Love’s Passion’s Flaming Bag of Poo.” It was an epic adventure. In pain. Most of the time, reviews are written after you have finished the book. I admit for Season of the SunI started it before I even got the book delivered, but I’d read it so many times before, I could do that, and the hook wasn’t really that relevant to the specific book anyway. This is not one of those reviews. It’s…
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September 25, 2010 | Saturday | 29 Comments
I swear I’m not doing this on purpose, but yet another guest review offering arrived in yon inbox while I was editing my review, and I enjoyed this one so much I wanted to share. I’ll turn things over to Dora who also read The Devil Wears Plaid. I spotted The Devil Wears Plaid the same way I find all my romances; in the “stationary” aisle at the supermarket. The reason it stood out to me was it’s title, sort of, which was vaguely . The other reason would be the woman they chose for the cover; her cheeky smile…
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