The flip side of asking for the good stuff to read? I also need some average to oh-man-that’s-horrid recommendations, too. BUT, if you are not thrilled with the idea of wielding the hammer of “Holy Crap This Stank” against a fellow author, please feel free to email me (sarah @ smartbitchestrashybooks.com). But please, hook me up with some truly average to holy-crapdamn-bad category recommendations, too?
Please?
Hello? Anyone?
Bueller?
UPDATED: Category! I meant Category! Categorically yikky category that you just plain didn’t like.
Note to self: never post while exhausted. Doh!
Well, if you want “craptastic”, you just need a Cassie Edwards book.
I was given a book by a friend recently. We both disliked it. I am hoping the author is not one that is on here. The name doesn’t ring a bell, so I hope I’m not insulting someone whose comments I enjoy reading…
Anyway, Wicked Magic by Cheyenne McCray
Sam
my word is nearly52…no damnit, not for a decade
The “Hope” series by David Feintuch. I only read 2 1/3 of them, but it made me want to beat my brains out with a sledgehammer to stop the pain. The main character runs a pity party that never fricking stops. “Oh, I’m such a horrible person! I am forced by the military to beat other men because it’s in the regulations that officers must flog their underlings when they do wrong! I’m a horrible, horrible, abusive man! No woman would ever want to have a romance with me if she really knew what kind of a man I am!”
Then, a girl likes him and they get intimate and the next day he’s whining (mentally) about how he *forced* himself on her! This guy is seriously screwed up. I read two, hoping it would finally end, he’d do something and feel better about himself. Never happened. I read part of the third and checked the end, and still no change in the endless pity party, so I declined to read the rest of the series. (I believe there were six in total- horrors!)
My spamblocker word: head97. Yeah, this guy was more screwed up in the head than 97 other, normal peopls!
Although I really enjoy most of Susan Sizemore’s work, I have to admit that this is my least favorite. Unlike most of her books, this one is a medieval historical romance with no time travel twist. The heroine is Lady Eleanor, a young woman who has spent much time with her mother at the court of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, and is versed in the arts of poetry and music and sophisticated flirtation in the Court of Love.
I think the reason I’m not fond of this book is that it just didn’t make sense. It’s unnecessarily complex, and I couldn’t figure out why the baron’s son became so wild that he just couldn’t fit into their society. There are too many extraneous characters, each with their own stories, so it’s hard to keep track of the main plot line. And I couldn’t figure out where the title came from!
I forgot the title of the Sizemore book! Sorry! It’s “Nothing Else Matters.”
Lady Blue by Evangelynn Stratton, the absolutely worst book for historical details in the English language. A reviewer on amazon.com called it “about as historically accurate as Hogan’s Heroes”.
I would submit that Hogan’s Heroes should be gravely offended by this. It is the WORST book.
Guilty Passion by Jacqueline Baird.
Nothing Changes Love by same. Harlequin presents.
You will want to kill these “heroes”.
The Wild Series by Sasha Lord. It’s amazingly crap-tastic.
Sarah B. Franklin’s “Daughter of Troy”
Oh man, go to Amazon and read the reviews: they don’t even begin to cover how bad/ROTFL funny this is. Without giving away too much, the heroine (Briseis) is the ONLY WOMAN IN ALL OF GREECE able to, er, accommodate the hero’s (Achilles) manly girth.
And if you really want to torture yourself, Sara Douglass’ fantasy “The Wayfarer Redemption” or “Hades Daughter.” They’ll make you appreciate the rapist heroes from the old school.
For good stuff, I’ve discovered Cecelia Ahern this Christmas after getting P.S. I Love You in my stocking and have wish-listed all her books. Her stories are less romance and more fun chick-lit, without the pathetic heroine trying to make-over her life to get *the guy*
Stupidest Harlequin Presents plot ever: Sinful Truths by Anne Mather.
Exceptionally offensive Harlequin Presents: Wife Against Her Will by Sara Craven.
Oh! Oh! Anne Mather!
The Greek Tycoon’s Pregnant Wife! Absolutely horrible! And the cover is unspeakable!
And yes, I am being paid by the exclamation point!
Todays freebie harlequin…oooh so not pulling my chain…well unless its the toilet chain and that definitely goes with the wo-o-oden seat dialogue.
Snowbound with Mr. Right
Miniseries: Mistletoe & Marriage
by
Judy Christenberry
Thing is, I think I might like the idea of the story if it just wasn’t…well, written the way it is.
(lol ill99 – dec 27th offereing was much better)
Minda Webber – the Reluctant Miss Van Helsing. The most godawful book I’ve ever read – EVERRRR!
I hate to knock on a Woodiwiss novel, but Petals on the River just got.on.my.nerves. Every other page or so, you got drivel pounded into your head about how perfect the heroine or hero is. The heroine is perfectly sweet and perfect and can tame the evil beasts in anyone or some such thing. Gah!
under26? How accurate…
I just finished a very slow, stiff historical Harlequin called an Unusual Bequest by Mary Nichols. I wanted to like it, but had to make myself finish it. I’ve actually skimmed/read several horrible catagory romances this past year. There was one book where a previous author had written “stupid book” on the flyleaf. When I began to read it I realized that the previous owner was spot on. It was a truly terrible book. I’ll try to remember some titles.
One name instantly springs to mind: Betty Neels. She wrote the most deeply painful Harlequin of all time, then wrote it again approximately sixteen thousand times more.
Seriously, they’re all the same book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Neels#Single_Novels
Devil May Cry by Sherrilyn Kenyon. Rotten.
I don’t have any recommendations for specific titles, but BookMooch (bookmooch dot com) is a good place to find copies of category romances. It’s a book swapping site. I’ve been using it for a year and like it a lot. Just browsing on the site, I’ve noticed that there are a lot of category romances being offered. I suspect that there will be more copies of the bad ones than of the good ones, but good ones turn up, too.
It helps that one can search by keywords, including publisher/line.
The problem with category, pro or con, is its short shelf life. I can recommend the old Jennifer Crusie Harlequins, but they’re not on the shelf anymore. If I don’t grab the Harlequin historicals at Borders the week they come out, I can expect them to be gone on my next visit.
Otherwise I’d be able to offer some suggestions for good stuff. I haven’t read any truly craptastic books in a long time ‘cause I have cradar (crap radar) that works quite well.
And I read reviews before I shop.[g]
OK, here’s another one, a category romance this time—the trouble is, it was so bad I’ve blocked the title and author.
I think the author was Anne Mather or Jayne Ann Krentz, and it was published in the early 1990s. It takes place in the US, in a traveling circus. The plot has to do with a father who marries his daughter off without her consent (basically sells her) to the manager of the circus, his protege, and tells him to discipline her (‘cause she’s such a bad girl). Except, she really isn’t a bad girl, she’s just misunderstood.
Anyway, there’s this continuing misunderstanding throughout most of the book – he thinks she’s bad and self-centered and treats her mean, and she takes it for months without explaining her side of it.
What I didn’t like about this book was the downright abusiveness of the hero. He was so emotionally abusing that I would have taken her to a women’s shelter where she could be safe and get counseling. It’s kind of scarey that this sort of thing used to be considered “romantic.” Geesh.
Jean, that sounds a lot like Kiss an Angel by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. But that’s a single title.
Absolutely second _Devil may cry_. That was a PoV nightmare. And redundant as all hell.
_Warrior Tycoon_ by Shari Whitefeather. An object-lesson in how NOT to write an interracial romance, not to mention more Texas cliches than you can shake a ten-gallon hat at.
(I took the liberty of mailing you my own disappointments of the year, the stories I read back over and say “That wasnt very good at all, was it?”)
I don’t have a specific book to recommend, but I do have a category. I am so over (way, way over) the “You can tell she’s spunky because she has a manly job” type of romance story which, yes, I still see occasionally. Girls who can fix cars rock, but why does it have to be some big focus point?
“Kiss and Angel” is exactly the one I mean – knew it was a “big” author. Maybe the 1996 single title was a reprint of a category, because I distinctly remember it with a category format and colors.
I’ll recommend one that I love, but hate that I love it because it’s so bad.
It’s the Guarded Heart by Robyn Donald, Presents #623. The hero’s pregnant wife is killed when the heroine causes an accident on her skateboard, so years later he forces the heroine into marrying him and giving him a replacement child.
The category I really hate is the “baby” one—you know, where the girl is pregnant and they guy marries her even though it’s not actually his baby and then they fall in love, and this is all supposed to take place in the modern world? Uhg.
As for a specific book, the last book I recall reading that was really bad was THE DUKE’S INDISCRETION by Adele Ashworth… I don’t remember exactly what I hated about it, but I do remember I only got past page twelve and then I threw it away because I was disgusted I paid $8 for it.
bonnie vanak.
i’m sure she’s a nice person and has many good points, but I can’t stand anything she’s written. It makes me go aiee!
I do love a good captured by the sheik, but she takes it and pushes all my (hard to push) squick buttons and takes my suspension of disbelief and stretches it all sorts of out of shape.
i liked kiss an angel by Susan Elizabeth Philips, but I couldn’t handle Vanak’s stuff. It was just too much.
If Only You Knew by Gwyneth Bolton is one of the worst books I’ve ever read. It was so bad that I felt compelled to post a review about it in on Amazon. The “hero” is an abusive asshole. Period. If you read it, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Somebody beat me too it on Betty Neels. I will say I enjoy her books, but I consider them in no one way “good.” They are my go-to books for when I really don’t want to think. Think of the most mindless embarrassing thing you watch of TV. Yeah like that.
And they really are just the same book over and over again. Not only that, but she wrote books in the 80s and 90s that are supposed to be contemporary, but it feels more like 1955 when you read them.
Another author that I think is horrible (that many people love) is Diana Palmer. She is the queen of the jerk hero. I think a lot of her categories have been reprinted so they might be easier to find.
Seconds on Diana Palmer. The first book of hers I read had the hero giving the heroine a spanking because she had spooked his horse (or something). I threw it across the room and never picked up another Diana Palmer.
Ummmm, hate to say it because I actually like parts of both books but..
The Lover & Gabriels Woman by Robin Schone. Some (most) of the books squicked me out but strangely I still enjoyed them. Does this mean I need therapy?
I’ve kept a database with scores for authors after I found I got some similar names mixed up.
The lowest score ever is Cathy Williams, Accidental Mistress, a Presents from 1997 – my notes say I wish the hero had thrown the heroine overboard
Ann Mather gets the next lowest, especially for A Woman Of Passion
Sandra Marton – Hostage Of The Hawk
Anne McAllister – The Santorini Bride – She’s written some quite good category books but this one stank, not least because she had obviously no idea what Santorini was like, and also because it fell into the dreaded prolific-category-author-series-trap of bringing in multiple characters from other books “oh look, so and so are pregnant again†and “look at this intriguing character, can’t you just see she’s being set up for her own book soon?â€
Lynne Graham is another author whose work I usually enjoy but The Cozakis Bride was unfinishable
Interestingly in my notes, the ones I truly hate are the ones where the heroine let the story down. I can accept an ass-hat hero if the heroine has at least a suspicion of a spine and an IQ pushing double figures
Other repeat offenders from the 90s, Helen Bianchin & Emma Darcy
I also kept a score of how many clichés each book had, whether good or bad clichés. The average is 2 or 3 – I call them clichés, some would call them “hooks†and say they are exactly what make category books category. In my scores high marks tend to mean they lept out at me as over used and predictable:
Williams didn’t get a score at all as the book was so awful.
Mather’s 2 books got a 4 & a 5
Marton 3
McAllister 2
Graham had 5, although another of hers, The Reluctant Husband scored a 6 on the cliché-ometer
Bianchin & Darcy averaged 2 – 3
Most of these are over 5 years old and show why I now only read selected Presents and prefer Romantic Suspense, or the Romance lines. For some reason, take away the supposedly hot sex of Presents and you get more depth of character. Yes, that’s an over simplification, but read a few of the books above and you may see where I get my prejudices!
And in the interest of fairness, I’ll put some of my high scorers here too, rather than on the previous list.
Susan Napier, Suzanne McCarthy, Valerie Parv, Michelle Reid (although I have to be in the right mood for her and one or two have earned 4 for clichés) Sara Wood
Napier in particular always delivers a good read, and often with good humour (not a common theme in Presents), she also has the ability to make them seem old fashioned, yet fresh. As if she knows these are tried and tested “hooks†but somehow not making them as jarring as the majority of billionaire romances. I wouldn’t say they feel “modern†but they remind me less of the power hungry, consumer driven 80s – where a lot of “billionaire†romances still seem to have their basis – fashion labels, flash cars, penthouses, private jets etc. Yes I like some escapism in my romances, but a little variety in the “trappings†is nice.
Ambassador’s Vow by Barbara Gale. The only Harlequin attempt I’ve come across for interracial romance.
Didn’t like it at all, and came across people who agreed with me.
On Amazon
I second The Reluctant Miss Van Helsing; I never managed to finish it, but I kept wanting to punch both the hero and heroine. (odd, as I rather liked The Remarkable Miss Frankenstein)
. . . and Bonnie Vanak. I’ve only read one of her books, but it made no frickin’ sense. “I just met you twelve hours ago, you set my house on fire because it was theoretically the only way to stop the shapeshifting enemy that was attacking us, you’ve been spying on my mind for the past week even while I’m in the shower masturbating, and you’ve given me no real reason to trust you. Let’s have sex!”
Susan Krinard’s Prince of Wolves is another craptastic read—memo to author: If the hero puts the heroine under mind control to make her dismiss any problems she might have with him and forget her job, friends and family to live with him in the middle of nowhere and have lots of sex? I am not going to root for a happily ever after.
But the worst I’ve encountered were in Joan Hohl’s Wolfe series. The first, Wolfe Waiting has the male lead show up uninvited at the female lead’s house the evening of the day they met, for no apparent reason, while she’s in the tub. She grumbles to herself that he’ll probably make some lewd comment and offer to help hook her bra (he doesn’t). Then she splits her dinner with him, and they spend the rest of the book failing to communicate for no frickin’ reason.
The second, Wolfe Watching, I didn’t really gather anything from beyond the fact that the heroine weighed 98 pounds and was clearly watching her weight.
The third, Wolfe Wanting, had a cop meet a girl when she crashed her car in an effort to flee her rapist. They ‘dated’ for a week, and then he decided that the best way to help her get over the incident was to pressure her into having sex.
I didn’t read the fourth, but I came across a book featuring one of their kids, Wolfe Winter, which had the heroine seduced by a minister who thought nothing of having sex before the first date. On a Sunday.
I nominate another Cheyenne McCray book, “Forbidden Magic.” This one was so bad I actually posted a review on amazon.com after I read it in an effort to spare others the pain. The one dimensional heroine was a total slut – but you didn’t even get the usual benefits of such books since the “erotic scenes”, though they seem to be trying to be cutting edge and titillating (i.e., lots of “naughty” words and the inclusion of a demon “warrioress” in human form with a penchant for poorly written D/s), were actually formulaic and boring. This book was so bad I couldn’t even bring myself to sell the darned thing on eBay or half.com since I couldn’t live with my conscience if I made someone else PAY to read it. Thank god for book swaps…
I am dissapointed with Catherine Coulters new book Wizards Daughter. I was expecting better. The hero/heroine was good, but there was the weirdest plot at the end. I thought that could of been cut out.
I’m also reading Elijah by Jacquelyn Franks. I read the first two books and thought they were pretty good, but I have picked this book up twice and can’t read it. I can’t stand when a hero/heroine goes on and on (about 5 pages each) on how much they like the other person.
I have to mention a book that I really like, Jeaniene Frost. I think it was her first book. Its called Halfway to the Grave. Aweome!