I'm just going to stop after the Knox novella. I'm all set with teaser prequels that lack an HEA/ending, and fluffy historicals don't entice me.
I loveI'm just going to stop after the Knox novella. I'm all set with teaser prequels that lack an HEA/ending, and fluffy historicals don't entice me.
I loved Room at the Inn a lot... until the ending. I think Grand Gestures are cheap and lazy as a rule, but this one felt even weaker tacked onto the end of such a thoughtful and emotional story. How does staging a humiliating, public scene in a church during Christmas Eve services strike anyone as romantic? How does a narcissistic, emotionally manipulative stunt like a public proposal atone for 16 years of narcissism and emotional abuse? Protip: it doesn't. It spoiled what had been a top notch story. I'm rating it three stars as the hero's redemption/change of heart was completely believable and accounted for, and I could see their HEA, but the church stunt was BS.
Merged review:
I'm just going to stop after the Knox novella. I'm all set with teaser prequels that lack an HEA/ending, and fluffy historicals don't entice me.
I loved Room at the Inn a lot... until the ending. I think Grand Gestures are cheap and lazy as a rule, but this one felt even weaker tacked onto the end of such a thoughtful and emotional story. How does staging a humiliating, public scene in a church during Christmas Eve services strike anyone as romantic? How does a narcissistic, emotionally manipulative stunt like a public proposal atone for 16 years of narcissism and emotional abuse? Protip: it doesn't. It spoiled what had been a top notch story. I'm rating it three stars as the hero's redemption/change of heart was completely believable and accounted for, and I could see their HEA, but the church stunt was BS....more
Despite being a little reluctant to pick up a romance about a woman who's self-conscious about sweating and the hot guy who loves smelling her, this wDespite being a little reluctant to pick up a romance about a woman who's self-conscious about sweating and the hot guy who loves smelling her, this won me over quickly. I loved the literal chemistry between the characters and watching them learn how to lean on each other and work through problems together over 11 volumes was a delight....more
Entertaining story of a gruff Scottish swordsmith and the ADHD New Yorker looking for a reboot, but the ending felt really rushed and a little unsatisEntertaining story of a gruff Scottish swordsmith and the ADHD New Yorker looking for a reboot, but the ending felt really rushed and a little unsatisfying. ...more
Just really didn't like how patronizing and controlling the hero was. His poor grandmother didn't need his nonsense. Just really didn't like how patronizing and controlling the hero was. His poor grandmother didn't need his nonsense. ...more
Ruth might be my favorite heroine ever. Finally, a disabled heroine (she's autistic) who gets to run her own life in her own way without needing a nonRuth might be my favorite heroine ever. Finally, a disabled heroine (she's autistic) who gets to run her own life in her own way without needing a non-disabled hero to rescue her. The sweet, muscular, bearded, blacksmith hero who cooks his way into her life one shepherds pie at a time was a plus as well. Hibbert does an excellent job of writing the characters' POV scenes so I really felt like I was visiting two different heads. Really enjoyed it....more
A marriage of convenience between a bold, impulsive ER nurse and a cool, reserved neurosurgeon 15 years her senior. Wonderful cast of LGBT characters,A marriage of convenience between a bold, impulsive ER nurse and a cool, reserved neurosurgeon 15 years her senior. Wonderful cast of LGBT characters, relatable family drama, and the slowest of slow burns. A really satisfying romance where the characters took the time to fall in love. ...more
Highly amusing riff on Coming to America where an epidemiology grad student gets tangled up with the prince of a fictional African kingdom. Lots of fuHighly amusing riff on Coming to America where an epidemiology grad student gets tangled up with the prince of a fictional African kingdom. Lots of fun situational humor where prince Thabiso tries to be "Jamal" the waiter, snappy dialog, and an interesting friendship between Naledi and her BFF Portia that's devoted but not totally healthy. Completely preposterous at times, but Cole kept it entertaining enough that I remained on board....more
Cute as hell friends to lovers romance between a straitlaced accountant and a free-spirited digital assistant. He's her older brother's best friend toCute as hell friends to lovers romance between a straitlaced accountant and a free-spirited digital assistant. He's her older brother's best friend to boot. ...more
An enjoyable enemies-to-lovers romance between a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent and a high-profile defense attorney set in Atlanta, but the sexAn enjoyable enemies-to-lovers romance between a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent and a high-profile defense attorney set in Atlanta, but the sex writing veered into the silly at times. ...more
Puerto Rican school librarian heroine and an unspecified white tech bro hero and a Harlequin Romance vibe. It had no on-page sex, which I know some pePuerto Rican school librarian heroine and an unspecified white tech bro hero and a Harlequin Romance vibe. It had no on-page sex, which I know some people are always looking for....more
This was an enjoyable, category-style read with a tight plot and fun setting. The writing was flat and confusing at times, but not enough to diminish This was an enjoyable, category-style read with a tight plot and fun setting. The writing was flat and confusing at times, but not enough to diminish my enjoyment too much.
Over the past five years, Melanie Gordon has worked hard to make a name for herself in her field of business.Originally posted at Love in the Margins.
Over the past five years, Melanie Gordon has worked hard to make a name for herself in her field of business. Dating, her social life, family relationships – everything in her life has taken a backseat to her career. When she’s offered a major promotion and named the branch manager of a brand new regional office, it appears that all of her work and sacrifice has finally paid off. There’s a hitch, of course, in that the office is in Cleveland – where she had fled from with her tail between her legs five years ago.
As if that’s not enough, Melanie’s friend and sort-of colleague Raine Mason tosses a spanner into the works by acting on a simmering, unspoken attraction between them on the night she gets promoted. Although she’s notoriously demanding when it comes to men, Mel’s pretty sure he’s the perfect man. He’s smart, handsome, and the dedicated head of a non-profit that finds employment for disadvantaged populations. But he’s in San Francisco, so what’s a girl to do?
I freely admit that I grabbed this debut novel from author Reese Ryan because I was browsing through Carina’s contemporary romances and the black couple on the cover stood out. (I’m easy, what can I say?) While I enjoyed the book, and will try another by this author, I didn’t love it. It felt like a debut novel. I wanted to be transported by her story, but the writing kept getting in my way. It was dry and prescriptive with an overabundance of fiddly little details that bogged down the narrative. Characterization was flat; the good characters were perfect, the bad characters downright villainous.
What kept me reading was the story’s freshness. It transcended a number of tried and true romance conventions without crossing too far over into chick lit territory. I enjoyed reading about a grown-up woman with a serious career, a full life and a history of past relationships. Melanie was this capable, confident woman that you don’t often get in romance. She’s not perfect, and she grows as a person over the course of the book, but she’s complete. Raine doesn’t swoop in and solve her problems or gift her with a sexual awakening, he enhances and supports her. Theirs is a true partnership of equals and, clumsy writing aside, I’m always here for that.
Another element that jumped out at me was the emphasis on the markers of middle-class life. Like a lot of chick lit, the book frequently name dropped brands and specified the food they ate in restaurants. Unlike chick lit, though, they weren’t exclusive brands. They were Sevens jeans and Stella McCartney purses and plates of beef osso bucco. They were the sorts of things you can find at your average suburban shopping mall. I’ve always read brand name dropping as a sort of aspirational escapism, so I found the brands in this book an unusual detail. I’m still not entirely sure how to read it.
Final Assessment: An entertaining read with a strong focus on the heroine’s journey, but it does occasionally bog down in unnecessary detail and bland telling. C+...more
Carrie West, city librarian, has hit a bit of a rut in her life. She’s just canceled an Alaskan cruise after Originally posted on Love in the Margins.
Carrie West, city librarian, has hit a bit of a rut in her life. She’s just canceled an Alaskan cruise after breaking down in tears (at work!) at the idea of playing the thirty-something year old third wheel to her very happily married parents. She swears to herself and her friends that she’s content in her singlehood, but she can’t resist reading the personals section of a local want ad website. As she’s reading through the listings early one morning, an ad simply titled “Wednesdays” catches her eye:
I will meet you on Wednesdays at noon in Celebration Park. Kissing only. I won’t touch you below the shoulders. You can touch me anywhere. No dating, no hookups. I will meet with you for as long as you meet me, so if you miss a Wednesday we part as strangers. No picture necessary, we can settle details via IM. Reply back with “Wednesdays Only” in the subject line.
The novelty and intrigue of this unusual listing, as well as the picture of a thoroughly handsome man about her age, has her responding to his ad before she can talk herself out out of it. An email and some chat messages later, she’s on her way to finding out what sort of man likes kissing so much that he’d put out an ad for it.
This is a difficult review for me to write. I follow the author on Twitter and had high hopes for this book. It got great press with not one, but two glowing reviews at Dear Author. Everyone in my circle of reader friends was reading it, and after each of these friends read it, they turned to me and said “I wonder what you’ll think about this one,” which was code for “this book contains disability.” I wanted very much to love The Story Guy, but unfortunately for everyone involved, I didn’t enjoy the book very much.
To begin with, the author’s voice and style failed to draw me in. It’s written in first-person present, but doing a find-and-replace on the pronouns to replace all the I’s with “she” wouldn’t have changed much at all. Instead of using this voice to get deep inside Carrie’s psyche and personality, the author pretty much only uses it to shroud Brian in mystery and create some suspense by withholding his story and motivation from the reader. I never felt immersed in Carrie’s thoughts and feelings. I felt as though I was meant to picture myself in her place, which makes some later parts of the book fairly problematic. Also, I found the author’s language a bit too flowery and melodramatic, especially where dialog is concerned. Here’s a bit from a phone conversation between Carrie and Brian:
“I would slide my hands around to your front, once it came apart, and at first, I would just hold your breasts in my hands, barely touching with my fingertips where the fullness of them spills over your bra.”
This is not how phone sex sounds in real life. Phone sex is awkward and impulsive and silly and intense. If they’re speaking in polished romance novel language, where’s the charming vulnerability that creates intimacy?
Perhaps because I wasn’t transported by the author’s voice I found a number of plot elements off-putting. The “insta-lust” when their lips first meet and their claims that it was the best kiss either’s ever had felt like a romance cliche. Carrie’s lack of respect for his boundaries - getting him to break his “no touching” rule, taking his phone and adding herself without his permission, pressing for a date - made little sense with how barely acquainted they were and her self-assurances that she was complete as a single woman. Additionally, the co-worker who dispenses sage relationship advice felt like a token gay guy, and Brian’s recounting of the time a man responded to his ad then showed up at the park seemed to be played for laughs.
But, of course, the thing that troubled me the most was the role Brian’s sister Stacy played.(view spoiler)[ You find out about halfway to two-thirds into the story that the reason Brian is unavailable is because he’s the guardian and sole familial caretaker of his severely brain-injured younger sister, and this gave me all sorts of complicated feelings. I’ll admit that I rolled my eyes at how conveniently (for the plot) Brian was alone in this role. His father had died young and his mother ran off to Florida after cocking up Stacy’s care and losing guardianship. As someone who’s read a lot of disability-themed romance novels, I found this familiar set-up frustrating. Pick a book with disability in it and nine times out of ten the disabled character was abandoned by loved ones in their past.
The reason this set-up frustrates me is because it’s generally used to make a non-disabled protagonist look good, and The Story Guy is no exception. Although he tells Carrie at length about how hard it is to be a caregiver - and it really is - she, and the reader by extension, sees it as evidence of what a great guy he is. Consider the following quotes:
The care he gives her one day could be the thing that hurts her the next. To live with that fear, and never have any confirmation that anything you did was the right thing? It’s astonishing, every kiss he’s ever given me.
To have the love of this man, who knows what it is to sacrifice his life for love, I would have waited longer.
Not only does caring for Stacy makes Brian a dreamboat in Carrie’s eyes, she further objectifies Stacy by making Brian’s caretaking into a compliment for Carrie. Her boyfriend has no time for anything because he’s busy being a saint, but he makes time for her, and isn’t she the luckiest? Bleh.
The ending then goes and makes this more obvious. We know already that Brian’s a superman, Carrie’s shown us how accepting she is of Stacy by fixing her breathing tube without flinching, we’ve seen Stacy accept Carrie by smiling at her, so now it’s time for the HEA - where Brian puts her in a home and Carrie promises they’ll visit every week. Whether or not the reader thinks Stacy should be institutionalized isn’t the point. Because the narrative never discusses what best meets Stacy’s needs, or Brian’s reasons for trying to do it all himself, Stacy and her care is reduced to a plot shortcut. She existed to bring out heroic qualities in the protagonists, and now it’s time for her to conveniently leave the picture. Even if this isn’t strictly ableist, it’s still lazy, and maybe a little contradictory (is Brian less heroic now?). (hide spoiler)]
Final assessment: If you can read this with your heart and turn off your shame detectors, this is probably a great melodramatic sort of read. Unfortunately, the magic dust didn’t work on me and the component parts were deeply troubling. D....more
This is a short little novella so there's not a ton to discuss. It's a girl-carries-a-flame-for-her-older-brother's-friend story featuring a curvy herThis is a short little novella so there's not a ton to discuss. It's a girl-carries-a-flame-for-her-older-brother's-friend story featuring a curvy heroine and a muscular hero, but the story is almost inconsequential. The beauty of this book is in the telling.
It's told in first-person present tense from the heroine's point of view, which I typically loathe. Stein, however puts on a clinic for How It Should Be Done. The heroine's personality is front and center, pouring from the little asides and stream of consciousness. You feel all of her emotions along with her as she puzzles them out with the reader. Occasionally she breaks out in Pratchett-like lists, at one point making me break out in hysterical laughter in the middle of some seriously hot sexual tension:
c) There is something pressing into the small of my back, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t a tube of Rolos. And if it is, he really needs to tell me where he bought such an enormous packet. I love Rolos.
If this were an HFN rather than an HEA, I'd give it five stars. The emotion and passion was just completely awesome and the narration was pitch-fucking-perfect. I just thought the ILYs at the end felt rushed and unnecessary.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to buy and read everything Stein has written....more
1. Written in first-person. 2. The book shuts the bedroom door in your face. 3. The conflict is a zero-sum choice between love, marriage and family or t1. Written in first-person. 2. The book shuts the bedroom door in your face. 3. The conflict is a zero-sum choice between love, marriage and family or the heroine's career. 4. Ending, thy name is deus ex machina....more
This was a paint-by-numbers Presents. All of the elements of an effective Presents story were here - a moody, rich hero marries a sweet ingenue out ofThis was a paint-by-numbers Presents. All of the elements of an effective Presents story were here - a moody, rich hero marries a sweet ingenue out of a sense of duty and has his cold heart thawed out by her boundless good nature - but there was none of the soul or feeling necessary to make it art. There's very little dialog in the book and the long stretches of navel-gazing POV prose repeats itself tediously as it shows rather than tells. To make matters worse, the sex writing is awkward and unerotic:
He was so large she felt that she could not let him go without feeling the suck of his organ on her womb, without feeling the need to have him back inside.
His fingers worked at his shirt, reefing it off, and she could not resist putting her hand to his skin, drinking in the complexities of his skinscape—the sculpted flesh, the wiry brush of hair, the nuggety nub of a nipple.
Not impressed. Really had to force myself to finish it....more
This was a frustrating read for me. Hewitt has a great voice for Presents, and the story was technically well-written. Unfortunately, the story itselfThis was a frustrating read for me. Hewitt has a great voice for Presents, and the story was technically well-written. Unfortunately, the story itself traded heavily in regret, remorse and guilt and after the truth behind their feelings come out the heroine reads like a weak-ass martyr....more
I liked a lot about this book. The characterization in particular was excellent. Everyone had a personality, insecurities and quirks that were their oI liked a lot about this book. The characterization in particular was excellent. Everyone had a personality, insecurities and quirks that were their own. Both the hero and the heroine had difficult relationships with their respective families and, as is typical of Superromance's issue-driven books, trying to live up to their parents' expectations while living their own lives their way drives much of the conflict in the book. It's a conflict that I found easy to relate to, and I really enjoyed seeing how these people navigated it.
What I didn't really enjoy was the fairy tale dust the townspeople all put on their Cheerios in small town contemporary romances. Everyone they meet is smiling, cheerful and so happy to have escaped the city for the wonderful countryside. I also grew frustrated with the flimsiness of Tiffany's dilemma. She wants a job in publishing so as to not waste her English degree. What I didn't understand is why she had to give up Chris and live in NYC to have it. I mean, yes, that's the most obvious path, but she never even entertains the idea of freelance editing or looking for a position that allowed her to work remotely. The book needs this to be a zero-sum situation, and I didn't see it that way....more
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