Review: Crazy Love

Crazy Love by Kendra C. Highley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Charlotte Brown has got a job in Aspen at Christmas waiting tables at a family diner while she saves money and studies for her third retake (or is it the second retake after she took it?) of the MCAT. Charlotte's mother has MS and ever since her diagnosis Charlotte has know she wanted to be a doctor.

I think this is the second book in a series and I haven't read the first book. Actually, I've checked and it seems to be a follow on from the Finding Perfect duology. The reason for my rambling is that the hero of this book, Luke Madison apparently featured quite heavily in Defying Gravity and may have been a bit of a douche. Anyhoo, Luke has returned home from college to Aspen, where his parents run a sportswear shop, he has made the monumental decision to quit school and go all-out to make a career out of snowboarding or SBX. He's sunk all his inheritance into paying for a coach and dedicating his time to training, no matter what his parents have to say on the subject. He also still has a crush on his younger brother's girlfriend Zoey, but the (unknown) events of last year have led him to take a long hard look at himself and he didn't really like the player he had become.

Charlotte and Luke first meet at the diner, he is instantly attracted to her but she is put off, first because he looks like a pretty boy player and second because she wants to focus all her effort on studying. But after he comes to her rescue when a group of snotty, entitled, kids dine and dash Charlotte thinks there might be a better man underneath than she originally thought.

But when the stakes are high, do either of them have time for love?

I liked this but I didn't love it. Whilst I normally rail against the YA/NA need for excessive angst I felt this had too little conflict, too little grit. It all took place in such a short period of time as well so there was no development of conflict with Luke's parents or with Charlotte's mother's illness. Lots of things were hinted at ... and never happened. It was as though the book had a page limit and so all the sub-plots and angst got ditched just to get the basic story told.

Although there is sexual content it still felt very PG romance, complete with a cartoon villain SBX rival.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews

Review: The Glass Gargoyle

The Glass Gargoyle by Marie Andreas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Two and a half stars.

Taryn St Giles is an archaeologist down on her luck, forced to resort to bounty hunting to make ends meet. She is the reluctant owner of three fairies who can usually be relied upon to get drunk and start fights. As the book opens Taryn is hunting for a bounty, although she collars him relatively easy he doesn't stay collared for long - and that is the start of a crazy journey. Soon there are mysterious disappearances, dead bodies, mysterious strangers, gypsies, jinn, elves, trolls, dragon-like creatures etc, etc.

Where to start? First, I received this ARC back in January last year, so my bad for not reading and reviewing earlier. However, the book was first published in March 2015 so I really don't understand why my copy has so many words runningtogether missing the intervening spaces. Also, there appears to be no formatting of the chapter headings which makes it difficult to 'feel' the breaks between chapters as they just merge into one long chapter. Previewing the Kindle version on Amazon doesn't look that much better either.

Second, there is waaaay too much stuff in this book and not enough world-building/ development. It doesn't help that Taryn hasn't a clue what is going on. I think it took half the book before the eponymous Glass Gargoyle was even mentioned. Taryn has a backstory and a mystery about her species which are just barely glanced upon. There seems to be a cast of thousands and the purpose of most of them seems vague at best. Villains drop in and out and we don't know why. The book even ends on a sort of cliffhanger - sort of.

I don't know whether Marie Andreas has got the idea for the whole series in her mind and has written the series as if it were one long book, or if she had so many ideas that she couldn't bear to to drop any, but the book ended up as a series of occurrences with no real conclusion. I still have no idea what species Taryn belongs to, I don't know who/ what Alric is (although I do have a good idea), I don't know who hired the jinn, I don't understand the Marcos plot, I don't know what set off all of these events, I don't see the purpose of Harlan, Covey, Cirocco, Dogmaela or Foxy, heck half the time I couldn't tell whether they were friends or enemies (obviously not the ones who were marked as enemies). There are extinct/ mythical elves, older more ancient races, lots of new creatures that I've never heard of, magical powers, although Taryn is a null, potions etc AND NONE OF IT IS EXPLAINED.

I think there is a really good series possibly lost in this but I just can't summon up the enthusiasm to try reading the second book.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.


View all my reviews

Review: Heart on Fire

Heart on Fire by Amanda Bouchet
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars. Oh dear, what a disappointment.

The climax to the Kingmaker Chronicles trilogy was, I'm sad to say, a bit of a yawn.

Spoilers ahead for the first two books.

At the end of the second book Cat and Griffin have conquered two of the three parts of the ancient Thalyria.

Griffin and his non-magical family overthrew the magical family which previously ruled Sinta, Griffin being the Beta Sinta and his elder sister being the Alpha. In the second book Cat, Griffin and their friends gain access to the ruling family of Tarva by winning the Agon Games and, with the help of two of the minor Tarvan royals kill the Tarvan Alpha and become the King and Queen. Now the only remaining realm is that ruled by Cat's psychotic mother Alpha Fisa.

Where to start? First, I couldn't work out which of Cat and her mother was the greatest fool. Cat's mother had the advantage of being more mature, having control of her magic, and being hard-hearted yet she signally failed to kill Cat on several occasions, because just like a Bond villain she liked to toy with her victims and gloat. On the other hand, Cat frequently had her mother at her mercy and then DID NOTHING. And don't get me started on the smexy times, I mentioned it in both the previous books as being excessive and out of place but jeez, you are supposed to be building tension for the grand confrontation and we kept detouring into kissy-kissy.

The gods and goddesses interfere so much in this book, and admit they have interfered time and time again that frankly Cat and Griffin just became puppets, puppets to whom the gods gave absolutely no instructions! I know the gods and goddesses are capricious and have vision beyond the ken of humans but it just left me with the feeling that nothing Cat did (or didn't do) had any meaning. Added to which Cat seemed to go off into deep navel-gazing sessions where she realised that she was a very special snowflake indeed and I just lost interest. Even the final confrontation was a bit meh.

In retrospect I wish I had left the series at the end of the first book.

View all my reviews

Review: The Mech Who Loved Me

The Mech Who Loved Me by Bec McMaster
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hmm, disappointing.

I started reading this with such high hopes but from about halfway through I really just couldn't get into it and kept playing Candy Crush instead.

Ava McLaren is a diminutive, blonde blue blood virgin with a mechanical heart. She works as a laboratory assistant for the newly formed Company of Rogues (took me ages to realise that was what COR stood for). Liam Kincaid is a large human with a mech arm and fiercely anti-blue bloods. Together they are teemed up to investigate a series of strange black vein deaths. Kincaid is everything Ava isn't, and maybe because of that she finds him fascinating. Tired of always being in the lab, never in the field, tired of being a virgin, tired of being treated like a child instead of an adult, Ava makes a decision to lose her virginity - almost like an experiment. Liam is horrified that innocent, naive, trusting Ava could make such a stupid decision, could potentially be taken advantage of or hurt by someone who wouldn't take the time or trouble to make things good for her. So he volunteers, as you do.

In a nutshell, that is why I was disappointed in this book, there was far too much sex or thinking about sex or talking about sex. So much so that the plot seemed relegated to the background and now frankly I am mystified as to what was going on, why the people died from the black vein, who was behind the plotting and what the purpose was. Okay, that's exaggerating, I understand these things individually but not how they form a coherent plot or indeed how they stumbled across any of these things because it all seemed to happen off the page - Gemma's found a clue, Malloryn's found a member of SoG, Ingrid's located a factory etc, etc.

I wanted more steampunk, more skullduggery, more dhampirs, more plot!

Also, is anyone else tired of the sweet, innocent virgin getting matched to the Dom? Although this was more in talk than action (thankfully) part of me thought Kincaid's talk about others not being careful with Ava seemed slightly at odds with his actions when they did finally get it together. Also, there seemed one point after a BIG SCENE when instead of debriefing the rest of the team, or trying to stop an all out war between humans and blue bloods or something important, Ava and Liam decide that would the perfect time to make love! Sheesh. But that's okay because Malloryn was too busy for a debrief until hours later - doing what? I screamed at my Kindle.

However, there was one brilliant scene, one that restored my faith in Bec McMaster, KIncaid and Malloryn are stalking a bad guy and Malloryn says THAT line, "[He's] mine" and Kincaid makes the most brilliant response,

"That's the sort of thinking that gets people killed," Kincaid pointed out. "This isn't a duel, Your Grace, and we've got ladies in here. If I see him, I'll shoot him."
"Fair call"

I didn't realise how ridiculous that line was until I read Kincaid's response - but he is so right!

Anyway, in every series there is a couple that doesn't work for me, or where I think the plot/ romance balance feels off and this was it for me.

Also, I've just realised that the first three books in the series are all twisted spy film titles (Mission Impossible, The Spy Who Loved Me, You Only Live Twice ) - is the fourth one a riff on To Catch a Thief?

View all my reviews

Review: Mission: Improper

Mission: Improper by Bec McMaster
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So, I started reading the London Steampunk series but got bogged down in book 2 and never recovered but I love a steampunk story and I was sooo over contemporary romance so when I saw this on my shelf (well actually the second book but I backtracked and started this one) I decided a palate-cleanser was in order.

Despite not having read books 2-5 of the London Steampunk I didn't find it difficult to follow the story, indeed a revolution has occurred (presumably the climax of the previous series), the Queen has overthrown her consort and imposed some enlightened laws upon her citizens: recognising the rights of verwulfen and mechs; and removing the absolute power of the Echelon, the upper class blue bloods who formerly ruled. Blue bloods are similar to what we would normally term vampires, however in this world vampires are what happens when a blue blood goes to far into the blood craving - once a blue blood becomes a vampire they are creatures driven by their lust for blood and are supernaturally strong (stronger even than a blue blood or a verwulfen) and almost indestructible.

However, not everyone is happy with the Queen's reforms, especially the blue bloods who are no longer entitled to do whatever they want. A series of bizarre events have seen whole groups of people simply disappear: an entire street in the East End of London, 40 members of the Echelon at a private party in pleasure gardens etc.

Caleb Byrnes is the illegitimate son of a blue blood and his mistress, accidentally infected with the virus. A member of the Nighthawks, he is invited to join a mysterious elite group to investigate the disappearances. The elite group comprises: Caleb; a verwulfen called Ingrid Miller with whom he has a chequered history; Ava McLaren, a blue blood laboratory assistant with a mechanical heart; Kincaid, a giant mech who hates blue bloods; Charlie Todd, one of the rookery lads who has also been infected by the blue blood virus; Gemma Townsend, another blue blood who deals in information; and the Duke of Malloryn.

As Caleb and Ingrid fight their animal attraction whilst investigating the disappearances we are plunged into blue blood conspiracies, secret societies, underground chases, vampires, dhampirs, false leads and corsets galore. I loved it.

Off to read book 2 ...

View all my reviews

Review: Brew - A Love Story

Brew - A Love Story by Tracy Ewens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Boyd McNaughton is the oldest of four sons. The three eldest: Boyd, Cade and Patrick, own and run Foghorn Brewery and are in the process of opening a tap house to showcase their brews. Boyd is the brewer, Cade will run the tap house and Patrick does the marketing. Boyd is also the father of a 13 year old son, Mason, born of a short-lived college romance. Boyd is the primary care-giver and he balances his work with bringing up a son with aplomb, he just doesn't have time for a relationship.

Dr Ella Walters moved to the small city of Petaluma, California from San Francisco two years ago after a relationship went terribly wrong (fair warning, we don't find out exactly what went wrong for quite a long time - at page 126 I made a rather exasperated comment asking what had happened). Naturally reserved, her family are, at best snobs and at worst vicious sociopaths, distant and her recent romantic failure has caused her to shrink further into her shell of work, work, work. She doesn't believe in love and isn't looking for someone.

After a disagreement with Patrick over the latest brew results in Boyd cutting his hand on a keggle and needs a trip to the ER where he meets Ella. Although the sparks are there aplenty it is really Mason and Ella who hit it off as Ella gives him advice about the girl he likes at school.

What I liked about this book. I liked Ella and I liked Mason, I liked Patrick and Cade and West (the fourth brother who is a movie star), most of the time I liked Boyd. I liked the way in which a working dad was portrayed and I liked the tentative romance as it blossomed between two thirty-somethings who had been burned by love before.

So what didn't I like? At some point in the books I have read by Racy Ewens the characters just seem to get stuck in a loop of denial or self-doubt which goes too far, the point at which I start using more profanities and exclamation marks than are strictly necessary. Luckily Boyd only did this once, page 233 if you are interested, but I did feel he needed to pull his big girl pants up. But, as always, what I really didn't like was Ella's 'friend' Bri, her gentle teasing was more like a sledge-hammer, she overstepped the bounds of friendship and was a bit of a bully. Also the way in which the group of women friends talk is completely unnatural (in my opinion), I mean who asks their friend if they have told a man that they love him, particularly if that friend is in denial/ hasn't realised it herself?

Despite my loathing of all things Bri, this series is like catnip for me and I am gagging for Cade's story - is it with Bri, please tell me no?

View all my reviews

Review: Icing on the Cake

Icing on the Cake by Ann Marie Walker
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

DNF at 27%.

I really enjoyed the first book in this series Black Tie Optional, and so, despite the Prince pretends to be a commoner premise, I jumped at the chance to request this book from NetGalley.

I just cannot believe that the two books were written by the same author. The first book was funny and challenged a few romantic tropes. This one, so far, is just such a cliche of a prince from a minor kingdom trying to go incognito at a friend's wedding where he meets a fellow guest, using the local bakery to cook cakes for the wedding.

I get that Prince Henry is supposed to come across as an entitled, thoughtless rich kid but he really had no redeeming features. Ann Marie Walker didn't seem to have even attempted to make him sound royal, an English accent doesn't cut it, and after three uses of the word 'vixen' to describe a wholesome baker (my Kindle tells me the word is used 26 times in the book and 'cock' is used 27 times) I decided I didn't want to read any further. I mean vixen, really? This isn't a Victorian novel FFS.

I have a filthy cold and a lowered tolerance for this kind of ridiculous fiction. Maybe if I read further I would get invested in the characters but I just can't drum up the enthusiasm to try.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews

Review: Rivers of London

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So, I'm a bit late to jump on the bandwagon I know. This has been on my TBR list for absolutely ages but it took Jodi Taylor mentioning that she intended to reread the series over Christmas to get me to open the book. I was hooked from the very first page1

How to describe this? So, it's set in contemporary London. Peter Grant is a probationary police constable stationed at Charing Cross police station. Like most young police officers he is keen to get off the beat and become a detective, perhaps with one of the flashy squads like the Sweeney or the Murder Investigation Team, he also has the hots for his fellow probationer, WPC Lesley May.

The book opens with a bizarre murder in Covent Garden (for those who don't know the area, this is a pedestrianised, tourist-friendly, shopping area with small shops and open air stalls selling wooden toys, blown glass and hand-knits, NOT a garden at all). Peter and Lesley are two grunts who are delegated to guard the area overnight after all the important Scene of Crime investigators and detectives have left. When Lesley goes off to get some coffee Peter encounters an unusual man who witnessed the murder, unfortunately it turns out that the man is a ghost.

Shortly after Peter is disappointed that his post-probation assignment is nothing as exciting as being a detective, in fact it is probably the antithesis of being a detective, he has been assigned to the Case Progression Unit - a team who basically fill out all the paperwork so that the detectives can get out on the streets to solve crime. Then, after yet another mysterious encounter late at night in Covent Garden, this time with a dapper gentleman who turns out to be Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, Peter finds himself reassigned to a a mysterious division run by DCI Nightingale which investigates crimes involving the paranormal.

This is laugh-out-loud funny, especially to a Londoner who recognises some of the traits described in this book, I especially liked the idea of good-Samaritanism being an extreme sport in London. I loved the setting of the book as I worked for many years just North of Tottenham Court Road and so I know many of the places described. But honestly, you don't have to be a Londoner, or even English to enjoy this book. Peter is soon embroiled in a supernatural world in which he meets vampires, the spirits of London rivers and the ghosts of dead thespians. For some reason this reminded me of Tim Powers' writing although MUCH funnier and I don't know why, when I tried to pin it down it kind of ran away and hid.

There are plenty of precedents for paranormal novels set in a contemporary police environment and yet this, with its mixture of historical facts, geographic detail, humour and the woo-woo seems different, maybe it's like C.E. Murphy's Walker Papers but set in London?

Anyway, this was fresh and unlike anything I'd read before and I am totally hooked.

View all my reviews

Review: A Spool of Blue Thread

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This book has been sitting on my TBR for two years and it's time to admit I'm not going to read it.

I can't really review the book because I didn't get past the first chapter, it didn't draw me in.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews

Review: Lady of Fortune

Lady of Fortune by Graham Masterton
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I'm admitting defeat and DNFing this book, it's been on my TBR pile for 18 months, I couldn't get into it and I have no burning desire to give it another go.

I didn't really read enough to give a proper review, it felt like hard work wading through the first chapter or so.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews

Review: Smooth - A Love Story

Smooth - A Love Story by Tracy Ewens
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Patrick McNaughton and his three brothers run a craft brewery and pub. Whilst Boyd is the brewer and Cade is the bartender, Patrick is the salesman, the one who gets their beers stocked in bars and restaurants in other towns and cities. Although of course he is now a handsome, charming man when he was at high school he had a brace, glasses and was extremely tall and thin (Luckily he gave up playing a musical instrument or he would have entered total nerd oblivion), this has left him with a bit of a complex about always winning.

Aspen Pane is the whip-smart office manager for the Brewery. Patrick, or Trick, has been infatuated by Aspen since they were at school together but she has never thought of him that way at all. In fact, Aspen's father's desertion at an early age and her mother's subsequent chasing after one unsuitable man after another has left Aspen opposed to love and romance. So much so that she only dates men she isn't attracted to! Because Trick doesn't think he can succeed with Aspen he hasn't tried - he's all about the winning.

Then one day a series of coincidences mean that Trick and Aspen fly together on a business trip, Trick is terrified of flying and a combination of booze and anxiety medication lead him to confess a little too much information to Aspen. From then its merely a matter of waiting to see whether Aspen can overcome her antipathy towards mad, impulsive love and whether Patrick can ever put himself out there and make the first move.

I'll be honest, I'm suffering from a head cold so some of the finer nuances of the interactions between Patrick and Aspen may have passed over my head but honestly they talked in so many similes and metaphors that I got totally lost and, frankly, I think Tracy Ewen did too. There was a lot of talk about diving into the deep end, inching into a kiddie pool, being a good swimmer etc - one of them in my ARC got so muddled up that Aspen wondered what would happen if Patrick was a strong swimmer too when I think she was meant to worry if he was a non-swimmer too.

Frankly at 68% through I thought the two of them would never stop talking themselves out of everything, there's slow burn but this was ridiculous. If it hadn't been that I didn't want to start 2018 with a DNF I would have been tempted to give up at that point.

I must stop using Women's Fiction as a disparaging comment, particularly in relation to books by this author, but this does strike me as belonging to that genre. Lots of talking and examining of feelings and trying to have witty banter like the characters in the old TV series Moonlighting (Bruce Willis as a young man) and I just wanted to scream at the characters to just bloody get on with it. Also Patrick's brothers and Aspen's friends are all so flippin' insightful, yet I am willing to bet good money that if I read their books they would each have been just as clueless about their own relationships. Also, whilst I get the sibling cruel to be kind attitude, Aspen's friends would very shortly have ceased to be friends of mine if they didn't butt out of my private business, sheesh.

Apparently this is the 10th book in the Love Story series, I have also read the eighth book Exposure - A Love Storyand made some similar comments.

So,, I think you can tell from my review that my cold has made me a bit tetchy but overall I found the book was overlong for the plot. I would have wanted more things going on (or at least to see more of what was going on in the background) rather than the intense navel-gazing that went on and on.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

View all my reviews