Review: Save Me: An O'Brien Family Novel

Save Me: An O'Brien Family Novel by Cecy Robson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think this is a love-it or hate-it book. I veered between three and a half and four stars but in the end I decided on four stars.

Seamus O'Brien is (I think) the third oldest of the seven O'Brien siblings. This is the fifth book in the series and I have only read one previously, Feel Me which features Seamus' older brother Declan, the DA.

Seamus is a big contrast to Declan. He's loud, opinionated, attracted to crazy women and has a VERY high opinion of himself. His little sister Wren is getting married and she (and his mother) are badgering him about bringing a 'nice' date to the wedding. One who isn't already married, or on parole, or will set the church on fire, literally. When cornered Seamus can't stop talking and so he makes up a fake girlfriend, someone 'nice'.

Forced to assist in Wren's wedding plans by choosing various pastries for one of the events he is queueing at a local bakery when he runs into Allie Mendes. Although he doesn't recognise or remember Allie they grew up together, she taught his younger siblings at Sunday School, they went to the same school etc. Allie too has a wedding-related problem. Her sister Valentina is getting married, to Allie's high school sweetheart, the man Allie thought she was going to marry. So Seamus and Allie agree to help each other out. Seamus will help make Allie look and feel more attractive and in return Allie will be Seamus' date to three weddings due to take place.

Seamus was a problem character for me. At first he was just a bit blunt, a 'say it as I see it' kind of guy. Then around the halfway mark he and his family became that obnoxious group of loud mouthed people who make offensive comments - you know the ones that you ALWAYS get sat next to in a family restaurant. None of them seemed to have filters and all of them felt it was appropriate to say whatever the hell they wanted. Maybe that's what people are like in Philly? Anyway I started to get that Elle Casey feel about the book but I persevered. And what do you know? Under that uber-confident exterior is a man who thinks all he deserves are skanks and crazies, that nice women only want one or two 'dates' before they leave him for a real man with prospects, like a doctor or a lawyer.

Despite my mid-book misgivings about Seamus I really enjoyed this book, I liked the way that Seamus and Allie fell in love quietly and almost unnoticed. I liked the way their fake relationship went on, not a two week insta-lurve thing but weeks of texts and calls and dinner with Seamus' family and wedding rehearsals and dress shopping - yeah they were dating and they didn't even realise!

I think Cecy Robson may have a tendency to draw her characters a little too broad - you know the baddies have no redeeming qualities and everyone is a Character with a big C - but this was still a charming and thoughtful romance where I really felt they way that Allie and Seamus got to know each other slowly, supported each other and most of all made each other laugh.

I am definitely going to go back and find the first three books to see how Seamus' other siblings found love.

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

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Review: Forget Me Not

Forget Me Not by J.M. Madden
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Chad Lowell is a partner in Lost And Found, a security company staffed by veterans. Chad himself has lost a leg and has facial scarring and one arm which has been badly damaged. He is engaged to Lora O'Neil, a former client whose abusive ex-husband tried to steal their daughter Mercy from her. This is all set out in Embattled Home.

Lora's ex-husband is dead and she has taken over the running of his (very wealthy) family's investment business on behalf of Mercy. Between trying to make back the money her ex-husband embezzled, learn about the investment business AND finish her degree Lora is so busy she has kind of overlooked Chad and Mercy.

Now I'll be honest here, Chad came across as a little bit of a whiner. By my count Lora has three 'jobs' plus looking after her fiance and child. Chad has one job, plus looking after his fiancee and her child. Yet he seems to think he is helping Lora out by picking Mercy up from school when one of her business calls runs over. Similarly, he throws a bit of a strop when her phone rings while they are talking - its not like she interrupted him to make a business call, they called her! Anyway, although Chad loves Lora dearly he is feeling a bit unloved and worries that Lora is putting business above family.

But before Chad and Lora can sit down and talk about things Chad gets a call that his father has had a heart attack.

This book is clearly a segue novella between the Lost And Found series and a new series based on Chad's family who are cattle farmers from Texas. I liked the set-up, it seems pretty obvious who each of the brothers and sisters are going to end up in subsequent books - although I might be completely off-base.

Anyway, an interesting peek behind the scenes at what happens after the HEA and an intriguing preview of a new series about cowboys - yee ha!

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Review: Hot and Badgered

Hot and Badgered by Shelly Laurenston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Let me introduce you to three half sisters, born of Freddy MacKilligan, a promiscuous criminal honey badger and three different women.

Charlie, the eldest, is half wolf-half honey badger. Her mother raised all three girls and Charlie has spent her entire life keeping her younger siblings out of trouble. Max, the second daughter is all honey badger and borderline psychotic. Stevie the youngest is half tiger-half honey badger, a musical and scientific genius she is also neurotic and likes nothing better than checking herself into very expensive mental hospitals and treating them like spas.

The book opens with Charlie getting a phone call early one morning telling her to get out of her Italian hotel room, before she knows it armed men are breaking into her room and her only escape (naked) is into the room of another hotel guest. Berg Dunn is a bear shifter, acting as security for Cooper Jean-Louis Parker, the jackal shifter and prodigal musician and bored out of his mind until a naked woman burst into their hotel suite, covered in blood from gunshot wounds, and followed by men in black military tactical wear. How great an opening is that?

Charlie knows that something like this can only mean one of two things - or both. Either her dead-beat Dad has done something monumentally stupid (again) or someone is after her genius sister (again). As it happens, it's both.

This has a slightly different feel to Shelly Laurenston's other books, and that's no bad thing. It's still funny, there are still tons of shifters, lots of my favourite characters from previous books make an appearance, there's brawling, there's baking, there's a BBQ, there's a wedding, there's rocket launchers and roller derby. Maybe the humour is gentler? Maybe the characters are gentler? Berg is just one giant softie (despite being part of a private security firm) and Shen? Cutie!

Anyway, what I think I am trying to say is that this is different to the Magnus Pack series, just as that is different to the Pride series, just as that is different to the Call of Crows series. Shelly Laurenston is exploring a different pack and I am dying to see what happens with Max and Stevie.

A great start to a new series.

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

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Review: Marrying Winterborne

Marrying Winterborne by Lisa Kleypas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

This book follows on from events in the first book. Rhys Winterbourne is a self-made man, the son of a grocer he is now one of the richest men in England and owns the department store Winterbourne's.

Lady Helen Ravenel is the delicate, shelter eldest Daughter of the Ravenel family, sister in law to Kathleen (Kathleen was briefly married to Helen's brother Theo until he died three days after they got married) who fell in love with Devon Ravenel (a distant cousin) when he inherited the estate after Theo's death. In the first book Rhys is badly injured and Lady Helen assists with looking after him. When Rhys is a little too forward and kisses Helen passionately she gets afraid and runs away. Kathleen is a little over-protective and confronts Rhys - hard words are spoken.

At the start of this book Rhys is nursing a broken heart until Helen comes to visit him to explain she was shy and she very much wants to marry him. Everything is going swimmingly until Helen uncovers a sordid truth about her past which puts her future with Rhys in jeopardy.

This was pleasant enough if a little predictable. I found Helen to be too weak of a character and I couldn't get over the thought that Rhys considered her to be a delicate bauble to decorate his life.

Intrigued at who is the subject of the next book.


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Review: Burn Bright

Burn Bright by Patricia Briggs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Whilst Bran is away in Mercy Thompson world Charles and his mate Anna are in charge of the Aspen Creek pack. When a strange call comes in from one of the Wildlings, wolves so broken they can no longer function even in a strong pack like Bran's, Anna and Charles uncover a sinister plot to kill or capture the Wildlings. It then becomes a race against time to save the Wildlings and uncover the traitor who has been selling the pack's secrets to persons unknown.

This has all the characters we know and love/ hate. Charles and Anna, Leah, Asil, Tag, even Bran. We also meet a small group of badly damaged wolves, men who are in constant battle with their wolves, where one of the pair is insane, or worse. Many of the Wildlings are very old and hold deep dark secrets which 'someone' will stop at nothing to uncover.

I liked this, it had all the brilliant characters and great writing that I have come to expect from Patricia Briggs, and yet I didn't love it. It didn't blow me away with joy the same way as Anne Bishop's Lake Silence did, maybe it was because I had trouble understanding why the baddies used such a hammer to crack a nut?

Nevertheless, Patricia Briggs is an awesome writer, her plots and storytelling are outstanding and she has created two wonderful characters in Charles and Anna.

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Review: Lake Silence

Lake Silence by Anne Bishop
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Absolutely superb, no questions five glorious stars!

This spin off of the previous series (although still called The Others) centres on The Jumble, a small, slightly down-at-heel holiday home with 12 small chalets located just outside the village of Sproing, near Lake Silence. The owner, Vicki DeVine is a short, stubby woman (she isn't curvaceous, just solid) who received the Jumble in her divorce settlement. She has invested much of the remaining cash settlement in things like septic tanks and flushing toilets for the chalets.

Vicki only discovers that her single paying guest, a young girl called Aggie, is Crowgard when she discovers her trying to heat up an eyeball ready to eat! This leads her to discover the body of a murdered man on the edge of her land. What follows is part taut thriller, part urban fantasy and all good.

I can't even write a review because I just loved all of it. It was perfect. Loved all the characters (except the baddies - boo, hiss), loved The Others, loved Sproing. Loved it, loved it, loved it.

Also, because this is not set in the Courtyard it can also be read as a stand-alone, provided of course that the reader is ready to be immersed in a world which might on the surface feel like our own, but is in reality very different.

Go, go, go!

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Review: Cracked Kingdom

Cracked Kingdom by Erin Watt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This just didn't work for me, more meh than dislike.

The last book ended on a cliffhanger with Easton Royal's girlfriend Hartley getting into a car accident with the Royal twins (Sebastian and Sawyer) and their girlfriend Lauren. As this book opens Seb is in a coma and Hartley collapses in the hospital waiting room.

I don't propose to bore you with the plot details. If you've read any of the preceding books you'll know that this is a series centring on a family of five boys with an absentee father and a dead mother who have more money than God and no self-control. There's illegal bare knuckles fight clubs, underage drinking, drugs, fast cars, loose women, lots of swearing and more bling than Liberace. But of course each of the Royal boys is just a poor lost soul who blames himself for something (usually the death of their mother) and needs the love of a good woman who won't stand any of his nonsense (and probably from a much poorer family).

I didn't like Easton at the end of the first book, for the first half of this book he was just an immature self-centred ass who drank too much, in the second half he became a model boyfriend (of course).

Hartley on the other hand ... (view spoiler)[After her amnesia she believes everything that people tell her about herself (she doubts what they say about others) including the 'fact' that she is a slut who has slept with half the school. (hide spoiler)]Her attitude just didn't ring true.

I'm still going to devour the next book because they are completely cracktastic nonsense - like Dynasty or Sunset Beach for the 2010s!

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Review: A Duke Like No Other

A Duke Like No Other by Valerie Bowman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

General Mark Grimaldi is the grandson of a Duke, but his mother was disowned for marrying an Italian Catholic and so he has always had a dislike of the aristocracy. He married Nicole Huntington 10 years ago, thinking she was an aristocrat who loved him as the poor soldier he was then. Unfortunately three months into the marriage he discovered that she already knew of his aristocratic family, added to which she was secretly spying for the Bow Street Runners behind his back. Words were spoken in anger and Nicole fled to France where she has been a spy ever since. Now Mark is hoping for promotion to Home Secretary but his boss wants to appoint a family man, so Mark has travelled to France to see if he can persuade Nicole to return to England until he gets his promotion.

I found this book a bit misleading, the blurb led me to believe this was an couple, estranged as a result of a misunderstanding, reconnecting to enable the husband to get a prestigious promotion and falling in love. Whilst it was, it was not the main plot, which revolved around solving a murder. So this was kind of a murder sandwich ie romance-murder-romance. And to be honest, both felt a little halfhearted, there wasn't enough romance AND there wasn't enough detective work. I also noted a few word choices that seemed out of place in an historical novel, talking about "giving a toss" about someone and "fancying" someone seem too modern.

I thought that Mark's excuse for getting upset with Nicole seemed flimsy and for a supposedly clever man he was remarkably stupid about his family and his wife. Nicole on the other hand seemed to default to running away at the slightest excuse.

Overall, it was a pleasant enough read but it didn't wow me.

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

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Review: Curran POV Collection

Curran POV Collection by Gordon Andrews
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What can I say? Think of the most iconic scenes involving Kate and Curran from the Kate Daniels world, now read Curran's view on what happened.

If you haven't read the books in this series these vignettes won't really have the same impact. If you've read the series then you've probably read these novellas individually anyway. But it's good to have them all in one place.

See what Curran really thought when Kate called "Here kitty, kitty", see what Curran was thinking that night when the two of them were on separate dates in Fernando's I could go on, but if you're a die-hard fan you'll just want to devour these novellas.

Can't wait until the next book.



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Review: Snow Angel

Snow Angel by Mary Balogh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

For a book written in 1991 it hasn't dated (snort, it's an historical novel).

The widowed Lady Rosamund Hunter is being driven to her brother's estate in anticipation of her grandfather's 70th birthday celebrations, by her much older brother Dennis, Viscount March when they have one of their rip-roaring arguments and Rosamund jumps out of the carriage determined to walk down the road (and haven't we all had one of those arguments in the car?). Unfortunately the weather is bad and it has started to snow, Rosamund is cold, wet and feeling sorry for herself when she is rescued by Justin Halliday, Earl of Wetherby on his way to spend a week in a hunting lodge. Unbeknownst to Rosamund, her brother's carriage lost a wheel and he was stranded in a ditch unable to rescue her.

Justin had intended to spend the week with his mistress in a last hurrah before they said goodbye in anticipation of his impending nuptials to a friend of the family some 12 years his junior. Instead, she is lying in bed with a head cold and Justin travelled to Northamptonshire alone with a trunk of brand new, never worn, women's clothes strapped to the back of his carriage. Gradually, over a few days snowed in together Justin and Rosamund become friends and have a torrid love affair. Both view it as a moment of madness, an escape from life. Both also slightly fudge their identities (mainly by calling themselves plain Mr and Mrs).

One month later, Justin arrives at the home of his fiancee-to-be's parents only to discover that Rosamund is the girl's aunt (Dennis' only daughter). What unfolds is a pleasant country house romance in which everyone is in love with the wrong person - it's almost Shakespearean!

Whilst I enjoyed this it didn't move me to laughter or tears, I didn't really feel deep emotions about Rosamund or Justin and I didn't feel that either character's motivations were really explored. Why exactly would Justin agree to marry a young girl just to please his family? He seemed to have a strong moral code yet had no issue marrying a woman he barely knew. Rosamund had been married to a much older man, her reasons appeared quite unusual and worth exploring but they were just swept aside - maybe it was a device to make the heroine almost virginal?

Anyway, having said all that, I have started and discarded several books recently and this was the only one that caught my attention.

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Review: Maybe This Time

Maybe This Time by Nicole McLaughlin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Jen MacKenzie is your typical girl from the wrong side of the tracks, living in a bad apartment, no full-time job, drowning in debt, tattoos, no college education. She was poor but happy teaching theatre in a local community college until the funding ran out, now she's juggling two part-time jobs and struggling to make ends meet.

TJ Laughlin was the Andrew McCarthy to Jen's Molly Ringwold in this variant in Pretty in Pink (or Cinderella, if you are old school). The son of wealthy parents he was one of the popular kids at school, handsome, glossy, well-dressed and gleaming smile.

Years later TJ is a joint owner of the The Stag, a boutique distillery that has become Kansas City’s go-to wedding venue. Jen has been part-time tending bar on a Saturday night and acting receptionist while the regular woman is on maternity leave, she's not thrilled to be working for someone who looks like he smells something bad every time she walks into a room but a job's a job, right?

TJ has lusted after Jen from afar ever since school, he even watched every single one of her Am-Dram productions. But his snobby friends and family deterred him from ever approaching her. Now, years later, working with the woman of his dreams is sweet torture.

I liked this but I didn't love it. My ARC had lots of grammatical errors (which I am sure were corrected before it was published). It was so blindingly obvious from the get-go that TJ liked Jen that her obliviousness appeared deliberately obtuse. Yet she continued to delude herself that TJ hated her, TJ looked down on her yadda yadda. Denial ,denial, denial. TJ was just as bad, he didn't get the courage to speak up until another man looked likely to sweep in and steal Jen.

Overall, it felt like Nicole McLaughlin was trying too hard to be even-handed, Jen had family issues, TJ had family issues, Jen had a secret, TJ had a secret etc etc.

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

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