Review: Hush by Carey Baldwin

(NOTE: Between writing this review and posting it the author has corrected the Amazon page to reflect that it is a reissued work. However in the weeks between this review posting on LITM and being transferred here, no further changes have been made. What I originally pointed out at Amazon remains the case on her webpage, Kobo, B&N and iTunes. Make of that what you will.)

I DNF'd Carey Baldwin's Hush for reasons that didn't have much to do with the story. One of my absolute hottest buttons is a rewritten work issued without disclosure. When George Lucas takes his fiftieth pass at Star Wars you generally know going in that he's swapped some stuff up. There's an implicit consent involved. While Baldwin has extensively reworked her limited release anthology tale Solomon's Wisdom, there is enough of the prior story left that I went from "This seems weirdly familiar" to "I've read this before". At that point I didn't want to continue. My consent for that experience had not been solicited.

I get that Solomon's Wisdom had a very limited audience. Most readers are not going to hit the same wall. I also understand the choice to market Hush as new material given the additional work put into it. I simply disagree. So, if you've read Solomon's Wisdom and give your consent to checking out Hush, let me know how it goes. (I stopped at the point where her brother-in-law bursts through the door.)

Hush is a romantic suspense dealing lightly with domestic violence. Anna is the girl next door, the quiet librarian with a spine of steel. Charlie is the former soldier turned medic haunted by their shared childhood. A death from the past and a death from the present intertwine, potentially placing Anna and her elder sister in danger. There was a lot I liked about Solomon's Wisdom that I still liked in Hush. While I found both Anna and Charlie to have cases of arrested development, I appreciated their honest communication. Both want to understand how their past created their present. Anna is proactive in her sexuality and her boundaries. Baldwin has a straightforward style that will work for a reader or it won't. I felt the same way about Charlie and Anna halfway through Hush as I did at the end of Solomon's Wisdom. Neither of them became more than pieces on the game board. If they won or lost was less important than turning the page and seeing where they went next.

Hush was supposed to be my second swing at Baldwin's work but I think I'm out. I like her working class settings (even with the advanced degrees) and everyday problems, but she didn't fully capture me with either version of Anna and Charlie's reunion. Baldwin is worth checking out but not an author I'm planning to follow.

* This review originally appeared at Love In The Margins.

Review: Free Fall by Carolyn Jewel

Pity the poor novella that is meant to hook readers into a series. It's judged not only on it's own merits, but also on it's ability to reduce a complex world into an appetizing bite. One misstep on either side and the reader is ready to bury it. With that in mind, pour one out for Carolyn Jewel's Free Fall. Having a vague impression of liking Carolyn Jewel I picked up Free Fall sometime in 2012. As I only read books that are piping fresh or carefully aged, it sat in the TBR waiting for the right moment. Free Fall packs plenty of story into a decent sized length. (Let me pause to say I appreciate how Jewel tells her readers up front how long the text is. You won't end up buying a 20 page plot summary disguised as a short novel.) Here Be Spoilers, lassies!

We met Lys Fensic (the heroic characters tend to refer to each other primarily by their last names) in the lobby of her building, waiting for a friend to help her escape an abusive relationship. Her co-worker is trying to aid her but his assistance only increases her stress. At this point I was very interested in the paranormal world Jewel created. Fensic demonstrated some quasi-autistic characteristics that I wanted to explore. (Reluctance to make eye contact, sensory overload, aversion to unsolicited contact, struggle to use visual cues to translate emotional contexts). Then her friend shows up. My paranormal problems kicked into high gear and never settled down.

Khunbish is your basic predator hero. (He's supposed to have a line over the u but I can't locate the alt command for that so just go with it or correct me in the comments and I'll add it.) Although he's a computer specialist by trade, Fensic thinks of him as dangerously powerful because he's tall and frequently calm. She builds up fantasies in her mind of him banging girls who wear glitter when he's not beating up random men. Fensic has issues. But maybe not. Khunbish immediately refers to the coworker as "a pussy." This is based on absolutely nothing. A perfectly nice man is trying to assist a coworker with her belongings. Khunbish instantly dismisses him with a slur of questionable taste. Nice. Let me go ahead and root for him right now. Or not. ANYWAY.

I'm briefly given hope that Jewel is going to call Fensic out on her vaguely fetishized reading of Khunbish's character. When Fensic explains that she needs someone like Khunbish he does challenge her on her assumption that he's physically adept and or violent based solely on his size and potentially his Mongolian ethnicity. Both of them hand wave it and move on. Of course Khunbish is violent! He's a demon who could, if he so chose, utterly control her and... (Oh god, really?) There's something about how witches are super sexy hot to demons (who are all male, as presented in this short) and they could enslave them but on the other hand mages (who are all men) can enslave the demons and that's worse than actually dying because... I can't even.

Fensic isn't helpless in the ex-boyfriend showdown. (She's equal in power to the other characters but set up as untutored and therefore exploitable.) They go to get something it turns out they don't need and then it's sexy time. I appreciated how Jewel set up the sexual interaction between the characters as freeing for both of them. Fensic has been held back by the domination of others and the fear of herself. Khunbish has been required to suppress aspects of himself to fit into the normalized human culture. (Vanilla is, of course, used as a dismissive descriptor. Because why not hit most all my peeves?) The concept that honesty enhances their sexuality is well presented and well conceived. Until it's not. (This was my Free Fall reading experience, things were great, then really not great, then kind of great... oh no not great.)

Early in their encounter Fensic asks about condoms. Khunbish explains that demon / human sex is free from disease due to incompatibly. She says that's cool and all, but she doesn't use birth control. He says no problem because in his human form he's sterile. He can only impregnate her if he's in his demon form. Fensic wistfully reveals she's always wanted a baby (because OF COURSE) and even in his demon form it wouldn't matter because she's unable to conceive. WAIT! FULL STOP! If she's unable to conceive why is she asking about condoms in a birth control context? Talk about your mixed messages there, Cookie! Is this a passive aggressive conversation? "Well, I could get PREGNANT!" "No, babe, you can't unless I change" "JOKE IS ON YOU! Even if you change I can't get pregnant, HA!" Of course, she totally CAN get pregnant because his magic demon sperm knows no human infertility. So let's make this hybrid baby and get back to the guys trying to kill us.

Fight scene, drama, ex boyfriend, discover your true powers, blah blah blah. Now we're wrapping things up with another bait and switch moment. Khunbish has been forced to call in the local warlords, who are apparently the main couple of the book series. At the close of the fight, the female half of the partnership asks if they're ok with meeting the male half and they agree. Suddenly it's baby-louge time and they're meeting with the male half several weeks after the female half asked if it was cool to do it now. Fine, ok, something changed, we can go with that. We head over to the mansion where the various demon underlings are hanging out and they're doing fist bumps and hand jives and trash talking and we discover some are Indian, some are not described and here's the big dude and.... oh hell to the no.

The big dude is a sandy haired boy next door type who is deceptively un-powerful in his physical presentation. My paranormal problems are having a five alarm fire in my head as he lays down the law for Fensic and Khunbish. Mr. Big Dude condescendingly tells Khunbish to "use his words" (no kidding) to figure out his relationship with Fensic because they can't be together unless both of them swear loyalty (or not) to Mr. Big Dude's gang. If they swear loyalty there is money and safety in it for them as long as they comply with whatever Mr. Big Dude desires. If they don't then they are "a problem" for him and might end up getting killed or something. Furthermore, while their fealty is of their own free will, once sworn any failure of loyalty could result in their death. Khunbish is fine with this because apparently demons are totally used to being in gangs. They kind of like it. He's been a free agent for so long because... some kind of reason... but he knew it probably couldn't last with all the turf wars heating up. Fensic agrees because love and pregnant and all, and because she isn't sure how to control herself without Mr. Big Dude's group teaching her. Mr. Big Dude welcomes them and the baby into his gang. And. The. Baby. AND THE BABY. Wow.

Your experience with Free Fall will depend completely on if we have the same paranomal problems. If I'd been able to set aside my aversion to ethnic based personality traits and alpha hole heroes pretending to be beta and street gang culture as paranormal normality, I'd probably have given Free Fall a pretty high rating. Because I wasn't I ended up with a C read. I still like Jewel, but I think I'll stick to her historical stories instead.

* This review originally appeared at Love In The Margins.

Review: No Place for A Dame by Connie Brockway

Uncle. Seriously. I give up.

I’ve been trying to read Connie Brockway’s No Place For A Dame since November 1st. I think three months is enough. Why don’t I love this book? No idea. None. The setup is a science minded heroine and her non science minded man. There’s class conflict – he’s titled, she’s the daughter of an employee. Brockway is an author I generally enjoy, and yet  five seconds after I’ve set it down I forget everything about it. Are those scenes from this book? Other books? What was it about again? Oh yea.. I should… is that glitter?

Avery Quinn, our heroine, is the daughter of (a gamekeeper?) someone who saved our hero’s dad’s life and has therefore been set up as a quasi ward. She’s been shipped out to various scientific homes to study astronomy under the greats. If Avery was overly worldly and possibly cynical it would make some sense. Instead Avery has emerged from her academic travels almost painfully naive. She is neither of her originating class nor of her adoptive one, and she seems to understand little of both. There’s a Manic Pixie Dream Girl happening here, actually. Avery is blasting into Giles life with her obsessions and her quirks to shine a light into his corners. I think. Remember, I didn’t finish it.

So Giles is charming, rich, titled and with daddy issues for days when Avery (decides? requires?) takes a trip to London so she can join the Royal Astronomical Society by cross dressing. (As you do.) There’s some reason Giles has to go along with it (or suggests it?) but he leaves her to get there solo to see if her disguise will hold. She is neither quickly unmasked nor entirely successful in her disguise. Rather than having the Magic Breasts For Binding that so many full figured heroines do, Avery find herself wearing a fat suit. She’s a Humpty Dumpty of a lad with spindly legs and arms and a youthful face. People find her odd, but not as odd as Giles being interested in the stars.

I think the point where I gave up was something to do with her wanting to see the gentleman’s club, which Giles balks at. She is trapped in the house and bored so she befriends another young man thereby ending up in a carriage crash outside the same gentleman’s club, which Giles then invites her into. His objections that were routed in principal are suddenly swept away by practicality. There’s a lot of this in the oddly titled No Place for A Dame, Avery cannot do things until suddenly she can. Things are wrong until they are not. Let’s all smash the patriarchy because science.

There’s some bit about spy cartels and missing agents and mortal enemies and Giles being in disguise and… surely in all of this there would be something for me to care about? One would think? Alas, there was not. No Place for A Dame should have been an Americana piece about the infiltration of local government during prohibition. Or something. Something other than pseudo ward / spy guardian it’s tough out here for a lady scientist in Romanceland romping. Anyway, everyone loves it but me. If egg slash is your thing, Avery’s got your suit. Go crazy.

*This review originally appeared at Love In The Margins

DNF Review: Buttercup by Sienna Mynx

The Kindle Sample for Buttercup consists of the prologue and a few sentences from the first chapter. I wish the sample had been longer,  because I don’t know that the prologue is a fair representation of the novel. If it is, then Buttercup absolutely isn’t for me. Having a weakness for both the 1930′s and sideshow life I expected to enjoy Buttercup. Instead I struggled to complete the sample.

When we meet Silvio and Buttercup she is dancing on stage and he is masturbating. (I somehow missed that this is an erotic romance, and not a romance with erotic elements.) For reasons I didn’t understand they progress to a one on one physical encounter. Through his arousal, Silvio reflects on events, events that apparently separated them. Here I was confused. Silvio has “bedded the whore, the virgin, the widow” but he is angry that Buttercup may not have been faithful to him. He’s had to seek her out, indicating they were not in communication, but here she is dancing (and disrobing) for him with barely a word.

Because Silvio is revealing their story between “slick sheens of sweat” it was hard for me to stay interested. It seems that Buttercup did something six years ago that endangered Silvio’s life. Four years ago he got out of prison. Two years were spent with his gang, searching for Buttercup while also trying to forget her. Buttercup is apparently indebted to, and protected by, the carnival she works with. She is such a fantasy figure in this prologue that I wasn’t sure she was real. At the end of the prologue is seems clear that this is meant to represent an actual encounter, not a dream of Silvio’s. I also wasn’t sure of the timeline of past events.

“Buttercup was different than in the past, but she was a girl of barely seventeen and he was a kid himself. He paid it no mind. They had both changed. His mind was on one thing. Reclaiming what was taken from him prematurely.” – Kindle Location 219, Buttercup by Sienna Mynx

I think this passage means she is twenty-three, but I had to read it twice. My initial pass seemed to indicate that she’d been eleven during their prior sexual encounter. I know Sienna Mynx is very popular and Buttercup was suggested to me by several different fans but I didn’t purchase the book. As a set up for an erotic novel, the world of a 1930′s carnival is fresh and original. If I were looking for an erotic read I probably would have been more interested than I was. I needed a contrast between Silvio’s sexual needs and who Buttercup is as a person. Because she felt like a fantasy, and he a stalker, I DNF’d the book and moved on.

* This review originally appeared at Love In The Margins

Review: In Love Again by Megan Mulry

In Love Again is the third book in Megan Mulry’s series, The Unruly Royals. Claire, the aloof and married older sister from the earlier books, is now  on her own. Moving to New York to pursue a fresh start, she finds a man from her past. Ben is at a similar crossroads in his life. His marriage has dissolved into a shared disappointment born of mismatched assumptions. He’s drifting through the days, waiting for something to bring him out of his malaise.

Although I have a soft spot for second chance at love stories In Love Again was an uneven read. On the positive side, despite it’s upper class setting, Mulry’s world isn’t composed solely of caucasians. Characters with different ethnic backgrounds are presented not as underprivileged made good, but as individuals from solid, sometimes affluent, homes. They belong in the world they are inhabiting. Ben is Lebanese, with a large and close family. His heritage is neither ignored nor presented as unique. Ben alludes to the potential racism of Claire’s mother in a scene that leads to one of the few awkward moments in In Love Again. Claire hastens to assure Ben that ethnicity isn’t something that matters to her. Ben never challenges her. Claire, who has been appropriately awkward in her grab for the non-racist ring, isn’t required to acknowledge that declaring it doesn’t matter has it’s own baggage. It’s a moment I wanted them to linger over despite Ben’s easy acceptance.

I loved Claire’s insecurities, her defense of stay at home parenting, her tentative steps toward creating an adult life after years of suspending her personhood. I hated how easy it all was. Claire gets the first job she applies for, because of her connections. She is embraced by all of her coworkers, because of her connections. Later she comments on how she’s trying not to lean on this privilege, yet at the same time she’s openly deploying it. I could forgive Claire for continuing to fall through her life if Ben were someone other than Ben. Ben and I, we didn’t hit it off.

There was a sense throughout In Love Again of missing pieces. (Claire’s mother has remarried? Freddie is a liar?) Most of these are eventually slotted into place but Ben remains a stubborn hold out. When we first meet him he’s unlikeable. For reasons rooted primarily in the past and her own low self esteem, Claire seeks him out again. Suddenly Ben is utterly accepting of anything. Even when it’s revealed he has good reason to resent Claire he doesn’t. When Claire repeats a sin of the past, even more egregious in light of her maturity and their past experience, he shrugs it off. When Ben takes Claire away for a weekend and a family member hijacks the night, it’s fine with Ben. Everything is fine with Ben. He wants Claire because he used to want her. He hasn’t anyone else at the moment and Claire is the heroine so they’re meant to be.

The easiness continues as Ben charms Claire’s troubled daughter, introduces her seamlessly to his family, and establishes himself at the center of her life. (He’s also very rude to a waiter. It’s meant to read as passion but it put me back to disliking Ben intensely.) Ben plays guitar to make himself interesting. He doesn’t convey any sense of musical obsession. He doesn’t practice around Claire. He chose his day job to be lucrative but is bored senseless by it. While Claire is reinventing herself and reinvesting her in family (another road easily cleared) Ben is just acquiring Claire. He has six sisters, one with a family member in crisis, but they’re almost invisible. Ben feels aimless.

Late in the book Claire becomes quite angry with her sister in law. An apology is quickly offered but the advice found objectionable wasn’t wrong. This too was a moment that could have shown the family divide but instead was quickly smoothed.In Love Again’s true conflict is primarily off the page as Claire’s ex complicates her life before being speedily dispatched. If Ben had been less unquestioning in his acceptance, if Claire’s interpersonal conflicts had led to her being called out on her own bullshit, I think I would have loved this book instead of liking it. As it was, everyone was a bit too perfect and isolated for me to fully embrace them. Even with these issues considered, In Love Again is my favorite of the series.

*This review first appeared at Love In The Margins

Review: Heaven With A Gun by Connie Brockway

*Somewhat disappointingly, this is not a tribute to the 1969 film.

The most I can come up with for Heaven With A Gun is that it was fine. Perfectly acceptable. That's sort of the review kiss of death, I know. This novella is neither compelling enough for me to remember the leads names nor offensive enough for me to have renamed them something like The D-Bag Duke. It's a western with a reporter and an outlaw. There. We're done. Wait, we're not? Ok, uhhhh...  I didn't love HWAG but I certainly liked it.

There's a pretty equal mix of charm and tedium in here. Saloon whores with hearts of gold. Hot headed youth. You know the deal.  The heroine's backstory isn't shown. It's strictly told. This is a shame because her history prior to the hero is the most engaging part of the book. I loved her meeting him, I loved her mind, I loved how she got her reputation. I tolerated her motivation and life choices. The hero starts strong too. I enjoyed his early mid life crisis, his cynicism and desire to shake the West off his shoes. Somehow putting them together diminished both of them. Our heroine falls for the hero because he's the hero and vice versa. Not in a bad way, just in a very conventional way that is perfectly... fine.

I suppose my hopes were high for this story. The Americana side of the genre hasn't knocked my socks off since Morsi. It's been a long dry spell for me and American historical. Plus, I love a good western. What's not to adore about European Colonialism using corrupt political motivations to clear indigenous populations? That is some prime drama there. Some of the early frontier towns were models of multiculturalism. (Much of what we learn in grade school is a heavily fictionalized account of how the West went white.)  Liking  HWAG fine just wasn't quite enough. I think Brockway could have made an interesting full length book out of the characters she created for the novella. The ending felt rushed, almost anticlimactic. Some of the early details begged for full length scenes.  If you're jonesing for a lightly comedic western you can do much, much worse than HWAG. I couldn't help wishing it had been just a bit better.

Review: Unraveled by Courtney Milan

You know, I could try and review Courtney Milan's Unraveled. Who would I be kidding? We all know I have been teetering on the edge of full on fawning for this author. I have now fallen completely over the edge. Is it a perfect book? Probably not. Is it an exceptionally excellent book featuring the epic romantic hero Smite? Yes. Yes it is. It's also $3.99 and what you should be reading instead of a review about it.

I swear I will get back to real reviewing tomorrow. Honestly. In the meantime, please appreciate my charter membership in the fan club. (Smite is mine, bitches. Mine.)

Review: Unlocked by Courtney Milan

There are so many things I love about Unlocked I don't know where to start. 


1. Pricing -  Unlocked is selling (as of this writing) for 99 cents. That's the magical marketing price of "pocket change". Unlocked is certainly up there with Mary Balogh's A Matter of Class, which (as you may recall) was priced at $16 USD. So, practically free. In fact I already gifted a few copies of Unlocked myself.


2. Marketing  - Milan is self publishing a novella set in the world of an ongoing series as a placeholder between the books. What could possibly make waiting for an anticipated book better? It's like the Pixar short being shown on demand instead of right before the feature.


3. Names - In Unlocked we meet Evan and Elaine. Lady Elaine. Can we all have a Mr. Roger's moment please? Not since finding out Simple Kid's real name is Keiran McFeely and getting my Cap'n Kangaroo flashback on have I smiled so much just at a character's introduction. Ok, her last name isn't Fairchilde but she has time.


4. Concept - Evan met Elaine when he was young and stupid and immature. In other words, in his late teens / early twenties. Their initial relationship is that of bully and victim, and like many in that situation Evan has moved past his actions while Elaine has lived with them. When Evan returns to England and discovers what his impulsive cruelty cost her he is ashamed enough to try and repair the damage. Elaine may have been victimized but she's not exactly a victim. Her coping mechanisms may be outdated but they're clever enough. Elaine has learned to stop internalizing the cruel words of others. She's not ready to forgive Evan, she's not even ready to believe him, but neither does she feel the need to please him. Both have to examine the part they played in their past. (But mostly Evan)


5. General Awesomeness - Unlocked was just a great read. Ultimately all that matters is the story, was there a good one, did I enjoy it, will I remember it? Yes, yes and yes. Any point I might argue about Unlocked would come down to wanting more. If it was in an anthology I'd feel sorry for the other stories, frankly. 

Review: Breakdown by Katherine Amt Hanna

Generally, I'm not one for self publishing. I've read some self published books that turned me off reading for weeks on end. That said, it's a new publishing world. Connie Brockway is jumping into the deep end. I think the cool kids are doing it. Time to expand my horizons. As it happens, I'd been hearing about Breakdown for some time. (It's one of those know someone who knows someone who knows the author situations.) God, I hate telling people they were right. I really, truly do. It's up there with filing my income taxes and reading fashion magazines. Credit where it is due, they were correct. Hanna can write.

So let's get the bad stuff out of the way. The cover does the content a disservice. Breakdown's cover makes me think we're getting something about a teenager. The backpack, the pencil shading, the coloration, the title, it all says Young Adult Angst. While this book would certainly work for the YA market, it's dealing almost entirely with older characters. (It's not spelled out, but most seem to be in their thirties.)  To it's credit, it is remarkably free of typos, grammatical errors, continuity issues. Breakdown scores better than half the majors on that score. To it's detriment, there are some fairly obvious fixes the author needs to take. Hanna has set a specific (and now past) timeline for her tale thereby dating it and throwing the reader out of the story. That's the easy fix. The slightly harder fix (and one I think an editor would suggest) is that Hanna has a few too many characters. I'd toss two or three right off the top. They don't advance the story. Neither do they weigh it down, but it's still parsley on the plate. Still, I never felt I was reading a self published book (with all the connotations that carries).

Breakdown is a great read. A one-sitting, I-stayed-up-too-late, why-is-it-over great read. For $2.99 I can recommend it with a clear conscience. At times Breakdown reminded me of the great sweet Americana romances of the early 90's. Hanna's setting is a post pandemic world, where the infrastructure has broken down and death has occurred on a 1918 (or far greater) plague scale. Having made his way from America to England over a period of several years, Chris finds himself unable to continue. Broken by his experiences during and after the pandemic, he finds solace in the simple life of a town the plague (but not it's after effects) passed by. If that sounds like the set up for a returning post Civil War romance, you're not far off. Breakdown has the same sweet yet horrific atmosphere as that lost genre. One of the best debuts I've read in ages. If this is the future of self publishing, sign me up.