Review: The Other Side Of Us by Sarah Mayberry

*The Other Side of Us is a book with something interesting to say but character choices kept me from caring about it. On the plus side, it's a free read in the Kindle Store so you won't be out anything if you give Mayberry a shot.

This is a book by an Australian author. This became important because some key cultural differences set me up to question the entirety. Plus there are annoying pet scenes. Look, I'll just come out and say it. Their dogs bang before they do and with possibly more enthusiasm. Afterward Oliver acts like his dog has been roofied and sold into the sex trade. It's kind of weird. Whatever, dog subplot, you freaked me out. Oliver is probably overreacting because his wife cheated on him. Finding out his dog is stepping out too was just overload.

Mackenzie was in a life altering car crash but due to her past success as a television producer is not bankrupted by the experience. She has that easy, unthinking affluence of many a romance heroine. When we meet Mackenzie she worries that she's come across as a bitch to Oliver, despite what seemed to be completely reasonable reactions. Oliver likes to come over unannounced. Mackenzie apologizes for pages over her rude inability to drop everything in her life to focus on whatever whim the stranger next door has come up with. She tells him she needs to answer an important call, he keeps talking. I'd be rude to the guy too.

I couldn't get a handle on Mackenzie. At the beginning of the book she is all about doing her rehab. I know a thing or two about post surgical exhaustion. Her nausea, shaking, sudden extreme fatigue all felt real to me. Her obsession with her scars did not. Mackenzie explores her scars with the careful consideration of a fetishist. She's had them for a year - it's not like they're new. Mayberry wants you to know that Mackenzie is weakened by injury, covered in scars, and unable to conduct her normal life. Suddenly Mackenzie is cleaning out sheds, filling wheelbarrows with gravel and taking long walks in the sand. (If you've had your pelvis rebuilt long walks in the sand are very much not on your To Do list.) The first time she has sex she requires special positioning to avoid severe pain from her hip. The rest of the time she's just up for it however. When Mackenzie was vomiting after using her weights I understood why she couldn't return to her job in television production. When she's walking to the grocer and working a shovel I didn't. Mackenzie has a super hot ex who wants her back but never met her needs. I liked him much more than Oliver.

Oliver was almost as absurd as Mackenzie. The guy is a rock star turned studio man. He left his wife several months ago but isn't divorced. When he takes up with Mackenzie his brother has kittens. Long soulful talks about taking things slow and knowing your limits and not rushing in take place. Oliver is completely unlike every rock star I've met or currently know. I started to understand why his wife (who wants him back, of course) cheated on him. He puts the E in Emo. It's a shame I couldn't buy into the leads because Mayberry has a lot to say about reinventing yourself after failure or disappointment. Oliver and Mackenzie both look to the dreams of their youth to form a dream for their future. This apparently involves rejecting commercial success. So to wrap up, unlikeable and unlikely leads, issues of consent in the canine community, exs that want you back so bad, realistic conflicts and a lot of emo flouncing. I might try another Mayberry but this one didn't move me.

Review: Five Star Romance by Jacquelin Thomas

I didn't finish Five Star Romance. After struggling with the opening pages, I threw in the towel on page 136. It's rare for me to do a review on a DNF book but I wanted to discuss how the style of the book kept me from engaging in the content. Thomas is working with classic romance elements. Her lead, Blaze, is the family's lost boy. He blames himself for the troubles of his past far more than his family does. This leads him to value his privacy, where he can control the face he puts out to the world. Livi is a rich girl trying to make it on her own, without the protection of her family connections. When an enemy of his family reveals their secret marriage, Blaze find his personal life on the front pages.

Thomas gives herself a lot to work with. Both characters have a reason to have initially interacted and reasons not to have seen each other since. Both have strong family units that offer support and encouragement. Wealth is not an issue that divides them or hinders their freedom to live as they wish. Five Star Romance is a classic case of great on paper. Thomas relies heavily on telling over showing. Her characters interact with others (and each other) only in very brief exchanges. The vast majority of the story is told in informational dumps. For example, an important confrontation between Livi and Blaze takes place in less than a full page. In that space Blaze has arrived to apologize for assumptions he made that have driven Livi away. She refuses to speak to him and he leaves. Major changes in motivation and assumptions hinge on handfuls of dialogue followed by paragraphs of exposition.

We don't see Blaze or Livi evolve, we are told they are. And they evolve rapidly. On one page Blaze wants a divorce. On another he's committed. In the same space of time Livi flips from committed to finished. Their actions and motivations don't engage the reader because the reader never experiences the transformation with them. As well, their world is inconsistent. Livi works with Blaze's family. She's been part of their business longer than they have. Livi has had two years to study any aspect of Blaze's life she chooses. As a result, some of Livi's actions make no sense. At times she appears star struck by the world Blaze lives in but it's a world she was born to and has worked around for some time. Thomas chooses odd details unconnected to the world she's building.

"A few minutes later, Blaze and Livi walked back inside and headed straight to the dance floor.

At the end of the evening, guests were given a choice of an iPad case or a notepad, pen and flash drive set by Ungaro as a party favor. Blaze gave Livi one of each.

When they were inside his car, he glanced over at Livi and asked, “Are you ready to go home?”" Page 103, Five Star Romance

Nothing about the party favors matter to the plot. Caring about the party favors doesn't fit with the background of the characters so the inclusion seems aimed at the readers. The first 130 pages of Five Star Romance are filled with these secondary details used as a substitute for natural scene transitions. This happens, so now that happens. Then this other thing. And they were thinking that. But then they did this. Livi and Blaze never really come alive, they stay puppets moved through a pantomime tale. 

Review: Back to the Good Fortune Diner by Vicki Essex

Occasionally a book comes along that catches every reviewer's eye at once. Maybe it's the marketing, maybe it's the theme, sometimes it's random chance. In the case of Back to The Good Fortune Diner it's the promise of a non-caucasian lead in a traditionally caucasian line. Vicki Essex is an author in the right place at the right time. Essex is also a talented writer. Ultimately, I think she's better than her book. I'm going to give Diner it's small town beats dirty big city vibe because that's a fetish. It's not my fetish, but the topic of message coding in this theme is more than I care to get into with this review.

I'm also going to give Diner it's simultaneous embrace and rejection of education - no I'm not. It was very problematic for me. The racism in the book was another stumbling block. For much of the story we have an interesting tale of two culturally different people learning to communicate with each other as adults but then it takes a sharp turn. The book couldn't sustain the weight of the material. Ultimately, it feels very After School Special in it's quick presentation and smooth resolution. A secondary romance felt it should have been the focus of (or a sequel to) the book. Finally, the brother and sister duo at the heart of both relationships felt completely wrong for their age. Whew. Let's unpack some of that.

Age before anything - Daniel and Tiffany are highly educated professionals in their mid to late thirties. both are so deeply enmeshed in their parent's possible view of them that they cannot see themselves. I felt their age was driven by the author's need to reunite her high school couple (Chris and Tiffany) through his teenage son. Drop everyone's age seven years, make the son a nephew, and all my issues with this part of the story evaporate. The emotional conflicts were realistic and interesting. Their timing was not. Tiffany and Daniel are both trying to figure out who they are. Both have degrees they don't want to use. While I completely disagreed with Daniel's choice of work I want to focus on Tiffany. About Daniel (certainly the more compelling sibling) I'd say that most 35ish year old men working the back of a kitchen (who are not chefs) have beaten their bodies to the point that they would welcome any alternate opportunity. That Daniel is in possession of funds, education, contacts and support but chooses to take a fairly low level position on impulse mystified me. He is banking on the financial support of a girlfriend he is estranged from while rejecting all paths that lead to his own financial stability. At 25, this is a mistake. At 35 it's running into poverty instead of away from it. Daniel will struggle for the rest of his life where a slight change of course could have given him the work he loves and the ability to enjoy his life while doing it. (I have to stop talking about Daniel. His dominance of a book not about him is turning into his dominance of the review.)

Tiffany has been chasing publishing jobs she doesn't find rewarding. I wanted Tiffany to grow into an appreciation of her own worth but she never does. Tiffany is the over achieving student, she's the impassive faced minority who magically brings the hateful white bigot into line, she's the understanding and self demonizing girlfriend and the overly devoted employee. Even as a rebellious daughter she's just a little too good. When the women of the town want to socialize with her Tiffany wonders why they would want to. Tiffany never wonders why she should want to talk to them. When Chris calls her out on her lack of interest she examines it as a personal flaw. Tiffany spends the entire book wondering what she offers others and ends it the same way. It is always Tiffany that is inadequate and Tiffany that must change. I wanted Tiffany to demand more for herself and standing up to a sick old racist was insufficient. Tiffany suddenly decides her jobs are unsatisfying. Her inability to make friends is her personal flaw and not a facet of her being uncomfortable in her own skin (this was hinted at but not developed). Breadcrumbs of an alternate career path are laid in the story. They are not used. Tiffany appears to give up her professional dreams so she can have the boy, because the boy trumps everything else in her life. She doesn't find a different dream, unearth a deferred dream, or reveal a dream she was afraid to follow. She settles. She's going to be with the boy and figure the rest out later. Again, understandable at 25 but troubling in your 30's.

I think Back to The Good Fortune Diner would be a stronger read without the racism. Or a stronger read with more racism in it. Of course the only Chinese family in a town is going to face bigotry. I've repeatedly lost friends to other states because they wanted their children to grow up as something other than "the Asian kid" in town. Having Tiffany face racism from one man was dealing with it in a token manner. Tiffany stands up to him, he folds. He's a softie underneath anyway. It's true enough in that it could happen, but it feels far too pat. Leave it out. Adding in Daniel's concern that his parents are bigots without really resolving if they are makes the post-racial ending even less satisfying. Daniel's story was too big for this book. Including all of it not only short changed Chris and Tiffany but it ended any chance to resolve the core of their arrested development. Why do their parents constantly fight? How did they both feel about the sudden move from the big city to the small town when they made it? Why did they press their children to get educations if they don't want either of them to use them? How does this dynamic stop influencing their children and start informing them? Chris and his father get their emotional issues resolved, leaving Tiffany as a Magical Asian when I wanted her to be the star. Removing most of Daniel's romance would have given Tiffany more room to earn a happy ending instead of concede her way to one.

All praise to Essex for making me care enough about her world and her prose to devote so much thought to it. I'm absolutely going to read her next book but I have to give a mixed recommendation to this one. Essex suffers from a lack of space over a lack of ideas. She might be better served by a longer word count. Back to the Good Fortune Diner is more enjoyable than my review suggests. It's actually very good, it just isn't amazing. There's a joke in there about the no-win life of the American (or Canadian) born Chinese, but I'm not going to explore it.

*I also wanted to explore Daniel's unconventional choice not to be the dominant financial power in his relationship and his willingness to subvert that gender norm. Really, the wrong couple led the book.

* If you haven't read the discussion at My Extensive Reading I highly suggest it. Among many excellent comments Sunita brings up a point I'd failed to consider. 

Review: The Man With The Money by Lynn Raye Harris

* As I write, Amazon is selling this in MMP for $1.58 or in Kindle for $3.44. Keep telling me about the cheaper e-books, Grandma. I love that story.

Lynn Raye Harris won a random purchase from me with a little game I like to call Author Making A Rational Comment About Reviews. (I always expect a lot of entrants, but generally it's just one or two.) I went for The Man With The Money for it's Katrina afflicted heroine. Cara has a pretty complicated background. In fact, I found her background far more interesting than Jack's, which was a shame because Jack was the focus of the book.

As a former fan of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, made to order writing is familiar to me. Here Harris seems to be working under an odd set of restrictions. Jack is the obscenely wealthy head of an overly successful (generational money?) family haunted by violent dysfunction. He's furiously angry at his older brother for deserting the family and furiously angry with himself for not doing the same. I felt like Harris didn't care for Jack much, nor could she reveal enough of his life to make him work as a tortured hero. Having to save so much of his back story and current motivation for other authors hindered the story's development. Luckily, Cara picked up some of the slack.

Cara is working at a casino in Europe when an altercation with her boss forces her to flee. On the run with Jack, Cara finds herself trapped. (Well, not really. As she finally tells him she could easily go to the American Embassy. As well, running away with Jack isn't going to do her much good outside of the immediate circumstance since her boss is fully aware of her identity and family situations.) Taking advantage of a holiday from the obligations of both their lives, Cara and Jack turn danger into destination travel. Cara is used to paying her own way. Jack is the typical throw money at it Harlequin hero. He offers her the payday of a lifetime to accompany him to his brother's wedding. Soon we're in comfortable territory as the Pretty Woman story plays out in it's normal pattern.

On the copyright Harlequin thanks Harris for her contributions to the story and I had to agree. Cara often seems to be fighting the box she's been placed inside. I felt like there was an interesting long form contemporary heroine trying to get out. (Something along the lines of Sugar Daddy by Lisa Kleypas.) The Man With The Money was a pleasant read, if not a compelling one. (The only real issue I had with it  occurs toward the end. Cara didn't strike me as a women who would keep Bobby Gold in her life, no matter what the power dynamic became.) The Man with The Money had moments of freshness in a familiar frame. I'd like to try something from Lynn Raye Harris that is completely her own invention.

Contemporary Challenge Review: Georgia Bockoven VS Sandra Hyatt

I used to read category romance extensively. Over the years I found myself reading less and less category, then less and less contemporary until finally I was almost exclusively in the historical niche. I've given myself the pointless challenge of rediscovering category books and contemporary romance. Harlequin had a major sale recently and I took the opportunity to buy a number of books from Twitter hashtag suggestions. I found that I read a category romance in about an hour, perhaps 90 minutes. That's got to kill the authors. I know they spend a lot more time on these books than I do, but there it is. Since they're quick reads for me, let's look at them in pairs.  First up -  If I'd Never Known Your Love by Georgia Bockoven versus Lessons In Seduction by Sandra Hyatt. (Spoiler's Ahoy)

I gather that the premise of the Everlasting Love line is that you've got one shot at couplehood. I used to read the (formerly Silhouette) Desire line voraciously, so I was more familiar with that framework. The Bockoven book left me curiously flat. I understand this is a three hankie classic read, but it didn't hit me emotionally. I admired how it was done without connecting to the characters. The lead is a woman who married her childhood love only to lose him. The book focuses almost exclusively on her. She is either fighting to get her husband back, remembering her youth with her husband (a bad boy gone good) or trying to move on with her life. This is an oddly idyllic setting for a pretty dark tale. The husband, a former foster child, falls into the lap of her farm family. After soaking up their good values and warm hearts, he builds a life with the heroine. He is oddly (and almost unrealistically) capable at relationships. The warm family is the type that can drop everything to support her when things go south, and her financial situation is extremely solid. This is a woman who can expect to be caught if she falls down. Even as she moves on with her life the safety net is extensive and intact. It undermined the well paced story of her struggle to find her missing man. All of her desperation is focused on the fact of his loss, little is spent on the day to day effects. In a sense, she saves him at the expense of all else. As a young woman, she wants to save him from his past. As an adult, she wants to save him from his fate. Children, careers, all else is secondary to her need to support him. When a new man enters her life there isn't anything left of her to give. He's certainly her type - he needs to be saved as well. I found this more of a character piece than what I consider a romance, although it was absolutely a genre book. I was frequently frustrated by the heroine even as I empathized with her. The topic is certainly fresh and authentic - hostage taking as a business is too common in many failed nations.

Hyatt's book was the complete opposite. While still a complete fairy tale, this story of a working class girl and an overburdened prince felt more real than the truer-to-life Bockoven book. Hyatt's limo driver is moonlighting from her higher profile day job as a way to keep her father's employment secure. Her hot and cold boss is a workaholic young heir to the throne trying to fit finding a wife into his already overbooked schedule. While this is also a tale with a shared childhood, it is not a reunited lovers story. The couple's attraction is as adults, their development is more moderate. She isn't seeking so much to save the prince as to remind him how to have fun. He has given away so many pieces of himself to responsibility that he has forgotten who he is.  Her swinging between irritation with the man and awe of his status reads smoothly. Despite the less realistic premise I connected more with the leads of the Hyatt book than the Bockoven. In both cases, I was reminded what a quick read a category romance is. these books can be fit between other demands, read in a lunch break or two. Neither demanded my full attention, there was a small cast of characters and a very focused plot to resolve. The lack of complexity  was part of the appeal to me in the past - I actually did read these on retail lunch breaks. I'm not sure if I will rediscover my love of the short form contemporary romance, but I have absolutely renewed my appreciation for their complexity. Simple is hard.

Review: A Midsummer Night's Sin by Kasey Michaels

Meet Puck. (He's not named after the really appalling MTV Real World character, but that guy pretty much ruined my ability to take anyone named Puck seriously as a romantic lead.) His mom has a Shakespeare jones and his parent's aren't married (allegedly, I have my doubts) because his aunt had Down's syndrome so his dad married her instead. So Puck has been running about being charming in Paris when he decides to return home and be charming in England. That was sort of interesting. Puck mixes blackmail into his charm under the they-deserve-it doctrine. Sadly, Puck is only charming for a few pages. His debut into London Society is also his swan song.

Puck converts from charmingly cold hearted party animal into caring righter of wrongs. at the party he meets first time bad girl Regina and discovers her cousin has been abducted. It's pretty obvious by who. And why. And, of course, it's one of those things that only really upsets our wealthy leads when it's happening to white folk. We're going to have to go with a spoiler here - the kidnapped cousin may or may not have fallen afoul of white slavers. It happens here! In London! To white people! Yes, everyone is most surprised. And it happens without care or notice to poor people! Who'da thunk? Of course the slaver is the baddest of the bad, the most ickiest dude, of course he's the slaver, how could they not have seen, etc? Here's the thing. While there is nothing good about slavery, being outraged over the white kind but not the black kind (our Puck nobly tries to rescue a white woman that completely forgets about the trade in general) doesn't read well. Let's give our characters that they only consider white slavery the really bad kind. Why is the slavery guy a horrible guy? Why wouldn't he just be a guy for profit who doesn't share their outrage at transferring slavery to white guys? (It's even pointed out that white slaves are less profitable than black ones unless they can be used for fresh virginal nookie). Look, Kasey Michaels does a decent job with it, I'm not faulting her for trying to tackle it in a realistic way or any of that. I'm just saying that omgz-he-is-so-bad slaver boy is an easy stereotype when her own characters tacitly condone non-caucausian slavery. Ugh. Let's move on from this comma overload.

So. Regina. Missing cousin, drunken mom, mixed family heritage (in the money sense not the color sense) meets Puck, party boy with a moody older brother and unmarried parents. They try to find her cousin, they have a fair amount of sex, they move on with their lives. All in all, it was better than Beau's story and I'm going to read Jack's but I wouldn't stay up late on the night I bought it. Or maybe I would. It's better than the review implies, I just can't get past the mixed slavery messages going on. If Michaels hadn't included the flashback to Puck's youth, I think I would have liked it much more than I did.

Review: Until There Was You by Kristan Higgins

Take a good look at the dog. Check out the expression, the tilt of the paw. Does that look like a dog who believes this couple is going to make it? I have to disagree with him. while Posey (What!) and Liam have some seriously screwed up relationship dynamics, both of them lack the self esteem needed to expect more. I didn't dislike Until There Was You. I enjoyed reading it. Unfortunately I never really liked Posey or Liam so it was hard to root for them together. I found aspects of their resolution wildly unrealistic, with other parts incredibly predictable. (So predictable that when one plot point appeared to have gone in a different direction I wanted to cheer for the author's good judgement. Luckily, I'd misplaced my pom-pom.)

Posey works at her family's kitschy German diner when she's not working at her thriving salvage business or dropping by her secret boyfriend's house. In a family full of tall buxom blonde beauties (except for her gay Vietnamese brother) Posey is a short, slender (if she doesn't eat every few minutes she will pass out) dark haired waif. Because she is not her cousin, Posey hides in the background and takes everything to heart. While she allegedly found her spine one sordid night in high school, Posey doesn't use it very often. Her dream man has always been Liam Murphy. Never mind that Liam refuses to use her preferred name, never mind that Liam never looked at her twice, never mind that Liam was an architect of her teenage downfall, Liam is the man for her. Because he is hot and he was nice to a kitten once. Really, that's enough.

Pity poor Liam. He could have been an interesting character. He is an overprotective father, a widower, a victim of PTSD and OCD with the self esteem of a gnat. Women fall in his path and offer to disrobe at his every glance. He met his dream girl in high school, married her, lost her, and has returned home to raise their child. Despite this golden girl dating him, marrying him and having his child, Liam secretly thinks she might not have loved him. Because he is unloveable. Liam is a bit of a black hole when it comes to emotional need. (That's a theme here, Posey's best friend has a disturbing dynamic with her own adopted son.)

So. The return of Liam and the recognition of Posey. Except it's more like the return of the Liam and the any-port-in-a-storm of Posey. Fleeing the aggressive attention of other women, Liam is attracted to Posey's pretense of disinterest while Posey is just grateful to have sex with him. Liam rarely opens up to her, almost never meets her needs and generally acts like a guy who might be on the spectrum. Posey loans her hateful cousin cash, keeps her secrets from the family, lays herself out like a doormat for anyone to wipe their feet on, and endears herself to Liam's kid. You can see why the dog has a headache. Still, I did like Until There Was You. Lacking in surprises it may be, but it's a great comfort read for a cold day. Nothing happens that can't be solved by five minutes of conversation. (I mean that sincerely, all problems in the novel are ultimately resolved that way.) Unrealistic construction projects are executed, adoption issues are breezily overcome, orphaned children move on readily. There is no baby in the final chapter, at least not for Posey and Liam. In fact, Posey is far more stable than some other Higgins heroines I've read and no one is required to give up their day jobs. If you overlook some flaws, there's a lot to enjoy here.

Retro Review: The Prize by Brenda Joyce

God almighty I hated this book. It wasn't just my bitterness at the untimely end of the Francesca Cahill series, it was the blatant racism, the TSTL heroine and the right out of 1979 hero. There was just about nothing I liked going on. Don't believe me? Let's take a look back to October of 2004. (I'm here. It's okay. We can do this together.)


According to the enthusiastic foreword, Brenda Joyce has been convinced to return to writing the "kind of books her fans love" about times when "men were men". This requires that I be exceedingly bitter and retract everything I've said about Joyce growing into her talents. (If this new direction corrupts her Cahill novels I’m going to have to Take Action.)  Not only is The Prize a step (way) back to her early days of heroines loving men who abuse them, it’s filled with pointless mayhem, bewildering character motivations and out and out racism. 

The racism falls in the form of our heroine’s best, best, bestest friend, Tillie, the slave. (To my mind, this is always dangerous ground because the act of owning someone negates the open give and take of friendship, but I’m willing to allow for it.) Tillie’s husband is deeply concerned that the plantation is placed up for sale, and the slaves as well. Tillie is worried our heroine isn’t getting enough to eat at the expensive boarding school. (Tillie alternates between patois and proper speech, but she never does learn anything about birthing babies.) After our heroine COMPLETELY FORGETS the danger facing her best best friend Tillie for five long months, Tillie welcomes her back with open arms, concern for her well-being, and (by golly) a good meal. Later, when our heroine’s blatant idiocy has trapped them in a fire fight, with Tillie’s husband most likely dead, it’s our heroine who occupies Tillie's mind because that’s the kind of best friends they are. The kind where you have to protect this sheltered delusional nitwit or spend the rest of your life being raped and beaten by whoever owns you next while your children are god knows where. 

Don’t despair! Our heroine is about to fall hopelessly in love (for no apparent reason) with a cold, violent pirate driven to destroy her entire family. Ok, well, of course she tries to shoot him first, but then she freely offers him no strings sex because how can you NOT love a guy who is busy causing the death of countless others? And really, later you’ll find out it’s all because his baby sister was ‘killed’ and his father was beheaded by your uncle during an Irish uprising. It’s hardly his fault. I mean, his mother got over it, his brother got over it - someone had to be scarred for life!! Though his brother is in love with you, (apparently solely because you know how to let a guy bang you senseless and not even leave a buck on the pillow the next day) he is going to fight to help you save said cold thuggish pirate dude. Barely affected by learning of his six year affair with your aunt, whom you bravely comfort because you are Warm and Good, or of his tossing any skirt that walks by because it is Just Sex, (he totally gets by with the “I banged her and thought of you because she is nothing and you are virgin-like” crap) you offer yourself for misuse again and again against the day that - will it come? Could it come? Yes! One day he will stop trying to kill the man who killed his father and give their country estate to the son who tried to murder him and rape you so that the British will stop fighting the War of 1812 or something like that. Who the hell knows. Not Tillie - she’s too busy trying to keep off the auction block to figure your cracker asses out.

Review: Bad Boys Do by Victoria Dahl

I've been wanting to talk about this book for a few weeks but I haven't felt very tolerant. The problem of my intolerance has not been for Dahl's excellent book, but for readers of this review. There are things I am very tired of reading that I know others are not. If I say "I am so freaking sick of the man whores already" then I will be approached by the man whore defender. If I say "I have had it to about here with the mousy introvert" the same thing will happen. But I have, I've had it with both of them. Yet I loved Bad Boys Do.

Dahl has done something great with power dynamics in this book. Making our man whore (Jamie) the younger member of the partnership and our mousy introvert (Olivia) the elder, she has shifted the balance just enough for me to be interested. As Bad Boys Do progresses, it becomes obvious that Dahl is upending a few more apple carts. Because Jamie is sexually attractive and works in a bar, no one thinks twice about exploiting him. From women grabbing at his kilt (manskirts are another thing I hate) to his sister pimping him out to draw crowds, everyone expects Jamie to enjoy the attention. What else is he for? Having been told he's a plaything without substance, Jamie is perfectly primed for a sexual predator to take advantage of him.

That's not Olivia. I found Olivia far less interesting. I don't care about her recapturing her power after shaking off domineering parents and an older spouse. I am not that compelled by her as a heroine. She is interesting (for me) only as a catalyst for Jamie's personal growth. It's Olivia who, in the guise of an empowered heroine, further exploits Jamie. Her belief that they are exchanging her professional expertise for his sexual services further erodes Jamie's self confidence. The heat meter in a Dahl book is fairly elevated. She's not an erotica writer, but her characters use sex to further their relationship. I was sorry when they fell into bed (or the hot tub or...) because I didn't want to skim ahead but I so completely don't care about the physicality of the characters relationship that I didn't want to read on either. (I felt a little bit like Jamie.)

Olivia has a realistic and well detailed experience of personal growth but my impatience with her Mouse That Roared backstory kept me from really rooting for her. I don't know why Jamie couldn't find his way to his self worth with someone more personally assured. While the power dynamic was interesting, the required building up of Olivia undermined the emotional components for me. Jamie has to do some pretty heavy lifting in this book. Not only must he disprove the tired belief that men are always up for it, that an endless stream of women is a dream come true, but he also has to be the one who lifts the mouse out of her hiding place. Jamie had it coming from all sides, no one really believes in him but Olivia, a woman he has to help believe in herself. No wonder he breaks.

As in the first volume, Good Girls Don't, the family dynamics are spot on. The unspoken regrets, the emotional assumptions, the burdens of roleplaying - all are expertly depicted in the Donovan siblings relationships. Where I frequently lost patience with Tessa, the compulsive liar and pleaser, (in book one) she shines here. The time table is a bit frantic (Bad Boys Do takes places almost immediately on the heels of Good Girl's Don't) yet her evolution holds together. For me the strength of this series has been the family relationships. I can easily see Victoria Dahl having a Nora Roberts like career on the basis of those alone. After all, I'm coming back for Real Men Will in which the heroine owns a sex shop. A skimmer of sex scenes has no business in a book with that setting, yet there I will be. (Is the sex shop the new toy store? Will all future quirky young business women stock fetish wear instead of trains? Should I even talk about trains and sex shops in the same parenthetical? Probably not.)

Review: Unclaimed by Courtney Milan

Do you think if I rolled around on the floor and waved my arms that Courtney Milan would rub my tummy? Because I have to tell you, I am so her bitch. Which is not to say that Unclaimed is perfection in a yellow cover. There's an editorial choice made near the end that I take issue with. (Everyone loves a reunion story, I suppose.)

Back to the book. Mark is the poster child for purity. This made me nervous because in my experience the guys with the purity rings are either A) lying, B) closet cases or C) destined to cheat on their RealDoll. (Did you see the episode of Dollhouse with the RealDolls and the golfing serial killer? I mean, all the icky rape culture implications aside, oh wait. You can't examine Dollhouse without them. Hm. Back to the book again.) Mark is D) None of the above! Mark Turner is Jonas Brothers famous for being a normal guy who just decided not to exploit women.

Jessica (I started to Google Jessica as a Victorian name but I got distracted by Rhenis as a cross gender name of unknown origin and ended up just trusting Milan. I mean, this is a series with a dude named Smite. If she wants a Jessica she can have a Jessica. It's probably even historically accurate.) is not as impressed with Mark's purity as the rest of London. (I don't think she'd be into boy bands either. Jessica strikes me as more of a bar rock kind of girl.) She hasn't been a virgin in a very long time, leading her to think that Mark is of the lying type. For the right bribe, she'll prove it. This leads to a WTF moment for me. It seems the Turner boys reclaimed their childhood home. Some serious stuff went down in that house but Mark decides to go back there to lay low. I haven't been in my childhood home in (cough) years and I still have nightmares about the place. I didn't have half of what the Turner boys dealt with so their affinity for the home confused me. But it's Mark's house, he can live in it. Flashbacks are his own fault. (Burn it down and salt the earth, I say.)

Aside from Mark and Jessica there are some really excellent side characters and a number of Smite sightings. (He's the cute Jonas Turner.) Also, a dog. Sort of. Mark has to deal with all the small town drama that his celebrity and her impurity bring with them while navigating his very normal personal desires. Jessica realizes she's been living inside a shell of herself, unable to see past her survival mode long enough to claim her own life back. I adored them, and I adored their story. Even with the sentimental bits and the weird real estate issue. Unclaimed is a love letter to morality for morality's sake and the power of siblings in our lives. Bring on Smite and toss me a tennis ball.

Review: The Taming of the Rake by Kasey Michaels

Kasey Michaels can be hit or miss for me. (I'd say it's about a 70% success rate.) This new series, The Blackthorn Brothers, starts off strong. The Taming of the Rake sets up the series premise - three brothers raised in the aristocracy as the bastard sons of their father and his wife's sister. The boys are raised in their father's household with warmth and all the care given legitimate children. Regrettably, this has lead Beau Blackthorn to think his bastard status won't matter to the Lady Madelyne. He is very wrong.

Fast forward a number of years and Madelyne's sister, Chelsea, needs a husband fast. Her brother has fallen under the spell of a religious zealot and her sister is too involved in her own life to care. Chelsea sees Beau Blackthorn as her escape from marriage to her brother's spiritual leader. Being the direct sort, she walks right into his house and demands they elope. Problem is, Beau hasn't seen her since he was rejected by her sister. Chelsea, not being the sort to take no for an answer, soon has him on the road and headed for the altar.

Most of the action in The Taming of the Rake takes place as they hurtle from one destination to another, with events repeatedly redirecting them. Chelsea isn't terribly likeable, but if you accept that she is supposed to be a bit of a shrew (and much better than Madelyne) it's easy to warm to her. The set up for the brother's background is as original as the relationships between Chelsea's family members. I found The Taming of the Rake an enjoyable and light read that left me interested in the next two books. Unfortunately a secret hinted at in the close of The Taming of the Rake leaves me concerned. The premise of these men as bastards and the relationship between their parents is unique. I'm afraid there will be a last minute reveal of their legitimacy, some sort of being thought a bastard builds character moment that will undermine it all. I hope I'm wrong. This was a breezy read and a solid start to the trilogy. If you like Kasey Michaels at least as often as I do, it's worth checking out.

Review: The Girl's Guide to Homelessness by Brianna Karp

I wanted to like this book. Actually, I wanted to love this book. Sadly, Brianna Karp has done the unforgivable with The Girl's Guide to Homelessness. She has forced me to defend Fox News.

"Baby, you can't watch this. This is Fox News. It's not real news. No wonder " Duh. I grabbed the remote from his hand before he could hurl it in Nancy Grace's monologuing face. "How about we try a little CNN?" - Brianna Karp, TGGTH, 2011.


The most obvious problem is that Nancy Grace is not an employee of Fox News. If Nancy Grace is speaking, they are already watching CNN. The second is her tone. Her lover is making an error in his ignorance that she can make all better through her higher knowledge. Except she's wrong. So she's adopting this arch silly boy my culture let me show you it pose on a topic she knows nothing about. This isn't a small error of fact, this is proof of fiction. I don't doubt she and her lover watch television news.  I do doubt the truth of Brianna Karp's presentation of her life. She is simply too victimized and too noble and too good and those around her are too flawed and too evil and too everything else. As we used to say on the playground, "Get off the cross. We need the wood."

Karp takes pains to show how much better she is than every single soul she knows. When her trailer is towed after a written warning, she is not at fault. She had a verbal statement from the local manager that the written warning was simply corporate's posturing. Nothing to worry about! The little boss has said the big boss is all smoke! When her lover has a child with another woman, that woman is at fault for improper planning. When she has her own unplanned pregnancy*, the other woman is still at fault for manipulating her lover through their now present child. If only her lover had listened to her it would all be different! She knew what a problem that woman would be! (Insert her diatribe on how women don't appreciate men after they give birth and the good men she's seen wronged by crazy hormonal new mothers as a result. Oh yea, she goes there.) Her unemployed, cheating, unmedicated lover was just too sweet to see it. Wait a few pages though, he turns into a heartless monster who leaves her to die in the snow. Better to freeze than disbelieve, I suppose.

Karp starts off strong, but what begins as a journey into housing uncertainty (even she agrees she is not fully homeless) becomes a long list of ways she has done everything right only to be cruelly betrayed. This is a personality type I am more than a bit familiar with, so here Karp sets my BS meter off again. For example, the reader is supposed to believe that she is doing everything she can to change her situation, but Karp continually redirects money into nonessential areas.  She also prides herself on not using programs meant to assist her into stable housing, because those are for people that need help, not people like herself. (Yet she's willing to pursue Walmart for money after her illegally parked trailer is legally removed from their property. Go figure. She is absolutely one of those 'it's the principle of the thing' types.)

I felt tired after spending time with Karp. While the problem of homelessness and housing uncertainty is very real in America, Brianna Karp doesn't offer much to the reader's understanding of either. I believe a memoir from the other people in her life would illustrate a very different tale of a young life going wrong, and for that she has my compassion. What she doesn't have is my endorsement. If her goal was to change one person, she's changed me. I have often tried to explain my mother's propensity for hoarding with the line "She probably has the wrappers from her first trip to McDonald's." Now that Karp has used a similar phrase I will have to move on. I never want to be accused of lifting from her material.

*I find a great deal about this unplanned pregnancy and the subsequent loss of her child troubling. If true, she shows herself to be a deeply damaged woman. If not true, she shows herself to be the same. No matter which way the reader decides the truth lies, the result is a fervent hope that no child is placed in her care. It is an uncomfortable judgement to make about a stranger, but it is an extraordinary series of events the reader is asked to accept.

Review: The Vampire Voss by Colleen Gleason

This is a unique case.

It's rare for me not to finish a book that I've taken to review, much less move forward with the review. But this is not your typical DNF. So much is right with The Vampire Voss that I think I could adore it if it didn't hit my particular buttons quite so hard. Right, so here is the solution.

I am not going to review The Vampire Voss. Mostly. I'll explain what kept me from enjoying it, and if those are not things that would keep you from enjoying the book then I think it's worth a look. Gleeson has an easy writing style with a nice eye for characterization and description, her pacing is solid, and her worlds are well realized. There's a lot more to The Vampire Voss than my displeasure. (If my Sony hadn't bricked twice during my third go at the book I might have made it to the end!)

In this world of Vampires and Vampire Hunters there are also rare persons with The Sight. One of those is Angelica. Her ability to see the moment of a person's death brings her to the attention of (say it with me) The Vampire Voss. Voss is the kind of kid his mother might describe as 'intellectual, sensitive, easily bored' and the other kids might describe as 'a serious pain in the ass'. My problem with Voss, and thus my problem with the book, is that he is a date rapist of high order. He sees a woman, he roofies her with his magic eyes, and they can get it on. He admits he doesn't really care how willing she is at first because hey, she'll like it later. Maybe he comes to realize this is wrong. I don't know. I didn't care. He 'thralls' half a dozen women and I just see rapist.

Book two is The Vampire Dimitri.  Dimitri's mom might have described him as 'studious, committed, ethical' while the other kids probably called him 'a serious pain in the ass'. You know that these two men will end up together. Dimitri is the required pigs blood drinker, the vampire with regrets. There's a scene where Voss marvels at the unneeded pain Dimitri puts himself through for his beliefs, since in this universe Lucifer continually sends physical signals of his displeasure to the bodies of his men. Being good hurts, what can Voss tell you. Voss proves he's the good kind of rapist when after a scene that's a little bit Merchant Ivory Slasher Flick, a little bit West Side Story With Fangs he comes upon a defenseless Dimitri and... doesn't hurt him. Ok then.

I understand that the Vampire genre either skirts with or embraces non-consent as a very fact of it's existence. This makes many of the books fail for me, because my bad boys need to be a little less bad than the whole 'She'll want it by the time I'm done' thing. Angelica, of course, is somewhat immune to being enthralled. She can't be the one girl in all the world if she isn't, right? Don't let them have the milk, make them buy the cow.

I like Gleeson's style, I like her mechanics, I will absolutely try her again. For me, the sheer Vampireness of Voss keeps me from falling in love.

Review: My One And Only by Kristan Higgins

Kristan Higgins is a best selling author for a reason, she delivers the goods. She also bucks the trend of sexually descriptive romance to show that real intimacy happens with our clothes on. I'd feel comfortable handing this book to a young adult reader or my great grandmother. Since books are more fun when they're shared, I appreciate her choice.

 90% of My One and Only is engaging, realistic, heartwarming and rewarding. 10% of it made me want to toss it out the window. It's not that the 10% was bad (far from it) but it threw me out of a story I was totally engaged in. Our heroine is a hard charging divorce attorney jaded by life and jaded by her clients. What she hasn't done she's seen and what she's seen has made her deeply cynical. Harper's self protective and prides herself on being free of illusions. She also curses like a three year old child.

This might not bother you, in fact it might please many readers, but for me when the hardbitten Red Sox fan lets loose with "Crotch! Crochety crotch!" It's hard for me to take her seriously. Sure, she can conjugate it "Well, crotch! Oh, crotch!" but it doesn't help. Really, who says that? Do you have a friend who pulls her cell phone out of her pocket, looks down and says "Crotch. It's my boss." (Maybe I just need to get out more.) The other thing that threw me came in the last few chapters. Everything gets tied up neatly and cutely and by everything I mean every single little thing. I'm shocked the dog didn't get a surprise litter from a pedigreed princeling. It's a bit much. However! There's the other 90% of the book.

Our heroine has a pretty tidy life with an island home, a firefighter boyfriend and a priest for a best friend. She's doing alright. Sadly, she also has family. In Harper's case there's a little sister who likes to marry guys she's known about five minutes. Her most recent engagement is to Harper's ex-brother-in-law. As Harper would say, "Crotch!" (Ok, I'll let it go) Harper boards a plane and heads out to confront her sister's latest folly which means confronting one of her own. Nick is more than ready to reexamine their past. Since their divorce, he's moved on with his life but he never moved past Harper. They may have married too young, but they weren't wrong to marry.

Harper and Nick are savvy people damaged by life and afraid to invest too much in each other. They are also achingly familiar.  There's an element of "Just communicate!" at play, but it works here because the characters are afraid to talk to each other. Exposing their fears means exposing themselves to pain. Neither is the trusting type. I have to say I'm Team Harper all the way. I'd have divorced Nick too. But I can't blame her for taking him back, either. Older and wiser, he's still the right one for her. Even though he's a Yankees fan. Which reminds me - Kristan Higgins totally won the cover jackpot. Right down to the NY plate on the car and the dog by her side, My One and Only has the perfect cover for the story inside. Bold, charming and appropriate, I love the cover as much as the contents.

Review: Deadly Vows by Brenda Joyce

Ah, Francesca. You are so incredibly young and I have missed you so very much. What else would you do on your wedding day but run off to investigate a mysterious letter that threatens to expose you to ruin? If you stopped long enough to think it through, you wouldn't be the Francesca Cahill (Hart? Bragg?) we've come to love. So there you are, rushing off on your wedding day, planning to meet everyone at the church for a last minute slide into your dress and a picture perfect walk down the aisle. If we've learned one thing about you Francesca, it's that your plans always work out the way you expect them to. Can you leave a man at the altar and still marry him? Hart thinks not.

Deadly Vows is an absolute gift to fans of the Cahill series. There is all the nail biting "Francesca what are you thinking" action of the other eight books. Francesca continues to have more perils than the famous Pauline and Rick is still trailing behind her with his woeful face on. Calder seems to have had enough of it all, which makes sense. Calder's had about enough of everything. Thankfully, by the end of Deadly Vows the will she or won't she, does she or doesn't she is resolved (for now?) as well as the questions of Bertolla's pregnancy. If The Deadly Series ends here, it won't be the cliffhanger it once was. That said, there is no reason for Francesca to stop sleuthing. The series could as easily begin here as end, a reader could start with Deadly Vows and move forward, much as you can with one of Nora Roberts In Death books.

The Deadly Series is long on soaptastic action, which there is no shortage of here. Everyone is embroiled in some secret, heartrending angst, except Francesca's parents. (I have to tell you, I expect one of them to come out with some drama soon.) Deadly Vows finds them doing little but fretting as Francesca tries to find a stolen painting, eludes a madman (or three), children are kidnapped, and plots are revealed. Even Francesca's brother chooses between the Irish seamstress he might love and the pregnant mistress he certainly doesn't. Being late to leave the city for the summer house hardly compares. (Since Deadly Vows closes as most of the characters head for the beach, I can't wait to join them there in the next installment.)

My complaint, and I must always have one, is the relationship between Calder and Rick. As the series goes on it makes even less sense to me. Calder is the wealthy half brother to the crusading older Rick Bragg. Calder has mommy issues like woah. Seems Mommy always liked Rick best (even though she was really telling young Rick to look after his baby brother what with her dying and all) and his half brother's father came to rescue them while Calder's father wanted no contact at all. Rick sees Calder as a self important selfish tool incapable of true emotion, which I can understand. Calder has money, he has tantrums, and he has issues with Rick while Rick has been charged with caring for the cranky little snot. Calder, on the other hand, sees Rick as a self important windbag using his good works as a cover for his lack of character. I get both of those views. Where it starts to fall apart for me is the brothers are both close to Rick's father and Rick's other half brothers. Calder feels unloved and unloveable, which he seems to blame on Rick. Wouldn't he feel more of a bond with Rick, who shared their mother's struggle and death, than his protected and pampered youngest brothers? There has to be more to the Calder / Rick drama than Calder being in a snit over Rick's dad wanting him. This needs a bit more oomph or a working out of issues to satisfy.

I may sound like I'm Team Rick. You'd be wrong, I can easily list what my problems are with both of them but it will have to wait. I can't detail my frustration with Francesca, her men, and their serious problems with adult life, until the next one. The Deadly Series joys lie in being spoiler free as it all unravels and then ranting about how ridiculous this or that person was during the book. It's the very definition of guilty pleasure, but no guilt is required. I'm ready to give all three characters a serious time out, but I'll be back for the next book as soon as I can get my hands on it!

Review: Unveiled by Courtney Milan

At this point it's just embarrassing.

I should have at least some pride. It's not like it's the first time I've felt this way, there was another author once. (Ok, maybe a few, I'm not going to lie.) At this point I should be able to come up with something a little better for this review than "omgIlovedyourbooksomuch" shouldn't I? I've been reviewing for various places for long enough to know better. This is probably a book with flaws. I have no idea what they are. If you show me, I'll dispute them. This is Courtney Milan's best book. The sheer hell of it is that this is my absolute least favorite romance genre jumping point. I cannot stand books that set up the disinherited heroine trying to retain her property and her resentment of the newly inheriting lordling. Hate them all.

Smarty Pants Milan has knocked the legs right out from under me. In the case of Ash and Margaret, she has every right to be outraged. Rather than a simple death setting off a legal transfer of property, Ash has set out to obtain the property through completely honest but untraditional means. In a wild youth none can even imagine now, Margaret's father married his mistress. Unfortunately, by the time he married Margaret's mother said mistress had not died. (Which begs a question - if that mistress had children would they be in line to inherit? Will Ash end up handing it off to a completely unrelated third party? He's the sort that would, if he felt like it.) So, Margaret isn't just a spiteful princess when she resents Ash so much as breathing the air on the estate, she's just sensible.

Ash isn't headed for a comeuppance, either. He is the legal heir. The current holder of the title is a complete tool who deserves taking down a peg or fifty and his sons are pretty obnoxious as well, if not obnoxious enough for Margaret to realize Ash is somewhat in the right of it all. I think the underlying theme of this trilogy is going to be Things You Don't Tell Your Family. Unveiled isn't a book with unrealistic revelations, it's a book filled with the tiny "why didn't you tell me" moments that lead to so much emotional distance between people. Ash is a creature of instinct. He wants the property because it feels like the right course to take, and his instincts have rarely served him ill. Margaret is just learning what her instincts are after a lifetime of drifting along in her designated lane. Both of them are trying to remain loyal to their brothers while wanting to be loyal to each other. It is a wonderful conflict.

My enjoyment of this book was increased by personal identification. Ash has a crazy bible thumping parent? Me too! Ash has secret reasons for living by his impulses? Me too! Ash had to leave younger siblings behind to secure all their futures? Me too! I could go on, but you were bored at the first paragraph of this review and I've no idea why you've hung on as long as you have. Read this book. Join me in my girlish infatuation. Savor the small moments, such as a few lines revealing why every historical romance sex scene at a ball ever was impossibly wrong, or when the theme of this specific volume is revealed. You matter. You are important. I used similar words last October to explain why romance, as a genre, is important to me.


Unveiled is a perfect example. Buy it. Forget what I said about her last books, buy this one first. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to compose myself before I face the next book I'll be reading. (I feel sorry for it, really. I'll just be going through the pages.)

Review: The Francesca Cahill Novels by Brenda Joyce

I am ridiculously excited about the return of Francesca Cahill. HQN is rereleasing the last two books in the series for readers who missed it the first time (and there are far too many of you) so they can get excited as well. I used to say that the Cahill series was for people who think they don't like Brenda Joyce. Until the Cahill series began I was a reluctant fan of Brenda Joyce. I read her books but I didn't respect myself afterward. (In fact, some of the most scathing reviews I've ever written are of Brenda Joyce books.) Then came Francesca.

Oh Francesca, how do I love you? Let me count the ways.  In love with a married man? In love with his brother? Befriending lesbians? (One of whom was your fiance's lover!) Taking street waifs under your wing? Hoping your socialite brother will stop his wandering ways to settle down with that nice Irish laundress? Standing over dead bodies while fighting for women's rights? Wondering how to hide street urchins from your mother while sneaking off to college? Wandering through the wreckage of your sister's marriage? Francesca, what don't you have going on? Although you use 'sleuthing' more frequently than anyone can tolerate and have a bit of the Mary Sue about you, I always regret closing the book and leaving you behind. It's not the murders that matter, it's your wonderfully convoluted life. You make Sookie Stackhouse look like an underachiever. When you left us I had to break up with Brenda Joyce. She made a triumphant return to the past while I longed for your future.

But now you're coming back, Francesca!! Will you (wisely) marry Calder despite his decadent orgies? Does he want you for yourself or because his brother Rick can't have you - tied as Rick is to the beautiful yet tragically crippled Leigh Ann? Or is there yet another brother in the wings? Perhaps a man we haven't yet met is waiting to step out of the shadows and capture your heart. Someone will be murdered. You'll throw yourself into danger as you always do. Stopping in at a dinner party to pacify your mother, knocking your brother's opium out a window, you'll arrive at the crime scene with a sweep of your skirts and a sniff of disdain. After all who better than you, society's darling, to handle the cases the corrupt New York police cannot?

Let's just start casting the films already. Are you Anne Hathaway or Taylor Swift? Is your arch self assurance born of innate skill or naive overconfidence? I think you've already grown a fair amount from that young ingenue who looked into Rick Bragg's eyes and mistook his shallow disdain for romantic depth. I can't wait to see where you go, and I can't wait to complain about how you get there.

Review: Trial By Desire by Courtney Milan

You know when that band who put out that really great album that made them your favorite band ever put out their second album and you were so excited until it wasn't the first album which made you so sad but then time passed and you realized you liked the new album too?

Yea.

Trial By Desire is like that.

No wait! It's not! Actually, there are two copies of Trial By Desire being reviewed. Some reviewers got an ARC of the unfinished book. While it was interesting to look at the editing process, it does Courtney Milan no favors to have a rough draft used to review the polished gem. Family drama. Super awesome courtroom sequence. Happy ending! Buy it. Read it. Love Courtney Milan if you're new to this author. Wait - why are you new to Courtney Milan? Do you hate reading? What's going on here?

Oh right. back to the book. Ned finished Proof By Seduction on the edge of a forced marriage with Kate. Kate is completely awesome. She marries Ned, has Ned do that whole "It's not you, it's me, I'll be finding myself" thing and moves on with her life. Being male, he thinks he's done her a favor. What he's really done is make her life a great deal more complex than it needed to be. While she waits for Ned to grow up, Kate works to secretly free abused women from their situations. Ned returns and slowly (again, he's male) discovers that Kate really doesn't trust him anymore. Why should she? He didn't make their marriage (or her) a priority in the past.

Ned's effort to regain Kate's trust plays out beautifully. There are no Big Misunderstandings, no Failure To Express The Heart, none of the standard shortcuts to a relationship on the edge of ending. Ned and Kate's communication issues are ones of assumption and fear. "If I show you who I really am, will you leave me?" I fell for Ned and Kate completely. If you missed this title, go back and take a look at it. Courtney Milan is one of my favorite authors.

Review: Good Girls Don't Get Fat by Robyn Silverman

Are you a girl?
Are you the parent, grandparent, friend, teacher or caregiver of a girl?
Do you know any girls?

Go ahead and buy Good Girls Don't Get Fat. (You might even couple it with another fairly recent release, The Hundred Year Diet by Susan Yager.) Reading Dr. Silverman's guide on helping children avoid eating disorders is like a window into your own damaging programming. In America, we do equate size with value. In a human, the lowest possible volume has the highest value. It's good to be hungry, it's good to be unhealthy if you can show the right silhouette. Good Girls Don't Get Fat points out how this message is turned into self hatred by young women every day. Nothing tastes as good as chasing the approval of others is supposed to feel.

Dr. Silverman points out things the average person might not consider. If a father praises a stepmother with a different figure than the mother, a child sharing that body type hears that she is unattractive. In her mind, her mother's appearance and her own are tied together. Her stepmother's physical type replaces her mother's as an ideal to strive for. If a mother talks about her own weight concerns, the child adopts those as her own as well. An unthinking comment about outgrown clothing can be twisted into a message that the child needs to lose weight. Even the natural weight gains of puberty, the puppy fat years, are made undesirable by the increase in images of undersized tween starlets.

Dr. Silverman's book is easy to use, practical and so very important to understanding how our attempts to foster a positive body image can occasionally be the cause of the child forming a negative one. Really, the only thing Dr. Silverman does not cover is how to model healthy body image if a parent is morbidly obese. Not every parent reading will be able to model body acceptance or healthy weight control.

Reading Good Girls Don't Get Fat reminded me of The Hundred Year Diet in that both deal with artificial media images causing real health concerns. For the former, it's beauty images. For the latter it's scare tactics. Every diet under the sun has it's roots in an earlier diet that didn't really work for that generation either. Long before America actually had a weight crisis, it believed it had one and manufactured chemical food substitutes to answer a weight concerned market. Without fad dieting, there is no diet cola. While Good Girls Don't Get Fat has only a minor flaw, The Hundred Year Diet is a less perfect read. It's information is also compact and usefully categorized, but it fails to feel as vital. Taken together they're the perfect tools helping your tween understand how the diet industry teaches her to hate her body.

Review: Medusa's Folly by Alison Paige

It has been suggested to me that I am a snob. Several books have been presented to me as Worthy Reads that I have rejected because I think they're probably dreadful reads. Unwilling to pay for the Alison Paige book suggested to me, I paid for a short story instead. Erotic elements have been a much larger part of romance over the last decade or so as they get redefined as making the read 'hot' or increasing the emotional connection between the characters.

(It is interesting to me, if I can take a side road for a moment, how the politics of sex and romance change over the years. In the 80's we had the sweet books, the rape books, and the interracial books. Now we have the inspirational books, the hot reads, and the erotic books. Interracial relationships are pretty much gone, even the horrible depictions from the plantation novels.)

You know the classic definition of pornography, right? I know it when I see it? I am not sure why it is unacceptable to call something porn. If romance cannot be labeled 'porn for women' (and I agree, it should not be) then what should porn for women be called if not, well, porn for women? Erotica is a different animal - it is something that rises above it's primary goal of sexual titillation to successfully portray deeper dynamics of human relationships. While I don't care for Megan Hart, I do think she clears that bar. Anne Desclos clears that bar with both her work The Story of O and it's repudiation, Return to Roissy.  (There is some controversy over the author of the second work. I find it brilliant in it's splintering of the fairy tale O has sold herself in the first.) Mr. Benson clears the bar for John Preston. Alison Paige takes the bar in the gut.

I don't know why that has to be a pejorative judgement. As porn, individual taste is individual taste. I am certain there are people who are perfectly content to read about greek goddesses leaving snail trails of 'cream' on acid rain bathed gargoyles without needing it to say anything more than that. Porn is where the money is. As a story, judged as more than a temporary shelter for a sexual offering, Medusa's Folly completely failed me. The initial explanation, that Medusa is so hungry for gratification that she must cling with desperation to whatever she can find makes no sense to me. If she has (as she suggests) been sexually involved with men she then met the gaze of (turning them to stone) mid act, one would think she has quite a collection of stone partners. With about five minutes consideration, she could easily create a way to have sex with human men without meeting their gaze. Her desperate hunger for human contact falls flat.

We will grant that she has run about checking to see if any of the gargoyles are up for it. So now we have Medusa, created to seek the destruction of all men because of her anger at her long ago rapist, and this stone dude who suddenly comes to life because.... that's not important. He was created by another goddess for failing to grant her sexual favors when he was obviously a man-whore and totally up for it with everyone else. Pissed her off. (Nobody seeks his consent, isn't that rape?) Turns out she's Medusa's mother. (Figures.) With one meeting of the eyes, Medusa and Uphir have fallen in love. Because they do, whatever, it's an eternal and devoted love. Mom doesn't understand. So she makes a deal. If they revoke their god status, they can be together. Of course they do. Because otherwise neither of them can ever have human sex again.

(Another side note - yesterday Amazon was selling this title. Today it disappeared from title search results, but was still on the author's search results. This evening it is no longer for sale to US customers. Is Amazon feeling some Kindle article heat? I don't know. Amazon has been good to me, we're cool.)

Anyway, I'll take a pass on the more expensive book. I know what I like and I'm just not interested in porn. Erotica I'll consider, but I prefer books about human relationships in their emotional and psychological complexity. Maybe one day we will understand why, as women, we can't just have porn. Maybe we'd spend less time defending conventional romance if we stopped trying to make the umbrella big enough to encompass every possible description. Maybe not. People do love to hate books where woman are respected or valued. Almost as much as they love to award ones where they are abused and thrown aside with the trash.