Retro Review: Burn by Linda Howard

Are you as fascinated as I am by revisiting my past? No? Dude, what's wrong with you? Ok, well, since I am I bring you another review from the Blog Community I Completely Forgot About. I kind of recall writing this one. Unlike the last one. Maybe I was coming down from the Doxorubicin. (I'd say enjoy, but I don't think that's the right sentiment here.) Love the rating I gave Burn. Looks like I was bitter. (Let's not talk about it.)


Title: Burn
Author: Linda Howard
Genre/Historical Period: Contemporary
Grade/Rating: Not As Bad As Death Angel
Summary/Review: Titanic Meets Category Romance
Part of a Series?: Concentrate And Ask Again
Would I recommend this book?: I wouldn't knock it out of your hands and scream "RUN"

You know, if I hated Burn the title itself would write the review. Given the last few books Linda Howard has written, I think it's pretty brave to call a book Burn (especially since it has just about jack all to do with the content). Then again, given that her next book is called Ice, this might just be some publisher branding meme. Burn is  two stories at once, and it is neither great nor terrible, it straddles the fence of lost opportunity and tries not to fall off. So there are going to have to be spoilers, right?

We meet our heroine, Jenner (right away you know her parents are loons) as she struggles home from her dead end job at the meat packing factory. If you've ever been poor, working a dead end job, or exhausted while some good looking loser expects you to bring home the beer, you'll find that Jenner's exhaustion rings completely true. Here I got excited because for the first time in a long time Howard wasn't giving me a beautiful buffed gal living in luxury with a few problems on the side. Finally we were back in reality land with a hard working woman driving a beat down car and standing in the Michelob line on a Friday night. Prince Charming was due with his tool belt any second, right?

Wrong. Jenner wins Powerball. Sure, she calls it the lottery, but with a 300 mil payout, those of us on the Michelob line know what game she was really playing.  It stays interesting because Jenner sensibly panics and takes the reader through all the post win steps you never think about. Like it taking months for the money to show up, and most winners blowing it all on craft beer and hookers. But not Jenner, cause it's not even her beer. She finds herself an up and coming lesbian (no, really, and may I say a huge thank you to Howard for bucking the trend of introducing gay characters just to kill them or have them turn evil?) and invests that cash like woah. Meanwhile, everyone in her cobbled together life proves themselves unstable and desert her.

(Let's take a moment to examine the class warfare that's about to go into play. Before Best Pal uses her for money, and having lots of money makes her see that. But her After Best Pal uses her for a backbone, and that's ok. Being used for money BAD. Being used as an emotional crutch GOOD. Since Jenner never goes poor, she doesn't really have to worry about how her new BFF would relate to a meat packer, does she?)

Alright, so Jenner gets rich but not happy. She discovers that taxes suck and tax breaks are not as plentiful on the ground as she'd been led to think, and that having money is actually quite a burden on 
Ms Howard Jenner. Rich people are untrusting, but much nicer than you'd think, and charity functions are really all about charity. Now that these things are off her chest, we leave absolutely everything up to this point behind. Seriously, rip the first half of the book out and set it on fire, leave the book in the closet for a year, start over, and you'll find it makes as much sense as it was going to make. The long set up of who Jenner is and why she is and her change in circumstances are only there to place her on a boat. Jenner, who has always had trouble fitting in, but now has trouble from a place of money and is smart (since she doubled her lotto win with investments) and only lost 20% in the recent market crash (well done Ms. Howard! Jenner!) boards a boat while her Bestie does not! There, you've got all you'll need for background.

Ok, so in the second book, Jenner is held captive by one of those lawless dudes that Ms. Howard likes almost as much as her "barely wet" fast, um, expressions of love. And her condoms. Seriously, this guy (whose name I already forgot - I think it's Cael but I kept calling him Caul like it was some kind of hoodrat thing) has coworkers who pass condoms out to people they think should sleep together. Can you imagine? You walk by your boss and you say "Hey buddy, I saw how you and marketing were eyeing each other - Catch! I brought you crazy kids a prezzie!! Its got a vibrating ring!" Yea, there's employment security. Anyway, she meets him, he's kinda hot, he kidnaps her so he's not so hot, she thinks he might rape her so he's REALLY not hot, he makes it clear that he's aware of the power disparity and No Rape Will Happen In This Book, No Matter How Alpha I Am, and things settle down to the plot. This would have been a most awesome plot except the bad guy totally tells you everything bad he's going to be doing. And it's awesome bad. It's so bad you want him to succeed and the whole book to be about them trying to stop it and the slow unfolding of events and the aftermath on all of them who survive and how it affects them and.... right, well, not so much the way it happens.

They don't even figure out what's going on until the very last section of the book. It's all Julie and Gopher and Lido deck shenanigans while a kidnapping contract worker and his really wealthy but spiritually lost captive find their way to each other through her savvy intellect and his willingness to be seduced. Then suddenly, pretty much by accident, they find out the bad guy is wanting to go all Titanic so Celine Dion will write songs for him, and it's a rush to save anyone they can. Which is kinda awesome but way too short. And there's no clean up - it's Wow! We are in DANGER and then it's DANGER ON and then it's Danger Over, Six Months (or whateves) Later. They don't even float in the water and think about which person they'd eat if they got, like, really hungry and people had to be eaten. Or have to explain to the Coast Guard why Titanic is being recreated in warm tropical waters. 

It's not a bad read, it's kind of an enjoyable read in several places. As a whole, it's incomplete. I wouldn't buy it in hardcover but as a library book I'd totally do it once.

Retro Review: Mastered By Love by Stephanie Laurens

When you've been reviewing as long as I have you can't be expected to recall every word ever written. I've done reviewing as a paying gig (not currently) as a hobby (that would be this) and as that person at the party who won't stop talking to you.  I've seen a million books and failed to be rocked by them all. Still, when a comment notification came up in my inbox I was surprised to find that not only did I fail to recall this 2009 review - I failed to recall being a member of the site it was on. (It's totally me though, my password and everything.) While it punches a little harder than I would generally swing on It's My Genre, Baby I am going to reprint it here because it makes me laugh. (My joy is your reason for existing, duh.)

Also, I think I was high. I believe I was doing a lot of Cytoxan in those days. (Kids, if it has the word Tox, like in Toxin, it's not going to be as much fun as you think.) Um, if you're Stephanie Laurens you might want to stop reading now. I stand behind really not liking the book, but I'm not wanting to pull the wings off butterflies or anything like that. Kthxbye. Oh no, wait, no Kthxbye yet. What is up with this cover? Is that the world's largest dental dam? She's naked and really happy - he's kind of on her hip bone - I dunno, it's confusing me. This color purple is the exact color of the book I once painted my nails to match so boys would notice me on the beach. Somehow I thought if my nail color and book jacket were in harmony, it would be hot. I wasn't the smartest kid. (I'm not sure this review is going to argue for my adulthood. Let's be real - I wrote part of it to the tune of Kidnap The Sandy Claws.)

Ironically (is it?) I get this reminder of why I stopped reading Laurens just as a Viscount Breckenridge arc showed up in my mail. Fingers crossed, kids. Fingers crossed.

Title: Mastered By Love
Author: Stephanie James
Genre/Historical Period: Regencyland
Grade/Rating: Is there a G?
Summary: An absolute chore
Part of a Series?: Bastion Club (Finale)
Would I recommend this book?: Oh hell no
Planning to read anything else by this author?: Not anymore.

OMGZ you guys I hated this book soooooooo much.

And if that was the entire content of my review, I'd have exceeded the quality of the book already.

I don't know - I think this book would be popular with a tween looking for a great deal of sexual description without having to be caught reading an erotic book. It has it all. Pages and pages of all. From 'she was sopping wet already' to crimson silk sheets and blindfolds, it's like a checklist of sexual cliche and excess description. She can summarize a major plot scene in two lines, decades of his life in three paragraphs, but its dozens of pages of sex, a few paragraphs to set up the next day, and then back in bed.

She forgot to include the romance. But it's not erotic either. It's just tiring. Like trying to be interested in a poorly shot porn video your friends made when you haven't slept in hours and don't really care. The prevailing feeling is how soon can I get away from these people? It leaves you emotionally fatigued and diminishes everyone involved.

There are GREAT building blocks here - a spinster running the dukedom, the sudden and unexpected death of the estranged father, an international plot centered on a master traitor and the cadre of spies who've been hunting him, (and honestly, by the time the spy is revealed you realize the only way he ever beat anyone was by their being bone stupid) and multiple base born adult children existing on their estranged brother's estate.

Why use ANY of that when you have crimson silk sheets? And you've decided to make your all powerful hero inept and bungling? His study of people, his abilities to guess what they will do before they know themselves, all out the window in favor of a generic Tru Hero Who Sux At Luv. And the mastermind behind all the traitorous acts of the entire series? A bumbling freak who talks to himself incessantly. Seriously, he CANNOT shut up. He spends a page and a half while he thinks the heroine is out cold deciding how to rape and kill her best - like Dustin Hoffman in Rainman as a deranged killer. THIS is the guy who outwitted everyone?? He leaves the most mindnumbingly obvious clue to their location, but it doesn't matter, because Our Hero And His Buddies are TSTL and with a force of at least - well - more than three - decide the answer is for most of them to hide outside and make no noise while the other approaches via Certain Death Trap alone. I can think of at least seven different ways to approach the situation that are less idiotic than the one they choose - but hey. That lets the heroine be drugged, assaulted, murder someone, and then go back to her party!!!! No harm, no foul!

Did I mention they were passing out TSTL candy like it was Halloween? Cause they were. Which made me think of Mr. Talky the Villain Of Self Soundtracking as the missing member of the Nightmare Before Christmas Trio -

Kidnap the Chatelaine
Take her to the mill
Throw her on the big stone slab
And monologue at will.

I'm breaking up with her. Meredith Duran and I have been flirting lately, I think it's time to offer her the spot on my auto-buy list. I hope Stephanie Laurens doesn't go all stalker on me, she needs to understand that when she does me like that I have to move on for my own self respect. I wish her luck, there's someone for everyone, right?