Review: Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet

It's rare I'm actually angry when I finish a book. Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet seriously pissed me off. Not only am I done with the series, I'm done with Darynda Jones as an author. She's on my don't-for-the-love-of-self-ever-read-this list. While I suspected it in Third Grave Dead Ahead, Fourth Grave underlines it, wraps it in a pretty package and sticks a bow on the top. Jones has taken what was an irreverent and interesting world with a strong voiced heroine and reduced it to an abuse fetish. If women who love dysfunctional abusive jerks are your thing, Darynda Jones is writing for you.

In the last book Charley was beaten and left for bait by her lover, Reyes. Her father also set her up as bait in order to protect his other daughter and the bitch stepmother that made Charley's childhood hell. In both cases Charley is physically harmed by a man who is supposed to love her, then left for dead. As Fourth Grave opens Charley is suffering from PTSD (for about a minute) and dealing with the emotional fallout of the previous events. Mostly by chasing after Reyes and being totally up for it. She shows some token anger at her father (who also spends part of this book shooting her) but quickly forgives him as well. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Bar. Be. Que.

No, Jones is not foxtrot kidding me, she's completely serious. Reyes controls Charley, misleads her, withholds vital information from her, threatens to kill her family (again!) becomes furiously angry at her when she asks questions or doesn't act on knowledge she doesn't have, gives her the silent treatment and deceives her. Charley cries and apologizes for not understanding him enough. I don't know why. Almost all of the book is Charley trying to understand poor, poor Reyes or wanting to have sex with super hot sexy Reyes. Reyes is an abusive homicidal ass. He leaves Charley high and dry over and over. She can't talk to his friends or his family. He doesn't even want her to know where he lives. He wishes Charley would just man up and quit sniveling because if she did she'd be so special.

Screw that. If I want to read about a woman being gaslit by an abuser with a savior complex I'll read the paper. I simply don't believe that if Charley takes enough physical and emotional abuse from Reyes and others she will become a better person. I no longer care about the heaven versus hell underpinnings of the story. The interesting characters have been sidelined in favor of more abuse dynamics. Charley is abducted by a bank robber and fantasizes about sex with him after he duct tapes her to a chair in an abandoned building. Charley mistreats a man who has (literally) been to hell for her and is always there for her. She treats with the most contempt the man who is the most considerate. Charley is ill. I can't watch the train wreck any longer.

Adding to my discontent is the inconsistent components of the other characters. Amber is 12. we are supposed to believe that this 12 year old girl kept a traumatizing and life threatening experience secret from her mother, whom she is close to. We are also asked to believe she finds Reyes attractive and finds overhearing relations between Charley and Reyes stimulating instead of embarrassing, disgusting or appalling. Like Charley, anything female of any age surrounding this abusive ass must be up for it, despite the unlikely age component involved. Cookie, her mother, places fighting demons above her child's safety. I can't even address Charley's father in this limited space so let's move on to her neighbor, Peri. Demons are possessing people who can see auras. Peri sees auras. Demons are surrounding Charley's life and looking for access points. Peri has access to Charley and is in her life. Demons never possess Peri, choosing bodies from other states instead. There is no longer any logic to Charley's world. People make choices to serve the story and for no other reason. Even seeing the dead has been shuttled to the side as an afterthought and a page filler instead of a way to drive the narrative forward. Jones gives every appearance of dragging the main points of the story through as many books as the market will bear. There is no end in sight for the reader. I'm disappointed that a series of such promise has devolved into an unpleasant experience.

Review: The Beginner's Guide To Rakes by Suzanne Enoch

People are not happy with my Amazon review of this one, but I have to stand by it. Diane is bat-shit crazy. By any yardstick you care to use, she is dangerously unhinged. Oliver at first seems to be fairly balanced, if a walking STD but by the end of the book you see why these two crazy (and I do mean crazy) kids are together. I've seen a number of reviews focus on the title, completely ignoring the insanity contained within. Look, I like Suzanne Enoch but she's a roller coaster of an author. When she's good, she's very very good and when she's bad, well, Sweet Jesus. I got over the whole conflating I-95 with the turnpike thing in her West Palm Beach series, I got over half of the Adventurers Club, but I have no idea where we go from A Beginner's Guide To Rakes. Suzanne, it's not you but it is definitely, absolutely, positively Diane.

Ok, so let's spoil this one. There is no way to adequately represent how much Oliver needs a restraining order without doing so. When we meet Diane she is determined to open a gaming club. As a respectable young widow who lost everything to her dead husband's gaming ways, she has decided to turn the tables and become the house. Since her business partner has turned up dead, her solution is to blackmail a former lover (Oliver) into loaning her tens of thousands of dollars and training her (all female but not whores) staff so she can realize her dream. Forget the incredibly slender thread of blackmail she has. Forget that Oliver KNOWS she is a master forger. Just go with the fact that he will be blackmailed. Oliver knows she's a master forger because after her husband's death Diane forged all the non-entailed property deeds into her name. (Keep in mind, the rightful heir is the villain of this book. How DARE he want his family property after Diane suffered a bad marriage to his brother? All of that is hers!) Ok, so Crazy-pants Criminal is our heroine and Walking STD is our hero. (He's one of those guys who pulls out of one chick while thinking about banging another in a few minutes. How tedious of these women who want to be treated like actual beings instead of a vessel for his pleasure. How histrionic of them.)

Still with me?

So Diane has her all female gaming club in the renovated downstairs of her stolen home with her blackmailed ex-lover living upstairs. Diane hates Oliver. HATES him. (Dead bunnies in the bed hate. Shredded clothes dipped in her own blood hate. Crazy hate.) She hates him because after two great weeks in bed a few days after the death of her husband he left her. She carries a gun in her pocket, she is so angry. She checks drawers to make sure a gun is always at hand. She threatens to shoot him to get her money. A few days later after some flirty action, he kisses her and walks from the room. So she does what any bat-shit crazy heroine would do. She shoots him in the back. Which everyone treats as normal. Of course you would. Never mind infection, never mind lack of antibiotics, never mind that she is bat-shit crazy, who wouldn't shoot a guy after a kiss? Duh! It's not like it slows Oliver down. No infection, no disability in movement, no discomfort wearing his clothes - within two pages he is his old agile un-shot self. Now he checks the rooms for guns before dealing with her, so her staff keeps threatening to shoot him.

Soon Diane needs more money. When faced with a blackmailing bat-shit crazy gun-toting criminal who hates you, the obvious solution is to pay her to bang you. But not just bang you, Oliver has a whole romantic escapade planned. He left her high and dry after their two week fling because he was beginning to love her. Oliver, this isn't love, this is STOCKHOLM SYNDROME! Run, dude! Run fast and far!! Even worse, this book is sequel bait. We're going to meet more of the ladies in the gaming club and their psycho self justifying boss in later books. By the time Oliver breaks through her ceiling for sex (while the club is open, the hell?) I'd lost any concern for him either. Benchley, the rightful heir of the house is not the bad guy! Trying to get his property returned is not evil! Toward the end of the book Enoch seems to realize this and hastily makes Benchley a slimy gambler who blackmails our loving couple. It's a bit late. I can't even get into the society matrons demonstrating on the steps and being bought off with a charity version of Diane's successful Ladies Night, much less her tour of White's. I'm as much a fan of Romanceland as the next girl, no stickler for historical accuracy when a good tale is spun - but c'mon, son!

This book was one long WTF for me. It might be a brand killer, I have to sit and think about it for a time. Enoch and I, we had some good times together. We had some bad times together. But we've never had bat-shit crazy times before. I never want to read about Diane again, if this is the launch of a series I'm probably going to have to sit it out.

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.

Missed Review: Bonnie by Iris Johansen

I don't think I am going to be reviewing Bonnie. I'm not even sure I am going to read it. Quinn might have been my last Iris Johansen book, and like so many endings I didn't know it while it was occuring. I mention this only because I have reviewed several other books in the series and because I need to say something in relation to this book.

I was wrong.

During the reset of the series that occurred in Eve and Quinn, I formulated a theory that Johansen was going to bring out a twist ending. I could see the groundwork laid for the twist. With so many books behind her, so many changes made to the character of Eve, a twist seemed the only resolution that made sense. Again, I was wrong. The twist is that there is no twist.

Readers of Bonnie should get some resolution explaining the fate of Eve's daughter. To be frank, I used Amazon's Look Inside feature to preview the book. With some judicious keyword searches I was able to determine that the writing choices Johansen has been making of late, the ones that drive me the craziest, are in full display in Bonnie. Saint Bonnie continues her path to canonization as the story moves ever farther from it's working class roots. It appears that people who may or may not be main characters will die. Joe and Eve may or may not get another adopted kid to raise. Bonnie and her Bugs Bunny shirt will absolutely continue to heal the dead, soothe the afflicted, and elevate the existence of all within her glow. I'm not sure I can sign on for 400 or so pages of that again. Still, I am not one to bail on a deal be it stated or implied so for the third and probably final time...

I was wrong.

Review: Quinn by Iris Johansen

This one sucks. It's rare that I say a book was a complete waste of my time. Quinn was not only a waste of that time, it made me feel my investment in the Eve Duncan series was misguided. I'll address Quinn as a book first.


Quinn jumps through times, events and people so quickly that readers will need to have read Eve (at the very least) to keep up. Divided roughly into thirds, the first third deals with the meeting of Joe and Eve, the second with the people surrounding them at present, and the last with a relationship between a side character and Bonnie's father. Ending with a sharp cliffhanger, Quinn offers no resolution for a one book reader and little plot advancement for a long time fan. Johansen's work has been very erratic for the last few years. Quinn easily belongs in the bottom tier of her work. While Quinn hits paperback in November, (just four months after it's hardcover release) I suggest skipping this volume entirely and continuing on (if you must) to Bonnie.

All of that said, it's time for some spoilers. In this recasting of the first meeting of Eve and Joe, Joe finds himself in love with Eve scant days into their acquaintance. While the staple of instant attraction is an old one in romance the long time reader will recall that at one point Joe Quinn was married. Subsequent books hinted that Joe had married simply to provide Eve with female companionship, but this version of their relationship makes that explicit. Joe's wife does not exist in Quinn, he has not even met her. This means at some point Joe is going to knowingly seduce and wed a woman he does not love and then express anger at her when she is jealous of his unexpressed feelings for Eve. It is not a case of Joe not having recognized how he felt about Eve when he married, he knows it. Our hero is going to completely tank some woman's life as he tries to help Saint Eve find Bonnie of Nazarene. Also, all that stuff where he pulls the class card on Eve during her relationship with John Logan? Joe is rich too. He might not be a billionaire, but he is a trust fund baby. Nice. Ok, so now that we've blasted a hole through the interpersonal dynamics of the early books we can move on.

Quinn is so far removed from the Eve Duncan I fell in love with. This series is like an abusive relationship for me. Every time I try to leave the carrot of resolution is held out. (I swore off Eve Duncan books right before this trilogy was announced. With Eve I thought we were nudging closer to the right track, but Quinn is off the rails.) When we first met Eve she was a hard working recluse who was driven by her work to resolve deaths for other families. Remember her? When is the last time Eve worked on anything? Saint Eve brings all the crime lords to her yard as she dips into the world of mercenaries, psychics and sadistic killers without finding her daughter or a grave for herself. People meet Eve and they are willing to give their lives for her. Eve, carrying the standard for Bonnie of Nazarene, charges blindly into every fray. Bonnie started out as a cute kid whose unsolved murder was the catalyst for her mother's valuable career as a forensic artist. Now she appears to people in psychic visions and is a perfect shining beacon of light. She can lead the dying back to life, instruct the living on their next move, and sing songs to captured prisoners across the world. If she had a loaf, she'd turn it into fish. She isn't a kid anymore, she's a cult leader.

This is another problem. When we met Eve and her daughter they were normal people in a tragic situation working toward improving the lives of other victims. Now Eve commands a multinational task force, seemingly unlimited government resources, and the belief that she can judge who lives or dies. She's a tyrant. These same shadowy government types working all around her have lifted this hard working single mother to an iconic figure. From drug lord to psychic to man on the street, Eve Duncan has only to speak to them to enslave. It's all a bit much. Her child's murder will turn into a kidnapping as her "special, special, Bonnie" is shown to be some sort of super human used for nefarious purposes by those same government agents. The reason she can't find Bonnie's grave is that there isn't one. I will bet you that right now.

Perhaps I could accept this shift of narrative if it were more smoothly executed. Instead Quinn is filled with clunky conversations and long passages where motivations are told repeatedly instead of shown once. People are presented as ideas and abilities border on the superhuman. Motivations shift. Tracking down who she believes to be Bonnie's murderer, Eve's friend Catherine pauses to wonder if she will kill him or sleep with him. No, really, she does. She thinks she's on the track of an unstable child killer, she has left her own recently returned child behind, and she rolls about in Gallo's sheets 'sensing him' (even though others have been sleeping in the bed and the sheets are fresh) while wondering if they will be lovers. These have become some sick individuals.

Review: Record Collecting For Girls by Courtney E. Smith

I feel bad about this review and I haven't even written it yet.  Let's preface everything by saying I hope between the time I write this (May) and the book's release (September) the publisher seriously reconsiders both the marketing and the cover copy. Record Collecting For Girls absolutely fails to deliver what it promises.

On the positive side, the design is fantastic. Arresting, visually assertive, all around excellent cover work. As well, the first chapter is fantastic. While reading it I was planning who to buy the book for at Christmas, who'd talk with me about it first. It was the proverbial hit single of a dog album. The rest of Record Collecting For Girls took me from irritation to rage and then to resigned disillusionment. The cover promises "Unleashing Your Inner Music Nerd One Album At A Time," It also vows "Gives Readers Tips For Curating A Real Record Collection." That bit is a complete joke. Smith doesn't believe in record collections, she believes in Hype Machine and extra hard drives and pirating singles instead of evaluating albums. Her records and CDs have been boxed for years, by book's end she is discarding them. This is not a girl's guide to a broad appreciation of music, it's a long recitation of the romantic failings in Smith's life and what she chose to listen to while she got over them. Let's go chapter by chapter.

• Record Collecting For Girls will sell a lot of copies as a Kindle sample. It's funny, focused, and correct in stating music conversation is dominated by the male perspective. Someone should take this chapter and write the book it belongs in.
• Top Five Lists does feel like a springboard to a real conversation about music as Smith explains how (to hold her own with boys) she came to her cutting edge choices of Elvis Costello, REM, Sleater-Kinney, Stevie Nicks and Fiona Apple. Here, among all these (white) critical darlings, you start to realize that you're going to Epcot instead of on a World Tour. (Fiona, Stevie, not your fault.)
• Where Have All The Girl Bands Gone? Mixing a small bit of info about the Go-Go's with an assertion that The Bangles were underrated Smith takes a drive by at Phil Spector's influence and name drops some early punk and post Lilith Fair without really exploring much of it. Sex sells. Unless you're the Dixie Chicks.
• My Scrobble, Myself. How to see what boys like to listen to and evaluate what you're listening to. 
• Making Out With Romeo And Juliet. How to decide what to play while trying to get laid, by a boy, and how to impress that boy (never a girl I guess) with your fine taste in music without scaring him off with your mad taste in music and a little bit about how soundtracks are compiled. Plus, boys (not girls) and making out. 
• Guilty Pleasures. Smith feels if you don't have a guilty pleasure you're pompous or boring. She likes the Pussycat Dolls. She thinks you should like what you like unless it's the Black Eyed Peas and then you shouldn't. 
• The Smiths Syndrome. Where to start? Pick a band, then refuse to ever date anyone who likes that band because they are all the same. To back this up, (Why are we still talking about dating? When do we really talk about music, it's evolution, or crafting a course of personal study?) she declares that all avid Smiths fans are mommy's boys obsessed with serial killers. Wow. That's so offensive and wrong I'm not sure how to articulate it. As an avid Smiths fan (by her criteria) and one of Moz (although I am currently boycotting him)  as well I must say I can't agree. Nor do the male Smiths fans I know discuss serial killers, concern themselves with serial killers or wear pompadours. And yes, we do travel long distances to see Moz. Hey, that's her world, she can live there. Nothing to me. 
• Give It To Me For Free shows Smith claiming that free music sells music. While I agree with that assertion, it's hard to take it seriously amid her repeated urgings that we get all our music from Hype Machine.
• Are We Breaking Up? Smith has music she likes to listen to when boys dump her or she dumps boys. She'd give up on boys but she still wants someone to pay half her bills. (No, really.) This chapter caused my partner to say "If this is how women discuss music it's amazing Joan Jett can stand to be a lesbian."
• The Next Madonna holds Madonna up as awesome. For all her flashing of her indie music creds and bragging on the width of her musical knowledge, Smith spends all her time in the top of the pops. Is Britney the next Madonna? Is Gaga? Why is Madonna herself? Let's talk about these three white girls a lot. I suppose the many women who worked in music during Madonna's career can never matter as much as Madonna. Let's just move on.
• Music Blogs Are Just Dadaist Conversation. Smith feels people are inadequate when they write about music. (The jokes write themselves here.) You should find some blogs and download lots of free music to see what you like. Maybe even set up an RSS feed to amass more music than you can practically listen to. (Waiting for the bit about buying music to show back up, but it doesn't.) All free and semi legal, she says. While I am not against music blogs (I use plenty) it's a bit both sides of the mouth, her position on paying for your tunes. Don't archive records or CDs, amass free tracks - and then what? Buy legal copies of the mp3s? 
• Our Song, Your Song, My Song is a way to talk MORE about dating. Having established in the intro that a problem with women breaking into music is their quality being viewed through the lens of male attraction, we now view our music as it relates to attraction. (That's deep, huh?) How do you know if it's your song? What if it was already their song? Let's talk even more about the authors love life, because this book isn't really about music and how to love it, explore it, understand it - this book is about the author and boys. 
• The Death of the Record Collection - Oh yes she does.
• Adventures in Second Live shows Smith doesn't just use RSS feeds, MTV freebies and the like - she also enjoys hard to find sections of online gaming. Because it's hard to find, it's awesome. 
• Rock'N'Roll Consorts. At first I thought Smith had tired of talking about her own sex life and was moving on the sex life of others, but really she wanted to talk more about hers. First we talk about how ick groupies are (never mind she is mostly judging a woman from the 1960's who experiences a culture and state of mind that Smith shows no real interest in exploring) and how kinda ick wives are and how no one should ever get involved with men (or girls?) in rock because they all suck and will do you wrong like this rock guy did her. 
• Beatles VS. Stones is based on someone having told her that girls who like the Stones will bang you. It's like the black guy in the bar telling you he only dates white women because they (insert offensive assumption here) but Smith runs with it, explores it, talks at length about how the Stones and Beatles being at odds were just marketing ploys (you don't say) and the Stones are icky because they are too old to perform those songs and should just retire and stop trying to make money. Ageism on parade, but I think the Stones fans won't be bothered.
• Down The Music K-Hole! This is it! We're going to discover how to expand our musical preferences! How to move from one genre to another! How to discover new sounds! What types of things might.... oh wait, we're just going to say "go to a web site and hit some buttons and listen to some stuff and mostly just listen to Prince cause I think he's awesome." Except we're going to do it with Choose Your Own Adventure stylings (or automated customer service phone menus).
• Acknowledgements - This book was a dream and so many people helped her make it. This I totally believe. 

I am sure Smith is a lovely women. If I had approached this as "My Years At MTV" or "The Guys I Dated And The Music We Listened To" I am certain my reading experience would have been different. Perhaps not totally different, but different all the same. Instead, I was expecting a conversation about music, how to love it, how to evaluate it, what to do to expand yourself, how to build your tastes, and I got an awful lot about how Smith can't find a nice boy to open a joint account with. I can't say either of us are better for the experience and I regret my negativity. If it's any consolation, this is the measured and mild version of my disappointment.

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: One Touch of Scandal by Liz Carlyle

Never taunt your TBR pile, kids.

After the awesome read that was Wicked All Day, I was unprepared for One Touch of Scandal. This is one of those reviews where anything you say (no matter how true to your feelings) seems mean. I hated it so much I'm sorry there's a sequel. And perhaps the author feels the same way because the book advertised in the back of One Touch of Scandal, the serially named One Wicked Glance has been renamed The Bride Wore Scarlet (to be followed by The Bride Wore Pearls). Although Amazon sells One Touch of Scandal, you won't find it on their Complete List of Liz Carlyle Books nor is it listed on Amazon's Liz Carlyle Page. Unless you search by title, Amazon goes directly from Wicked All Day to The Bride Wore Scarlet without a book between. (They tried to warn me I suppose) I have an ARC of The Bride Wore Scarlet, so I'll report back next month on that.

On the positive side, our hero Ruthveyn's mother was from India. His heritage is handled fairly well (although of course he's into tantric sex). Our heroine had a French father so she gets her share of exotic in as well. Neither of them slip into offensive territory or use heritage as a substitute for character. There is also a nice scene at a tomb where Grace gives in to grief after being snubbed by the family of her former fiance. It's a bit odd that she just accepts the snubbing (time and again) for as long as she does but we will give her that - she is in mourning after all.

Ok, that's it. We've covered the parts I liked. There's a murder and it's only a mystery to the characters in the book. If you haven't figured out who did the deed by the end of the first chapter this might be your first time. In fact, the murderer seemed so obvious I thought it was a red herring and became annoyed as the clues toward that presumed red herring built up. But whatever, dead guy, suspicion, Grace on the run. She runs right into a (get ready) Super Secret Society of Psychics. No, this isn't a Jayne Ann Krentz book. Yes I know Liz Carlyle is better than that, but apparently a deep seated need to write about pseudo Masons and the Chosen Ones overtook her.  It's not paranormal, it's not steampunk, it's not even butter. I described it elsewhere as stumbling into a bad cosplay event where people were trying to bend spoons with their minds. I meant it. This is the lamest Boys Only, Girls Are Too Loud secret society ever. At one point Grace tries to tell Ruthveyn's sister that she's not psychic when the sister is all "Don't you find you are a good judge of people? AHA! You are just untrained!" I half expected her to add "And can't you always smell when the cookies are burning? AHA!" 

Right. So Ruthveyn finds Grace extra hot because he can't tell when she's going to die or what she's thinking (his super powers) meaning she might be his soul mate! I agree that seeing how someone dies whenever you touch them has to be unsettling at best, but this is one of my least favorite coupling tricks. "I understand you less than anyone else I know - I must have you!" For her part, Grace wants a family. Any family. A dog, a few kids, she just wants to get away from her Aunt and stay away. Ruthveyn will do just fine even before they find out... look, if telling you they are related is going to spoil the book for you then I have done you a favor. Grace has blood heritage to the Super Secrets too! Decoder rings for everyone!

I was done long before Ruthveyn cured his long standing drug use (he charms Grace with a Snoop Doggy Dawg imitation) via one night of sex. I was done before he caught a friend in a compromising position with a tabloid reporter and dealt with it by thinking sure, maybe they'd done some crazy stuff they'd both like to forget during those opium orgies back in the day but no way did that make anyone gay! Then Grace agrees. She knows that guy as well and no way is he gay. Not him. Nuh-uh. Look how upset he is at almost kissing a girl! Um, I mean, boy! There's more to that, for sure! What could it be? What? What could it be!

I'm hoping The Bride Wore Scarlet is significantly more enjoyable than One Touch of Scandal was. We're going to start with two problems. One is it being a sequel to this mess. The other is that Carlyle apparently ties her paranormal world into her previously established non paranormal families. I like Liz Carlyle, I'm pulling for her on this one, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared.

Review: The Earl Claims His Wife by Cathy Maxwell

This recovery is teaching me that books in my TBR pile are generally there because they suck.

I'd hate for someone to judge all of Cathy Maxwell's books on The Earl Claims His Wife. As Agency Pricing continues being the gift that just won't stop giving (much like VD) there is a possibility that you're considering dropping 8 hard earned USD's on this clunker. (If I can save just one of you, etc.) I didn't even like the cover. Somehow she has ripped her dress around mid thigh, lost all her underthings and shoved her naked body out of the hole. He's not faring much better. That's someone else's boot on the side there, or our hero has extra articulation in his thigh. (Add the super painful Barbie arch of her foot and this seems like a bad idea all around.)

But back to the contents. Brian, the Earl in question, is a complete Tool. Capital T, walking poster child for narcissistic personality disorder. Let's take him first. Brian is in love with Jess, some chick from his childhood days, so he makes her his mistress. He's a third son, and his dad tells him he has to get married anyway so he's all like, whatever, you pick, I don't care. He takes his blushing young virginal bride home, bangs her quick to get it over with (while thinking of Jess) then tells her his heart belongs to another and he is off to be with his true love. No really, like that. Surprised he didn't wipe himself on her leg. Off he goes to be with the woman that holds his heart, leaving his new wife to deal with his disapproving and dominating parents. Then he's off to war, where he doesn't write his wife and upon his return just heads straight to be with Jess again. All this happens before we meet him. When we actually do meet Brian, he's bellowing at his wife for having fled this torture chamber of a life and demanding she come home. She balks, he decides to kill someone to narrow her options. He's a prize, isn't he?

I wish I liked Gillian better.  Not only does she have dreadful taste in men, she's lacking in backbone. She's left Brian (or left his parents actually) and found love (or desire) with a broke as hell Spanish baron working on the estate. Although she is like so totally sure she loves Andres, she hasn't made any moves on him. She mostly watches him stroke horses and sighs while declaring that any minute now, any minute at all, maybe even right this second she's going to get a divorce and be with him. Andres is totally down with that plan. Which makes her think maybe it's a bad plan because when he says he wants her it seems like he's being foolish. (COSIGNED) Anyway, there Brian is doing the bellowing thing in the driveway and dueling in the courtyard with Andres when it occurs to Gillian that someone might die and her options won't be any better. She strikes a deal with Brian that she will go with him in exchange for her freedom in 30 days after she establishes him politically. (Which the divorce would then.... oh she's not the brightest girl.)

Less than a day later, Gillian is riding Brian like he's a naughty pony and forgiving him all. Jess is dead, you say? Well then! Andres is broke so let's get it on. Of course, Jess isn't dead and Brian hasn't come seeking Gillian for love but because he has a household in shambles and a dying baby. Well, it's Jess's dying baby, but since his brothers have died (making him the heir y'all!) and the baby is his father's, then this baby is the Only Brother He Has Left. Gillian is upset and suddenly Andres is looking good again. Despite her post nookie renewal of vows, she wants her 30 day countdown back. Then she doesn't. Then she does. Then she doesn't. Gillian wants to love whichever man she isn't with.

Brian stomps his feet, holds his breath, and proves his independence from his controlling father. He does this by taking the post his father has arranged for him. (I know, Brian can't be helped). His feelings of betrayal from Jess are all tied up in his feelings of anger at his father for banging his mistress. Brian takes comfort in the thought that the Evil Innocent Scheming Victim Jess has ensnared his father who thinks he is So Clever but Really Is Not. (I think Brian is 12. Maybe.) Brian's mom doesn't matter because women don't matter in this book. This book is all about Needy Men Who Need Things. Don't believe me? Let's examine Jess.

Jess is stunningly beautiful and poor. Brian, the 3rd son, swears he loves her and is eternally devoted to her so she becomes his mistress. He moves in with her and sees to all her material needs. When he goes to war, she takes up with his creepy father. Does she do it because she feels betrayed by his marrying? No, she does it because she needs to monetize her youth. Really. She says so. Then she bears his father's son, despite never having a kid with Brian. (I see a problem with the succession looming. Also, where are Brian's older brother's wives? Did they not have kids?) Brian's dad is all, no kids, thanks, so Jess sends the baby to a warehouse where they put it in a closet and forget about it. (Not kidding.) Brian arrives in the Nick Of Time to take the baby and restore it to health where Jess comes to see it. Not because she wants her baby or has regrets, but because Brian's dad tells her to go rattle Gillian's cage. It doesn't make any sense to the guy's motivations, but it allows Gillian to cry a lot and jerk Andres around more. Why is Jess an Evil Whoring Bitch? Apparently she was born that way. Wouldn't any woman whore herself out to father and son then abandon her child? It's just, like, what they do. Bitches. Brian's dad is like, you're a victim of her awesome sexxing and Brian is like, no dad, YOU are and Jess is like, I can't help it if I need to get paid.

Eventually, for no apparent reason, Gillian and Brian loudly declare their love for each other without ruining his political career and set off with their bastard sibling son for the diplomatic post his father wanted him to take in the first place. Brian has successfully broken free of his father by moving where his father wanted, working where his father wanted, and banging who his father wanted. Happy Ending Indeed. (Or not.)

Review: The Taming by Aleen Malcolm

All the Agency shenanigans going on right now have killed my interest in reading. I know it will come back, but in the meantime the hours I would have spent reading were spent divesting myself of 99% of my print books. I sorted them into pulp, donate, gift and other. I hadn't looked in these boxes in almost seven years and they comprised my 'keepers' from 1980 to 2004. I learned a lot about myself by looking at these with fresh eyes.

First, I discovered I was one heck of a curator. Then I found when it came to romance my keeper shelf wasn't just the warm and fuzzy reads, it included some serious WTFOMGBBQ book moments. I'd pull a book out and rattle off the plot without hesitation even though it has been twenty years and a lot of chemo since then. I knew the closing lines of several of Edith Layton's books. (I miss Edith) My once perfect memory is no more, but some things scar the soul forever. So it was with Aleen Malcolm.

See that chick there? She's 14. Maybe 13, I don't actually recall. I do remember that she marries this guy who is like, twice her age then follows him around taking all kinds of abuse (physical and otherwise) in a quest for his love. I think I was about the same age when I read this and even then I thought that was some messed up interpersonal dynamics. I think it was also about this time that Luke raped Laura on the American show General Hospital. There was this weird message being sent to American women that some guys are going to rape you just because they love you so darn much. The men and boys in my life seemed to think this was awesome. We've come so far in Romanceland. We may have a way yet to go, but the days of 14 year olds who are 'asking for it' from men twice their age appear to be behind us. Thankfully.

If you have never read romance from this era, you totally should. Not the good, quality uplifting stuff. The meat and potato rape-o-ramas, the racist plantation novels, the OMGWTFBBQ moments. The days when all the beloved rapists were Scottish, unless they were English, but they were never black. Because love meant being at least half European in your ancestry. (Some things haven't changed, have they?) Being a woman meant needing to be broken, needing to be tamed, needing to be shown your place and accepting of your master so you could be worthy of his name. Sort of like wanting to read e-books today.

iPad Killer: Dead On Arrival

Electronics is a bloodthirsty game. As soon as Sony's Data Discman came out... Ok, I'll grant you that it was a very long road from the Data Discman to the Kindle but the point remains, the cycle of life can be vicious. One moment you're the king, the next you're ducking shoes. Currently every predator has a taste for Apples.

I like my iProducts. My iThings work easily, they don't flake out on me, they do what I tell them and they seem to like it. Granted, iStuff isn't for everyone. There are people who seem to honestly dislike all things iLicious. It's cool. My pal lets his Windows hang out, we don't judge. Now everyone's talking about Androids, I'm open minded, I'll check it all out. I was asked to review one of the up and coming iKillers. (I said "Bring It!" because I talk all 80's like that.) I have to admit, the first impression really surprised me.

It was sleek. It had some serious tactile appeal. It looked like it was built for love and had storage for days. Even though Microsoft and I had broken up more than a decade ago, I was ready to consider reuniting. Cue up the Peaches & Herb, dim the lights,  and run the startup menu. We named it Godzilla, because it was going to stomp all over my iLove. A bajillion and a half years later I remembered that Windows has to get in the mood. You might be ready to rumble, but Windows, it needs to feel respected. A little wooing is required. (I wasn't going anywhere.) Finally, it was done playing the tease. A flash of blue screen, a hint of a start up menu and.....

A blaring series of beeps? What? Keep the sirens for Prodigy songs! My iPad Killer was turning out to be all talk and no action. The screen went black, the beeps kept coming and the power button quit working. I carried it into the garage and shut the door. It could come out when it was fit for company. So here I was, all ready to cheat on Apple and only a dead motherboard to show for my efforts. I called The Man about a replacement. Fed-Ex, walk in, what are my options? My options were to hurry up and wait. Talk about a buzz kill. Even though the $600 brick was only an hour old, it had to go to a repair center on a repair ticket for investigation of the problem. After all data was scrubbed and the problem determined, it would be sent back to me. In a couple weeks.

Um, what? A couple of weeks? Do they know how long that is in dog years? I tried pulling rank. I was soooo casual - "You know this is for a product review, right? I'm supposed to go several places and give people my opinion on whether or not they should buy your product? As in purchase? With money?" Turns out they could shorten the turn around time. Ten days. I don't know about you, but if I shelled out $600 for something that died in an hour, I wouldn't wait ten minutes. So I wrote my review. And I named the names I'm not naming here because I think part of the review process is seeing how the customer service would work for standard customers.

Flirting with the iPad Killer reminded me of what I already knew. People are willing to put up with an awful lot in a relationship. It's why I've stayed with Apple so long. My iBabies don't throw tantrums, and they don't need time outs. If someone's going to kill my iPad, they're going to have to move a lot faster.

Review: Table For Three (New York) by Lainey Reese

And thus ends the porn vs erotic romance debate.

About a million years ago (okay, it was the early 90's) I had a gig reviewing m/m romance (totally in it's infancy) and porn with pretensions, now known as explicit erotica. In many ways these two have merged into one market. I'm going to be honest and tell you I didn't finish A Table For Three. Halfway through is really all I needed to know. Having long argued that we should call porn, romance and erotica what they are, I felt if I was going to keep having an opinion on the topic I needed to catch up. Over the last few months I've read about twenty 'hot' reads from various publishers. I'm caught up, and my opinion hasn't changed. (Also, if I could go another decade or two in blissful ignorance of where the pornrotica market goes, that would be AWESOME, thank you very much.)

I am not here to judge people getting their kink on. I am not here to argue the porn debate. I am not here to say anything but let's stop pretending there's a romance element to hardcore explicit erotica. A Story of O? 9 1/2 Weeks? Beauty's Punishment? Anything by Anias Nin in her frisky phase? They may have relationship elements but they are not romance. Romance is about finding the best in each other, not the best ways to pork each other. (I'm sorry, was that rude?) After wading through the unspeakable Medusa's Folly, Naughty Bits 1 & 2, Alison's Wonderland and a grab bag of assorted books by other publishers I've chosen A Table For Three as my stopping point. It reminds me of the early 90's when m/m romance was only sold in certain stores.

The heroine of A Table For Three (in the last hour I've forgotten all their names, this points to the emotional impact they don't make) is exactly the sort of girl you expect Ron Jeremy (ew, why did I do that to myself?) to pick up in the first four seconds of an adult film. She is constantly hot for it, made out of rubber, lacks any common sense at all, and is obviously a stand in for a well trained dog. She's not a fully developed woman, she's a composite of traits assembled to resemble a woman for the purposes of furthering the male relationship. The men would make excellent date rapists, but instead they left the Ivy League to run a sex club where they can meet and (oh so gently!) coerce women into having sex with them since having sex with each other would make them gay. Even though they share intimacy, apartments, trips, businesses and fashion tips - the final barrier for them is banging each other instead of the chick. (Maybe they change their mind later in the book, I don't know.) She meets one of the guys, bangs him in public within ten minutes (despite having only limited sexual experience - two guys who were in and outers) goes upstairs with him, and by morning she's willing to bang his friend as well.

By the next day, she's ok with all the BSDM she never knew about, living with them like a house pet, and taking her punishment like the 'little one' they name her. The diminishing nickname fits. Our heroine is not the only woman I encountered. As a counterpoint to the completely submissive and startlingly elastic heroine with a pure heart (She only wants the sex!) we have a bitter waitress who has known the boys since they were young and had finally (Finally, I tell you!!) put herself in a position to be showered with gifts for banging them (Not in it for the sex! Evil!) while she plots to have their child, forcing 18 years of support! (OMGZ! Sperm Stealer!) When she realizes our doe eyed young ingenue has swept these closeted lovers off their feet she realizes she's got to eliminate her rival!

Ok, so we have two rich men that love each other (and set up charities for children, of course) while catering to rapists and the like in their sex club (that's a whole other paragraph) and the young undereducated stacked sexpot fresh off the bus who asks the taxi driver to take her somewhere - somewhere she decided to bang a guy in public and then learn about oral sex before taking his roommate on as well, and a crazed child support craving aging working class jade out for cash and prizes. Oh yea, I feel the love. How could I ever have equated explicit erotica with homoerotic porn, which is so anti female? I dunno. I'm just like that, I guess. Dude, Mr. Benson had a more believable love.

Now to be fair, because it's not Lainey Reese's fault she's the final nail in my updating the market coffin, she is getting high reviews for a reason. Many of these books make no pretension to competence, much less attempting a plot. Lainey Reese is in the higher tier of writers both from my random samplings and my prior experience. She's working it, and she's working hard. If you're looking for porn that won't make you get out a red pencil and start editing, you're good to go. I, for one, hope to remain in blissful market ignorance for some time to come as I return to my "know it when I see it" stance.