I generally could not care less about corporate finance and the lifestyles of the uber-wealthy, and yet this book sucked me in anyway. I liked NatalieI generally could not care less about corporate finance and the lifestyles of the uber-wealthy, and yet this book sucked me in anyway. I liked Natalie and even David, though David is cast as an anti-hero. The book was well-paced and engrossing, and refreshingly different.
There are a lot of supporting characters and subplots that helped to round out the book and offer depth and texture to the story. I look forward to reading on in the series. ...more
I don't follow football even a little bit, but I'm on a sports-romance kick and I inhaled this series, though I read them out of order, finishing withI don't follow football even a little bit, but I'm on a sports-romance kick and I inhaled this series, though I read them out of order, finishing with this one (the second of 3 so far). As with the other books in the series, I really enjoyed the pacing and the witty banter, especially the text messages the heroine, Ivy, and hero, Gray, exchange throughout the story. I do tire of the taming-of-a-manwhore trope so common in so many subgenres of romance, though, and this definitely fits in that category. I'm not sure exactly why I find it so tiresome. I'm not judgey about the sex, so long as the fella is respectful towards his many women. I think it's the one-sidedness of it, because these stories rarely involve an oversexed heroine as well as a manslut. No, she is almost inevitably comparatively pure and innocent, and her goodness shames the man into fidelity. I don't buy that. I can usually willingly suspend my disbelief for purposes of going along with the story, but there's nothing particularly interesting about the manwhore trope as it is usually done. ...more
I like what I've read so far of this series, and Latham's writing style is snappy and entertaining, but I struggled with this book because the main chI like what I've read so far of this series, and Latham's writing style is snappy and entertaining, but I struggled with this book because the main characters' tragic backstories, especially the heroine's, were just too tragic. I struggled to willingly suspend my disbelief with respect to both characters -- not that these bad things could happen, but that they would shape the characters the way they did. Caitlyn, the heroine, is a 27-year-old virgin. The first two-thirds of the book, the conflict is about why she's untouched, and whether she's going to lose her cherry with the hero. When they finally do the deed, it's sudden and anti-climactic. (Which, to be fair, is actually pretty true to real life, now that I think about it...) From there, the plot devolves into accidental pregnancies and miscommunications, only to be all tied up with a cliche epilogue. ...more
I read the novella Her Christmas Earl over the holidays, and liked it well enough to check out some of Anna Campbell's full length books. I started wiI read the novella Her Christmas Earl over the holidays, and liked it well enough to check out some of Anna Campbell's full length books. I started with Seven Night's in a Rogue's Bed because it was already in my TBR, no doubt due to some sale or recommendation a long time hence. I found this story very readable and entertaining, though parts of it annoyed me considerably.
The Set Up: Jonas Merrick is a brooding bastard who has made it his life's ambition to take revenge on the cousin who scarred his face and stole his title. He lures his cousin's wife, Roberta, into an Indecent Proposal at the gaming table: having played too deep, she must now spend seven nights with Jonas. Upon learning of the terrible bet, Roberta's sister, Sidonie, offers herself to Jonas instead. Determined never to marry, Sidonie is willing to sacrifice her innocence to save Roberta's life, because Roberta's husband is an evil, violent man who would kill his wife if he learned she fulfilled her bargain.
The good: I enjoy Campbell's writing style. She sets the scene very well and the pacing moves right along, unlike some authors who tend to drag out background detail so much that the story drags and then gloss over the good parts. I also enjoyed this plot, which took a lot of familiar tropes -- the gothic castle, the scarred hero with the tortured past, the hero in pursuit, the wrongful arrest, even (view spoiler)[the secret baby (hide spoiler)]! -- and took them in new and sometimes unexpected directions. Finally, I liked the gender flip of the afraid-of-commitment trope: here, the heroine, not the hero, was determined to avoid marriage.
The bad: On several occasions, the hero and heroine behaved in ways I felt were melodramatic and not in keeping with their characters, and that diminished my overall enjoyment of the story. The heroine had one such moment where her behavior crossed the line into too-stupid-to-live territory and was completely irrational, though she was otherwise a reasonable, intelligent, and sympathetic character. (For details, click: (view spoiler)[Overset by her physical response to some heavy-petting, and afraid her arousal would overcome her determination not to be seduced, Sidonie runs out into a November rain storm in her nightrail in the middle of a dark and stormy night, and nearly falls off a cliff into the ocean. The hero comes after her, realizes he loves her and needs to slow down the seduction routine because he's freaking her out, so after he brings her back to the house and warms her up, he withdraws. Sidonie then gets upset that he's keeping his distance, where not an hour before she literally fled from him in terror. (hide spoiler)])
The hero has a similar bout of out-of-character irrationality, one which really soured the last quarter of the book for me and brought my rating down at least one star. Sidonie has kept a secret from him -- (view spoiler)[ she has proof that he is legitimate, not a bastard (hide spoiler)] -- which she keeps for an extremely sympathetic reason, and which she reveals under circumstances which literally save Jonas's life. It's a pretty big secret, so I'd have been okay with him being pretty mad ... for a few days or until they have the kind of conversation that grown ups in relationships have after fights. Instead, he gets all butthurt and behaves like a total douchecanoe, cutting off all contact with Sidonie (view spoiler)[ until he finds out she's pregnant, forces her to marry him, and then insists he wants a marriage in name only (hide spoiler)]. I might have been more sympathetic to his cause, but it seems to me that a guy who trapped a married woman into infidelity in a card game doesn't have a whole lot of moral high ground to stand on.
I also found the sex scenes to tend toward purple prose. That's a minor quibble for me since I tend to skim the smexy parts anyway, especially in historical romance, but I know that makes some people crazy... so fair warning. ...more
This is the second time one of Darlene Marshall's pirate-themed historicals have languished in my TBR, untouched, for such a long time, and when I finThis is the second time one of Darlene Marshall's pirate-themed historicals have languished in my TBR, untouched, for such a long time, and when I finally get around to reading it, I've thought, "This is awesome! Why did I wait so long?!" Don't be fooled by the campy titles and cheezy covers: these books are really good. Yes, they're campy -- by design. Darlene Marshall knows and exploits all of the tropes of her genre -- this story has a secret baby (now a winsome eight-year-old plot moppet), a straight-laced plain jane governess, a cocksure pirate captain who is secretly an English lord -- but while you've probably read all this before, you've never read it the way Marshall does it: frothy and fun, yes, but also smart and surprising and very, very well-written.
If, like me, you have one or two of these books buried in your TBR, languishing because you can't remember what you were thinking when you added something so cheesy to your cart, do yourself a favor and give it a try. You won't be sorry....more
I really need to get better about writing reviews as soon as I finish a book, but I've been crazy busy lately. If I wait, I'm left with only vague impI really need to get better about writing reviews as soon as I finish a book, but I've been crazy busy lately. If I wait, I'm left with only vague impressions, no matter how many quotes I highlight or notes I make as I read.
I Married the Duke was my first book by Katherine Ashe, and I will read on in the series because I liked this fairly well even though I've been kind of "meh" on the whole historical romance subgenre lately. I also liked it despite the fact that the hero was actively misrepresenting his identity to the heroine for the first half of the book, and since dishonesty is a major turn off for me, the fact that I like this as well as I did speaks well of Ms. Ashe's skill as a writer.
The funniest thing about this book is that it hits so many of the tropes of historical romance, it's almost as if someone dared Katharine Ashe to write a book with as many stereotypical tropes as she could manage. Gypsy fortuneteller? Check. Penniless orphans? Check. Scarred hero? Check. Love affair between a lord and a governess? Yup. Mistaken identity? Marriage of Convenience? Big Misunderstanding? Sudden Blindness? Check, check, check, and check.
The plot was very, very complicated. I was able to follow it, but I think a lot of the layers and plot twists were only necessary to continue the hero's deception about his identity, which (as I've said) I could have done without.
Anabella is the middle child in a trio of sisters orphaned as children. They know very little of their past, except that it involved a shipwreck, and they have a very expensive ruby ring which a gypsy told them holds the key to learning their roots. That same gypsy foretold that one of the sisters would marry a prince, so Anabella has made that her life's ambition.
Fast forward a few decades; the girls have grown up and are in service. Anabella is on her way to France to be a finishing governess for a princess; she hopes to meet and marry the princess's brother, the prince, to fulfill the prophecy. Unfortunately, through a series of unfortunate events, she misses the ship that is supposed to take her to France and ends up hitching a ride with the hero, Luc, instead. Luc is a former naval captain with a Tortured Past who retired because he's in line to become a Duke when his uncle passes on, and he can't risk being killed in action (though he's still sailing, obviously).
During the story, Luc's uncle dies, but Luc's ascendency to the title is uncertain because the uncle's wife is preggers, and if she has a boy, the child will inherit. The wife is the sister of the story's bad guy, a priest who molested Luc and his brother when they were kids.
When Luc takes Anabella to France, he doesn't tell her who he is, even though her destination is (through one of the crazy coincidences that would never work outside of Romancelandia) a castle he owns, and the home of his brother.
During their journey, Luc finds himself in Mortal Peril and marries Anabella because he might be a Duke and she might be carrying his heir... and, oh, yeah, also because he might possibly be in love with her just a little bit. Then he dies, but not really, and Anabella is heartbroken, but maybe she'll get to marry the prince after all, so there's always a bright side.
Yeah, this is the sort of crazy sauce plot you can't really explain... but I liked it anyway. I Married a Duke hits enough familiar tropes that most readers of historical romance will find something about it appealing -- catnippy, if you will -- but it can come across as chaotic and crazy, which isn't to everyone's taste. ...more
I've had Monica McCarty's "Special Ops in kilts" Highland Guard series in my TBR for a long time, and moved it to the top of the list in the days leadI've had Monica McCarty's "Special Ops in kilts" Highland Guard series in my TBR for a long time, and moved it to the top of the list in the days leading up to Scotland's September 18, 2014 vote on whether or not to remain part of the United Kingdom, because what's more appropriate on the verge of a vote for Scottish Independence than to read about Robert the Bruce's 1306-07 struggle for Scottish Independence?
The Hawk is the second book in the series, and holy moly, it is Chock Full of Crazy. If you are a stickler for historical accuracy or have a low tolerance for plot ridiculousness, this is not the book for you. There is a scene in which the hero and heroine sail across the Irish Sea in a fierce storm in the middle of the night in the dead of winter in a ten foot skiff cobbled together with scrap wood and seal grease and sailed with a freaking bedsheet, and when the mast breaks, they're all, "Oooh, this is sexy!" and they lay down in the bottom of the boat and get it on. Some people would be annoyed by this kind of thing: I just laughed and rolled my eyes so hard I nearly strained a muscle.
If you have a high tolerance for ridiculousness, though, this book can give you a heck of a ride: there are kidnappings, chase scenes, narrow escapes, hand-to-hand combat, dangerous missions, spies, and lots and lots of boats (I'm a sucker for boats). Erik "Hawk" MacSorley can sail anything and swim like a fish. He's also gorgeous and charming and basically sex-on-a-stick. He gets around, and makes no bones about it. He is trying to gather Irish soldiers to assist in Robert the Bruce's uprising against England's Edward I, and is having a secret rendezvous with Irish militants when Ellie accidentally swims into the cave where they're hatching their plans. (Yes, she's swimming. At night. In January. Chock Full of Crazy, I tell you.) Hawk can't let her go because he doesn't know what she's heard, and he can't leave her to be raped and killed by the Irish (who are great when you need a hand in a fight, but you can't trust 'em around the ladies), so he takes her with him as a captive.
Ellie mistakenly believes Hawk is a pirate, and that he'd take advantage if he knew she was the wealthy daughter of an earl aligned with the English, so she tells him she's a lowly nursemaid. This mutual mistake of identity persists throughout much of the novel.
Ellie is also (as the story keeps telling us over and over and over again) painfully plain and not at all Hawk's usual type. I know that it's supposed to be romantic when Adonis falls for Plain Jane despite her lack of looks, but whatever: all of that handwringing about how-can-anyone-so-perfect-possibly-look-twice-at-me? (on Ellie's part) and I-can't-believe-my-staff-is-rising-for-this-chick-who-barely-has-any-boobs (on Hawk's part) really doesn't reflect well on either of them.
That said, Ellie is really smart and has plenty of starch in her collar, and Hawk is funny and charming and noble, so their romance mostly worked for me even despite the annoying Plain Jane trope and their inexplicable tendency to get hot and bothered in circumstances which seem cold, wet, and uncomfortable to me. (See the infamous Boat Scene, referenced above.)
I liked the first three quarters of the book much better than the end, where the lovers were separated and the plot bogged down in the skirmishes between Robert's and Edward's battalions, but on the whole, this was a fun (albeit completely absurd) read....more
This is the third Rainbow Rowell book I've read. I loved Eleanor & Park, but the ending was such a disappointment. I liked Fangirl quite a bit, but I This is the third Rainbow Rowell book I've read. I loved Eleanor & Park, but the ending was such a disappointment. I liked Fangirl quite a bit, but I found it kind of uneven, and again the ending let me down (though not as epically as E&P). Given that track record, I read Attachments with a certain degree of detachment, not wanting to fall in love with the story only to get burned again in the last chapters. As it turns out, I needn't have worried. Attachments is delightful from the first chapter to the last.
That this book is as enjoyable as it is kind of amazing, given the premise. The protagonist, Lincoln, is about as beta as they come, and he could easily have come across as a Creeper rather than a Keeper. He's a 28 year old computer geek who lives with his mother and doesn't get out much, except for his weekly Dungeons and Dragons game. He's still mooning over the only serious relationship he ever had, a youthful infatuation that ended nine years ago. He works the graveyard shift at a local newspaper, monitoring employees' email and internet use for violations of company policy, and preparing for Y2K. (Oh, yeah, this book is set in the fall of 1999, on the cusp of the predicted apocalypse of technology which, of course, turned out to be a lot of sound and fury.)
As part of his job, Lincoln reads the email conversations of two reporters, Beth and Jennifer, whose emails get flagged a lot because of their profanity and their frequency. (Employees are not supposed to use email for personal conversations.) LIncoln is charmed (as is the reader) by the women: the way they tease and support each other, the way they lift each other up in tough times, the way they are sometimes brutally honest with each other. He begins to develop feelings for one of the women, Beth, before he ever sees her. -And almost as soon as he realizes he's in love, he understands how hopeless it is, because reading her email without her knowing it is so very wrong, even if it is his job.
The fact that Lincoln understands and is troubled by the creepy stalkerish aspects of his job is what saves him from coming across as creepy and stalkerish. (Also, the reader is as charmed by Beth's and Jennifer's emails as Lincoln is, and you don't want him to cut off access by revealing himself.)
Interspersed with chapters devoted to Beth's and Jennifer's emails are chapters devoted to Lincoln. Over the course of the novel, he makes a number of small changes, not really realizing the import of each, until he ultimately overcomes the inertia that has bogged down his life since college: he eats dinner in the break room instead of alone at his desk, he reconnects with old friends, he connects with new friends, he joins a gym, he finds an apartment, he gets a haircut. Individually, each of these changes is insignificant, but by the end of the book, Lincoln has made enormous personal growth. The beauty of it, though, is that his self-improvement doesn't come at the cost of anything or anyone else. He doesn't kick his Dungeons and Dragons friends to the curb in the pursuit of a cooler crowd. He leaves his mother's house, but does so in such a way that she still feels needed and loved. Lincoln becomes a better guy, but he isn't a different guy; he remains true to himself and his roots.
He and Beth don't actually connect until 95% of the way through the book. The wait is excruciating, but it's the anticipation of something wonderful, like Christmas morning or a long-planned vacation, and when it comes, it's almost indescribably satisfying. (And yet, Rainbow Rowell does a pretty good job describing it:)
There are moments when you can't believe something wonderful is happening. And there are moments when your entire consciousness is filled with knowing absolutely that something wonderful is happening. Lincoln felt like he'd dunked his head into a sink full of Pop Rocks and turned on the water.
Dare I hope that I have finally gotten the Outlander series out of my system? Don't get me wrong, I loved Outlander, but in hindsight I wish I'd quit Dare I hope that I have finally gotten the Outlander series out of my system? Don't get me wrong, I loved Outlander, but in hindsight I wish I'd quit the series after that first book. Dragonfly in Amber was too wretchedly grim to be an enjoyable read, what with Culloden and Claire and Jamie's first daughter (trying to avoid spoilers, but suffice it to say that that kind of plotline is a major trigger for me). Voyager was just chockful of over-the-top plot WTFery such that by about two thirds of the way through, I simply could not willingly suspend my disbelief any longer. Drums of Autumn was more promising, in that it was neither crushingly sad nor insanely ridiculous, but Gabaldon's plot organization did not work for me at all.
Drums of Autumn jumps around in time and space between Claire and Jamie Fraser (in colonial North Carolina in the late 1760s-early 1770s) and their daughter Brianna and her sweetheart, Roger, in the 20th century. Brianna discovers that her parents are in danger in the past, so she goes back in time to warn them. Roger, discovering what she's done, follows her and tries to find her. Many, many adventures and misadventures ensue before the two couples finally settle together on Fraser's Ridge.
This hopping around among various times, people, points of view, and plots drove me absolutely batty. It felt like I spent the whole book being pulled from one storyline I cared about to a new scene, having to take time to set aside my resentment at the interruption and force myself to take an interest in the new scene and storyline(s), and just when I began to care about that, getting pulled on to something else entirely. Consequently, my overall reading experience was one of frustration rather than enjoyment. Moreover, at several points Gabaldon brought us right to the edge of a critical plot twist, and then jumped ahead, and only went back and told of the crisis in hindsight. I can think of three examples-- (view spoiler)[
1) a big chunk of the first third of the book is devoted to a confrontation between Jamie and his aunt Jocasta, who wants to leave her plantation to him -- Jamie and Claire take off into the woods with the decision about what to do with the plantation still unmade, but then they find and have nookie in a pretty patch of strawberries in the mountains, and the narrative jumps ahead several months and suddenly they're building a cabin. Jamie's aunt has been nothing but kind to them, and for Jamie and Claire to take off without even having a conversation is both cowardly and extremely poor repayment for Jocasta's hospitality. 2) Brianna gets raped by the main villain of the story, Stephen Bonnet, but the rape is told in retrospect, only after the narrative reveals that she is pregnant. 3) Jamie and Ian, mistakenly believing Roger is the rapist, beat the snot out of him, and then the narrative jumps and we learn only several chapters later that they sold him to Indians.
(hide spoiler)] In my opinion, not only is this extremely frustrating to the reader (at least to this reader), it takes away much of the emotional punch of these scenes, because telling something in hindsight when some (if not all) of the aftermath is already assured takes away from the suspense of the event. The fact that Gabaldon repeatedly did this with the most critical plot twists of the story made the whole book feel anticlimactic.
There were other narrative choices that reduced the emotional impact, and thus my enjoyment, of the book as well. For most of the book, Roger and Brianna are separated, and both go through hell in the interim. Their reunion at the end should have been the joyful, emotionally cathartic capstone to which the whole plot was building, but because it is told neither from Roger's nor Brianna's point of view, but from Claire's, it totally falls flat. In fact, their reunion is entirely spoiled by a scene involving maggots and rotting flesh that came very close to making me toss my cookies... and people wonder why readers don't find Brianna and Roger as romantic as Claire and Jamie!
Let's be real: the All Souls trilogy is Twilight-spawn. Slightly pretentious Twilight-spawn, actually, as if all of this highbrow attention to historyLet's be real: the All Souls trilogy is Twilight-spawn. Slightly pretentious Twilight-spawn, actually, as if all of this highbrow attention to history and science and art could obscure the fact that we're still talking about two stories where an obscenely wealthy and dangerous old vamp falls in love with a mousy, not-very interesting human and their love is obsessive and forbidden, and over the course of the series Mousy Girl gets her groove back and becomes Queen of the Mary Sues, and when the couples breed the Powers That Be are disgusted and afraid of the unknown dangers that these rare forbidden vampire-hybrid babies represent, and vow to wipe out the whole Cullen/de Clermont clan.
That said, there's a reason Twilight made Stephanie Meyer rich, and there's a reason all of these books are bestsellers. Mock all you want, with good reason (and even Harkness mocks, when her vampires haughtily insist they don't sparkle), but the fact is, these books are entertaining. Twilight lets you shut off your brain and get carried away in the fantasy of forbidden attraction; All Souls takes you on the same journey without shutting off your brain.
I read A Discovery of Witches in February 2011, with no idea it was the start of a trilogy, and when I got to the cliffhanger ending, I was so gobsmacked it took me several days before I could sleep again. When Shadow of Night came out in 2012, I got an ARC copy and took a week's vacation so I could savor it properly. But since then, I've moved house, had a second baby, weathered a lot of changes at work, and I'm generally a lot busier, and so when the long-awaited final book in the All Souls Trilogy showed up on my Kindle, while I was excited to see it, I didn't have time to drop everything and devour it. Moreover, I didn't have time to re-read the first two books to refresh my memory, which in retrospect would have been very helpful. Consequently, I spent the first quarter of The Book of Life catching up on vaguely remembered details from the complicated world Harkness developed in the previous books.
The Book of Life picks up more or less where Shadow of Night leaves off: time-traveling supernatural power couple Diana Bishop (a witch) and Matthew Clairmont (a vampire) have returned to the present day from 1590, where Diana was learning how to use her rare spell-weaving powers from the more powerful witches of that age. (One of the overarching plot issues is that the magical world is weakening in the modern age: witches cast less effective spells, vampires are less able to make new vampires, and daemons are more prone to insanity than genius.) Diana is pregnant with twins, a secret which will get them in very hot water with the Congregation (the governing council of the magical creatures), because witches, daemons, and vampires aren't allowed to marry outside their own kind, much less reproduce.
Book of Life ties up the convoluted strands of the series-wide plot: the search for the ancient manuscript, Ashmole 782, that all of the creatures believe holds the key to their survival; the long-anticipated confrontation with the Congregation over Diana and Matthew's forbidden relationship; the explanation (and solution) to the problem of weakening magic. In reaching these conclusions, the book delves deeply into a lot of less central subplots: there is a lot of time devoted to the gordian knot of political and familial loyalties and obligations in the de Clermont vampire clan, a lot of time devoted to the analysis of genetic material in the pages from Ashmole 782 and DNA-testing of various magical creatures, and a lot of time devoted to traveling and describing the many settings of this book, including various locations in France, upstate New York, New Haven, London, New Orleans, Oxford, Venice, and Chelm, Poland.
The entire series has been plagued by pacing problems. Deborah Harkness's attention to detail is at once the series' greatest strength and also its greatest weakness. The extensive descriptions of places, people, history, furniture, art, and so on make the reader feel like s/he is right there in the story, but sometimes Harkness gives us more detail than we could possibly need. In A Discovery of Witches, the never-ending descriptions of Diana's clothes and meals made me crazy. In Shadow of Night, Harkness told us more about arcane alchemical processes than any reader (except perhaps a Ph.D. candidate) could possibly care to know. -And here in Book of Life, perhaps more than ever, the details get in the way of the story.
Let me explain: As the capstone of the trilogy, Book of Life is the climax the whole series (all 1800 pages of it) has been building to. The reader therefore has a sense of urgency in seeing how certain plots resolve that the detailed narrative often frustrates. Some examples: Matthew's mother, Ysabeau, gets held prisoner early on by the Congregation. Despite expressing some concern about it (and after learning why imprisonment might be especially traumatic to Ysabeau given her history), Matthew and Diana hie off to the States and spend several months gardening and cleaning the Bishop homestead in New York rather than working on a plan to free her. Later, they learn that the Book of Life's main villain is holding a witch hostage and repeatedly raping her, trying to breed with her. Matthew and Diana express horror and outrage... and then go to Yale and spend several more weeks futzing around in labs and libraries. Then, Diana has a pregnancy complication and gets put on bed rest while she and Matthew are on separate continents. Rather than rushing to her side, Matthew spends a week carving infant cradles. Later still, Matthew himself is a hostage of the Big Baddie, and Diana hurries to France... to feed her babies. Now, as a relatively new mom myself, I get that babies need to be fed, but surely not even the most hard-core breastfeeding enthusiasts would object to the sitter offering a little bit of formula so that Mom can go save Daddy from Mortal Peril.
The baby plot was almost as ridiculous and cringeworthy in Book of Life as it was in Breaking Dawn. The birthing scene was less horrifying, thank God, and the Bishop-de Clermont babies have reasonably normal names and growth patterns, but they still prefer blood to milk, and there's a ridiculous scene in which Diana tells her husband that their daughter is "not a vampire. She's a vampitch. Or a wimpire." (p. 424). Seriously?!
Book of Life has a point of view problem (as does Breaking Dawn, now that I think of it). Some of the book is written in first-person POV, as narrated by Diana. Some of the book is in third-person POV, usually limited to Matthew or other characters, but sometimes almost omniscient. Whatever rhyme or reason there may have been to the POV changes, I found them jarring and unnecessary.
One plot I wish the series had developed more fully (and I say that with some hesitation, when there were so many plots that could and maybe should have been pared down), is the issue of Diana's mortality. Unlike Twilight's Bella, Harkness's protagonist has no intention of becoming a vampire. That means this is a story of a timeless, all-consuming love between a woman who will live a mere handful of decades compared to her husband's millennia. Perhaps the most empowering aspect of this love affair (especially contrasted with Twilight) is that both Diana and Matthew are happy with Diana the way she is, and don't wish to change her... but I still think they need to confront the issues in a more meaningful way. At one point, Matthew tells Diana that his greatest wish is to grow old with her, which of course can't happen -- Diana's response is to conjure him a few grey hairs for Christmas, a wholly unsatisfactory answer to a real and pressing problem.
Reading over my review, it all sounds more negative than my actual reading experience reflects. I have a lot of nitpicky complaints, but overall, this book, and this series, is great entertainment. It's long and complicated and full of delicious (and sometimes maddening) detail, and the romance is compelling and the stakes are sky-high, and for a lot of people (including me) the All Souls trilogy is total reading catnip. I envy newcomers to the series who have the time to dive into all three books and read them in one epic 1,800 page binge, all at once, because I bet the story would be all the more transporting and satisfying that way, rather than interrupted by the long wait between book releases. ...more
Hero with Self Esteem Issues This book might have the beta-est beta hero ever, notwithstanding the fact that he's a fierce medieval knight who wields Hero with Self Esteem Issues This book might have the beta-est beta hero ever, notwithstanding the fact that he's a fierce medieval knight who wields a broadsword, leads a band of loyal men, and is undefeated on the battlefield: despite all that, he's got serious self-esteem issues. Thayer has lots of battle scars, plus he's a freckled ginger, all of which combine to make him--in his own mind at least--the "Beast" of this book's title. I've never encountered a romance hero so obsessed with, and so insecure about, his own appearance... and it did not go over well.
Thayer returns home from battles in France to attend the wedding of his cousin, the heir to Seitun Manor, only tor learn that his cousin is dead and according to the terms of the marriage contract, Thayer himself is now heir to the Manor and to the late cousin's bride-to-be, the prodigiously beautiful Gytha. Rather than greeting this arranged marriage with joy, Thayer gets butthurt because Gytha's beauty means he'll spend his whole life chasing lovesick swains out of his wife's bed... because all pretty girls are cheaters, of course.
After some sexy times and near misses on the battlefield, Thayer and Gytha fall in love, but neither wants to tell the other because ... reasons. Plus, Thayer still doesn't trust Gytha's chastity, never mind that she's never given him any reason to doubt her, and his inability to believe that a beautiful woman would hitch her wagon to his star nearly unravels their marital felicity... that, and Thayer's uncle keeps trying to kill him, which also puts a damper on things.
Time passes, Gytha almost gets raped, gets kidnapped, almost gets raped again, Thayer rescues her and defeats the dastardly uncle... and then, just when you think the story is wrapping up, there's a surprise plot twist that makes it all too clear that Thayer still doesn't know what the fuck he's doing when it comes to women.
There's enough catnip in this story--arranged marriage trope (a weakness of mine), medieval setting, spunky heroine, amusing dialogue--that I stuck with it even though Thayer's awkwardness with women was not so much endearing as insulting and infuriating, but in the end, this book is simply "meh." ...more
I don't have much to say about this one. While it was nice to read a historical romance featuring African-American protagonists and Hispanic and Nati I don't have much to say about this one. While it was nice to read a historical romance featuring African-American protagonists and Hispanic and Native American supporting characters, the plot was predictable and the prose was pretty purple (especially during the smexing)....more
Refreshingly Sweet Paranormal Romance, But Watch Out For That Plot Twist (child-in-peril trigger) I don't read a lot of paranormal romance, but I thinRefreshingly Sweet Paranormal Romance, But Watch Out For That Plot Twist (child-in-peril trigger) I don't read a lot of paranormal romance, but I think I'd read more, if more of it were like T.L. Haddix's Firefly Hollow. This relatively slow-moving, sweet romance between a lonely, reclusive young shape-shifter and the girl next door is all about the small-scale dramas of family dynamics and falling in love, and eschews the war-of-the-worlds style conflicts that seem to be such a staple of paranormal romance. Set in Appalachia in the 1950s and 1960s, Owen's and Sarah's romance had a nostalgic, old-timey tenderness to it that I really liked.
Owen Campbell inherited a recessive "shifter" gene from his mother's line, and in his teens began to shift into a deer or a wolf (depending mostly on his moods). This caused a rift with his father and brother, who were not shifters and rejected Owen as a potentially dangerous freak. Now, his family is gone, but Owen's fear of rejection remains, so he lives as a hermit on a mountaintop and only goes to town to visit the library (because he's a bookworm. *swoon*).
Sarah is Owen's neighbor. Unbeknownst to her, she had some early encounters with him in his deer and wolf forms when she was a teenager, but the first time she really meets him is at the library, where she gets a job after her father's death forces her to drop out of college.
Owen and Sarah are both kind, considerate, intelligent, and romantic, and I very much enjoyed their courtship, which seemed very slow and ritualized compared to my usual contemporary romance fare, where people pair off and leap into bed together shortly after meeting. Owen and Sarah have slow goodnight kisses under the porch light, with Sarah's mother waiting up inside. They get rootbeer floats at a drugstore lunch counter. They go to church and have family dinners afterwards. Though the dialogue occasionally seemed anachronistic, the story really does feel like what it is, a throwback to another era.
Perhaps because of the sweetness of the story, I was caught off-guard (and not in a good way) by a plot twist involving Sarah's sister. At the start of the story, Sarah's sister, Kathy, and Owen's brother, Harlan, are both just rotten people. They are so unpleasant that I found myself wondering if the author has some sort of traumatic relationship with her own sibling(s), because the conflict between Sarah and Kathy and Owen and Harlan goes well-beyond ordinary sibling rivalry. Also, Sarah and Owen are so nice that it just seemed strange that their siblings should hate them so much. By the end of the book, both Kathy and Harlan get their comeuppances, but in both cases the penalty is sooo much worse, and more irrevocable, then either sibling deserved. That's all I can say without getting too spoilery, except to say that if it had come any earlier in the story, or if I hadn't already been liking the book so well, Kathy's downfall would have been it for me -- T.L. Haddix crossed a line there, and my rating of this book dropped at least one star....more
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