Reckless in Moonlight by Cara Bristol

TITLE: Reckless in Moonlight
AUTHOR: Cara Bristol
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 44k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotic romance
COST: $5.99

Dana Markus is in the middle of a divorce. Her husband left her for a woman barely older than their daughter, and now she finds herself wondering about her own desirability at the age of forty-five. During an evening skinnydip in her pool, she fantasizes about her neighbor’s twenty-eight-year-old son, only to have him show up in the hot, living flesh only moments later. Attraction flares from the start, but Dana isn’t looking for a relationship, and especially not one with a younger man. But their desire for each other is combustible. Is it so wrong to want some of that passion for herself for a change?

I have to admit, I’ve been curious about this author. I hadn’t read anything by her before now, because the titles I’d seen were domestic discipline in nature, and while I understand it’s purely fantasy and escapism, that’s a no-go area for me, no matter what. So when I saw this older woman/younger man story come up, I decided to take the plunge and try her. I learned something very important. Her erotic style and sense of humor don’t mesh with what I enjoy.

It’s a straightforward contemporary. Dana is forty-five and in the throes of a divorce. Her husband cheated on her and left her for a woman only two years older than their daughter, and Dana is feeling less than desirable. She fantasizes about the neighbor’s hot son, a twenty-eight year-old doctor with a body like Adonis. The night they actually get to meet face to face – in her backyard after she’s been skinnydipping – that fantasy becomes reality. Lon has been lusting after his parents’ hot neighbor for months, and now that he has got a taste of her, he wants to have a go at dating. She’s a little hung up on the age difference, but he quickly takes care of that. With lots and lots of sex.

Buying from LI is a lot like buying from EC 90% of the time. The focus tends to be on the sex in the romances, which isn’t always a bad thing. It only gets in the way when the erotic style doesn’t work for me, and unfortunately, that was the case here. Much of it has to do with terminology, and that’s a preferential thing that varies from reader to reader. What bothered me – like having cocks and pussies referred to as “weeping” – might not bother others. I did debate early on if I should keep going once I realized I was going to have issues with it, but because it’s such a recent release and because I’ve been so curious about this author for so long, I stuck it out.

It wasn’t just the erotic style that didn’t work for me. Attempts to lighten the mood with jokes and banter fell flat as well. Humor is so subjective, though. Lines like, “I plan for you and my cock to get to be best friends,” are obviously meant to be funny (within the context of the story), but just made me roll my eyes and wonder if I was reading about teenagers instead of adults. I ended up feeling rather indifferent about the whole experience, from the characters to the romance to the sex. I don’t regret buying this book, though, because my curiosity has finally been satisfied.

Readability	6/10 – Purely based on the author’s humor and erotic scenes not working for me
Hero	4/10 – So much was spent on the sex there was too little time to learn what he might actually be like when he wasn’t
Heroine	5/10 – At least she didn’t whine about the age difference for half the book
Entertainment value	3/10 – I learned the author’s erotic style and sense of humor does not mesh with what I enjoy
World building	5/10 – Everything felt skimmed over in favor of all the sex
TOTAL:	23/50

Shapes in the Blood by Kim Knox

TITLE: Shapes in the Blood
AUTHOR: Kim Knox
PUBLISHER: Loose Id
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 27k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: $4.99

Aila can’t believe how her luck has changed. The hottest guy at her new job has asked her out, and it looks like she’s actually going to get what she wants for a change. But when he shows up late, then drags her to a war memorial and starts talking about needing her, alarm bells begin to peal louder than her hormones. She tries to leave, but he won’t let her go easily. She has no choice but to accept the help of the strange man who suddenly shows up, telling her she’s just this demon’s latest intended victim…

I’d hoped choosing an author I’d enjoyed before would make this a good reading week for me, but unfortunately, this is probably the weakest story I’ve read by her yet.

It starts in a rush. Aila has been working for six weeks at her new job, and just that morning, garnered the attention of a gorgeous co-worker. He asked her out for that night, then ended up showing four hours late for their date. The lust she has for the man overrides her better sense, and she agrees to go out at that late hour, but when he directs her to a war memorial for some annual ritual he does, then proceeds to tell her he needs her help in doing what he’s come to do, she finally comes to her senses. She tries to leave, but he doesn’t want her to go, changing right before her eyes into something not quite human. A stranger then appears out of nowhere offering to help, and on instinct, she tosses him her car keys and lets him drive her away.

It only gets confusing from that point on. I could try explaining it all, but honestly, it took me so long to figure it out for myself—and even then, it took the bulk of the information that doesn’t get revealed until the very end—that it would be pointless for me to try. Because that’s this story’s greatest weakness. The ideas behind the world-building are ripe with potential, incredibly intriguing and different from the norm, but the way they’re conveyed is next to impossible to keep straight. Details get twisted around by dreams that might not actually be dreams, while facts about who Aila is and what the demons wants with her are vague and unnecessarily circuitous. The novella is only 27k, but it reads much longer, mostly because of the lack of clarity given to the world-building and what exactly is going on with everything.

Part of that likely stems from the thick tension that permeates the story from page one. The author excels at UST and making things steamy, but in this case, it ends up obscuring the actual story that’s being told. Too much focus is placed upon Aila’s raging hormones, all the way down to awkward dreams that play out her hidden thoughts about Matt, the stranger who helped her escape. It’s too hard to tell where manipulations end and genuine reactions begin, and while some of that is intentional, there’s just too much. It gets in the way of understanding who Matt and Aila really are, and if there is any kind of real future there outside of the too-convenient one we’re told they’ll have.

As much as I’ve enjoyed this author in the past, I can’t recommend this story at all except to romance readers who are mostly interested in hot tension rather than clear storytelling.

Readability	6/10 – Clarity gets sacrificed for oblique prose
Hero	4/10 – Hints that I should find him attractive, but the story is too muddled to give me any kind of idea of what he’s truly like
Heroine	4/10 – Um, ditto
Entertainment value	3/10 – Though the sexual tension runs rampant, it’s not nearly enough to counter the muddy storytelling
World building	5/10 – Great ideas, poor execution
TOTAL:	22/50

For Your Eyes Only by Melissa Hosack

TITLE: For Your Eyes Only
AUTHOR: Melissa Hosack
PUBLISHER: Silver Publishing
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 18k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: $3.99

Dragged out on Halloween by her best friend, Lily finds herself a wallflower again until the most gorgeous guy she’s ever seen begins talking to her. She decides to take a chance when the attraction between them sparks, but when she wakes up the next morning and discovers he’s actually a ghost, she has to decide if the fact that only she can see and touch him is all that matters…

While I’ve had my eye on Silver Publishing for a while, this was the first story I was tempted enough to buy. The blurb on the publisher’s site hinted at something a little more complex than the usual ghost story, but unfortunately, that’s not what I got.

Lily is shy, but willing to live vicariously through her best friend. She agrees to get dressed up for Halloween and go out dancing, but finds herself alone at a table, watching from the sidelines yet again. That changes when a man begins talking to her. Nathan is the most gorgeous guy she’s ever seen, and his humorous charm, telling her he’s dressed up as a ghost when he’s wearing a T-shirt and faded jeans, relaxes her enough to enjoy his company. At her friend’s urging, she gets up the nerve to invite him back to her apartment, where they spend the night having sex. In the morning, however, she discovers that his ghost description wasn’t a cute joke. He actually is one, and as soon as he gets outside a yard from her presence, he becomes incorporeal again.

The reason I bought this story was because of this sentence from the publisher’s blurb: In a complex relationship between woman and ghost, the pair must wonder how long they'll be able to keep Lily's human friends from asking too many questions about the boyfriend they never see. That hinted that it might actually tackle the ghost issue in a new way, even though I knew from the pricepoint and novella length it wouldn’t be very long. Unfortunately that never happened. Lily and Nathan meet, they go back to her place, they have sex a few times, then it cuts to a year later. Any depth it might have had was wasted in the time jump, and instead, I got very mediocre sex that was just way too coy for my tastes (using life essence for come, for instance). It’s not helped at all by the rather pedantic writing, or the fact that Lily’s characterization remains flat for most of the story.

I’d almost written it off completely when it got to the resolution, but a turn in the plot I hadn’t quite expected helped bring it up a bit. It still ends too abruptly, however, just as the complications would be interesting to work through, so while the finish might have raised my overall enjoyment of it up a tad, it wasn’t nearly enough to convince me to try other works by this author. It felt too much like a wasted opportunity when it was done.

Readability	6/10 – Too simplistic for the most part, with the sex scenes too coy for me
Hero	5/10 – Mildly charming at first, but lacks depth
Heroine	4/10 – Though I didn’t dislike her, I never really felt like she was a real character
Entertainment value	4/10 – The ending saved this from being a complete wash
World building	6/10 – Little is done to explain the paranormal aspects of this until a big information dump at the ending
TOTAL:	25/50

Brass and Bone by Cynthia Gael

TITLE: Brass and Bone
AUTHOR: Cynthia Gael
PUBLISHER: Carina Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 36k)
GENRE: Steampunk paranormal
COST: $3.59

Lady Abigail and her partner Simon are called upon an old friend of hers for a very delicate job. He needs her to take cargo across the globe on her airship, with the witch he’s captured as part of the magical lock that will seal it forever. There’s a lot of money involved, too much to resist, but Simon thinks the witch’s keeper – her ex-lover – is too cavalier and dangerous about this entire mission…

The more published steampunk I read, the more I wonder what the big deal is. Because if these are the best the genre has to offer – and it seems everybody across the internet proclaims steampunk as the next big thing by begging for more – then I really have to ask just how awful the stories are that don’t manage to get published. Because this novella I recently finished just doesn’t cut it.

It starts out well enough. Simon and his partner Abigail rob a man of a device, having been hired to steal and deliver it for a hefty sum. Things go mildly awry when Simon is poisoned by the thing, but he is treated in time to suffer no long-term damage. He finds out the next morning that they are traveling to see an old friend of hers, a man he can’t stand, because he was both the one that hired them for this particular job and is in need for more work, something he says only Abigail can do. Once they get there, they discover they are to transport something to Australia, where it will be locked away forever using the combined blood of a witch and a human. He has a witch on hand, a French woman named Cynara, but she is treated as more of a thing and prisoner than a person. He’s sending along a keeper, the man who was Cynara’s lover before he turned her over to this group of Witchfinders, and so the four set out on this around the world journey.

If this sounds interesting, don’t be fooled. It’s a muddle and turns even more tedious after they actually leave. The story is riddled with so many weaknesses, it’s difficult to pinpoint just which holds it back the most. First of all, the author chooses to write it in alternating 1^st person POVs – Simon’s (the male half of the airship pair) and Cynara’s (the female witch half of the paranormal pair). I normally love 1^st person, but I find it much more difficult to switch between two within the same story, especially from chapter to chapter. It erases the deep perspective 1^st person creates, and forces the reader to start over again with a character from scratch. Don’t get me wrong. It can be done, but it requires top notch writing and voices to truly pull it off. That doesn’t happen here. Instead, we only get one decent voice – Simon’s. When it switches to Cynara, the entire story gets thrown into confusion, largely because much of what happens in her POV is told instead of shown, and the world-building explaining the magical/paranormal aspects of the story is some of the sketchiest I’ve read in a while.

The telling vs. showing is a problem that runs throughout the entire story, though. For too much of it, it reads like a summary of a much longer work, skipping over what felt like should have been crucial events, skimping on the details on too many things. Characterizations suffer as a result. The only one who felt fully well-rounded and real to me was Simon. Cynara falls short on believable motivations or interest, her keeper Henri is too secretive to be anything but frustrating, and Abigail is put on a pedestal by Simon. The only aspects of the story that seem to get a good balance of loving detail are the steampunk gadgets. Abigail’s airship alone merits nearly 500 words of description, just so “you may visualize it when I discuss such aeronautical locations as the bridge, engine room, galley, hold and so forth.”

Here stems the roots from which my problems with most of the steampunk stories I read grow. I buy a genre book to read a story and be entertained in some fashion, not to be regaled with the author’s imagined gadgetry that seems to fit into this new world. Ultimately, I still need to experience an actual story, and I mean experience it, not told it. Too often, that feels like it gets forgotten, in favor of lavishing all this attention on the elements of a steampunk world. World-building is fantastic, but not the sole purpose.

Though it doesn’t say so on the site, this novella has to be the first in a series, because the conclusion is very open-ended, with nothing actually resolved. It’s just as dissatisfying as the rest of the story, but I won’t be bothering with any more that might come along. I’ve read enough of this author’s voice to know this style is just not for me.

Readability	6/10 – Alternating 1st person POVs with lots of telling makes this very tedious to get through
Characterization	5/10 – Simon fares the best, but the rest of them come off as vague or caricatures
Plot	5/10 – Incomplete since it’s clearly meant to be part of a series, with little sense of flow
Entertainment value	3/10 – Started off well, but the disjointedness of the plot as well as too much tell rather than show turns this into a slog
World building	6/10 – The steampunk aspects are all right, but everything on the paranormal side leaves a lot to be desired
TOTAL:	25/50

Temporary Spy by Lynne Connolly

TITLE: Temporary Spy
AUTHOR: Lynne Connolly
PUBLISHER: Total-e-bound
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 16k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotic romance
COST: $4.36

Beth investigates industrial espionage, but when a new job ends up coming from the man she left behind, she insists on being the one to do it. It’ll give her closure, she believes, except the moment Finn Scott sees her, he’s all over her, the chemistry they’d shared three years earlier hotter than ever. Finn has never forgotten Beth, ransacking the country for any sign of her when she disappeared after turning down his marriage proposal. But now that she’s back in his life, he has no intention of ever letting her go.

When I saw this for sale earlier this week, I got excited. I’d recently really enjoyed some of this author’s work, and while I’ve already purchased some of her backlist, I thought buying her most recent release would have me reading her at the top of her game. I was wrong. I was so disappointed in this story, it’s hard to believe it’s the same author.

The story starts in Finn’s POV as he is fending off the advances of his PA. She complains about the awful temp she has to deal with, so he agrees to talk to her at the end of the day. He doesn’t expect the temp to be the woman who disappeared out of his life three years earlier, however. The second she walks into his office, he is across the room, kissing her desperately against the door. Beth is there to help him ferret out and prove someone is stealing from him, but she gets caught up in the passion between them, and the single kiss turns into sex, sex, and more sex. She believes with everything she has that it won’t work, though, and fully intends for their relationship to be over once the job is done. Finn has other ideas.

My problems started early. We get none of the backstory between Finn and Beth before she walks into his office, and yet, he throws her against the door with such passion, there’s a distinct disconnect, like some of the story is missing or that I’ve somehow lost it from my file. In fact, we get very little of the backstory until later in the story, and what we do get comes in boring telling sections that do nothing to add any kind of sparkle to the characters. Beth’s explicit reason for leaving Finn before is kept a mystery until the very end, even though it’s painfully obvious very early on. It’s also incredibly lame, because all of the drama about why it was such a big deal is merely referenced in conversation that has zero emotional impact.

Both leads are flat, and the sex between them uninspired. Finn does start getting interesting near the end, but then the story is over and it all feels like one big wasted opportunity. Beth, on the other hand, always felt like a wet rag, and why she thought she could have this last fling with a man she’d left with no explanation, I’ll never know.

The espionage story itself is handled clumsily and then abruptly (and conveniently) resolved, leaving this short novella’s primary focus on the romance between the two leads. There’s an HEA, but honestly, I laughed out loud at it. She’s shown very little reason to change her mind, until, oh wait there’s the ending, she has to. If I hadn’t read this author before, I would have dismissed all the rest of her work out of hand after reading this one. It was just that bad. Now, however, I can only hope that this is a blip, because of the publisher perhaps, or maybe because it’s so short or written to a deadline I can’t know about or something like that. There has to be a reason why this falls so short of the level I’ve previously experienced with this author. I can only hope it’s a one-off and doesn’t reflect in the other stories I already have waiting to be read.

Readability	7/10 – Short, so it went quickly, but ultimately a little cold
Hero	4/10 – Flat for too much of the story, by the time he started getting interesting, the story was over
Heroine	4/10 – Her behavior remains unexplained for too much of the story, making her annoying rather than sympathetic in any way
Entertainment value	3/10 – The sex was unengaging, the characters flat, and the overall effect extremely disappointing
World building	5/10 – Her past is sketchy as is her involvement, though there’s more when it comes to Finn’s work
TOTAL:	23/50

Cougars and Cubs by assorted authors

TITLE: Cougars and Cubs
AUTHORS: Ashley Ladd, KS Augustin, Mia Watts, Catherine Chernow, Elizabeth Coldwell, Imari Jade
PUBLISHER: Total-e-bound
LENGTH: Anthology (roughly 105k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotic romance
COST: ₤6.49

A collection of six erotic novellas, each about a romance between an older woman and a younger man…

My biggest hope when I buy anthologies is to discover new talent, but that doesn’t happen all that often. It definitely didn’t happen with this one.

The anthology starts off with “Scene of the Crime” by Ashley Ladd. Forty-four year-old Robyn returns to the college she graduated from as a history professor, but that also means returning to the town where she’d first had her heart broken by a man who lied to her about being married. Now divorced, he wants to rekindle things with her, but she wants nothing to do with him. Running out on a date with him that she got ambushed on, she goes to a local bar, gets drunk, and takes home the hot young guy she played pool with. The next morning, she’s appalled to discover he’s the spitting image of her ex. He should be. He’s his son. While the writing itself in this story isn’t bad – there’s even some chemistry between the two leads – I was so put off by the idea that this professional woman would get involved with the son of a man who hurt not only her but his wife and child, I could never really accept the too-swift love that came between them. The situation was just too complex, and people were too badly hurt, for this to succeed. It needed more time and depth to be even remotely believable, not to mention give me the reader a chance to empathize with her for her predicament.

Following the weak lead-in is KS Augustin’s “Singapore Sizzle.” Sophie is an ex-socialite who’s been divorced for two years, eager to get a little fun back in her life. She accepts an invitation to a masquerade ball, and there, she meets a gorgeous man who takes her up to the penthouse suite almost immediately. She has problems with the age difference, however, and flees the next morning. He, on the other hand, isn’t so easily put off. While this one has a better flow than the first, with a slightly more sympathetic heroine, the hero lacks much depth to give this anything more than a fling feel. Of the six stories, it has the most realistic ending, though, so points there for that.

One of the stronger stories in the collection is “Melting Melinda” by Mia Watts. Mel has been best friends with Karen for a very long time, but recently, she’s become attracted to Karen’s grown son, Ethan. The trio are practically family, but what Mel doesn’t know is that Ethan has been in love with her for years. He lets her know on the vacation they all take together, but she doesn’t want her moment of insanity to ruin the best relationships in her life and runs scared. This is the romance I bought the most of the group. The relationships between the three, as well as the two secondary characters Larry and Lyla, sparkle with authenticity. I never doubted Ethan’s feelings for her for a moment, and I really liked how the fallout was handled.

Unfortunately, liking that one wasn’t nearly enough to save me from the next. “Lucky in Love” by Catherine Chernow is about fifty-year-old Maddie Summers and the hot thirty-five year-old Jake Conroy who moves in next door. She discovers they work for the same company, and though she tries to keep things professional, he’s too attracted to her not to put the moves on. This one never got off the ground for me. The authorial voice is simplistic and borderline pedantic, with short, simple sentences and stop-and-go pacing. Maddie’s inner conflict is overwrought, and the transition from strangers to more too unbelievable for me to ever accept. Definitely my least favorite of the bunch.

“Something Within Him” by Elizabeth Coldwell is the 1^st person telling of editor Kate who agrees to see someone as a potential intern as a favor for a friend. He’s cute and smart, and hiring him is a no-brainer even though the last intern she hired was a fiasco. He makes his attraction to her obvious early on, but she manages to hold him off until a trip to Amsterdam to cover a new hotel throws them together. Of all the stories in the collection, this is the one with the most sophisticated prose, with some very nice descriptions and intelligent phrasing to help counter the fantasy of the entire situation. The ending is too saccharine in relation to the realistic tone set by the rest of the story, but the author’s voice was such a pleasant change of pace and the heroine so refreshing that I was forgiving of it.

The anthology ends with Imari Jade’s “Something to Be Thankful For.” Julianne is the manager for rock star Cameron, but when he tells her he loves her and wants more, she excuses the sex that follows as a drunken mistake. He disappears after that, and she tracks him down in hopes of repairing their relationship. While I rather Julianne in this, Cameron remains an enigma. We’re told a lot about him – that he likes women and alcohol too much, and overindulges with both – but little of it meshes with what I actually see on the page. I never felt like I got to know him, and without being able to see him as an individual, I can’t invest in the romance.

Unless you’re a fan of more than a few of these authors, I’d suggest passing. Pick up the authors you like individually, or, if you don’t want have one, try Coldwell’s or Watts’. They’re the only two in this that didn’t really feel like a waste of my time.

Readability	6/10 – Relatively clean, but a couple bordered on hard for me to finish due to the voice
Romance	5/10 – Little depth in most, with resolutions too easy
Characterization	4/10 – For the most part, very flat
Entertainment value	4/10 – Unmemorable and surprisingly not very hot
World building	5/10 – Only one seems to make any real effort here
TOTAL:	24/50

The Vampire's Madam by L. Rosario

TITLE: The Vampire’s Madam
AUTHOR: L. Rosario
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 8k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: $2.00

A madam of a high-end brothel in London, Janna has been infatuated with one of her regulars for the entire two-and-a-half years he’s been coming to her business. Not once in all that time has she offered to service him herself, but after she witnesses a particularly torrid night with one of her girls, she decides that she’ll allow no other girl in her employ to give him what he needs – her blood…

Finding an excellent short story in the romance genre is difficult, mostly because authors usually prove too ambitious within the story’s parameters. This one is yet another that falls woefully short.

The story takes place in Victorian London, in a high-end brothel run by the half-Welsh/half-Indian beauty, Janna. Janna has been shunned by society her entire life because of the color of her skin, and takes great pride in running one of the most successful establishments in the city. The only thing keeping her from true satisfaction is seeing the man she lusts after come into her business every Wednesday night and going off with one of her girls instead of her. After two and a half years, she gives in to the voyeuristic desire to see what’s going on and discovers that the gorgeous Hugh de Troyes is actually a vampire. She decides then and there that no other woman in her employ will see to his needs. She can give him everything he desires.

If this story had stuck to being erotica, it just might have worked. The set-up is a little trite, but the heat in the voyeuristic first third was sufficient to hint at how explosive the rest of it could be. However, it doesn’t settle for that. Instead, it attempts to be a meaningful historical/paranormal/romance on top of the erotica, and in the space of just less than eight thousand words, it just didn’t succeed. What’s meant to be romantic declarations of unending love come across as just silly. Hugh is a six-hundred year old vampire who claims to have been alone all this time, and that Janna is the one for him. Seriously. They’re making vows to spend eternity together with barely any time at all to get to know either one of them, let alone the fact that Janna really knows very little about the vampire’s current life, only what she’s gleaned from history books. History we’re told about toward the end of the story as if it actually has time to mean anything by that point. It’s one big information dump that feels irrelevant to the rest of the story except to justify expecting readers to buy into the “romance” part of it.

It didn’t work. It pulled me even further out of the story. The sex ends up mired in all this melodrama and clumsy writing, Hugh and Janna become little more than flat figures trying to fit into the niches the author has created, and the story itself is uninspiring.

Readability	7/10 – Hot when it had to be, but mostly just inoffensive
Hero	4/10 – Hints of appeal before the story derailed
Heroine	4/10 – Mostly just really horny
Entertainment value	3/10 – It can’t decide what it wants to be and ends up being schizophrenic as a result
World building	5/10 – Some details are described, but most of it’s either relayed in conversation or glossed over completely
TOTAL:	23/50

Forbidden Thunder by Kathleen Lash

TITLE: Forbidden Thunder
AUTHOR: Kathleen Lash
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 93k)
GENRE: Contemporary romance
COST: $6.00

When one of the company trucks gets in a precarious accident, Caila does what her trapped brother asks and calls Four Sons Towing to help them out. Little does she know that in doing so, she’s settling an old debt between their fathers, but rather than yank the livelihood away from a lot of good people, she’s able to come to an agreement with John Thunder, the man who now runs the towing company. It means putting in a lot of hours and making a lot of sacrifices, but more importantly, it means spending a lot of time with a man who drives her senses crazy…

Readers are always on the hunt for books that blow them away, so it’s always a disappointment when yet another one fails to live up to that hope. This one definitely falls into the realm of missed opportunities.

It starts off all right. Caila runs the business end of her family’s trucking company. When her brother is in a dangerous accident, he instructs her to call Four Sons Towing, even though their father strictly forbade them from doing so prior to his retirement. She displays courage and strength as she steps in to help however she can, at the same time meeting John Thunder, the son who now runs the towing company. Little does she know that a deal was made forty years earlier. In order to settle a lawsuit, Caila’s father agreed to pay $4,000,000 to John’s father in the event his company ever called the Thunders for help. There is no way the company has that kind of money to settle the debt, but Caila manages to finagle a settlement with John, preying on his sense of fairness to not put a lot of innocent people out of work. It forces the two of them to work in close proximity, during which time their attraction combusts.

The story goes on from there. And on. And on. At over 90k, it’s not a fast read, mostly because it gets bogged in really sloppy perspective and scene shifts, poor pacing, and tedious melodramatic events that end up repeating themselves in an attempt to put the principals at risk. Where John had seemed wonderfully alpha at the beginning, by a third of the way into the story he simply comes across as controlling and sullen, not appealing at all. He claims to admire her strength, but every time she displays independence in a way he doesn’t like or approve of, he goes off on her in the most condescending fashion imaginable. The romantic progression was jerky at best, with them being awful to each other and then suddenly chewing each other’s faces off. Plot points lurched out of nowhere to create drama, during which the narrative was so clumsy it was often hard to understand what exactly was going on. Then, I had to put up with what seemed like serious injuries getting ignored in favor of sexual escapades.

There was mild hope in Caila, but that got destroyed by the relationships surrounding her. Caila sacrificed a lot for her family and company, always putting her all into her work, her own needs on the back burner. I really liked that backbone in her, as did John. What creeped me out was her relationship with her brothers. They’re a very close family, but incredibly touchy-feely. This capable young woman gets pulled into their laps, gets her hair caressed, gets her face constantly touched, in ways that seem inappropriate from brothers. It’s made worse when John does the exact same thing. What was likely meant to be innocent becomes cast in a romantic, intimate light, until it got to the point where I would cringe every time another scene with a brother showed up. Which was a lot. She had four of them, after all. It’s explained away as a reaction to their traumatic childhoods, but that comes too late in the story to do any good. My feelings on them were already cemented.

I guess I’m still on the hunt. It’s too bad, because under better conditions, John is a type of hero I’d totally fall for.

Readability	6/10 – Sloppy POV, poor pacing, and repetition problems
Hero	4/10 – Intense but not in a good way, controlling and dour
Heroine	5/10 – Strong and independent, but inconsistent and her relationship with her brothers creeped me out
Entertainment value	3/10 – The prose was a mess, the relationships a little creepy, and the repetition/overkill on problems too much to believe
World building	7/10 – Well, she knows her trucking industry, that’s for sure
TOTAL:	25/50

Highland Arms by Cathie Dunn

TITLE: Highland Arms
AUTHOR: Cathie Dunn
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 63k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $5.50

After her reputation has been sullied in Edinburgh, Catriona MacKenzie has been exiled to her godmother’s estate in the Highlands, an escape she is desperate for since she was falsely accused of promiscuous behaviors. There, she meets Rory Cameron, a man she wants to hate but finds herself attracted to even when he treats her appallingly. A Jacobite, Rory is determined to keep love and relationships far, far away, unwilling to have someone mourn or hurt for him, but from the moment he meets Catriona, his senses are cast awhirl. She is clearly in need of help, fragile and dependent on their good will. His political beliefs run deep, but just maybe, she is the woman who can change his mind about the future…

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how much I love the history. If I don’t like the main characters, nothing is going to save the story.

Catriona is traveling with her awful brother Angus through Scotland, on their way to her godmother’s. She’s been banished from Edinburgh after her fiancé made false accusations regarding her promiscuity, claims her brother backed up as part of a deal. Catriona is glad to be rid of the city and her terrible fiancé, especially since the Highlands appeal to her. So does Rory Cameron, a not-by-blood cousin she meets along the way. She’s shocked to realize he lives with her godmother, mostly because he’s the most attractive man she’s ever seen and her senses go haywire whenever he’s around. Rory is deeply involved with the Jacobites and refuses to have any emotional connections to people, as a means of keeping them safe should something happen to him. And considering he’s stashing arms for an upcoming conflict, something most likely will. The problem is, Catriona figures out very quickly what he’s up to. Toss in the fact that he’s just as attracted to her, and it’s disaster waiting to happen.

My biggest problem with this story? Catriona. Hands down. She’s emotionally fragile and cries at the drop of a hat. Her tears are referenced more than thirty different times in this novel. By the halfway point, I was ready to shove her into the loch and hold her down just to put her out of my misery. Her moments of backbone offer hints of the character she could’ve been, but any hope for liking her is destroyed when she starts to cry or tear up again paragraphs later. How am I expected to believe that a man like Rory would fall for her?

To be honest, though, he’s not much better. He assumes the worst of Catriona almost from the start, and his constant pulling her close/pushing her away grows tiresome early on. His behavior turns at the drop of a hat, affording little continuity and almost no explanations that actually make sense. I liked that he was so politically involved and seemingly capable, but that was about it. Oh, and he didn’t cry as much as Catriona. In this story, that’s a point in his favor.

The suspense and action of his involvement in the approaching uprising could have been taut if it wasn’t ruined by Catriona’s presence. She dampens every scene she’s in, usually by crying, and shatters any sense of tension that might have been generated. There are some better personalities in the supporting cast, but their doting on her baffled me to the point of losing respect for them. As much as I love Scottish history, this might have turned me off to reading anything about it in the near future. I need time to forget about this one first.

Readability	7/10 – Repetition in description and actions gave it a ho-hum factor, though it was mostly clean
Hero	5/10 – His push/pull of the heroine grated
Heroine	3/10 – Weak and too tearful for my tastes
Entertainment value	4/10 – As much as I love Scottish history, disliking the primaries really dragged this down
World building	6/10 – Though it’s obvious the author knows the setting, the repetition in the prose ends up stunting its vividness
TOTAL:	25/50

Soul Bond by Christine Price

TITLE: Soul Bond
AUTHOR: Christine Price
PUBLISHER: Samhain
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 30k)
GENRE: Gay sci-fi erotic romance
COST: $3.50

Captain Julian Gaspar had a bounty out on a certain man for many years before he was brought to him. But when he finally gets his ex-lover Ellis in his bed again, Ellis is already dying, attached to a corpse-feeler that is slowly stealing his soul…

It always amazes me how some novellas can fly by in the blink of an eye and others are a chore to slog through. I knew when I started this story it wasn’t that long, but I triple-checked the word count when I was done because I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to make my way through it.

It starts out with an opportunist on an alien planet finding a man in an alley he recognizes from a bounty poster. Hoping there might still be a reward, he hauls this obviously dying man to the ship in question, where he is paid an exorbitant amount of money to keep his mouth shut about what he found. We discover that the ship’s captain, Julian, had put a bounty out on the dying man years before. The dying man is Ellis, and he was Julian’s lover until he sacrificed himself to save Julian. The story jumps to flashback, to tell how Julian and Ellis met and what led to their eventual parting. Then it’s back to the present, and Julian’s quest to try and find a way to keep Ellis alive. Ellis is wearing a ring that is slowly stealing his soul. According to the ship’s medic, he has less than a week to live.

A lot of potential for drama, right? I thought so, too. The concept of the soul ring was an interesting one, with a parasitic race that uses the ring as a means to prolong their own longevity. But it’s never really given a chance to soar, mostly due to the dull characters and even duller prose. The story is far more tell than show, and the initial interactions with Ellis and Julian are uninspiring. Ellis is a stowaway on a ship Julian captures during the war. He bargains sex for not getting throw out an airlock. Everything about him screams shallow and opportunistic. Yet, Julian is fascinated by him from the start. They fall into bed quickly, and for several chapters afterward, it’s sex (not nearly hot or long enough to counter the weak characterizations) with a minor problem either solved or brought up. It’s predictable and boring very quickly. But then, it turns on a dime. Julian, in an act that seems ridiculously dumb for someone who’s supposedly such a brilliant man, almost kills himself and sets his ship on fire, at which point Ellis jumps in and saves him at the expense of his own safety. I’m expected to believe at this point that there might be more between these men, but everything I’ve been shown up to this point is not-very-inspiring sex. I never see what Ellis’s appeal is other than the fact that he’s pretty and supposedly good in bed.

Without being able to care or invest in either of the two leads, I was left hoping to get involved in the drama. I didn’t. A character gets introduced after the flashbacks, who, while interesting, provides a whole deus ex machina feel to the entire latter half of the story. That doesn’t end up being the case, but by the time I found that out, the damage had already been done. Add in the rather dreary and terse prose, and the drama that should have crackled throughout the climax fell flat on its face. I never felt the intensity that should have come from such a life or death choice, and then it was over almost before it began.

Stories need more than an interesting gimmick to keep me invested. They need people I can feel for, and drama I care about. I would have settled for even one of those here, and I just didn’t get it.

Readability	6/10 – Lots of telling and not enough depth made this more of a chore than it had to be
Hero #1	4/10 – Shallow and uninteresting
Hero #2	4/10 – Seemed more of an opportunist than what I was told he should be
Entertainment value	3/10 – With no character depth and trite ideas, this felt like a longer book than it was
World building	6/10 – Some attempts are made at bringing the setting to life, but some lack common sense while others are incomplete
TOTAL:	23/50

Getting Even with Warren by Wynter Daniels

TITLE: Getting Even with Warren
AUTHOR: Wynter Daniels
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 15k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotic romance
COST: $2.49

At the funeral of her much older husband, Macy meets his oldest son for the first time, the biracial Alex. Attraction sparks between them, and both think sleeping together is the perfect way to get back at the man who did wrong by both of them…

Though she left her husband a month before his death, Macy Halstead must still attend his funeral for the sake of appearances. There, she has to sit and watch all his mistresses mourn for the man. The only person who attracts her attention in a positive way is Alex, her husband’s oldest son. The product of an affair, Alex has always believed he wasn’t as good in his father’s eyes as his half-brothers because of the color of his skin, and has resented the man his entire life. He’s attracted to the latest widow, as well as intrigued by how young she is. They come to agree almost at the same time – albeit to themselves at first – that sleeping with the other is the perfect revenge on Warren. If they get fantastic sex out of it, too, all the better.

And that’s what a good part of this story is. Sex comprises almost half of its word count, with conflict generated out of the blue and then disregarded paragraphs later. If that’s all you’re looking for, I suppose it works, but for me, I need to at least feel the attraction first. I didn’t here. I could see why Macy was attracted to Alex – from his description, he sounds hot – but she lacks any kind of personality or enticing description to make me understand why he feels so connected to her so quickly. Without feeling that connection myself, it became a chore to read sex scene after sex scene, in a voice that, while clean and rather unobtrusive, didn’t engage me either. This sex should’ve been charged with so much emotion – his anger, her anger, their sublimated desires – and it fell far short of reaching that. It’s a victim of too much. In this case, too much sex completely obliterated any impact the story might have generated because it didn’t give the characters enough time to come to life outside of their orgasms.

Readability	7/10 – Nothing wrong with it, but never really engaged me either, it felt a lot longer than 15k
Hero	4/10 – By the numbers and flat
Heroine	4/10 – Other than her disdain for her dead husband’s philandering, I never understood what was so special about her
Entertainment value	3/10 – Without being able to engage in either leads, it was just one sex scene after another
World building	4/10 – No attempts are made, and since when do cameramen have secretaries?
TOTAL:	22/50

The Mitchell Money by Sue Fineman

TITLE: The Mitchell Money
AUTHOR: Sue Fineman
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 76k)
GENRE: Contemporary romance
COST: $6.50

Rachel Woods hasn’t been widowed for long, but she’s already discovered that she didn’t know her husband as well as she thought she did. For starters, he’s made all their money disappear, but when she tries to find out, she hits a blank wall. She’s forced to seek the help out of a young lawyer friend in town, who trades her services as a cook for his ex-cop father’s investigative abilities. Gary Martinson is surly and obnoxious from the moment they meet, but Rachel has little choice but to rely upon his expertise as she tries to ferret out the truth of the life her husband led without her knowledge…

Honestly, the blurb is the most interesting thing about this book. If I’d had another book available to me at the time I was reading this, I wouldn’t have finished it. Extra innings at my daughter’s softball game is the biggest reason I did.

It’s not like there isn’t potentially interesting stuff that happened. Rachel is a forty-five year-old widow who has only just discovered that her husband emptied their bank accounts right before he died suddenly, leaving her in the middle of their house construction with no marketable job skills and a mountain of debt. With nobody else to turn to, she goes to the young lawyer who helped them buy their land. He offers her a job cooking for him and his widower father, and in exchange, his dad, an ex-cop, will do what he can to find her money. It’s the only deal Rachel feels she can get so she accepts. She soon discovers that the surly man she literally ran into in town is the lawyer’s father, but after a rough start, agrees to stay in the agreement. Gary starts digging around and it quickly comes to light that Rachel’s husband was leading a double life. He had a son by another woman, a young teenager who has been living on the streets since his mother died, as well as an entire history Rachel never knew about. Rachel and Gary work together to unravel the truth, and slowly end up building another family in the process.

Sounds like it should be good, doesn’t it? There was so much potential here. Rachel and Gary are an older couple, which always makes for a nice change, and if the living a double life angle is a tad overdone, I thought the second chance at romance approach was a nice way of going about it. It might have been, too, if the prose itself wasn’t so awful. It’s clean enough technically, I suppose, but it’s all telling instead of showing, and the headhopping is insane, often switching perspectives within the same paragraph. Everything that’s wrong with this comes back to its dishwater voice and pedantic presentation:

As the days passed, Johnny and Rachel settled into a routine at the ranch, and the four of them became a family. Johnny worked in the barn or bunkhouse after school, helping Joe get ready to open the ranch for business again. With Gary’s encouragement and Joe’s brotherly love, Johnny thrived. Rachel did her part, too, cooking nutritional meals and reassuring him he’d always have a home with her. She loved the boy as if she’d known him forever.

This is what passes for character development. Instead of showing me how Gary and Rachel manage to get over their antagonism with each other (it just seems to evaporate out of nowhere after being so caustic in the first few chapters, I was convinced they would never work through it), I get this convenient little time jump. There’s also no sense of tension in the external plot, as Gary conveniently removes the obstacles that make it dire for Rachel to find the money. Her need for independence remains, but honestly, most of the time it felt like an excuse to act stubborn rather than organic to any kind of character development.

Simply put, I was bored to tears. The characters were flat, the writing style immature, and the potential lost.

Readability	5/10 – The prose is overly simplistic and pedantic, with too much telling and headhopping
Hero	5/10 – Flat and uninteresting, a victim of the colorless narrative
Heroine	5/10 – She suffers the same fate as the hero
Entertainment value	2/10 – There might have been some good ideas in the basic plot, but I was so bored by halfway through, it didn’t even matter
World building	4/10 – As uninteresting as the rest of the story
TOTAL:	21/50

Tempting Alibi by Savannah Stuart

TITLE: Tempting Alibi
AUTHOR: Savannah Stuart
PUBLISHER: Ellora’s Cave
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 19k)
GENRE: Contemporary erotic romance
COST: $4.45

Michaela has had the hots for her new neighbor ever since he moved in seven months ago, but she hasn’t said a word to him since welcoming him to the neighborhood. An ex-Marine, Scott now runs his own auto shop and keeps getting a lot of negative attention from the town’s sheriff. When the sheriff shows up and demands Scott provide an alibi for the night before, Michaela – who happens to be there dropping off her car – gives him one. It breaks the ice for Scott and Michaela, but will their disparate backgrounds keep them casual, or do they stand a chance at making it last?

I don’t have high expectations for short contemporaries from Ellora’s Cave. They have a very singular purpose, so I go into the read keeping that in the forefront of my mind. Sometimes, I get pleasantly surprised, while others don’t manage to attain what it sets out to be.

This story falls into the latter category. It’s the story of Michaela and Scott, their mutual attraction, and the quick development of their romance. Michaela is from a wealthy family in town, well-educated with good connections, while Scott grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, enlisted in the Marines as soon as he graduated, and now owns an auto shop. They’re new neighbors, and each has been harboring a crush on the other the entire time without ever speaking after their initial meeting. When the sheriff shows up at Scott’s shop demanding an alibi, Michaela leaps to his defense, which opens up the door to them interacting on a more personal level. That means sex primarily, since Scott’s not really a talker and Michaela seems mostly interested in getting into his pants.

Heat is what drives most of these short contemporaries, but unfortunately, I didn’t feel it in this. The best word I can think of to describe the author’s voice is inoffensive. There’s nothing really wrong with it, but it’s so simple and unassuming that I got bored. Especially since she’s a mild headhopper, too. It might have been helped if I’d cared for either of the two main characters, and though I tried, I just couldn’t. Scott lacks any kind of personality, though again, there’s nothing really wrong with him, while I thought Michaela came across as a prig. When considering how swiftly things get physical with Scott, she thinks, Normally she dated a man for months before thinking about sleeping with him. And even then, she usually got too bored with them before taking that next step. Someone who doesn't even think about having sex for months when dating someone just comes across as uptight to me, an impression that got reinforced throughout the story. There are mild BDSM elements to their sex – she keeps commenting on how commanding Scott is, while he realizes Michaela likes it a little rough – but because of those early impressions of Michaela, they always felt like window dressing, not organic at all to the kind of woman she is. I suppose the argument could be made that she’s coming out of her shell, that Scott does this for her, but that’s an intellectual rationalization made after I’d already finished the story and sat thinking about why it didn’t work for me. I just couldn’t relate to Michaela at all.

So without being able to connect emotionally to either lead and having an author’s voice that is just a little too bland for me, this one was a miss.

Readability	7/10 – Mostly inoffensive w/mild headhopping
Hero	5/10 – Lacks personality, though there isn’t anything offensive about him
Heroine	4/10 – I thought her a big of a prig for much of the story and couldn’t relate to her at all
Entertainment value	4/10 – Without being able to connect emotionally to either lead, I was left relying on the hot factor, and the author’s voice is just too bland for me
World building	4/10 – It’s a short contemporary that starts out good but then disintegrates in favor of the sex
TOTAL:	24/50