Review: Sweet Inspiration

Sweet Inspiration by Penny Watson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I bought this on Carolyn Crane's recommendation and, well, it was disappointing. Not disappointing in the 'Why did I spend money on this?' way, but more in the 'God, there's so much squandered potential' way.

It's a really interesting premise. To describe it in a nutshell, Santa has five sons and Sweet Inspiration is the story of the oldest. Nicholas Klaus is in line to be the next 'Santa Claus,' but his passion is baking. While on vacation before the Christmas rush, he comes across Lucy's bakery and her delicious cookies. There's an immediate attraction between them, one thing leads to another, and Lucy, without her express consent, gets whisked to the North Pole. At this point, she still doesn't know that the whole Santa Claus thing is real (except for the flying reindeer, apparently). She's in for a rude awakening when she wakes up and, as punishment for bringing Lucy to the North Pole without permission, Nicholas has to give up baking and step into Santa's boots.

The elves were hysterical. I could totally buy how Watson set up the North Pole and how she integrates it into our reality. I really liked the other brothers and I would read their stories if I came across them. Santa and Mrs. Klaus were a little two-dimensional. The only thing I can remember about them right now is that Mrs. Klaus can't cook and Santa is buff. The main problem for me was Lucy and Nicholas. Nicholas was a borderline ass most of the time and Lucy had that Disney princess feel to her. She accepts her changed circumstances with equanimity and barely gives two thoughts to what it will be like to leave her life behind. The elves all love her, of course, much like the Seven Dwarfs fawned over Snow White. I guess I wanted her to be more 'real.' I wanted her to react like any sane person would react after finding themselves in a fairy tale: lots of deep breathing and kicking Nicholas out of his kitchen so she can bake. I don't have the book in front of me at the moment, but I'm not even sure if we really find out with Mrs. Klaus does. I think there was a throwaway line about how she keeps everything running, like she liaisons between all the different departments, but it's not like anyone gave Lucy enough information to make an informed choice.

It was just frustrating to read because this could have been really, really great and instead it falls squarely into the 'meh' category. I have a feeling that this is Watson's debut and with a good beta reader or editor, her writing would have sparkled. Here's hoping the next book in the series, Sweet Magik, lives up to Watson's potential.



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Review: The Next Always

The Next Always by Nora Roberts

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



When I first found out that Nora Roberts was creating her own Inn, I checked out the website. That was probably back in 2009. Now, I have a pretty good memory for words and, while the website copy has changed slightly, portions of The Next Always felt like they were lifted straight from the website's room descriptions. I also knew that Turn the Page bookstore, that the heroine owns in the book, is an actual place where Roberts does her Maryland signings. I took another look at the website before writing this, and it looks like Vesta, the restaurant where one of the secondary characters (likely a heroine of a future book) works, is also exists in reality.

So here's my verdict. If you know nothing about Nora Roberts except that she writes books you like, you will probably really enjoy The Next Always. At its core, it's a sweet story about family, community, and the hopefulness of love. However, if you have already heard of BoonsBoro, MD and checked out a website or two, The Next Always will seem like a commercial in book format. It's weird because I doubt Roberts is hurting for money and if she wants to drive traffic to the inn, lower the room rates! In this day and age, it's a lucky person who can spend $300 after taxes for one night's stay.

While I adore the J.D. Robb books, for me, in recent years, nothing Roberts has published under her own name has been able to top the Irish books (Born in Fire, Jewels of the Sun, Irish Thoroughbred, etc.). I've read everything she's put out, but the last book I actually bought was Blood Brothers in 2007. I keep hoping that she'll go back to Ireland, but, in the meantime, I'm looking forward to Celebrity in Death!



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Review: It Had to Be You

It Had to Be You by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I'm pretty sure I read this book back in the day, but I didn't really remember it and since I've been on a sports romance, I decided to re-read it. It Had to Be You was published in 1994 and the book's age shows. I'm a big technology person and talk of answering services & landlines dated the book for me. In addition, the talk about safe sex, while certainly important and realistic, smacked a little of 'Hey, did you hear about this scary new HIV thing?' Why, yes, I do believe that I know about HIV. I also know that, according to a 2009 CDC report, the rate of STD transmission has dropped and is now more likely to occur in ethnic groups & the gay community. I think Phoebe and Dan, two straight, white, members of a high economic status, will be okay if they use protection. They spent more time on STDs than on the possibility of getting pregnant. You'd think that given how much Dan wants to be a father, the thought would have crossed his mind.

I think the other thing that diminished my entertainment was the fact I didn't particularly like the hero. Dan basically juggles two women, sleeping with the heroine while dating someone else. He's very dismissive of Phoebe on multiple occasions and the dude has communication problems. He's like your typically good ole boy. There's also a bit at the end where he basically beats the crap out another person. It's meant to be justifiable and Phillips's kinda glosses over the specifics, but Dan clearly has a violent streak buried within him. Phoebe fell in love with him way faster than I thought was realistic and I didn't quite get why.

The book really read more like fiction than a romance. It wasn't about Phoebe and Dan as a couple. It was about Phoebe overcoming the trauma of her past and her father's dickhood. It was about Dan overcoming his own dickhood. They had to grow as people before they could be a good couple.

I don't know enough about sports to really gauge how well those portions held up over the last seventeen years. An eight million dollar contract seems a bit low to me, but Google reveals that a standard contract would be for four years and two million dollars a year is actually on the high side for a wide receiver, so I don't know. I kept thinking about the movie Moneyball. While that was baseball, I think most of the same principles apply when managing a team and, in that respect, It Had to Be You was right on the money.

My public library system has the rest of the books in this series and I do plan on reading the next book in the series. It'll be interesting to see how it compares to It Had to Be You.

Review: Altered Destiny by Shawna Thomas

Altered Destiny by Shawna Thomas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



To put it quite bluntly, I didn't love this book, but I respected the hell of out it. It actually reminded me of a cross between Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear and Elizabeth Vaughan's Warprize series.

Altered Destiny is your classic 'two races divided by racial prejudice/historical malfeasance are now at war over land/resources' story. Neither side is blameless nor 'good.' What really intrigued me about this book is the world Thomas created. She gives us just enough of the back story that the reader can make certain assumptions, but doesn't provide anything concrete. It appears that Altered Destiny is set on our world after a nuclear event that destroyed most of the existing civilizations and altered or mutated what remained. However, it could just as easily been some alien world where there was some kind of solar event. Thomas makes reference to animals and plant life that fit what currently exists, but they are different enough to indicate we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Except for horses. Horses don't seem to be any different, which I'm guessing was a convenience thing, because they are the main mode of transportation. This world seems to be at the technology equivalent of the 1700s.

Despite the skillful world building, this is a four star book for me because of two related reasons. First off, this is a book about war. It may be a war fought with bows and arrows, but it is a war nonetheless. Hard decisions must be made and there is collateral damage. This leads into the second reason: Thomas kills off a significant secondary character. It was a death that meant something and did help the story advance, but damn, it was heavy. This is not a book to be read as stress relief.

I do recommend this book, but know what you're getting into. There are a few sex scenes, but I feel like this would be a good rec for older high school students. It's got that apocalypse feel, a dash of vampirism, and an ending that offers a measure of realistic hope for the future.

Monthly Tally: September 2011

Okay, so as promised, I'm only going to highlight a few titles from my reading this month. If you're curious about what else I read, you can check it out at GoodReads. I read 54 books last month and most of them fell into the 'meh' category.

In my opinion, the best book I read last month was Ecstasy Untamed by Pamela Palmer. You can read my review of it over at GoodReads. Yes, I only gave it four stars, but as I said, the book only works if you have read the previous books in the series. Call it the former bookseller in me, if you'd like, but I think I should be able to pick up any book in a series and still know what's going on. This is not to say Palmer doesn't recap some crucial information, but the book loses a lot if you're not emotionally invested in the characters. It comes out on October 25th and if you've read the Feral Warrior series, this is an auto-buy.

The worst book I read in September has to be Darkest Fire by Tawny Taylor. I won't reiterate why, as you can read it for yourself here, but I definitely don't recommend it. This book was part of my attempt to tackle some of the older titles in my TBR journal. I'm finding that I'm more flexible about my reading selections now that I'm not working at Borders anymore.

Angels of Darkness and the Storm Born graphic novel both got five stars from me. I'll be honest, a large part of that rating for Storm Born was the artwork. I'd read Richelle Mead's novel back in the day, but I wasn't particularly thrilled with it and the sequel, Thorn Queen, has been languishing in my TBR for quite a bit. However, the prose of the graphic novel parses the novel down to its essence and the art elevates it with its beauty. Sea Lion Books is going to be at NY Comic Con this year and I'm going to see if I can pick up one of the loose issues at their booth. As far as Angels of Darkness is concerned, obviously I never got around to writing that longer review as my personal life took a dive into Shitsville. I stand by everything I said over at GoodReads and I rec it for any paranormal fan who likes their stories with a dash of grit and darkness.

On Thea Harrison's recommendation, I bought Ilona Andrews's Silver Shark. I'm a big Andrews fan so I was willing to spend the money. It's a space romance, different from Andrews's normal fare, and unusual in narrative. However, there were times when it could have benefited from some editing as certain parts were confusing and there were several noticeable typos. It kinda killed any desire I had to go back and read the first book or purchase something else. So I wouldn't necessarily recommmend it, but I do hope Andrews eventually decides to revisit this world in a proper novel.

At the beginning of the month, I read Janye Castle's (aka Jayne Ann Krentz) Canyons of the Night. It was when I wrote the review for this book that I realized something was admiss. I'd always thought that Amaryllis, Zinnia, and Orchid were connected to the Harmony series. After all, they both focus on humans wiwth psychic powers tht arrived on the planet via a 'Curtain.' I started re-reading the older books and discovered the flower books are set on the world of St. Helens. It's funny, but I kinda feel like Krentz plagurized herself. I mean, Orchid was published in 1998 and the first Harmony book, After Dark, was published just two years later in 2000. To make myself feel better, I've started pretending that the Curtain opened up once and several colony ships went through, each to a different planet. I post-it noted several sections of my copy of Amaryllis for comparison purposes, but it got packed away as I prepared my room for new windows. I would like to do a more in-depth look at some point.


Category Totals

Romance: 41
Horror: 1
Young Adult: 2
Comic Strip Collection: 1
Graphic Novels: 4
Children's Nonfiction: 1
Picture Books: 2
Mystery: 1

Review: Game for Anything

Game for Anything by Bella Andre

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I know what you're thinking. Another sports book? Really?

Okay, here's what I was thinking: "God, I'm tired. I should start reading Blood Rights because Kristen Painter is going to be at Comic-Con this weekend. But I'm tired. And I don't want to stare at my computer screen while I eat my hot pockets. I don't feel like starting a new author right now. I just wanna read. I downloaded those football books last night. Because I liked the one I won, From This Moment On. I read the last one (Game For Love) already. It didn't suck. Andre is a pretty consistent author. I'm just gonna read one of these."

On the brainless read front, it delivered. The plot was fairly simple. Ty and Julie knew each other in high school, she lost her virginity to him, and the morning after was a disaster, fraught with miscommunication. Fast forward ten years, he is a superstar football player with a bad personal reputation and she is the image consultant hired to straighten him out. There's lots of sexual energy and more miscommunication, now sprinkled lightly with personal growth.

Now that I'm emerging from my hot pocket haze and my brain has started to sort through the different aspects of the book, I find a lot of WTF-ery is emerging. Like the ending. I mean, this was a pretty straightforward contemporary. However, the ending was a grand reveal worthy of a Scooby Doo episode. While this is slightly explained by the aforementioned grand reveal, I don't think Ty necessarily needed a image consultant. He didn't have a DWI, get caught doing drugs, nor did he have a revolving door in his bedroom. By today's standards, his perpetual house party is actually pretty tame. It seemed like he was still doing his job, showing up to practice, etc. So one would think Julie, as an experienced image consultant, would have kinda been like 'Huh? Something ain't right here.' A much better take on this concept is Jill Shalvis's Slow Heat.
This was also another book that takes place during its sport's off-season. As a result, there's actually not a lot of football in it, aside from a few scenes in the weight room. I would have liked at least an epilogue with Julie in the stands, watching Ty play. The reader also meets a grand total of ONE of Ty's teammates who, not-so-coincidentally, happens to be the hero of the next book.

I am definitely going to read the next book at some point, but I would recommend this series for those times when you just want to be mildly entertained without taxing your brain. I should really re-read the Susan Elizabeth Phillips football books now.

Review: Ecstasy Untamed (Feral Warriors, #6)

Ecstasy Untamed (Feral Warriors, #6) by Pamela Palmer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I am seriously wrestling back and forth over giving this five stars or four. I think I'm going to stay at four because if you have not read books 1 and 5 in the Feral series, you will not love Ecstasy Untamed as much as I do in this moment.

I don't think I can articulate properly why I love this book. The phrase that keeps springing to mind is "it was a culmination," which really doesn't make any sense. Let me ponder on a suitable analogy for a moment.

...

Okay, this is the best I've got. It's like Girl Scout cookies. Like, the majority of the year, you're like Girl Scout cookies, whatever, Keebler's tastes just as good, and then you order a box because your co-worker is nagging you, and then you kinda forget about it because there's that delay in between, and then the box arrives when you're cranky & PMS-ing, so you open the box, take a bite, and when the flavor hits your tongue, you're like, THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED AND IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW and then you're all sad because you only ordered one box and you have to wait until next year to order more.

...

Now I want Tagalongs.

Anyway.

Pamela Palmer is not one of those authors I think about very often and I've found her books to be a bit hit or miss. I still read 'em because shifter romances are my crack and so when this e-ARC became available, I snapped it up. I think that was, like, over a month ago. The heroine, Faith? Awesome. The hero, Hawke? Awesome. Cameos of pretty much every supporting character we've ever met? Awesome. Massive overall series plot arc advancement while tying up loose ends? Awesome. If you like the Feral series, you will love this book. I'm not quite at the point where I think the average paranormal reader should make their way through the first five books to get to this point, but if book seven is as wonderful as book six, I will be.



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