SBD: a couple of books

[jmc_bks]

Firstly, Josh Lanyon's A Vintage Affair.  The cover art is full of man-titty, but also kind of fits the story.  Well, but for the bowtie and tuxedo shirt, which never appear....okay, maybe not.  But, hey, there's a bottle of wine at least!

The blurb:

Somewhere in the cobwebbed cellar of the decrepit antebellum mansion known as Ballineen are the legendary Lee bottles -- and Austin Gillespie is there to find them. The last thing on his mind is a hot and heavy romance with handsome bad boy Jeff Brady. But Jeff has other ideas and, after one intoxicating night, so does Austin.

The only problem is they have different ideas. Jeff doesn’t believe in love at first sight, and even if he did, he’s buried more deeply in the closet than those famous missing bottles of vintage Madeira. Popping a cork or two is one thing. Popping the question? No way. No how.

Unless Austin is ready to give up on another dream, he’s going to have to figure out how to make sure the lights go on -- and stay on -- in Georgia. 

A pun about lights going out in Georgia.  How very original.  /sarcasm  

Having a narrator/hero who is a wine auctioneer is original -- forget doctors and cops!  Tasting wine for a living seems like it would be awesome...except for the whole spitting-it-out, which is just a waste IMO.  Anyway, Austin arrives in Georgia intent on cataloging the cellar at Ballineen and perhaps finding the Lee Madeira.  He's worried professionally because the boss's fiancee wants his job, and personally because he feels like he's not living up to his father's expectations.  Not long into the cataloging he finds a body in the cellar.  Given Lanyon's mystery writing history, I expected Austin to become involved in the sleuthing here, helping to figure out who the dead man was and why he was killed.  But the dead body didn't really serve much purpose, plot wise.  Readers are told who he is and then the mystery drops off the page.  We're told whodunnit at the very end in a lackluster way.

Much more time is spent on the one night interlude between Austin and Jeff, the closet case.  That doesn't sound sympathetic toward Jeff, intentionally so.  Actually, I was very sympathetic to him and how he handled the one night with Austin: he was honest about himself and how he dealt with living in a small, conservative community.  But he lost my sympathy through his behavior on Austin's return to Georgia; to avoid spoilers, I'll just say that he ignored Austin's opinions and objections, and there is a scene that skirts close to dubious consent for me.  His grovel at the end sort of softens me up and makes me think maybe the HFN will be an HEA eventually.

It felt like this book wasn't sure what it wanted to be: romance? mysery?  romantic suspense?  It read quickly and was a pleasant beach read (Hairball the Kindle on the beach!) but is not Lanyon's best work.  If you like Lanyon's voice, you'll probably enjoy it, but it isn't as memorable as the Adrien English mysteries.

Second, Meljean Brook's Demon Forged.  Am about half way through it.  Love her world building and the plotting.  What I'm realizing, though, is that I have little patience with internally driven separations.  Irena and Alejandro are In Love but have been separated for four hundred years.  Why? Because of pride and a Failure to Communicate.   When I say separated, I mean that they work together and see each other regularly...but they aren't lovers anymore and talk only of superficial things, the way you do with a colleague at the office rather than The Love of Your Life.  Which makes the failure to communicate even more frustrating for me.  Have I always felt this way?  I don't know.  Maybe.  Brook does a good job of showing why they are this way and it works with the plot, it's just frustrating for my reading tastes.  

Actually, now that I think about it, this was the same problem I had with the beginning of Ilona Andrews' Magic Bleeds, although it was slightly less frustrating there since the not talking only went on for three week and was grounded in characters/behaviors established in earlier books.

Um, also, the cover art for Demon Forged is very pretty, but the woman is missing something -- where are the tattoos?  I know, art department and marketing completely separate from writing.