jmc_bks

The holiday weekend in books: not very felicitous.

1. Down Home Zombie Blues by Linnea Sinclair. CBA --> DNF. Which is a shame because I’m sure this is a good book. 

2. Under the Rose: An Ivy League Novel by Diana Peterfreund. C. I didn’t hear much about this follow up to Peterfreund’s debut, which was promoted all over the place. No budget? Or was she burned by the overexposure? (I thought it was average.) Also curious about the format change – from hardback to trade paperback. The book itself? Eh. I didn’t mind spending 3 hours on it; I’m glad it was a library book, though. It seemed predictable to me, and I have an inkling about where it is going in the future (also predictable). Mostly I just felt impatient with the narrator, who never struck me as being as smart as I was told she was. 

3. If You Could See Me Now by Cecilia Ahern. DNF. Pretty cover. But if I had known from the backblurb that Ivan was imaginary, I wouldn’t have bothered even borrowing it from the library. Imaginary friends are okay for children but scream mental health problems to me in adults. Requires a suspension of disbelief that I can’t manage. 

4. Murder in Chinatown by Victoria Thompson. C. Interesting glimpse of turn of the century Chinese-Irish community. Okay mystery. All of the personal stuff that is hinted at between Sarah Brandt and Det. Sgt. Malloy? Eh. In the indelicate words of my impatient grandfather: piss or get off the pot. UST shouldn’t be stretched out forever; my limit is about 4 or 5 books; this series is long past that point. 

5. The Food of Love by Anthony Capella. DNF – not because it was bad but because I realized that I’d already read it. Went looking for a copy after reading Capella’s The Wedding Officer; realized I’d already read it a couple of chapters in. Good but not really worth a re-read IMO. B-/C+ 

6. Sugar Daddy by Lisa Kleypas. I actually have a bit to think about and to say about this book, but I’m saving it for Monday’s SBD. Unless I come up with something better for SBD, then I’ll post my opinion about Sugar Daddy earlier.

However, I did receive a Barbapapa book for Christmas! And a copy of Allende's YA book La ciudad de las bestias. And two Borders gift  cards.  Yay!

A Bucket of Ashes is P.B. Ryan’s last Nell Sweeney/Gilded Age mystery, according to her website.

Summers at the Hewitts' sprawling Cape Cod cottage always prove bittersweet for governess Nell Sweeney, for it was here that she lost three sisters and two brothers--and gained a reputation as the best pickpocket on the Cape. At last, her dark past is behind her--but soon she'll learn that it's never too far behind...

Nell has proven herself a model governess in the years she’s worked for the Hewitts. But now a terrible secret from her past--and the lurking suspicion that she might be carrying Will Hewitt's child--threaten to rob her of everything for which she has worked so hard.

But these problems pale when Nell learns that the body of her only remaining brother has been discovered--and that he was wanted for murder. Though Nell's attempt to clear his name starts in the criminal underworld, it will lead her to the top ranks of Cape Cod society...

( What'd I think of the book? )

Lord Sin by Kalen Hughes

Six nights of pleasure…
Georgianna Exley’s passionate nature has always been her undoing, and for this reason the beautiful young widow allows her lovers only a single night in her bed. But Ivo Dauntry has come home to England, and for him she’ll break her most sacred rule: granting him six nights of sensual bliss, one for ever year he’s given up for her…

Six years to wait…
As a gentleman born, Ivo risked his reputation and his life in a duel to defend Georgianna’s honor. Now, returned from exile, Ivo discovers that she has proven to be less than a lady…and soon, his daring seduction becomes a sensual contest of wills. But the long-ago duel that bound them forever has fueled the hatred of a madman determined to make Georgianna pay for her misdeeds with her life, and once again, Ivo must risk everything to save the woman he loves…

This backblurb is actually fairly accurate, at least until the melodramatic ending. Ivo didn’t have to risk anything to save Georgianna.

It has taken me forever (well, a week) to write this review, in part because I have such mixed feelings about the book. ( What did I think of it? )

I have a coupon for a free pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream (courtesy of World Assets -- check them out: reasonable phone rates, plus book recs and other stuff), so maybe I'll use it to buy some of Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream.

I'm going a little stir crazy here. Cleared off the car -- which took forever since it was ice, not snow. Made soup. Read Beau Crusoe -- two thumbs up! Finished Blood Bound. I even studied and worked on my homework. I don't care what the weather is like, I have got to get to work tomorrow.

Okay, Beau Crusoe.

( Spoilers follow! )

The excerpt for Beau Crusoe is up at the Historicals page over at eHarlequin. You can check it out here. It appears to have been cut and pasted from the opening of the book, as usual. But I think perhaps there were technical difficulties or operator errors, because a couple of the sentences make strange jumps in topic and point of view. :shrug: I have faith that the jumps are just a technical glitch and not Kelly's work.

And here's the back blurb:

Stranded alone on a desert island, he had lived to tell the tale. A triumphant return to the ton saw James Trevenen hailed as Beau Crusoe—a gentleman of spirit, verve and action. But only he knew the true cost of his survival!

Susannah Park had been shunned by Society. She lived content with her calm existence…until Beau Crusoe determinedly cut up her peace! The beautiful widow wanted to help him heal the wounds of the past—but what secrets was this glorious man hiding?

I tend to discount CK's back blurbs, as they are often quite inaccurate...but even the bare bones of this (shipwreck and abandon followed by eventual readjustment to "society") sounds interesting.

This was an impulse purchase from the library's sale shelf. I had to admit that I wouldn't have purchased it otherwise and likely would never have thought to check it out from the library. Why? Because I read Day's debut, Bad Boys Ahoy and was not particularly impressed -- it wasn't awful but neither did it stand out to me. But TSIM looked so lonely there on the sale shelf that I had to take it home.

( Was it worth the whopping $1 I paid? )

After starting the year in reading on a high note (Meljean Brook's Demon Angel), I have read several books that either disappointed in the end or that I couldn't be arsed to finish because they bored or irritated. So, yay! that I picked up Hunt's Duchess, a fictional account of the life of Sarah Jennings Churchill, a fascinating woman who exercised an amazing amount of political power in the courts of James II, Mary & William, and Anne. Her marriage to John Churchill, military strategist par excellence, seems to have been a match of politics and passion...at least as portrayed in the book. Shrewd strategist, wise investor, manipulator extraordinaire, she was a progenitor of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (another amazing woman, though profligate), Sir Winston Churchill, and the current princes William and Harry via the Spencer family.

I'm going to have to pick up some nonfiction information about Sarah and John to see what was exaggerated, created or dramatized in order to make a good story. But that period of English history is tempestuous enough that I'm guessing not much was created; more likely just embroidered a bit.

Monday again. But the work day is nearly over, yay! So, it's Smart Bitches Day!

I have at last seen the light. Well, I wouldn't go that far. But I have finally found a Barbara Samuels book that I really enjoyed. I've blogged before about how perplexing I find this author-worship, especially for her In the Midnight Rain, which some readers believe has the ultimate hero, Blue Reynard. Meh. And her contemporaries? Meh again, I say.

Except I've now read one of her historicals, The Black Angel. Wow. Let me say it again: WOW! I'm sure someone will tell me that this isn't her best historical effort, but color me impressed. The premise: Georgian (1781 is Georgian, right?) debutante is ruined and she enthusiastically participates in the ruination. After the affair ends, her brother kills her lover in a duel, then flees for his life. After spending five years living in obscurity, Adriana must marry -- the marriage was arranged by her father on his deathbed. And her suitor doesn't mind that she was ruined. He's Irish, and is looking to capitalize on her family's reputation to gain a seat in Parliament. But he's hiding things, and she's holding back because of his rakish reputation. :queue soap opera-ish music: Will they ever trust each other? Tune in next time, folks.

Well, since this book was written before Samuels' segue into womens fiction, there is an HEA. [Caveat: given what little I know of Anglo-Irish history, I have to wonder how happy it really was, but that's another matter entirely.] I like the hero, although readers receive his POV/perspective less often than the heroine's. I like the heroine, too, although I do think she was stupid (or maybe naive?) to be so abandoned. That's Samuels' point, that there are a fortunate lucky few who live privileged lives and have more rights than others, and women were not among those privileged. That was the reality, one could either edge one's way around reality to get what one wanted, or disregard it totally and stomp through boggy ground toward what one wanted, but there was a price to be paid either way. The heroine did eventually realize that, which I appreciated. But I felt like Samuels missed a huge opportunity and that the lesson was oddly late learned, given that the heroine had a mulatto brother and sister whose rights were limited which she recognized. It was as if the heroine was unable to recognize that in her own way, she was nearly as constrained as they were.

I thought the conflict between the hero and heroine -- her resistance of any affectionate relationship and resistance to sex -- was overdone. We are told he was a rake in his younger years, but precious little evidence of it, other than his nickname, The Black Angel, was mentioned or shown. And Adriana likes sex...she just doesn't want to enjoy it with her rakish husband. Samuels did a great job with the sexual tension between the two, though.

I don't know, as I type all of this, it seems that there are large pieces of the story that I have a problem with. But I really enjoyed the book, despite them. Enough to dig Bed of Spices out of my TBR pile, and to hope that Lucien's Fall arrives soon.

Anyway, all of this is my preface for today's SBD question: are there authors that you never got, but then all of the sudden, they clicked for you? If so, who? And what was it that clicked?