Elsker - S. T. Bende (Elsker Saga #1)

Did you like Twilight, but maybe wish that Edward wasn't quite so psycho?  Or did you want writing of an ever-so-slightly higher caliber?  Or a college setting rather than a high school one?  But still with "powerful immortal spends all of his time going to school over and over again and then falls in love with teenage girl"?  Well then do I have the book for you.

I read this for a category in the Unapologetic Romance Readers group, that of a virgin hero, because I already had it on my Kindle and it appeared on a list that fit that category--unfortunately, the matter of either character's virginity never really comes up, though it's kind of implied the heroine is (go figure).  So I'm going to have to ditch it for that and pick another one.  But at least I can take it off my Kindle now!

The plot follows Kristia, an eighteen-year-old college student from Oregon who gets visions, though normally boring ones, and nightmares of Ragnarok that she blames on her grandmother telling her too many stories of Norse mythology when she was younger.  Wanting a change of pace, she applies for a study abroad at Cardiff University in Wales, where she meets Ull, the hottest guy on campus who also happens to be a Norse god in disguise.  Of course it's love at first sight, and Kristia figures out who Ull really is in pretty quick succession because of two conversational slip-ups he makes and her mythology class.  Because, you know, a centuries-old god would totally just let it slip in casual conversation that his stepfather is Thor and he's known his best friend for eight hundred years.  And when hearing that his stepfather's name is Thor, Kristia would totally automatically assume that his family is comprised of gods instead of thinking, you know, maybe they're just really into mythology, hence the reason Ull is studying it.

The romance here is kind of flat, because the two are in love and all gushy over each other pretty much right away.  And because they're in love right away, there's need for another conflict--aka the "We can't be together because of Ragnarok!!!" plotline.  The problem with all of this is that the entire story is full of holes that you could sail the Titanic through.  Let's examine a few, shall we?

For example, why is Ull so concerned about Kristia not getting wrapped up in Ragnarok?  It shouldn't matter; the story of Ragnarok involves the destruction of the human world, as well, with only two people surviving to restart the human race...and if one of those was Kristia, she'd be hooking up with another guy, so I'm not sure that's something he'd be psyched about either.  Ull says that Kristia is in control of her own fate--but also has a Norn that has decided the two of them are supposed to be together, which doesn't seem like Kristia has a lot of say in the matter.  And they're fated to be together, but apparently no one knows if that will actually happen.  And apparently being a seer will allow Kristia to travel through the various worlds without being detected?  What kind of logic is that?

The actual writing here is okay.  It was nice to see some female friendships, and the girls do discuss things other than guys, though Ull is still a central topic of conversation.  Bende seems to have a shaky grasp on how grammar with dialogue works, and she also has a few words that are misused in the place of homophones.  Additionally, the cover is a little weird because it says "You don't win the heart of an immortal assassin without making a few enemies along the way," which has nothing to do with the story, because Ull is not an assassin (he mentions he was a warrior in the past, but not really an assassin) and Kristia doesn't make any enemies except one person in her dreams, who I am betting is Loki because Loki is suspiciously absent here, but that doesn't even really affect the story at all.

Overall, this was kind of meh, and I don't really see myself reading the future books.  But it wasn't terrible, so I'll give it...

2 stars out of 5.

Queen Heir - Jaymin Eve and Leia Stone (NYC Mecca #1)

Queen Heir was the monthly book pick for the Unapologetic Romance Readers on Goodreads, though it probably wasn't best-suited for the group because it's not really a romance; the romantic interest doesn't even show up on the page until almost halfway through the book.  It focuses on Arianna, one of the heirs of the wolf-shifter queen in New York, who finds herself fighting for the crown after the queen is murdered.

Arianna is pretty much insufferable.  She is, of course, gorgeous.  She has platinum blond hair and gorgeous eyes but oh, her dad might have been Polynesian so she has dark eyebrows and eyelashes even though otherwise she is pale, pale, pale!  She is the strongest of the heirs, has the best familiar (and the only one that is a wolf), is the best at fighting, the best at magic, the best the best the best.  And the only one who can solve the queen's murder!

The writing here is very clunky and the world building is scattered at best.  For example, the authors once use "ferreted" instead of "ferried," and the magic system was apparently created by the Tuatha De Danann, which makes no sense.  Why not, you ask?  Well, for starters, the Tuatha De Danann are a "race" of Irish/Celtic god-like beings, who the authors here instead label as fae.  But they're specifically linked to Ireland.  Here, the authors decide that New York conveniently has a magic system called "the mecca," which again, good job for either mis-appropriating religious aspects or not understanding what words really mean, which was created by the Tuatha De hundreds of years before humans were there and which conveniently aligns exactly with New York's buroughs.  And can be used for teleportation.  Oh, yes.  They also appear to be lumping together the Tuatha De Danann, who are traditionally considered "good," with the Fomoire, who are generally bad.  Either that or they can't tell the difference between these groups and the Sidhe, which are related to but not the same as the Tuatha De Danann, and are more along the lines of what people sometimes call the "Seelie and Unseelie" faeries.  All of this can be gleaned from a quick perusal of Wikipedia, so I'm not really sure there's an excuse for butchering things this badly.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love adaptations of mythology that are twisted up and made new, but most authors at least try to do it with some respect for and understanding of the sources they're pulling on, rather than just going, "Oh hey, that sounds cool, let's do it!" and diving in without any preliminary research or handling source material without any semblance of tact.  Combined with the annoying main character and the sub-par writing, which was also rife with info-dumping, this book was pretty blah.  The pretty cover lured me in, and I liked Kade quite a bit, but I don't think there were enough redeeming qualities in Kade to keep the rest of the series on the top of my interest list.  I think I'd probably be better of going back to the Kate Daniel books for a paranormal romance featuring a sexy shapeshifter.

2 stars out of 5.

Because of Low - Abbi Glines (Sea Breeze #2)

OMG, what a cheesy cover.  XD  The expression that guy's face just makes me want to cackle with laughter.  Okay, moving on now.

Because of Low was my pick for the "A college romance" category of the Unapologetic Romance Readers 2017 Reading Challenge.  It's the second in the Sea Breeze series, and the main character, Marcus Hardy, was apparently a side character in the first book.  However, you definitely don't need to have read that first book in order to read this one.  While the couple from the first book appear here, there's nothing you can't really intuit about what happened.  The plot of this one is about Marcus and Willow, aka Low.  Marcus has moved back to Sea Breeze from Tuscaloosa to deal with family troubles, mainly that his father has been having an affair with devastating effects on Marcus' mother and sister.  He moves in with the friend of a friend, Cage, who happens to be the best friend of Willow, who basically lives with Cage, even sleeping in his bed, because she doesn't have a home of her own since her sister kicked her out.  Cage swears he's going to marry Willow, even though there's no romantic relationship between them, and Marcus is immediately attracted to her as well.

The "big reveal" of this book isn't really as such, because its' pretty apparent from the beginning what's going on, and when you factor in that the very first page of the book has Marcus saying he has to choose between his family and Willow...well, there's only one reason for that, now isn't there?  But overall, this was a light and cute romance.  The timeline seems a little funky, sometimes seeming like it's taking place over a few days and sometimes over the course of weeks.  Additionally, while both the characters are in college and are taking classes (Willow at a community college, Marcus online) there's not really a "college" vibe here, but I guess it technically counts.  However, I honestly found Willow and Marcus to be very bland characters.  You can see the protagonists of future books lining up on the sidelines here, and honestly I feel like they had more potential than these main characters.  While Marucs and Willow are both very good people who care for each other, their friends, their families...they kind of have the type of lives you'd want to live (family drama excepted, but that's not them, that's their families) not the ones you really want to read about.

So, yeah. This was good, and light, and fast; a decent summer read, even though it doesn't take place in summer.  But it wasn't anything electric or riveting.  I might check out the other books in the series since I do think this was a character thing rather than something to do with the writing or plotting, but they won't be immediately at the top of my priority list.

3 stars out of 5.

Slammed - Colleen Hoover (Slammed #1)

Slammed was my pick for a new adult romance for my 2017 romance challenge with the Unapologetic Romance Readers on Goodreads.  Like many of my other selections, it appeared on many lists as a good one for its category, and it was available from the library.  Like many of my other selections, I found myself skeptical upon starting it--because the heroine is still in high school.  Most new adult books focus on characters who are college-aged or a little older, whether they're in college or not.  However, after reading it, I agree: this is definitely new adult, not because of the age of the main character, but because of the themes it tackles.

The main character is Layken, aka Lake, who moves to Michigan with her mother and younger brother following the death of her father.  She immediately finds herself attracted to the guy across the street, who takes her out on a date to a slam poetry session at a local club.  It's insta-love, for sure.  And then disaster strikes the next week when she goes to school and finds out he's her teacher--and he finds out she's not in college, like he thought she was.  Gasp!  The drama!

But beyond this "we can't be together!!!" drama there's another story.  Will, the hero, has rushed through college and into teaching in order to care for his younger brother, who came into his full custody following the deaths of both his parents in a car accident.  And Lake, dealing with her father's death, her family's move, and soon more lurking troubles in addition to her floundering relationship status, is being forced to grow up and act beyond her years as well.  It's these aspects that make this book belong in the "new adult" category.  Will and Lake lean on each other through their troubles, trying to be friends and supportive, and sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing.  There are some very sweet moments in here, and Will is definitely not an alpha character--except at one particular instance, but it's not directed at Lake--which is unusual these days and rather refreshing.

And of course, the title and structure of the book itself are unusual.  Slammed does not, in fact, refer to sex--gasp!--but to slam poetry, a theme I don't believe I've seen in any books before.  I'm sure it has been used, but it's not common by any means.  But while this is another refreshing aspect, I think it's also one of the book's weaknesses...because slam poetry, as Will points out, isn't meant to be read.  It's meant to be performed.  And when you're reading the book, no amount of mental picturing can really capture the performance of a real poetry slam.  While this might intrigue some readers to go look up performances on platforms such as YouTube, some of the strength of the characters' experiences is necessarily lost through the switch of medium, from spoken word and live performance to words on a page, despite the lengths Hoover goes to in order to try to portray how the poems are given, with bold fonts and italics and line breaks.

Other great aspects of this book include the side characters, particularly Eddie, a foster kid who immediately sets herself up to become Lake's best friend and confidant, and Eddie's boyfriend Gavin.  Even Lake and Will's younger siblings, Kel and Caulder, are good.  It's hard to do child characters well and to properly integrate them into a plot so they're not just superfluous annoyances, and I think Hoover handled it well and managed to make them into meaningful characters in their own rights.

Overall, the romance here isn't super strong, but it's definitely prevalent, along with the other struggles the characters face.  Is this a book that I'll go back to again and again?  No, probably not.  But it was well-written with good characters and a strong premise, one that I actually think Hoover handled pretty well despite some skepticism on my part about the ages involved here--Will's already becoming a contracted teacher at 21?  Really?  But still, I enjoyed it, and overall think it was a solid pick for this category.

4 stars out of 5.

Second Chance Boyfriend - Monica Murphy (One Week Girlfriend #2)

Sometimes a book just doesn't live up to its predecessor.  It's unfortunate, but true.  Sometimes the first book in a series just has something, some sort of oomph, that its younger sibling just lacks.  That's exactly what the case was here.

I read One Week Girlfriend back in January, and really liked it.  It was a new-adult romance in which a guy hires a girl to pretend to be his girlfriend over Thanksgiving break in order to keep his family, with whom he has unhappy relations for several reasons, at arm's length.  Of course, they have instant chemistry and a relationship of sorts ensues.  All the while Fable (the female protagonist) tried to untangle what exactly what was going on with Drew (the male protagonist) tries to avoid the issue and get the hell back to school as soon as humanly possible.  I liked how Drew's issues were handled, the relationship between them...most of the aspects, other than the concept that Fable could "fix" Drew.  When the book ended with them splitting up, I wanted to read the next one to see about the reconciliation.

That said, I found this book sadly lacking in the plot that made the first one strong.  The first book had this mystery lurking in the background, something you could probably guess at but that had threads that were continually teased out over the course of the book and helped support the relationship plot.  This book didn't really have a secondary plot going on; there were a few things happening in the background, but nothing big or overarching that kept me reading to know what exactly was going on.  Everything was very explicit here; nothing to be poked or prodded at, nothing to be figured out.  The story is basically about Fable and Drew getting back together and Drew trying to move past what happened with his family when he was younger.  Drew also has a new therapist and Fable has a new job.  They're not together in the very beginning of the book, but they get back together pretty quickly and then there's not a lot of conflict to propel the plot along, just random side things that happen every now and then.  Originally it seemed like there was going to be some plot revolving around Fable's new gig, but that was dropped pretty quickly and in such a weird way.  Murphy clearly set up to use Fable's boss, Colin, for a third book, but it meant that his total weirdness in this one was just left hanging.  And then, at the end, a bunch of stuff happens and BOOM.  Done.  Happily ever after.

So, what did I like?  I liked that, in this one, Drew was seeking actual help for coping with his problems.  His therapist helped him tease out the things that were bothering him so he could face them and not get over them, but move past them to a functional life and relationship.  Drew and Fable's relationship was also depicted as more supportive than as a "fixing" relationship, which was a nice change from the first book.  But Fable needed Drew to do something completely dramatic in order to trust him again, instead of just realizing he'd had a freakout, and that seemed completely unnecessary and I mean, I wouldn't want to be with her if I knew that was what it would take to get her to trust me...

This has some cute scenes, some steamy kisses, but overall it just didn't have the strength of the first book.  I'll probably read the other two books in the series, which have different main characters, but I hope that Murphy recovers the charm that One Week Girlfriend had in them, or they'll probably be a bit disappointing.

2 stars out of 5.

One Week Girlfriend - Monica Murphy (One Week Girlfriend #1)

So, for those of you who don't follow weather news, Winter Storm Jonas has been wreaking havoc on parts of the east coast of the US--namely, the parts of the east coast that aren't used to having winter havoc wreaked on them and therefore are completely unequipped to deal with such winter havoc.  One of those areas is the Washington, DC metro--which happens to be my place of residence.  Work ended at noon on Friday and was cancelled for today (Monday) and it's debatable whether or not we'll be in tomorrow.  And with the amount of snow we got--two to three feet, which is a ton for this area and is higher than my dog is tall, but she loved it anyway--it's basically impossible to go anywhere.  Many streets haven't even been touched by plows yet.  You can't order takeout.  The drugstores are devoid of snacks.  Cabin fever is setting in for many and for me, that means I want to read an endless stream of trashy romances, so I went combing through the pages of my Kindle for something suitable.  And based on the cover...this seemed to fit.  Away I went.

One Week Girlfriend wasn't actually as trashy as I thought it would be, but it was a quick read and I enjoyed it quite a bit.  So, the story follows Fable and Drew.  Fable is known as the campus slut in a college town, even though she doesn't actually go to college; Drew is the football star.  He has to go home for Thanksgiving, something he's dreading because is family is very, very screwed up.  In order to keep his father and, more importantly, his stepmother off his back, he hires Fable to pretend to be his girlfriend for the week.  Fable is in desperate need of money because she pretty much single-handedly supports her thirteen-year-old brother.  Her mother is in the picture but is a deadbeat and spends most of her time with her alcoholic boyfriends, so Fable manages on her own.  For three thousand dollars, she agrees to go with Drew, on the condition that he doesn't expect a real relationship out of the deal.  You can pretty much guess how that goes.

The interesting part of this book wasn't actually the relationship, though Fable and Drew definitely had chemistry.  No, the interesting part was Drew's past and family dynamic.  It's super, super messed up, but I think Murphy did a good job of handling it.  She doesn't glorify Drew's abuse--not really a spoiler, it's really obvious what's going on here from the beginning--and doesn't try to downplay it.  She does make it out like Fable can "fix" him, which is a bit unsettling.  Love, sex, whatever, can't fix abuse victims, who indeed don't need to be fixed because they're not broken, but beyond that I think she did a good job.  The abuse is made out to be just as disturbing as it actually is, and its impact on Drew's life isn't downplayed at all; it haunts everything he does because the consequences of it really are that bad.  As for what comes out later... Was it necessary?  I don't know.  It was certainly an added shock factor (kind of; again, it was sort of predictable, but it was definitely a shock to the characters if not to the reader) but I don't know, it might have been going just a tiny bit too far... Hm.  I don't know about that one.

This is only the first half of Fable and Drew's story; the second half is another book titled Second Chance Boyfriend.  I haven't read the second one yet, but I think I will--though I don't think they needed to be separate books.  They're quite short, with this volume clocking in at 155 pages, and while the place to break it made sense I think it could just as easily have been a "Part 1" and "Part 2" of a single volume.

Overall, an interesting new adult dynamic.  It's very unusual to see the male character with the more substantial problems in a book like this, and I liked the change.  Male abuse is very underrepresented in fiction, and seeing a book that handled it mostly well was very refreshing.

3.5 stars out of 5.

The Replacement - Rachael Wade (Replacement #1)

Hmmm....  This one was a weird one for me.  I ended up liking it much more than I thought I would for a while, but I still have some reservations about it.  The Replacement is about Elise Duchamp, a 23-year-old waitress in Gig Harbor, Washington, who is also known as the town whore.  She sleeps with pretty much every guy in town, available or not, and she doesn't regret it.  She thrives off of it.  Until, of course, that one special someone comes along.  She doesn't want to change her ways, particularly, and she tries to drive him away because she doesn't think she's good enough for him and blah blah blah.

It's complicated.

I liked Elise and I hated her in turns.  And, the more I think about it, the more that I don't think she should have gotten the guy in the end.  Let me tell you, Ryder was hot.  He was awesome.  I loved Ryder.  But Elise shouldn't have gotten him.  Mainly because she didn't deserve him.  She was cruel to him, purposefully and ruthlessly cruel, and while she went out and had a whole big epiphany/self discovery period and then came back to him, I don't thinks he should have ended up with him.  I think Ryder deserved better than Elise, and that Elise should have had her big self discovery and then moved on and maybe ended up with someone else who isn't in the book at all.  Maybe someone else in another town, because I have a hard time thinking she'd ever be able to really live in Gig Harbor after everything she did.

I really liked the writing.  I thought it had a great flow, and Wade made Elise, a girl who is not really likeable...at all...a likeable narrator.  I thought I'd hate her for the duration of the book, but I didn't.  There were times I hated her, but it wasn't a constant stream of hate.  And there were parts of her that I could definitely empathize with, too.  Not the sleeping with other people's husbands/boyfriends and getting off on that, but things like her dream of going to Paris, and her complete awareness of what an awful person she is, because the first step to changing is acknowledging that there's a problem.  There were sweet aspects to her that went a long way towards mellowing out her other, less savory qualities.  There was, I will admit, a lot of sex in this book, which I guess is to be expected from a book about a self-proclaimed whore.  It varied in quality, but overall it was good.

One complaint I do have is that Wade made almost every man in the universe look like a cheating bastard in this book.  There were a total of two who weren't.  Now, are there cheating bastards in the world?  Yes.  But I refuse to believe they are as plentiful as they apparently are in Gig Harbor.  Geeze, ladies of Gig Harbor, y'all need to move somewhere else, because apparently there is something in the water there that makes guys insensitive, cheating bastards.  I really would have rather seen Elise engage in a handful of more noteworthy affairs than a whole slew of non-noteworthy ones, because I would have found it more believable.  Also...I'm not really sure where her issues came from?  Because she says she has "daddy issues," and she clearly does, but from the way her father treats her in the book it seems like they would have manifested very differently from what they were, like maybe always trying to please men instead of herself?  I don't know.  It was kind of off, but not book-ruining for me, and overall I still liked this one.

A solid 3 stars out of 5.