The Duchess Deal - Tessa Dare (Girl Meets Duke #1)

Way back in November, The Duchess Deal was the pick for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' monthly read.  Except I was number sixty-something on the wait list at the library, so I definitely didn't get it in November.  It finally came through recently, and I absolutely devoured it.  Dare's "Castles Ever After" series is so cute and romantic and all-over wonderful, so I'm not terribly surprised that this other work of hers is just as delightful.

The two main characters here are Emma, the daughter of a vicar who has been working as a seamstress after becoming estranged from her father; and "Ash," real name George, but he's the Duke of Ashbury, so his friends call him Ash.  At least they would if he had any friends.

Emma and Ash's paths cross when she turns up at his house wearing the wedding dress that she made for his fiancee from a now-broken engagement, because said fiancee has refused to pay for it and Emma's going to be turned out of her lodgings if she can't pay her rent.  Ash, disfigured by an exploding rocket at the Battle of Waterloo, sees that his marriage prospects slim, so when Emma turns up in a wedding gown, it seems like a sign from Fate.  He offers to marry her, telling her that once she gives him an heir, she never needs to deal with him again.  Emma agrees for a few reasons, and not only for her own benefit, but she adds a few conditions of her own--like he has to have dinner with her every night, and she gets to pick something to call him, encompassing ridiculous pet names.  The chemistry is of course there and the two grow closer at a good clip, though it's not instant and the relationship is definitely hindered by the issues that both have lingering from their pasts.

There are other awesome aspects here.  Several other young women enter the picture, presumably the heroines of future "Girl Meets Duke" books, and since sincere female friendships are so rare in books in general but in romance in particular, their instant embrace of Emma and the great dynamic the women had between them was a real highlight.  I also really enjoyed Emma's Scarlett O'Hara moment--you know, the one with the curtains.  The banter is spot-on.

Of course, there are the usual miscommunications a refusals to communicate here.  They are endemic to the genre.  There is a really hackneyed subplot that had me rolling my eyes--the one where Ash goes stalking about after dark as the Monster of Mayfair and is eventually accused of murder.  I guess Dare felt like he needed something to do, but meh.  Trevor was fun, though, and overall the book is just such a lovely, fast read that the issues are pretty minor.  I really enjoyed it and would definitely read it again.

4 stars out of 5.

The Shivering Sands - Victoria Holt

A Gothic romance was my last category to read for my 2017 romance challenge with the Unapologetic Romance Readers group.  I'd had The Shivering Sands picked out for quite a while, and saved it for the end of the challenge so I'd at least have one good category to look forward to after drudging through a bunch that I really didn't like.  Someone once told me that Victoria Holt was the queen of Gothic romances, and so it seemed like a good choice--especially because I've already read the most iconic of Gothic romances, Daphne DeMaurier's Rebecca, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

In the wake of the disappearance of her archaeologist sister Roma, Caroline takes on the position of music teacher for the manor in the town in which Roma disappeared.  Going incognito, she hopes to make a living, distance herself from the death of her famous pianist husband, and possibly solve her sister's disappearance, as well.  At Lovat Stacy, she becomes entwined with the three young women who live there, the returned prodigal son Napier who was responsible for his older brother's death, and the other strange and curious residents of both the manor and the surrounding area.  When a second disappearance occurs and Caroline continues to investigate, she finds that she might be the next on the list of those to disappear.  The title refers to the quicksands that lurk off the coast of Lovat Stacy, which have devoured ships whole, leaving only their masts to haunt the inhabits of the manor and town on the shore.

This was definitely a Gothic.  It has a mystery, it has a gloomy atmosphere--the manor by the cold and stormy sea, the burned-out chapel in the copse.  It has the characters who may or may not be guilty of terrible things on pretty much every front.  It has a mad relative lurking in the wings to shake things up and make strangely insightful statements.  It has a heroine with a boring and yet tragic past who pokes her nose into something larger than she, and who ends up deeper than she ever intended to be.  Gothics are not fast-paced action novels and they don't tend to be steamy romances, either.  Consequently, the pacing can be a bit slow, the heroines more introspective than in some other genres.  That was certainly the case here.  The romance is mild, with two love interests representing polar opposite futures vying for Caroline's hand--but it's clear that her mind is made up from the start, even as she fights against it in the name of logic.  There's not a lot of wooing, or embraces, or anything like that.  Instead, the romance is more the "drawn to you and I don't know why" type, but I think it works because it suits the atmosphere of the book.  Caroline is, after all, drawn to Lovat Stacy and its inhabitants and she doesn't quite know why, being as she has already accepted that her sister is dead before she arrives.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book.  It's slower, quieter, but the atmosphere was spot-on, the air of menace lurked over the whole thing, and I didn't manage to figure out who the individual behind the disappearances was.  Of course I knew that quicksand was going to have to be involved in at least one case--the title of the book points that out on its own--but I didn't guess in what way, and the way Holt wrapped it all up was beautifully done as well.  I would definitely read more by this author.

5 stars out of 5.

The Flame and the Flower - Kathleen E. Woodiwiss (Birmingham #1)

The second-to-last category of my 2017 romance reading challenge is done, and it was the last category I was dreading, since I saved one I was looking forward to for my final book.  What was the category, you ask?  The bodice ripper.  And when you look up bodice rippers, the name of Woodiwiss abounds, so one of hers seemed like the logical choice to fill this category.  Of course, bodice rippers are known for an abundance of rape and creepy men and unlikable heroines, so I pretty much knew what I was in for going into it.

The story is about Heather, living a life of drudgery with her aunt and uncle until her aunt's brother offers to bring her to London to get her a position teaching at a school--though when they arrive, he promptly attempts to rape her, ending in a struggle in which he's stabbed and Heather flees.  Her flight ends rather abruptly when two sailors get hold of her and take her onto a ship where she meets Brandon Birmingham, the captain, who thinks she's a prostitute and does proceed to rape her, several times, despite her repeatedly telling him no and declaring she's not a prostitute.  So, nice guy.  Heather manages to flee again, back to her aunt and uncle, until it's discovered she's pregnant and they all return to London to force Brandon to marry her, with the help of a family friend.  And then Heather is whisked away to America, where Brandon lives and plans to stay after retiring from his life at sea.

So, this is basically the story of an eighteen-year-old girl falling in love with her rapist, who is nearly twice her age.  Brandon declares that he hates Heather for trapping him into marriage, and that she'll be nothing but a servant to him, but he never treats her as such.  Though he does eventually threaten to rape her again if she doesn't come to him willingly.  So there's that.  Overall, he's not as rapey and creepy as most bodice ripper heroes, but I definitely still would not put in him the categories of "good guy" or "desirable romantic interest" because of the way he basically disregards Heather's feelings while simultaneously panting after her for the entire book.  And, you know, how he says that he raped her eight months ago and she should be over it by now.  Of course, to balance out Brandon's rather mild status are a bunch of other bodice ripper tropes--all other women hating Heather because she has Brandon and they don't and is prettier than them, all the other men wanting to rape Heather because she's pretty and innocent and naive, and a few murders thrown in for good measure.

The writing here is measurably better than the last bodice ripper I read, Savage Ecstasy, which was quite a relief.  I wouldn't go so far as to say I enjoyed this book, but reading it wasn't the form of torture that SE was.  It's all rather purple and melodramatic but again, that's something that I expected of a book in this genre in general.  Heather's feelings for Brandon were completely unrealistic--she's afraid of him for a bit and then gaga over him in quick succession and laughs off her extremely traumatic rape within less than a year.  But that's probably to be expected because Heather doesn't really seem to have much agency at all.  Every now and then she gets mad and stamps her foot or breaks something, but these rages never lead to actual action and she just goes back to doing whatever Brandon wants--or whatever she thinks he wants--the next time he appears on the page.  And then there's the portrayal of people of color--Brandon's housekeeper is black woman who is basically the embodiment of the Mammy stereotype (a la Gone with the Wind; it's a thing in books that take place during the era preceding the Civil War that black women are either portrayed as "the Mammy" or "the Jezebel" with little else to distinguish them) and it's questionable whether or not the "servants" were actually slaves.  They're called servants, but everyone else in the Charleston area has slaves, sooooo...

Obviously, this is a very problematic book.  The portrayal of "romantic rape," the women who are clearly sluts because they want sex but are not Heather, the "all ugly people are bad," the stereotyping of people of color, and all the other things I mentioned above all add up to it.  However, as it wasn't as terrible--in writing, in brutality, in pretty much anything, as the last one I read, sooo...

1.5 stars out of 5.

A Pirate for Christmas - Anna Campbell

A Pirate for Christmas was the holiday romance selection for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' group.  Like most Christmas-themed historical romances, it's a novella rather than a full-length novel.  Also like most Christmas-themed historical romances (and Christmas romances in general, regardless of time period) it relies on love at first sight to get everything going--probably because the short length doesn't leave as much room for relationship and character development.

The two main characters here are Bess, the daughter of the vicar of her rural village, and Rory, who has just taken over the title of Earl after his older brother's death.  There's a rumor rampant in town that Rory is a dastardly pirate, but we know from the book's description that he was actually in the Royal Navy.  When Bess visits the manor to obtain the donkey that always takes part in the Christmas play (Daisy--Daisy was probably the best part of the book) she encounters Rory, the two fall in love at first sight but are of course unable to express their feelings for each other, and go edging around each other as Bess starts reorganizing Rory's house and gets him to give her Daisy and his own participation in the Christmas play...all for the price of a kiss, of course.

As I mentioned before, there's not a lot of room for plot or character development here.  Bess and Rory spend most of the time mooning at each other from afar with all of the village folk trying to push them together, and then there's an extended scene where they conveniently get stuck in a cabin in the woods during a snowstorm together.  Rory wants Bess and Bess wants Rory and and Rory spends a lot of time pursuing Bess but not really wanting to do anything about it because he wants to marry her first (because that's what she deserves) but also not really doing anything to move in a marriage direction.  But of course that's where it all ends up, and then there's a weird time-jump to the honeymoon where the ~sexy times~ start.  Honestly things probably would have been a bit more interesting of Rory really had been a dastardly pirate instead of a misunderstood navy captain, but meh.

Christmas romances in book form are, essentially, the same as those cheesy holiday movies that you see on TV all the time at this time of year.  They  might be cute, for what they are, but they're not particularly good.  This book follows that trope exactly.

2 stars out of 5.

Savage Ecstasy - Janelle Taylor (Gray Eagle #1)

Slogging through the remainder of my romance reading challenge categories before the end of the year, I came to this: Savage Ecstasy.  This fit into the category of "A Native American romance."  This is a particularly bad category for a couple of reasons.  First, despite asking around in the romance group, I could not find any #OwnVoices Native American romances.  If you know of one, please direct me to it.  But what this ultimately meant was that all of the ones I was finding were written by white women.  Not ideal.  Second, there aren't a lot of ones I could find that were written within the past few decades, which mean that they were pretty much all coming from the era of bodice rippers.  I mean, the title should probably tell you all you need to know about this book, and the rest that I saw were very much like it.  But I already had this one, because it was a bodice ripper buddy read for the Unapologetic Romance Readers last year that I never got around to actually completing.  And so, since I couldn't find anything that looked better, off I went.

This book is just as offensive and downright terrible as the title would suggest.  The story follows Alisha, who has moved to the western territories of the American colonies with her uncle following the death of her parents.  One day some men living in her settlement capture an Oglala warrior, Gray Eagle, and plan to torture and kill him for kicks, but Alisha intervenes and eventually he's just put into isolation instead--from which he escapes and quickly extracts his revenge, returning with his buddies to kill basically everyone at the fort with the exception of Alisha and a few others--one other woman, who's turned into a whore, and a few men that are tortured and killed at the Oglala camp.  He claims Alisha for his own and so begins a brutal tale of repeated rape and abuse on literally every level that's peddled as a romance in which, by the end of the book, the two main characters have never held a conversation.  Seriously.  Gray Eagle speaks English but he doesn't let Alisha know this and so they just snipe at each other in their respective languages with nothing actually being communicated, and Gray Eagle periodically raping Alisha because apparently this will make her love him and be loyal to him.  And Alisha obviously does love him because clearly you fall in love with someone in the thirty seconds it takes you to lay eyes on them, and them killing literally everyone you know, raping you, beating you, torturing you, etc. does nothing to challenge those emotions.

Not only does this book have an awful plot, but it's full of terrible writing and terrible tropes.  Yes, there are some editing issues here, but I think in this case that's actually caused by an older book being converted to a Kindle format.  But the writing itself is still terrible.  It's stilted, jumps between past and present tense, and was so boring that I actually found myself falling asleep while reading it.  Why?  Because there is no depth. It's all surface level, all tell and no show.  And for the terrible tropes?  Well, beyond the love at first sight and the rapey-ness of this, all the men want to bang Alisha because she is beautiful and pure!  And all of the women who are not Alisha hate her because all of the men want to bang her.  Obviously.  Additionally, Alisha is repeatedly described as looking like a little girl, which adds a whole new level of creepiness and ickiness to this which was completely unnecessary.

This was a terrible book.  I will definitely not be reading the others--yes, this is a series, if you can believe it--and cannot fathom reading anything else by this author in general.  There was literally nothing good about this.  I hated it.

1 star out of 5.

The Raven Prince - Elizabeth Hoyt (Princes #1)

This was the main buddy read for the Unapologetic Romance Readers group for December 2017.  I'm still waiting on the November title from the library, but the library didn't have this one at all, so I went ahead and bought it and read it during those dark morning hours that you have to suffer through when you travel time zones and consequently wake up two to three hours before everyone else--and the sun.  Good thing for Kindle Paperwhite, eh?

The story here follows Anna, a widow living with her mother-in-law and one servant and whose household is going through some financial difficulties.  She decides to get herself a job to help, and finds a position serving as secretary for the local earl, who has just moved back to the area and who no one has seen yet.  Of course, Anna finds out quickly that she has seen the earl--he nearly ran her over with his horse a few days before, leading to a rather awkward encounter.  And of course the two are attracted to each other, but there are Problems.  Like Anna being barren (which, come on, she clearly isn't) and Edward wanting a family to continue his line, and him being engaged to another woman in order to pursue that.  You know.  Stuff like that.  There's also a very minor blackmail subplot, but most of the book involves Anna trying to seduce Edward, even going so far as to get herself into a brothel so she can have sex with him without him knowing it's here.

This has a good premise and good writing, and I felt the characters had great chemistry, but looking more closely at it, there are definitely some problems.  Edward has a violent temper, doing things like throwing objects at his steward's head, and it seems like maybe that's not a great person to get involved with.  Anna is confident enough to go to London to seduce Edward, but not if he knows it's her--and then gets miffy when he doesn't realize afterward.  Uhm...what?  And when she tells Edward she doesn't want to marry him, he won't take no for an answer.  I know, I know, it's a romance and they need to end up together, so clearly he's going to have to ask her again--but he outright harasses her way past the point that was acceptable.  And he continues to sleep with her before breaking off his engagement to his fiancee, which is pretty slimy in and of itself.  The whole "woman sneaks into a brothel to have sex with the man she desires" trope is also one I've encountered before and not one I'm fond of.

That said...I didn't dislike this.  I think Hoyt's writing is really good, as I mentioned before, and I think it carried the book through its rather questionable character and plot points.  She can write good tension and good banter and a good sex scene, and there is also a minor side romance that was quaint; it's always nice when love isn't exclusively reserved for the main characters.  Also, I liked how the blackmail plot was resolved.  Anna makes a questionable (again) choice regarding it at first, but then realizes what she's doing and works to rectify it.  Of course things still go downhill, but that was more Edward's fault than Anna's.  The main story is also framed by a fairy tale book also called The Raven Prince, which follows the structure of "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" but with a little less work needing to be done on the heroine's end to get her man back.  But while I liked this device, I'm not entirely sure what purpose it served since the two stories don't really parallel each other at all.

This was my first Elizabeth Hoyt book, though I have a bunch of hers on my to-read list.  Based on it, I would read more; some of my other favorite historical romance authors have made some questionable choices in their back catalogues as well, and I've loved other works of theirs.  (Lisa Kleypas comes immediately to mind.)  Hoyt's writing was strong enough for me to not just toss her to the wayside, and I'm interested in seeing what she might have to offer in other plots, preferably ones with less issues involved.

2.5 stars out of 5.

The Queen's Consorts - Kele Moon

There are some books you just don't want to cop to reading, and I admit, a "menage a trois" romance for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' 2017 challenge was going to be one of them for me, no matter what the specific book ended up being.  And yet here I am, admitting it to the internet at large.

I have to admit, finding a book for this category was a struggle.  Why?  Because most books involving a menage are not going to be romances, they're going to be kink erotica and probably not all three parties are equally invested in the relationship; hence were my findings as I trawled through Goodreads lists.  Why did I end on The Queen's Consorts?  Well, it was an actual novel, which meant there would likely be some semblance of plot beyond just sex, since shorter pieces in erotica subgenres tend to be "characters meet, characters fuck, end scene."  Also, it was a fantasy/sci-fi book, which made it more reader-friendly to me and I actually think helped integrate a three-member relationship better into the story.

Heroine Sari is a young woman living on the streets after escaping years of sexual slavery in which she managed to never actually have sex--because of course, the heroine's virginity is tantamount to her goodness.  *eyeroll*  While helping a little girl who's also on the streets, Sari is attacked and almost killed before being rescued by a royal guard, who recognizes that she's of higher birth because of the streaks in her hair.  (Basically, society here is the upper class, which all have streaks, and the lower class, which doesn't, and it's all very weird and kind of racist in its own way.)  He also recognizes a pendant that she has, that no one else has recognized in all her years even though it means she's the queen who went missing when she was a child!  Gasp!  Who would have thought!  So he brings her into the palace and turns her over to "the queen's consorts" so they can take care of her while the guard puts things to rights.  You can imagine how well this goes.  Of course there is scheming and a coup and lots of sex in a magical bath along the way.

Let's start with things that I think worked for this book.  As someone who is not big into "kink" erotica, I liked that Moon set up her world where it is the norm for people to be in triad relationships composed of two males and one female, though it does make one wonder where all the lesbians are.  This norm made it easier for me to slip into the story and also did away with a threesome being something that Sari herself had to get over.  There's also some interesting mixing of sci-fi and fantasy; magic abounds, from how Sari's emotions control the weather to how there are magical healing baths, but there are also "bolter" weapons that seem more like something out of a space opera.  And finally, there were some good supporting characters beyond Sari and consorts Calder and Taryen; Macro comes immediately to mind, as does a "sister" that Sari encounters in the palace.  The writing was okay overall, and I will say that Moon can write a pretty good sex scene.

And as for what didn't work?  Well...I mean, Taryen and Calder's entire purpose in life is basically to give Sari orgasms so it will be sunny, which really seems to diminish Sari's purpose.  The planet seems to have run completely fine without her except for the weather, and having role of "orgasm to bring the sun" kind of reduces her to a sex object more than I'd like.  Also, all of the "sisters," aka others of the streaked-hair upper class, are basically evil, with the exception of one.  There is rampant sexual abuse of Calder and Taryen throughout at the hands of the sisters, which was hard to read.  And, while the world has some cool elements to it, it never really felt complete because Moon speeds through the book from sex scene to action scene to sex scene again, back and forth with little space to actually develop any of the world or characters--as they come to us is basically as they leave us at the end of the book.  And, am I really supposed to believe that Sari managed to not be found for years and escaped sexual slavery without having sex?  Because I don't.

Overall, I think this was kind of trying to be a Luna book (a publishing imprint that focuses on romantic fantasy novels!) but it kind of missed the mark because it just wasn't fleshed-out enough to shine.  There were some strong elements to it, but they weren't really tied together and kind of fell apart when Moon moved from one to another.  Unfortunately for me, this is a category in next year's reading challenge for the Unapologetic Romance Readers, too, so maybe I'll pick up another of her books if they fit and see if they're any more polished.

2 stars out of 5.

Crimson Kiss - Trisha Baker (Crimson #1)

Vampires.  Oh vampires.  They have completely taken over pop culture ever since Twilight, and every time I think they're about to go away, they come back again.  Of course, those are new school vampires.  They can go out in sun, they sometimes sparkle, they're universally beautiful and love-worthy, etc.  Crimson Kiss isn't like that.  It predates Twilight.  The vampires here don't abide by all the vampire "laws" of old--they're bothered by garlic because of super senses, not because it repulses them for magical reasons, and they can touch crosses--but they still suck blood and kill people (some of them) and some of them are downright hideous.  And they can't go out into the sun.

This was my read for the "dark romance" category in the Unapologetic Romance Readers' challenge for 2017, and it delivered.  It starts with heroine Meghann learning that the vampire who made her into one, Simon, is alive when she thought he was dead--and he's still one sadistic bastard, and he's coming after her.  From there, the story jumps back in time to how Meghann met Simon, became a vampire, and escaped his hold.

The writing here isn't much to marvel at, really lacking emotion and finesse.  But the depravity present in this book isn't to be sneered at.  I was supposed to read a dark romance, and I got one.  This is the first part of a trilogy, and so maybe it will wrap up happily with someone who is not Simon--but this one is all about Meghann and Simon, until the very end.  Even when Meghann thinks Simon is dead, she's still wrapped up in him even though she doesn't want to be.  She can't commit to another, more positive relationship because her bond with Simon is still there, in her head even if it's not in her heart.  Baker does make an effort to show that Meghann isn't really in love with Simon--that it's magic and the bond and lust talking, and not actual emotions.  But Meghann heself stubbornly insists she loves Simon, and that bothered me so much.  I know she was in an abusive relationship, but she didn't act like one in personality.  She didn't blame herself, she knew she had to get out, she just didn't know how, because Simon was a powerful vampire.  And it seemed like, with that in mind, she should have known that she wasn't in love with him.  There was just some disconnect in the logic there.

I also didn't really like any of the characters in this book.  Some of them, like Simon, weren't meant to be likable--but I will say that Simon was interesting, whereas I didn't think everyone was.  I thought Meghann was actually pretty boring.  She had such promise--vampire psychologist who can only see patients after dark!--but the book never really dug into any of that instead just went into a Simon-spiral.  Alcuin had the promise of being sort of the Dumbledore of vampires, but that went down the drain pretty quickly once Simon showed up.  Jimmy was a pretty shitty love interest; he had his own issues, to be sure, which were also vampire-related and could have been interesting, but he went from "You're a vampire!  I hate you!" to "I love you and want to be with you!" in literally the space of a few sentences, so that was a dud for me.  And then he was pretty darn stupid when dealing with the Simon situation even though he really should have known better.

Overall, if you want a darker vampire book, I would say this is for you.  And I do mean darker.  There's repeated rape and torture in this book; it truly abounds.  But if you want a romance, it's probably not the best choice, and the writing isn't anything special.

2.5 stars out of 5.

Take the Lead - Alexis Daria (Dance Off #1)

Take the Lead was listed as one of the best romance books of 2017 by Sarah MacLean in The Washington Post, and Nenia over at Readasaurus Reviews gave it a thumbs-up, which is fairly rare for her, and it's about a dance competition, so yeah, it jumped onto my to-read list pretty quickly!  I have a weak spot for figuring skating romances and Dancing with the Stars, which I never watch on-air but binge clips of on Youtube, and this book could also fill in a category I hadn't yet gotten to for my romance reading challenge: the interracial romance.  I'd planned to read The Far Pavilions for it, but when that showed up on my Kindle with a read time of 25 hours, I backed away from that, bumped it to next year's list, and put this in instead; Alexis Daria is an #OwnVoices author, and her heroine Gina Morales is a Hispanic Puerto Rican while her hero Stone is a white guy with distant Scandinavian ancestry.

SO.  The book itself.  Gina is a professional dancer on the The Dance Off, which is basically Dancing with the Stars.  For her fourth season, she fins herself partnered with Stone, whose family is the subject of a reality TV series where they live "off the grid" in the remote expanse of Alaska.  And as soon as they meet, Gina knows what the show has in mind--a showmance between them, something she refuses to do as she tries to buck the stereotype of the promiscuous Latina and put forth a more true and positive image of herself.  Problem: she and Stone actually are attracted to each other.  And when they find out that Gina's job is on the line if she doesn't win The Dance Off this year, Stone doubles down and decides to take them all the way.  There are costumes and contrivances and glitter and of course awesome dances, though we rarely see Gina and Stone on stage; most of the action actually takes place in their rehearsals and other parts of their lives.  There's a positive female relationship between Gina and her roommate Natasha (set up to be the heroine of the second book) and just all-around awesomeness.  But that doesn't meant that Daria slacks on the drama.  Oh, no.  It's a constant stream of "We can't be together because I want to live in the city and you want to live in the wilderness!" and vice versa, and a Big Miscommunication to which, I will say, Gina totally overreacts (and everyone tells her so, thankfully).

But yeah.  This book was a riot.  It wasn't perfect, but it was very, very fun, and well-written.  Stone and Gina were both great main characters (Stone of course has a Secret that he is protecting for his family), the drama is on-point, and the "behind the scenes" dynamic of the dancing show is one I haven't seen before, showing just how much of it is contrived for the audience's amusement and consumption.  I'm definitely looking forward to reading the second book!

4 stars out of 5.

An Extraordinary Union - Alyssa Cole (Loyal League #1)

Rushing to finish my reading challenges by the end of the year means more weekend book reviews!  Oh boy.  After several attempts at fulfilling the category for a Civil War or Reconstruction romance for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' challenge, I stumbled upon An Extraordinary Union, which had high reviews, the right setting, and an interracial romance.  I don't end up reading a lot of interracial romances because I heavily favor historical romances, primarily Regency-era ones set in London society, which was not exactly brimming with interracial couples, but I'm not at all opposed to them as a concept, so this was a pleasant discovery.  (I do have to read an interracial romance for another category and have a different book picked out for it; I just had too much trouble finding a good Civil War romance to slot this one into another category.)

The story here follows Elle(n) Burns, a free woman of color who was born a slave before being freed with her family as a child.  Now, Elle has returned to the South to spy for the Loyalty League, a group of blacks working for the North, the Union, and Lincoln.  Her disguise necessitates her posing as a mute slavery and subjecting her to humiliations that she'd thought she'd escaped.  It also puts her in the path of Malcolm McCall, a Pinkerton detective who is also spying on the South, though he has the privilege of being a man and white and so gets to pose as a soldier instead of a slave.  Upon their first encounter, Elle and Malcolm are both attracted to each other--at least after they establish that Malcolm hasn't shown up to rape Elle.  But despite their attraction, Elle is leery of Malcolm for very good reasons.  You know, like the fact that she's black and he's white and there can never be an equal power dynamic between them, society will never accept them, and she's not really sure if he really likes her or if he just wants a taste of something taboo.  So there are a few obstacles in the way of their romance.

Cole does such a great job bringing Elle and Malcolm together.  There's a keen awareness of unequal power dynamics in the very nature of their relationship and Cole (and Malcolm, by extension) does everything possible to even the playing field, making sure that Elle's consent is highly visible at every step of the way and that Malcolm backs off every time she seems like she's about to say no.  After he saves her twice, she makes a request that she save him the next time--and then she does, in spectacular fashion.  And of course, Elle is the one who puts together the pieces to figure out what is going on with a ship that could threaten the the outcome of the blockade and the war itself.  Elle is a strong, remarkable woman even when she's being humiliated and put down, in direct contrast to her "mistress" who is a downright bitch and petty and vindictive even when she already has everything she could ever want.

The writing here is excellent, the pacing is on-spot, and the chemistry between Elle and Malcolm absolutely sizzles.  However, I do have two issues.  My first complaint is that not a lot is done to show Elle and Malcolm's backgrounds; a few things are stated, like the reason for Malcolm's family's immigration to the United States and how Elle came to be free and lost her best friend and former lover, but there's not a lot of insight into how that made them the people that they are.  And second, while I think the individual plots of the spy mission and romance are done well, they're not necessarily woven together well.  I liked how Elle and Malcolm teamed up to pool information and find out about the ship, but the spying aspects and romance aspects seemed to seesaw from one extreme to the other without much in-between.  Still, this was highly enjoyable and I'm definitely interested in reading more books in this series and by this author.

4 stars out of 5.

In Flight - R. K. Lilley (Up In the Air #1)

So, there are a few categories in the Unapologetic Romance Readers' 2017 challenge that I wasn't super-psyched about.  A BDSM romance was one of those categories.  It is sooo not up my alley and I was also leery of falling into the "Fifty Shades" trap where it's actually not a BDSM romance but a story about a horribly abusive relationship.  So I basically had a few requirements for this category.  One, it needed to be an actual book, not a short that consisted entirely of sex--which was a requirement for all of the categories for me.  (I did cheat on the holiday romance one for this, but read 3 novellas to make up for it.)  Two, it couldn't be a Fifty Shades book.  Three, I didn't want it to be downright awful in writing or content.  So of course I headed off to the Goodreads lists.  This was something I knew I was going to have to buy, because the library wouldn't have it and I was skeptical of anything in this category that was for free, and after some perusal I purchased In Flight, which appeared to be both an actual romance novel with BDSM aspects instead of just straight sex and had a very strong reading (4.1/5) on Goodreads.

The book is written in first-person from the perspective of the heroine, Bianca, who works as a first-class flight attendant on an unnamed airline and encounters a hot young billionaire with a taste for BDSM.  (Okay, so maybe there are a few Fifty Shades similarities here, but I'm willing to let that go.)  She and James, said billionaire, are immediately attracted to each other and James outwardly states his intentions to get Bianca so sleep with him, though he doesn't want the relationship to be public.  Though she initially is reluctant, she finally caves, because she's young and hot and is still, of course, a virgin--though James didn't know that initially so at least he's not coveting her for it, though he admits it's a perk.  Bianca is also the least-connected woman on the face of the planet--no TV, no internet, no social media... Basically all she does is work and paint.  That said, none of this actually hit me until later in the book, when I started to go, "Wait a minute..."

There's definitely some wonky language in here that was funny more than sexy, and could put an instant damper on the mood.  The writing was average--not good, not bad.  There's some annoying slut-shaming, because clearly every other girl who has ever been interested in James is a dirty whore where Bianca is pure as the driven snow, though she has a Dark Past and can orgasm on command.  *eyeroll*  But what I will give this book credit for is that, as far as I can tell, it's an okay portrayal of a BDSM relationship that isn't actually abusive, which is how these things apparently tend to go in books--not that I am an experienced enough reader in this subgenre to make a firm call of my own.  They discuss a safe word, James provides aftercare and time for Bianca to rest even when neither of them particularly wants to take a break.  But he seems to flipflop between personalities and not just when they're getting freaky, and that put me off a bit from him--he's warm and welcoming and cuddly one minute, and absolutely frigid the next for little to no reason.

I think this was a decent book for what it is, and the writing is certainly better than Fifty Shades (no "inner goddess"es here).  The actual BDSM is pretty light (good for me!) though it seems like it might head into slightly heavier territory in future books.  Also, as this is a proper series and not a string of connected books with different main characters like most romance series are, there is no Happily Ever After ending here--that's left for the future.  But still decent, and I didn't hate every second of it like I expected to for this category, though I'm not sure if I'll take on the other two books or not.

3 stars out of 5.

The Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux

Trying to scramble through the remains of my reading challenges, I needed a horror romance, and thought the classic The Phantom of the Opera would suit it perfectly.  It's not gory horror; instead, it's very Gothic in feel, with an unseen menace lurking in the shadows and a twisted love propelling a plot that keeps apart two more suitable protagonists.

Written as a relating of the tale behind "true" events (and apparently inspired by some actual true events, though I couldn't find to what degree) the story follows several people in a Paris opera house haunted by a "ghost."  Two new managers have recently taken over the opera and think they're being pranked by their predecessors, while overlooked singer Christine sees the ghost as the Angel of Music who brings her talent to new heights, and the young viscount Raoul views the ghost as a sort of demon leeching away Christine's life and keeping she and Raoul apart.  There are really two love stories here: the one between Raoul and Christine, which started when they were children and is now foundering in the face of the ghost's obsession with Christine; and that between Christine and the ghost, aka Eric, which is sort of love and sort of obsession and sort of sick fascination, all rolled into one.

The writing here is definitely in a "classic" style, which means that it can seem a bit distant and clinical at first, but it gets very engaging as you get used to the style and become immersed in the world of the opera.  And the opera itself is almost a character in and of herself; the opera house is huge, fantastical in ways that I doubt a real opera house could be.  With a lake built under it, floors beyond imagining, and a cast of minor characters that seem as much a part of the building as a limb does part of a body.  Even Eric and the Persian seem like their true purposes are more to be entities of the opera house than to be their own people--their backgrounds never being as fully or satisfactorily explained as Raoul or Christine's own backstories.  It's a very atmospheric feel, with almost the entirety of the story taking place in the opera house and the characters as extensions of it.

One thing to note is that I feel like Leroux read Dracula and was really pulling in inspiration from it at parts--like, you know, Eric sleeping in a coffin, or not being able to go into daylight (except he can???) and so on.  A lot of it had a very vampire-like feel to it, though I never got the sense that Eric was actually supposed to be a vampire.  Just a crazy guy who stalked a woman to the point of no return.  Cool.  Remind me why people root for Christine to end up with this psychopath, by the way?  He's a genius in his own way, to be sure...but you know, a murderer, torturer, and all around madman.  So, not exactly prime romantic material.

Anyway, this was a suitably creepy read to be going through around Halloween, and a good choice for my horror romance category.  I enjoyed it even though some parts weren't as thought-out or fleshed-out as they probably could have been.

4 stars out of 5.

In Bed with a Highlander - Maya Banks (McCabe Trilogy #1)

I'm not a huge "highlander" romance fan, but I've read a few of them this year in hopes of fulfilling this category for the Unapologetic Romance Readers 2017 Reading Challenge.  Unfortunately for me, every time I read one, it seemed to fit another category better, and so I had to keep searching.  I'm finally calling it off with this one!

The story is about Mairin Stuart, who is apparently a bastard princess whose heir will inherit huge, wealthy holdings in Scotland.  Consequently, everyone wants to marry her.  She's been hiding out in a convent for ten years, but the book starts with her being discovered by the men of one Duncan Cameron, who intends to force her to marry him.  When she refuses, she's badly beaten, but manages to escape his clutches with the help of a maid and a boy she saves from being killed by Cameron's men. The boy, of course, ends up being the heir of another clan, who gets his father to promise to protect Mairin--and then promptly marries her.  The two scream and fight and Mairin tries to run away before they get married, but as soon as the vows are said, they're pretty much gaga over each other and spend most of the book having sex while Mairin makes charming mistakes in being the lady of a highland clan.  There's a flimsy subplot going on here with Duncan Cameron trying to get Mairin back, and someone trying to kill one of the couple, but it's mostly shoe-horned into the end of the book.  There's also a lot of Scottish history (I think) that's required to understand it, so if you're not familiar with Scottish royal genealogy in the early twelfth century, it's all a bit murky.

I honestly wasn't a fan of the writing, either; there's a lot of "aye"-ing being done, and I didn't feel that Mairin and Ewan had any chemistry at all.  Honestly, his brothers were more interesting characters, but I didn't like this book enough to pursue the other two with them as heroes, because the writing is just...flat.  The sex scenes aren't sexy, the bickering doesn't have any tension in it, and then there's the lackluster plot that's supposedly propping the whole book up.  Overall, it's just "meh," and I don't see myself reaching for this author again in the future.

2 stars out of 5.

Untouched - Anna Campbell

Okay, the romance reading challenge strikes again!  This time, we're examining the "virgin hero" category.  I read a couple of books trying to fulfill this, finding that I had been misled, the issue of the hero's virginity doesn't come up, etc.  So I went to a list!  Unfortunately, most of the books that I was interested in, I had already read, and I really try to read new titles for my reading challenges.  But Untouched was on the list, and the library had it, so it became my choice.

This is an interesting historical romance because it doesn't take place among ton society, or a country manor, or any of the usual settings.  Instead, it takes place in a walled compound with some grounds, a garden, and a small cottage, and remains there for most of the book--there are only a few segments that take place beyond it.  Why is this?  Because the book starts with the heroine, Grace, being kidnapped and delivered to the "mad" Matthew, Lord Sheene, to "entertain" him on orders from his uncle.  But Matthew doesn't want to be "entertained" even though he's been locked up since the age of fourteen, when he was the victim of a bad illness that gave his uncle, Matthew's guardian since the death of his parents, the room needed to make a grab at the family fortune and influence.

It's established pretty quickly that Matthew isn't actually mad, though he's understandably pretty ornery and doesn't want to let his uncle "win" by sleeping with a woman said uncle's goons provided.  Why this would be letting him win, I don't know; you can have sex with someone you're locked up with (as long as they want to have sex with you!) and still want to escape, the two conditions are not mutually exclusive unless, apparently, you're Matthew.  As far as heroes go, Matthew wasn't exactly my favorite.  He's an outright bastard to Grace, flip-flopping between believing her about her origins (or what she shares of them) and accusing her of being the worst sort of whore (which is problematic for other reasons, but now is not the time).  He's nasty and has none of the charm of most historical romance heroes, until they sleep together, at which point he quickly becomes an amazing lover and a very charming individual.  Because Sex Magic, I guess?  And he swears that he loved Grace at the first instant he saw her...despite being downright awful to her for so long, which, really, does not seem to indicate instant love.  He does demonstrate instant lust, but definitely not love.  However, the two seem to be hopelessly confused in this book, which even Grace admits at one point.

As for Grace...she was kind of vanilla.  She had a bit of an interesting background leading up to her kidnapping, but her own actions mostly include being victimized by people, wearing scanty clothing, and pining over a guy she's convinced she can't have even though he only wants to be with her.  She doesn't even want to escape from her confinement unless Matthew comes with her.  I didn't actively dislike Grace, but there was nothing that made me want to really root for her except a general distaste for Matthew's slimy uncle and his goons.

Matthew and Grace undeniably had physical chemistry, but beyond that, there wasn't a lot of development of their relationship; as I mentioned before, Campbell tries to later justify this with a "love at first sight" explanation, but that is not how it reads.  I would have liked to see a little bit more of the "getting to know you" phase of the relationship, some banter, something between them other than lust disguised as love.

Overall, this was an okay book.  It didn't have the same feel to it as most historical romance books, which was interesting--different is always interesting--and I commend Campbell for that, but it also lacked some of the spark that I look for in historical romances.  Would I read Campbell again?  Eh, maybe.  Still undecided on that front!

2 stars out of 5.

The Fires of Winter - Johanna Lindsey (Haadrad Viking Family #1)

I recently looked at my 2017 reading challenge in the Unapologetic Romance Readers group on Goodreads and realized that if I didn't get moving, I was going to be in very, very big trouble.  Here's the thing: I was tearing through that challenge at the beginning of the year.  But in doing so, I kind of...read all of the categories I was looking forward to.   Which left me with the "dregs" of categories I don't have much interest in or have downright been dreading reading for the end of the year.  Sigh.  Nevertheless, I had to get to it, so I decided to go for the "Viking romance" category I still had pending.

Much like sheikh romance books, Viking romance books seem to have a theme of being very rapey.  This is somewhat because this is what Vikings did.  They pillaged and plundered and raped and ravaged.  Not amongst their own people, where rape was a very, very serious crime, but Viking romances typically involve a young woman from the British Isles being swept away by a marauder and then falling desperately in love with him after her "traitorous body" responds to his ravishments.

Ich.

But there didn't appear to be any escaping it, and so I took on Fires of Winter.  The heroine here is a Celtic woman named Brenna, who was basically allowed to act like a boy for much of her young life and goes around in boys' clothes and carrying a sword.  You would think Brenna would be all about the #gurlpower, but the book starts with her discovering a man raping a woman and deciding it's okay as long as the rapist marries his victim.  This pretty astutely sums up Brenna's outlook for the book.  She's supposed to be married to a Viking in order to cement some sort of peace treaty, but the Viking's father, Anselem--with whom the deal was struck--reneges and raids her home as a form of vengeance; the prospective groom, unaware that he even was a prospective groom, doesn't show up until later, when Brenna is already ensconced in his house as a slave gift from the aforementioned raiding father.  Brenna, unlike all of the other women in her town, manages to escaped being raped in the journey to Norway, because of course her virginity must be preserved so "hero" Garrick can divest her of it.

Garrick is awful.  He's known as the "Hardhearted" because he doesn't like women after a former lover scorned him, but we're supposed to see through his tough exterior to a warm and cushy center.  Not so much.  Repeatedly raping the heroine doesn't really get very far, and Lindsey doesn't even attempt to mitigate the act with any "traitorous body" nonsense (which is the traditional out in this type of book, the 1980s bodice-ripper--"she liked it and so it's okay in the end") until pretty far into the book.  And even then, Brenna returns to her philosophy of that it's not wrong that Garrick is raping her, it's wrong that he's raping her and refusing to marry her after.  Why does he refuse to marry her?  Because she's a slave, but he can't free her, because then he wouldn't be able to rape her!  Obviously.

BUT!  Here is the thing.  Horrible people doing horrible things does not necessarily a bad book make, as my recent reading experience of The Bronze Horseman goes to show.  What actually made this a bad book was the writing.  Brenna was not a heroine I could root for; her actions in the beginning of the book, excusing a rapist even though she protests to hate rape, set me against her from the start, and it wasn't an upward path from there.  Despite saying she will never be dominated by a Viking, she finds herself basting the hindquarters of animals pretty quickly and cleaning up a room she trashes because Garrick says he won't feed her until she does.  She is of the foot-stamping, hair-tossing variety of woman who everyone happens to love, or at least want, at first sight and who, despite being "the best" warrior, manages to get her ass handed to her at every turning point.  She screeches and flails and is just generally so annoying that I wouldn't have minded if she fell into a fjord and drowned.  Garrick, though a terrible person, actually fit the book better, because his actions were essentially what I expected of this variety of character in this time and place.  I actually kind of appreciated that Lindsey didn't make him the raider who had stolen Brenna away, because that was actually something a little different.  But despite having an intellectual acknowledgement of Garrick and his motivations, I still couldn't feel strongly for him in any direction because Lindsey's writing is just flat.  No emotion, no spark, no fury, no passion.  Nada.

Looking at other reviews of the book now, I see I probably could have spared myself the time if I had realized Nenia from Readasaurus Reviews (and also admin of the Unapologetic Romance Readers group) had already read and reviewed this.  But still, the library didn't have anything available on Kindle and this was relatively inexpensive, and I don't think most other Viking romances would have any better, so I'm just going to move on.

1.5 stars out of 5.

Scarlet - Marissa Meyer (Lunar Chronicles #2)

Scarlet is the second book in the Lunar Chronicles series and is the last book of the series I need to review' life's funny like that, innit?

This book both continues Cinder's story as rogue moon princess and introduces a new character, Scarlet.  The main setting here also shifts to France, where Scarlet lives and is looking for her recently-disappeared grandmother, who was also involved with Cinder's relocation from Luna to Earth, though Scarlet doesn't know it.  The new romantic interest for Scarlet, Wolf, also takes the scene, as does Carson Thorne, an American deserter with a stolen spaceship who falls into Cinder's company.  Kai is also still involved, dealing with the drama of Cinder's escape and rising tensions with Luna from the palace in New Beijing.

Cinder starts coming into her own as a moon-princess-badass here, and Scarlet quickly sets herself up as someone who is not to be messed with.  Scarlet is a typical "fiery redhead" character, which is a bit lacking in originality, but at least her hair is only mentioned twice instead of being harped on for the whole book.  Her "Little Red Riding Hood" story is queued up with her signature red hoodie and, of course, Wolf, as well as a brief encounter between Wolf and a street fighter named Hunter.  There's a bit of a twist in this book, one that I don't think was as evident as the "twist" in Cinder, but reading it through a second time it's pretty obvious where the story was going.  Still, I found the story to be enjoyable.  This is also more of a romance than Cinder was, with a strong bond between Scarlet and Wolf from the beginning, even though both admit that it doesn't make sense.

This isn't a very complex story, and I think that Scarlet's part of it actually moves more slowly than Cinder's story initially did.  Meanwhile, Cinder's story picks up pace as she and Thorne flee New Beijing and try to determine their next steps.  Thorne is a delightful character, someone who thinks that he's much more charming than he actually is and with a checkered past that he tries to spin in the best light possible.  This all sets him up wonderfully as a true hero in the next book, when he see him through a different pair of eyes.  Iko also makes a return to the page here, and she is just as wonderful as ever.  Cinder herself is also a stronger character than she was before, gaining a true determination and sense of self that she lacked in the first book.

Overall, this is a great book, a strong continuation of the series and, I think, better than Cinder itself was.  On the re-read, I'm not quite as dazzled with it as I was the first time I read it.  When I do my re-read of Cress, we'll have to see if Scarlet can retain its place as my favorite book in the series or if it will be overturned.

4.5 stars out of 5.

My Fair Princess - Vanessa Kelly (Improper Princesses #1)

This was one of the monthly book selections for the Unapologetic Romance Readers group on Goodreads.  We tend to read a lot of historicals, and this is no exception, which makes me happy because historicals are my favorites!

The plot follows Gillian, the bastard daughter of a royal duke (AKA the Prince Regent's brother) who grew up in Sicily and, when we encounter her, is busy hunting down the bandits who killed her beloved stepfather.  Skip ahead a bit, and Gillian and her surviving family have returned to England, where they have enlisted Charles, Duke of Leverton, to help with civilizing Gillian so she can make a good match.  Why Charles?  Because he's apparently some sort of distant cousin; at least distant enough that I couldn't keep any of the connections straight.  Gillian doesn't want civilizing or a husband, she just wants to go back to Sicily, and so our conflict is born.

As far as plots go, this one revolves around a trope that I quite like: the hero trying to find the heroine a love interest, and then falling for her himself.  Charles as a character actually grew on me quite a bit.  Despite being rather bland and proper at the beginning of the book, he slowly starts to come out of his shell, pulled from his comfort zone by Gillian's behavior and the scandal that she stirs up.  Gillian, on the other hand, made me want to slap her upside the head.  She has her own desires, of course, but she acted like such a child, refusing to even see that maybe the way she was going about things wasn't the way to get what she wanted, or that what she wanted might not even be possible.  She dragged other innocent parties into downright dangerous situations, including a child who wanted to impress her.  When Charles tells her that she can't continue acting like that, she basically blows up and says that well, then they can't be together, to which I say, well then, maybe he would have been better off without her.

As for their relationship, there's a rather abrupt shift in it at one point.  In the beginning of the book, they kind of separately admit to themselves to being mildly attracted to each other, but neither is pursuing the other in any sort of active way.  And then, all of a sudden, they're all over each other.  It's not insta-love or insta-lust, but it's also not a slow development, and the switch felt like it came out of nowhere and made the pacing of the relationship just feel a bit off.  The supporting characters help to bolster the weirdness of the relationship, particularly Charles' sister Elizabeth, who was a wonderful supporting character and just the kind of sweet and steady presence both main characters needed.  Gillian's half-brother, Griffin, is also featured, and appears to be a main character in a book in one of Kelly's other series, the Renegade Royals--one of the books of which I have also read!

Overall, I liked this, but it was nothing extraordinary.  Gillian was an infuriating heroine and her revenge subplots kind of dragged down what could have been something absolutely delightful.  However, I would still be interested in reading more from Kelly in the future.

3 stars out of 5.

Sheikh Romances - Sexy Sheikh Bundle

Oh, boy.  This is one of those things I can't believe I'm confessing to reading.  But one of the romance categories for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' 2017 Reading Challenge was a sheikh romance.  Sheikh romances are notoriously terrible and, it seems, notoriously short.  But I always feel like reading a novella instead of an actual novel is cheating, for some reason, so I got a bundle of three novellas out of the library with the thought that, together, I would have done my due diligence.  Enter the "Sexy Sheikh" bundle.  There are three books in this bundle, all of them put forth by the imprint of "Harlequin Presents."  Oh yes.  They're Harlequin.  All three are contemporary stories, each by a different author and characters--no overlapping or connections here.  Let's take a short look at each of them in order.

The first book is Exposed: The Sheikh's Mistress by Sharon Kendrick.  This is actually the reason I got this bundle, because another reader in the group read a Kendrick sheikh romance and said it actually wasn't terrible, which is high praise for something in this subgenre.  The story here follows Sienna, an event planner whose life is upturned upon the reappearance of Hashim, the guy (and sheikh) she was involved with years before until he found out she'd posed for topless photos in a calendar in order to pay her mother's medical bills.  Clearly, this made Sienna the worst sort of trash in his eyes, and so he dumped her, only to come back years later to torment her/have sex with her.  This will quickly become a theme in this bundle: it's totally okay to hire someone to work for you just because you want to have sex with them, and then sexually harass them until you get what you want.  Oi.  Anyway, Sienna eventually concedes to being Hashim's official mistress, but the scandal is revealed to the media!  Gasp!  I honestly didn't feel that these two had any chemistry, and Kendrick didn't do a very good job of developing plot or character here--another theme in this bundle.  It's totally possible to do a good job with both plot and character in a novella, but none of the authors seemed to feel like doing that here, which was disappointing.


Next up is The Sheikh's Innocent Bride by Lynne Graham.  Heroine Kirsten works at a castle as a servant in hopes of saving up enough money to escape her extremely restrictive and abusive father.  Her world is turned upside down when the castle's owner, Shahir, shows up and becomes interested in her, despite him being her employer.  Things quickly get out of control, Kirsten gets framed as a thief, and runs away to London.  The drama escalates from there.  This engaged in the "secret baby" trope, as well, which is not one of my favorites.  Of course, Shahir finds out and immediately decides that he must marry Kirsten so their child can inherit his country, which really seemed like the flimsiest logic of all time.  I mean, he thought Kirsten was a thief, and wasn't entirely convinced she wasn't a slut even though he knew she'd been a virgin when they got together, and really seemed inclined to think the worst of her in every way, and definitely wasn't in love with her, and yet he rushed off to marry her.  It seemed far more likely that he would have taken the age-old way out of giving her some money and then never speaking to her again.  Again, this book involved copious sexual harassment from a superior and emotional abuse by the hero, and really no development of characters to compensate for the flimsy plot.  They're not in love and then they are, happily ever after, the end.  Meh.  Probably my least favorite of the three.


And finally, there's Stolen by the Sheikh by Trish Morey, which actually appears to be the second in a series of novellas, though this bundle didn't include the first.  Heroine Sapphire is a rising star of a fashion designer in Italy, expected to marry her on-again, off-again lawyer boyfriend.  When Khaled shows up and commissions her to design a wedding gown for his bride, she reluctantly agrees on orders from her boss, and finds herself spirited off to Khaled's home country and palace--because he is, of course, a sheikh.  The plot, that Sapphire is actually the person Khaled intends to marry, is pretty transparent to us as readers, though I actually can't fault Sapphire for drawing the initial conclusions she does, weird as the situation is.  There's a revenge plot going on here as well, of course involving Sapphire's boyfriend.  Morey does throw in a bogus terrorism subplot as well, one that comes out of nowhere and then doesn't go anywhere, either, and mainly revolves on a lot of infodumping about a minor character who was completely unnecessary.  Still, I liked the romance here, flimsy as some of its trappings were, and thought that Khaled and Sapphire had a bit more character to them than the main characters in the other books in the bundle.  This was a tropey book, what with the minor Stockholm syndrome and all, but I think it was the strongest in the bundle and I liked it the best.

Overall, was this a good bundle?  No, of course not.  Was I expecting it to be?  No, not really.  But considering I went to it because I actually had to toss aside the other book I'd planned on reading for the category because it was such trash (the offensive kind, not the fun kind) I guess I got off easy.  I've actually read a few historicals in this genre that weren't absolutely horrible, as far as I can remember, but it seems like tastes for this trope have shifted to the modern, and the quality hasn't shifted with them.  Sigh.  2 stars for the lot--I can't even really justify 3 for Stolen, though it's probably a stronger 2 than the others.

All Night Long - Jayne Ann Krentz

All Night Long was the romantic suspense read for the Unapologetic Romance Readers in August, but it took me a while to get it from the library and then get around to reading it, so I didn't finish it until early September.  The story seems to have a good premise from the summary: having fled her hometown years before after the murder of her parents, Irene is summoned back by the woman who was her best friend the summer of the murders, pulled by a code word that meant something urgent had happened.  But when Irene arrives, she finds that Pamela is dead, too, apparently of an overdose, though Irene suspects more foul play is involved.  And with a sexy ex-Marine innkeeper to help her, she is determined to get to the bottom of things.

There's definitely some suspense here, though the story goes a little sideways and eyebrow-raise-worthy towards the end of the book, complete with a scene of the villain info-dumping all of his motivations and actions to the heroine, which of course gives the hero time to swoop in and save the day.  And the the denouement seems to drag on a bit, as well.  But my main issues with this book were twofold: first, the hero is a total creepy stalker not at all worthy of making this a romance, and second that Irene has absolutely nothing to actually lead her to believe that all of the murders are connected (or are, in fact, murders at all) and instead just forges ahead like a crazy person on nothing more than her gut because--well, there really is no because.

So, first, Luke.  He is not a romantic person.  He is a crazy stalker.  Irene is staying at the hotel that Luke has recently acquired while she's in town, and he immediately begins following her around without her permission, and in fact directly in opposition to all of her wishes, for no reason at all.  Later, after they become involved, he basically shows up and says he's moving in with her.  Their total acquaintance?  A handful of days, at most.  Let me emphasize this for everyone: stalking is not sexy.  It is utterly terrifying, and should not be viewed at all as romantic.  Some books utilize otherwise nonromantic behaviors in a romantic way because the relationships are supposed to be twisted; however, that's not the case here, and Krentz seems to honestly put forth that Luke's behavior towards Irene is attractive and desirable.

And then there's Irene, who's supposed to be an intrepid reporter, but honestly is going on nothing.  The death of her parents was ruled a murder/suicide, which okay, she doesn't have to believe--that's her prerogative.  But there's absolutely no reason for her to believe that Pamela's death is anything but an accident or a suicide, and there's even less for her to go on from there.  Ultimately, of course, Irene is right--because otherwise there wouldn't be a book here--but there's no sense of logical progression in the crimes that form the backbone of this story.

The writing itself is fine, I guess, but Krentz relies on the sensational in order to sell the story and there isn't a lot to propel it along other than that.  The whole book just feels very "thin," from the characterizations of the hero, heroine, and antagonists, to the romance and the very plot itself.  There are some good scenes--a car chase along a winding road comes to mind, as does a confrontation with Luke's family, who were another annoying part of this book--but overall it was nothing to write home about and I don't intend to read any Krentz in the future.

2 stars out of 5.

Cinder - Marissa Meyer (Lunar Chronicles #1)

It feels a bit weird reviewing this book so long after I put out my first review on this series, for Cress.  I had read Cinder before, but I wasn't writing reviews at the time, and so this comes to anyone following along a bit out of order.  Cinder was the Unapologetic Romance Readers' theme read of "A sci-fi romance" for September 2017, and I was delighted to have an excuse to re-read it, especially as I'd been in a bit of a reading slump and going back to books I've previously enjoyed always helps with that.

Cinder is, as you can guess from the title and cover, a Cinderella story.  Except this Cinderella is a cyborg.  Injured in an accident she can't remember, Cinder has been left with a mechanical arm and lower leg/foot, with wires in her brain and nervous system and an interface that flashes information over her eyes.  She's also one of the best mechanics in New Beijing, and her business is her step-family's main (only?) source of income.  Oh, and New Beijing, and the rest of the world, are currently being ravaged by a plague with an unknown cause and no cure.  But one day, when Prince Kai stops by Cinder's stall to get an android repaired, Cinder is pulled into a web that she never imagined and that will destroy--or rebuild--her entire life.

I love this story so much.  It follows a very traditional Cinderella structure, but with little flourishes and garnishes that make it seem new.  The pumpkin coach is a decrepit car, the glass slipper is a cyborg foot.  The characters are also wonderful; while Meyer makes Cinder's stepmother absolutely loathsome, the daughters aren't entirely without redemption, particularly Peony, who Cinder actually likes.  And then, of course, there's Iko, Cinder's android sidekick who has a quirky, perky personality all her own.  Adding the plague and the brewing conflict between Earth and Luna adds dramatic tension to a story that traditionally lacks it, and having Prince Kai and Cinder meet and grow closer multiple times before the ball is absolutely necessary--the "love on first site" aspect of Cinderella has never sat well with me, so I appreciate this added relationship building.

That said, this isn't a perfect story.  It has a bit of a cliffhanger ending, which I didn't remember.  Given the narrative arc of the series as a whole, I can see why Meyer had to break it where she did, but it definitely doesn't lead to a satisfying conclusion for this volume.  And while the Cinderella element helps to tie together a story and genre that could otherwise alienate some readers--I probably wouldn't have normally picked up a story about a cyborg--it also means that, despite the flourishes, the plot itself can be quite predictable.  Of course, the story as a whole goes past the Cinderella story, but that doesn't mean that parts of it can't be called from a mile away.

Still, I really enjoyed rereading this.  It's not my favorite book in the series--that goes to Scarlet--nor does it feature my favorite main characters--that would be Cress--but I still think it was a solid intro volume, and would definitely recommend it to others.

4 stars out of 5.