The Last Original Wife - Dorothea Benton Frank

The cover of this book had me dreaming of tropical locations and days on the beach.  I'd hoped it would read something like Barbara Delinsky's Sweet Salt Air, which was a drama I rather liked.  But it didn't.  And I didn't like it.  We're presented with two narrators, Les and Wes.  Les is unhappy in her marriage, for a lot of reasons, most of them having to do with Wes.  Wes' friends have all recently gotten divorced and remarried (or, in one case, widowed and remarried) and Les hates their new wives.  She calls them Barbies and thinks that they're stupid and sluts.  She thinks Harold is an asshole for cheating on his (now ex) wife and is pissed when it's hinted at that Wes might have cheated on her during a trip to Atlantic City.

So what does Les do?  She goes and does the exact same thing and cheats on Wes.  But apparently we're supposed to think that it's okay for her to cheat on him, because she was unhappy.  It's never okay to cheat on someone, unhappy or not.  If you're unhappy, you either need to work it out or break it off.  Not be a vapid, hypocritical bitch who thinks more about what her brother's dog is wearing than the effect that a divorce might have on her family.  And then it's all tied up in a neat little package, happily ever after, la di da.  What?  No.

I hated everyone in this book except Danette, who was the best person of the bunch.  Everyone else was a bunch of hypocritical, stereotypical bastards.

Oh, and the amount of dialogue drove me crazy.  All Les ever does is complain and shop.  That's it.  There is more to life than that!  Uuuuuuugh!  And there were some great settings that were completely underutilized, too.  Atlanta and Charleston (particularly Charleston) have so much character, and our author just ignored that completely and moved Les around like she she didn't have a single brain cell to her name.  If you want me to root for the main character, there has to be some redeeming quality.  Les had none, and Wes had even fewer.

Completely frustrating.  One star.  This is why "chick lit" has a bad name.

The Emerald Talisman - Brenda Pandos (Talisman #1)

I have some serious issues with young adult paranormal romances these days, mostly because most of them are terrible.  This one is no different.  Let's dive right in, shall we?

Julia, our heroine, is an idiot.  She thinks words like "obscure" (a word of a whopping two syllables) are "big" and that people should be teased for using them, is taking alegbra at age sixteen (around here, it's taken when you're thirteen or fourteen, in eighth grade, if not earlier).  I work with stupid people all day long (NOT my coworkers, it should be noted--but definitely our customers/clients) and don't particularly want to read about them in my free time.  Doing so just extends the period of time in which I feel the need to punch someone.

It reads like the author just made a character sheet (Q: What type of car does your character drive?  A: A 1984 Volkswagen Quantum) and then dumped every single detail off it into the first chapter.  So basically, you get this: "My name is Julia.  These are my friends.  I can read minds and none of them know.  I drive a 1984 Volkswagen Quantum and work at the best sandwich shop in town.  My mother disappeared when I was five, but my aunt acts as a surrogate mother figure even though I hate her new husband.  I live in the cutest house on the block."  And so on and so forth.  Everything in italics, by the way, is verbatim from the book.

And then there's the biggest problem: the love interest.  Nicholas.  Oh, Nicolas.  Julia, what were you thinking, girl?  He stalks you, doesn't want anyone to know you're together, he may or may not eventually want to rip your throat out and drink your blood.  If that doesn't say "deal-breaker," then I don't know what does.  But no.  Julia meets Nicholas and five minutes later (literally, five minutes later) is head over heels in love with him, obsessing over him, and doing all kinds of stupid, dangerous stuff in the process.

I dream of a young adult paranormal romance in which the heroine actually possesses a brain.  This isn't it.  1.5 stars.

Enchantress - James Maxwell (Evermen Saga #1)

Enchantress is one of those books that I feel had awesome potential but didn't quite live up to it.  It took a long time for me to get into the story; I found the writing fairly juvenile, the characters flat, and the comma use fairly abysmal, considering that this is supposed to be a professionally-published book.  (Though 47North is an Amazon imprint, so I'm skeptical of how much work they actually put into the books they publish.)  I'm glad I soldiered through, because there was a great story lurking in the background involving a pair of siblings, one who wants to be an enchantress and one who wants to be a bladesinger, and the conflict in which they find themselves embroiled, but ultimately Maxwell just kept doing things that would jar me out of the tale and leave me going, "Wait, what?"  Here are some examples:

-Ella makes a terrible, foolish decision that has terrible results, and yet she is only nominally punished for it; she isn't expelled from the enchanters' school, all of classmates and teachers continue to adore her, and she gets the school's most prestigious award despite her actions.

-Maxwell alternates between info-dumping on things that aren't really interesting, like politics, and not fleshing out aspects of the story which would be interesting, like the Dunfolk, the different types of magic, etc.

-Characters appear out of nowhere, and we are expected to develop emotional connections to them on the basis of two or three pages, before they vanish, are killed off, or otherwise exit stage right and are never seen again.  Other characters' loyalties and motivations seem to switch between different factions and emotions with little rhyme or reason behind the changes.

-There seems to be some discrepancy with the internal "rating" of this book.  For example, Maxwell includes a fairly detailed sexual encounter early in the book, as well as a near-rape scene and some gruesome battles, but the "wrack" (which should probably be "rack") punishment/torture session is self-censored, which seemed odd when it could have greatly helped the development of Ella's character.  As it was, she came off seeming completely unaffected by that incident, and it did nothing to mature her as a person.

-Maxwell dabbled with elements of a lot of books I liked; a city of bridges, like in Bitterblue, a magical academy much like in Harry Potter, A College of Magics, or The Name of the Wind, an imposing empire poised to take away the freedom of other territories similar to The Ropemaker, and fantasy desert tribes like The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, but never really tied these together into what felt like a rich, cohesive whole, and instead spent too much time jumping between elements, trying to cram in too many plotlines that were never fully developed or explored.

-Armor and swords that requires constant singing to make them useful doesn't actually seem very useful at all, especially when this "needs to be sung about to work" quality isn't used consistently.

-The story strongly relies on the concept of different "houses" that practice different types of magic, but all of the types actually feel the same, with no clear distinctions made between them.  Essence, the source of magic, can't be used on living things, only inanimate objects, so there doesn't seem to be a reason that one group of people can enchant a wall and another group can enchant a shield, but they can't switch objects.  Additionally, despite it being repeatedly hammered on that essence can't be used on (most) living things without horrible consequences, one house can apparently make trees come to life, move around, and even fight battles without said consequences making an appearance.

-A better place to break the book would have been when Ella joined up with the desert clans and Miro fought his big battle; after these points, the book had a much different feel to it that would have suited the beginning of a second book more than the ending of a first one.

I might pick up The Hidden Relic, the second book in this series, but I'm not sure quite yet.  If I do, I hope to find that Maxwell's writing has matured some and the flaws that were so jarring in Enchantress are lessened or eliminated in The Hidden Relic.

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.

A Gentleman's Honor - Stephanie Laurens (Bastion Club #2)

A Gentleman's Honor is the second book in Laurens' "Bastion Club" series, about a group of noblemen during the Regency period who are prime targets on the ton marriage mart and yet are determined to pick their own wives instead of having young women foisted upon them by interfering mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, etc.  I read the first book in the series, too, and after finishing this one, I've come to a realization: Laurens doesn't have much variation in her characters.  It's a lot of hot, possessive guys and a lot of girls who like to think they're independent but becoming melting messes the second they lay eyes on their love interests.

That said, the book wasn't bad.  Actually, I found it more interesting than the first one in the series, and I got through it a good deal quicker, too, but that was mostly because it had a more interesting plot than the first book.  That's another thing about these books.  They have plots.  I would like to call them subplots, because the main plot should be the romance, but...it's kind of not?  I mean, there's lots of kissing and sex and all of that good stuff (so much, in this book, that I actually kind of got bored of it...apparently there's a delicate balance for these things in my mind) but there's a plot that goes through it all of Anthony, the main male character, trying to catch someone who has committed treason, and Alicia really ends up on his radar because the traitor is trying to use her as a scapegoat.  And meanwhile, Alicia is hiding her own background in the hopes that she'll be able to successfully marry off her younger sister, Adriana.  The "catch the traitor" plot in this one was more interesting than the "catch the creepy guy" plot in the first one, but given the repetitiveness of the characters between the first book and this, I doubt the others in the series will be much different, and I probably won't be reading onward.

3 out of 5 stars, but not a memorable 3, if that makes any sense.

The American Bride - Karla Darcy (Sweet Deception Regency #6)

I have been struggling to find a historical romance author who can compete with Lisa Kleypas and Julia Quinn for my affections.  So far, the search hasn't yielded fruit, and Karia Darcy's The American Bride gets to join the pile of discarded hopes and dreams.  As far as historical romances go, this one was just bland.  The writing was stiff, very tell-y, and the witty banter that usually makes historical romance novels a fun read was pretty much entirely lacking.  The love interest, Julian, was stiff, cold, and uncaring, and honestly I can't see how Cara fell in love with a total asshole like him.  He does soften up--but only after Cara is in love with him, and he returns to being a complete ass to her not too long after.  Also, I'm not sure how Cara and her grandmother decided on such a hare-brained scheme to get Cara acquainted with Julian, anyway.  This probably would have been a more interesting story if Cara had just showed up as Julian's arranged bride and the two had been forced to work things out.

Additionally, there was some...weird stuff going on in this one.  It's repeatedly stated that Julian's father arranged the marriage, and yet his father appears to have been dead for some time, so I can only assume the marriage was arranged from beyond the grave.  And as for the relationship...well, on Cara's end, it doesn't make sense, as mentioned above.  On Julian's end, it's just creepy.  He apparently views Cara as a child with boobs, given the numerous times he refers to her as a child, girl, etc. both in and out of dialogue.  However, he apparently has no qualms about entering a physical relationship with her and perhaps even keeping her as a mistress.  All together, that's just creepy.  Cara's interactions with her charges, Richard and Belin, were amusing, but I'm forced to think that she was a completely awful governess.  I mean, yeah, she helped the kids come out of their shells, but it's not a governess' job to play Indians in the woods or give swimming lessons.  Lessons of the type a governess should have been giving (and ones Cara insisted she was more than qualified to give) were completely lacking.  And with the way she acted, Julian should have booted her off the estate within a matter of days.

Overall, this one just didn't make any sense to me, and with the awkward, stiff writing (filled with an abundance of misplaced commas) it was just dull and finishing it felt more like a chore than a treat.

2 stars out of 5.

The Septembers of Shiraz - Dalia Sofer

The Septembers of Shiraz actually has nothing to do with Septembers in Shiraz, so don't pick it up if you're hoping Shiraz will be a prominent feature.  It's not.  In fact, the book is split pretty much entirely between Tehran in the early 1980s and New York City at the same time.  The title comes from one little passage of reflection at the very end, and while it does have a ring to it and some lovely alliteration, it's not exactly relevant to the plot.  The plot revolves around Isaac Amin, a gem dealer who is arrested for mysterious reasons, and his family as they go through the ordeal of his imprisonment while trying to keep up appearances.  While Isaac struggles with life in prison, never knowing if each night will be his last, his wife and daughter face harassment from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard at their home.  Farnaz, Isaac's wife, tries to keep life moving on, and his daughter Shirin steals files from the house of one of her friends in the hope that the files' subjects will escape her father's fate.  Meanwhile, Isaac's son Parviz attends university in New York City and only has spotty communication with his family, and lives an impoverished life when they are not able to send money, at the same time becoming involved in the lives of the Mendelsons, a family of Hasidic Jews from whom he rents his living space.

It took me a while to get into this book, mainly because not much was happening.  Sofer's writing style just didn't grab me and pull me in, and after Isaac's arrest--which happens almost immediately--there's a lot of day-to-day stuff going on before the next "big thing" come along.  It ended at a sort of strange place, and overall felt rather anti-climatic.  That said, I did get into the book about halfway through and enjoyed it, though it's probably not one that I'll grab for the next time I want to read something about the Middle East.  It was good, but not really remarkable; that's pretty much all there is to it.  It did, however, leave me wanting a Turkish-style tea set, for some strange reason.

3 stars out of 5.