Review: Where We Left Off

Where We Left Off by Roan Parrish
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not nearly as good as the first in the series, but still serviceable.

I don't know, I couldn't shake the feeling that Leo and Will never really got on the same footing. I sort of wish that Leo had spent more time away from Will.

I loved Leo's use of physics and yoga, go you nerd with your science speak! However...sigh...Will...we kept coming back to how hard his life is because he is SO DARN PRETTY. The subplot about his sister sort of felt tacked on at the end to show some kind of character depth.

I just wanted to take Leo aside and be like, dude I know, you're 20 and having all kinds of pants feelings for this guy and HE IS SO DARN PRETTY, but there are a lot of people out there that will value you much more than this guy and not be such a self-serving punk about it. Listen to Daniel, he had an awesome character arch in his book, in fact, let's all just go back to that book and pretend that you went off to MIT instead of NYC and are doing adorable things with particle physics or something.

I'm still rating this book as a 3 because I like Parrish's writing and up until the end I had hopes for some other kind of comeuppance for Will.

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Review: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Volume 3: Squirrel, You Really Got Me Now

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Volume 3: Squirrel, You Really Got Me Now by Ryan North
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As with all other volumes of Squirrel Girl this one was just as enjoyable and dealt with the ever popular trop of time travel quite well to say the least.

I was glad that they included both Howard the Duck cross-over issues at the end, although I still find Howard super creepy I was glad to find out how the story ended.

I do wish that there had been more Mew, but then I always wish that for everything ever. Worst part of the new Thor movie-total lack of Mew.

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Review: A Queer Trade

A Queer Trade by K.J. Charles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A very nice little novella.

I really like that Charles writes stories about people that we as historical romance readers don't usually get to see but who were the backbone of cities like London. The added dark humor is just an wonderful plumb dough topping on it.

This story takes place in the same universe as the Magpie books, but shows a whole other facet of the way magic can be used in the universe. I suggest reading the first in the Magpie series to have a better understanding on the world before reading this one.

The romance is adorable if a little on the 'love at first awkward flirting' side of things. However, with how short the story is that can be forgiven.

All in all I am looking forward to reading more in the Rag and Bone series.

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Review: Third Daughter

Third Daughter by Susan Kaye Quinn
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This story was sort of all over the place.

First off, although it bills itself as a romance...eh I would say that that part of the story line was tenuous at best. It sort of felt a bit tagged on just to give easy reasons for some of the character's actions. The author could have easily just said that Aniri was 17 and not really into the idea of getting married, instead wanting to travel and track down her father's killers and that reasoning would have worked just as well as a motivator.

I also had to keep reminding myself that Aniri was 17 and thus prone to making bad choices, although I found it hard to believe that she had never bothered to learn anything about the politics of her court or the surrounding lands at any point. You would have thought that someone who seemed so interested in traveling would have bother to sit down one afternoon and read a bit about the places she was interested in.

And perhaps that's the biggest weak spot in the book, everything seems to have been cobbled together with a basic idea without much in the way of addressing some of the deeper issues of world and character building. At no point was I clear on if the story was happening on earth in some sort of steampunk version of India or if it was happening on another planet. I mean, great we aren't in Victorian England for once, but where the heck are we? I found myself constantly second guessing the world building and technology due to uncertain geography and thus never quite getting into the flow of the story.

That said, some of the settings and tech was interesting, the story perfectly serviceable, although Anrir got pretty irritating and some of the other side characters had me rising my eyebrows. There was a lot of repetition in the last bit of the book like the author realized that she needed to finish the book and wasn't quite sure how to get there in a timely manner.

Overall, if there had been a bit clearer idea just where the world was it would have improved the story as a whole.

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Review: The Unknown Ajax

The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I love Heyer, usually, however...you know when you go to a party and there a lot of interesting people there but you end up talking to the group who you thought were going to be witty due to them being really smart but then about fifteen minutes in you realize that each on their own would probably be fun to be with but the whole of them together are pretty boring? That's what this book is like.
There needed to be about 20% edited out to bring it up to the quick-witted romp that one usually enjoys in a Heyer Regency.

One has a pretty good idea about what is going to happen quite quickly in the story, but it drags getting to the point and sadly the good highly amusing bit doesn't really happen until the last four chapters.

Much like the characters in the book, it does feel like being stuck in a country house without much to do and it keeps raining. This is a perfectly good book to read if one is stuck inside at a country house while it is raining and you can't bear to listen to the other members of the party once again discuss the fashions of the ton. Otherwise, go read The Grand Sophy instead.

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Review: Shacking Up

Shacking Up by Helena Hunting
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Fast amusing read, really liked Bane's pets, it was nice to see a positive representation of a spider.
Story starts off with a sort of comedy of errors type of thing, and I enjoyed that Ruby and Bane built their relationship through a long-distance type set-up.

However...ugh, maybe I am over thinking this book but there are a few things that really bugged me about it. First being that Ruby was coming from such a background of privilege, that even if her acting thing didn't work out she would still have a job working for her father. Although she says that she has a strained relationship with him I just wasn't really feeling the peril of her having to go work for him. That coupled with the dismissive and somewhat obnoxious manner in which she spoke about working as a burlesque dancer much less the shaming of sex workers just really rubbed me the wrong way.
Add to that with how she keeps referring to her BFF's worrying changes in behavior due to her fiance yet never asking her BFF about it really had me side-eyeing Ruby. I assume as there wasn't any sort of resolution to her BFF's story line and the massive number of info drops about other side characters that those side characters will end up having their own books, but, eh.

Speaking of info drops, the first few chapters were like info bowling balls dropped on the reader.

All in all, a perfectly serviceable book, just didn't hit me the right way I guess.

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Review: The Ghost Bride

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The setting and mythology of this book are wonderful, the pacing, is not.
With the main character Li Lan bridging not only the world of the living and the dead, but the traditional Chinese and the more western cultures as well, the story has a somewhat dream-like feeling. However, it drags and I found myself more than once bothered by how long it took Li Lan to come to some sort of conclusion or action. Sadly the really interesting bits don't happen until the last 80% of the story and then there isn't much of a pay-off at the very end.

Read it for the setting description, read it for the mythology and cultural background, but don't read it for Li Lan. she's a nice girl, but...eh, not really someone that you will find interesting enough to want to hang out with the length of this novel.

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Review: The Ruin of a Rake

The Ruin of a Rake by Cat Sebastian
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The third in Sebastian's unnamed series, The Ruin of a Rake is quintessential romance.

Not as deep as her Soldier’s Scoundrel, or as squee-filled as The Lawrence Browne Affair, Rake sits right in the middle. A solid romance with likeable characters, cameos from characters from the first two books (although you can read Rake as a standalone, I think you get more out of it if you read the first two before cracking this one open), but perhaps not quite the level of pining and drama of the other two.

Lord Courtenay is a world-weary hedonist, although the more we read about him the more it is less believable that he spent the last ten years just chasing his own pleasure, but rather using the mask of a disreputable gentleman to pursue his quest for love and acceptance. Julian Medlock on the other hand, has gone the opposite direction, becoming all that is proper in his quest for acceptance. This set-up gives us a wonderful snark-to-lovers situation that ends with bother characters realizing that they really aren't who they think they are, much less who others think they are.

Sebastian's turn of phrase and dialogue is just as sparkling as in her other two books, but I could have gone for a bit more longing there at the end. But I did read this book in one day so there's that.
I can't wait for Sebastian's next book and cringe to think how long I might have to wait for it to show up.

Also, there are kittens. Everyone loves kittens!


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Review: The Magpie Lord

The Magpie Lord by K.J. Charles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was somewhat wary about reading this as I have read some of Charles' most recent books and loved them and was a bit worried about how strong her earlier works might be (Prachett I'm looking at you).

Fear Not!
The Magpie Lord is right up there with her more current works, and dare I say, much more amusing.

In creating a believable magical system that the characters then explain without the reader getting bored of would be an accomplishment in and of itself. However, taking the already overdone setting of a magical Victorian England and making the idea feel new and different really takes the cake, and not a hard-yet-soggy fruitcake either, a proper cake.

I adored Crane and Day, and spent most of the books wishing that Crane would just throw Day over his shoulder and the two of them run off to China together to live in snarky magical love together. However, the mystery as to who or what was trying to kill Crane was much too interesting to wish for the character's total abandonment of the plot to hard.

The only thing missing to make the story really luridly Gothic was a painting hidden under a vale in the attic and some deranged monks. It was wonderful.

I am fully on board for further Magpie books, although not in the first-class cabins as I've heard what people get up to in them.

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Review: Rock Addiction

Rock Addiction by Nalini Singh
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Ah...what to say.

So I had started this book ages ago and gave up about 3 chapters in. I picked it back up to finish it as a personal challenge as I kept hearing how many people like Singh's writing.
I can only guess that they haven't read this book.

It starts out well enough, lots of strong female characters who are supportive of each other. Some sort of past horribleness that puts the main character Molly Webster so on her guard that she has never had sex before, however when confronted by the interest of her celebrity crush's desire to bed her she goes home with him for a one night stand.

That should have been all the tip-off that I needed to never return to this book.

What follows is an uneven tale that switches back and forth from Molly to her Rock star crush Fox, both unloading their formative year's trauma's to each other in such a way that any little conflict that might have made the story interesting was quickly swept away by one soppy conversation after another bracketed by sex.

oh god, soooo much sex.
Sex that you will find yourself skipping pages of because you just don't care.

Add in the fact that Fox is borderline creepy possessive and demands that if they are going to be together then Molly has to come live with him, leaving behind all her support network literally on the other side of the world and I'm left thinking 'you in danger girl.'

The one big conflict that could have been interesting at the end of the book is easily fixed in a manner of speaking withing about ten pages, and you really don't care.

I'm going to give the rest of this series a hard pass and go back to rugby romances for any of my New Zealand romance reads.

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Review: Provoked

Provoked by Joanna Chambers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Provoked had some very interesting characteristics that I found set it apart from some of the other romances set in the same period.
First of all for once we aren't in London, although there really wasn't very much said about Edinburgh, it was nice to be somewhere else for a change. Secondly, David Lauriston isn't of the Ton and isn't of the lower-class, he's basically just on the cusp of lower-middle-class thanks to his dedicated scholarship and has a very good chance of bettering his place even more.
The drawback of this is that we end up having to read a bit too much about how he misses working on his father's farm. These jaunts into semi-depressed nostalgia gets a bit wearing at times but goes into David's character as being a bit heavy on the self-flagellant side of things.
Which leads me to my next point, true to the time period and David's very clear ideas of what is right and wrong, he has some major issues about his love for men. His thoughts about this can be a bit on the depressing side of things to read to say the least.

Counter that mind-set with Lord Murdo Balfour aggressive anything goes and pleasure before theological debate view, and neither character comes-off at their best.

I found myself highly irritated with Balfour's dismissive and insulting attitude towards David's beliefs, not just those in the bedroom, but about human kind at large. There were more than a few times that I muttered 'you can do better than HIM David,' throughout the book.
Without giving too much away, the main issue I had with David's self-denial was that it seemed to weaken him to Balfour's desires too easily and to an extent that I was a little worried about David's consent.

This is the first in a series and ends on a sort of sweet-sour note. I am interested in reading the next one mostly due to wanting to see David ending up in a happy place. Balfour can take a flying leap for all I care.

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