Review: The Duchess Deal

The Duchess Deal by Tessa Dare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Duchess Deal is sort-of a spin on the classic Beauty and the Beast tale, once handsome guy is now physically less handsome with accompanying ego and self-esteem issues, needs a wife. Hardworking, clever girl is in need of something, in this case the fee owed to her for work she did on the wedding dress of the Duke's bride-to-be who has jilted him.
Witty banter ensues.
I text my friend three pages in 'dude, you need to read this book, they just described a dress as looking like a unicorn vomited on it.'
She agreed that she must read this book.

One of the great things about this book is that the Duke isn't really in need of redemption, he's a good guy, just a cranky jackass dealt a hard hand who needs someone to challenge him and point out that a monster is what you make of yourself if you let other people tell you who you are. That being said, Emma is so out of his league, she's awesome and DOESN'T HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THIS SHIT. She finds nice, interesting friends, a clever way of keeping up with her dressmaking skills, and isn't even put-off by the fact that all of her employees are way too invested in her love life.

I read this book in 2 days and did the classic past-one's-bedtime-but-must-finish-this maneuver. There are sexytimes, the first few are highly amusing, then I started to find them a bit boring as the witty banter was more interesting, but they were easy to skim.

Sweet book, great banter, I want to hang out and have tea with Emma's friends.

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Review: Heart of the Steal

Heart of the Steal by Avon Gale
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I adore Roan Parrish's first book in the 'In the Middle' series, it is so full of angst and cinnamon bun goodness, so I was hoping for more of that in this book. Failing that, perhaps some kind of cat and mouse heist courtship between the main characters, but no.

The start of the book sets-up a good framework for the courtship-through-heist via art theft, but sadly doesn't really follow through on that line. The theft acts as more of a example of how differently the two characters view the world.
And maybe that's the part that just didn't click with me, they do have to do a lot of work to figure out how to fit together, but I never got the dire feeling that it wasn't going to work out in the end. Heart of the Steal just doesn't have the same heart-ripping depth as Parrish's In The Middle. Now that's not to say that it wasn't a fun read, it was a fast, cute story with quite a bit of sexytimes thrown in with a goodly dash of pining, but I don't think I will be finding myself thinking about the characters any further than wondering if Amory cleans the cat's litter box or pays someone to do that.

I'm giving it three starts as it was an enjoyable read, but in the same way that watching House Hunters International is, you know at the end they are going to end up some place nice that you'll never be able to afford but it was still nice to see that rich people have bad taste in bathrooms too.

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Review: Murder on the Last Frontier

Murder on the Last Frontier by Cathy Pegau
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Set in a small frontier town in Alaska after the first Word War, Murder on the Last Frontier has a lot of really interesting aspects to it, but it just didn't make it over as few nit-picky things to land itself into 'really good' for me.

The writing was just a touch clunky for me, a lot of repetition of things, and a bit too much telling instead of showing from the main character Charlotte. At the start of the book there is quite a bit of her alluding to a traumatic incident in her past that as a reader you figure out pretty quickly. However, it takes forever for Charlotte to clearly say what it was which also happens at the same time as a rather graphic autopsy. The description of the autopsy caught me off guard, a cozy mystery this book isn't.

Charlotte's detective powers lag a bit behind the reader's which can be either a good or bad thing depending on how you prefer your mysteries to play out. she is an interesting character, and the town is an interesting setting, Pegau has a good start at building both up for future books in this one. But if you are looking for romance there is only a fleeting wink to it for the future.

Good first book, interesting setting and character, I might pick up the next book to see if Pegau is able to work out some of the weaknesses as well as flesh out the town.

SPOILERS BELOW***

I did like how Pegau wrote and treated the sex workers (the ones who survived), although I found the murder of one to be a overdone plot. Having that as the main mystery made it fairly easy to solve from the reader's perspective even with the waving of red herrings.


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