Review: Issued to the Bride: One Navy SEAL

Issued to the Bride: One Navy SEAL by Cora Seton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first in a series, 'One Navy Seal' has a huge info dump at the beginning that sets up all the characters for the next 5 books. It felt a bit like having a guest list thrown at my head and I had a bit of an issue trying to remember who was who at first.

The other main point that might bother some readers more than others, is that you have to be willing to go all in on a very unlikely scenario that would allow the General to pull off his plan. You will have to have a suspension bridge of disbelief to get into this book. The added bit of mysticism really hammers that home. The Love at First sight it not the hardest thing to believe in this book.

That being said, it's a solid, fast read. Brian is a nice guy, and although I would have liked to have seen more of the development of the relationship between him and Cass (the timeline gets a bit irritating) I did find myself cheering for them.

I probably won't go out of my way to read the rest of the series, but if I come across them I might still pick them up.

View all my reviews

Review: Competence

Competence by Gail Carriger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Third in the Custard Protocol series, Competence follows Primrose Tunstell as the crew of the Custard float into the New World with a Templar assassin in their guest bedroom, the ship's captain and engineer making doe eyes at each other, and a question about vampires.

I was excited to have Prim as the main character, I love a highly competent person, and I love cats (read the book, you'll see). Sadly I didn't feel like I got to see Prim shine as much as I had hoped. I understand the need for a character to noodle over fundamental truth about themselves, but I found that having her mother's reaction to said truths as being the big sticking point, to ring a bit hollow. Unless becoming a Hive Queen has drastically changed Ivy, I can't see her reacting as horribly to Prim's realizations as Prim thinks she will.
I would have liked a bit more adventuring, I mean, I haven't seen Victorian Peru much less Victorian South America at all and would have loved to see more of that and a bit less noodling.
I was also excited to see more of Percy, although I found it strange that at the start of the book almost every third thing he said was in Latin, but that he stopped fairly quickly and no one commented on it. Also, being very familiar with a number of non-neurotypical individuals, which I got the feeling Percy is supposed to be, some of the reactions of both he and the other characters had me giving a bit of a side-eye. With the amount of love that Carriger writes LBGTQ characters I found some of the reactions to Percy a bit jarring, I'm hoping that in the next book which is reportedly going to be about him that those reactions will be challenged. His POV and such got much better toward the end of the book, so hope springs eternal.

The humor, as always, was solid. There are some great ruminations on gender and sexuality with the added lenses of history and culture, which were great to read. I only wish there had been a bit more adventuring.

View all my reviews

Review: Sixty Five Hours

Sixty Five Hours by N.R. Walker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Started out promising, the single POV from Lucas Hensley, advertising guru extraordinaire, was good in that we had just as much of an idea as to why his co-worker and son of Lucas's boss, Cameron Fletcher, didn't like him.
However once the two characters were dropped into their forced proximity plot you got a pretty good idea just what it was about Lucas that Cameron didn't like. Thus, most of the tension dissipated. The story is sweet, all the character are quite likable and there are enough sexytimes for even the most ravenous of readers.
The last 30% of the book is essentially just a sweet epilogue. I kept waiting for a 'but wait!' or 'oh no!' moment, but none came which I found slightly irritating. The other thing that bugged the hell out of me was how their big advertising campaign was for a company that dealt with condoms, sex toys, etc. and they even used the safe-sex angle in their advertising pitch, yet safe sex practices during the character's oral adventures were completely ignored. At no point did the character exchange the basic 'hey, I'm clean are you?' talk, which, ok, yes fantasy romance book don't want to lose the sexytimes momentum, but the discussion of safe-sex practices and the importance of them was a plot point in the advertising plot.

The book was a nice, light, amusing read, just a bit too long and with a few points that really threw me out of it.

View all my reviews

Review: Wilde in Love

Wilde in Love by Eloisa James
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first in a new series by James, and it's going to be a very long series if the allusion to how many siblings and family friends Lord Alaric Wilde has is anything to go by.

Lord Alaric returns to England after spending a number of years away traveling and writing about his adventures. He is surprised to find that his books have become incredibly popular and he has become a heartthrob of society. Although this seems to have more to due with a very popular play based on him than with his own writings. Seeing how the ladies of society fawn and obsess over him, James gives us a bit of a tongue-in-cheek look at what she thinks of fan culture.
So, of course the one woman that Lord Wilde wants is the one who hasn't read any of his books and is steadfast in her belief that he's underwhelming. Which, fine, that's a good solid trope which lends itself to some good banter, but as Miss Willa Ffynche has just finished her first season (where she killed it) and has her own fortune thus not needing to marry, I just couldn't get over the thought of 'Willa, you're like 19 and rich, go enjoy yourself a bit.'
There were a few times I found myself side-eyeing how Wilde pushed Willa's limits doing things that she had asked him not to, etc., not so much that I was throwing red flags on the field, but I was reaching for the yellow ones.

The best friends are delightful and I would have rather followed them around for a bit, and I did have to give Wilde points for the skunk. However, the villain is a little eye-rolling and you know that the bog is going to play a big role so you just sit there glaring at it the whole story.

Still pretty amusing and a fast read even though I didn't feeling like the two main characters really grew that much during the book, perhaps we'll see them grow a bit in the follow-ups.

View all my reviews

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.

View all my reviews

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.

View all my reviews

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.


View all my reviews