Alive and Breathing

Had a lovely weekend this weekend. Nothing amazing happened, no great achievements were met. But it was a nice time nonetheless.

I read the Daisy Dexter Dobbs Greek trilogy and it was fun. If you're not a fan of insta-love then these aren't the books for you but if you enjoy light hearted and funny then these are good.

I'm reading The Collector by La Nora (Nora Roberts, that is) right now and wow, I love this woman's stand alone titles. Great writing, natural flow. She's what I want to be in my next life.

I did some writing and I'm working on a series of three books that I want to have done by my birthday. Book one is 2/3 finished and I was writing on book two because I'm making it different than my usual fare: more erotic and intense. It's great fun to write although the erotic part is hard.

I dyed my hair Saturday. I messed up because I wanted purple but got violet. I should have realized it wasn't purple but my mind has been stalled. I'm sure in the sunshine I look like a raspberry. I wanted to look like a grape popsicle (I know Carol, you want pictures...)

Anyway, that's about it in my life. What's going on with the rest of you?

Exercising Her Options by Daisy Dexter Dobbs

I had a huge fear of reading this because I love Daisy (DDD) on Facebook and her blog is a miracle of awesomeness. What if her book just isn't as funny? What if she's *gasp* just okay?

At the beginning of the book, I was super worried because the book seemed a little slow going with two best friends talking about how happy they were while obviously both were miserable.

The best friends, Polly and Helen, have their world crash in n them when Polly discovers her fiancée and Helen's husband cheating in London. Helen disconnects from her husband immediately but Polly decides to lose 30 pounds, tone up at a gym and be someone her philandering fiancée would never cheat on.

Of course Hunky McHunkHunk, becomes her personal trainer. He's big, Greek and is always hiding his McHunk junk when Polly is around... he wants to pound Polly with his McHunk junk.

LOL

Anyway, the book is pleasant and then around midway it picks up speed and the DDD I've come to stalk and love really comes out to play. Polly has a sense of humor and as she and her Greek God (Nick) become more comfortable together (well, as comfortable as one can be while wearing a corset and getting jiggy with it), the book explodes in humor.

I don't want to get all spoiler-ific but omg, I haven't laughed this much reading a book since back when Vicki Lewis Thompson used to write for the Harlequin Love & Laughter line. And when Inga comes out to play (sorry, can't explain), I was howling. Literally. Howling with laughter.

The best thing, the best best very best thing, was that revenge was served with a side of chocolate and it was bee-you-ti-ful.

I love me a strong woman, a hunk and a weasel getting his back in spades.

Really a good read.

The Will (or Where There's a KA Book, There's a Way)

So KA's newest, The Will ... um, yeah. It's an interesting book.


It's really long.


It's set in Maine.


It has an uptight, white heroine whose ass is housing not one stick but an entire forest and a hero who owns a gym and a titty bar. But it's okay because all the women in the titty bar are gorgeous, intelligent, rich and not demeaned in any way.


Interesting side note: at one point in the story when the ultra-famous, black, hip-hop artist shows up with his posse and they all go to the said titty bar, later there's a throwaway line that everyone got laid that night. The hot brothers and the unhot ones too because they were paying the girls well. So basically KA made all these gorgeous women prostitutes also but in a completely throw-away sense. Like paying topless dancers to sleep with you doesn't make them hookers. Say what?


But we're in KA's world where all the men who have muscles whether in Colorado, LA, Maine or Buttfuck, USA sound exactly the same. No regional accents, no deviation in dropping g's or anything. They can all say 'babe' and mean 'Fourscore and seven years ago...'


Okay, so like here's the real deal with the book. I hated the heroine.


KA likes to write heroines who are gorgeous, every man wants them and usually they're self-deprecating and funny. This one, Josie, is so beautiful that no man who meets her can help himself but make a play, she has one night stands with ultra-famous, black, hip-hop artists who then pine for her because who wouldn't want a gorgeous woman with a forest up her ass and a dictionary down her throat and a heart that's encased in glass.


Oh yeah, Josie isn't just growing trees in her bum, she speaks like a Jane Austen heroine who's growing trees up her bum.

"But now I'm in a lovely frock, you look very handsome in your suit, you're very gallant which is most charming, and we're at a fabulous restaurant where I'm certain we'll partake of an excellent meal."

Yeah, that's a direct quote.


And men want her. Why?


KA tells a good story and she gets the whole idea of why we read romance because her stories are full of romance. You watch her characters get to know each other, you see their day to day interactions and by the time they declare their love, you believe in it too.


I just didn't believe that anyone could love the heroine because I found her the most absurd character I've ever read. The book just didn't work for me.

What I've Been Reading

I’ve been on a small binge recently that can best be described as eclectic.

 

I started with Jill Shalvis and her Wilder Brother books:  Instant Attraction, Instant Gratification, Instant Temptation and Instant Chocolate for Lori. Enjoyable books with lots of sexual tension but not too much in your face sex so it was a nice change.

 

I like J.S.’s writing style. She’s fun and easy to read, there are modern references throughout her stories about Facebook, Twitter, Words With Friends…  And she took one of my least favorite tropes which is the girl in love with the hero forever and didn’t make me want to scream or tear my eyebrows off.

 

Kudos to you, Ms. Shalvis!

 

After that I read Painted Faces by L.H. Cosway. Now that was an interesting book. The hero is a drag performer who happens to be quite straight but also quite effeminate. The idea was brilliant and Ms. Cosway pulled off the theme of the book brilliantly.

 

The problem with the book was that there were many instances where the narrator addressed the reader directly (breaking the 4^th wall) and it was clumsy and every time took me out of the story and pissed me off. But I’d recommend the book highly, it’s a delicate subject that’s handled astutely.

 

Currently I’m reading Miss Buncle’s Book by D.H. Stevenson. What a delight!

 

It’s completely charming, based in a small town where Miss Buncle is running out of money and writes a book about her town (loosely changing the identities of the characters) and she sets the town abuzz and on its collective ear.

 

It’s one of those charming, all British tales that makes you want to read it while sitting in a comfy chair by a fire. Loving it!

 

And after I finish, I believe there’s a new KA book awaiting. Oh, life is brilliant!

Eep!!

“It’s unsporting to be seducing me when I’m preoccupied with trying not to get us killed,” she said.

“Am I seducing you?” he said. “I hadn’t realized I’d got to that part yet. How amazingly clever I am.”

— Vixen in Velvet

It's coming in June and I can hardly wait. I love Loretta Chase and I'm not discriminating enough to find ANY of her books, bad, indifferent, unreadable or meh.


Have an excerpt ...  Vixen in Velvet  ... and enjoy.  ♥ ♥

Rita Finalists

Here's a list of the Rita finalists with the Golden Heart thrown in for good measure. You may have seen this elsewhere, but that's okay; it a list of books to hunt down and try.  :-)




Rita

Thea Harrison is Cool and Chrome Lets Me Post Pics.

I was on a bit of a Thea Harrison glom, rereading her novellas and my very favorite novel, Oracles' Moon. So many well written passages, both emotional and humorous, jumped out at me with this read that I decided to share them here.

Oracle's Moon has THE very best love scene I've ever read. Khalil is a Djinn and he can take an almost human form or his natural Power form. He knows very little about humans and even less about human children. But he's a fast learner.  ;-)

"She was suspended a few inches off the floor, completely supported in midair. Her feet didn't dangle. He knee wasn't strained in the slightest. Khalil watched her expression with a heavy-lidded gaze, his lips curved in that sinful, sensual smile.

As his hands - both  his hands - slid under the hem of her top and spread around the sides of her cage, resting against her skin.

And long, hot fingers slid through her short hair, cupping and massaging the back of her head.

And two hands slid down her thighs, to the sensitive skin at the back of her knees, cupping them firmly.

She stared at him, blank with shock. "Khalil."

His smile widened, a tender, mischievous look. "Relax, I've got you," he murmured. Then his smile was burned to vapor by the incandescence inside of him, and all that was left on his elegant face was savage hunger. 

Oh God, I want to reread it again, because that's not the end of their lovemaking by any means. I want me a Djinn of my own.

As for the children - Chloe is four years old; Khalil is thousands of years old. And ...

Chloe and Kalil assessed each other like two gunfighters in a Western movie. Grace could almost see the dirt street they stood on, with the white steeple of a church in the background. The classic theme music from the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly whistled in her head. She could have sworn a tumbleweed blew by. There was going to be a shootout at the O.K. Corral, and it wasn't going to be pretty.

LOL! Way to write a metaphor!

Another amusing passage, right on the first page of chapter one:

The babysitter Janice's pointed words kept bouncing around in Grace's head like a loose football on a field. That football was ten yards away from the end zone, and it had two teams of two-hundred-pound-plus NFL football players scrambling after it with the intensity of their multimillion-dollar careers being on the line, and if that football could, you know it would be whining, "Oh geez this is gonna hurt."

That caught my attention because I'm a football fan. (ROLL TIDE!!)

                                                                 *****

Another metaphor, this one in Hunter's Season, a novella.

He said nothing as he stood and watched. The moment spun on an enchanted spindle until it drew out, long and golden like a thread of dyed flax pulling taut between them. She would not look up. She could not. She did not feel in control of herself, and she was terrified at what might show in her eyes.

And Natural Evil:

She was not afraid of death. Death was a thief that always wore a mask. Accident, disease, stillbirths, old age, natural causes, war, murder. It existed in the shivering silence between tolls of a bell. It stole everything away while it left its mark, a dark knowledge that lingered at the back of smiling eyes, a hesitation between thought and action in times of danger, a heaviness that tunneled wormholes into happy memories.

She and death had danced together for a long time. Sometimes the were partners. Sometimes they were opponents. Sometimes she might cheat him, but hell, that old thief was still bound to win some day.

She pulled the trigger.

True Colors:

He put bullets in clips to load his guns, and read files on unsolved crimes and treatises on war. aHe taught recruits how to wait, how to obey orders, and how to kill, and he played chess because it was a battle wits that kept his mind sharp.

He put his forehead to her breast. His hands fisted in her nightgown.

He needed to come home but he didn't know how. He hadn't even known where home was until he looked in her face for the first time. He needed to be welcomed, but he wasn't sure he deserved it.
~
~
"He whispered, "I want to be a good man."

Devil's Gate:

And now all she could do was wonder, what else could he say in that silent, sensual language of his?

What poems could his fingers whisper as they danced across her skin?

What eloquent prose could he share with his body?

I wish I'd written any and all of these passages. They all touched me, each in its own way; made me sit up and take notice. Some brought tears to my eyes. All of them enhanced the storylines, which I see I neglected to include, but that's why they made Amazon, right?

Try Thea Harrison's Elder Races. It really is worth it.