Slacker

Slacker by Gordon Korman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'm a huge Gordon Korman fan and have been since childhood, uh, some decades ago. Unfortunately, this one is not my favorite. I'm really tired of all the adult characters being clueless and/or uncaring, for one thing. And for another thing, the "main" character (if you can call him that in a book where only a few of the chapters are from his POV), Cameron Boxer, is a video game addict who really doesn't grow or mature very much over the course of the book until he suddenly has something of a change of heart at the very end.

I think that's really why this story didn't resonate with me: virtually no character development. So much more *could* have been done with that. I would love to have learned more about Xavier's background and emotional growth, for example. I enjoyed the scene with the handmade bowl. Both Pavel and Chuck had potential. Melody's motivations begged for elaboration. And what was up with the high school mean-girl-on-steroids who never got her comeuppance or ah-ha moment? Seriously, NO adults figured out what was happening? And NONE of the high schoolers--in a supposed do-gooder group--were willing to resist her nasty schemes or spill the beans? *sigh*

What this book was, was fast-paced and plot-driven. I read it in a single evening after I got my son to bed. The short chapters bounced from character's POV to another's and flew by rapidly, so I think this book will be far more interesting to kids, who typically read for plot anyway and who lack the adult perspective that makes the plot holes and cardboard characters so obvious. There are some mildly humorous situations, mostly the result of people ascribing positive motivations to this self-centered kid who doesn't care about anyone or anything except his video games. I was actually shocked he followed the dripping water in his chapter at the retirement center.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is obviously primary. No sexual content or swearing. The only violence was a middle school girl tackling a senior citizen to save a beaver. Well, and a big chaotic "fight" in a sabotaged swimming pool, but no one got hurt that I can recall--it was mostly a lot of yelling and anger vaguely described.

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The Wishing Bridge

The Wishing Bridge by Viola Shipman
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Henri Wegner grew up a beloved child in Frankenmuth, Michigan, helped her father plan and execute his dream of opening the world's largest Christmas store, and then moved to Detroit to live her own dream of going to business school. She couldn't wait to leave behind small-town life and her childhood sweetheart. Fast forward a few decades, and the company she has worked for since graduating is now run by the son who inherited when his father died, and the son's a 2-dimensional stereotype of a greedy corporate shark. To save her job, she impulsively promises to convince her father to sell his now-famous, beloved store to a soulless company that will destroy it for profit. All she has to do is go home in December for the first time in years and betray her family to save a job she hates and doesn't really need or have strong ties to anymore.

*sighhhhhh* I wanted to like this book. It's a Hallmark Christmas movie in book form. Sadly, it is NOT one of the good Hallmark movies. There is no real conflict in this book, just a couple hundred pages of a grown woman agonizing over the world's most obvious choice.

This story is an identity crisis, and not in the way it intends (see above about the faux dilemma). Henri is introduced as being 52 years old, but the math on that doesn't work out, since based on the timeline of all the flashbacks, she had to be born in 1967, and the main part of the story has to take place now (2023) or thereabouts because of how the author refers to the COVID pandemic's effect on businesses in town. So Henri is actually 56. A 56-year-old woman with the angst and immaturity of a 26-year-old.

And that's, I think, really the problem. I LOVE finding stories centered on middle-aged characters, but this one doesn't feel authentic in the slightest. We are supposed to believe that Henri has lived and worked in the same place for *decades* and yet seems to have zero community? Her assistant is the closest thing she has to a friend in the city. There is no mention of anything that would in any way tie her to her current life--no friends or neighbors or former coworkers she keeps in contact with, no favorite restaurants or theatres, no faith community, no personality of any sort in her fancy, cold, uber-modern condo, and her work life is unbearably toxic. Apparently Henri has had the world's most routine, robotic life for the past 34 years, and we're supposed to believe this is in some way hard to give up to come home to a place she says she loves and feels loved, to take over management of a business she helped get started and still feels nostalgic for?

If Henri *had* been 26, I could buy that she was a workaholic driven by ambition and focused on her career to the exclusion of all else. I could believe that she was facing a quarter-life crisis and grappling with the realization that her life was going in the wrong direction. Actually, I could believe that of a 56-year-old if the circumstances of her life were different--multi-dimensional instead of a negative caricature of "Big City Life." It feels as though Henri was intended to be 26, but the author wanted to include all the nostalgia of life in the 1970s & 80s, which she couldn't do without making Henri a generation older. And it just doesn't work.

I did appreciate the nostalgic bits--I am old enough to have grown up with the excitement of those huge Wish Books at Christmastime that came from Sears and Montgomery Ward. However, I'm also old enough to know that NO ONE in 1975 was excited to get Star Wars figurines for Christmas, as is asserted in the opening of the book, because Star Wars didn't come out until 1977. That was just the first of several anachronisms.

One other thing really bugged me: toward the end, when Henri's boss & rival showed up at her family's store "unexpectedly" (it was telegraphed so hard...), Ms. Shipman describes the two of them sitting on the giant Santa throne in an "unchristian" way. I'm assuming she meant something akin to "lewd" or "x-rated," so the term raised my hackles. And then I snort-laughed at the implication that Christians don't have sex. Sure would be a lot fewer if that were true!

As with all Hallmark Christmas movies, there was supposed to be a romantic theme. Again, it would have worked quite well if the main characters had been 26 instead of 56. Or if they had spent more time getting to know the people they've grown into over the past 35 or so years since Henri broke Shep's heart, and IF the people they have become were actually a good fit. But that was pretty much glossed over, aside from Shep's newfound maturity a la post-divorce therapy. Nothing at all with the realities of single-sided step-parenting (which I can promise you is tricky!). I honestly think the most real character was Shep's ex-wife Hannah, who had done some major self-reflection and personal growth that Henri and her childhood BFF had not. Well, Sophie might have done a bit. All that is to say, the romance aspect of the book, which is usually my favorite part of a Hallmark Christmas movie, was both incidental to the main story and disappointingly paper thin.

For readers' advisors: I'm going with setting doorway as primary, for the descriptions of Frankenmuth and all its snowy businesses. There was no sex or violence, only a little swearing and a fair amount of drinking. Don't suggest this book to anyone who cares about complex, well-developed characters or a compelling plot, but it will probably appeal to readers who don't care about those things and just want to inhabit a Bavarian Christmas fantasy-land for a while. In that, it succeeds!

Nevertheless, I am very grateful to NetGalley and the publisher for the free eBook ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

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Starla Jean: Which came first? The chicken or the friendship?

Starla Jean by Elana K. Arnold
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

My kids thought this book was great; I thought it was meh. A little girl goes to the park with her dad and comes home with a chicken. I totally sympathized with the dad who stupidly said she could keep it if she could catch it, never imagining she'd actually catch it. I also sympathized with the mom who did not want a chicken inside the house, though I would have been a LOT more forceful about keeping it outside and away from my dining room table.

It was OK. Silly enough to make my kids laugh; ridiculous enough to make me roll my eyes. (Putting a diaper on a chicken??)

Oh--one thing I didn't understand was that at the end of the book there were some "chicken facts," including that chickens can do basic addition, with an illustration showing a chicken at a chalkboard adding 1+2=3. What?? How is this a chicken fact? If chickens have somehow been proven to be able to add, then the illustration should explain this, not be wildly impossible. That...just...NO.

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Bloom of the Flower Dragon

Bloom of the Flower Dragon: A Branches Book by Tracey West
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

My kids loved this book; I was bored out of my mind and annoyed to boot. These stories are quite formulaic, which bothers my kids not a whit. I wouldn't mind so much if the formula was better--I'm really not on board with the 8-year-olds-save-the-world-completely-without-grownup-supervision concept.

In this iteration of it, Drake and Worm transport Ana and Kepri to some mountains where there are tiny dragons living in a field of flowers near a village but somehow without the villagers knowing about it. The dragon stone chose a blond boy to be the dragon master for the tiny dragon who first came to Bracken to ask for help. The "twist" this time is that the blond boy is rude to this little dragon because he's not thrilled the dragon is small, and he doesn't want to help because he's determined to go search for his missing father instead. Lovely.

A seer has predicted the imminent arrival of a monster, so the children go off to the field and figure out that Kepri can use sunshine powers to charge up the tiny dragons so they can basically hypnotize & heal the monster, which turns out to be a werewolf-type creature--i.e. a human who ate the wrong berries & morphed into a murderous beast. Most adults will be able to guess this outcome of this story.

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Quiet

Quiet by Tomie dePaola
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I love the concept: how everyone is hurrying, even in nature, and how essential it is to take time to be quiet and still. Unfortunately, Tomie dePaola's style of artwork isn't my cup of tea, and in this case that mattered more than with many of his other books. I didn't find it restful, as it really should be for maximum impact. And my kids, who usually ask me to read books over and over (and over and over...), never requested this one beyond the first time, which tells me it didn't resonate with them either. But other reviewers have had the opposite opinion, so I'm glad they liked it!

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Sacred Rest: Recover your life, renew your energy, restore your sanity

Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity by Saundra Dalton-Smith
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book. I requested my library purchase it so I could read it. But...it is WAY too preachy, repetitive, and lacking in useful content. I enjoyed the brief scientific parts. I enjoyed some of the parts where she talked about her own struggles and those of her patients. However, I needed there to be much more science and much much less evangelism. I'm fully on board with the idea that rest is sacred, necessary, and as God intended. Stop quoting Bible verses at me, though, especially when they are taken out of context and irrelevant. I wanted to read the book to get tips/ideas for how to manage my life so that I feel more rested, present, joyful, and calm. In the end, I realized that reading the book was annoying me so much I was skimming it while rolling my eyes and muttering impolite responses, so when my checkout expired, I didn't bother to renew and finish the last few chapters. She wasn't saying anything new. In fact, the book might not have been too bad had an editor removed all the redundancies, nearly every Bible verse, and every attempt to convert the reader to her particular brand of evangelical Christianity.

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Seven Days of Us

Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Birch family hasn't been close in many years, so spending an entire week together in quarantine over the Christmas holidays is an ordeal. Until they are certain that eldest daughter Olivia hasn't been infected with the deadly Haag virus while treating its victims in Liberia, they are virtually cut off from the outside world, holed up at the family's decrepit country manor house, each one desperately trying to keep his or her secrets hidden.

Other people have described this novel as both warm and funny, and I have to ask...what book were they reading? Despite some unbearably hot weather we had while I was reading, I felt chilled to the bone by the self-centered, dishonest characters and the gloomy, damp setting. Jesse irritated me the least, aside from Hornak's overuse of the word "like" in his speech (he's a grown man in his mid 30s--he wouldn't talk like a teenager). All the other characters were imprisoned in their individual silos of self-absorption. Obviously life isn't all sunshine and flowers, but honestly, it doesn't have to be that miserable--just tell the truth. Get over yourselves and pay attention to someone else for a change. Stop trying to hide cancer, job dissatisfaction, recently discovered children, forbidden relationships and protocol violations, sexual preferences, doubts, and all the other sources of anxiety. These things disconnect people from each other just as surely as they disconnected me from this whole cast of characters.

The story itself could have moved along more quickly, I felt. As soon as Jesse and Emma had their chat at the airport, I could see where that was headed, but it felt like an eternity before we got there. There was one twist at the end that I didn't see coming, but everything else was telegraphed way in advance. This isn't necessarily a deal-breaker for me, but it didn't help matters, especially when combined with the loose ends left dangling. (For example, Jesse and George's first meeting stayed a secret. Really??)

The tone of this novel strongly reminds me of The Art of Baking Blind by Sarah Vaughan--a book I've never been able to finish because I didn't like any of the characters--perhaps because both are British novels told from different points of view by deeply flawed characters? Thankfully for both authors, there are plenty of readers out there who enjoy spending time with people I can't stand.

For readers' advisors: character doorway is primary, setting secondary. Loads of profanity, including some of my least favorite words. Some sexual content, references. No violence.

I received a free advance reading copy (ebook) from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

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Just Say Maybe

Just Say Maybe by Tracy March
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

1 1/2 stars, technically.

Holly Birdsong first encounters Bryce Bennett when he crashes his rented mountain bike after riding too recklessly down a trail. She next encounters him when he walks into her law office seeking a real estate attorney who can help him with purchasing an abandoned lodge that has caused everyone in the small town of Thistle Bend, Colorado, a great deal of heartache, especially Holly's family. Their attraction is instant...and threatened by secrets and emotional baggage from prior relationships.

I so wanted to like this more than I did! I really liked the first book in this series, and Holly was one of my favorite secondary characters in that one, so I was excited to get my hands on the eGalley copy of this one, courtesy of NetGalley (in exchange for my honest review), but...ugh. I couldn't wait for it to end, almost from the first page. That is never a good sign, and if I hadn't been reading an ARC, I'd have quit and moved on to something better. But I felt obligated to keep reading, and I just kept hoping it'd improve. I did enjoy the brief scenes with the Montgomery sisters, so it wasn't all bad.

I know other reviewers have raved over this book, but I read for character (a la Nancy Pearl's Appeal Doorways), and this book had immature, one-dimensional characters, including the protagonists. They came off as shallow and superficial to me, perhaps because Ms. March spent so much time describing how they looked and how hot and sexy they were. One of the many instances where less would have been so much more! I kept thinking, "SHOW them falling in love, don't tell!" Also, I wish all romance authors would stop writing until they have been through all of Alison Armstrong's workshops about understanding men and women. Lust DOES NOT EQUATE NOR NECESSARILY LEAD TO love, people! No amount of flipping your hair or acting like a ninny is going to make a man fall in love with you. Neither is strutting or showing off going to make a woman want to spend her life with you.

There was virtually no character development or real growth. I don't want to include any spoilers, so I'll just say that Holly's lack of faith in Bryce near the end disappointed me--it was childish of her to jump to (illogical) conclusions and not at least listen to what he had to say. That's not how you should treat people you (supposedly) love!

To sum up: this installment of the series felt juvenile, like it was written by maybe a college student, not the same author who wrote Should've Said No. Or perhaps it was just rushed to print without sufficient revisions and editing? *sigh* I think I'll wait until the 3rd book is actually published before reading it so that I can quit if it's as bad as this one. I really hope it turns out to be as good as or better than the first!

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary, setting secondary. There are several sex scenes and lots of sexual references (see above about confusing lust with love). Some swearing. No violence.

p.s. Why is the woman on the cover wearing an apron?  Holly is an attorney, not a baker or chef!

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Natural Born Charmer

Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Dean Robillard is a big-time football star for the fictional Chicago Stars--gorgeous, wealthy, and restlessly unhappy. He decides to drive across the country to the farm he's purchased outside Nashville to check up on his new housekeeper who only communicates with him via email, and along the way he picks up an angry woman in a beaver costume (minus the head). He drives her to confront her weasel of an ex and decides she would make an excellent distraction from his depression during his road trip so capitalizes on her newly broke status to convince her to travel with him.

Blue Bailey is a portrait artist who never stays in one place for long, especially not now that she has discovered her rotten ex doesn't need her help after all: he's found a new (teenage) muse and stolen the $200 she had hidden in her rental room. Her mother recently cleaned out Blue's bank accounts to pay the ransom for a group of girls in Colombia, leaving Blue with a total of $18 to her name, some ratty old clothes, and a car that's given up the ghost. Driving to Garrison, TN, in a fancy car with a handsome man pretending to be gay seems a better option than staying where she is, so she opts to ride. She never expected to grow roots.

I'm giving this one 2 stars because the main romance didn't work for me. I really enjoyed all the secondary characters, especially Nita and Riley. I found April and Jack's relationship plausible, if fraught with emotional scar tissue. However, Dean and Blue's romance...no. It COULD have been believable--the potential was there, and it started off well. Blue fascinated Dean because she didn't fall all over him like all other women. She was zany and unpredictable. She entertained and amused him just by being herself. If Ms. Phillips had kept going with that, had let her characters slowly grow on each other, gradually developing an attraction to one another instead of flipping the lust switch and turning Dean into a controlling jerk and Blue into a spineless ninny, this could have been an outstanding book.

Instead, it lacks internal consistency. Blue and Dean bicker constantly and enjoy doing so. They had difficult childhoods and have built emotional walls around themselves to protect against future heartbreak, so both have a whole lot of maturing to do before they are ready to trust and risk showing vulnerability, yet the arguing gives them a way to safely spend time getting to know each other. So far, so good.

However, Ms. Phillips chose to make Dean determined to have sex with Blue almost from the beginning, despite his open disdain for her appearance, fashion choices, and lifestyle. It was a power and control issue for him, which is decidedly UNsexy and should have been a complete turn-off to Blue, who was fully cognizant that his so-called interest was due to a lack of better options and a need to dominate. Had Ms. Phillips remained consistent with her original characterization of Blue, Blue would have continued to rebuff Dean's advances and called him on his B.S. until he finally grew to actually respect her and show some kindness for a change. Then and only then would the attraction have been plausible and based on a solid foundation.

But that's not what happened. I abandoned hope when I got to the scene where Dean is hurt and angry with his father and bursts into the caravan, waking Blue and demanding--not asking, but demanding--that she have sex with him. He's again a total jerk, she can tell he's upset, but she gives in instead of saying, "You're furious, so your solution is to RAPE ME?!" Had she done that, it would have brought him up short and perhaps triggered his brain to restart. Not how the scene played out, though, and I ended up howling in frustration in my car, wishing I weren't driving and could skip over the too-explicit and ridiculous sex scene that followed ('cause, you know, if she takes her own clothes off when ordered to, & is inexplicably turned on by being used, it doesn't count as rape??). It gets worse from there, although there is a small bit of redemption by the end when Dean FINALLY admits maybe he has some growing up to do. Note to Dean: if someone has lifelong abandonment issues, perhaps you shouldn't abandon her over and over and over again!!

The character development for everyone else is excellent. *sigh* Four stars for them, zero for Dean & Blue, for an average rating of 2 stars.

For readers' advisors: character doorway is primary. There is quite a bit of swearing and some semi-explicit sex scenes. Definitely not suitable for listening to with a toddler in the car. The narrator did an excellent job with the voices--only a couple of times did I get confused as to who was talking. She had totally different voices and accents for all the characters.

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LaCour's Destiny

LaCour's Destiny by Robert Downs
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received a free eGalley copy of the ARC from NetGalley & the publisher in exchange for my honest review. However, after reading 141 of 238 pages, I just am not liking it very much, so I'm giving up. I think the author needed to do more revisions or have an editor take another, closer look at it before this went to print. There are too many, "Wait, what??" moments for me--and not the good kind, but rather the kind where suddenly the author mentions details out of the blue, or a character leaves the room and a few lines later the main character is talking as though the person has magically reappeared. I can't get a handle on the setting (small town? city?) enough to picture the action, and I find much of the sleuthing Samantha does implausible. Mostly, though, I feel like this is a book that hasn't gelled yet. It could be good with a lot more work, but it's not ready for prime-time. I'll probably skip ahead to the end to see who the killer turns out to be, but I have too many other things on my To Read list to use up any more of my rare free time finishing this book. Sorry, Mr. Downs!

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Make Your Home Among Strangers: A Novel

Make Your Home Among Strangers: A Novel by Jennine Capo Crucet
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'm giving up on this one. I find myself making excuse after excuse not to pick this book up to finish it because I just do not like the main character. She lies and makes stupid choices all the time and for no good reason, doing all kinds of unnecessary damage to herself and others. I can't stand spending time with her, and I'm having a hard time seeing how any college would think she were smart enough to be accepted, which makes the foundation of the story completely unbelievable. I was really expecting a book that told the story of a first-generation Latina college student trying to cope with unfamiliar customs and traditions, which I guess this is, but she'd have a much easier time adjusting if she were a nicer, smarter person with even an ounce of common sense. :( I'm basing my review on the first 115 pages of the book, so feel free to take my opinion with a grain of salt if you read the whole thing.

I received an Advance Reader's Copy (ARC) from the publisher via BookBrowse in exchange for my honest review.

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Beyond the Sunrise

Beyond the Sunrise by Mary Balogh
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I should really know better than to read/listen to a romance novel written before the mid-to-late 1990s at the VERY earliest (aside from Jane Austen's novels, of course).  Balogh is one of my favorite historical romance novelists, but this early work of hers is awful.   It's kind of interesting as a historical spy novel set in Portugal & Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, but as a romance it fails miserably.  The heroine does nothing but humiliate, emasculate, and lie to the hero, even when her mission no longer requires secrecy, and yet the reader is supposed to believe he would STILL fall in love with her?!  Um, no, that's not how that works.  Men respond to authenticity, not the contempt Joana demonstrates for all men as she manipulates, flirts with, and controls them like puppets on a string.

The book perpetuates the myth that if you have sex with a man who lusts after you, that means he'll automatically fall in love with you.  Um, no, also not how that works!  A man has to care about and respect a woman in order to fall in love with her.  Lust is just lust.

The story could have wrapped up in half the time if only Joana had told the truth as convincingly as she continued to tell lies; had explained why she wanted the French colonel to follow her; had been honest, genuine, and/or kind; and had enlisted Robert's help instead of deliberately making him think she was a French spy.   There were flashes of excellence in this novel, where you could glimpse the writer Balogh would become, but there were also plot holes and faulty premises enough to have me ranting at my car stereo for hours (see above about the unnecessary length of the book).

I strongly do not recommend this one.  The narrator does her best, but she can't make up for a terrible story.

For readers' advisors: setting doorway is primary.  Story is secondary, I guess.   There is some swearing and a lot of sex.  Seriously, no one could have energy for that much sex while trudging around the hills/mountains of Spain & Portugal in wartime with no shelter, no trust, no safety, & not much food.  No one.

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Four Nights With the Duke

Four Nights With the Duke by Eloisa James
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Negative 500 stars, really.

I give up. I struggled to listen to 19 chapters' worth, but I simply can't take it any more. This book is AWFUL!! The narrator's breathy, sleazy voice exacerbates the Ick Factor so badly that I almost didn't make it past the first chapter. In retrospect, I kind of wish I had given up right away and not wasted my time listening to such a wretched travesty of storytelling.

Mia is secretly a popular author of ridiculous Gothic romance novels, but when she's jilted at the alter a month before the deadline her deceased brother imposed on her to marry in order to remain guardian of her nephew, her money doesn't help. She resorts to blackmailing the son of her father's lover into marrying her right away. Their parents caused scandal with their 20-year relationship and more scandal by dying together in a fire at an inn, and further association with the Carrington family is the last thing Vander wants, so he's pretty livid. Stupidly, he doesn't read the letter she leaves with him explaining the terms, which include dissolving the marriage as soon as Charlie's safety is assured. Instead, he burns that letter but does NOT burn the one she also leaves with him that proves his mentally ill father was also treasonous. (Yep, bafflingly moronic decision.)

I'm still not sure why she felt she had to resort to blackmail instead of just telling him the truth and asking for his help. If he'd understood her predicament and met Charlie at the beginning, not to mention the sociopathic uncle scheming to control Charlie's inheritance, perhaps he wouldn't have been as furious or nasty or a complete and total jerk to her. They could have worked together to thwart her uncle and uncover the truth of what happened to her father, brother, and fiance. THAT would have been a much more interesting story for Ms. James to tell. Not to mention actually romantic as they got to know each other and gradually fell in love.

Instead, Ms. James wrote a story in which an a$$hole lusts after his new wife but treats her like garbage and still expects her to be an enthusiastic bed partner. He's controlling and vicious--his only redeeming quality is that he's nice to Charlie. Mia is supposedly independent and brave, but other than her initial determination to follow through with the blackmail, she's a spineless ninny who completely believes she's ugly and has no worth. All scenes between them were excruciatingly painful to listen to and usually resulted in me rolling my eyes, gagging, howling, grinding my teeth, and/or shouting, "THAT'S NOT HOW THAT WORKS!!!"

Case in point: every time Vander was cruel to Mia and then grabbed her, manhandled her, forced kisses on her, or in any other manner sexually assaulted her, and she went from being devastated/furious/anguished/heartbroken to instantly turned on and responsive. WHAT?!?! It's like Ms. James wished to invalidate the trauma of thousands (millions, really) of rape victims by saying, "Oh, it's OK--I know you SAID you didn't want him to touch you, but once he did, you loved it."

I so wish I could prevent Eloisa James from writing another book until she took every single one of Alison Armstrong's PAX workshops. Every. Single. One. Perhaps repeatedly, until the lessons really sunk in.

So what kept me listening through 19 dreadful chapters? I wanted to know whether Mia's uncle had murdered, bought off, or abducted her fiance on the way to the church, and whether he'd set the fire that killed her father. I can't remember how her brother supposedly died, but it wouldn't surprised me if her uncle had killed him off, too. In fact, if anyone reading this review knows the answers to these questions, I'd be grateful if you'd tell me in the comments section below!

I did like the character of Vander's drunken uncle, Sir Cuthbert (Chuffy? hard to tell with an audiobook), and I liked little Charlie. Also, I was amused at the references to Julia "Quiblet" (a.k.a. Julia Quinn, one of my favorite historical romance authors) and Lisa "Klampas" (a.k.a. Lisa Kleypas, another historical romance author).

Unless you wish to alarm your fellow drivers by shouting and gesticulating angrily at invisible people, I'd say skip this audiobook entirely. (If you do wish to freak people out during rush hour, then by all means, download this book.)

For readers' advisors: setting doorway (i.e. England, circa 1800). Swearing and sexual content. Abusive relationship.

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Crystal Cove

Crystal Cove by Lisa Kleypas
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Justine Hoffman was raised by a mother who never wanted to settle down and stay in one place, never allowed her daughter to put down roots. Consequently, Justine craves stability, and as the co-owner of a bed-and-breakfast in Friday Harbor, Washington, she strives to make her guests feel at home. The one thing she despairs of ever finding, though, is love. Justine and her mother are hereditary witches, and it turns out that when she was a child, her mother placed a geas on her, cursed her to never find love so that she would never experience the pain of loss. Justine decides to break the curse, no matter the consequences.

Jason Black is a very wealthy video game designer and reclusive mogul. When his assistant books rooms for Jason and his team at Justine's B&B, he has ulterior motives. Jason knows he has no soul, and he believes Justine's grimoire holds the key to saving him, whether she wants to loan it to him or not. He just didn't plan on falling for her first.

This book could have been so good. It's the fourth installment in a lovely series of magical realism romances, although I accidentally read it third. Unfortunately, Kleypas jumped on the 50 Shades of Grey bandwagon, opted for explicit sex scenes with bondage, and lost interest in making the characters or main relationship likeable.

The concept of Jason having no soul was muddled: supposedly all that meant was that when he died, that was just...it. No afterlife. Which really made him desperate enough to do genealogical research on hereditary witches and enlist his assistant's family's help to do the impossible, regardless of the cost to himself or anyone else? So if he was in all other ways "normal," why did he have to be such a ruthless, controlling jerk? Why are his eyes described as "fathomless...shrewd and opaque as blackstrap molasses--could have belonged to Lucifer himself"?

The fact that Jason was manipulative instead of kind completely undermined the story's central relationship. There was just no foundation for any kind of believable romance--nothing in common, no real friendship or companionship, nothing whatsoever to form a scaffolding for building a life together.

The tipping point for me, however, was when the hemp ropes came out and Justine allowed Jason to turn her into a human pretzel during a graphic sex scene. How can I put this...um, NO. A thousand times NO! There isn't anything wrong with choosing to be passive. Being tied up, restrained, unable to move, on the other hand, I find neither sexy nor erotic. All I could think was, "OW!! Use your safe word! USE YOUR SAFE WORD!!" But she never does, and then she wakes up to find him vanished, having stolen her most valuable possession. Yep. What's even better is that she only stays furious for a few days and then melts for more explicit sex when she catches up to him. Because, see, he "loves" her. Yes, indeedy--this relationship is solid!

Ugh. The more I think about this book, the more the bad parts eclipse the good parts. So I'm going to stop concentrating on this one and move on to writing my next review. (Of book 3 in this series, which I adored!)

For readers' advisors: story doorway. Do not suggest it to anyone who didn't love 50 Shades of Grey or similar titles.

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Death and the Girl Next Door

Death and the Girl Next Door by Darynda Jones
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Lorelei has had flashes of visions all her life. Some come true; others make no sense. None of that has ever bothered her two best friends, Brooklyn and Glitch. However, when the school's loner, Cameron, starts stalking Lorelei, and a new boy comes to town who has all the girls drooling, their lives are going to get much more complicated, for one of Lorelei's visions is about the new boy being tortured and another is about herself covered in blood and puking by the side of a road. All is not as it seems, and the trio suddenly find themselves part of an otherworldly battle.

I had really high hopes for this new series because I LOVE Darynda Jones' First Grave on the Right/Charley Davidson series. Unfortunately, I got the feeling that this book was rushed to print way before it was ready. The pacing felt off, there were about two dozen too many variations on the word "smirk" used, and the characters never quite gelled for me.

The heat and intensity of Charley & Reyes' relationship did not translate well to a story about teenagers--even supernatural ones. All the descriptions of Jared as "supernova hot" had me rolling my eyes and/or gagging. Not that I didn't believe Jones intended for him to be gorgeous, just that it was too full of teen angst & hormones. There wasn't enough maturity in the characters to believe anyone had fallen in anything but lust.

Similarly, the pacing seemed...wrong. It took forever for anything to happen or be explained (or discovered/uncovered). It took a bizarrely long time for anyone to figure out why Cameron hated Jared, and then even when Cameron is F I N A L L Y confronted with the truth...nothing changes. The feud continues. That was ultra-annoying. And what was up with the poltergeist scene? Shouldn't there have been some sort of follow-up scene with the two girls? The whole book ended up coming off like a really really long, scattered prologue for the rest of the series. I may still read book two to see if it improves, but it's moved WAY down my priority list. *sigh*

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary. Character is probably supposed to be secondary, if only I could get past my annoyance with them. There is no actual sex, just a couple of kisses and a lot of supposedly steamy descriptions of Jared's hotness. It would probably make a decent book to read with a group because there could be so much to discuss, given its flaws.

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Dark Angel/Lord Carew's Bride

Dark Angel/Lord Carew's Bride by Mary Balogh
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This book would have scored a much higher rating in my mind had it not been for the sex--or rather, rape--scenes toward the end of each novella, particularly the first. I do not care if "exercising marital rights" is historically accurate; doing so while your new bride is sobbing and thinks you publicly humiliated her in order to trap her into marrying you will DESTROY YOUR MARRIAGE. It will not "save" it!! Even the character himself admits it feels like rape. Yes, that's because it IS rape! You do not have her consent. She hates you, and even if you are super gentle with her and make her body respond a little bit, that will just make her hate you even more!!

I really like Mary Balogh as an author, but these early novellas of hers should have been rewritten first or never seen the light of day ever again.

Dark Angel was a 4-star novella until the rape scene, and then it dropped to -10 stars.
Lord Carew's Bride was also a 4-star novella until the bordering-on-rape scene, and then it dropped to 2 stars.

The two novellas have intersecting characters, particularly the heroines who are cousins. Both start out imagining themselves in love with the same man, who turns out to be a total slimeball. I will not bother to summarize the plots. Goodreads and the back of the book do that well enough. I just want to be done with this book and move on. I'm so disappointed! They were so good at first....

For readers' advisors: story and character doorways, but skip this one in favor of her other works.

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The Ugly Duchess

The Ugly Duchess by Eloisa James
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

The Duke of Ashbrook informs his son, James, that James must woo and marry the duke's ward, Theo, or they will lose everything. The duke has already embezzled a sizable amount of Theo's dowry, and if her mother finds out, she will have him arrested. James is livid but is forced to agree to the plan, on the condition that upon their wedding day, his father signs the entire estate over to him to prevent any more financial disasters. James and Theo have been raised as siblings and are best friends, so when he begins to court her, both are shocked to discover their feelings are deeper than either knew. Two days after the wedding, however, Theo learns the truth and banishes both James and the duke from the house. She never hears from her husband again until the day of the formal ceremony in the House of Lords to declare him dead.

I was going to give this one five stars...until the last third of the book after James returns and is a total jerk. 1 star for that section. He's known all along that he betrayed his best friend and will have to work really hard to rebuild her trust in him and convince her he actually does love her, not her dowry, yet when he finally bothers to come home, all he does is humiliate her and run roughshod over her life, stripping away her freedom and autonomy. I HATED him for that. For not listening to her. For not ever really apologizing or demonstrating that he understood the vastness of her pain. James swaggered in and treated Theo like a possession, not a person, and never ever truly LOOKED at her to see the person she had become or what she had accomplished during those long years alone. Even while he was working to overcome her revulsion at all things sexual, all he did was lie to her and trick her. (And really, under the circumstances, she re-learned to enjoy sex WAY too quickly.)

This book made me so very very angry. I have enjoyed Ms. James' books in the past, but this one.... James (the author as well as the character!) needs to attend some of Alison Armstrong's workshops, especially the one called "Understanding Women"! Particularly the part about The Rage Monster and the proper (and only effective) method of apologizing to a woman.

Oh, and it's loosely a re-telling of the Ugly Duckling fairy tale.

For readers' advisors: story, character, setting doorways. Steamy sex scenes.

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Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life

Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life by Rachel Renée Russell
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Meh. Not my thing. Silly middle school girl with a scholarship to attend a new private school tries to turn herself into a "cool" kid to make friends but ends up making friends with fellow library-book-shelving volunteers instead. It was refreshing that the cute boy she had a crush on was nice to her and didn't much like the stereotypical spoiled rich girl who was her arch-nemesis. I appreciated that the many manga-style cartoon drawings helped speed the story along so it was a pretty quick read. I'm sure tween girls love this series, but there was too much middle school angst for my taste, although Nikki's dramatics were obviously tongue-in-cheek, meant to highlight the ridiculousness of her "woes."

For readers' advisors: character doorway primary, story secondary.

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Pirate Santa

Pirate Santa by Clay Clement / Mark Summers
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Well...the illustrations are nice.... The story, though, is puzzling at best. Santa doesn't, of course, deliver toys to misbehaving children, such as Ninja Boy and Pirate Girl (whose crime is being on a pirate ship??), so his cousin Pirate Cap'n Slappy gets really angry and decides to pick up shipwrecked toys from a mermaid and deliver them with the aid of magical dust stolen from Santa and sprinkled on talking sharks who want to be part of the crew. Which turns out to be Santa's plan all along.

Huh?

I just don't even know what to say about this strange story. It tries to have a moral to the story (i.e. all children deserve toys), but the message is so mixed and bizarre that I got to the end thinking, "What the heck?" Doesn't help matters that the text is intended to be read aloud in a rhythmic sing-song, but the meter isn't consistent, so the flow trips and stutters all over the place. A good editor should have caught those errors and insisted on revisions.

I am thankful to NetGalley and the author/publisher for allowing me to view the eGalley copy.

Oh, and one interesting thing is that the authors are apparently the originators of Talk Like a Pirate Day, which I think is awesome!

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The Shape of Desire

The Shape of Desire by Sharon Shinn
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I've been struggling with how to rate this one. Sharon Shinn is one of my favorite fantasy writers. And yet...meh. This one didn't do it for me. Too much angst. I kept forgetting the main character was supposed to be in her thirties. She behaved much of the time like she was 19--come to think of it, she reminded me of Bella from Twilight. I didn't exactly dislike her; I just wished she'd grow a spine and not waste so much of her time moping over her boyfriend. And there didn't seem to be a solid foundation for a 15-year-long relationship, which is unusual for a Sharon Shinn novel.

I thought the premise of the story had potential: the difficulties of being in love with a shapeshifter who was increasingly not in human form. How do you balance your life to hide his secret? But why did Maria feel compelled to make up SO many lies? She lied to practically everyone about practically everything, and for no really good reason. I never understood why she couldn't just tell people she had a boyfriend named Dante who traveled a lot? Why did she try to hide his existence? When she did need to lie to protect him, why didn't she stick to as much of the truth as she could? That would have made her life--and everyone else's--so much better and less complicated. Instead, she lied constantly, even to Dante eventually. It's not a recipe for healthy, successful relationships, and it's utterly unnecessary. I can understand being apprehensive about broaching a difficult topic with your partner, but if after 15 years together you can't trust him enough to be sure he didn't murder people in parks, then maybe you should not be sleeping with him like a rabid, horny teenager!

I had such a hard time getting through this. It did eventually get a little exciting toward the end. If it hadn't been written by Shinn, I'd have given up and quit reading it after the first couple of chapters, though.

*sigh* OK, Ms. Shinn, enough with the contemporary paranormal stuff. Please go back to writing another Twelve Houses novel or something!

For readers' advisors: tons of swearing and sex. I'm struggling with appeal doorways because the book wasn't very appealing to me, but technically I'd say the doorways are character and story.

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