Rocky Mountain Miracle

Rocky Mountain Miracle by Christine Feehan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Someone has been spreading rumors that, to get his hands on millions of dollars in inheritance money, Cole Steele killed his father and intends to kill Jase, his fourteen year old brother. Itinerant veterinarian Maia catches Cole's attention when he hears her defend him to the locals, and he starts hanging out in the bar watching her play drums several nights a week. Cole is doing his best to convince her to sleep with him when he gets a call from Jase, frantic because his favorite horse has been severely injured. Cole insists Maia go with him to the ranch. As they drive through the increasing snowstorm, animals swoop down from the darkness and run into their path, frantic to warn Maia of danger ahead--men and blood and violence.

However, between the snowstorms, the injured horse, and a wounded mountain lion, Maia isn't leaving the ranch any time soon. Thank goodness for Jase's presence because Cole gets sexier as his secrets come to light and barriers soften and collapse. When she learns Christmas is a traumatic time of year in the Steele household, Maia is determined to do what she can to banish the hateful ghost that permeates the house. But it isn't a ghost causing the dangerous accidents, and Cole soon realizes that whoever killed his father is still out there.

Seriously, I got it the first time--he's a sexy bad boy inexplicably obsessed with the traveling vet, and even though she knows better, she's attracted to him, too. Despite the obnoxiously repetitious beginning, I eventually enjoyed this story of abused brothers learning to trust each other and heal with the help of a vet who can communicate with animals. I kind of wanted the mountain lion to have a bigger role in the story, though.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary. There is a fair amount of swearing; some pretty explicit sex scenes; and a ridiculous number of descriptions of the main characters' potent attractiveness destroying all good intentions of self control, liquid fire of desire, careful defenses not working, branding kisses, yada yada yada.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I really wish all romance authors would take Alison Armstrong's Queen's Code workshops (see www.understandmen.com) before they wrote any more novels. Lust does NOT equal love, and too much sexual chemistry is a bad thing, not the fire that keeps a relationship going as so many people seem to believe. Which is not to say that attraction isn't critically important, just that both parties need to feel comfortable enough to be their true selves in order for a relationship (of any kind, really) to grow and strengthen over time. Desperately twisting oneself into a pretzel in an effort to be what one thinks the other wants never works in the long run, and neither does invading someone's personal space with blatant sexuality. Ms. Feehan does eventually get her characters to the point of showing their true selves to each other, but I almost didn't read far enough to find that out because the beginning of this novella was so full of raging lust and hormones.

I received a free eGalley copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.  Apparently this novella was published a decade or so ago as part of a couple of story collections and is now being repackaged on its own in ebook format.

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The Mouse-Proof Kitchen

The Mouse-Proof Kitchen by Saira Shah
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received this as an Advance Reader's Copy (ARC) from Bookbrowse.com, and when I started reading it, I questioned my sanity in requesting it in the first place. Not because it's a terrible book--it's not. Rather, because a woman in her late 30s, six months pregnant for the first time with a much-anticipated daughter should probably not read a story about a woman in her late 30s who just gave birth for the first time to Freya, an unexpectedly severely handicapped baby girl. Anna's despair, frustration, and need to control something--anything--in her out-of-control life rang out so strongly, I had a hard time disengaging my own emotions from hers.

Anna's husband shirks responsibility and provides virtually no support--emotionally, financially, or practically. I kept wondering why she stayed with him. She supposedly loved him very much, but I really didn't see why. He ignores her for most of the book and spends most of his time shutting out the world while he works on composing movie music and flirting with Lizzy, the flibbertigibbet teenager they pay to help take care of Freya...which she never actually does.

Anna becomes increasingly short-tempered and shrewish as the book progresses and her exhaustion (mental and physical) mounts, which is certainly a realistic reaction to her situation. I didn't always like Anna, but I also could empathize with how she was feeling, and I certainly don't claim I'd react any better were I in her shoes. How does one cope with the collapse of one's dreams of parenthood? How do you face a lifetime caring for a child whose brain never fully developed and who has constant seizures, a lack of muscle control, and will only ever be, in essence, a gigantic infant, no matter how long she lives, never capable of caring for her own most basic needs, if she even survives at all?

For readers' advisors: character doorway is primary, setting (they move from England to a village in France) is secondary. To me the tone of the book was...heavy and frequently depressing. The secondary characters are quite well-developed, and the mystery of their neighbor's mother's death during WWII was intriguing. I think this would make an excellent choice for an adult book discussion group.

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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 Inn at Rose Harbor

The Inn at Rose Harbor by Debbie Macomber
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It took me several tries to get into this book. Not because it wasn't interesting, but because it hit a little too close to home and revived memories of deep, dark fears.

The book opens with the story of Jo Marie, a recent widow who lost her husband after only a few months of marriage. She was in her late thirties when she met her soulmate, Paul, and they fell in love immediately. Despite his deployment to Germany two months later, they managed to sustain their relationship, and he proposed when he flew home at Christmastime on leave. They married in January, and right afterward his unit was sent to Afghanistan, where he died in a helicopter crash in April.

This is pretty much my nightmare scenario. This is what had me jumping every time the phone rang for the first year of my relationship with my (now) husband while he was deployed to Kabul. I was petrified I would lose the love of my life after having finally found him. I imagine this is the nightmare scenario experienced by all military spouses, girlfriends, and boyfriends: having your future together ripped away in one moment of violence. Then again, given recent headlines in the local newspapers, perhaps this is a fear we all share, military or not.

At any rate, by the time I finally managed to get past the first chapter and into the rest of the book, my egalley copy from NetGalley expired. ARGH! So I had to put the physical book on hold at my library and wait until it was my turn.

The Inn at Rose Harbor is actually the story of three people whose lives intersect one weekend: Jo Marie, newly minted innkeeper of the B&B she bought with the life insurance money, and her first two guests, Joshua Weaver and Abby Kincaid. Josh has returned to Cedar Cove to deal with his dying stepfather who hates him, and Abby must face the guilt she has carried for the fifteen years since her best friend died in a car accident. All three need and receive healing over the course of the long weekend.

For readers' advisors: It was hard to decide how to categorize this novel. It's not a straightforward romance, although there is some romance involved. It doesn't quite fit into "magical realism" either, although the angels/ghosts make it lean into the paranormal. I think it will appeal to people who enjoy Debbie Macomber's Cedar Cove series, and fans will recognize some secondary characters. It's a contemporary "clean read," with no sex or bad language--a very sweet novel. Character doorway is primary, and setting (Cedar Cove on Puget Sound in Washington) is secondary.

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Melonhead and the Vegalicious Disaster

Melonhead and the Vegalicious Disaster by Katy Kelly
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The best-laid plans oft go awry, and so do the impromptu ones. No one knows this better than Adam Melon and his best friend Sam. When Adam's mom invites the new girl in school, Pip, over for dinner, disaster is waiting around the corner. Or in this case, inside the duct-work. Adam's mom has resolved to provide healthier meals this year, and thanks to a new Vegalicious cookbook promising recipes kids will love, she is on a creative roll. The kids are awed by the work that has gone into her masterpieces...and horrified at the prospect of eating the bizarre concoctions. Their efforts to spare her feelings have unforeseen consequences when combined with the heat and humidity of September in Washington, D.C., though, and Adam and Sam learn some valuable lessons about honesty (and mold).

I started off thinking this book was silly and cute; I never expected to be laughing out loud by the end. Adam's antics put a grin on my face primarily because he was so earnest and full of "boy logic." Katy Kelly must have (or have had) boys in her household. She does a great job capturing the thought processes of ten-year-old males--or at least it seems so to me, seeing as how I have never actually been a boy myself but do have one in my home every other weekend.

I also appreciated that this story was so positive: all characters meant well and respected each other. This held true across all generations, genders, ethnicities, religions, and physical abilities. I loved the subplot wherein Pip worked to get the teacher to treat her the same as she did all the other students instead of focusing on Pip's wheelchair and cutting her too much slack.

My one quibble was that I can't imagine any parents allowing two ten-year-old boys to visit the Washington Monument and the Air and Space Museum by themselves. Maybe if they were in their mid to late teens, but definitely not fifth graders. It's just a bad idea on so many levels!

For readers' advisors: story and character doorways. Girls will probably like reading this story, but it's targeted toward upper grade elementary school boys. Plus there are a few jokes in there aimed at adults, which makes it a good choice to read with your kids.

My thanks to the folks at NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read the pre-publication egalley!

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Kissing Shakespeare

Kissing Shakespeare by Pamela Mingle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm really having a difficult time deciding how to rate this one. One and a half stars for the beginning of the book, three stars for the last half, for an average of two and a half stars overall? The premise was intriguing: a young William Shakespeare is being recruited to the (forbidden) Jesuit priesthood and away from his destiny as the great playwright, so a time-traveler enlists the aid of a modern teenager from a theatrical family to seduce Will and restore history. The author seems to have done a good job researching that era, both the history of Shakespeare & Catholicism as well as the habits of daily life, but the set-up of the story is rushed and full of holes.

The book begins with Miranda upset at her terrible performance as Katharine in her high school's production of The Taming of the Shrew. A cast member she barely knows kidnaps her, taking her first to the roof and then to Elizabethan England. Stephen tells her she is to pretend to be his sister while they stay at his uncle's house, and her mission is to seduce Shakespeare so he will decide not to be a priest after all. She thinks he's crazy and is insulted that he believes she's sexually experienced. But Catholicism has been outlawed in England, and after Miranda--now called Olivia--witnesses a priest being burned at the stake, she stops resisting the plan and becomes an active participant, intent on saving Will's life.

I am glad I kept reading. I almost quit after the fourth or fifth time "smirk" appeared in the text. (Oh, how I wish YA authors were forbidden from using that word!) Mercifully, she invested in a thesaurus about a third of the way into the novel, although that did not stop the incessant eye rolling--both mine and the characters'. However, I was reading an ebook galley copy from NetGalley, so perhaps Ms. Mingle's editors were able to take another run at the manuscript before it went to print.

Word choice aside, I struggled to get past the implausibility of Stephen choosing Miranda for this task. Why choose an American? Why not choose a British girl? How is it possible that her accent, vocabulary, and patterns of speech didn't give her away moments after their arrival at Hoghton Tower? Miranda is supposedly chosen for her acting ability and knowledge of Shakespeare's plays, yet she continues to speak like an American teenager, not like an actress immersing herself in a life-or-death role. It just felt...off. Fiction requires a willing suspension of disbelief, but this needed too big of a leap.

Still, I enjoyed the fast pace by the end. The spying and sneaking around held my attention, and I wanted to know how the story would unfold.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary, character and setting are secondary. No actual sex occurs, but it's a near thing.

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Cooking from the Farmers' Market

Williams-Sonoma Cooking from the Farmers Market by Jodi Liano
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The photos in this new cookbook are luscious--food porn, to be honest. Gorgeous and mouth-watering enough to make me wish I liked cooking. Tempting enough to have me thinking about actually attempting a few of the simpler recipes.

Make no mistake, this is not a cookbook intended for the culinary novice. I had hopes it might be, especially when it opened with photos of fresh food and charts of fruit and vegetable seasons. It even ends with a fabulous index (by ingredient!) and recipes for some oft-repeated basics like pastry dough and cooked white rice. And every fruit or vegetable begins with a lesson on what to look for, how to store it, and a brief history of the item. Love that!

However, as simple as some of the recipes are, others call for things like "oyster sauce." (Is that a real thing, and do I even want to know?) Not every recipe has been photographed, nor have any key steps. There are cheeses I've never heard of, and instructions I don't fully understand. Blanching, for example. Despite the instructions at the end of the book on how to do that, I'm still not clear on what that word means outside the context of human emotions and facial expressions.

Rather, this is a book one has for inspiration. For planning a fancy dinner party menu to delight one's guests. Or to give to a true foodie--someone whose passion involves shopping for and cooking lovely, healthy food. Don't get me wrong: I adore this book and am thrilled to have received an eBook version through NetGalley. I have immensely enjoyed reading it and even learned a few things along the way. I plan to try out a handful of the recipes on Sundays when I can both go to my local farmers' market and have the free time to work on preparing the dishes. But this beautiful book is better suited to a chef. Maybe not a professional chef who should have already learned these things in culinary school, but an amateur hobbyist chef who enjoys entertaining family and friends.

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Diary of a Parent Trainer

Diary of a Parent Trainer by Jennifer Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Katie Sutton is a thirteen-year-old expert in parent management, so she is writing the ultimate user guide to grown-ups. She knows all the "Modes" and how to switch a grown-up from a less-desirable mode to another, more favorable one. Katie has two best friends, an older sister, a younger brother, a widowed mom, loads of other relatives, and a crush on a cute boy. Life is pretty good until her mom does the unthinkable: finds a boyfriend. Suddenly, all Katie thinks she knows about managing the behavior of her grown-ups gets called into question by the invasion of this stranger into their lives.

For some reason, this book reminded me of Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, although I read that so long ago, I'm not sure how they are similar, other than being about British teenagers with crushes. In any case, I enjoyed reading the mock-diary-style tale of changing household dynamics told from a teen's point of view. Coincidentally, I was concurrently reading A Career Girl's Guide to Becoming a Stepmom and found these two sides of the family coin tracked well together. I think it would be a good choice for tweens, especially those who have experienced divorce or the death of a parent.

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

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Shift

Shift by Kim Curran
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Have you ever wished you could go back and make a different decision? Turn left instead of right? Answer the phone instead of letting it go to voicemail? Sixteen-year-old Scott Tyler can--he's a Shifter, with the power to change his reality by deciding to change decisions he's already made. Sometimes that saves his life. Sometimes it kills his sister. And then there are the decisions that lead to meeting a girl named Aubrey...and being hunted by a brain-eating psychopath.

I read an advance copy of Shift, courtesy of NetGalley, and I loved it! A very fast-paced read from a new British young adult author (so new, she's not even on Fantastic Fiction yet). The story is set in modern-day London, but with a few tweaks: some children are born with the ability to "shift," to change their minds and thus their realities. These children are recruited to join a special school that trains them to control their abilities, and the teenage "graduates" go on to work for a variety of departments, including mapping likely outcomes of Shifts and "fixing" timelines gone wrong. At the onset of adulthood, entropy sets in, and Shifters lose their abilities. At least, that's what everyone believes until Scott and Aubrey stumble over some evidence that reality is not what it seems.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary, setting secondary. There are a few swear words and some violence, but not much.  The ending could have benefited from a slightly longer explanation of what happened to Scott.

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Zero Gravity Outcasts

Zero Gravity Outcasts by Kay Keppler

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Five years ago, Minka Shokat was falsely accused of treason and kicked out of Central Command, so she's not their biggest fan. But she still needs their money, so she and her partners, Anjali and Tex, occasionally transport Central Command cargo in their modified junkheap of a Wayfarer Class spaceship. When Minka discovers that this time their cargo is accompanied by the gorgeous ex-boyfriend who didn't support or defend her, she is furious. When she finds out their "cargo" is the very general who brought the charges against her in the first place, she is livid. However angry she is, though, she first has to survive the journey, and that is no easy task when hostile ships are attacking from all directions.

While reading this novel (novella?), all I could think about was Firefly. The characters were different, of course, and the universe wasn't as fleshed out, but there were many similarities: futuristic setting of humans colonizing other planets, centralized galactic governmental agency bad guys, struggling independent spaceship crew, innovative defenses based on designs by the brilliant crew members, etc. Minka's little pine tree for some reason always made the phrase "Earth that was" run through my head.

It was an entertaining and quick read. Not very deep or complex, just fun. I think it would have benefited from being a little longer--more time to develop the story instead of rushing through the exposition via the gossipy Tex, and no need to skip entirely over the delivery of the rest of their cargo or gloss over the battles to get to the happy ending.

For readers' advisors: story doorway primary, setting secondary. No sex, but there is some swearing.



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Rules of the Game

Rules of the Game by Sandy James
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Maddie Sawyer is a successful romance novelist who decides to scope out the clientele of a few biker bars in search of a suitably masculine "bad boy" to hire as her date to her 15-year high school reunion. In one of the most improbably lucky encounters, she meets The Perfect Man, Scott Brady. He's gorgeous, calm, patient, intelligent, sexy, and only seems to have one flaw: he's a slob. Then again, Maddie is no neatnik, so she can hardly complain. Problem is, he doesn't want her money. He wants her to pretend to be his girlfriend so his family will stop fixing him up on blind dates. Her orderly plan flies out the window, though, when he changes the rules of the game on her and decides he wants to date her for real. But both have secrets, and Maddie's past is about to erupt into the present. She will need all the calm support Scott can muster to help her cope with her out-of-control life.

I never expected to be in tears at the end of a romance novel. I mean, really? Tears?! For a romance novel?! Yet, that's exactly what trickled slowly down my cheeks last night as I finished reading in the wee hours of the morning (despite end-of-week exhaustion and aching eyes). James' story grabbed me from the get-go and didn't let up until the last page. I felt like the characters were real people I might actually know, including the angry teenager. And while I heartily disapprove of Maddie's stupidly dangerous plan to hire a stranger to accompany her from New York to Indiana--ladies, do not try this at home!--it was such a good story, that more than made up for the implausibility. I will definitely be checking out more of Sandy James' books.

For readers' advisors: some spicy sex scenes and a few scattered swear words. Character and story doorways vying for primary status.

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The Perfect Imposter

The Perfect Imposter by Wendy Soliman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Struggling modiste Katrina Sinclair lets herself be talked into switching places with her childhood friend, Julia Dupont, the Marchioness of Lanarkshire, at Lady Marshall's house party in the country. Katrina needs the money Julia's patronage could bring, and she is indebted to Julia's father for saving her from charges of murdering her husband, so she gives in to the emotional blackmail and takes Julia's place for the week. Meanwhile, Leo Kincade, Julia's former fiance, has been tasked with tracking a jewel thief rumored to be planning to steal a tiara from one of Lady Marshall's guests and sell it to aid Napoleon. Leo knows immediately that Julia is not quite herself, and things get even trickier for Katrina when Julia's husband arrives unexpectedly, as does Katrina's vengeful brother-in-law.

This book has so much potential! I really wanted to like it, and I did at first. However, I was reading a galley copy badly in need of one more round of editing. The occasional typos were distracting (i.e. "produce" instead of "product," etc.), but more distracting was the overuse of particular words. Note to Ms. Soliman: if you are going to use a distinctive word like "somnolent," for example, do not use it more than once or twice and definitely not within a few pages of each other.

The use of the word "rumbled" was even more troublesome for me. In context it meant "to expose as a fraud," and yet every single time I read it, my brain substituted the word "tumbled," and I had to back up and re-read the section to clarify that Soliman was not talking about any form of sexual encounter. I'm sure it was exciting to use what I assume to be a historically accurate slang term, but I was yanked out of the story each and every time, which is irritating. Use it once and clearly, and then pull out your thesaurus and get creative from there on out, please!

As for the story itself, the premise was interesting: who was stealing jewels and why was Julia so desperate to sneak away without her husband's knowledge? The trouble I had with it was:
1) The plot holes were huge. (Really?! No one is going to notice a society lady has been replaced by her dressmaker?! Not even her HUSBAND, friends, or former lover?!)
2) The characters' behavior and motivations felt inconsistent. It's one thing to have multi-dimensional characters, it's another to make them lurch from one personality trait to another.
3) The end was confusing (Did I miss something? Why were all these minor characters suddenly appearing, apparently in on the sting? How does it make sense that Julia and her father showed up at the last minute?).
4) One of the Big Secrets was quite obvious to me from the very earliest pages of the book, and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to have figured it out then or not.

For readers' advisors: (historical) setting and story would be my best guess at appeal factors for this one. But I would suggest Mary Balogh, Mary Jo Putney, Julia Quinn, or Eloisa James instead.

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