Undercover Bromance

Undercover Bromance by Lyssa Kay Adams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Liv Papandreas is a brilliant pastry chef with a horrible boss. Braden Mack is a wealthy nightclub owner who wants to settle down with his current girlfriend so he can experience the kind of relationship he has helped his friends achieve. When Mack decides to splurge on a fancy dinner and $1000 cupcake at the restaurant where Liv works, the evening ends in disaster, with Mack's girlfriend dumping him, and Liv witnessing a young server being forced into performing sexual acts by their boss. Liv's defense of the girl costs Liv her job.

Realizing her former boss clearly has a history of harassing and coercing women, Liv goes on the offensive, trying to discover his previous victims, regardless of their fear, shame, and reluctance to come forward and accuse this powerful celebrity chef of his crimes. She demands Mack make up for costing her her job by offering a job to the server in an attempt to protect her. The girl initially refuses the help, but Liv is determined to put a stop to the abuse. Eventually the entire Bromance Book Club (plus a few others) cooks up a plan to break in to Royce's office and steal his computer files containing information on the women he's harassed and paid off so they have hard evidence with which to confront him.

All this plotting and planning means Liv and Mack are spending large amounts of time together, and despite Liv's initial disdain for Mack, she discovers there is more to him than she imagined. Mack, in turn, comes to realize he's going to have to face the trauma of his childhood if he wants to create something real with Liv, who has her own emotional baggage to deal with.

Book #2 in the series reveals more about how the Bromance Book Group got started and why Braden Mack, a bachelor, is a member. Spoiler alert: he started it! Getting to know more of Braden's backstory was one of my favorite aspects of the book. Also, the best thing about a hating-to-dating romance is the lack of insta-love. I generally prefer a slow burn story.

For readers' advisors: character and story doorways via for prominence. Profanity is pervasive, there are some steamy sex scenes, and a rooster gets pretty violent when men come to the farm where Liv resides. Trigger warning for anyone sensitive to issues of domestic violence and sexual harassment.

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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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Mistress of the Art of Death

Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In 1171, Simon Menahem of Naples, Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar, and Adelia's servant Mansur are summoned from their homes in sunny Salerno to the chilly clime of Cambridge, England, to uncover the monster who has brutally murdered four small children, all of whose deaths have been blamed on the town's Jewish population. King Henry II is displeased to have lost so much revenue since the Jews have been sequestered in the sheriff's castle for protection for the past year, and he has asked his cousin to send experts. Simon is the King of Sicily's chief investigator, and Adelia is Salerno's top "doctor of death" (the medieval equivalent of a forensic pathologist). The two friends must fight prejudice and suspicion to solve the crimes before the killer takes any more lives, including their own.

Why is it often so much more difficult to review a really good book? I've been working on this review on and off for nearly a week, and all I can think of is, "It's really good. If you like historical mysteries with well-written characters, you'll love this book. Don't let the odd Greek-chorus-like opening and closing put you off. Those parts don't last very long, thankfully." I don't know what else to say that doesn't give anything away.

For readers' advisors: character, story, and setting doorways. Lots of historically based swearing. Not a cozy mystery because of the suspense and the horrific damage done to the children. Some nudity and one mild (and improbable, given the injuries sustained just prior) sex scene.

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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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