Romancing the Inventor

Romancing the Inventor by Gail Carriger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This one is for everyone who loved the character of Genevieve Lefoux in the Parasol Protectorate (or Vieve in the Finishing School series) and wanted to see her find love.

A character-driven novella wherein Imogene Hale takes a job as a parlourmaid for Countess Nadasdy's vampire hive in an effort to help feed her mother and siblings whilst simultaneously avoiding matrimony. Imogene never imagined she'd meet the love of her life: the eccentric inventor busily creating things in the hive's potting shed. The course of true love never did run smooth, though, and this love must navigate hurdles both external and internal--from a vindictive footman and vicious vampires to Genevieve's disastrous relationship history.

For readers' advisors: character doorway is primary, setting secondary. Plenty of sexual tension, but only a couple of not-explicit lesbian sex scenes. Some physical abuse from the footman and vampire queen. Alexia and the Woolsey pack make several delightful appearances, and the wicker chicken has a cameo. A couple of mild historical swear words. It's best to have read at least the Parasol Protectorate series first to understand the nuances of the setting and characters.

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The Dirt on Ninth Grave

The Dirt on Ninth Grave by Darynda Jones
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Charley Davidson has retrograde amnesia in the 9th installment of this fun, fast-paced series. She's working as a waitress in a diner in Sleepy Hollow, NY, using the name Janey Doerr ('cause Jane Doe is so cliche). Her inability to remember her name or anything about her past causes occasional panic attacks, but she does have some new friends to cheer her up and a stalker cop to shoo away, so there's that. Also, there's the fact that she sees dead people, an angel seems to be trying to kill her, and the mundane wintry world co-exists with one of fiery hot winds and desolation which no one else seems able to see. Good thing she's got coffee! Lots and lots of coffee. She'll need it if she's ever going to figure out what is up with her new BFF Cookie calling her "Charley" in moments of stress, the drop-dead gorgeous Reyes who never sits in her section and isn't really human, and the white-eyed old dead woman Janey sees in all photos of her coworker Erin's baby.

I absolutely flew through reading this book--found every excuse to sneak a few minutes to read, even staying up wayyyy too late one night. Even though Janey/Charley doesn't recognize all her friends and family from the previous eight books, readers of the series will enjoy watching her meet and fall in love with them all over again. Especially Reyes--I particularly enjoyed her confusion over her obsession with this man who seemed to hate her and yet was always there, watching out for her. I appreciated the astonishment and resentment Reyes felt toward this woman whom he'd loved for "a thousand and one" years--how could she have forgotten HIM? Likewise, Janey/Charley's heartbreak when she learns that Reyes still loves the wife who left him, and the torment of being unable to walk away like she believes she should do.

This may be my favorite book of the whole series. So far. Can't wait for the next one!!

For readers' advisors: story and character doorways are very strong, as is language doorway (humor). This book had me laughing out loud on more than one occasion. There is some sexual content, but far less than earlier books. There isn't really much violence in this one, as compared with all the supernatural fight scenes of previous installments. What there is isn't terribly graphic. There is a fair amount of profanity, as usual, but it fits the characters.

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Eighth Grave After Dark

Eighth Grave After Dark by Darynda Jones
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The eighth book in the series picks up about eight months after Book #7 left off. Charley & Reyes have long since moved to sacred ground to avoid being shredded by twelve demon hellhounds, Cookie and Uncle Bob are about to get married, and Beep will be born very soon. It's a fast-paced whirlwind of a book, full of both humor and suspense, as well as some swearing and sexual content. Great fun, with enough twists and turns to have readers flipping back a few pages to make sure they got it all.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary. Some swearing and sexual content. Often popular with fans of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series.

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Sixth Grave on the Edge

Sixth Grave on the Edge by Darynda Jones
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Book #6 picks up only a few days after Book #5 ends. Charley's life hasn't become any less chaotic or complicated. Since Reyes proposed, Charley has been stalling and trying to uncover more information about his background, namely his human family. As a favor to FBI Agent Carson, she's looking into a long-unsolved kidnapping where the missing child just happens to be the one and only Reyes Farrow--a fact Agent Carson does not know. However, it's not as straightforward as Charley thinks: there is more than one kidnapping in this particular story, which mucks everything up.

While she's trying to figure out what to do, gunmen break in and threaten to harm her nearest and dearest if she doesn't track down a witness to a murder who is being kept in protective custody. Again, there is more to this story, and not everyone will escape unscathed.

She also gets a visit from a panicked man who lost his soul to a demon in a card game and needs her to get it back for him so he can someday go to heaven to be with his 3-year-old daughter who just died. Over Reyes' objections, she goes to meet the demon and makes her own bargain with him. A demon with an ulterior motive? What a shock!

Then there is the ghost who so terrifies her teenage friend Quentin, that she traps him on a tram car until Charley can come to his rescue and help the girl cross over. The child's abusive life and horrible death prompt Charley to make it her mission to discover what really happened and ensure supernatural justice takes place.

In the midst of all this, Angel's mom tracks Charley down, demanding a truthful explanation for the money Charley has been depositing into her bank account every month. Angel is furious when (some of) the truth comes out, and it leads to more revelations of what really happened when he died.

Add to that Charley's "ingenious" plan to make Uncle Bob jealous enough to ask Cookie out...by setting her up on several consecutive blind dates. As with all of Charley's plans, it goes awry. It's a busy week in Albuquerque.

There is actually so much going on in this installment of the series, that it felt very much like a middle book--a way station enroute to a larger climactic moment in a later book. Lots of loose ends that don't get tied up, especially with Charley's dad's mysterious behaviour. It feels to me like it ended mid-scene, in fact. I was a little startled when the credits music started playing, as I had been expecting another chapter to follow.

While I still enjoy the author's style, I did find myself a little frustrated that there really wasn't any character development for Charley. Despite all her catastrophes and near-death misadventures, she just never seems to grow up at all. I appreciate that much of her attitude and banter is a defense mechanism, yet I really wished she would learn to think things through a little more, to heed other people's warnings and not barrel head-down into danger all the time, forcing others to come to her rescue. She's got a big heart, but I'm growing a little weary of her foolish recklessness.

I wonder how much of my dissatisfaction has to do with the fact that I listened to the book instead of reading it? The narrator, Lorelei King, did an excellent job, I thought, of giving each character a distinct voice and personality. I'm not sure why Cookie's voice was so deep as to sound masculine, but otherwise I thought Ms. King did an excellent job of bringing to life the words on the page. However, when read out loud, I really noticed the repetition of certain elements, like Charley asking, "What can go wrong?" or all the ways to talk about Reyes being hot--in all senses of that word. I found myself much more impatient than with earlier books. I think I'll go back to print rather than audio with Book #7.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary. There is a great deal of swearing and sexual content. I've seen this book characterized as "urban fantasy," which makes a certain amount of sense--it's too chaotic and lacking a central mystery to call it a "mystery." I listed it as "suspense," but it's also not terribly suspenseful, although "humorous romantic paranormal suspense" is more or less how I'd describe it.

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True Love

True Love by Jude Deveraux
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Alix Madsen spent only one summer on Nantucket when she was a small child, so when Adelaide Kingsley dies and leaves Alix her home on the island for one year, Alix is puzzled and reluctant to go...until her boyfriend dumps her. After that, a year away seems much more enticing. What she doesn't know is that the year has strings attached: she is supposed to uncover what happened when Valentina Montgomery vanished two hundred and two years ago.

For his part, Jared Montgomery Kingsley really does not want Alix living in his home for the next year. She's a newly graduated architecture student, and he is a famous architect who has no desire to put up with the fawning adoration of an acolyte. He owes her parents for essentially saving him and putting him on the path to where he is now, yet he hates that he has to keep their secrets and not tell Alix that each of her parents has spent a great deal of time on Nantucket these past twenty years or so. However, his grand plan to avoid her falls through when she and her best friend Izzy arrive three days early. That's when he begins to discover that Alix is everything he never knew he wanted.

As expected, book one in the trilogy helped explain some of the context for book two, For All Time which I accidentally read first. I highly recommend reading the series in order.

When I began reading True Love, I wasn't sure I was going to like it. Jared starts out arguing with his (several times great) grandfather, the ghost who's haunted Kingsley House for the past two centuries. Caleb has been visible to each of the heirs as well as the occasional female relative...and Alix when she was four years old. The argument read like a temper tantrum, making 36-year-old Jared seem petulant and immature, but thankfully I kept reading because it got better. While he will never be my favorite fictional hero, Jared did grow up and develop over the course of the book.

For readers' advisors: character doorway is primary, story and setting secondary. Some sex scenes and sexual references. I can't recall if there is any swearing.

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Inn at Last Chance

Inn at Last Chance by Hope Ramsay
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Jenny Carpenter used to be a teacher, but when she realized she was destined to become the unofficial spinster of Last Chance, South Carolina, she decided to take charge of her life in other ways and fulfill her dream of owning a B&B. She bought the rundown Jonquil House mansion from the last member of the Raintree family, famous horror author Gabriel Raintree, and she's spent the past few months renovating it into the floral-themed inn she's always wanted. She hasn't even received delivery of her mother's antique furniture yet when the grumpy former owner himself shows up on her doorstep demanding to be allowed to rent a room.

Gabe needs a quiet place to hide and write, and he is not pleased when the frumpy innkeeper turns him away. Jonquil House is both the source of his happiest memories and his greatest pain--the perfect place, he believes, to get his creative juices flowing again. Luckily for Gabe, Jenny's book group needs to ask him for a favor, so they guilt her into offering him a room in exchange for being the featured guest at their upcoming save-the-library fundraiser. And that is when the ghost starts making his presence known.

I requested a copy of this book from NetGalley, thinking it would be a nice, light romance, along the lines of Debbie Macomber's works. Just goes to show, you can't judge a book by its cover! Yes, some aspects were similar--e.g., there were no explicit sex scenes--but I was not expecting it to be more ghost story than grand passion.

I think the book had the potential to be a solid 4 stars instead of a weak 3 if Ms. Ramsay had also taken another look at her character development to make it more internally logical--i.e. to give it more of a solid foundation/structure on which to build the story. It would also have been nice to see Jenny develop more of a backbone & not be so meek with those sewing circle/book group ladies--the new pastor was a jerk, and she should have SAID so!

Ironically, I found the haunting more believable than the budding relationship. I found Gabriel's motives for hiding his diabetes from Jenny completely inexplicable, for example, and he was so rude to her for so long, and she had such unresolved mommy issues, that their attraction really didn't make much sense. Still, I did eventually root for them to get together.

What holds the book together is the plot, which I found to often be quite engaging, particularly when the ghost was acting up. However, I don't know that the homage to Jane Eyre works tremendously well, which would be great fodder for a book group discussion. (There is a reading group guide included at the end of the book.)

For readers' advisors: story doorway, a little swearing, what sex scenes there are fade to black. It's the seventh book in the series, so readers might want to start with book #1, Welcome to Last Chance.

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Death and the Girl He Loves

Death, and the Girl He Loves by Darynda Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not even moving to the other side of the country can stop Lorelei McAlister's visions of darkness, death, and destruction.  In fact, they have recently gotten worse.  So much for that plan to stave off the end of the world!  To add insult to injury, she's now receiving death threats.  I mean, come on!  Overkill, anyone?

When she's attacked at boarding school despite being in her own personal version of Witness Protection, Lorelei decides it's time to go back to New Mexico.  If the world is going to end, she might as well be with her friends and family, right?  Besides, Riley's Switch is where her gorgeous boyfriend Jared (a.k.a. Azrael, a.k.a. the Angel of Death) lives.

The conclusion to the Darklight trilogy is very fast-paced.  I raced through it in a couple of days, and only took that long because I (inconveniently) had to do other things like work, take care of my infant daughter, eat, sleep, wash dishes, and so on.   I thought the way Ms. Jones tied everything together at the end was both clever and satisfying, although I did have a couple of microseconds of feeling like the solution was a tiny bit too easy after three books of angst and whining.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary, character secondary.  No sex, but there is some heavy petting & a little bit of very mild swearing.

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Death, Doom, and Detention

Death, Doom and Detention by Darynda Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lorelei McAlister, high school student and the last female descendent of the prophet Arabeth, is soon going to have to save the world from an invasion of demons. How? She has no idea. She's still struggling with the recently resurfaced memory of her parents' death when she was six--the day demons first broke through into this world, and Satan's second-in-command, Malak-Tuke, took up residence in her body.

Luckily for Lorelei, she's got some help in the form of a half-human/half-angel protector, Cameron; her best friends Brooklyn & Glitch; Jared, the super-sexy Angel of Death her grandparents won't let her date; and a network of church members who believe in the prophesies of Arabeth. Plus, she's just discovered she has the power to go inside a photograph to see what was happening in the moments just before it was taken, which is way cool, if not obviously helpful.

Even though Lorelei knows the war is coming soon, her more immediate concern is with the weird way everyone at school is starting to act. What is up with the stares? Even Jared is acting strangely. Her visions become increasingly specific and frightening, making class an ever more dangerous place to go.

I enjoyed book #2 far better than Death and the Girl Next Door. There is still a lot of whining and angst, but the story also gets fleshed out more--missing pieces filled in. The cliffhanger ending had me rushing to my computer to put book #3, Death and the Girl He Loves on hold at the library.

For readers' advisory: story doorway is primary, character secondary. Humorous, snappy dialogue. Heavy petting & teen hormones but no sex. I don't remember any swearing, but I'm writing this review a couple of months after finishing the book, so I can't be certain.

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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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Third Grave Dead Ahead

Third Grave Dead Ahead by Darynda Jones

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Charley Davidson hasn't slept in 13 days. The moment she closes her eyes, her supernatural--and furious--boyfriend is there, doing all kinds of erotic things to her and completely preventing her from getting any rest. His anger is something she wants to avoid, so she's been drinking gallons of coffee and inventing zany ways to stay continuously awake. But now he needs her help to prove that the man he went to prison for killing ten years ago is not, in fact, dead. Meanwhile, she's searching for a missing wife whose husband is the prime suspect.

Darynda Jones writes such hilarious, fast-paced novels, I could not put this one down until I finished it last night. I sure hope she publishes the next one asap because I need to know what happens next! What other powers will Charley discover she has? How will she keep the demons from destroying them all? Will she and Reyes ever forgive each other? Will Charley ever be able to forgive her father? Will Cookie date Uncle Bob? And how does this new guardian of hers factor in? I thought I knew how the book would resolve, but there is an unexpected twist at the very end! Well, a couple of them, technically.

For readers' advisors: story and character doorways primarily. Swearing and steamy sex scenes (particularly early in the novel) may be too much for some readers.



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Plum Spooky

Plum Spooky by Janet Evanovich

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm not sure what holiday this book is supposed to be linked with, although it does include an encounter with a retired Easter Bunny. This Between-the-Numbers novel features a lot of Diesel, a little Ranger, and very little Morelli (aside from phone conversations). Lula and Carl the Monkey spend a great deal of time "helping" Stephanie track down the socially inept (to say the least!) boy genius, Martin Munch, who has teamed up with Diesel's evil cousin Wulf. There are some laugh-out-loud moments, although not nearly as many as in Fearless Fourteen. It was light entertainment, but not my favorite of the Stephanie Plum books.


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