Mixing and Matching

Coming up is the paperback edition of the first four books in the Foothills Pride series. The compilation is titled Foothills Pride Stories, Vol. 1, and even writing that I feel a little like Quentin Tarantino and the Kill Bill movies. Although if you haven't read the Foothills Pride series, don't expect anything remotely like Tarantino. The blood count is much, much lower in the FP series.

At any rate, AngstyG is working up a cover that melds the Old Town map and the Stonewall Saloon. Since the series starts off with What's in a Name? and the first chapter begins in the saloon, I think it's only fitting that the cover of volume 1 be the image of Stone's bike and his business.

So for those wondering what the two separate images look like, here they are. Now we'll see what AngstyG can do to make these two become one.

Cover Contest -- Be Sure to Vote!

For the past few years (2005 - now) Cover Café has held a cover contest open to anyone who wants to vote on the covers the Café members have culled throughout the previous year.

I'm happy to be part of the Café crew and want to be sure readers of my blog have a chance to determine the best and worst of the covers the crew has uncovered.

Click here to vote from May 1 through May 21, then go to the Cover Café afterward to view the winners.

Oh, yes, there's also a category for Worst Covers of 2013, so be sure to vote in all categories.

What Would the Coxswain Do?

I picked Settling the Score by Christopher Koehler to review because my younger daughter was the coxswain on the Mt. Holyoke crew team and one of the protagonists in the novel is a cox for the CalPac crew team.  Unfortunately for me, there wasn't much about being a cox in the novel, and the crew team showed up only a couple of times.

But that wasn't the worst disappointment.  I keep looking at the cover of the book and wondering why out of all the things that could be on the cover of this book, the publisher chose two men and a toddler since the bulk of the book is about Stuart, trying to decide between trying out for the Olympic men's crew team and going to med school, and Philip who is trying to get solid control of the family business.

True, both stories have family elements--Philip's father is in prison and Stuart's fundamentalist parents have shaped their children's lives.  But a toddler as a predominant character?  Not hardly.

So we'll have to chalk this one up to the cover artist being given mixed messages by the editor, poor author Koehler having to live with the unfortunate choice, and readers going away shaking their heads.

The Slow Way to Gay

Author Riley Hart seems to be implying that some people are just on a collision course and are in each other's orbit in Collide.  I don't know if I really believe that, but Hart does go a long way to persuade me with a very good story.

What I liked best, and don't say in the review, is that Hart ties up all the loose ends very well, making what seems to be a coincidence fit neatly within the storyline.  I like the symmetry of that since so much of the fiction I read these days reminds me of the buildings in Cairo, all bare rebars in the sky because finished buildings are subject to tax.  So the stories, like the buildings, consist of bits and pieces left handing.

Another thing that I liked was how patient Noah is with his friend Coop.  Deep friendship, which usually demands copious amounts of patience, is the best basis for a romantic relationship, meaning Noah and Coop have a very good chance of happily ever after, a rarity in many gay romances that are based solely on sex.

I'm not sure I would have chosen the cover as the one to illustrate all of this, however.  The cover models don't look like they're colliding nor do they look particularly loving.  But maybe the publisher thinks this will sell books.  Thank goodness (again!) for my Kindle, so I don't have to see this when I go to reread the book.

I Laughed So Hard I Cried

I love reading review books and galleys on my Kindle and often do at night before I go to sleep.  Often my husband falls asleep before I turn off my Kindle, so those times, I try to be quiet which is facilitated by the Kindle's noiseless page turning.

But when I read Spark by Posy Roberts, I couldn't contain my laughter at various places throughout the story, places I'm not sure Roberts was going for humor.  One particularly funny spot, which you can read about in my review at AAR, caused me not only to shake the bed but to wake my sleepy husband and read the pages to him.

While he didn't find them as funny as I did since he had no context and was admittedly sleeping before being awakened, I was still laughing about this particular passage the next morning.

I'm fairly sure that Roberts didn't mean the passage to be so funny since the men were supposedly overcome by lust and hurrying home to have sex.  But I guess in the end I can use this passage as an example, when readers accuse gay romance of being wall-to-wall sex, that the couple in all gay romances are rushing to have sex.

(Oh, yes, what's that thing on the cover?  Is it a sleeping bag snail?  Uninstalled insulation?  And what significance does it have to anything in the book?  I have no idea.)

Sabotaged by its Cover

Even having worked for a publisher at one time, I'm still flummoxed by how editors and art directors can undermine their own products by using completely subversive covers.  My review of Deirdre Martin's Hip Check running on the front page of AAR today gets into this problem a little bit.

I mean, look at the cutie with the hockey jersey used as a dress.  She's having a lot of fun, right?  And then there's the veteran hockey player, not a scar visible, who's holding his stick like he's a cut-out.  Sparks are flying, and everything's cool.  (Okay, bad hockey jokes.)

But the book itself?  Martin's story?  Well, that has to do with the death of the happy-go-lucky cover guy's sister.  He's become the single-parent uncle of his niece.  And the woman on the cover?  The no-nonsense nanny. 

Now take a look at the cover again.

Do you see the still grieving Finn?  The playboy turned responsible adult superstar hockey player?  No?  Me either.

How about the responsibility-laden former teacher turned nanny?  The woman who's concerned with a grief-stricken child?  Yeah, I'm missing her too.

So if you're a reader who's looking for a light, fun read, how cheated would you feel picking up this book and getting a story that, while really good, subverts your mood?  Would you venture into Deirdre Martin territory again?  Or would you be very wary?

Much More Than Nothingness in Boney's Book

Opening a book by an unknown author is a little like opening an unmarked chest.  Inside could as easily be a nest of snakes or inert sand as a hodgepodge of unique and interesting artifacts.  Finding the boxes with the fascinating treasure, a story that transports readers into another time and place with characters they will come to know, love, and cherish, makes reading for review worthwhile.

My most recent find is The Nothingness of Ben by Brad Boney, the review of which went live on AAR today.  This is one of those books that when readers finish reading the last word, they wish there were another hidden hundred pages still waiting to be read.  This is a book where the identification of being part of the family is so strong, that finishing the book breaks the ties so completely that readers will be rudely awakened to the real world around them.  This book is definitely a Desert Isle Keeper, a book to read and enjoy over and over again.

As I say in my review, I can't wait to read his next book.

(With any luck, Boney's next book will feature a cover without chopped off heads!)

A Sad But Ultimately Beautiful Romance

What can I say about Dex, other than I fell in love with him and at times wanted to take him in my arms and give him a big mommy hug?  Amy Lane's group of gay-for-pay porn stars are multi-layered, interesting guys, who more than anything are young and just need someone to befriend them who doesn't want something from them.

My review of Dex in Blue went live on AAR today.  Not only did I enjoy the book, but I really like the cover too.

Bad Is a Relative Term for This Boy

Why are sports figures so compelling to readers?  What players do and what readers do are so different that you'd think they'd never cross paths.  But Jaci Burton's Play-by-Play series is just a tip of the iceberg that encompasses sports-related romances.  My review of her latest, Playing to Win, went live today on AAR.

My biggest question about the book is how bad is bad.  Cole Riley, the wide receiver protagonist, seems more burnt out and bored than "bad."  Supposedly, he gets really feisty with the press, and (oh, shocker here!) plays the field with an assortment of women.  He also likes to go to a club with what he terms "friends" even though most of them are just happy to be around someone famous.

All that is "bad"?  Uh, no, not really.  Misguided.  Juvenile, maybe.  But bad?  Hardly.  Now if he threw a photographer through a window, hit a woman, trashed a hotel bedroom, or some of the other nasty stuff we read about, then yes, I'd say he was "bad."

I got the feeling while reading the book that Burton can't really afford to have her heroes be "bad" in the real sense.  It would definitely take more than a few hundred pages for a reader to come to like and accept a really bad boy's transformation.  With Burton's upbeat, glossy style, transforming a true bad boy wouldn't be the kind of book her readers expect.

So the term "bad" is relative in her books.  She's not Sarah Mayberry, Amy Lane, or Anne Stuart.

(Although I absolutely HATE cover art that cuts off faces, I'll make an exception this time.  Go figure.)

Shakespeare, Sacramento, and English Teachers--Oh, my!

My review of Amy Lane's It's Not Shakespeare ran today at All About Romance.  This is one of those books that needed to last longer than it did.  Both the disgruntled English teacher James Richards and the "underwear model" Rafi Ochoa had much, much more to tell about themselves and the way they got together than Lane's slim 164 pages gave.  And I miss those insights.

Still, at 164 pages, Lane's book is a satisfying read.  I just wish readers had a chance to sit down and talk to characters who intrigue them.  I'd love to sit down with James and trade English teacher stories.  I'd especially love to know what his students in Maine were like as compared to those here in Sacramento.  I'm sure we'd have a great time chatting.

Oh, yeah, and I can honestly say that I never saw even one of my students like either of the guys on the cover.

Forward and Backward

My review of Conquest appears on today's All About Romance page.  One thing I forgot to mention in the review is that there's a lot of gay sex in the book, a fact I should have mentioned since not all gay romances are wall-to-wall sex.  I should know since I've been reading a lot of them lately as I decide which ones to review and which to pass.

So far the review list includes these authors:

Sean Kennedy
Jay Bell
Z. A. Maxfield
Robbie Michaels
Amy Lane
Brent Hartinger
L. A. Gilbert
K. A. Mitchell
Jeff Erno

On my to be read list are
Sprout by Dale Peck
Fate Lends a Leg by Jax Cordoba
With or Without You by Brian Farrey
The Screwed-up Life of Charlie the Second by Drew Ferguson
By That Sin Fell the Angels by Jamie Fessenden

Thank you, Robbie Michaels, for providing me with such an outstanding list of gay romance.  Your Most Popular Guy series is outstanding!  I'm waiting to read more from you.

But back to the Conquest series.  I'm now finishing the drummer, and about to embark on the pianist / keyboardist's story.  Unlike some series that get better and better with each book then seem to taper off, these are pretty even throughout the series, although Jesse and Evan get harder and harder to take with each one.  Jesse is more over the top flamboyant while Evan is starting to get middle-aged angry.  They haven't lot their teen lust and flaunting of PDA.  Sheesh!  As if PDA made a point about gay men.  Whatever.

And isn't the cover art the worst you've ever seen?  Since I read the book in Kindle form, I'm glad I didn't see it before I read the excerpt.  I'm not sure I would have bought a paperback with that cover.

Back in the Saddle

I can't believe that it's been since August that I wrote and had reviews published.  After kidney surgery in May, I thought I was on the road to recovery until cracked ribs hit me in September.  With any luck, all that's behind me and I'm now really recovering.  It's been a long, slow process, and it turns out that I'm not a very patient patient.

It hasn't helped that I've read a bunch of "C" grade books during my recovery.  The first of the romances for AAR, Tallie's Hero, is reviewed today.  It's definitely one of those that I really wanted to like and in synopsis sounds wonderful.  Too bad the reality didn't pan out.  In fact, in places the book read like author Sarah Luck was just a little too close to her source material and was coping the give-away pamphlets and self-published booklets given away at historical sites.

Unfortunately, the next few reviews for AAR will be just as lackluster as this one was.  (The "cowboy" on the cover, however, is a real cutie!  Nothing lackluster about him.)

Can Buy Me Love

I gave a starred review rating for Molly O'Keefe's latest Can't Buy Me Love in Booklist a while back.  Now LinnieGayle weighs in with her take on the book.  While she didn't agree with my A grade, she did give it a stellar B+ which makes us quibble just a hair.

LG does agree that when an author can turn an unlikeable character into a likable one that the author is doing quite a feat.  To turn two such characters like O'Keefe does into likable, sympathetic ones is the hallmark of a wonderful writer, someone readers should watch.

The cover, however, is another matter since that's definitely not the body of a 30-something ice hockey player who was fabulously talented but is at the end of his career.

I'm Persuaded

My review of Persuasion: A Latter Day Tale by Rebecca H. Jamison went live on AAR today.  I was prepared to bash the book because it's a contemporary retelling of Austen's Persuasion, only set in a Mormon community in Northern Virginia.

Instead, it turned out to be quite clever and enjoyable, proving once again that I should never start a book with a preconceived notion.  I seem to be proved wrong almost every time.
I even love the cover of the book.  Go figure!

Jacked Up - Really!

I can't believe Jacked Up by Erin McCarthy is getting good reviews.  In fact, I'm starting to believe that people post reviews for books they haven't read more frequently than I once thought.

I'm hoping that my review for AAR gives a more accurate picture of Jacked Up.  If readers want some suggestions for much, much better titles that are set in the mechanic's melieu, then I'd suggest Sarah Mayberry's She's Got It Bad or Motorcycle Man by Kristen Ashley.  (A side note: MM is the las of a series of four books.  Skip the previous three and just read MM.  You'll thank me for this tip.)

One thought about the cover:  Great bod, but he doesn't look like what I picture a jack-man to be.  I'm thinking more pro football tackle Michael Oher or somebody built like him.  But having never studied jack-men, I could be wrong.

When Opposites Actually Attract

In my review of From Father to Son by Janice Kay Johnson (posted on AAR today), I talk about how realistically an author brings together two different types of people and make their connection realistic.  Johnson has that touch.

What was really striking about his book was that the Niall who didn't think he wanted anything to do with a family didn't just slide comfortably into the role of father like so many romance books would have it.  Instead he backslid quite a bit, often barricading himself in his house and pointedly ignoring the people who loved him, most notably a little boy.  It was heartbreakingly real and made his acceptance of fatherhood more deliberate and therefore sweeter.

Oh, yes, and what I didn't talk about in the review was that Niall played the bagpipes for the Scottish Games.  I just wish Johnson had done a little more with that side of his personality.

And finally, we can add this cover to the desperately bad category.  I'm glad I didn't see it before I started reading the book.  I would have passed it by.

Youth and the West

My review of Matthew by Emma Lang went live on AAR today.  This was a maddening book that should have been fun to read.  But Matthew at 25 alternately whined and commanded like someone in his early teens. Why any woman would be attracted to this idiot is beyond me.

If the main character and the plot (marriage for Matthew's convenience) weren't enough, the PhotoShopped cover is totally impossible.  First there's the Matthew character looking much older than the whiny 25-year-old in the book.  Worse is his poor shoulder which looks like a ham-handed doctor or neophyte PhotoShopper "fixed" it.

To compound the problems are the wild-looking horses in the lower left corner.  Horses?  Yeah, sure, Matthew is a rancher, but horses have so little to do with the plot that it took me a moment to figure out what they might be doing on the cover.

All in all, the entire package of Matthew is a mess.  I read so you won't have to.

Longhorn Humor

No question about it--Katie Lane understands Texas and Texans, especially their sense of humor.  My review of her Catch Me a Cowboy is posted on the Booklist website as of February 27.  Unfortunately, in order to read the 175 word review, users have to be subscribers to Booklist.

To quote myself:
"Lane gives readers a rip-roaring good time while making what could feel like a farce insightful and real, just like the characters themselves."

I recommend that readers who enjoy Texas humor read Lane's Bramble, Texas, series.  And, I might add, the cover is another that is nice, but doesn't quite reflect what comes in between.

So That You Don't Have To

My husband and I were talking about books and reviewing the other night.  I was reading a review book that I really, really wanted to like, but the author was making it so hard for me that it was essentially a losing proposition.

"Why do I read these things?" I asked in disgust.

"So that others don't have to," he replied, and his response struck me as the truth. 

It's also helping me get through books that I know I'll be panning.  Often this happens halfway through and there seems to be no way for the author to recoup from all the losses to either the characters or the plot, or both.

A case in point is The Last Cowboy by Lyndsay McKenna.  McKenna probably heard how rugged, testosterone-driven men are the staples of Western romances.  So she piled on macho posturing, troubles galore, and manly spirit.  It's as if a cook says she likes chocolate, so she mixex every kind of chocolate she can find--liquid and solid--into a cake pan combined with powered cocoa and calls it a cake.  Not only does it look awful but it tastes worse. 

McKenna's novel is all the tropes about cowboy romances written to their maximum.  Only a reviewer would read the first hundred pages about a mean-spirited cowboy and keep reading and hoping for him to become the hero.

The good news about this book, however, is maybe now that McKenna has written about the Last Cowboy, she'll write about something, anything else in the future.

Sadly, this is the best Western romance cover I've seen in quite a while.  I only wish the inside were as wonderful as the outside.

Dancing on Buried Treasure

My review of Ellen O'Connell's newest, Dancing on Coals, was posted on AAR today.  O'Connell is one of those really good writers who doesn't pull her punches.  Dancing is no different from her previous two books.  If nothing else, O'Connell always makes me happy that I'm not living in the late 19th century.  Now if O'Connell could only come up with better covers!  Even a half-naked Apache would be better and more telling of the book's contents than the rodeo couple.

Also up on the AAR board today is the list of 2011 Buried Treasure books, books that were very good and which seemed to get no publicity or discussion, and dropped like stones in the glut of romances published.  Speaking of not for the faint of heart (like Dancing on Coals is), one of my buried treasure picks is an erotic romance between two gay males--definitely outside my comfort zone, but an outstanding read nonetheless.  Go figure!