Don't Try to Fool Me

How do I decide which books to review and which to pass on?  The Internet has made this process much easier than it once was.  I read the book description which I take with a grain of salt.  If the book sounds much too good to be true, I might add another grain or two.

Then I go to Amazon and read the sample.  When Amazon doesn't have a sample, I go to the publisher's website and hope to find a sample of the book there.  Finally, if all else fails, I search for the author's website online and see if there's a sample there.

Armed with the book description and sample, I'm usually fairly certain that the book is something I want to read.  Of course since I haven't read the entirety, I'm only intrigued, not completely sold on the book.  But I'll read it for review.

But sometimes the book turns out to be something quite a bit different than what I expected.  A case in point is Jack Greene's Whiplash, the review of which is up on The Romance Reviews site.  And this kind of bait-and-switch makes me really, really cranky--cranky enough to tell the world just how disappointed I am.

But wait!  Even though it was entered into the GLBT review queue, shouldn't I review it as erotica which is where it should have been entered?  No, I don't think so.  If you show me a Granny Smith apple and ask me to judge it as an orange, I'm going to give it a bad review.  It's NOT an orange.  The same goes for erotica parading as a gay romance.

It's a new era.  There's more to gay romance than sex.  Erotica should be judged as erotica, and gay romance should be reviewed as romance.

Another Double Review Day

Don't you just hate it when you read the synopsis of a book, then the sample, and the book doesn't live up to your expectations?  I do.  And my reviews posted at All About Romance and The Romance Reviews today are those kinds of disappointing books.

Long the Mile by Ally Blue has a wonderful premise in two homeless men who were once successful helping each other learn how to live on the street.  Since my husband and I once were on the board of a homeless project and mentored one of the first families, I was curious about how accurate Blue would be in her novel.  Not so much, as it turned out, which was a big disappointment.

Adored by Shawn Bailey, on the other hand, doesn't promise to be realistic, by any means.  However, it has so many out-and-out horrific problems that it's a wonder that Phaze (celebrating nine years in publishing their website proudly announces) thought the book worthy of publication.  Why did I think it was worthy of review?  I'd hoped to see all the problems convincingly cleared up by the end of the book.  Instead, they're just left as is.  Truly disappointing.

Too Slick to Be Likeable

Reading the preview and the synopsis of Mandy Harbin's Slick Competition, I was intrigued: A gay man with a masters in biochemical engineering is challenged to come up with a new product expressly for gay men.  Wow!  Think of the possibilities.

That Mitchell comes up with a new lube is lame, but then unless Harbin's a chemist, I guess it's good enough to be credible.

But then the competition and the story turn ugly.  And that's when as a reviewer, I want to bail.  I don't mind odd twists of fate or really disgusting characters made believable and turned good (thanks, Rick Reed!), but when characters do something really underhanded and ugly and then think a couple of "so sorry" apologies will heal everything, I'm outta here.

I'm particularly put off by one character forcing sex on another in an act of revenge or retribution.  I understand that Harbin's story is billed as erotica, but I still don't think meanness is admirable no matter what the motive.

As the saying goes, I read this so you don't have to.

Trying to Heal while in College? Not Happening for Me

Having taught at a junior college for many years, I've watched college students come and go.  Most of them have baggage, some heavier than others, but all burdened by something.  Stress is usually at the top of the heap, but often the stress is compounded by some other bits of baggage that the students struggle with as well as cope with their homework and labs.

In Left Drowning, author Jessica Park pours on the baggage and then wants readers to know that the teens with heavy emotional scars are still passing their classes, turning in their homework, and generally being successful students.  And as a former English composition instructor, I'm not buying it.

Understandably, Blythe, the main character, has emotional scars from surviving the fire that killed her parents.  Compounding that, Blythe feels guilty for ruining her brother's sports career because she dragged him out of the burning building over a piece of glass that impaired his leg.  All of that I can understand.

What I don't believe is that the reclusive Blythe, who hasn't gotten any help from extended family or friends, is still passing her classes.  In my experience, even students with less baggage than Blythe fail their classes and need help before they can concentrate enough to become successful.

That a group of equally scarred students bring her into their group is no surprise.  But that they all turn out to be successful students is.

I wish this fairytale were true.  But my experience is that it's just a fairytale, and these college students might just as well wait for their pumpkins to turn into coaches as to believe that angst equals passing grades.

Disappointing Tucker Springs Addition

I couldn't wait for the next Tucker Springs gay romance since all of the other ones I've read I absolutely loved.  Who could forget the spirited religion debates in Covet Thy Neighbor?  Or the way the atheist in that book counseled the forlorn teen?

Or how about the engrossed entomology grad student in Dirty Laundry befriended the hunky, thug-like bouncer at the gay club?  And how the divide in brain power was only a superficial hang-up that once overcome became a non-issue?

Unfortunately, After the Fall while a nice enough story just doesn't live up to its predecessors.  I hope this isn't a trend in the Tucker Springs stories.  It would be a shame to see a series with so much promise just wither away.

The Wine Is Missing a Backbone

I love the premise of Syrah, a gay romance in which the owner of a wine store and a restaurant manager get together.  And the cover to the novel is lovely.  I just wish a reader didn't have to go through page after page of the manager acting like a scared kid who was willing to knuckle under to abuse for no good reason.

Romances, at least for me, are about strength and courage.  Doesn't it take both for people to unwrap their hearts and put them in their hands for someone else?  When someone says, "I love you," isn't the person taking a leap of faith that the recipient of the declaration won't stomp all over the heart and fling to back to the declarer?

So reading a romance in which one of the protagonists refuses to stand up for himself when it's within his power to do so is off-putting for me.  I understand if the protagonist has undergone years of abuse and needs a hand getting out from under that abuse.  But when the protagonist is an adult male who knows he's being offered verbal abuse and does nothing to change his life (get away from the abuser) and then ignores the help of his friends and potential lover, then my sympathies wane.

Syrah had so much potential.  In fact I haven't seen any other gay romances set around the wine world.  I just wish the book's protagonist lived up to its heady promise.

Cloyingly Sweet Young Thing/Thang

The thang, uh, thing about Anne Tennino's Theta Alpha Gamma gay romance series is that it has such promise.  However, I was dubious about Sweet Young Thang from the get-go, even before I read it for these reasons:

The cover art: Was it the purple underwear, the guy's meh look, or the Polaroid-looking print in what seems to be a girl's hand?  Since the blurb about the book talks about gays and bisexuals in the TAG house, bombs, exploding water heaters, paramedics, and househusbands, I was having trouble reconciling a cover with purple undies and photography.  All very strange.

The title: The twangy title didn't help any in making me feel like this sequel was going to live up to its predecessor.  In fact, written across the guy's back like it is, the words have sort of a predator feel about them.  It's like the guy's been caught peeing in the woods and the wolf has crept up behind him trying to alleviate his terror by calling him a sweet young bite to eat.

So going into this book, I had misgivings.  You can read my review this weekend or anytime at AAR.

How Do Some Books Get Published?

Throughout my years as a reviewer, I've often asked myself how some really flawed books get published while some really good ones are left to die on the wayside.  I've read friends' novels and novels entered in large and small contests that easily outstrip books that commercial publishers have rejected.

Take Brainy and the Beast by J. M. Cartwright, for example.  Where was the editor for this book?  Let's pretend that someone at Loose ID saw something he/she liked about the book.  Didn't he/she also see the flaws and want to make the book better?  Or, God forbid, is this the edited version of the manuscript and it was much worse before it was revised?

None of the answers will tell me what I ultimately want, however.  How do these books get published?

Where Have All the Editors Gone?

Reading Robin Kaye's Back to You was quite a challenge since it was written with so many gaping holes in the storyline and with protagonists whose illogical actions begged for more than the suspension of disbelief.

What bothered me?  Let me list some puzzles:

• The first third of the book is a vicious and stupid tennis match of insults between the love interests where the reader doesn't learn anything except that they had a thwarted sexual encounter many years before.
• After this, readers learn that purportedly an adult, Storm (yup, that's his name, folks) designs luxury yachts and maintains a home and business in New Zealand, yet thinks it's appropriate to teach a ten-year-old child to drive a car--even when he realizes her feet don't touch the pedals.
• Bree, the heroine he nearly had sex with before he ran yelling and screaming from her room (okay, a slight exaggeration there), refuses to have sex with him years later when he returns, but when he takes her out on a yacht he's designed, she's not only ready but willing to have a night of sex.
• After their night of sex, Bree is ready to become friends with benefits, but Storm doesn't think that's such a good idea.

At this point my reaction was "huh?".  Is this supposed to make sense to anyone?

Kaye's Bad Boys of Red Hook series is one in a long line that I'll skip.

A Reluctant Review

Because at AAR (All About Romance), reviewers get to pick the books they want to read and review, I was excited to see Carla Kelly's My Loving Vigil Keeping on the list and be the one getting to review it.  I've loved Kelly's writing for years, loved especially the taunt storyline and stoic characters who plod steadfastly ahead in life.

Kelly has switched publishers, and her new editors, probably ecstatic to have her there, have given her full reign.  Consequently, her new books, many of which revolve around the Mormon faith in years past, have gotten away from her signature style.

My Loving Vigil Keeping is a case in point.  I read this book twice before I reviewed it, and each time I came away feeling cheated.  Click on the book's title for my full review at AAR.

Great Scenery, But No Romance

After reading the first book in Linda Lael Miller's new Western romance series, Big Sky Country (reviewed today at AAR), I'm starting to wonder what's going on with Miller.  Or maybe I should wonder what's going on with me.

I once loved Miller's Westerns.  The men were bigger than life, but totally committed to family.  These are men who live in an unforgiving climate and are often just as unforgiving in their personal lives.  That rigidity often leads to disputes.  Although many of them feud with their relatives, blood is definitely thicker than water.

So I expect a lot from a Miller book.  When I read a book like Big Sky in which the romance of the West settles more between a young man and his teenage stepdaughter and not with the young woman love interest, I've got to wonder what kind of message Miller's trying to give.

Harlequin, however, may not edit Miller as heavily as it once did, but it sure does her proud on the covers it gives her.  Now all I want is for Miller to get back in the saddle romance-wise and deliver a rodeo as entertaining and satisfying as her old novels were.

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.

Back from Surgery

On May 2, I had a growth removed from my right kidney.  The growth proved to be benign, and since the second I've been recuperating.  Before I went into the hospital, however, I read and reviewed as many books as I could.  Here are the reviews that ran on the AAR site while I was away from the computer:

All for You by Lynn Kurland was a real disappointment especially since I was looking forward to it.  Now I'm getting the feeling that Kurland has lost interest in her de Piaget time travel romances.  In fact this one seemed like a mediocre bone flipped to her baying readers.  And we'd hoped for so much better for Peaches who'd been burdened by an unfortunate name and now an unsatisfying romance.

Missing by Shelley Shepard Gray really grated on me.  This is the first of a three book series.  What this means for Gray is that readers who want to know the answer to the central mystery will have to buy each one of the short $13 books (for a total of $39) to do so.  If the other two have such simplistic romances, there's no bargain to be found.

Fortunately, Just Down the Road by Jodi Thomas saves this trio.  Rancher Tinch Turner and ER doctor Addison Spencer are a wonderfully wounded couple, and Thomas makes their coming together totally believable.  I also enjoyed watching the YouTube video of Thomas talking about how she got the ideas for the book and where she writes.

A Bloated Penny

My review of Catherine Anderson's Lucky Penny appears at AAR today.  This was another book I really wanted to like because I've enjoyed Anderson's work in the past.

Unfortunately, this one doesn't have a very likable female protagonist.  This shouldn't bother me since I've read a lot of books that begin with unlikeable primary characters who, thanks to a sympathetic love interest, mend their ways and become very likable.

I'm reminded of Anthony in Mary Balogh's DIK The Temporary Wife, who starts off very unlikeable since he's out to hire a quiet governess to marry and present to his family as his wife.  Fortunately, Charity, the impoverished woman he hires, helps Anthony become less self-centered and less tortured about his past.  Anthony ultimately is one of my favorite Regency heroes.

But while David in Lucky Penny is a terrific guy, Brianna never made me like her at all.  Considering that divorce was pretty much unheard of in the Old West, I can't help but think that David's life won't be as happy ever after as he deserves.

Good Premise; Faulty Follow-through

I was really excited when I read the blurb about Shadow's Stand: a half-breed cowboy and a Chinese woman come together.  Living on the West Coast near a train museum, I've read quite a bit about the contributions of the Chinese to the transcontinental railroad and Western expansion.

Add to that numerous trips to museums and historical societies that have extensive resources about Native American Indians, I have more than a little knowledge about that time in American history.

Finally, because I read so much Western American romance, I've got a pretty good idea about what themes and characters have been explored and which are staples and nearly cliche.

A romance between a Chinese woman and a half-breed man is as rare as the fist-sized gold nugget.  Bring it on!  I was ready to read.

Unfortunately, McCarty wasn't ready to deliver.  You can read all about it in my AAR review.

Feeling Cheated

At AAR reviewers pick what they'd like to review from a huge list mailed out by the editor-in-chief on a sporadic basis.  She gives the title, author, and subgenre which doesn't leave much to go on if the author's name isn't familiar within a subgenre.  Typically, I go through the list looking for subgenres I haven't burnt out on (paranormals and Regencies are definitely out for me these days), then take out the titles I've already reviewed for Booklist which has an earlier publication schedule.

Then with the ones left, I go to Amazon or the author's web page or blog, and read about the title.  This works well as long as the finished book does what she (or sometimes he) posts that the book is about.

In the case of Cowboy Father by Linda Ford, the book that's reviewed on AAR today, I chose to review the book even though it sounded a little on the heavy-handed side of Christian because it was set in Alberta, Canada, during the Depression.  Since I've never read anything else with that time and place setting, I thought I'd get an insight into what it was like there during the time period.

Alas, that was not to be.  Ford's book could have been set anywhere in the North America.  Maybe Canada wasn't too different than the United States during that time period, but at least Ford could have given some feel for Alberta since I'm sure not all Canadian provinces aren't alike.  I'd like to know how they differed then.

So I was cheated.  Ford didn't hold up her end of the promise with this book.

A Home by the C

My review of Christina Skye's confusing Home by the Sea was posted on the AAR site today.  Every once in a while I have to wonder what authors are thinking as they finish a book that is 180 degrees different than the book they started writing.  Do they not care that their readers will be confused?  Or do they think their readers are essentially clueless and won't notice that the premises at the beginning of the book crumble and a substitution is made?

I guess it's the reviewer's job to point out the confusion.  But you would think that the agent or editor would have not only caught the problem, but suggested ways to fix or alter it.  I've got to wonder why that didn't happen in the case of this book.  It's sad since Skye is a good writer, but obviously weak plotter.

Not Head Over Heels

I really, really wanted to like Head Over Heels a lot.  Shalvis is my kind of writer--straightforward, witty, charming--all the ingredients for a must-read author as far as I'm concerned.

But when she gives the female protagonist a condition that is really familiar to me (asthma) and then makes her adult character disregard her condition and do potentially dangerous actions as if they were nothing, I'm left wondering how Shalvis can be so cruel.

Main character Chloe's best friend Lance has cystic fibrosis, and while I'd love to read a romance about how he finds and woos his girlfriend, I shutter to think what Shalvis might do with a storyline like that after reading some of the really deadly places she went with Chloe.

Unfortunately, this book doesn't just do a disservice to asthmatics, but also to those who don't know much about this condition and might think putting oneself in danger isn't that big a deal.  How sad.

So Disappointed

My review of The Survivor by Shelley Shepard Gray is posted on AAR today.  I really, really was looking forward to reading this book since Mattie was such a compelling character in the other books.  In one of the previous books she nearly renounces her faith and her God when her cancer grows and grows.  She gets mad at her long-suffering mother and at the love of her life, Graham, because they have to see her at what she thinks is her worst.

When I read that Graham was going to be accused of fathering a child and then abandoning the pregnant mother, I was ready to see Mattie rear up like a dragon and defend her stalwart friend.  Instead, she, like the rest of the Amish community, believed the girl and didn't listen to Graham's denial.  What?!?  This is the loyalty his undying support provoked in her.  More than anything, I was disappointed in Mattie's character since she didn't seem to be worthy of Graham's love.

Unfortunately, at some point I'll bet that Graham will realize Mattie's defection and wonder about her profession of love.  I would if I were he.