Fight, Bicker, Love

I've never been a fan of romances in which the couple bicker and fight their way to "love."  Love, to me, is a much more peaceful emotion, not one in which the participants must be combatants.  Obviously, this isn't true of other readers.  Some like the barbed by-play followed by bedroom moments. 

For those who do, Kate Angell's No Tan Lines, which is reviewed on AAR today, might be a keeper.  I gave it a low B grade because Angell's a slick writer, who's easy to read.  It's not until I stopped to review the book and had to come up with a plot synopsis that I realized how much of the book was sniping and angling by the couple.

Seems to me that there's enough sniping and angling in the day-to-day world that there should be a respite somewhere.  To my mind, love is kinder and gentler.  If it isn't and physical chemistry is the only thing the couple has going, is it really love?  Or is it just sex?

Fortunately, the couple in Angell's book share so many other traits that believing that they are in love isn't difficult.  What strains credulity is their attraction in the first place.

Trust Fund Baby and Yes Man?

I'm still uneasy about Kristen Higgins' Somebody to Love even though I gave it a B grade on AAR.  Trust fund baby Parker was just so resentful of her father's right hand man, James, and was so hatefully snarky when she referred to him has "Thing One," that it was often stretched believability almost to the breaking point that they would happily get together.

I knew going in that Higgins isn't an easy writer to read.  She's like Delilah Marvelle, whose book Forever a Lady, I just read for Booklist.  Neither of them sticks to the romance ruts, so sometimes their books become messy or odd or too much to take.

But what's the point of reading the same formula over and over again?  Isn't it better to read something that might not quite work, but gives the reader an interesting ride?  My gut says yes.  The same old same old gets wearisome otherwise.

Thank you, Kristen Higgins, for taking chances and going upstream. Somebody to Love was an interesting ride.

Comings and Goings

My review of Heartbreak Trail can be found on today's AAR.  (See link at left for review.)  Author Shirley Kennedy must have read quite a few homesteader diaries and letters to come up with the details she uses in her gritty recreation of a trip across America in a covered wagon.  As we complain about the delays in airports, it's good to remember that there once was a much worse way to travel cross country and thousands of people did it with not nearly the number of complaints.

I sent off reviews to Booklist for Demons Prefer Blondes and Kiss of Snow last night.  Demons has probably one of the snarkiest heroines I've ever read.  It's a talky book, and I wondered at times whether the war between one of the Devil's princes and the fallen angel sent to kill him would ever begin or if it would just be talked to death.  But I know that many younger readers (younger than me, that is!) enjoy snarky, so I didn't pan it.

Kiss of Snow, on the other hand, was a wonderful read.  I thought I was burned out on shape-changing