The Rebound Girl by Tamara Morgan

this review was originally published at DearAuthor.com

the “Cliff Notes” version of my review

Dear Ms. Morgan:

I did not like this book.

For starters the heroine, Whitney Vidra, is a nasty piece of work: self-absorbed, manipulative, bitchy, and oh so superior to all the lesser beings around her. I endured page after page of her being a she-dick, waiting in vain for her to be redeemed. The hero, Matt Fuller, is a nice enough guy although he’s a bit on the dull side and not like any actual guy I’ve ever met. Matt puts up with Whitney’s drama-rama crap because, well, I don’t know because why. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t dump her and find a nicer girl-friend.

And then–poor Ms. Morgan just had the bad luck to have me, a plastic surgeon’s wife and co-owner of his practice, review this book–the heroine is a plastic surgeon. A nothing-like-the-real-thing plastic surgeon. This book makes error after error about plastic surgery, surgery, and private practices. And I gotta say, I don’t understand why Ms. Morgan made her heroine a plastic surgeon because the heroine clearly disdains her field. Why pick a profession you then portray with scorn? Furthermore, if you’re going to trash an entire medical discipline, at least figure out what its practitioners actually do.

I also disliked just about every supporting character in the book who were all cloying cliches. There were the cute but crazy over-sexed parents, a Laura Ashley wearing wimp of an ex-wife, a horny burly gay guy pal, and, one of my least favorite, the beautiful best friend who sleeps around. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

Also, the ending is silly.

It’s entirely possible you meant for this book to be tongue in cheek. It didn’t read that way to me. I didn’t find it funny; I found it annoying. I give it a D.

Sincerely,

Dabney

the extended release version of my review

Dear Ms. Morgan,

I did not enjoy your latest Carina Press release The Rebound Girl. The book was a failure for me on several fronts.

Whitney Vidra is a plastic surgeon recovering from being dumped by her world-famous, third world-children-fixing plastic surgeon boyfriend, Dr. Jared Fine. Whitney feels she gave up several years of her life following Jared into the wilds of Guatemala where he fixed cleft palates and cheated on Whitney, then a nurse, by “plowing an anesthesiologist.” (Nice.) Whitney, in a time-frame that seems unlikely given how long it takes to become a board-certified plastic surgeon (ten to twelve plus four years of undergraduate education), returned to the States and became a plastic surgeon herself. It’s a profession she seems exceedingly ambivalent about. As she describes her post-Jared career choices,

She was on to bigger and better things.

Well, maybe not bigger. The fellowship at Temple University she’d turned down had been pretty big. And not everyone in the medical community shared her belief that the term better applied to her chosen focus on boob jobs and liposuction in place of more sedate medical care. But this was her life, her rules.

As the book begins, Whitney is hanging out in a bar in the town of Pleasant Park, PA thinking dismissive thoughts about its patrons. She recently relocated to Pleasant Park to open an medical spa but really doesn’t think much of the town.

Whitney had known coming in that her new life would take a little getting used to. That was kind of the whole point. Take one part upscale Pennsylvania borough, add three parts big-city beauty professionals. She, Kendra and their third partner, John, were practically their own bad joke: a chubby plastic surgeon, an overeducated esthetician and a hirsute massage therapist walk into a bar…

The move had been a long time coming, of course, and she didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. It was just that she’d somehow failed to realize that setting up their medical spa in an upstate outpost meant living in an upstate outpost—complete with an agonizingly slow nightlife and guys like awkwardly conversational elbow patches over there.

Whitney may joke that she’s chubby but that’s not how she sees herself. She thinks she’s hot as hell and any guy lucky enough to get his hands on her curvaceous form should realize his extraordinary luck in doing so. On the night in question she is approached by cutie-patootie Matt whose wilder brother is grinding on the dance floor with Whitney’s friend Kendra. Matt charms Whitney with his whimsical conversation and the two go out for pancakes. Over the maple syrup Whitney tells Matt–he’s recently divorced and new to dating–he’s hit the jackpot. She’s going to be his rebound girl. When Matt asks her what that is she says,

I don’t want you to buy me a ring. I don’t want to bear your children. I don’t even want to be your girlfriend. All I want is you and me and as much sex as we can possibly squeeze into the four hours before dawn.”

Matt’s mouth went dry. “That’s a real thing?”

“Oh, Matt. Poor, sweet Matt. You have no idea. You’re obviously one of those men built for monogamy and the kind of love that lasts until you’re wrinkly and don’t remember where you put your teeth—which of course means that you’re completely wrong for the bar scene and for women like me.”

“Then why would I go home with you?” The rational part of him warned him to cool off and back away. The still mildly tequilaed part of him, the rigid stirring in his groin—they had plenty to say on the subject.

“Because,” she said with painstaking calm, “you can’t start a long-term relationship until you rebound, and believe me when I say I’m exactly the kind of girl you want in the interim. I’m an exceptionally good lover. And commitment makes me itchy.”

Matt, who really is just the cutest thing–he’s a kindergarten teacher to boot–manfully tells her no. He’d love to date her but casual sex isn’t his thing. This doesn’t deter Whitney. She shows up at his workplace–which is, of course, an elementary school–and, after insulting two of his students’ mothers, propositions him again. Ultimately Matt agrees to date Whitney and to offer her access to his johnson as long as the two don’t actually have sex. It’s completely unclear to me why Matt wants to date Whitney because she is mean-spirited, overly critical of just about everyone, and stupendously self-absorbed. I have this feeling you were trying to make her seem empowered which she is. But empowered doesn’t have to mean egotistic. I’m all for strong women. I’m down on super bitch.

It’s not just me who thinks this. Whitney’s arrogance and dismissive attitude toward the plebeians of Pleasant Park causes the town officials to be “unhelpful” (think the DMV on an average day) to her as she tries to open her spa. (The way she does this has no bearing on what a physician would really do when starting such a practice but I haven’t gotten to that criticism yet.) Kendra and John keep trying to work around Whitney’s bratty behavior but the people of Pleasant Park aren’t especially interested in working with them.

As Whitney and Matt indulge in heavy petting, Matt falls for Whitney. She’s nothing like Laura, his demure, faux-helpless wife who cheated on him but now wants him back. In fact, Whitney’s nothing like anyone Matt has ever met. Perhaps that’s her appeal; again, I didn’t get it. For her part, Whitney refuses to fall for Matt. She doesn’t do love and even though he treats her like a queen she rebuffs his efforts to turn their relationship into something lasting.

It’s hard to root for a relationship when one half is toxic. I wanted better for Matt. He might be boring but he’s a hell of a nice guy–kindergarten teacher!!–and he deserves better than Whitney.

Matt and, surprisingly, Jared are the only genuinely likable characters in this novel. They also must share the same kind of crazy because Jared sees the error of his ways and comes to Pleasant Park to woo Whitney back. It’s  too bad  both Matt and Jared are straight because I’d have preferred them to have a Happily Ever After while Whitney whined at their reception. (It’s possible my Whitney-hatred colored my perspective here.)

I also have to ask: why on earth is Whitney a plastic surgeon? Not only is this book filled with snarky digs at the profession, it also, repeatedly, factually misrepresents plastic surgery. If any plastic surgeon approached medicine, patients, or establishing a practice as does Whitney they’d be disbarred. Now, I acknowledge I have a stake in this–my husband is a plastic surgeon, now in private practice, and I, in part, manage his practice. Prior to being in private practice, my husband was at a major medical center where he headed up the Cleft Palate team, so I’ve seen pretty much every aspect of the field. Please don’t misunderstand me–I’m not defending every aspect of plastic surgery. I wasn’t bothered in this book by all the snide asides about the field; I was bothered by the fact that most of them were made by Whitney. Why have a heroine who has so little respect for her chosen field? It made her even less admirable.

The Rebound Girl was, for me, a unenjoyable read. I give it a D.

Sincerely,

Dabney

Untamed by Anna Cowan

this review was originally published at DearAuthor.com

Dear Ms. Cowan:

Before I began this book, I read a scathingly negative review by another reviewer. Here at Dear Author, Janine and I have different opinions about Untamed. The novel is a book many will either love or hate.

I loved it. It’s one of the most mesmerizing books I’ve read this year. It’s not perfect and yet I won’t be surprised if, come January, it’s on many a list as 2013′s best debut.

The book begins with the hero, the Duke of Darlington, sipping coffee and perusing silk handkerchiefs in the box window at Whites. In barrels a mammoth of a man, the Earl of BenRuin, seething with rage. BenRuin’s wife, Lydia, is one of Darlington’s lovers. BenRuin is stopped from slitting Darlington’s throat–he breaks a chair instead–and he leaves after telling Darlington that if he touches Lydia again, BenRuin will indeed kill him.

Lydia is at home, taking tea with her sister Kit who has recently come to London to have a belated (she’s 28) season.

‘I do wish you would leave the servants alone,’ said Lydia, Countess of BenRuin, graciously accepting a cup of tea from the footman. She and Kit sat in the upstairs parlour, squares of sunlight fat and warm on the carpet. ‘It makes them so uncomfortable.’

And your house and your friends and this fine dress make me uncomfortable. ‘Yes, my lady.’

Lydia, of the white-blonde hair and perfect figure, looked at Kit like she was a rat who had crept in and sat down for tea. Not scared of rats, Lydia, just deeply disdainful. ‘You only need to call me that in public,’ she said. ‘Lydia will do in private. I grow tired of telling you.’

‘Of course. Lydia.’

‘I suppose “sister” would be too much to manage.’

Kit resisted the urge to throw her hands up at her – a dreadful, base gesture. ‘We’ve not had cause to call each other sister these thirteen years, but the habit could be learned, if you wish it.’

Something interrupted Lydia’s smooth expression, then was gone. ‘Just a passing fancy,’ she said, her vowels as round as a line of marbles. Bored marbles. ‘Is the tea not to your taste? Fetch a new pot,’ she said to the footman. ‘And be sure it is hot when it arrives.’

You wouldn’t know by listening to them, Kit thought, that she was older than Lydia by seven years. The instant you laid eyes on them you’d not be confused, though. The fresh, fair-skinned Countess and her dark hobgoblin sister. Although perhaps she was too tall and strong for a hobgoblin. Perhaps the child of a hobgoblin and a tree.

BenRuin, a man deeply in love with a wife who seems not to care a whit for him, storms into the parlor.

The Earl fell to his knees before her sister, and though standing he was too large, too much for Kit, seeing him brought so low was awful.

‘I almost killed a man today,’ he said, his hands reaching for Lydia and finding no place they would be welcome. ‘I swear to you, I would have put my knife in his throat. Do not drive me further than this.’

Kit looked at her rough hands. Here was the part that was not so easy. She had given everything so that Lydia could marry well.

Lord BenRuin stood, as though he could no longer bear to be near his wife. ‘Do not see him again,’ he said. ‘I beg of you, do not see him again.’

That night, Kit goes to a ball and, as she always does in these social situations, slouches against a wall and thinks about her life at home, a place where she works hard–her family, the Sutherlands, are one step away from impoverished–but can be her true self. As she thinks about the pigs that need to be slaughtered, she listens to the way the ton talks about her sister and realizes Lydia’s affair with Darlington, the most scandalous man in town, is destroying Lydia’s reputation. Kit decides to make her business to end her sister’s liaison. When Darlington arrives at the ball, Kit sees him but before she can seek him out, the most beautiful man she’s ever seen strikes up a conversation with her. Their interchange is charged with the promise of emotional intimacy and, after he walks away from her, Kit feels that “something in her has been touched.” She goes and warns off Darlington who cheerfully tells her he and Lydia have “parted ways.” Darlington seems nothing like his reputation and Kit is bemused.

She wanders away from the social crush and follows the sound of a piano being played. As she stands on the edge of the room, she sees it’s the man she spoke with playing. Before she can speak to him, the hostess of the ball, the very married Lady Marmotte strolls in. As Kit watches the man, who Kit realizes is Darlington, begins to make love to Lady Marmotte. Kit is horrified to see the look on the Duke’s face.

…he was not engaged at all. He did not feel passion. His expression was calculated. His smiles, his voice, were deliberate. He used his body with as much dispassionate skill as the carpenter at Millcross used his lathe. He pushed her further back still, and then he leaned forward and licked her breasts, first one then the other. Methodical, contained.

The next day, Kit encounters Darlington while she is out with Lydia in the park. She asks him to leave Lydia alone. He agrees with the condition that Kit leave London, return home, and take him with her. She agrees despite being warned by BenRuin that if Darlington lays a finger on her, he’ll destroy the man. When the Duke’s carriage arrives to take Kit and Darlington back to the Manor (Kit’s name for her home), Darlington again shocks Kit.

…she was the most magnificent woman Kit had ever seen. She wore the rigid dress of the previous generation, but instead of looking outdated she made you long for the gorgeous, riotous colours of another age. Yellow poppies burst across the wine-red silk that bound her torso, chest and shoulders. They trailed down the skirts that waterfalled under their modest table. She was tightly corseted, her trim figure accentuated by the flare of small hoops beneath her skirts. She looked out the window, offering Kit her profile – the fine, straight nose, the smiling, expressive lips and heavy eyes. She wore a black wig, one thick coil falling over her shoulder on to the white linen tucked around her neck.

The woman turned away from the window and the Duke’s difficult blue eyes laughed out of her face.

What happens from here is complicated, routinely unexpected, and, depending on your perspective, either miraculous or mendacious. The Duke, whose name is Jude, settles into life at the Manor with Kit, her hazy mother, her beta brother, and their one servant Liza. Jude manipulates everyone–only Kit knows he’s a man–into living the lives he sees for them. In the time that the Duke takes over the Manor everyone changes, everything changes. Jude controls everyone but Kit. And it is that relationship with its every shifting power structure that makes this novel so extraordinary.

Let me say I don’t give a damn about this book’s sexual politics. Or rather I don’t give a damn about whether Untamed does justice to non-heteronormative lifestyles. It’s not that I don’t care about the cultural conundrums we ineptly struggle with as we try to define what it means to be a man, a woman, a person in 2013. But when I was reading this book, I was transported. It simply didn’t occur to me to analyze and parse. I just wanted to read.

The majority of this book details the time Jude and Kit spend living together at the Manor. Jude is a volatile chimera, shifting from entrancing to almost evil. Kit is, like so many of my favorite women in fiction, often unlikable. Their relationship is in every aspect–emotional, sexual, and social–constantly mutating. As I turned the pages, steadfastly ignoring the responsibilities of my life, I was, over and over again, surprised but never discomfited by their behavior. Together they are fascinating, sensual, and, in the way that great story-telling often is, fabulously unlikely.

The final chapters of Untamed don’t match the brilliance of the rest of the book. When Kit and Jude return to London–Jude is facing social and financial destruction, all of which has been engineered by a very pissed-off Lady Marmotte–the story falters. Kit and Jude become unlikely in ways that don’t work. The society they best is one that even I, who rarely cares about historical accuracy, found jarringly dubious. Had it not been for the deft and moving portrayal of Lydia’s and BenRuin’s relationship, I’d have felt bereft as I finished the novel.

Untamed is flawed. When, days later, I awoke from its spell, I became aware of its missteps. The novel is rather like an improved Icarus, that fabled dreamer whom Kit invokes near the end of the book’s, a literary “lunatic glory.”

Untamed falls short of its ambitions. But even as I contemplate its failings, I’m ready to read it again. It gets B+ from me.

Darius by Grace Burrowes

this post was originally published at DearAuthor.com

Dear Ms. Burrowes:

I chose this book because the titular hero is a man ho. I read and enjoyed Claire Kent’s Escorted, a contemporary whose hero is a gigolo, and thought it would be fun to read a historical with the same premise. It wasn’t. Darius is well-written and has sympathetic leads. But the storyline never pulled me in and my attention wandered every time I sat down and tried to read.

Darius Lindsey is an impoverished second son who makes his living by sexing but not having intercourse with women in the ton. He’s known for his prowess and his discretion. Despite his skill set, he’s slipping into desperate financial straits. He is saved by aged and dying Lord Longstreet. Lord Longstreet offers Darius all the money he needs if Darius will take on the task of impregnating the Lord’s young wife Lady Vivian. The baby will be the heir Longstreet needs and, once the deed is done, Darius is to have nothing more to do with Vivian or her child.

Darius is the third historical I’ve read in the past few years with an impregnation plot. I enjoyed the other two, Cecilia Grant’s superb A Lady Awakened and the well-done Waking up with the Duke by Lorraine Heath, far more than I did Darius.

After Darius hammers out the terms of his service(s), he and Vivian head off to spend a month together at Darius’s estate in Kent. In the beginning of their relationship, they are classic cliché characters. Darius is the whore with a heart of gold who hides said heart because life has treated him cruelly. Vivian is, despite her marriage, a virginal good girl who tells Darius she wishes she could ”put a sack over my head, stuff cotton wool in my ears, and hum some good old Handel while you do the going on.” And though, at the beginning of the month, they’ve only known each other a few days, they each sense the other’s true self. It’s as if rather than sharing insta-lust, they share insta-almost love.

When they become lovers–they have to wait a few days because Vivian’s having her period–both find the experience galvanizing. (I am so tired of virginal heroines having fabulous intercourse only-orgasms the first time they make love. I realize this trope is as common to romance as chase scenes are to Bond flicks but I’m weary of both.)

Bliss rippled up from their joining and washed out over his body in long, hot pulses, until he lost the sense of where his skin separated him from Vivian, or any other aspect of creation. He heard himself moan—he never moaned—and felt himself clutching at Vivian more desperately than he sought his next breath. His body gave itself up to drenching spasms of pleasure, until he realized that harsh, grating sound was his breathing, and he was going suffocate Vivian if he didn’t turn loose of her.

“Jesus.” He echoed her earlier prayer. “Holy Jesus.”

She pushed up to peer at him. “Was that how it was supposed to go?”

He smiled at her, loving the earnest concern in her expression, the rosy flush of pleasure on her chest. “It will do for a start.”

“You’re teasing me.” She settled down against his chest, content, and he was content to have her in his arms. More than content, God help him.

Within days of their first coupling, both have developed strong emotions for the other. The month they spend together is well-detailed by Ms. Burrows; we see them sharing not just their bodies but their lives. Despite seeing all this intimacy, though, their love for each other seemed a bit out of blue to me. Yeah, they desire each other and Darius pampers and pleasures Vivian every chance he gets but I struggled to see them as soul mates. However, when it is time to part (at the 50% mark in the novel), the two are deeply in love and Vivian has indeed conceived.

When Vivian and Darius return to town, their story began to slip into tedium. They can’t be together but, by the story’s end, they must–this is a traditional romance. Between leaving Kent and living happily ever after in London, Darius and Vivian face melodrama and menace, none of which I found interesting. Darius’s old clients act very badly. Vivian’s evil psuedo-stepfather threatens her and her child’s futures. People are mean to Daruis’s sister whose story will, I’m sure, be explored in one of the other seven books Ms. Burrowes is publishing in this Lonely Lords series. I perused two hundred very slow pages before I, happy to do so, finished the book.

To be fair to Ms. Burrows, I appear to be in the minority. The book has gotten strong reviews elsewhere and 175 Goodreaders have given it over a four star rating. This is my review, however, and I give Darius a C.

Mulishly,

Dabney

The Seduction Hypothesis by Delphine Dryden

this review was originally published at DearAuthor.com

Dear Ms. Dryden:

The Seduction Hypothesis is the sweetest book I’ve ever read involving stainless steel butt plugs and a spreader bar with a set of neoprene ankle cuffs. The hero Ben is just adorable. A few months ago he stupidly broke up with his now ex-girlfriend Lindsay because he’d panicked, an act he’s regretted since the moment he did it. Now, the two are on their way to BeastCon–sort of nerd convention for fans of comics/games/anime–and Ben is going to use the next five days to get her back.

It takes Ben just a few hours riding to Phoenix with Lindsey for him to realize she is turned on big time by the erotic graphic comic she’s reading, Balls ‘n’ Chain. Ben knows just how she’s feeling.

In the single issue he’d read, the girl called Sub Red had worn a shiny black sleeveless catsuit thing unzipped almost to her navel, with suicidally high-heeled boots. Halfway through the comic, the pants had been replaced with short shorts for some reason he couldn’t recall.

He’d read that entire issue with a painful hard-on, put the comic aside and never touched another one for fear he’d explode. It was actually more potent than porn in its effect on him, but he felt horribly guilty for getting turned on by the stuff. He wasn’t supposed to be aroused by the idea of hitting girls on the ass with whips. Or his hand. Or any of the rest. He couldn’t understand why Lindsey, who seemed as progressively feminist as all the other girls of their circle, wanted to read something so misogynistic. True, there were as many women giving the beatings in Balls ‘n’ Chain as receiving them. But shouldn’t that be beside the point? Even the Dominatrices were objectified into sex objects. Hell, everyone was objectivized into a sex object.

He’d told her as much, maybe even scolded her a little, the next time she’d tried to show him a panel from the comic.

Ben, who really is a total peach pie, is also very smart. (A grad student in history. Sigh.) As he thinks about himself and Lindsey, he begins to understand that the whole Master/Slave dynamic is just the thing he needs to, well, master, in order to be the guy Lindsey wants. In fact, not only does he want to be that guy for Lindsey, he wants to be that guy for himself. So, when they get to Phoenix, Ben embarks upon a well-thought out and very sexy totally in charge seduction of Lindsey. It’s the nicest, hottest, campaign to get a girl out of her Slave Leia costume I’ve ever read.

The Seduction Hypothesis is a great book. It’s funny, emotionally engaging, and full of fabulous dialogue. As Ben begins to begin to be Master Ben, he runs everything he’s doing by Lindsey. This endeared him to me. It’s not enough for Ben to realize what Lindsey wants, he’s such a good guy, he talks her through why they weren’t like this before, and how, now, it’s all going to be different.

At the convention, Lindsey, who looks a lot like Sub Red, is recruited to stand-in for–actually, be tied up as–Sub Red at the Balls ‘n’ Chain booth. Ben finds her after she’s done her first shift.

“Did that guy paddle your ass? Or spank you, or flog you, or any other variation of that?”

Lindsey shook her head against the tug of his fingers, her mouth suddenly too dry to speak. She was breathing too fast, practically panting. If Ben slid a hand between her legs right now she’d go off like a bottle rocket.

He seemed to give a lot of thought to what he said next, stating it slowly and clearly as though he wanted there to be no misunderstanding.

“I can’t stop thinking about doing all that to you. Not just the spanking, either, a lot more. A lot. If anybody is going to do that stuff to you, I want it to be me. Nobody. Else.”

She was so accustomed to thinking of him as cute, as harmless. The kind of man who would never hurt a fly. Softly focused, with his sandy hair and indeterminate hazel eyes, vacillating about his career. She’d never seen this version of him until last night’s assertive kiss, this razor-sharp Ben who knew what he wanted and seemed potentially ruthless about getting it.

But still. “Just because you think that’s what I wanted you to do before?” The music shifted gears, growing louder, and the bass drum throbbed through her bones in a maddening primal beat.

Ben shook his head and leaned closer, until their lips were almost touching. “No. Because the thought of putting you over my knee and smacking your perfect butt until it looks like my handprint’s tattooed on there makes me so hard I can barely walk. It made me hard before, too, but I was a fucking idiot and thought I had to feel guilty about getting turned on by shit like that. I’m willing to work on my guilt issues if you’re willing to let me take you up to that hotel room right now and violate you eight ways from Sunday.”

Oh, oh, oh…

Oh, oh, oh is right. This book should come with a fan or a teeny tiny portable air conditioner.

I loved everything about this book. The secondary characters–Ben and Lindsey get helpful tips from Ivan and Cami, the couple from the first book in Ms. Dryden’s The Science of Temptation series, The Theory of Attraction–are effectively rendered and add humor and nuance to the novel. The convention is described in fascinating detail and gives the story an ideal context. Ms. Dryden’s writing is wonderful; she shifts easily back and forth from Ben’s and Lindsey’s perspectives, giving each a clear and interesting voice.

For me, this book was a perfect romance read. The Seduction Hypothesis is a kinder, sweeter book than its predecessor, The Theory of Attraction. This novel has lots of hot, kinky sex in it but is first and foremost a love story. The BDSM in it is just one part of the lovely relationship between Ben and Lindsey. The two use their altered sexual dynamic to improve their already strong bond. As Ben tells Lindsey, “I always knew you were a pervert. I just needed to grow up enough to realize that was a feature, not a bug.”

Ms. Dryden’s latest gets an A- from me.

Dabney

A Taste for Trouble by Susan Sey

This review was originally published at All About Romance 

The last Susan Sey book I read, Money Shot (2011) was set on a remote island in Lake Superior and had deadly money laundering villain, pagan ceremonies, and a smokin' ex Navy SEAL for a hero. This book, Taste for Trouble, is set in the suburbs of DC, has a scheming Martha Stewart wannabe, and a professional soccer playing sorta hot Southern gentleman for a hero. I loved Money Shot; I like Taste for Trouble.

Taste for Trouble opens with the familiar scene of a perfectionist female getting left at the altar by her "I've fallen in love with your assistant" fiance. The dumpee is Belinda West, a driven woman who is the second in command on "Kate Every Day," a popular syndicated daytime TV show. Belinda is upset about her jilting, but not because she loves her jilter. He is just a good friend who, until he fell for another woman, had agreed with Belinda that “Love is nothing more than an excuse to be fickle, impulsive and selfish. People shouldn’t build a lunch date around it, let alone a marriage." Belinda is, however, dismayed that the entire world, as well as Kate of "Kate Every Day", has just watched Belinda's non-wedding on national TV. Kate, who is poised to pick her successor - Belinda was sure it would be her - tells Belinda she's clearly not up to "Kate Every Day" standards and fires her.

Belinda and Kate's agent, a truly lovely man named Bob Beck, tells Belinda she can win her job back if she takes agrees to a (ludicrous) scheme Bob and Kate have cooked up. Another of Bob's clients, the man-child soccer star James Blake, is in need of a manners nanny. James is in danger of being kicked off the DC Statesmen because, as Bob says, "He drinks, he fights, and if he’s ever had a date he didn’t pick up in a strip club I’ve never met her.” Bob proposes that Belinda spend the four weeks supervising James and his two brothers, Will and Drew. When Belinda asks for clarification, Bob explains.

“It means that each week for the next four weeks, Kate will assign you a new social grace to teach our boy. At the end of each week, she’ll evaluate his performance and yours. Brutally. You pass and you get your job back in time for the Kate Every Day Christmas Special.”

Belinda, who has spent the last twelve years of her life, dreaming of living a "Kate Every Day" life, agrees.

The premise of this novel didn't do a thing for me. It seems forced, silly, and unbelievable. I doubted Ms. Sey, though herMoney books are excellently plotted, could make this work. I was wrong. Though the premise never became any less unlikely, the characters in Taste for Trouble sell the story. Belinda and James, as well as a host of well-developed secondary characters, are interesting, well-written, and emotionally engaging.

One of the truly striking things about this book is how profoundly it both shows and tells the reader that family is everything. James, Will, and Drew are a unit because that's who they are. As James explains to Belinda, the only child of a self-absorbed soul-wrecker of a mother, the Blakes have a code.

"...we know what’s important. We know that family is precious, that love is rare, that fate is unkind. We learned those lessons the hard way, and it taught us how to protect what we love against anybody and anything that threatens it.”

What's interesting is that Ms. Sey doesn't make the filial bonds the Blake boys share easy ones. In fact, my favorite part of the book is how bitter and angry Will (my favorite character as well), James's older brother, is about the ties that bind him to his brothers. Will is one unhappy man. He's a borderline alcoholic with a compulsive need to lash out and destroy. He is furious at the ease with which James gets everything: success, money, women, friends, and love. He tears down Drew's simple joy in everyday life every chance he gets. He hates who he is but he can't stop himself from being so self-destructive. Yet it clear he loves his brothers deeply and their love for him exists whether or not he's an utter ass. The next book is Will's story and I can't wait to read it.

Though their parents are dead, the Blakes are a clan (they even have a family crest). Their bonded life exists in sharp contrast to Belinda's (and her boss Kate's) very isolated one. This difference in life experience shapes how differently Belinda and James see their attraction to each other. Belinda fights it because not only is love a messy business, James is her job. Belinda has made her life work by living by a series of rules and one of those is that it is unprofessional to get involved with client. This distinction means nothing to James. He begins falling for Belinda from the moment he meets her. Soon, he cares deeply for her and, for James, that connection is all that matters. Their relationship is winning without being sappy, sexy without being overheated.

At times, this book felt like a Desert Island Keeper to me. In other places, it felt like an inchoate mess. But even when a plot-line didn't work or a character behaved incomprehensibly, I wanted to keep reading. This is a read that, in places, made my heart hurt. I cried at the end, the kind of tears that make you want to find those you love and hold them in your arms. I connected with the Blakes and Belinda, with Kate - poor, bitchy Kate - and Bob, and with Audrey (Will's love interest) and her little girl. I wanted all of these characters to find happiness. Not all do and that too makes this a stronger book than its plot would suggest. I'm glad I read it. I'll be waiting eagerly for Talent for Trouble, the next tale in the trilogy.

I give it a B.

Beauty and the Blacksmith by Tessa Dare

This review was originally published at DearAuthor.com

Dear Ms. Dare,

I may have had it with Spindle Cove, your Regency-era haven for unusual young women and the men who love them.* The place has become nettlesomely toothsome, rather like Gwyeth Paltrow gushing over adorable organic baby blankets. This novella, Beauty and the Blacksmith, is a quick, easy read, the equivalent of a too small serving of trifle served with a half cup of over-sweetened tea.

The fairest maiden in Spindle Cove is Diana Highwood. Diana is the well-behaved sister of my favorite of all the Spindle Cove spinsters, Minerva, the heroine of the very amusing A Week to Be Wicked. In the books preceeding this one, Diana's role has been to be a gorgeous, delicate foil for her matrimony-obsessed mother, Mrs. Highwood. Mrs. Highwood is a good example of why I've grown tired of quaint Spindle Cove. In every scene she's in, she makes the same inane assertions. Diana is so lovely, every titled man in England must fall for her. Diana is so striking that if she'd just try a bit harder, she could land a Duke. She's a one punchline joke I've encountered too many times.

In Beauty and the Blacksmith, Diana, like the reader, is uninterested in her mother's marital schemes. Diana doesn't want to wed any of the men her mother keeps throwing her at, for Diana has fallen for the village blacksmith, Aaron Dawes. She thinks he's hotter than the forge he's always banging away on. (I will refrain from making a smutty pun.)

Goodness. Just look at it. Thick as my ankle.
Diana Highwood took her glove and worked it like a fan, chasing the flush from her throat. She was a gentlewoman, born and raised in genteel comfort, if not opulent luxury. From an early age, she’d been marked as the hope of the family. Destined, her mother vowed, to catch a nobleman’s eye.
But here, in the smithy with Aaron Dawes, all her delicate breeding disintegrated.
How could she help staring? The man had wrists as thick as her ankle.
As always, he wore his sleeves rolled to the elbow, exposing forearms roped with muscle. He pumped the bellows, commanding the flames to dance.
Broad shoulders stretched his homespun shirt, and a leather apron hung low on his hips. As he removed the glowing bit of metal from the fire and placed it on his anvil, his open collar gaped.
Diana averted her gaze—but not fast enough. She caught a moment’s glimpse of pure, superheated virility. Sculpted chest muscles, bronzed skin, dark hair . . .

Aaron has the hots for her too. Not only is she the most beautiful girl in the world, she's kind, resourceful, smart, too good for him, etc... Aaron knows she's above his station but damn, it's clear she's as attracted to him as he is to her. He knows this because, for the last two years, she has brought him every piece of metal she owns to be repaired.

“I wonder about it. Why you come so often. Why every metal latch and clasp and rivet you possess seems to need mending of late.” His voice grew deeper, almost dreamy. “I’ve told myself you’re just bored with this village. With this weather, there’s little else to do.”
He circled her, running his finger beneath that chain. Branding her with a necklace of his touch.
“Other times”—she caught a wry note in his voice—“I decide you’ve been sent by the devil to torment me for my sins.”
He came to stand before her, holding that vial that dangled from her necklace. He pulled gently, and she swayed toward him. Just an inch.
“And then sometimes I think maybe . . . just maybe . . . you’re hoping for something to happen. Something like this.”
She swallowed hard, staring straight into the notch above his sternum. That shamelessly sensual crossroads of bone and muscle and sinew and skin.
The heat of him swamped her. She felt . . . It was so very odd, but she felt ticklish. As though every inch of her was exquisitely attuned, anticipating his touch.
Perhaps he was right.
Perhaps she had been wanting this.
He released her necklace. “Well?”
She gathered her courage and looked up at him. Outside of social calls and dinner parties, Diana had little experience with men. But if there was one thing her genteel upbringing had taught her, it was how to read an invitation.
If she gave Mr. Dawes the slightest encouragement . . .
Oh, heavens. He would kiss her. Those strong, sensual lips would be on hers, and his powerful arms would hold her tight, and there would be no taking the moment back. She would leave with a changed understanding of herself and smears of soot on her best blue frock. In the eyes of the world, she’d be soiled.
Dirty.
“I should go.” The words erupted from her throat, like a geyser of panic. “I should go.”

Diana does run away the first time he tries to kiss her, but not the second, and before you can say once upon a time, the beauty and the anything but beastly blacksmith have fallen in love.

This slight novella tells Aaron's and Diana's story quite straightforwardly. There's nothing but reality standing in the way of their HEA, but, hey, this is a fairy tale.

I liked Aaron and Diana and Ms. Dare infuses her prose with her usual well-done heat. But, there's little here (with the exception of a very odd and yet funny story about mysterious suitor named Mr. Everwood a Spindle Cove spinster named Miss Bertram natters on and on about) that's new or exciting. And, all the things that have begun to grate on me about Spindle Cove exist in abundance in Beauty and the Blacksmith. I give it a C+.

Sincerely,

Dabney

*It turns out I'm not ready to abandon Ms. Dare's Spindle Cove series. After reading Beauty and the Blacksmith, I read the next book, Any Duchess Will Do. It's delightful.

to baby or not to baby: that is the question

This piece was originally published at All About Romance

Warning: this piece has spoilers about three contemporary romances: Sabrina Darby's Entry Level Mistress, Joan Kilby's Maybe this Time, and Sarah Mayberry's Suddenly You

Last month, I read a contemporary romance by Sabrina Darby that, despite its slightly sexist title--Entry Level Mistress--I was enjoying. Then, in the last few chapters of the novel, a plot twist ruined the book for me. The heroine, a smart, independent 21 year old with a successful career as an artist ahead of her, gets pregnant by her billionaire 31 year old boyfriend and, with very little thought, decides to have the baby. 

Now, before you scroll down to the comment section and share your passionately held views on abortion, please, for my sake, read a bit further. 

Let me tell you a bit about the context of this particular surprise baby. In Entry Level Mistress, the protagonists, Emily and Daniel, are very careful--except for this one time--not to get pregnant. They talk about birth control, use condoms, and share with each other how important it is to both of them to succeed in their professional worlds. One tempestuous night, they make love without using protection, fight the next morning, and break up. Emily, when she finds out she is pregnant decides not only to have the baby but to do so without any support from Daniel. Once Daniel finds out she's carrying his child, he woos her back to his side, and she realizes that being with him, becoming Mrs. Hartman, will make her the happiest woman alive. 

Why did this so bother me? For starters, I didn't believe that Emily wouldn't have given abortion some serious thought. There's nothing in the novel that suggests she's religious or has dreamed of having children. In Entry Level Mistress, Emily is about her goals, her profession as an artist, and her empowered sexual self. I found it almost impossible to believe that she would decide, at 21, to have a child without seriously considering other options, especially that of abortion. 

Why do I mention abortion rather than adoption? Less than 20,000 American children are given up for adoption each year. Although no one can agree on a single number, it's safe to say over a million abortions occur in the United States each year, a third of which are had by women 20-24. Emily lives in Massachusetts, a state with comparatively liberal abortion laws. It seems unlikely she wouldn't have given serious reflection to the choices available to her. 

Furthermore, the surprise baby did not seem intrinsic to the plot. Emily and Daniel had other believable barriers to their happy ending. The pregnancy felt awkwardly shoved in the story. And, once a part of the narrative, the unplanned baby became the focus of the story. As the book ends, there's no sense that the rest of Emily's life outside of Daniel and their child matters to her in a significant way. A book that began with the heroine as a (very) young, independent, self-determined woman ends with her as a wife and a mother above all else. 

Now, I'm a wife and mother. I have four children and I didn't work for several years when my children were young. And while I am pro-choice, I'd prefer abortion be safe and rare. Two of my children are Emily's age and I confess it would depress me if either of them defined themselves solely, so early in their lives, as spouses and parents. I want choices for my children. I want them to have options, consider those options carefully, and choose the option most likely to bring them long term happiness. 

Let me be clear, it's not just Ms. Darby's prose that irks me here. It's contemporary romance in general. In the past year, I've read too many books where a young (or not so young) woman gets pregnant and never considers any choice but to have a child. Worse, the pregnancies are often unintended--the condom broke, the couple was carried away by passion, etc..--and yet the arrival of a baby is usually portrayed as a boon to the relationship. That too makes me crazy. Babies are hugely stressful for marriages. 90% of couples say the quality of their relationship declined when the first baby arrived. Many women suffer from post-partum depression. Here again, don't misunderstand me. I'm all for having babies if you want them. I had four, despite having a terrible post-partum depression after I gave birth to my first child. Having children does make parents, in the long run, happier. What I'm irked about is that contemporary romance rarely shows having a baby as the challenge it is for many many couples. 

So, you may ask, what do I want? No pregnancies in contemporary romance? No. I want pregnancies that, rather than portraying a baby as something akin to a human lottery ticket, are organic to the story in which they occur. 

I want more novels like Joan Kilby's Maybe This Time. In this contemp, a divorced couple has a fling when they discover they're both on the same singles cruise. They wait a little too long for the ex-husband to don a condom and the ex-wife gets pregnant. She wants the baby; initially, he does not. Her pregnancy is hard on her--she's working full-time as a nurse--and rather than binding her to her baby's father, the stress she feels pushes them farther apart. It's not until the heroine has the baby and then gets a severe case of the baby blues, that the hero, worried something dire might happen, begins to insert himself into the lives of ex-wife and his child. Everything about this book felt real to me including its joyful ending. 

I want more books like Sarah Mayberry's Suddenly You. In that book, one of my favorite romance from 2012, the heroine Pippa gets pregnant and the father of the child wants nothing to do with her or the baby. Pippa adores her daughter Alice but being a financially strapped single mother is hard. Between working, trying to study, and caring for Alice, there's little room in Pippa's life for fun and romance. When she does begin seeing a man she fancies, Harry, he is at first completely uninterested in Alice, and, in fact, sees her as a reason not to get emotionally involved with Pippa. When Harry and Pippa do become lovers, Alice is often an anti-aphrodisiac. In Suddenly You, when Harry and Pippa think about their future together, both give a great deal of thought to what it would mean to raise a child together. 

I want more books like Jennifer Lohmann's The First Move where adoption is portrayed as a reasonable alternative for a young mother and where the issues around not having and not keeping a baby are explored with sensitivity. 

I want books where the protagonists explore all the options--pregnancy, adoption, the morning after pill, and abortion--carefully and openly. Many say that to do so would doom a romance novel. I don't believe that. In 2009, Dear Author ran a poll asking if abortion was an acceptable choice for a romance heroine. 70% of the respondents said yes. A recent Rasmussen Reports poll found that 59% of American women described themselves as pro-choice. I believe if an author wrote a contemporary romance where a pregnant heroine decided against having a child and that decision was part of her happy ever after many romance readers would welcome such a story. After all, there are thousands of romances that show heroines having babies. There are none, that I'm aware of, that show a heroine making a different choice, one that women all over are familiar with. Those readers, the ones that want to see the choice they or others they know have made not to have a child, are ready for a romance that reflects their reality. 

In 2002, country music superstar Tim McGraw released a song called "Red Rag Top." The song went to #5 on the country charts and #40 on the Billboard Top 100. In it, Mr. McGraw tells of a pair of young lovers (he was 20, she was 18) who got pregnant. Mr. McGraw sings: "I was out of a job and she was in school/And life was fast and the world was cruel/We were young and wild/We decided not to have a child." If country music, often considered the province of the conservative side of America, can depict ending a pregnancy, why can't a romance?
      

thoughts on The Way We Were

I saw this movie the year it came out. I was 12 and the only reason my mom let me see it was because my dad was a big Barbra fan. I've seen it, oh, I don't know, somewhere in between five and ten times since then. I watched it tonight and it occurred to me how differently I see that movie now than at other times in my life. Here, for the sake of a smile, is my perspective on The Way We Were over the years.


The Way We Were at age 12: "Wow. I have no idea what that was all about but it was so sad and I really like that song. Robert Redford is the best looking grownup in the world. Sobbed at the last scene."

The Way We Were at age 20: "Communism was kinda cool. And why can't Hubbell see that he'll never be the guy he needs to be with out Katie. Strong women rock. Sobbed at the last scene."

The Way We Were at age 31: "Oh my god, this movie is over the top. But even knowing that, I still want Katie and Hubbell to be together. Plus, they had a baby. I have a baby. This is just wrong. Sobbed at the last scene."

The Way We Were at age 51: "Hmmm.... It's clear they should have just had sex and moved on. They were never going to make it. Too different. And, today there's no way he'd have no responsibility for that little girl. Still, I do love that song. And this damn movie. Sobbed at the last scene."

The Great Escape by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

this review was originally published at DearAuthor.com

Dear Ms. Phillips:

Your novels, when they work well, are like excellent banana pudding. I idolize banana pudding. It’s the ideal comfort/pleasure food. Good banana pudding is softly hued, has just enough variety in its makeup to keep it from being boring, is sweet without being cloying, and, after I’ve inhaled it, I’m unchanged but content. The Great Escape is not great banana pudding. It’s tolerable banana pudding, and, yikes, I’m abandoning this metaphor right now.

The Great Escape is Lucy Jorik’s story. Ms. Phillips fans first met Lucy in First Lady as the daughter of future president (and unbelievable heroine) Cornelia Case. Lucy grew up in the White House, always in the public eye, and, when last seen in the irritating Call Me Irresistible, she’d bailed moments before she was to marry one of my least favorite SEP heroes, practically perfect in every way, Teddy Beaudine. Prior to The Great Escape, readers knew Lucy was one time-zone away from Texas but had no idea where she’d gone.

Now we do and, frankly, it’s lame.

After Lucy ran out of the church, clad in an “exquisite French bra, her lacy bridal panties, blue garter, and white satin stilettos” and a choir robe (she’d ripped off her headpiece, gown, and veil and dumped them in the vestry), she met a man on a motorcycle.

The motor idled as he took his time studying her. One black boot hit the gravel. “S’up?” he said over the engine noise.

He had too-long black hair that curled pat his collar, cold blue eyes set above high cheekbones, and sadistic lips. After so many years of Secret Service protection, she’d grown used to taking her safety for granted, but she didn’t feel safe now, and the fact that she dimly remembered the biker as a guest at last night’s rehearsal dinner–one of Ted’s odd assortment of friends–didn’t exactly reassure her. Even semi-cleaned up in a dark suit that didn’t fit well, a rumpled white shirt open at the collar, and motorcycle boots that appeared to have received nothing more than a dusting, he didn’t look like anybody she wanted to meet in an alley….

He jerked his head toward the rear of his bike. “Wanna go for a ride?”

Doggedly good girl Lucy gets on the bike, robe riding up her thighs, and heads out to experience the big bad Secret-Service-free world.

None of this is remotely believable. That’s not so bothersome, however. Ms. Phillips’s works exist in a parallel world where the realities that limit ours–government agents that can’t be escaped by a President’s daughter in stilettos, voters who have yet to elect a young female president, poverty that isn’t really poor, tigers that telepathically communicate with girls named Daisy–hold no sway. She writes that world unapologetically and, especially when it’s set around a mythical Chicago football team, it’s entertaining. (It Had to Be You, Natural Born Charmer, Dream a Little Dream, This Heart of Mine, and the non-Stars based Kiss an Angel = good banana pudding).

No, what’s bothersome is how uninteresting it is, how petty Lucy’s efforts to find herself are. Lucy leaves Ted, her family, her best friend Meg, and their expectations at the altar. She rejects the limiting life she’s had growing up in the public eye. What does she do with this freedom she’s finally grabbed for herself?

She gets picked up by a taciturn guy named Panda riding a bike that bears this bumper sticker:GAS, GRASS, OR ASS. NOBODY RIDES FOR FREE. He wheels her away, acting like a lout, to days of crappy fast food and chaste nights in low rent rooms. Lucy doesn’t have money or a cell phone, so she uses his. She hides behind his badass swagger; no one notices her in the dives they frequent, they’re all too twitchy with fear of and/or desire for Panda. Lucy tells herself she’s working on her bad biker babe skills. She renames herself Viper, practices sneering, and spends her days thinking up surly girl repartee to impress Panda.

Lame.

This goes on, rather incomprehensibly for two Secret Service free weeks and 67 pages. Then, in short order, Lucy and Panda have Dairy Queen described sex (“Flurry. Quake. Flood.”), Panda dumps Lucy, explains what he’s really been doing with her, and Lucy runs away again, this time to a picturesque island in the Great Lakes where she thinks Panda regularly goes (she found a ferry pass in his pocket.)

At this point, the novel becomes not about escape, but about finding the holy grail of fictional bliss: a safe harbor. (I’m convinced Ms. Phillips planned to call this book Safe Harbor for both the phrase and the concept appear frequently.)

Lucy, who has disguised herself to look like, yes, a biker girl complete with dreads, too tight tank tops, black combat books, and press-on tattoos, arrives via ferry to Charity Island, in Saginaw Bay. (The island really exists. It’s in Michigan waters of Lake Huron.) There, she lies to a couple of chatty locals who tell her that “a dude named Panda” “bought the old Remington place out on Goose Cove” a couple of years ago. Lucy heads to the empty house, breaks in (Viper, the girl with the fake dragon tattoo, strikes again!), and, after returning her rental car back to the mainland, buys some groceries, and begins living there.

She settles in, scours and rearranges Panda’s vacation (?) home, and tries to write her part of her famous mother’s biography which she’s utterly unable to do. After a week of this, Panda appears and he and Lucy begin again. He tells her his real name, where he lives (most of the time), and tells her to go home. She doesn’t. He agrees, after some Viper applied guilt about the sex they had, to let Lucy stay for a month, rent-free, in his house. He won’t be there, he says. He’s got a job to do elsewhere.

Up until this point in the novel, I’d found nothing to hold my interest. Lucy annoyed me with her posturing, Panda’s “I’m pretending to be a big jerk” schtick grated. In the second two-thirds of the book, Panda’s and Lucy’s exasperating relationship became one of several story lines. The book leaves contemporary romance behind and moves into the hazy realm of women’s fiction. Furthermore, although she does it in ways that leave her vulnerable to accusations of tokenism and misinterpretation of young black males, closeted lesbians, and veterans with PTSD, Ms. Phillips expands her cast of characters beyond the white and witty.

I liked the descriptions of life on Charity Island. The island has a small year-round population and Ms. Phillips shows the life behind the fruit stands. At times, her writing is lovely. Whether describing the bees kept by Bree, the depressed divorcee whose family once owned Panda’s house, or showing the ease with which teen tourists wreak havoc, the prose in this part of the novel is strong and occasionally moving. Her familiar themes of family and community are well-done. If I had to articulate the ethos of Ms. Phillip’s Charity Island, it would be it takes a village to raise us all, a village made of all kinds. There is a vague hectoring sense to this novel, but it didn’t distress me. In The Great Escape, kindness, charity, tolerance, and acceptance are all trumpeted. It’s done with a somewhat awkward horn, but I appreciated the message nonetheless.

Sadly, the end of the novel is, in all sorts of ways, the pits. The focus returns to Panda and Lucy the latter of whom opts for icky shenanigans in order to win Panda… which he is fine with. There’s a spouse/spawn epilogue as treacley as any I’ve encountered. If I could burn books–I can’t, I’m the daughter of a librarian–the last twenty pages of this book would be toast.

I give it a C.

Dabney

P.S. Here’s a recipe for my favorite banana pudding.