Review: Sugar Pie Guy by Tabitha True

3 stars

For ages, I've been going between 3 and 3.5 stars on Sugar Pie Guy. It gets full marks for the concept and some aspects of the execution, while other - particularly the insta-love and some of the writing - didn't work so well for me. 

It's set in 1977 suburban Cleveland, where a small, run-down strip mall serves as the centre of the local community. Roberta "Bobbie" Bell's aunt owns a business there, and Bobbie and her friends decide to hold some discos for some good, clean fun, and to help Bobbie's aunt out of some financial difficulties. But when Randy is sent to Cleveland to realise his father's ambitions of turning the mall into something more profitable, the community must rally. Even though Bobbie and Randy are on opposite sides of this fight, they're drawn to each other, and soon Randy's not sure if selling the mall is the best idea after all. 

The romance between Bobbie and Randy developed quite fast, and I found it hard to accept that they could fall in love so quickly, especially given that they are on opposite sides of the campaign to save the mall, and would be entering into a potentially fraught interracial romance (as you can see on the cover, Bobbie is African-American, while Randy is white, of Italian extraction).  

Admittedly, the latter does give Bobbie pause, and constitutes part of the continued awareness of race throughout the book. I thought this was handled sensitively, reflecting both the progress made in the decade since the Civil Rights Movement ended, and the entrenched bigotry that remained. 

The American disco scene is not exactly my area of expertise, but my understanding is that it - like many cultural phenomena - arose from the marginalised African-American, gay and Latino communities, and I was pleased to see that reflected in Sugar Pie Guy. It is together with her cousin Luke, and his DJ partner, Sal, that Bobbie starts the disco, which is always intended to be a safe space for everyone: 

“Vel [the owner of the space where the disco is being held] knows that this is probably going to be a mixed straight and gay crowd, right?”    

“Right.  He doesn’t care. He says he saw everything there is to see during the war.”  Propping her chin on her hand, she warned Luke about the house rules for a private party at the Donuteria.  “No booze, no drugs, no nudity, no public sex…”  (14%)

The distinction between their "safe, suburban disco" (23%) and other, wilder ones is something that I found particularly interesting because of similar cultural phenomena in Australia and New Zealand, from the Blue Light Discos that my parents attended and that are still a fixture for young people in some communities, to the locally renowned "Lav" dances I went to in Sydney as a young teen. 

The 70s setting was expressed in campy dialogue and writing that - to me, as a modern reader - mostly hit a good level of 'cheesily fun'. Sometimes, however, I found myself rolling my eyes, particularly at the flowery, heavily euphemistic way the sex scenes are written. Bobbie and Randy's repeated use of the endearment 'baby' also got old, but I think has to do with my distaste for that particular pet name than anything else.

But, overall, I enjoyed the way Sugar Pie Guy brought both the carefree attitudes and more serious aspects of the 70s to life. It was a novel read, and I'd recommend it for anyone who - like me - is always looking for 'outside-the-box' historicals. I think there's a lot of untapped potential for romances set in the second half of the 20th Century in a variety of setting, and I hope to see more authors taking advantage of this in the future. 

Review: Yuletide Truce by Sandra Schwab

3 stars
I received an ARC of this book from the A Novel Take PR (on behalf of the author) in exchange for an honest review. My opinion is my own.

Yuletide Truce was a short and sweet m/m Christmas novella. As always, Schwab builds an excellent sense of time and place, but I wish that the romance had been a little bit more drawn out.

Bookseller Alan "Aigee" Garmond loves the Christmas season, but Christopher Foreman's scathing comments in About Town magazine about Aigee's humble book reviews are putting a damper on his mood. Foreman's antipathy upsets Aigee, but, when an incident occurs that strips both men of their defences, it provides an opportunity for the two men to call a Christmas truce, one that has the possibility to turn into something more.

Schwab is extremely talented at breathing life into the everyday world of her characters. Here, that's the Victorian middle-classes, and there were lots of small moments that brought me unexpected enjoyment: Aigee's reminiscences of his life as an apprentice, the descriptions of illustrations from an English translation of the Brothers Grimm, and a reference to the knocker-upper. 

An awareness of class underlies the whole novella, as Aigee doesn't feel completely at home in either the bourgeoisie literary world in which he works, or the world of the rookery where he grew up. 

While this sense of being caught between two worlds was poignant, I felt as though it was undermined by the lack of conflict in the men's developing romance. Despite the enemies-to-lovers trope, after the men's initial on-page meeting, there was very little tension between the characters, or resistance to a relationship. It all came a bit too easy, with almost no groveling on Foreman's part, or grudge-holding on Aigee's. 

That said, the lack of angst means that it fills a certain niche within the genre: everyone needs an easy, feel-good romance at times - particularly at Christmas, when many people are dealing with conflict-heavy or fraught family situations - and Yuletide Truce fills that need perfectly. 

Review: Sight Unseen Anthology

Multiple ratings

The concept of this anthology was that well-known romance authors would each write a story outside of their usual genre, but their name would not be attached to it until some time after publication, leaving the reader to guess which author wrote which story. I thought the concept was clever and was executed well - although I am pretty sure I know the author of one story, I can only make guesses at the rest. 

Even though I auto-buy three of the five authors included in this anthology (Thomas, Barry and Satie), and regularly also read and enjoy Duran's books, I found the majority of stories (3/5) just okay. I've been thinking about this: on one hand, it's very common for anthologies to be a bit of a mixed bag, while, on the other, I think the experimental nature of the anthology could also be a contributing factor. Not having the authors name attached to their work means there's a lack of confirmation bias, because the reader can't go in thinking: 'I've loved all of this author's previous work, surely I will love this as well' and is thus more critical than they might otherwise be.

Nonetheless, I think that Sight Unseen is full of quick, interesting reads, and contains something for everyone, except maybe readers who heavily lean towards historical romance. The novelty factor also adds something fun and unique to the reading experience. 

Lost that Feeling - 3 stars
Before being captured as the leader of a rebellion, Alma used her magic to wipe her memory. When her fellow rebels break her out of the prison where she has been kept, she must relearn her place in this underground movement against the King, and begins to question her motives her wiping her memory, and her relationship to Driss, the man who helped her escape. 

Objectively, the world-building in Lost that Feeling was great. I'm sure most people would have enjoyed it more than I did, but I have very been particularly interested in the kind classical fantasy setting that appears here. Given a strong romance arc - like in Grace Draven's work - I can sometimes let myself go and enjoy such settings, but there were only the slightest hints of romance between Alma and Driss. Having said that, I did like the open and hopeful ending, which reminded me of the teasing ending of a prequel novella, before the book actually dedicated to unravelling the hero and heroine's relationship.

A Clear View of You - 3 stars
Kate works as a psychic to pay off her student debts, even though she hates it and the whole thing is obviously bogus. But then North shows up, offering her an obscene amount of money if she'll use her 'skills' to help him locate an object. 

As a Fey, North knows that Kate has no psychic talent, but what she does have is a mother who is meddling with powers beyond her control. He needs Kate's help to gain entrance to the compound where her mother's so-called 'coven' live, and take back a Fey orb whose power is being misused, before it is too late.

Again, I liked the world-building and backstory of this one more than the romance. Kate has issues from growing up with a hippy mother who believes she is a witch, and just wants to lead a normal life. North is more of an enigma as a character, but the differentiation between the mundane and fey worlds were well-explained and -constructed. However, I wasn't convinced by the romance arc, and feel like the story would have benefited from being a bit longer, or having a bit more characterisation on North's part. 

Free - 3 stars
In small-town Montana, Wren's father and uncle run the local second-hand car dealership and a motorcycle club. She's sure that the club just a social thing for bored guys for like motorbikes and wearing leather jackets until the dealership's dorky part-time accountant, clues her into some suspicious stuff on the books. 

Brad has had it bad for Wren for ages, but she's the town's unofficial first daughter, not to mention the on-again/off-again relationship with one of the guys in the motorcycle club. But when he accidentally lets Wren in on what's going on behind the scenes, assuming she was already in the know, she begins to make her own investigations, and needs someone to turn to when she uncovers something unpleasant. 

Heroes in motorcycle clubs are currently all the rage, and Free used this trope in a creative way that I really appreciated. Making it MC-adjacent meant that the reader doesn't have to tackle the moral greyness or suspension of disbelief involved when the hero is actually a biker. The story was also very well written and paced. I considered giving it a higher ranking, but didn't, because Wren's portrayal of the dumb-blonde-with-smokin'-body portrayal rankled. There's nothing inherently sexist about it - in fact, it is a good example of Butler's concept of performative gender, but it was continually a point of focus in a way that centred the male gaze, and it dampened my enjoyment of the whole thing a bit. 

Chariot of Desire - 3.5 stars
The 70's were good to the legendary band Donjon, but as the 1980's roll around, the rock'n'roll lifestyle has taken its toll. Lead singer Donny has joined a Christian sect, and is thus unwilling to sing any of their backlist that contains immoral themes. So, basically, all of it. With the stress on the band reaching breaking point, Donny turns to the band's drummer, CJ, as they try to find a balance between Donny's religion and demons, CJ's standoffishness and the good of the band.

I found Chariot of Desire interesting and different, for a number of reasons. There's the mid-to-late 20th century setting (which I think is massively underused in romance), the use of religion and sectism and the fact that the main characters are past their prime and live (or lived) for sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. As with other stories in the anthology, there is an open ending without a definitive HFN or HEA, but for some reason it worked slightly better for me here, perhaps because it would have been too much of an about-face for the characters to commit to a relationship together. 

The Heart is a Universe - 5 stars
Every generation, on the planet of Pax Cara, a child is chosen and raised with the knowledge that, when they grow up, they will be a sacrifice to the old gods. With less than a month left until she must sacrifice herself, Vitalis is looking for a way out. A hero in his own right, Eleian of Terra Illustrata has watched the media coverage of Vitalis for many years. When they meet at an official function, he makes her a public offer of marriage. She accepts, but both of them are hiding things from the other, and the day of the sacrifice is growing ever closer. 

The Heart is a Universe was the anthology's stand-out story for me. The world-building, characterisation and plot were all amazing, and it several times it went in directions I genuinely did not expect. It has an unconventional HEA, and if someone else had told me about it, I would have scoffed and denied that anyone could ever pull that off, but somehow, the author does. 

Also, for those of you taking part it July's #RomBkLove on Twitter or elsewhere, yesterday's theme was "favourite Virgin Hero/Heroine", and many of us talked about our love for virgin heroes, and made some suggestions. I forgot to mention Eleian, but he is an awesome virgin hero, and I love the way this is worked into the story.

Concluding Thoughts
Looking back on what I've written, it strikes me that Sight Unseen is not just experimental in form, but is also pushing the romance boundaries in other ways, particularly in the way many of the endings do not fit genre conventions surrounding the HEA/HFN. That makes me feel bad about critiquing them, or - more accurately - critiquing some and accepting others. But I'm all about the HEA. 

Review: In at the Deep End by Penelope Janu

3 stars

In at the Deep End was a quirky Aussie romance by debut author Penelope Janu. I'd really been looking forward to this one, but I'm left feeling ambivalent, because, while I enjoyed the second half, I didn't connect to the first half.

Harriet 'Harry' Scott grew up in the public eye as the daughter of two globe-trotting conservationist documentary-makers. But an accident in her childhood has left her petrified of water. When the ship she is captaining - which was once her parent's but is now owned by the charitable foundation they set up - goes down in Antarctic waters, Per Amundsen comes to her rescue. He's a Commander in the Norwegian Navy, on loan to the Australian Navy, and he's unimpressed by Harriet's plight. The sinking of the The Watch has damaged Harry's reputation, but Per has lost his chance to undertake his research on the Antarctic ice shelves. 

Harry has a plan to put things right: the Scott Foundation will buy a new ship, and Per can use that for his research. But the foundation doesn't have the money. Although Harry's high profile and Per's scientific connections would help fundraising efforts, Per wants no part of it. He thinks that Harriet is incompetent, irresponsible and a danger to herself and others. When it becomes clear that the only way he will get what he wants is by working with her, Per places a condition on his involvement: Harriet must learn to swim. And, when Per takes charge of Harry's swimming lessons himself, sparks fly. 

The whole novel is written from Harriet's perspective. This gives the reader an awareness her phobia - which I thought was portrayed realistically and sympathetically, as were the other psychological matters the book dealt with - but it also means that, until late in the piece, the reader sees Per as Harriet sees him: as an uptight, overbearing pain-in-her-ass. 

This lack of insight into the hero was critical to me, because I had trouble relating to Harriet. She doodles in high-stakes meetings with lawyers, even when people are talking directly to her. In her day-job as a geography teacher, she seems to spend more time drawing pictures on the whiteboard or talking to her students about her personal life than teaching the curriculum. She's also massively clumsy, which never sits well with me. Some of her irrationality and juvenility can be attributed to her phobia, but not all of it. For example, about mid-way through the book, Harry elbows Per in the stomach, because he's holding her arm and she's having a panic attack. That's perfectly acceptable. But then, towards the end, she punches him - 3 times - because he's "frustrating and intractable" (loc. 4409). Not acceptable. The romance between the two is a very slow-burn, which I usually love, but characterisation here meant that I had trouble even getting to the point where the romance began to warm up. 

However, the second half, when Per and Harriet worked through their enmity, was nuanced and engaging. As Harriet and Per opened up to each other - particularly he to her, since we're already inside her head - I was better able to invest in their relationship. Their growing closeness allowed Per to be the kind of hero that I love, caring and compassionate. In fact, there were a few moments that gave me butterflies, especially around the way he handled consent and safe sex. 

I also really enjoyed the fact that In at the Deep End was set in Sydney, where I live. I can't help but feel a connection to a book that references and describes familiar places like the Quadrangle at USyd, the HMAS Penguin at Balmoral and Royal North Shore Hospital, which I have always known like the back of my hand, first because it was my dad's workplace, and then because it was my own. 

Because of my background in health care (and my general pedantry), I was pulled out of the story several times because of the artistic license taken with medical matters. While there's nothing wrong with that, and I doubt it will bother anyone else, I can't help but issue a PSA: if someone has hypothermia, don't massage or rub or massage their body or extremities. Best case scenario, you'll send the patient into worse shock and severely chaff their skin. Worst case scenario, you've got a cardiac arrest on your hands. 

Harriet's reminiscences about her childhood travelling the world also made me quite uncomfortable, because they were continually exoticising and primitivising other cultures: 

When I was fifteen I spent weeks living with him in stilted huts on the banks of rivers in South-East Asia. The village women forced me to eat even though their own children were far skinnier than I was. The following year...we catalogued the wildebeest migration from the Serengeti in Kenya to the Masai-Mara in Kenya. A few months after that we spent the summer on horseback with Mongolian herdsmen on China's Silk Road. (loc. 317) 

There's a lot of footage of Drew and me dancing together--with Ghanaian drummers, North American boot-scooters, Turkish belly dancers. He used to say that he only got into trouble when I wasn't dancing with him, like the time he waltzed with a dictator's mistress in Cuba, and did the tango with a Geisha in Japan. (loc. 2079)

Paragraphs like these occur throughout the book, and I suppose their purpose is to highlight Harriet's experiences across the world growing up, but they brought nothing to the story. In fact, they often interrupted the narrative flow, and the way people and their lives are made into props in Harriet's 'adventurous' life left me feeling a little bit off. 

Because I did have such disparate feelings about different parts of this book, I've been struggling with this review for a long time. I've had trouble putting everything into words, so this isn't a particularly eloquent or coherent review. It's very rant-y for something that I ended up giving 3 stars to, but I was just so damn ambivalent about everything. I'd think of something I disliked and lower my rating, then remember something that worked for me and bump it back up. In the end, I went with 3 stars, but it's one of those cases where I think people should make up their own minds. Almost all other reviews have been favourable, so if it sounds like something that's up your alley, give it a go. Maybe it's just me, and you'll have an easier time with it.

Review: Luck Be a Lady by Audra North

3 stars
Release Date: 23/01/16
I received a free ARC of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review. My opinion is my own.

It took me a while to get into Luck be a Lady, and I didn't enjoy it as much as Audra North's other books, particularly my gold standard, Giving It Up. 

Set in Ireland, Luck Be A Lady is the story of Aoife Gallagher and Michael Faraday (like the scientist). They were childhood friends, until Aoife overheard something that sent her running. Fifteen years later, after Aoife has built up an internationally successful cosmetics company based in the US, the two are in Dublin. Michael makes contact when he thinks Aoife might be able to help him professionallly, but he soon realises that he's interested in more than her connections.

My main problem with with Luck be a Lady was that the relationship between between Aoife and Michael was on the weak side. First, a miscommunication kept them apart for 15 years. To North's credit, the two of them got this sorted out quickly and in a pretty straight-forward manner. However, after that, we keep being told that they really enjoy being together, but their purported connection is told and not shown. To me, it doesn't feel like there's much extended dialogue or many extended interactions between Aoife and Michael shown entirely on the page. We're not shown that they have a good time together, instead Aoife informs us that when she is "with Michael, [they] hav[e]...fun simply talking" (loc. 1242) and "it was amazing to her, how easy it was to be with him....She loved talking to him, laughing with him..." (loc. 1651).  And big moments, like the one where they essentially formalise their relationship and decide that they're together, even if it's long-distance, take place off-page: 

They were going to try to make it work, though.  They'd agreed it was worth a shot, even if it meant a long-distance relationship and they'd only been together for a few weeks....They'd barely slept last night, talking and trying to store up enough moments to last them through the next few weeks apart. This morning, they'd said goodbye....

If I'd actually seen this conversation and some tender goodbyes play out, I think I would have been much more emotionally invested in the black moment and resolution of their relationship. 

As it was, much of the interesting, potentially hashing-out-a-relationship stuff got skipped over in favour of drama from external sources, which I didn't like, but which prompted both Michael and Aoife to think about themselves, their emotions and their relationships, which I did like, although I still felt this was somewhat inhibited by the weakness of their romance.

Although their relationship wasn't everything it could have been, both Michael and Aoife were characters with interesting facets. Michael's passion for Ireland and her history was sweet, while Aoife's experience as a teenager has led her to value and prioritise phyiscal beauty. The exploration of this theme was well done, as Aoife slowly challenged this mentality with Michael's help. Similarly, I enjoyed the way Aoife, having built her business up, slowly comes to terms with the fact that she is no longer enjoying her work and explores other options.

Overall, quick and easy summer (or, I suppose, winter if you are in the Northern hemisphere) read but not all that I'd hoped, given the strength of North's previous work. 

Review: The Last Plus One by Ophelia London, Lindsay Emory and Alexandra Haughton

I'm deep into the university semester, so it's been novellas all 'round for me lately (as you can probably tell by the last 3 reviews). The latest is The Last Plus One, an anthology featuring one story each by Ophelia London, Lindsay Emory and Alexandra Haughton, all set at the wedding of a senator's daughter in Maine. Here are my thoughts: 

Bringing Home The Boss by Alexandra Haughton - 4 stars

Maggie's parents are the senator's groundkeeper and housekeeper, and she's always straddled the line between being a family friend and being the help. She's now a founding partner of a successful sportswear company, and no-one there knows of the circumstances in which she grew up, so it's a problem when her business partner and friend invites himself along as her plus-one. Cruz is entirely unaware of what he is walking into, or the trouble he is causing for Maggie. All he knows is that he can feel Maggie slipping away from him day by day. He doesn't know why, and he doesn't know how to fix it, but maybe accompanying her to this wedding - despite her protestations - will help. 

Maggie and Cruz's story was by far my favourite of the three. It was so evocative, with Cruz trying so hard to anticipate Maggie's needs and wants, and Maggie just attempting to hold it together long enough to make it back to life in Austin. The romance unfolded naturally and beautifully, and I loved it. 

Always on My Mind by Ophelia London - 3.5 stars
Ashton is the groom's sister, and she's agreed to be George Hawkin's date. For all he was originally her brother's friend, Hawk and Ashton have been best friends for years. Hawk has been biding his time, but with Ashton moving to Switzerland and him interviewing for a job at a prestigious private school, it's now or never if they're ever going to be together.  

Hawk and Ashton are very different people. She's a sex-positive therapist and researcher with next to no filter, and he's a buttoned-up teacher. I liked both characters, especially Ashton. The conflict between the two started off well, but I felt like it dropped off towards the end. They kept rehashing their differences, then did this big "I was wrong to want you to change", "No, I was wrong to want you to change" but it was just this big blame-myself-and-love-the-other-fest and I was left with little idea about how they were going to manage their differences - which had been so reiterated throughout - in the future. It wasn't a big thing, 

When We Were Young by Lindsay Emory - 3 stars
Bridesmaid and wedding planner Claire is livid when she finds out that Tom Harrington has been brought in as a last-minute groomsman. She hates him, and he hates her, and she doesn't know how they're going to get through this wedding being civil to each other, given their constant animosity and the unresolved one-night stand from college that still hangs over them. 

Emory did a good job of redeeming Claire, who had been called 'Wedding Planner Barbie' and 'The Meanie' by the two previous heroines. Unfortunately, the hero got no such treatment. Caught up in the fact that Claire doesn't fawn over him, he plays a cruel prank on her, throws her phone into the ocean and just generally acts like a dick. The bride spends the whole story reassuring Claire that Tom is really a nice guy, and she's right: he is a textbook Nice Guy. I'm deducting .5 stars for my issues with Tom, but even I have to admit, the ending still gave me loads of feels. 

Overall
The thing I enjoyed most about The Last Plus One can't be put down to any one story, but the way each built on the last, so that aspects of the same event as interpreted in varying ways. The characters in each story see things from a different, completely understandable position. Maggie (Story #1) thinks Claire (Story #3) is trying to prove she's a better friend to the bride and make a move on Cruz. Claire is genuinely perplexed by Maggie's attitude towards her, but in her anxiety over planning the wedding does accidently come across aggressively. Ashton (Story #2) is sour that, despite being the sister of the groom, she's been left out of the wedding party, and transfers her resentment to Claire as the wedding planner. Claire only took on the wedding planning because the Maid of Honor is sullenly useless, and because its something that she's good at, a way to pay back her friend for something that happened in the past. 

I loved the way it tied together as an anthology, and I'm off to find more multiple-POV, same event anthologies, stat!

Review: Stirred by Tracy Ewens

3 stars
*SPOILER ALERT*

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My opinion is my own. 

I quite enjoyed the middle third of Stirred by Tracy Ewens, but it took me a while to get into, and my engagement dropped off again towards the end. I've only read one other in the series (Candidate, #2), but I definitely didn't enjoy Stirred as much as that one, which was at least a 4 star read.

The heroine of Stirred is bartender/mixologist and former mechanical engineer, Sage Jefferies. She's been loving her friend's brother Garrett from afar, and one night, after she accidently drunk texts him to pick her up from a date gone wrong, she tells him that. The two agree to put Sage's confession aside, but Garrett can't deny that it has changed the way he sees Sage. He wants her, but he's used to being on his own, running the family farm, and Sage can't bear to be involved with Garrett only for something superficial. 

The characters were well fleshed out, and the part of the novel I enjoyed was where the author spent time drilling down into their hang-ups. Unfortunately, the drill then got stuck to 'on' and started going sideways into the bedrock. All character development and forward movement of the romance arc ceased, and we were left with this awful broken record of "this isn't going to work", "I'm meant to be on my own" et cetera et cetera. Then - SPOILER - they break up, get back together, break up again, and then Garrett makes a big gesture and proposes. That really didn't do it for me, because Garrett's issues were never resolved (hence the second break up), nor did he explain to Sage how he was going to address them or how things were going to be different. I guess the fact that he was offering commitment was meant to be enough, but commitment does not prevent dysfunction, and I could easily imagine them in exactly the same position six months down the track. 

I was really backing Sage for a while there, particularly liking the way she cherished her autonomy. Then this strong character who believed that no Garrett would be better than emotionally-unavailable or casual-sex Garrett turned anaemic and gave me this unsatisfying HEA, which totally was not what I signed up for. However, I also respect that different readers react to these things differently, and I will be the first to admit that I have a low tolerance for endings that are - for me - unfulfilling. 

Perhaps because I wasn't feeling the plot and had lost my connection to the characters, aspects of the writing also started to annoy me, something I don't recall from reading Candidate. Anecdotes are fine, but it seemed that every second page was "so-and-so remembered one time when this happened" as a metaphor to make a point. Similarly, I felt that characters using their parents' or siblings' favoured phrases with the addendum "as her mother would say" or similar was much overused. I could handle the fact that the characters' egos and bodies shared their individual thoughts with the rest of the character - that's not that unusual - but I was bugged by the formatting that made this look exactly as if an actual person was talking out loud: 

"What the hell is wrong with wanting his body?" her own body screamed. 

I just couldn't get used to it. Every single time, I'd go, "wait, what, who is this talking?", only to reach the end of the speech marks and realise that nobody was actually speaking, it was just weird anthropomorphism again. 

I don't think Stirred was necessarily a bad book, despite all my griping, but rather that it and I were just a bad fit. It pushed some of my buttons, and then, because of that, I started nit-picking. Overall, trying to separate myself as much as possible from my dissatisfaction, I'd classify it as reasonably lightweight read, maybe good for holidays, but I'd definitely recommend trying others in the series first. 

Review: The Secret Rose by Laura Landon

3 stars

Release Date: 15th of March 2016
I received a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. My opinion is my own. 

When I saw The Secret Rose on NetGalley, I thought 'why not?', since I've read a few Laura Landon books and don't remember disliking any of them. I didn't enjoy this one, or maybe I did, but I didn't want to enjoy it. Perhaps it's best to say that I didn't like the content of this book, but I liked reading it.

Abigail Langdon was engaged to Stephen Cambridge, Earl of Burnhaven, until she found him in flagrante with another woman. Now, with Stephen missing, his brother Ethan has had to come from the Caribbean to sort out the mess he's left behind. Thanks to a deathbed letter from Abigail's father, he knows Abigail has the answers. She's is unwilling to share her secrets, but her desperation to stay at her family's estate is obvious to Ethan, so he buys the estate from the new owner and offers her a solution: if they marry, she can have the estate, and he'll gain her father's shipping interests, with which he can pay his absentee brother's debts. But Abigail is no closer to trusting him, and her secrets and his enemies are closing in. 

I made that plot synopsis very melodramatic, but it fits, because this book is super old school. At one point, I investigated whether it was actually a reissue of an old title, because the classic romance vibes were that strong. It was, like, kidnappings, big secrets, affairs, amnesia, menacing villains, near-rapes old school. I wasn't so keen on that, but it did make for weirdly compelling reading. Although the plot was a little crazy, the suspense was skillfully done, so that I kept turning page after page after page, even when I should have walked away.

At the outset of the story, Abigail was a strong and capable heroine. She's alone in the world, struggling with a lot of stuff and just doing what she needs to in order to survive. I looked forward to seeing this develop, but instead she deteriorated, and her strength became overwhelmed by the old school elements. At times, it was almost like there was an inverse relation between her and Ethan, where there was a finite amount of strength and agency, and only one of them could possess these at any given time. When Ethan got increasingly high-handed (and by 'high-handed', I really mean 'kidnaps Abigail to force her into marriage'), Abigail's strength of character just deteriorates. It does make a comeback right at the end, but by then I was too upset at her being so forgiving and taking responsibility for men's actions towards her, that I didn't really care. 

As for Ethan, he wasn't openly domineering, but his attitude towards Abigail was worrying at times. He thinks he has a right to her secrets, and then, as she gradually reveals them, acts exactly the way she feared he would. He comes around, but this process is mainly glossed over, leaving me disturbed that he could so quickly do an about-face from viewing Abigail negatively to deciding he still wants her. He also showed a lack of awareness about Abigail, and what her secrets might be. Despite ample evidence, he never considers the possibility that she was sexually assaulted. Instead, he puts two and two together and gets thirty six, deciding that she spooks at his advances because she is so innocent, and maybe no-one's ever kissed her before. 

I wouldn't go so far as to recommend this book to anyone, but I have to admit that, despite its flaws - or perhaps because of them - it was a compulsive read. However, for anyone who is considering it, be aware that it opens with an attempted rape. 

Review: The Things They Didn't Bury by Laekan Zea Kemp

3 stars

Assigning a star rating to The Things They Didn't Bury has been hard. I have such drastically different feelings about different aspects of this book, it's hard to weigh them up and shape them into a coherent whole. The story was good, as was the recreation of war-torn and recovering Argentina, but the central relationship was mediocre and the writing and characterisation were mixed bags. 

The Things They Didn't Bury follows Liliana, who returns to her homeland of Argentina with her father and sister in the early 1990s (by my guess - a date is never given), after fleeing to the US during the Dirty War. Liliana's mother, Isabella, was one of los desaparecidos - the disappeared - who were arrested by the military junta and never heard from again. For Liliana, returning to the property where Isabella grew up is a chance to learn more about her mother, and she enlists Diego, the son of the property's caretaker, to help her. Interspersed throughout the novel are Isabella's diary entries and narration of the events leading up to her arrest, so that it becomes the story of both mother and daughter, of the intensification and aftermath of  the war.

It's meant to be all-consuming - and at times it is - but it could have been far more so if it had been proof-read more thoroughly. I understand indie authors work under different constraints, but the difference between their/there/they're and your/you're is fairly fundamental and it is extremely hard for the reader to ignore the wrong one being used. Every time I came across such a misuse - and there were many - it pulled me out of the narrative, and made me more aware of other errors (such as conscious instead of conscience) and the writing style as a whole. 

Perhaps this explains why I found the writing to be very variable in quality. In some places, it was beautiful and lyrical, while in others it was an odd combination of too descriptive and not descriptive enough. In one instance, a tree is described at length, but I couldn't work out where the characters were, relative to the tree. There was also some confusing head hopping, which sometimes lessened the intended emotional impact. 

Nonetheless, The Things They Didn't Bury was still plenty emotional.  The depiction of the war was outstanding, and by far the strongest aspect of the novel. The details of the atrocities committed by the junta, and also its opponents, can be stomach-turning and heart-wrenching, but they are integral to the lives of the characters, so much so that the name of the novel is taken from one particularly inhumane practice. The junta would get rid of dissidents/activists/anyone who looked at them sideways by throwing their weighted (but still alive) bodies out of a plane into the sea. The psychological scars this caused to those left behind, and those who witnessed the planes drop their 'cargo' are touched on in the book, and in more detail in this 2013 article by the BBC. 

While Liliana escaped witnessing most of the war, first because she was too young to remember and then because she was in the US, Diego saw it all, including the plane drops. He had so much potential as a character, and yet he's pretty much just a stoic cardboard cut-out who exists to drive Liliana places and provide a shoulder for her to cry on. While we hear of his experiences during the war, they are imbued with little emotion and often are relayed only so that Liliana understands the context of something. He always followed Liliana's lead, even when he knew she was dragging him into something dangerous. I held some resentment toward her for being so stupid and headstrong, but as I'm writing this, I realise that it was Diego who understood the potential ramifications of their actions, and who should have spoken up. I guess it's a sign of devotion to her that he didn't, but getting yourself and your potential girl into near-death scenarios isn't really very cool either, for all it moves the plot forward. 

Diego's passiveness contributed to the overall lacklustre relationship between himself and Liliana. There was a curious lack of conflict between the two of them, partly because Diego just did whatever Liliana wanted to do, without comment. This, along with the absence of any romantic intimacy, meant the romance was less than satisfactory for me. Don't get me wrong, YA romances with little actual physical interaction between the characters can be very fulfilling, but The Things They Didn't Bury didn't have the deeper connection or sense of longing between the characters that is usually used as a substitute for physical intimacy in YA, and without this the declarations of love at the end felt forced and premature. 

Although the romance reader in me found the central relationship and HFN were lacking, on an intellectual level I recognise that the absence of a concrete HEA reflects the uncertain times the characters have lived through, and ways in which they are unable to find closure. The book's lack of moral justice also made it uncomfortable for me, but this too reflects the reality. Few people have been held to account for their actions during the war, and, as a result, my impression is that Argentine society bears a wound that might have scabbed over, but certainly hasn't healed.

To top off that piece of postmodern nihilism, I'm going to say this is a case in which the rating at the top of the page means absolutely nothing. Overall, I would recommend The Things They Did Not Bury for people who would be interested in learning more about the Dirty War, but not for those who are simply looking for a romance with a different setting, because it is a exploration of war first and a romance second. Regardless of my ambivalent feelings towards story itself, it did provide a unique opportunity to learn more about something I knew very little about, and I'm grateful for that. 

Review: Switch by Janelle Stalder

3 stars

Maybe it's my secret desire for a catastrophic event that mysteriously wipes out people who can't queue, but I've developed some strange need for dystopic romances during these last few weeks of travel. Switch by Janelle Stalder was my most recent indulgence, read while navigating the Peruvian rail system. It was a mixed bag (Switch, that is; the Peruvian trains have actually been very nice), but it was intriguing enough overall that I instantly downloaded the sequel, despite having the wave my Kindle around to get the necessary bars of 3G. 

Switch take place in 2035, after some guy called Ludwig has taken over the world (or at least Europe). Mind-reading Charlotte-slash-Dinah is drawn into the politics of it all at sixteen, when her house is raided on the suspicion that her father is involved in the resistance movement. She accidentally lets Ludwig's second in command know about the whole being able to hear thoughts thing, and when we flash forward a few years, she's become the autocrat's mysterious and feared 'Weapon X'. 

Ludwig sends Dinah to spy on a rebel faction, because we know that always works out a treat. Sure enough, she meets Pete McKay, a rebel leader with secrets. Pete was a decent hero, but it was hard for me to get past the most overdone Cockney accent since Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Seriously, the guy referred to everyone - even his brothers - as 'mate'. 

But back to the storyline. Or the would-be storyline, since the constant changes between four different narrators mean it's not apparent that Dinah and Pete are the protagonists for the first third of the book. Neither was this slow start filled in by detailed world-building; I still have no clue how or why Ludwig decided to take over the world, for example. 

If it's becoming clear that I have a bee in my bonnet about this whole world domination thing, it not just because it was all very flimsy.  It really pissed me off that, in the absence of any overt motive for Ludwig or any explanations of his ethnic or national affiliations, London had been renamed 'New Berlin'. Because using Germans as inexplicable and one-dimensional villians is not at all a lazy trope-tastic cop-out! I hope that Ludwig will be fleshed out in the second book, which features the other two narrators from Switch, who actually captured my interest more than Dinah and Pete. 

However, I was drawn into the book as it gained momentum, and it ultimately found its feet in the moral ambiguities of the second half. Ironically, however, the reason I liked it is also the reason I come down so harshly on Ludwig as a villian; his charisma was supposed to contribute to the moral confusion of it all, but in the absence of detail, it actually detracted from it.

Review: The Rearranged Life by Annika Sharma

3 stars

The Rearranged Life by Annika Sharma was...fine. It certainly wasn't a page-turner, but it neither was it tedious. Perhaps it is most accurate to say that I wasn't a fan of The Rearranged Life as a New Adult romance novel, but that I did appreciate it as an exploration of cultural conflict.

Nithya hasn't ever really considered breaking out of the mould her Indian parents and culture have created for her. She's not quite sure if she chose pre-med of her own accord, or if it was simply the most palatable of the acceptable options for an good Indian child, but she's committed to becoming a doctor. She hasn't thought overmuch about marriage, but she always assumed that it would be semi-arranged. After all, someone outside her culture could never entirely understand or accept her Telugu-speaking Brahmin family, and this would ultimately lead to conflict. Then Nithya meets James at university, and suddenly images of a different life worm their way into her mind.

The Rearranged Life is not actually a book about Nithya and James so much as it is what Nithya thinks about her relationship with James. The romance between the two was very low-key and completely chaste, and James himself remains more a nebulous symbol of white America than a fully-fledged character in his own right. As Nithya internally explored her options, she rehashed the same things over and over again: He'll never understand my world, I have to think of the unity of the family over myself, I don't want to rock the boat. 

When Nithya's internal debate worked, it worked well. She had a strong voice that demonstrated the difficulties navigating two worlds and two sets of norms and expectations. As another character says, first-generation Indian-Americans "have to be as Indian as the people in India and as American as the Americans" (loc. 650). Nithya doesn't know if, by bringing James home, she will alienate her parents and community, thus also losing the part of herself that values those connections. And the tricky thing is, she will never know unless she actually does it. So, even if I found the writing a bit repetitive at times, I accept that maybe that's the point: Nithya's not just reminding the reader of her situation, she's reminding herself of the stakes. 

Review: Trancing the Tiger by Rachael Slate

3 stars

Trancing the Tiger by Rachael Slate is a paranormal romance with a unique premise. It's set in an alternate modern day or near future, where the earth - particularly North America - has been ravaged by the Red Plague. Having lost her parents to the disease, Lucy Yeoh comes from her home in the US to her father's birthplace of Penang, Malaysia to meet her uncle. Unbeknownst to her, she's also walking into Ground Zero of the divine war that unleashed the plague. And fighting on the frontline is Li Sheng, who seems to think that he, Lucy and some other misfits are the hosts of the spirits of animals of the Chinese Zodiac, bestowed on them by the mythical Jade Emperor. To Lucy, it soon doesn't sound as crazy as it seems. But as her relationship with Sheng (and his resident Tiger) heats up, so too does the fight against the rival Kongsi, the Council of Elders, and the agents of the Plague God.

The world of Trancing the Tiger, particularly the setting of Penang and use of Chinese mythology, was well-done, as was the character of Lucy. When Sheng kept trying to convince Lucy that she was one of 'The Chosen' who bear an animal Zodiac, my inner geek started reciting "Into each generation, there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness...". And even though she wasn't a Slayer, Lucy actually was a Buffy-esque heroine. She was a good combination of diffidence and strength, given she was facing life in a strage place after the death of her parents. It was Sheng who I wasn't so keen on as a character. I didn't really get a sense of him; it seemed like he had almost no character traits outside of his alpha-male Tiger-ness, his desire for Lucy, and his sense of duty to the Chosen who made up his Kongsi.

There were also some other elements I felt didn't work so well. Perhaps it's because I'm not a big reader of paranormals, but there were several things that happened that I found quite weird, such as Lucy's Rabbit randomly deciding to fling herself all the way to the ceiling of a room, where she hung in a manner more befitting a gecko than a rabbit. And although I enjoyed the ending, I felt like there was something of a lull and then a great flurry of action, as opposed to a gradual build toward a denouement. 

On the whole, though, Trancing the Tiger was a solid read, and I'll probably read the next in the series for the freshness of the premise.

Review: Fighting Silence by Aly Martinez

3 stars
EDIT: Changed this rating from 3.5 to 3 stars. Must have been feeling generous that day.

Some of my favourite romance novels of all time feature the 'I've loved you my whole life' trope, so I was excited to read Aly Martinez's Fighting Silence, particularly as it features a unique hero, Till Page, who is going deaf from a congential hearing problem. 

The day Till finds out about his hearing defect is the same day he meets shy, artistic Eliza. They're both kids from the wrong side of the tracks with absentee parents, and from then on they look after each other. Till convinces himself that Eliza can never be his, but at eighteen they spend a night together and everything changes. Till disappears, and Eliza moves on with her life.  But Till can't stay away for long, and soon he's back with a fledgling boxing career and two brothers in tow. He doesn't want to do anything to endanger their friendship again, but all Eliza has ever wanted is Till, and she's not going to let his fear get in the way.  

Fighting Silence was different and touching, but while it was enjoyable, I was a bit conflicted about how to rate it. If you had asked me throughout the first half, I would have told you unequivocally that it was 5-star material, but I felt as though the second half let it down. The use of time-jumps worked well to set up Till and Eliza's relationship, allowing us to see a few formative incidents from their shared youth, but once they were together it prevented the reader from appreciating their growth as characters.  

Perhaps because I started to lose my sense of connection to the story in the second half, I also found the ending was very convoluted and took away from one of its major themes. I don't think it's any great spoiler to say that, about halfway through the book, Till becomes completely deaf. His early attempts to deal with this are very poignant. The way Till looks after his two little brothers is very endearing, making his realisation that they may suffer the same fate particularly heartbreaking. When he becomes permanently withdrawn and it starts to have consequences on his relationships with others, Eliza basically tells him to suck it up. After a time jump in which Till flicks his internal self-pity switch to 'off' and everyone around him magically learns to sign, his deafness is pushed to the side in favour of a lot of random new complications, and it's here that I start to wish the book took a different tack.

While I would be just as dissatisfied if the book gave the impression that becoming deaf is the be-all-and-end-all, it would have been nice to see Till learning to navigate his disability more, and to have had more realism in this process. I mean, everyone - regardless of ability - has days when they feel sorry for themselves, or have to make a concerted effort to remind themselves how lucky they are, and I feel like the quick change from Till underwent from 'angry at the world' to 'this is my lot now' delegitimised this constant and ongoing struggle.

These things brought Fighting Silence down, but it was still a enjoyable, well-written romance.