Review: Due South by Tamsen Parker

4 stars
*EPILOGUE SPOILER ALERT* 

Lucy Miller has mixed feelings about going home to the Midwest for Christmas, but then there is a forced change of plan: thanks to other people's incompetence, she and the shy Chanoch Evans will have to work through the holiday on a project. When they are accidental voyeurs to their boss and her husband getting hot and heavy late one night at work, something sparks between them, and they decide that - despite their firm's 'no fraternisation' policy - a Christmas fling won't harm anyone. 

Due South and its characters struck a serious chord with me on so many levels. I seriously related to the way that both Lucy and Evans are shy, anxious and slightly socially awkward. Lucy faces derision from her family for being "just a secretary", in the same way I absolutely loathe being called "just a receptionist". Lucy has also faced a lifetime of having her sexuality policed, being told that she is responsible for the way men respond to her body, something that I think most women can relate to. Evans' family dynamic also hit quite close to home for me.

On a less personal note, I loved the way Evans' was so sweet, and tries so hard to be honorable. After he and Lucy kiss for the first time - which he initiates - he has this internal monologue:

As soon as this massive and increasingly achy erection goes away, I am going to offer her the most profound and profuse apology that has been offered to anyone ever. And if she’s uncomfortable with me—and who could blame her?—I’ll offer to hand in my resignation. It’s the only proper thing to do. Sure, I’d have to find something else right away because of my family, but I can’t bear the idea of Lucy having to work with someone who violated her. If I kept a sword in my office, I’d throw myself on it. As things are, I’ve only got some pencils that are in desperate need of a sharpening, a ruler, and some paperclips. I couldn’t even injure myself in a dignified manner. (loc. 385)

The whole book is as droll and funny as that excerpt, both from Evans and Lucy's perspectives. The chemistry and romantic compatibility between the two was also suberb.

Another thing that I really appreciated was the three dimensional portrayal of Lucy and Evans' boss, who runs the gamut from ball-busting dragon lady to sympathetic, caring and overwhelmed. While both Lucy and Evans' have some sentimental attachment to their workplace, Due South is also wonderfully realistic about the ups and downs of being a heavily-relied on employee.

While I enjoyed the heck out of Due South, I didn't feel like the ending was as strong as the rest of the book. It was a bit run-of-the-mill, when both the MCs had been such beautifully complex and different characters throughout. I also felt it undermined everything that preceded it: the story very much revolves around Lucy and Evans as shy, introverted characters and the epilogue somewhat overturned that. 

While Evans does have second thoughts about proposing to Lucy in a semi-public place, it's to do with his nerves and not how it might be for her, which I felt was at odds with the way he is normally so considerate of her. Similarly, the resolution sees Evans taking a particular decision out of Lucy's hands, and - while it showed that he cared for her enough to solve a problem for her, potentially at his own expense - it did rankle that he robbed her of agency. However, I was happy that, through Evans actions, the two of them avoided a potential Big Misunderstanding.

Lastly, I know that it's rare for authors to have a say on their books covers, but I'm not a fan of this one. The book makes a point of Lucy being a beautiful, curvaceous woman, and the model is so...angular. She's all jawbone and scapula and absolutely no boobs. Ughh. 

Review: Craving Flight by Tamsen Parker

3.5 stars

Tzipporah Berger is thirty-seven, once-divorced and newly part of an Orthodox Jewish community. When she mentions to the rabbi's wife that she's looking to remarry, gruff local butcher Elan Klein is put forward as a candidate. He ticks all the right boxes for Tzipporah, and she's hopeful that he might even be able give her what she needs in the bedroom, but BDSM isn't really something you can bring up between "How do you feel about children?" and "How strictly do you keep kosher?" in an Orthodox courtship. Marriage is always a struggle, but it proves even more so for two people who don't know each other very well outside of the marriage bed, and who originally come from two very different worlds. 

Tzipporah was such a vulnerable character, as was Elan towards the end, and basically Craving Flight emotionally gutted me. Some of that was in a good way, but it was also partly in a it-all-ended-too-soon-and-I-haven't-made-peace-with-everything way. I found it to be a very emotional read, and I don't feel like I can rationalise all those feelings very well, so bear with me. 

Elan was a gentle giant - gotta love a gentle giant - and the brusque care he showed Tzippporah was touching. Nonetheless, as a ba'alat teshuva (a secular Jew who has chosen to become Orthodox), she struggles with feelings of inadequacy, which are inadvertently exasperated by Elan and his family. Even though these feelings mostly surround matters of religious observance, it's something I think most women can relate to, as we're socially conditioned to link our worth to our relationships with other people. 

Both Elan and Tzipporah are fully-grown adults who have been married once before, and who each have a life and profession of their own. Tzipporah works as a professor, and has to constantly defend her decision to live a life that people outside the community - including her own family - see as oppressive. When it came to age, gender and religion, I thought that Craving Flight was measured and thoughtful, which is why the quick turnaround to a HEA at the end was such a shock to the system. 

I'll pick up the odd BDSM book occasionally, even if I don't read very many of them, but I've rarely felt so uncomfortable about the sex scenes in a book before. I started to skim over them, because they were just too much for me, both in terms of the kink itself and the characters' interactions. It wasn't that there was a power imbalance between them - they were all clear on that front - but...Tzipporah just became so emotional, and Elan was still so inscrutable. We never get to see his reactions to being a Dom; the focus is always on Tzippoarah, and it was just hurt my heart to see her laid bare emotionally. 

I think I could have coped with it better if I'd had more insight into Elan as a character. We did get to see some emotion from him towards the end, but having been been such an unemotional character up until that point, it came as a bit of a bombshell that I didn't expect, and didn't recover from. 

I don't know why I had such strong reactions to Craving Flight, or whether other readers can expect the same. Nor do I even know whether this review will even be at all useful for someone deciding whether or not to read the book, but here it is anyway. I would recommend giving it a go, especially since it's free on both US and Australian Amazon. 

Review: Off the Clock by Roni Loren

4 stars

Off the Clock by Roni Loren was a refreshingly different take on the old sexually-experienced-hero-tutors-sexually-inexperienced-heroine trope, because both the hero and heroine are sex researchers/therapists.

When the reader is first introduced to them, Marin and Donovan are the only two students in a university building overnight. She's manning the sleep lab, and he's (supposedly) working late on a project. Marin helps Donovan out with his research (which is about female arousal) and they wind up having a one-night stand. Years later, they meet again when Marin takes a job as a sex therapist at the exclusive treatment facility where Donovan works. As her assigned mentor, Donovan quickly realises that Marin has a terrible poker face and little sexual experience, so he creates a checklist of sexual scenarios for her and selflessly offers to help her tick them off.

As the blurb implies, the premise could have gone terribly wrong. There's a power differential, but Donovan never pressures Marin into anything. He makes his offer only semi-seriously, and it's Marin who truly initiates things between them. Throughout the novel, I was impressed by the way Donovan respected and encouraged Marin's agency and autonomy. There were no power plays between them - sexual or otherwise - which was refreshing, especially in an erotic romance.

I also relished Off the Clock's frankness, which extended beyond the sexuality into its portrayal of mental health. Marin's mother had bipolar disorder, and this has defined her life in so many ways. She's scared that the illness lies latent within her, and so has always been careful to stay away from anything that might trigger it, including relationships.  It's not uncommon to have a hero living a self-destructive lifestyle, but rarely is it put in terms of mental illness, as it is with Donovan. Nor is it a case where the love of a good woman has the power to heal or cure the hero; Donovan makes an effort to sort through the things contributing to his depression, so that he and Marin can have a healthy relationship.

There was also a subplot about Marin's little brother, who felt as though he'd lost his sister when she began to spend large amounts of time with Donovan. In romance, we tend to focus on the happiness of the central couple at the exclusion of those around them, and I liked the way this acknowledged that new romantic relationships can upset the balance of other existing relationships.

Even though Off the Clock subverts many tropes, there were also those that were not scrutinised. These, I felt, held the book back, particularly the 'malicious ex-girlfriend' character. Overall, a solid 4 stars. 

Review: In Her Closet by Tasha L. Harrison

3.5 stars

The official synopsis of In Her Closet describes it as such:

Entertainment columnist Yves Santiago unapologetically lives her life as carelessly as a man. Her day job keeps her flush in men, with few regrets and even fewer mistakes. By night, she details her exploits on her anonymous sex blog, Lust Diaries.

Yves leads a happy, delightfully filthy life. Until she meets nonfiction editor Elijah Weinstein.

Moss green eyes, sun-kissed shoulders and a mouth so damn sensual that it should have a NC-17 rating, this perfectly suited and coiffed, Fifth Avenue prince is everything she never wanted yet can't resist. He methodically lays waste to the walls she's built around herself, looking to get closer to the real Yves Santiago.

With the the promise of a fairytale turned real, Yves must dig into the depths of her past. But once she shakes out the skeletons in her closet, will she be ready for all Elijah has to offer?

It sounds like a fun, sex positive romp with maybe a wee bit of angst, right? But if you thought that, you'd be wrong, just as I was. In Her Closet was so dark it needed neon lighting, perhaps as massive signs reading 'trigger warning: domestic violence and near-rape'. If someone had told me that when I was looking at buying it, I probably would have steered well clear. However, I actually quite enjoyed In Her Closet and this has left me a bubbling stew of mixed feelings.

Yves is set up initially as an anti-heroine, coming across as a tad reckless and self-absorbed. That's not a coded censure of her sex life, but it is influenced by it. In the aftermath of her encounters with men, she was sometimes quite callous, including towards her brother, who was indignant that Yves would sleep with his boss at the potential expense of his career. As the book introduces the ghosts of her past - namely an abusive, stalkerish ex - it becomes clear that this cognitive dissonance is a coping mechanism. The reader is able to relate to her, even pity her, but the downside of this transition is that the sex positivity also disappears. In fact, Yves goes from "living as unapologetically as a man" to being racked by doubt, shame, guilt and feelings of being complicit in the abuse she suffered. It's an understandable response, given the deeply conditioned social mores that tell us that, as women, we are responsible for the ways men act towards us.

Yves does an admirable job of challenging these concepts, but they remain an insidious undercurrent throughout the book. By and large, I respected Yves as a heroine. She was strong, independent and stuck to her guns. For example, her ex was been a friend of her brother and remained very close to her family, so when his abusive nature is publicly revealed and Yves' mother refuses to believe it, Yves promptly tells her to leave.

If I've talked a lot about Yves and not much about Elijah, it's because there is not much to say. He seemed like a nice guy, but most guys would in comparison to the ex. In retrospect, the two were largely developed in opposition to each other. Elijah cares about Yves' feelings, Cesar doesn't. Cesar was a controlling, vindictive mothereffer, Elijah (mostly) isn't. Cesar continually slut-shamed Yves for her body and demeanor, Elijah doesn't. Elijah's kink isn't really explored that much, and it made me a bit uneasy because Yves doesn't really seem to know what, exactly, she's getting into. But she also has a right to make her own decisions without being judged. It's not my job to label things as problematic - that's been a way of policing women's sexuality for generations - but I will say that there were certain aspects of In Her Closet that produces knee-jerk reactions for me.

Overall, In Her Closet was an emotional and enthralling read. In several ways, it broke and inverted stereotypes associated with erotic romance: Yves is sexually experienced, Elijah is not domineering and the implications of non-consensual sexual violence are discussed. It's left me with a lot to think about, not least of which is whether or not I will read Everything She Never Wanted, the second instalment of Yves and Elijah's relationship. I think not, actually. I don't like the idea of Yves going through yet more emotional trauma, and from the Amazon reviews it sounds like that might be in store.

In Her Closet also represents the culmination of my WNDB challenge to read 20 books with diverse characters. It's served its purpose admirably, widening and refining my understanding of the world. I don't think I'll be taking part in the challenge next year, but that's not to say I won't be reading diverse literature; I'll be reading diverse because I enjoy and respect it, not because I need to meet a self-imposed quota.

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: Fierce by Rosalind James

2 stars

I hate writing entirely negative reviews and I don't think they are very useful to the reader, so I always try to bring some relativity to it.  I whinge away and then say 'but this was a redeeming feature' or 'if you are not bothered by xyz, then you might like this book more than me', but I've tried to do this for Fierce by Rosalind James and I can't. I've sat here staring at my blank screen for twenty minutes and I can't think of a single redeeming feature, and I can't think of a single person who might enjoy it, but clearly many people did because there are a lot of positive reviews online. To each their own, but, for me, Fierce was interminable and prompted some serious WTF moments.  

The first came from the power imbalance. This happens in a lot of romance novels, of course, and there's nothing wrong with it, but it needs to done carefully so it doesn't seem coercive. Set in New York, Fierce is a romance about a Kiwi business tycoon, Hemi, and his employee, Hope. Throughout the novel, Hope is continually concerned that Hemi will fire her, and frequently laments her lack of other employment options. When she mentioned this to him, he claims he'd never fire her, but I'm not sure how Hope was meant to know that, given Hemi is manipulative, overbearing, ruthless and doesn't take well to being told 'No'. 

As an added gripe, this was often attributed to and excused by Hemi's Maori ethnicity. At one point, he fantasises about hauling Hope away, and then says: 

"I couldn't do any of it, because this wasn't the New Zealand bush, it wasn't three hundred years ago, and she wasn't mine."  

Gah with the noble savage stuff. Also - and there's a spoiler here, because I really can't be stuffed to talk in circles - this book really reinforced the fact that the American healthcare system is completely nonsensical. Hemi 'proves himself' by paying the medical expenses for Hope's sister, Karen, in a move that finally convinces Hope that she shouldn't do a runner (even though she totally should). That plot device wouldn't have worked in Australia (or New Zealand), because the conversation - in a worst case scenario - literally would have gone like this:

Hope: My sister's throwing up constantly and I think she needs to go to the GP but I can't afford the fees so do you know one who bulk-bills?
Hemi: Yeah, there's a practice of them down the road.
Hope: Cool, thanks.

*after seeing GP*
Hope: So, turns out Karen has a brain tumour *sob*
Hemi: I'm sorry to hear that, Hope.  
Hope: Yeah, it's pretty bad. The GP gave us a referral to a Neurologist, but she only works in the public system once a month and is quite popular, so we are going have to wait maybe three to six months to get in *sob*.
Hemi: If you like, I'll pay for you to go to see the Neuro in her private rooms. It's usually about $220 dollars for an initial consultation, and you'll get $75 rebate back from medicare afterwards.
Hope: I'll give you the Medicare cheque and pay you back the rest next payday. K, thanks, bye. 
Hemi: Damn you, Medicare Benefit Schedule, you just ruined by chance to coerce this woman into a relationship!

Or Hope just would have taken Karen to Emergency one time when she had a bad episode and then it wouldn't have been classed as elective surgery and they wouldn't have had to wait at all. I understand, if you are working or lower-middle class in the U.S., the healthcare system is nothing to laugh about, but it's very hard to keep patience with a book that uses this plight so mercilessly. I've come across the plot device before and it hasn't bugged me as much, but as a New Zealander who had more money than he knew what to do with, Hemi should have:

a) paid his staff a living wage.
b) made sure their health insurance was sound and kicked in ASAP (Admittedly, I'm not sure about this. Is it legislated that you have to be in a job a certain amount of time before you can access healthcare or is it just convention?).
c) helped Hope and Karen out of the goodness of his heart.

It's getting 2 stars because it got slightly less awful in the closing chapter, when Hemi magically gained some humanity. I think I'll have to go back and read her NZ-set books with Maori heroes now, to see if she pulled the same fetishising bullshit there, and it passed me by. 

Review: Breathless for You by Elizabeth Anthony

4 stars

Breathless for You is set in 1921, amidst a Britain still reeling from the Great War, caught between the old and the new.  It's an anxious time, and this book captures that perfectly.

The heroine, Madeline, is the ward of the Duke of Belfield, but her past life in France has left her at odds with her aristocratic surroundings. Desperate to avoid being the source of gossip and insinuation that could affect her guardian's standing in society, she removes herself to the Duke's country estate, where she is irresistibly drawn to the mysterious gamekeeper, Nathan Mallory. The two begin an affair, but their growing relationship is threatened by the secrets they are both keeping, and by the manipulative Lady Beatrice, the widow of the former heir to the dukedom. With Belfield away peacekeeping in Ireland, it is up to Madeline to thwart Beatrice's attempts to ruin both her reputation and that of Sophie, the Duke's common-born love. 

Breathless For You was a compulsive read. The reasons behind the characters' actions were revealed in stages, encouraging a 'oh, just one more chapter, until I find out XYZ' mentality. These gradual revelations made Madeline a complex and interesting heroine, confident in some ways and diffident in others. The conventions of the genre usually provide the reader with a 'tortured hero', but Madeline was a 'tortured heroine' poignantly fighting against the demons of her past. Nathan starts off as a fairly stock-standard hero, but as he gains a greater understanding of Madeline's situation and he begins to share his own secrets, he too becomes an interesting and engaging character.

But while I enjoyed the hero and heroine, I can't say the same for the other characters. Don't get me wrong, Beatrice made an excellent villain and the book would not have worked without her constant devilry, but I found the cruelty and sordidness that defined her and most other female characters to be off-putting at times, never mind the fact that she never received her comeuppance. From a stylistic perspective, I understand; it is a dark erotic romance, and even if it were not, the post-war setting requires a level of moral nihilism. Nonetheless, as someone who reads romance because I like the happily-ever-after, I found it marred my enjoyment of the book. It's a personal quirk, I know, but it's one that I feel many romance readers share.

Overall though, Breathless for You was an interesting and well-constructed novel, made particularly memorable by the seldom-used setting of post-WWI England.  

Review: Ember by Bettie Sharpe

5 stars 

"I know you think you've heard this story before, but you're wrong. Some would have it that this story begins with a virtuous virgin, a young woman of honesty and integrity sucker punched by cruel fortune and forced to sleep among the cinders while her moral inferiors lived the which was meant to be hers. Bullshit. This is no fairytale." 

That's the first paragraph of Ember by Bettie Sharpe, and it's certainly not the last time the heroine, Ember, breaks the fourth wall to warn the reader not to glorify her. For all it has the same first-person narration and fantastic setting as the fairytale retellings of my childhood, it's no starry-eyed Ella Enchanted. In fact, it's completely different from anything I've ever read before.

The main character, Ember, is a witch. Not a sanitised bubbles-and-rainbows type of witch (I'm looking at you, Glinda the Good), but a legitimate witch, the kind that makes blood sacrifices and gets her revenge on those who've wronged her.  Her love interest is equally unconventional. At birth, Prince Adrian Juste was blessed with the universal regard of his subjects; men respect him, women want him, and neither can deny him anything. As much as he craves a life where he's not surrounded by sycophants, he's not above using his curse to get what he wants. And he wants Ember, the one woman who isn't affected by his unnatural charm.  

Ember is unburdened by conventional morality, and it makes her an unpredictable and memorable character. As a snarky anti-heroine, she's eminently relatable. Sharpe treads the tightrope between amorality and likability well, keeping the reader onside through Ember's loyalty to her step-mother and -sisters. In this adaptation, Ember's step-family are whores, forced to escape their homeland and make a new life with Ember and her father.  Once again, Sharpe deals with this sensitively, and provides the reader with a raft of great secondary characters at the same time.  One of the things I really loved about this novel was that all of its characters were well-developed, independent of gendered stereotypes. There was no cookie-cutter hero, or same-same good-girl heroine; each and every character was unique and interesting. This in-depth characterisation was countered by a realtively simple plot, but this too was well-executed. 

Potenital readers should be aware that there are a few more swearwords thrown around than usual. I didn't feel like they were gratuitous - Ember's character wouldn't have been half as bad-ass without them, that's for sure - but we each have differing levels of tolerance for these things. Ditto the level of sexuality. While Ember doesn't have any more sex scenes than your average romance novel, Ember and those around her are all overtly sexual beings. Frankly, it would have been weird if this hadn't been the case, given her stepfamily's profession and the Prince's curse!

If I had to critique one thing about Ember, it would be that it was sometimes scarce on details. This occasionally drew me out of the narrative, as I'd have to flick back a page or two to remember where a particular conversation was taking place or some other such thing that had been mentioned, but not reinforced through detailed description. However, I don't feel like this came at the expense of the characterisation or plot, and it didn't really detract from my enjoyment of the book.

Ember was a great read and, at the moment, it's $0.79 on kindle. THAT'S SEVENTY-NINE CENTS, GUYS. You can't even buy a Ghost Drop for 79 cents these days. And unlike many cheap reads on Kindle, there's not a spelling or formatting mistake in sight, in addition to a good plot and excellent characterisation. It's the mythical needle in a haystack, the hen's tooth, the black cat in the coal cellar. I'm getting overly poetic now so I'll stop, but if it sounds like your thing, go get it!