Review: My Fair Concubine by Jeannie Lin

4.5 stars

My Fair Concubine by Jeannie Lin was a delightful Pygmalion story set in Tang Dynasty China.

Fei Long's sister Pearl has been given the honour of being a heqin bride, women of the royal family or court who are sent to rulers on the Empire's borders in marriage alliances. Unfortunately for Fei Long, Pearl's eloped with another man, and his family honour is on the line unless he can find another woman to take her place.

Enter Yan Ling, a servant in a small-town teahouse. Her meet cute with Fei Long has her throwing a pot of tea over him because she thinks he is propositioning her. She's let go from her position, so Fei Long agrees to take her to Changan and train her as a replacement heqin for Pearl. But that necessitates the two of them spending a lot of time together. Fei Long begins to admire Yan Ling's determination, and Yan Ling isn't sure what to so with her feelings for the gruff man of the house.

The characters were the real highlight of My Fair Concubine and gave me so many feels. Fei Long was such a vulnerable hero, with so much responsibility on his shoulders. Yan Ling and her/Pearl's lady's maid, Dao, are - excuse me for using the dreaded phrase - such strong female characters. Yan Ling is caught in no man's land; she's not Fei Long's servant, but neither is she his equal, despite the fact that she is masquerading as his sister and will eventually receive the honorary title of princess. She's having to forge forward without any template as to her status or behaviour, and not be discouraged by Fei Long's constant nit-picking. As a servant, Dao will never have the opportunity to marry, and she is outspoken if her belief that Yan Ling is jeopardising her chance at a better life by falling for Fei Long, whose status means he will probably only dally with her, or - at best - make her a concubine.

Yan Ling's low birth also provided My Fair Concubine with a different focus to the other books in Lin's Tang Dynasty series, and different insights into life in Imperial China around 800 AD.

I could see the way one complication was going to resolved a mile away, but the mystery was in how the romantic arc was going to get the characters to that conclusion. Throughout the novel, Fei Long is very concerned over his good family name, which is endangered by Pearl's elopement and his father's debts and which also puts his lifelong family retainers at risk. I kept turning pages obsessively to see what the catalyst would be that cause him to believe that his feelings for Yan Ling were more or equally important than his family honour. This catalyst did come as a surprise, and an emotional one at that.

Lin has consistently delivered with this series, but I found this one to be particularly satisfying.

Review: The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

5 stars

Release Date: 9 August 2016

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. My opinion is my own. 

My romance catnip is where the hero is more aware of his feelings than the heroine and/or more invested in their relationship, so I nearly had to be hospitalised from catnip overdose while reading The Hating Game by Sally Thorne. I mentally placed it on my favourites shelf when I was only halfway through, and then, somehow, the second half got even better. Just to give you an indication of my insane love for this book, I'm a paragraph into this review, and I already feel all giddy reliving my reading experience. 

The Hating Game is about Lucy Hutton and Josh Templeman, who are the assistants to the to two co-CEOs of Bexley & Gamin publishing house. Bexley & Gamin was formed out of a merger of two separate mergers: Lucy and her co-CEO are from Gamin; Josh and his are from Bexley. They have different corporate cultures, and Lucy has hated Josh from the moment he walked into their shared office, when she smiled at him and he didn't smile back. Now, they spend their time playing games of brinkmanship and one-upmanship: The Staring Game, the HR Game, the How You Doing Game. Then, a new position is announced - Chief Operating Officer - and suddenly Josh and Lucy's games have real stakes, just as Lucy was starting to realise that Josh doesn't hate her the way she thought and maybe she doesn't hate him quite as much as she thought either.

That little blurb I've written above doesn't really do it justice, and it also implies that there's more of an element of sexist "he's mean to you because he likes you" than is really present. 

I've had big problems lately with the not-quite-redeemed hero, but Thorne has no trouble redeeming Josh. Once Josh realises that Lucy interprets his behaviour as enmity and standoffishness - and that this is affecting her self-perception of herself as a likable person - we begin to see a whole other side of him as tries to salvage their relationship and build something new and good. 

Lucy's relationship with Josh - where she gives as good as she gets - is markedly different to her relationship with others, where she values her reputation as a nice girl too much to rock the boat. I loved seeing her confidence grow as a result of Josh's support. In turn, Lucy's support was essential for Josh to face his family at his brother's wedding, and these make some of the book's best scenes. 

The whole thing is just insanely humorous and off-beat, and somehow manages to simultaneously have off-the-charts levels of sexual tension and sweetness. 

Thorne's writing is unique (maybe other people will think it's OTT, I don't know) but I thought it was perfect, both as writing and as the expression of a zany, Smurf-collecting, five-foot tall heroine. In fact, it's lucky I had a physical ARC, becuase I think if I'd had an e-copy I would have broken my Kindle highlighting all the beautiful turns of phrase. As it is, every second page ended up being dog-eared either because I loved the writing, or it was just too heartwarmingly cute, and I wanted to be able to find it again easily. Only, as it turns out, when you dog-ear everything, you can find nothing, so the joke's on me.  

I guess that's it, because I don't know what else to say. I feel like I used up all my praise on books less great than this one in the past and now I have no words that are strong enough to convey my feelings. Fangirl Dani out. 

EDIT 8/4/17: Apologies, Fangirl Dani didn't notice the problematic aspects in this book. Please see the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books review, and Silvana's review on Goodreads for details

Review: Girl on a Plane by Cassandra O'Leary

2 stars
*SPOILER ALERT*

For me, Cassandra O'Leary's debut novel Girl on a Plane didn't live up to the anticipation and hype that surrounded it. The hero was frustrating, which has been a bit of a theme for me lately. I know I don't deal well with misogynistic, patronising or insert-dickish-tendency-here heroes (there's enough of that in real life) but am I asking too much to be able to track a hero's journey from jerk to not-a-jerk, or from emotionally stunted to not-emotionally-stunted?

The hero here, Gabriel, is the Australian CEO of a travel website, and en route to London to set up the European arm of his company, he meets Sinead, an Irish flight attendant. Due to a typhoon, the two of them end up stranded in Singapore, where the hotel has accidently double-booked them in the same suite. Sinead - who is on the fence about the way Gabriel has been behaving - isn't about to give up easily, and a power struggle ensues, until they fall into bed together. When the bad weather clears, they have to decide whether they simply go their separate ways, or whether their secluded few days is the start of something more.

For the first third or so of the book, Gabriel is shown to have serious man-baby tendencies and the emotional coping skills of a baby howler monkey. I might have been more accepting of the excuses given (he was tired, he hadn't meant to do whatever) if he hadn't been so calculating in the way he treated women, and if it hadn't been the female characters, including the heroine, who bore the brunt of his bad behaviour. I mean, he randomly accosts Sinead when she's off-shift in a neutral environment (the airport lounge) to take out his anger at her employer over an unavoidable situation.

While these overt instances of white male privilege fall away somewhat, we're still left with a less than admirable hero. I particularly disliked the male banter between Gabriel and his best friend. In one instance, Gabriel admits to having met someone, and this exchange follows:

Ryan leaned forward in his seat. "Now I'm intrigued. Give me the low-down." 

"Flight attendant, Irish accent, long blonde hair, fantastic breasts. She's hot, but she's more. Funny and sweet. She's got me agreeing to all sorts of crap to keep seeing her....She's making all these rules. No touching for a month." 

"Oh man, you'll be out of your mind. You agreed? She must be special." 

"Special." Funny, Sinead had used the same word. It was growing on him. "Yeah, you could say that. Lucky we already got down and dirty in Singapore so I know it's worth waiting for. It'll be hell in the meantime though."

There's a few things going on here, and elsewhere. First and most obvious is the objectification, followed by the male entitlement to a female's body. This might be a realistic portrayal of how men talk and think amongst themselves, but it left a bad taste in my mouth, especially since Sinead has left an abusive relationship and spends the whole book dealing with the fallout of this. Gabriel doesn't know this at this point (I don't think, I can't remember with 100% accuracy), but the reader does, and it I found it hard to back a relationship where the hero seemed to have some of the same entitled behaviours as the abusive ex.

However, Gabriel's backstory about his mother's early onset Alzheimer's was going some way towards redeeming him, at least until that all fell apart as well. His concern about succumbing to the same illness and not wanting Sinead - or anyone - to have to care for him was poignant and the major barrier to them establishing a long-term relationship. And yet, we don't see it being worked through. Gabriel breaks up with Sinead over this fear, then all of a sudden, he's back on the scene, saying he's been to a doctor and he's going to be fine. Cue HEA.

On the other hand, I did genuinely enjoy Sinead's observations on life in customer service. She describes her work-mode self as a 'flight attendant zombie', and is over the fact that she is clever, fluent in 3 languages and simply worth something as a person, and yet has to put up with being patronised, objectified and generally treated badly. She also holds some ill-will towards a male colleague, who does the same job as her, yet is sullen because he thinks he's above certain parts of it, and is treated differently. I related to her sense of disenchantment, and enjoyed the snark, wit and bone-tiredness that infused her observations. It went some small way to making up for my frustration at Gabriel and the plot. In other ways, however, Sinead's observations made my annoyance worse: the author doesn't have any illusions about being a woman in the service industries, and yet her hero is still exhibits those characteristics her heroine hates.

Review: Imperfect Chemistry by Mary Frame

4.5 stars

Imperfect Chemistry was the most enjoyable New Adult romance I've read in a long while (not that I read masses of them), and I loved it. Somehow, it managed to strike a near-perfect balance between light-hearted romantic comedy and serious NA issues like consent, parental approval and emotional dependency. It also provided several genuine surprises  along the way that were really delightful and brought the story away from cliche genius-girl-and-hot-boy territory. 

Having started university at the age of thirteen, Lucy is in the unique position of being a 20 year old with a PhD in microbiology. She's received a research grant to study emotion as a pathogen, but she's having trouble coming up with a hypothesis and methodology. After a disastrous stint in the university's counselling clinic leaves her no closer to an answer, she decides that maybe her neighbour, the mysterious Jensen, can help. The gossip on campus is that he's gone through a bad break-up, and done some serious rebounding, and Lucy thinks he can move her project forward in two ways. Firstly, she can ask him about these experiences, and then, since she seems to find him attractive, maybe he could help her experience some more personal emotions. 

Lucy's voice was very distinct, straightforward and scientific like the character herself. However, it changed over the course of the novel, as Lucy becomes less clinical and more accustomed to interacting with others. Throughout, the light relief that Lucy's friend Freya, Jensen and, increasingly, Lucy herself, provided was essential to counterbalancing the cerebral nature of Lucy's commentary. 

This leads to the not-entirely-positive thing I have to say about Imperfect Chemistry. The whole thing occurred in Lucy's POV, but the conflict in the romance arc comes from Jensen's side. Because of this, the conflict seems to come about very abruptly, and I felt some foreshadowing or set-up to this would have been well served. Quite apart from that, Jensen was just a very sweet hero, and I would have liked to have more insight into his thought processes and feelings about Lucy. The second book, about Freya, is dual-POV, and I have to say I did appreciate that. (I'm not going to write a review for Imperfectly Criminal, because it would be much in the same vein, also being a really good NA read with quirky characters). 

Usually, I read other books between instalments in the same series, because I find I engage less if I read one in a series straight off the back of another, but this is one case where I just had to keep going. So I read the second in the series, then I read one other book (which was a disappointment) and now I'm going to move on the third for another hit of funny-and-feelgood-but-not-fluffy. 

Frame has worked some serious magic so far in this series, and I find myself wishing she had more books in print. She must know she's going to get the reader hooked as well, because Imperfect Chemistry is free on Amazon (I repeat: FREE), and then the other two in the series...aren't (although they're still very reasonably priced). But even if it weren't free, I'd still recommend you pick it up. 

Review: Most Eligible Bachelor by Empi Baryeh

2.5 stars
*SPOILER ALERT*

There were aspects of Most Eligible Bachelor I really liked, and others I had serious problems with. I started off thinking it was definitely a 4 star read, then I revised to 3, and now it's ended up with a 2.5. In a nutshell, the hero exhibited some really worrying, dickhead behaviour and I can't move on from that. 

Set in Ghana, Most Eligible Bachelor is the story of Chantelle Sah, a journalist with a well-respected national magazine, and her interviewee, Lord McKenzie, a construction juggernaut with a playboy reputation. Unbeknownst to Chantelle, Lord has been following her work and specially requested that she be the one to interview him, on Valentine's Day, no less. Valentine's Day has been pretty shitty for Chantelle since her fiance died - with another woman - three years before, but that doesn't mean she's going to fall for Lord's smooth lines. 

For the most part, I enjoyed this take on the arrogant businessman meets resistant woman set-up, and Chantelle's backstory provided some good depth to this, as did Lord's desire for a loving relationship like his parents'. At first, I worried that the stiry relied too heavily on the use of conventional tropes, but the Ghanaian setting and relative strength of Chantelle as a character provided a good balance.

However, as I mentioned earlier, I had some serious issues with the Lord's behaviour, in particular his decision not to tell the Chantelle the condom broke when they first had sex. I read romance for escapism, and men robbing women of their agency is one of the most real life scenarios there is. It's depressing, it's frustrating and it's very hard to keep backing a relationship where it occurs. Even though the reason a man treats a woman this way is, by and large, irrelevant, Lord's rationale somehow does make it worse. He calls Chantelle to tell her, but she doesn't pick up, so he convinces himself that it'll be fine, she's probably on the pill anyway. Then the issue is dropped for ages, and I thought - because he's clearly psychic about her contraceptive choices - that he must not intend to tell her. But, oh no, he still does, he's just 'waiting for the right time'. Even though, by this point, they've been alone together about a dozen times. MATE, there is no right time to tell someone the condom broke, you do it ASAP so they have options and can be checked out. In the end, he doesn't tell her until she is already about to take a pregnancy test, which is so not ok. Chantelle is obviously angry, pointing out that if he'd told her earlier, she could have had the morning after pill. But then she forgives him, because, you know, love. That's where I started to detach from the story, because I was unable to trust his assurances that he wouldn't ever act in a similar manner (there are other incidents where he railroads Chantelle or doesn't respect when she says no), and so my desire for and belief in the HEA was reduced somewhat. 

It's a shame, because at other times, Lord could seem really sweet and be the kind of hero I wanted him to be. In one instance, Chantelle tries to initiate something, and doesn't proceed, concerned that she is emotional and still has regrets over the last time they slept together. I could get behind that Lord, but, unfortunately, he is ultimately eclipsed by his horrible twin.

So, overall, Most Eligible Bachelor was a mixed bag. It started strong, had good writing (although I wasn't a massive fan of the euphemisms in the sex scenes) and a well-executed plot (with the obvious exception of the whole I'm-not-going-to-tell-you-about-the-condom-breaking conflict). I just wish the hero had lived up to his potential, and allowed the heroine the freedom of choice she deserved. 

Review: The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn by Usman T Malik

5 stars

The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn was a hauntingly beautiful speculative fiction short story. It's not a romance, although it does include two love stories; one has a HEA, and one does not. 

It starts with Salman Ali Zaidi, a young boy in America, whose grandfather tells him stories of the pauper princess he knew during his youth in Lahore, Pakistan. A descendant of the last Mughal Emperor, Zeenat Begum ran a small tea stall. She told people that a jinn had protected her royal ancestors, and now watched over her from the Eucalyptus tree that shaded her little stall. 

After Sal grows up, he discovers evidence in his deceased grandfather's possessions that his family have a much greater link to the Mughal princess than his grandfather ever let on. He travels to Pakistan for the first time to investigate and is caught up in the same eternal and otherworldly mystery his grandfather had stumbled upon half a century before. 

The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn drew in ontology of the creation of human and jinn, and philoshopy about myth and history. From reading Goodreads reviews, I gather the philosophy was a turn-off for some people, but as Sal's grandfather told him as a boy, "all good stories leave questions". Just as with much speculative fiction, especially the shorter formats, I don't feel like one is meant to get bogged down in the hows and the whys of it all. I certainly felt like everything was explained, in a lyrical way that befitted the story, and that nothing got overly complicated, unless you were trying to connect every dot. And this was the thing - the reader couldn't connect every dot, because Sal didn't even have that ability, and he was the narrator. 

Sal's voice - and the writing in general - was so lyrical and strong, and Malik has woven so many different things into such a short story and made them fit together seamlessly. It shouldn't have worked, but it does. However, if I was to critique the story for anything - and it's a such a very small thing, hardly worth bringing up  - it would be the story's reliance on a unbroken male line for five generations, given that the whole story hinged on a Mughal princess. 

Review: Long Gone Girl by Amy Rose Bennett

3.5 stars

Long Gone Girl was a cute, little 1950s-set novella. Ginny Williams is recently returned from the Korean War, where she served as a nurse and had a short marriage to a medic before he died in action. Keen to escape stifling life in small town New Jersey, she heads to the shore for a weekend, only to meet her high school classmate and one-time crush Jett Kelly on the beach. Jett humiliated Ginny once, and Ginny won't let him do it again, but she's also very attracted to him. And, as Jett is a pilot who also served in Korea, they have a lot more in common now than they ever did in high school.  

Long Gone Girl is a light, quick and easy read, with a 1950s setting that made it stand out. Bennett does very well at giving the reader a sense of place and time, and the setting also shapes the characters and their interactions. Obviously, there's their mutual experience with the Korean War, but Ginny is also rebelling against her mother's conceptions of correct behaviour, and attempting to strike out on her own as a new type of woman. She was frank, both sexually and with reference to her career. 

This meant that it focused a lot on the physical attraction side of things, and not very much on what Ginny liked or thought she could like about Jett as a person. There was HFN and not a HEA, which I thought was fitting, but that's because I didn't see what would have held Ginny to a relationship with Jett, apart from sexual attraction, even though she says at the end that she was falling for him. 

There was so much that was yet to be explored, and in an ideal world I'd have liked an epilogue or something where this was touched on, however briefly. I also felt like the conflict could have been slightly more prominent or protracted or something, because both the two main obstacles in the romantic arc - Ginny's lack of desire for a relationship and her lack of faith in Jett - are dispensed with fairly quickly and with minimal angst. I would have also liked more information about the characters' experiences in Korea, or for this to have more of a visible impact, but this is probably very much a matter of personal preference. 

Overall, taking into account the fact that Bennett is working within the novella format, Long Gone Girl did its thing quite well.