When I found out this was reality TV-themed, I was like *pterodactyl screech*. And then I found out that even though the heroine is on the reality TV show, the love interest is just the stalkery brother of the producer who is WAAAAAAY too jealous over this woman he doesn't even know. Way too jealous. Like, watching TV with only one hand in sight, jealous. Ewww.
Kate and Cooper meet a blackjack game. She's the daughter of a famous card player and picked up a few tricks. She's also the girl-next-door archetype on this reality TV show called Throb, which is like a tropical-set Bachelor where all these girls queue up to date this rock star named Flynn-- who's actually REALLY nice. I loved Flynn.
But the love interest is Cooper, who gets interested in the show just because of Kate (initially, he was like oh god little bro, ANOTHER probably-failed reality TV show? let me fall into rich boy agony). He's instantly jealous and starts demanding that the film crew force the rock star guy to take another girl out on a date besides Kate (who he was going to choose) and then after screening a video where he sees Kate and Flynn kiss, Cooper gets jealous and has one of the crew call her into his office, where he then forces a kiss on her himself and is like HOW WAS THAT.
Ummmmm.
#Bye
I will be the first in line for an alpha hero of a man but not if he's like a stalkery, spineless, icky one. UNLESS he's supposed to be stalkery, spineless, and icky... and I don't think so. Kate is just like ohhh Cooper is so dreamy-- and I'm like yeah, if that dream is a nightmare about stalkers.
So I actually read this book back in 2012 when it was published by Ellora's Cave and Jaymie Holland was Cheyenne McCray. The original title of this book was KING OF HEARTS but now it appears to have been changed to TAKEN BY PASSION. I downloaded this when it was a freebie from the Kindle store because how often do we have the opportunity to reexperience the foibles of our youth? Even if it lands us in horny jail.
*bonk*
Oh my God this book was just as bad as I remembered. No shade to the people who liked it because I do understand that this is basically just like an expanded version of those erotica shorts that people enjoy reading for the smut (#FTS) but... even with the alleged 60 new pages of content to expand and flesh out the story, I thought this was pretty awful.
The heroine is plus-sized but the way this is brought up is pretty cringe-worthy. Back in 2012, people were way worse about body positivity so I guess I was hoping that maybe the expanded, rewritten version wouldn't have Alice hating on her appearance so much. Not so. Also it still has the icky beginning where she finds out her boyfriend/fiance is cheating on her with TWO other people and when caught, he immediately insults Alice's weight. Gross. And then you have the hero, Jarronn, validating the heroine by telling her how hot he thinks she is which feels... um. Gross.
I didn't like the sex scenes either. They felt very juvenile to me. I think they're supposed to be. This is one-shot escapist fantasy but it's written like it too. And the writing is not good. The heroine's internal monologues are so weird. When she's not beating herself up for her weight, she's making up-- I kid you not-- fake Twitter updates that she could post about her situation, replete with hashtags. In terms of quality, this definitely feels up there with monsterotica and dinoporn.
Read this for fun, or for the lols, or because you like being in horny jail. But don't get this and expect it to be that much different than the smutty original.
I pushed farther than I normally do in books like these because I quite enjoyed the author's other work, STONE COLD MAGIC. There's nothing really objectively wrong with THE SELECTION, which is why I'm giving it two stars-- the writing is of decent quality and I could probably force myself to finish it if I wanted to, but I don't want to because it feels a little too derivative for me.
If you saw the title, THE SELECTION, and wondered if it was like that other book-- then yes, dear reader, you would be right. THE SELECTION is like THE (other) SELECTION with a liberal dash of THE HUNGER GAMES. Maya lives on Earthenfell which is Earth as ruled over by alien colonizers from Calisto. Every year, boy and girl "Obligates" (read: tributes) are taken for the alien overlords. The girl Obligates fight to the death for a chance to join Lord Torric's harem, and the boy Obligates serve.
I did actually like the beginning of the book which establishes Maya as a scrappy compassionate heroine who gathers fruit for her blind sister to fulfill her quota while also contemplating poisoning the jerk fiance she discovers cheating (and she doesn't even slut-shame the other women, which is so rare in books like these, I couldn't help but approve).
My problem with this book-- and what kept me from finishing-- is the overwhelming Hunger Gamesiness of the story and the fact that Torric's POV is that classic sleazy alpha male style of narration that I just can't stand. The moment he lays eyes on Maya, he's already fascinating about her resemblance to an angel and demanding that the courtesan of his that resembles Maya most be brought to him in anticipation of having her. Ugh! So he's basically the same as her sleazy fiance who was sleeping with others to keep Maya "pure," but because he's alpha, we should like it? NOPE.
I'd recommend reading STONE COLD MAGIC instead if you're curious about this author.
I loved this author's book, DELIVER, but nothing of hers I've read since can recapture that magic for me. DEAD OF EVE had a lot of problems, though. It's a post-apocalyptic book where a "Muslim insurgency" has unleashed a plague upon the U.S. that turns them all into bug people. The xenophobic/mutant plot kind of reads like something you would see in a 1950s Z movie, that could just as easily be called "Invasion of the Bug People" or "The Last Woman on Earth." You see, all the women have died, as the men mutated, except for Evie.
This post-apocalyptic nightmare is basically her gun nut husband's wet dream. He's prepared for this his whole life, you see. He trains his wife to use weapons but still treats her and talks to her like a child. I get that it's ostensibly because he loves her and is afraid during these terrible circumstances, but he comes across as a major ass. I'm guessing he probably dies at some point, but he's in it for the long haul in the beginning.
The book summary makes it sound like this is going to be a reverse-harem, but I read one of my friends' reviews and if it is a reverse-harem, it's a very slow to start one, because she said that by 60% in, there still wasn't any reverse-harem action. I didn't read this book for that, but if you are, that's something to think about. I was put off by the extremist themes in the book and some less-than-stellar writing. I do think this will appeal to people who like those campy 1950s movies, but that person is not me.
Not quite my fastest DNF, but it didn't take me long to realize that this book wasn't for me. THE AIR HE BREATHES employs your typical Early New Adult Formula, which means it's 2 parts tragedy, 3 parts insta-love, 1 part toxic gender roles, and 5 parts cliche.
Elizabeth meets Tristan when she accidentally runs over his dog. She's about as sympathetic as one might expect, i.e. not very. ("Oh my God, why is he being so mean to me? What did I do?") Honestly, if someone ran over my pet and then started arguing with me about what the fastest route to the animal hospital was, I'd probably be pretty sour, too.
Tristan is a bit of a psycho. He yells a lot and when we first meet him, he's running around without shoes. I'm guessing that his rage is what he uses to hide his emotional pain, because he's just too ~macho~ to emotion, you guys, oh, the suffering, oh, woe, woe.
It seems that each of these characters had someone close to them die and now they're upset and afraid of letting others in and being hurt all over again. Tristan has a dog. Elizabeth has a young daughter. Both of them (Elizabeth and Tristan) have the emotional maturity of teenagers. I guess if you're into authors like J.A. Redmerski and Abbi Glines, you might like this. Me? Not so much.
There are many popular reviewers on Goodreads who enjoy reviewing New York Times best-sellers and the latest trendy young adult book, but I'm not about that life. I enjoy reviewing out of print bodice-rippers and weird erotica with titles like CRAMMING HER CANDY BAG. I'm actually a little disappointed because I was hoping this was going to be an erotica about a woman having sex with actual candy, kind of in the vein of those bizarro erotica shorts like I FUCKED FROSTY or BAGGED BY THE GROCERIES. karen reads a lot of these, and I find them equally terrifying and hilarious.
CRAMMING HER CANDY BAG is not one of these monsteroica second cousins once removed, however. It is straight-up normie erotica about a middle management pencil-pusher named Melanie whose big dream in life is to push four pencils, all at the same time (hurr, hurr). She has a boyfriend named Wesley and is hurled unwillingly into dat single life when she comes home from work to catch him having a threesome. Because he is a gentleman, he offers to let her join.
A messy break-up ensues, rife with fat-shaming (because he would go there). Melanie self-pity shops for vintage outfits and a sexy costume for the mandatory company Halloween party and then masturbates at work, thinking about doing her execs. At the party, we learn that all four of her bosses have been lusting after her since she was hired. Sex quickly ensues, with some of the most terrible scenes I have ever read, and some truly heinous euphemisms that are straight out of Bertrice Small, like "love box."
Their big cocks rattled around in my hot box in the most wonderful way! I couldn't stop cumming. It was like a waterfall running out of my pussy (96%).
It was like drilling for pleasure and hitting a big vein, only we were using our flesh drills and the oil was her unending squirts (87%).
There's a brief blip in which Melanie learns that they were attracted to her when they hired her and is afraid that maybe they didn't actually bring her on to the team for any professional skills. The men all panic, as visions of lawsuits dance in their heads, but they come to the conclusion that she won't sue the firm because she's a "kind and compassionate person," which, wtf. Way to victim-shame.
Including the men's POVs in this book was a big mistake, I think, because all they do is hate on HR and objectify Melanie.
Those harpies at HR could all go to Hell. We were human, dammit! And this was our humanity, giving our bodies to each other! (58%)
At least it has a happy ending, though. She marries all of them (although since bigamy is illegal, what I think she actually does is marry one of them officially and live with all of them unofficially) and they live polyamorously ever after. And the whole company (including, I'm assuming, HR) comes to their wedding and all of their clients are 100% fine with this. Because that's totally realistic.
*eye roll*
This book is currently free so if you're into this kind of thing, today's your lucky day. I'm not really into the book equivalent of porn unless it has a cohesive storyline and actual character depth, but if you're a fan of Alexa Riley or even Virginia Wade, you might like this one. Part of me is tempted to read her other book, FILLING HER STEINS, in which one woman has six partners at the same time, but that sounds a little too hardcore, even for me. I found myself cringing in this book when Melanie has double-penetration anal with no lube. She does this vaginally, too, which is equally yecch. Not sure how that would work with six guys, unless they triple-up? How about no.
One thing to note: in the ebook, the author has embedded some links asking for reviews and encouraging you to sign up for her mailing list at the end ofthe book. When I accidentally clicked on this link, it appeared to be a malformed URL and was blocked by my web browser, which is potentially suspicious, so be cautious about clicking on the hyperlinks.
Fun fact, this book was free in the Kindle store on the same day that I had a date with an actual guy from Macedonia. The date, like this book, didn't really work out. Kismet? Maybe. Either way, it's funny - and so is this book, unintentionally. MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT is apparently named after a celebration that seems to be Macedonian Mardi Gras. The heroine, Sigourney Hamilton, is a journalist who ends up being kidnapped by Damon Demetrios because he wants her to report on the Macedonian rebellion (I'm guessing from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) based on the date that this was published). However, she keeps referring to the secret police organization VASIK, which, if this was SFRY-related seems like it probably should have been OZNA? Also, hilariously, the dictator dude in this book is named Agamemnon. Yeah, like that Agamemnon. *side-eye* Is his #1 VASIK thug named Achilles?
I have had mixed success with Parris Afton Bonds's novels. She wrote primarily during The Age of Bodice Rippers. DUST DEVIL, one of her earlier books, was the story that gave no f*cks. Racism, mutilation, rape, torture? Why not? It's fun for the whole family! I might have liked it for the sheer ballsiness of the narrative, if not for the unspeakably dull last act, and for the happy ending-baiting that occurred in the second act, only to end in utter calamity. The other book of hers I read, LAVENDER BLUE, was more in line with what I expect from bodice rippers - dangerous, sexy hero, backdrop of danger and war, and a heroine who is bold to the extent of being unreasonable. It probably would have been a five-star book, if not for the hero's Mr. Hyde transformation in the last of act of the book, where he randomly decides to ill-treat the heroine. You know, for funsies. I don't expect my books to be 100% politically correct, but by golly, if you're going to write a character one way, you keep them that one way and don't do a 180 for shock value!
MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT was completely different from these other two books in that it is a contemporary romance (the other two were historical) and seems to be trying to emulate the Harlequin Presents sort of storytelling, with the ingenue heroine who gets mixed up with the sexy and sexually formidable European alpha hero who dazzles her with his blend of riches and intimidation, although I will give Bonds credit for forgoing the typical Italian/Greek/Sheik formula for something slightly more esoteric. I'm pretty sure most people in the U.S. don't even know that Macedonia is a country, and wouldn't know where to begin looking for it on a map (no, it's not in Africa).
MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT failed me because it is boring AF. I wasn't excited to read it at all, and when I rediscovered it on my Kindle and tried to continue where I left off, my brain wasn't having it. I'm kind of shocked, because both DUST DEVIL and LAVENDER BLUE had me flipping the pages trying to figure out what happened next, but I couldn't care less with MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT. Maybe it was partially tarnished by my unsuccessful date, but mostly I felt like there wasn't enough chemistry between the h and the H or enough action in the storyline to keep me engaged.
💙 I read this for the Unapologetic Romance Readers' New Years 2018 Reading Challenge, for the category of: BBW (Big Beautiful Woman) Romance. For more info on this challenge, click here. 💙
Man, I always secretly dread the BBW challenge. In principle, I think the concept is great. As a plus-sized woman, it's awesome to see curvy or heavy women gracing the covers of romance novels. When I saw the cover of this book in the Kindle freebie section, I snagged it instantly, because of course I want to support that.
The problem is that these sorts of books usually come across as cliche-ridden and fetishistic. PRETTY IN INK is no exception. Aubrey is rich and overweight. When we meet her, she's at a bar with her skinny-bitch sister who's getting married. They're double-dating (Aubrey's seeing the best man). Aubrey has issues about her weight (and it's suggested that she's this heavy because she eats), but refuses to starve herself to become as slim as her sister. Her entire family is this cliche bunch of villains that demonize her for being heavy, and this loser she's dating actually tries to veto her dinner order at the bar to force her to eat a salad and chicken instead of cheese and steak. It turns out this loser is just dating her for her money and utterly resents her for being fat.
Cut to our hero, Garrett, who loves big women because they give him a "smooth landing" or something like that. He loves curvy women a little too much, actually, because his attraction to Aubrey is simply because she's big, and that makes sex more fun for him. I guess that's fine, but at the same time, he's not really seeing her as a person, but as a plus-sized blow-up doll, and while I get that that is the point of these short, sexual fantasies - objectification, but in a "positive" way - it still feels gross. Particularly since the narrative appears to be trying to belabor the point that Garrett is such a nice guy for willing to date her for herself, and that he's the only one who sees her as a sexual being with feelings and not as some gross blob, so he is validating her very existence, blah, blah, blah.
PRETTY INK INK tries really hard, but the quickie format just doesn't work for the topics it broaches. It made weight-shaming and body image issues feel cheap. Maybe if you enjoy Alexa Riley romances, you'll enjoy this, as they are very similar in tone - there's that same protective alpha, "I MUST CLAIM HER" caveman vibe that their fans seem to love. But if you're expecting something substantial, with good plus-size rep, you're going to be very disappointed.
My new friend Brandy and I decided to BR a royal romance in honor of the Royal Wedding and this was a Kindle book we both had sitting on our Kindles. I'd never read anything by this author before and to be surprised, I was kind of surprised it was a romance about a prince because the dude on the cover looks more like a well-groomed biker or a rock star, but hey, to each their own. Maybe he'd be a sexy rebel cast in the mold of Harry Windsor and I could get my princely fix.
Well, no.
This is so stupid. It's about two scammy sisters named Zelda and Ava who like to go to casinos and scam money. They're con artists. One day, they go a scam too far and end up catching the attention of this exiled dude from a made-up country named "Monagasco" (a portmanteau of Monaco and Madagascar?) who blackmails them into agreeing to cozy up to the prince of Monagasco, or else he'll report them to the casinos for fraud, etc.
I stopped reading when the prince encounters one of the sisters (Ava, I think) standing outside on a balcony reciting poetry to herself during a big party. Honestly, that was the straw that killed it for me because that was so unbelievably stupid. Who does that? I mean, seriously. This book was just one big suspension of disbelief after another. I'm already kind of suspicious of made-up countries because that, to me, is indicative of lazy writing (i.e., "I don't want to do any historical or cultural research, so I'm going to make something up"), and the culture and history of "Monagasco" was super vague. Why do they speak French, for example? Why not a made-up language? Monagascese?
The prince, what's-his-name was also super-skeazy. He's basically a NASCAR driver; he spends all his time racing. Which, I'm pretty sure a prince would probably not be allowed to do because of the danger factor. I don't think hobbies that could kill the heir apparent would be encouraged. Also, he and his brother (or was it his cousin?) brag about their conspicuous bad-boy activities, like orgies and cocaine, and I'm just thinking, "Cool, so the major export of their company must be tabloids, because who the hell lives like this sustainably and where are they getting the money for these activities?"
And then I got to the poetry on the balcony scene and I was done.
This is just another one of those basic romances with poor quality writing and uninspired characters. It almost reads like the author had two disparate ideas and just decided to cram them into one book. Spoiler: it didn't work.
I don't think I'll be reading anything else by this author.
You know those 90s makeover movies where the guy feels like he ought to have "first dibs" on the newly beautiful girl because he liked her when she was "ugly"? This book is basically a gender-flipped version of that, except it's between annoying brat of a heroine and a hero who has Asperger's, and she feels super possessive of him because she feels like she's the only person who treated him like he was "normal" before everyone else realized that he was just a normal, even cool guy too. You know what the problem with that is, though? You're assuming that you deserve gold stars for just treating people the way they want to be treated. And this 'heroine' right here? She wants all the gold stars.
PUDDLE JUMPING has a 4.22 average rating among my friends, so I was expecting to like it. I wasn't expecting to hate it, or have it fill me with disgust - which it did. First problem for me is that the writing style feels really amateurish and is super chatty, with tons of pointless asides from the narrator that add nothing to the plot. I was willing to roll with it in the beginning, because it's written from the POV of the 'heroine' as a child, but the problem continues - and worsens - over the course of the story. It's just bad writing.
Second problem, the treatment of the hero with Asperger's. The whole 'romance' is basically the heroine's big crusade to make the hero her big makeover project. Right away, she goes up to this other girl who's also dating a neurodivergent guy and starts asking for tips. She Googles Asperger's and is totally shocked that people with Asperger's are people, too.She gets a big stick up her bum when the hero gets a job and skips out on prom (not somewhere someone with Asperger's might want to go) to work at his new job, which he loves, and gives him a big lecture about how she is just as important as his job, and then gets his mom on his case to make sure he follows up on all their subsequent dates. At the end of the book, the hero gets an amazing opportunity to pursue his dreams abroad, and the heroine storms out of his party without congratulating him, because she had his future planned out for him and this goes against her plans. She felt like she should have been consulted first, and wants to make him stay. His mom actually has to come over and explain to this 'heroine' what a great job she did with her son, and butter her up to make her cool with it.
The constant tone of superiority and condescension hanging over this book like a cloud really put me off. At first, I wondered if I was maybe being too harsh on this book, so I kept reading, and the more I read, the less I liked. By the time I got to the end, I couldn't brush aside my qualms anymore. It had this galling "savior" tone to it, like the heroine was making it her personal mission to "humanize" the neurodivergent and it was her own personal discovery, and she expected all the awards for it. I went to look at the negative reviews for this book once I had finished and saw, to my relief, that I was not alone. Some people used the word "fetishization" and I think that's the word that was escaping me: Colton's hotness was basically used as an excuse to make him worth pursuing, in spite of what made him different, and the entire journey was one-sided and written entirely from a privileged, ableist perspective about how brave people are who bother befriending those who are different.
Thirdly, I really didn't like the slut-shaming and the way sexuality is treated in this book. It's a short book, and yet the 'heroine' is constantly making jabs at her friend, Harper. Oh, and this girl who gets chlamydia from a tanning bed is called "Chlam-face" - by the heroine, no less. Is the heroine innocent and pure? Of course. She's so innocent and pure that she's too afraid to get birth control from her parents, so she has a friend steal her some from a clinic. #InnocentAndPureFTW
For better romance novels about neurodiversity, I'd suggest K.J. Charles's AN UNSEEN ATTRACTION, and Jennifer Ashley's THE MADNESS OF LORD IAN MACKENZIE. Both are historical fiction, unfortunately, since I don't read too many contemporary romances, but I thought both did a fairly good job with this - although I will be honest that THE MADNESS (as the title might suggest) comes across as dated and shares many of the same issues as PUDDLE JUMPING.
This was a pretty terrible book. I took a nap before reviewing it so I wouldn't sound *too* cranky, but it still made me pretty irritated (as you can probably tell, haha). I wouldn't recommend it.
🎃 Read for the Unapologetic Romance Readers Halloween 2017 Reading Challenge for the category of: a romance novel with blood on the cover 🎃
Good books make you ask questions - but sometimes, bad books make you ask questions, too. Questions like, "Why is this book so long?" "How did this even get published?" And, most pressingly, "What is it about this book that people actually like?"
I read SEMPRE for our book of the month over at URR, and am only just now finishing it because of how awful it was. It wasn't even spectacularly awful - just dismally so. Everything about this book dragged. Most of those 500 pages? They're all padding. The story, without all that fluff, is pretty simple. Haven is a teenage slave. Carmine's father buys her. He falls in love with his slave, and she falls in love with him, and it's all hearts and cuddles and tender moments - until the mafia steps in and says, "Hell no."
I hate to say it, but I was on the mafia's side in this one. I was like, "Hell no," too.
Here's my biggest issue. SEMPRE reads like the author wanted to write fanfic of Goodfellas, Godfather, and Sopranos, but she also really wanted to write a disgustingly fluffy book like Stephanie Perkins, but she also wanted to write a really edgy new adult book with SEX, but she also really wanted her hero to be a Nice Guy, but she also really wanted her heroine to be pure and virtuous.
Even though, you know, she grew up in a world of sex trafficking.
So what we have is a PG-13 mafia/human trafficking book where most of the book takes place in high school and there's a few random scenes that seem to be heavily inspired by the three mafia books I mentioned, all written from Carmine's father's POV. Haven is a slave, whose mother is basically a sex slave, but Haven herself is used for cooking and cleaning and that's it. She's innocent about everything, and even asks, in all seriousness, whether there are colleges in California.
WHAT.
I mean, there's sheltered, and then there's how-the-hell-did-you-not-know-that.
Carmine is everything I hate in a hero. He swears a lot and punches people out to show how tough he is, and Darhower desperately tries to make him the good guy by punching out these people on Haven's behalf and having all these forced intimate moments with her. Forced in the technical sense, that is: not the rapey sense. And Haven is so naive that she makes me sick. You can tell that she's just supposed to be so adorable because she nibbles at food, nuzzles at people, peers up at people, and chases fireflies while the adoring Carmine just sits there and smiles in vacant admiration because that's what people do when they watch cat videos, and Haven is basically supposed to be the human equivalent of a cat video - only for some reason, it's not cute when a person does it, just disturbing.
I'm still blown away by how boring and terrible this was, and that it has a 4.2 average rating on Goodreads (did we read different books?). SEMPRE took a dar topic and tried to make it a cute love story. The result is a book that comes across as both tone deaf and ridiculous.
I'd had my eye on this book for a while because I love dark historical romances (because bodice ripper queen, obviously) and the idea of a modern author reviving the trend had a lot of appeal, as the only two authors who really "revamped" the bodice ripper genre with any modicum of commercial success are Anne Stuart and Anna Campbell. When it showed up for free in the Kindle store, I thought to myself YAASSS, and was thrilled when my friends Heather and Brandy agreed to a buddy read of it.
I only made it to about halfway before the book became intolerable. First, don't be fooled by that awesome title or the many reviews branding this as "dark." Gregory isn't a dark hero at all. He's an immature jerk but he's not a gamma hero - not in the bodice ripper sense and not even in the Anne Stuart sense. He's just a jerk who loses his cool whenever someone calls him the B-word.
Arabella, likewise, is one of those unconventional heroines who doesn't really garner more than a side-eye or the occasional unkind word from jealous rivals, even though she does things like ride side saddle or speak in thinly veiled innuendo in public. She kind of reminds me of some of Catherine Coulter's heroines, where foot-stomping is a form of feminism, because real women CANNOT be tamed, ooooooh! She has hints of a dark back story but nothing to give her serious character; both she and Gregory felt very one-note and bland to me, as insignificant as the side characters.
Oh, and let's talk about the writing. Now, I get that this is self-published, so a certain degree of clunkiness is expected. Sometimes that "diamond in the rough" style can give an author's awkward style of writing things a certain gawky poetry. Tarryn Fisher's works are like this - you can tell she is indie, but her works are well-written and there are passages of exceptionally gorgeous and insightful writing. Not so in Addison Cain, particularly the sex scenes, which were about as sexy as a trip to the gynecologist for a routine pap smear. It was unbearable. I literally could not go on.
I'm sorry I didn't enjoy this more because on the surface it seemed like a story that I would embrace with open arms. Sadly, DARK SIDE OF THE SUN feels like a very washed-out, coffee-stained hodgepodge of Anne Stuart's TO LOVE A DARK LORD and A ROSE AT MIDNIGHT. To this book's incredible misfortune, I just read those two books and the comparison was fresh in my mind. This book failed to live up to its predecessors in just about every way, shape, and form.
My romance group, the Unapologetic Romance Readers, picked this as our May group read. Some of us really enjoyed it - but others fell into the camp of, "Excuse me, what is this?"
As far as I can tell, the plot of these books can be summed up as "Men Who Have Beards... and the Women Who Want to Do Them." (The men, that is - not the beards, although given the strangeness of this book, beard sex probably isn't off the table.)
Beau and Duane Winston are two of these Men with Beards. They are identical twins, although with opposite personalities. Beau is the Elizabeth Wakefield of the two: friendly, sociable, intelligent, good ol' boy, whereas Duane is the Jessica Wakefield: moody, sarcastic, mean-spirited, and selfish.
Jessica - I mean the Jessica of this book, Jessica James (not to be confused with the far more awesome Jessica Jones) - has been in love with Beau her whole life. So when one of the twins decides to cop a feel and then more than a feel, she naturally assumes it's Beau and just rolls with it. Little does she know that the twin she nearly does in the shadowed corners is actually Duane (and if that weren't icky enough, he knows that she thinks he's his brother and doesn't tell her).
Honestly, this happens so much in romance novels, and I think it's such a gross, fetishy trope. I can't imagine twins IRL pulling sex pranks on their love interests or pretending to be their twin in order to get some booty. That feels almost rapey to me, because you don't technically have their consent to have sex with you. I didn't like Duane from that moment on, and his treatment of his stripper girlfriend, Tina, and his creepy, Travis Maddoxy assertion that he and Jessica are "suited" just continued to make me like him less, and less, and less.
I also didn't really care for the writing style or the humor in this book. Penny Reid kind of reminds me of L.H. Cosway with her awkward asides and weird, rambling humor about totally random stuff, and I believe Reid and Cosway actually did a collab, so that's probably a match made in heaven. Not my heaven, obviously, but somebody's. Somebody who is not me.
I was going to try to force myself to finish this but I have so little time these days that I may go back to rating and reviewing books I haven't finished. Normally I just chuck them to the side, unread, but I feel like if a book is so bad that pushing yourself to continue actually ruins your day a little, the public should be informed.
P.S. What is up with the biker gang sub-plot? It's like the author herself realized, "Hmm, this book is actually kind of boring. Better add in some pointless action."
P.P.S. Does Jessica have a circumcised penis fetish? She was really into the fact that Duane was circumcised. Like, REALLY into it.
How often do you grab books while they're free or discounted on Kindle and then never read them? For me, pretty much all the time. That's why my friends and I have started the Kindle Clean Out club where we BR books that have been sitting in cyberspace, gathering virtual dust. You can read Sarah's review of this book here, and Heather's review of this book here.
This is actually my second book by this author. The first was STILL LIFE WITH STRINGS. I received a copy of the book directly from the author and ended up giving the book two stars because even though I loved the idea of a romance with a sexy violinist (*drools*), the romance felt rushed and unrealistic, the heroine was kind of a judgmental little sh*t, and the two of them had sex without a bloody condom - my #1 erotica pet-peeve.
I leaped at the chance to obtain PAINTED FACES because this sounded like yet another interesting concept - a romance between a baker and a straight drag queen. "Yes, okay, just give it here!" said foolish me. "I'll totally sign up for that!" I began reading the book and was dismayed to find myself with yet another book that also felt rushed and unrealistic, with a judgmental little sh*t of a heroine who has sex without a condom.
Oh. My. God. There is no escape from the madness.
Fred is the worst heroine. She's always making judgments about everyone around her, slut-shaming women, body-shaming women, reverse-slut-shaming women (if you're not actively having sex, you're all dried up). She's snide about a woman with a college degree who became a stay-at-home mom. She makes fun of her friend Anny for having a threesome. She age-shames this woman for having sex with Nicholas (before she and Nicholas are together) because having sex with a younger, attractive man makes you desperate. Her mouth (or at least, her words) is always running to deliver these constant asides that make her seem desperate to relate to you, the reader. Do you enjoy relaxing in sweatpants? Do you like watching people eat the food you cooked? Do you think furry animals are cute? Wow, you do? Oh my God, you're so unique and quirky...JUST LIKE FREDA.
Her relationship with Nicholas starts out with them being friends, but that, too, felt rushed and desperate. I liked how secure Nicholas was with his sexuality, and how he indulged in both stereotypically masculine and feminine activities without making a big fuss over it. Unfortunately, Nicholas is also an alphahole who gets really grabby with the heroine. When they first meet, he presses himself up against her backside while she's cooking (ew, predatory, no). He's constantly grabbing her breasts or talking about her body. He sleeps around with other women and then mocks them - either behind their back or in front of them, to other women (mostly Freda) - and uses them to make other women who want to sleep with him jealous (everyone). He's constantly tearing at her clothes, at one point yanking her dress down so he can molest her in a bathroom (again, before they're together). He employs the heroine with a job that's 100% pretense so he can gauge whether or not she's worthy of him. It's all so sick-making and by the end of the book I despised him. How can you possibly like a hero who tells the heroine that she's pure and clean, while other women are dirty, and after sleeping with another woman, tells the heroine he was imagining her while doing it??
I wanted to like PAINTED FACES, but I didn't. I liked parts of it - the role music had to play, the drag shows and performances, the descriptions of middle class Ireland, baking - but the whole of the book was ruined by the two main characters and the wasted potential. I feel like this book could have stirred up some very interesting dialogues about transphobia, homophobia, sexuality, gender fluidity, sexual abuse, and heteronormative relationships that would have been incredibly relevant and interesting. Instead, it just took the same tired old cliches and tried to gussy them up with sparkly heels and mascara.
Do you have a favorite author whose works are so niche that there's no one else who really writes like them? I have two: Heather Crews and R. Lee Smith. One supplies my dark vampire romance fix, the other my alien/interspecies romance fix. It's like they deep-dived into my mind and found the sorts of stories I'd comb through Fanfiction websites as a teen for, and then wrote them. "This is my original character"-type stuff, only actually original and bad-ass AF.
Science-fiction/futuristic romance is an especially niche genre because you have to be 1) a big ol' nerd and 2) you have to be a big ol' nerd who likes romance. Those two things shouldn't be mutually exclusive, but science-fiction hasn't traditionally been a safe space for women, what with all the dudes trying to keep us out of their Questionably Phallic Spaceship Appreciation Society for Big Boys Only™ club through the usual dudebro tactics of Passive-Aggressive "Are You a Fake Geek Girl?" Trivia Questions™ and Women Are Not the Target Audience Because My Penis Told Me So in a Dream - or Was It an Alternate Reality Brought on by a Singularity? Either Way no Non-Sexualized, Agency-Possessing Representation for You
™ "logic." Basically, it's a niche genre for a niche audience that is only now starting to really grow.
R. Lee Smith is one of my favorite authors, and I'm super bummed that she appears to be on hiatus right now. Nobody writes like her. If you had told me ten years ago that I would think lizard men or zombie men or insect men could be hot, I would give you the side-eye before backing away slowly to the other side of the street. Her stories are just so full of emotional development. They are entire worlds, packed in book form, cinematic in scope and epic in the way that books rarely are anymore. She basically writes GONE WITH THE WIND, only with lizards instead of carpet-baggers. Go fig.
So anyway, with R. Lee on hiatus, I needed a replacement fix. Penelope Fletcher's book, VENOMOUS, shows up on a lot of the same lists as Smith's work, and if you search for Smith's work on Amazon, VENOMOUS shows up as a suggestion there, as well. Targeted marketing, indeed. I was super curious about the book because the premise seems really great. The heroine, Lumen, is auctioned off as a prize to a bunch of aliens fighting in a gladiatorial arena. The one who wins her ends up becoming her lover, and then he takes her back to his home world where, I assume, racism and sexism rear their ugly heads in a Cosmically Star-Crossed Battle of Fiery, Interspecies Love
™.
Or so I would imagine.
The problem was that a lot of my friends had given this book very low ratings on Goodreads. I trust my friends (or I try to - except when they lead me astray. *cough* Disappointments *cough*). But here, their concerns actually seemed pretty legit and I couldn't bring myself to pay for VENOMOUS. But the author, perhaps sensing my weakness, said, "That's okay, boo, it's free now. Enjoy." And of course, being a trash queen with zero self control, there was no way I was saying no to a free-ninety-nine price tag - especially not when it was a book I was actually really interested in. I "bought" it.
Oh dear.
First, let's just say that all the complaints about this book are true. It reads like one of those late-80s bodice-rippers. Like early-80s bodice-rippers, late-80s bodice rippers had rape (or, "dubious consent" if you're living in Delusionland
™) . Late-80s bodice-rippers, though, felt a teensy bit guilty. Not guilty enough to remove the rape, but guilty enough for a rebrand. So, like a third-tier celebrity who's erroneously spilled the tea and then deletes all their Tweets and Instas like they think the Internet has no collective memory and won't remember all those ugly brown stains (spoiler: we do), late-80s bodice-rippers decided to rebrand the way they presented sex, where the no-no-nos became no-no-yeses, and the heroine's traitorous body made her realize that she could trade consent for true love, like exchanging a return item at the mall. VENOMOUS takes this approach, with some very dubious consent actually becoming very pleasurable for the heroine once she decides that she didn't really have a choice anyway, and at least he's sort of hot in a four-armed iguanodon sort of way.
I have no problem with dubious consent, but I didn't like the way it was presented in this book. I feel like characters should react to situations with some degree of realism or else your characters just kind of feel like a bunch of cartoony finger-puppets on a cardboard stage. It doesn't help that the writing in this book is exceptionally awful. It reads like the author had a thesaurus on stand-by and was trying to write the Great American Novel, if the Great American Novel had sex scenes where orgasms were called "harmonies" and penises were referred to as "stems." Some of these words were being used incorrectly or could have been substituted for better words. The writing is also very clunky. She has a habit of starting her sentences with a verb or a noun, so you'll get things like, "Proudly he lifted his viridian grated chest ribbed with proud scales and laid his orbs upon his mate." That's my own sentence, FYI, not hers, but it's a pretty close approximation of her style, imho. It's really weird.
I'm giving up on this book because it's not for me and I don't really have much of a stake in finishing it. If you're interested in the book right now, it is still free for Kindle, so I recommend grabbing it now while it has that free-ninety-nine price tag and maybe seeing if her style works for you. Just keep in mind that the reviews are right, she is no R. Lee Smith - she's more like early Johanna Lindsey.
Can I just take a moment to say that I finished not one, but BOTH of my romance group's monthly picks? As someone who is notoriously bad at buddy/group reads, I take pride in this! #yaass
SPARROW was our January pick - I think I was actually the one who suggested it, because I'd gotten it for free from the Kindle Store & was trying to give myself a reason to get to it faster. Mafia romances are not usually my thing...I don't think I've ever read one I liked, and that's usually because "power" is portrayed as "moronic jackass who likes to wave his designer gun around." I don't know much about the mafia, but I'd imagine politics and business dealings are far more effective weapons than a pistol.
Troy Brennan is definitely a jackass who enjoys waving his gun around. To be fair, in the beginning of the book, he felt genuine. There was an icy restraint to him that felt authentic and convincing, kind of like Bastien Toussaint from Anne Stuart's Ice series, on steroids. I felt like that subtlety was far more threatening than anything overt. This disappears pretty quickly. Troy wants you to know he's a bad guy, so he's always wearing his gun, always using the f-word, always brandishing that stupid list of his so you know he means business. In the beginning, we see him kill one guy and get a graphic description of how he tortures another guy, and that was genuinely scary but after that, it's adolescent posturing, with Troy bawling out, "SHE BELONGS TO MEEEEEEEE!" to anyone who will listen.
But - he's also a CHEATER.
When he first gets married to the heroine, Sparrow, he gives her a gift and then gleefully tells her that his mistress picked it out. It's lingerie. When she needs a dress, his mistress sends her one. He sleeps with his mistress in the bedroom he shares with his wife, because he is a CHEATER.
He also fetishizes the heroine's virginity in a very weird way. At one point, he implies that her being a virgin makes her taste better after oral sex. The heroine is so afraid that he's going to rape her on their wedding night that she slices her foot and puts the blood "in there" so she can tell him she's on her period. Troy makes her take her underwear off, demanding to see the blood, and then PUTS HIS FINGER IN THERE AND LICKS SOME. Ew. I think that is worse than the tampon scene in FSoG. Even grosser, we find out later that Troy was forced to marry Sparrow by his father to get her inheritance, and knowing that, he kept her a virgin her whole life by threatening anyone he thought was interested.
"[He ke]pt you a virgin all this time so he'd be the one to pop your cherry" (246)
She was a blank, clean, white sheet for me to scribble on (222).
What makes this even more annoying is the fact that Troy has no problem sleeping around. CHEATING aside, he's slept with most of the women in their city, and brags about it. But God forbid his wife cheats on him. He threatens her about this several times, putting her purity on a pedestal.
Sparrow isn't much better, personality-wise. She doesn't have a personality, really. All we know about her is that she's a virgin, 5'3", underweight, and very young looking. (I think in the beginning of the story, she describes herself as looking barely legal.) She makes a big point of insulting all the other women in this story, including (especially) Troy's mistress, Cat. But not just Cat. Any sexually mature woman is portrayed as a vile, swooping harpy, whose only mission in life is to titter lasciviously in an attempt to coax men to cheat, usually juxtaposed against good, sweet, PURE Sparrow by means of comparison. Here's how she describes an innocent waitress whose only crime is to check out a man in Sparrow's presence:
"A middle-aged waitress with fake boobs and enough makeup to sculpt a small-sized vase brushed past us and eye-licked Brock..." (173)
She never appears in the story again, but it's so important that you know what a scheming tramp she is that not one, but two, descriptors are applied to her appearance to make you realize how pathetic she is.
I will admit that, bar a few typos, the writing in SPARROW was pretty good. And the beginning of the story showed a lot of promise. In my book group, I initially praised the author for taking the time to actually show - NOT TELL - us that the hero was a bad guy. I think the problem was that the author seemed to want Troy to be this troubled guy, who was so much MORE than an evil, heartless mobster (as that big reveal with Cat towards the end seemed to suggest). I.e. "He's damaged and just needs a hug, etc., etc." But his portrayal fell apart, and he became very immature and unprofessional, and his constant need to posture just made him seem insecure instead of powerful and intimidating.
I'm not sure I'd read another book by this author. Even though this is definitely the "best" mafia romance I've read, I still didn't enjoy it. I was tempted to give it a 2* because I felt like the author really did try her best, but I was just too annoyed with the hero and that tacked-on happy ending. A 2* would have felt fake. If you enjoy mafia romances, you'll probably enjoy this one, as it is better written than most. Just be aware that there's CHEATING, for those who are bothered by that trope.
Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨
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