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Audiobook Review – The Toll-Gate – Georgette Heyer

31 Oct

The Toll-House
Author: Georgette Heyer

Narrator: Daniel Hill
Run Time: 9hrs and 15 minutes
Producer: AudioGO

Book Description:
Captain John Staple’s exploits in the Peninsula had earned him the sobriquet Crazy Jack among his fellow Dragoons. Now home from Waterloo, life is rather dull. But when he finds himself lost and benighted at an unmanned toll-house in the Pennines, his soldiering exploits pale away besides an adventure — and romance — of a lifetime.

Review:
I have come to the conclusion that I am just one of those people who can’t appreciate Heyer’s work. In the romance community, she is the one recommendation that people come up with for realistic romances, but they just leave me feeling not quite complete. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t bad, they just aren’t for me. In this instance, I have to admit that I preferred the mystery aspect of the story (what happened to the Toll-Gate keeper) to the romance which was a bit ehh. It almost ended up being an insta-love situation, I never truely felt like there was any romance between the 2 main characters.

In conjunction with the iffy romance in the storyline, I wasn’t a huge fan of the narrator. I think he did an ok job with the various adult male voices, but the female ones, as well as the young kid who was fairly significant in the book were only ehhh. They all just started to blend together after a while, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. I had debated actually DNF’ing this at one stage, but decided to see it out. The ending was satisfactory with how the mystery was solved, and the narrator’s voice sorta grew on me, but not enough for me to want to seek him out again in the future. Overall, i can only give the book and narration 2 stars.

 
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Posted by on October 31, 2012 in Audiobook Review, Book Review

 

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Guest Post – Mrs. Missive on Banned Books Week

04 Oct

As I was making plans to celebrate Banned Books Week, I put out a call to several of my reading groups to see if anyone would be interested on writing a guest post for the week (or even providing some quotes). But apparently no one loved me enough 😦 So I asked one of my good Goodreads friends, Mrs. Missive, if she would be interested in providing a post and I’m happy to say that she said YES! lol! We have been online friends for several years (and yet have never met).

Mrs. Missive is the Moderator and Founder of the Kindle Smut group on Goodreads.com. She has an addiction to coffee and books she can get lost in. Smut lover and author advocate, she hopes that one day her world will resemble a romance novel.

Mrs. Missive on Banned Book Week:
Banned Books Week is more than a celebration of our right to read. It is an outright battle cry for the first amendment. As a society, our “normal” is always changing. We have new values and new acceptable practices every day. Human rights have advanced through the written word.
Sometimes when people were afraid to speak, they could write. Many of the roadblocks for human rights began to crumble simply because someone was brave enough to ask why they were there in the first place. Putting these whys to paper or computer in an increasingly literate society, can make them spread like wildfire.

Fiction books play an important role in our society, as well. Escaping into a world or character created by these imaginative authors let us see things from a point of view that we could never imagine on our own. This ultimate immersion helps us put our own prejudices aside for a few hundred pages and look outside ourselves.

But aside from all that, for me, banned books is about supporting authors who have had to fight to have their voices heard. Buying a book, requesting it at the library, or posting a review are all ways we can put the names of the authors out there. I don’t want to read books I won’t enjoy. I’m not about reading something because it’s a classic and I should.

I want to read something that pushed someone during my Banned Books Week. Every protest over a book means the book affected the reader emotionally. Those words put them in motion, even if the motion is one of protest, which is entirely their right. Those are words that hold power and should not be kept hidden. Or the person didn’t read the book at all and is acting on supreme ignorance. I will keep my vulgarly worded opinion of that to myself.

You may call these big words for someone who reads primarily erotic romance, a genre with a severe negative connotation. I say there is no difference in what I read and what you read. Sex is not evil. Sex is emotional. Sex is powerful. Sex is empowering. When an author pulls me in, and shows me the couple’s emotional connection when they make love, I understand how those two characters relate to one another in the most intimate way in existence. When two people have sex, when a person lets go and becomes overtaken with an orgasm, that, right there, is when a person is the most honest. That is where that character’s truth lies. So I am not embarrassed to read “smut”. I am empowered. By uncovering the truth for the characters I read, I also find another clue about my own truth. Every book I read, I find out a little bit more about myself. Love it or hate it, a book helps you uncover something.

Banned books week lets us celebrate those authors who were willing to help us discover something that no other person has before. I am reading 1984, which was challenged in 1981 in Florida schools. I am also waiting on The Perks of Being a Wallflower from the library. I won’t list all those challenges or bans for that one. There are too dang many. Then I am picking up some of my Selena Kitt books that were pulled from Amazon for content that occurs in a fictional world. Not all of these will be my taste. Not all of these will leave me with warm fuzzy feelings. But by reading something someone was told they shouldn’t, I am gaining knowledge that at least one person missed.

Celebrate Banned Books Week with me. Find a new piece of your truth.

 
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Posted by on October 4, 2012 in Guest Post, Reading Events

 

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Review – Hearts in Darkness – Laura Kaye

15 Sep

Hearts in Darkness
Author: Laura Kaye

Book Description:
Makenna James thinks her day can’t get any worse, until she finds herself stuck in a pitch-black elevator with a complete stranger. Distracted by a phone call and juggling too much stuff, the pin-striped accountant caught only a glimpse of a dragon tattoo on his hand before the lights went out.

Caden Grayson is amused when a redhead literally falls at his feet. His amusement turns to panic when the power fails. Despite his piercings, tats, and vicious scar, he’s terrified of the dark and confined spaces. Now, he’s trapped in his own worst nightmare.

To fight fear, they must both reach out and open up. With no preconceived notions based on looks to hold them back, they discover just how much they have in common. In the warming darkness, attraction grows and sparks fly, but will they feel the same when the lights come back on?

Review:
I’ll be the first to admit that I struggle with enjoying novellas. Most of the time, I am left unfulfilled with the conclusion at the end, because it seems as though the author just ran out of word count and had to end the story at a given point. Even more so, I’m not a fan of books where it encompasses only a couple of scenes, because I feel even more jilted. So when I saw that Hearts in Darkness was only 110 pages in print, I was skeptical. About the only thing that convinced me to pick it up was that many of my friends had given it 4 and 5 stars on Goodreads.com and since I rely on them to help me choose the books, I want to read – I took a chance on it.

I have to admit that overall, I was pleasantly surprised. True it was short and it only took me about 40 minutes to read (if that), but I felt like the author did a good job in the limited time she had for character development and while maybe a tad unbelieveable…umm, yeah, hooking up with a guy who you got stuck in an elevator is every girl’s wish right? I liked how the story progressed. I would love to see her take the characters and re-visit them, or maybe feature some of the minor ones that appears in this book and give them their own.

FWIW, I also loved the cover – how it was attractive without being too showy – there was just something that drew me to it. I’m curious to know who the cover artist was, so i can see what else they have designed in the future. Either way, I am intrigued enough by her writing, that I am going to be checking out some other books by her in the future and hopefully, they are as enjoyable as this one. 3.75 stars.

 
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Posted by on September 15, 2012 in Book Review

 

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Review – Blood Brothers – Nora Roberts

05 Aug

Blood Brothers
Author: Nora Roberts
Series: Book 1 in the Sign of Seven Trilogy

Narrator: Phil Gigante
Run Time: 10hrs 4min

Book Description:
In the town of Hawkins Hollow, it’s called The Seven. Every seven years, on the seventh day of the seventh month, strange things happen. It began when three young boys-Caleb, Fox, and Gage-went on a camping trip to The Pagan Stone. And twenty-one years later, it will end in a showdown between evil and the boys who have become men-and the women who love them.

Review:
Nora Roberts has become a comfort read for me over the years, and with the 200+ books that she currently has available, I will have plenty of reading for a while yet. But recently, I have been going back to some of her older books and listening to them – they are a great way to kill the commute to work and Blood Brothers being no different. As with most of her other books, especially those in a trilogy, you can see who is going to be paired up with who early on in the books, so there really isn’t the surprise factor – but in return, you get to see more character development, the relationships develop over a longer period of time and the kind of conflict that you would expect to see in a long-term relationship show up.

One of the main complaints that I have with this book and the second one in the series (I haven’t listened to the 3rd was yet), is that Quinn, the main female character seems to be wayyy to focused on her weight and eating healthy and from the way she is described, it seems like she isn’t overweight…maybe it is part and parcel in the time period that the book was written – but it drove me nuts. In fact, it made me want to go out and eat a pint of ice cream just to counter-act her worrying about her weight.

When it comes to narration, no one tops Phil Gigante when it comes the narration. He is easily probably one of my top 5 narrators out there and I will definately opt to listen to a book narrated by him, than most other narrators. While at first, most listeners aren’t a fan of his female voices, I know I wasn’t, he definately grew on me. It is unfortunate that the other 2 books in the trilogy are narrated by other people. Phil is definately what I called a weak-knee’d narrator – in that when I listen to his narration, I get weak-knee’d in places because his voice just does it for me. But I think that is enough squee’ing over Phil 😉

 
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Posted by on August 5, 2012 in Book Review

 

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Review – What I Didn’t Say – Keary Taylor

22 Jul

What I Didn’t Say
Author: Keary Taylor
Publisher: Self-published/Createspace

Review Copy Provided by Author via NetGalley

Book Description:
Getting drunk homecoming night your senior year is never a good idea, but Jake Hayes never expected it all to end with a car crash and a t-post embedded in his throat.

His biggest regret about it all? What he never said to Samantha Shay. He’s been in love with her for years and never had the guts to tell her. Now it’s too late. Because after that night, Jake will never be able to talk again.

When Jake returns to his small island home, population 5,000, he’ll have to learn how to deal with being mute. He also finds that his family isn’t limited to his six brothers and sisters, that sometimes an entire island is watching out for you. And when he gets the chance to spend more time with Samantha, she’ll help him learn that not being able to talk isn’t the worst thing that could ever happen to you. Maybe, if she’ll let him, Jake will finally tell her what he didn’t say before, even if he can’t actually say it.

Review:
The first thing that caught my eye about What I Didn’t Say was the cover – I found the picture of the boy and girl facing each other, looking like they were whispering to each other to be intriguing. It made me want to know more, and then when I read the description, I was drawn in.

Drunk driving as a topic in YA books is always hard for me to digest because while I was growing up, my father was a fireman for the local fire service and he was often called out to car crashes, many of which involved drunk driving and while he didn’t often talk about it, I was able to gather enough information normally to form a picture of just how bad it was. So the images presented in What I Didn’t Say were really highlighted for me, I could visualize what happened to Jake when the car crashed and he was stabbed through the throat…and this is probably not an image that I want to see in my mind again anytime soon…

I loved seeing the characters grow and make mistakes through-out the book like normal teens do – it was refreshing to see. While I have been on a bit of a YA kick lately, it seems that either the teens in those books either have the appearance of being perfect or are so screwed up that nothing changes during the course of the book…so seeing Jake and Samantha develop and change over the course of the year was fun. I felt that the author did a good job developing the secondary characters – Jake’s parents, his siblings, friends at school…the only one that I truly wanted to bitch slap was Nora, the student body president – why is it that the popular kid that does a crappy job is always the one elected and not a quiet one who could do the job – I would have loved to have seen Samantha in that role.

However, no book is without its weaknesses, for me it was the fact that Jake was entering his senior year of high school and we knew that he wanted to join the AF and be a pilot…ok, well, from the descriptions within he was going to enlist…why was he not pushing to go to the Air Force Academy or ROTC…something which he would have had to have established prior to his senior year and that being said, why was he taking woodshop…that isn’t a class that would endear him to any college program where a strong science focus is needed – which is the way that most military programs are heading today (and yes, I say this from experience, I was in one of the last year groups where it was easy-ish to get a scholarship with a non-technical science degree..)

But that being said, after the accident and once the AF was out of the equation, I felt that the book was strong and engaging. I will definitely be looking for more books by the author in the future.

 
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Posted by on July 22, 2012 in Book Review

 

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Review – Ride with Me – Ruthie Knox

15 Jul

Ride with Me
Author: Ruthie Knox

Book Description:
When Lexie Marshall places an ad for a cycling companion, she hopes to find someone friendly and fun to cross the TransAmerica Trail with. Instead, she gets Tom Geiger—a lean, sexy loner whose bad attitude threatens to spoil the adventure she’s spent years planning.

Roped into the cycling equivalent of a blind date by his sister, Tom doesn’t want to ride with a chatty, go-by-the-map kind of woman, and he certainly doesn’t want to want her. Too bad the sight of Lexie with a bike between her thighs really turns his crank.

Even Tom’s stubborn determination to keep Lexie at a distance can’t stop a kiss from leading to endless nights of hotter-than-hot sex. But when the wild ride ends, where will they go next?

Review:
I was recently lucky enough to chat with the author of Ride with Me, Ruthie Knox, in a Ask an Author Q&A in one of my goodreads groups. Prior to that I had never heard of her as an author, but after reading Along with the Ride, I hope that it won’t be the last time that I hear from her and read something about her. Almost immediately after picking up Ride with Me, I knew that it was gone to be one of those books that once you start reading, it is hard to put down. I was drawn into the antics of Tom and Lexxie as they biked across the country.

One of the things I love about Ride with Me, aside from the setting being a TransAm ride (which is just cool in itself) is that Lexxie was a kick-ass female who gave as good as she got. There seems to still be an excess of TSTL heroines in romance novels and it was good to not see a typical one 😉 Reading about their adventures crossing the country, makes me want to drag my bike out of storage and start training for some long distance rides. Anyone want to join me? Maybe not on a TransAm, but maybe something short…lol!

I definately look forward to reading more by Ms Knox in the future and have already grabbed her other book that she currently has out. Can’t wait to see it 😉

 
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Posted by on July 15, 2012 in Book Review

 

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Review – Take This Regret – Amy Lichtenhan

24 May

Book Donated by Author for Review

I always love a book that I pick up planning to only read a few chapters and i get immersed in it. That to me is a great way to spend a night and what happened when I started Take This Regret. I w as immediately sucked into the story of Elizabeth and Christian. Unfortunately, I had to put it down otherwise I would have stayed up all night reading and that would have been bad juju for work the next day.

As a reader, I’m normally not a fan of the separation/reunion type romances, which is what this primarily is, and yet, I was sucked in.  I don’t know why I normally have such as issue with them – maybe because in the way the scenario is typically presented – I don’t know if in the same situation I would have forgiven the idiot who caused the grief.  And to some extent I felt the same here – if I was in Elizabeth’s shoes would I have been able to forgive Christian for what he did…probably not – and yet, the author made me believe in second chances and the fact that sometimes people do regret the actions the result in other people getting hurt.

 I did like the fact that the whole book didn’t occur in a really short space of time, which to me would have made it more unbelievable than normal –  but rather over a period of several months and you saw the struggle that Elizabeth faced as she tried to make the decision to let Christian back into her and her daughter’s life.  The one thing that I felt could have been avoided in the story was the meeting his child for the first time at the grocery store – that just seemed a bit trite and overdone.  I wish instead that it had been a proactive approach by Christian to find out what happened to Elizabeth and his daughter all those years ago and not just left to chance.

The cast of supporting characters – Natalie, Matthew, Christians mother – all seemed believable and it was nice that they were integral to the story and not just thrown in there for the heck of it.  I do wish that there had been some more interaction between Christian and his father before his father had died.  I have to admit that I would love to see a short follow-up of maybe their lives 5 years down the road – even as a freebie on the authors website – just because I am honestly a sucker for those happy endings and seeing the future 😉

 
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Posted by on May 24, 2012 in Book Review

 

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