Night of Cake & Puppets (by Laini Taylor)

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Young Adult / Fantasy

Why am I sitting here tormenting myself, trying to write a review for this book?

Those who have read Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Days of Blood and Starlight will know and love Zuzana and Mik. But until now we’ve only been given fleeting glimpses of their lives. In this novella, on the shorter end of novellas, we finally see them star in their own story.

On a bleak winters night Zuzana, who has been quietly infatuated with Mik , finally gathers her courage to ask him out. With a treasure map, a couple of puppets and five wishes she sends him on treasure hunt around Prague.

If I could give this book 10 Stars I would. I just can’t put into words how masterful this book is. I read a fair bit of Young Adult fiction and a lot of it is kind of sub-standard…a bit like christian rock. Laini Taylor gives us a master class in how good the genre can be. This is what every author should strive to write.

Becoming Alpha (by Aileen Erin)

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Young Adult / Paranormal Fantasy

Tessa has a gift, though she would call it a curse. When she touches people or objects people have used, she is bombarded with visions. She goes through life avoiding touching anything that has been handled by others. Labelled as a freak, her family takes her from California to Texas in the hopes of fresh start, but the town they have moved to is also home to a pack of werewolves.

After escaping a disastrous party, she gets her first kiss from Dastien, and then Dastien’s wolf decides to claim her with a bite. Suddenly all her problems are multiplied ten fold with pack politics piling on top of schoolwork and being a new werewolf, and as an alpha strong enough to rival the other alphas in the pack she is definitely causing a stir.

Becoming Alpha is pretty damned good. As you expect of a debut novel the author has thrown everything into it and that occasionally doesn’t work, but it’s done with such enthusiasm…almost approaching glee that it’s hard to hold it against her. It’s a good fun story about werewolves and witches with interesting characters.  It’s a lot of fun.

(I should note that while this book very much reads as young adult there is a bit of bad language which might make it unsuitable for younger teenagers.)

Many thanks to Ink Monster LLC and Netgalley for providing me with this ARC.

The Last Clinic (by Gary Gusick)

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Suspense

When a much loved preacher and anti-abortion campaigner is gunned down outside a women’s health clinic, the police immediately look at the doctor as the most likely suspect. Dr Stephen Nicoletti, is an Ob/Gyn and one of the few doctors in Mississippi who will perform abortions.

It’s left to Philadelphia PD transplant, Detective Darla Cavannah to sift through the evidence and find the killer. But with an incompetent partner who is determined to push his own anti-abortion agenda gunning for the doctor, she has to spend just as much time fixing up his messes as investigating the crime…all the while a killer is on the loose and he’s got a plan.

The Last Clinic surprised me. I wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did. It reminded me a little of another book set in Mississippi, A Time to Kill by John Grisham, but I think this book is better. I don’t read too many male authors, and this book has quite obviously been written by a man, but he’s managed to write a female main character who is both interesting and has depth.

It’s a solid debut novel and a good start to series that has a lot of potential.

Many thanks to Random House and Netgalley for providing me with this ARC

Villere House (by Leslie Fear and C.D. Hussey)

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Paranormal Romance 

When Lottie travels to New Orleans, she fully expects it to be a few days of drinking and partying.  But almost immediately she starts having vivid flash backs to a drama that unfolded 200 years earlier.

With help from Xavier, the sceptical owner of a shop selling voodoo trinkets to tourists, she needs to unravel the mystery, end a curse, and hopefully be alive at the end.  But the malevolant spirit that cursed her family has other plans.

Disclosure:  Leslie Fear is both a Facebook and Goodreads friend of mine.

Villere House is an old school ghost story.  It’s well paced, well written and entertaining. The romance didn’t entirely work for me, but to be honest that was probably because I kept thinking about the author’s children reading it…it’s hard to get past that. The real highlight for me was the ghost story. It’s rollicking good fun and even managed to creep me out a little.

The Perfect Match (by Kristan Higgins)

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Contemporary Romance

Honor and Brogan have been friends with benefits for 17 years. Despite loving him for all of that time he’s never seen her as anything more than passing time. As he describes it, she’s like “an old baseball glove”. With her biological clock ticking away she is desperate for more…marriage, children, forever.
But when she suggests marriage, Brogan laughs it off as messing with a good thing. And then a matter of weeks later he rubs salt in by becoming engaged to her best friend.

Tom is an Englishman on a work visa. When the college where he lectures announces they won’t be renewing his tenure his time in the U.S. is suddenly short. But he is desperate to stay in the U.S. and close to the boy he considers his son, so Honor and Tom decide on a marriage of convenience. He will get his green card and be able to stay in the U.S., she will be able to salvage some of the shreds of her pride and hopefully get a child in the bargain.

That marriage of convenience plot line generally annoys me. It’s usually a whole bunch of misunderstandings and missteps and honestly it’s always felt like slow torture to me. But, The Perfect Match is actually pretty good. it’s your typical feel good contemporary romance but with likeable characters and a solid story it worked. I did struggle with the “marriage for green card” aspect but everything else was so good that I’m willing to let that slide.

The House on Main Street (by Shirlee McCoy)

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Contemporary Romance

Many years earlier Tessa left Apple Valley, Washington rather than watch her sister marry the man she loved. After her sister’s death she finds herself the guardian of Alex, a 10 year old boy with autism and the owner of an old Victorian that has suffered from years of neglect.

Her plan is to sell the house and then return to the East Coast with Alex and her Aunt Gertrude. But Alex wants to stay in Apple Valley and when Cade, the guy who broke her heart years earlier starts showing up, she finds herself struggling to keep it all together.

Christmas books are a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. I generally read one or two at this time of the year every year. I honestly don’t expect all that much from them except that I feel good by the end. The House on Main Street gives me everything I want, and then it gives me a whole lot more. It’s a great story, the start to a new series, the first book by Shirlee McCoy I’ve ever read but definitely not the last.

I’m kind of excited to continue with the series when The Cottage on the Corner comes out in 2014.

Many thanks to Kensington and Netgalley for providing me with this ARC

Friends Without Benefits (by Penny Reid)

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Contemporary Romance

Elizabeth’s earliest memories are of Nico teasing her. All through high school he picked on her but with the support of her one true love Garrett she was able to get through it. Then Garrett died of a terminal illness and Elizabeth was left alone.

Ten years have passed and Elizabeth is now a doctor. When Nico turns up at the hospital with Angelica, a young child who has a rare disease, it falls to Elizabeth to treat her. And with three treatments a days for 30 days, avoidance isn’t going to work. Despite their attraction to each other, the shadow of the past hangs over them and threatens any chance of a future together.

Friends Without Benefits is a very smart love story. There is no dumbing down in this book and it occasionally pushes the boundary between contemporary romance and chick lit. I loved that one of the characters would switch to Italian and it was just put out there with no translation. I love that Penny Reid uses medical jargon without explaining it. It’s just so nice to come across an author who has that level of respect for her readers.

It’s witty, occasionally very funny, a lot longer than most of the books I read but all in all, great fun.

Many thanks to Penny Reid for providing me with this ARC

Take me Home for Christmas (by Brenda Novak)

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Contemporary Romance

After her violent and abusive husband defrauds the townsfolk of Whiskey Creek, Sophia DeBussi is left destitute and hiding out in her now empty house.  Despised by most of her neighbors, she has few options and nobody she can turn to.

Ted Dixon was betrayed by Sophia many years earlier. While he was away at college, she stepped out on him, became pregnant and married the boy who would become her abuser.  He more than anyone has a right to resent Sophia but when he sees how she is being treated he reluctantly agrees to offer her a job as his cook and housekeeper.

Sophia loves Ted, she always has, but she accepts that any chance she had with him disappeared years earlier. Now with her daughter being bullied at school, someone making threats against her, and those in authority unwilling to intervene, she just wants to make enough money to flee Whiskey Creek with her daughter and start over.

Take me Home for Christmas is very good Contemporary Romance about a woman who has been beaten down so often that she has started to believe what her abuser and his parents said about her. As she works for Ted she slowly learns to value herself again and finds hope for a second chance.

Loved this book. 5 Stars.

Many thanks to Harlequin and Netgalley for providing me with this ARC.

Up to the Challenge (by Terri Osburn)

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Contemporary Romance

Sid Navarro is Anchor Islands smart-mouthed boat mechanic. She has been in love with Lucas Dempsey since high school, but Lucas always had his sights set on bigger and better things and as soon as he finished school he left the island.

After his father suffers a heart attack, Lucas returns to the island to look after the family business for the summer. He’s thrown together with Sid and sparks immediately fly but the women he’s attracted to are quiet, reserved…pastels, and Sid is anything but. She’s brash and in your face, she could swear a sailor under the table.

Despite not being his usual type, Lucas is attracted to Sid. But she will never fit into his world and he needs to return to the mainland by the end of the summer so the best he can offer is a summer fling. What he doesn’t know is that beneath her hard shell is a vulnerable young woman and when he leaves, he will break her heart.

It’s difficult to know what to say about Up to the Challenge. No matter what I say, it just won’t be enough. If I take the very best books by Jill Shalvis and Robyn Carr, wave my magic wand and somehow make them 20% better, then we are probably getting close to how good this book is. Solid gold 5 Stars!

Many thanks to Montlake Romance and Netgalley for providing me with this ARC

Miracle Lane (by Edie Ramer)

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Romantic paranormal suspense…fairytale

After being run over by a car Nia has been left with no memories of her life before. All she knows is everyone in her family despises her and one of them tried to kill her. Her only ally is Bast, a talking cat who is determined to guard her come what may.

Returning from Afghanistan with his own ghosts, Rob the identical twin brother of the local cop, shows up at her house after she calls about an intruder. After failing his comrades in Afghanistan, he is determined to save Nia from whoever it is that wants her dead.

I don’t quite know where to put Miracle Lane. It’s contemporary romance, romantic suspense, there is a bit of the paranormal going on and it reads like a fairytale.  The writing style is conventional, perhaps a little whimsical, but the thing that really hit me from the very first chapter, that sets this book apart, is the concept. It really is wonderfully odd. While I was reading Miracle Lane I kept thinking of that old Jimmy Stewart film Harvey (where Jimmy Stewart has an imaginary friend who might be a six foot tall rabbit), and a Japanese cartoon from about 20 years ago called Kiki’s Delivery Service.  It’s probably the first time those two movies have been mentioned in the same sentence.

Great fun, but there is an almost oppressive undercurrent to this book.

Many thanks to Blue Walrus Books and Netgalley for providing me with this ARC.