Almost (by Anne Eliot)

Posted on August 11, 2012 by setaian

Almost

Without another word, I turn my back and start for my Jeep, wondering if he can hear how loudly he’s made my heart pound.
“Okay then, see you after school, Jess. It’s a date. We’ll have some fun! Good luck on your afternoon final!”
He sounds like a stupid megaphone. When I don’t answer and hunch my shoulders, his low laugh adds a trail of goose bumps coursing down my neck.

As a high school freshman, Jess was drugged and almost raped at a party. That single night has defined every day of her life in the years since then. Unable to sleep at night because of the nightmares, she is perpetually tired. She survives on short naps in her car and Red Bull energy drinks.

When she meets Gray she comes up with a plan which will allay her parents’ fears and allow her to attend college. His job is to pretend to be her boyfriend and give her the air of normalcy. But he isn’t pretending, and he has a secret that could destroy any chance he has with her.

Almost took quite a while to get going. I think I was nearly 50% through before it finally had me hooked. Honestly, I could have walked away from it without any regrets…but I’m glad I didn’t. Despite the slow start and the difficult topic, this is a really good book, both satisfying and uplifting.

“I know I’m acting crazy but I’m in love with this girl. Major love. And I have no idea what to do about it, so it’s messing with my sanity.”

The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires (by Molly Harper)

Posted on August 2, 2012 by setaian

An unexpected side effect of the Great Coming Out in 1999 was the emergence of all-night industries, special products, and cottage businesses, like mine, that catered to the needs of “undead Americans.” Companies were tripping over one another to come up with products for a spanking-new marketing demographic: synthetic blood, protein additives, dental-care accessories, lifelike bronzers. The problem was that those companies still hadn’t figured out packaging for the undead and tended to jump on bizarre trending bandwagons, the most recent being a brand of plasma concentrate that came pouring out of what looked like a Kewpie doll. You had to flip back the head to open it.

It’s even more creepy than it sounds.

Iris Scanlon has managed to carve out a little niche for herself running daytime errands for Half Moon Hollow’s undead community. But despite working for vampires, she doesn’t quite trust them and goes to great lengths to keep contact to a minimum. That is until she finds her newest client lying on the kitchen floor, poisoned. After saving his “unlife” he offers her a small fortune to shelter him for a few weeks. She’s none too happy but needs the money and so finds herself living under the same roof with a sexy vampire and her smart mouthed younger sister.

I don’t quite know how Molly Harper does it. I generally start to lose interest in a series after two or three books, but despite these books all following the same basic formula, here am I returning to Half Moon Hollow, KY for the sixth visit and loving it just as much as Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs (Jane Jameson book 1). She has become an author whose name I type into Google on an almost weekly basis. I want to be the first to know about her next project. I want to be the first to read it. I just can’t help myself. She writes funny, intelligent and snarky books about vampires, werewolves and other creatures of the night. The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires doesn’t disappoint, it delivers exactly what I have come to expect.

Forever and a Day (by Jill Shalvis)

Posted on July 26, 2012 by setaian

“Mallory nodded and toasted a cupcake to that. Then she set the cupcake down and got serious as she turned to Grace. “Honey, just promise me something.”

“What?”

“That you won’t be so driven by your past that you throw away your future.”

Forever and a Day is the sixth in Jill Shalvis’ popular Lucky Harbor series. It’s the third and final book in her 2012 trilogy and centers around Grace and Josh.

Grace has lost her way. She has spent her life trying to live up to her parents’ very high standards. After running away from a job in which she was expected to provide “other services”, she finds herself in Lucky Harbor, broke and without any prospects. On the day she arrives in Lucky Harbor she gets trapped in the Eat Me Café by a blizzard (Book 4, Lucky in Love), but as luck would have it she is trapped with Mallory and Amy. The three form a friendship which is the thread running through the three books released this year.

Grace is doing every job she can to keep the wolf from the door. She isn’t picky, she’ll do anything from delivering flowers to working as a life model. When someone calls her number asking about her dog walking services, a wrong number, she sees an opportunity to make a few more dollars. That someone turns out to be Josh, an overworked Doctor with a young son who won’t talk and a younger paraplegic sister who is angry at the world.

Despite losing the dog five minutes after it has done it’s business in the house, Grace manages to hold onto the job. Gradually she finds herself not only looking after Tank (the dog) but also providing a mother’s nurture for Toby (Josh’s son) and acting as something like an older sister to Anna (Josh’s paraplegic sister). But Josh is a very different story, Josh has his busy life, and Lucky Harbor doesn’t fit into Grace’s long term plans. Despite their chemistry a relationship doesn’t look like a good idea to either of them.

Jill Shalvis writes uplifting and optimistic contemporary romance. Her books are light enjoyable reads that will leave you feeling good. Of the three Lucky Harbor books published this year, Forever and a Day is the stand out.

Recommended for fans of Robyn Carr and Kristan Higgins.

With thanks to Grand Central Publishing and Netgalley for providing me with this ARC.

No Peace for the Damned (by Megan Powell)

Posted on July 21, 2012 by setaian

I crushed his hand instantly, the bones breaking to bits under my grip. I slammed a quick extended-knuckle fist into his larynx, no more than bruising his windpipe, but incapacitating him nonetheless. Then I swung him completely out of his chair, twisting him to his knees in front of me, his back pressed to my front, his broken-handed arm pinning him in place. The Glock 34 he’d had tucked into the waistband of his jeans now rested nicely in my other hand. I pressed the gun to his temple.

Magnolia was born into a sadistic and cruel family. Gifted with off the charts supernatural abilities, including a body that completely regenerates no matter what damage is done to it, her father, uncle and brothers spend their time using her as a guinea pig to fine tune their sadism. After one particularly brutal night she escapes from the family estate and lands in the lap of Thirteen, leader of the Network, a shady organization fighting against supernatural terrorists. At first all she wants is to escape the violence and be left alone but when those she has come to love are kidnapped by her family, she has no choice but to return to the location of all her nightmares in a desperate bid to save them.

No Peace for the Damned is supernatural fiction at it’s best. Megan Powell writes a book that sucks you in from the first page. It is a brutal and terrifying battle between good and evil. Thoroughly entertaining.

Recommended for fans of Jennifer Estep, Laini Taylor and Richelle Mead

The Siren (by Tiffany Reisz)

Posted on July 15, 2012 by setaian

WARNING: This review contains explicit language.

“I know you want to fuck me. And I know you wish you didn’t. So how about we compromise and you can sit here and say, ‘No, Nora,’ ‘Don’t, Nora,’ ‘Stop, Nora,’ and I’ll ignore all those protests and slide right down on your cock anyway? And I’ll do it because no and don’t and stop aren’t your safe word. So you can finally get fucked and still sleep like a baby in your big lonely bed tonight feeling all clean and shiny and virginal because, after all, you did say ‘no’ and that awful Nora Sutherlin just wouldn’t listen.”

When I started reading The Siren I was expecting to be taken way out of my comfort zone. I was expecting to be challenged, uncomfortable and offended. I was not expecting to love this book as much as I did.

Nora is an author of erotic fiction who not only writes it, but lives it. Her reluctant new editor Zach wants nothing to do with her, but she wants her new book to be something special and needs his help to make that happen. He agrees on the condition that he has final say on whether or not the book gets published. Together they embark on a complete rewrite which must be finished in six weeks. As the rewrite progresses, Nora draws Zach into her world, a world where pain, submission and domination are used for sexual release.

The adjectives used to describe a book like this are almost predictable. Anyone can conjure them up and I don’t think I really need to bother with them. The words I want to use are, beautiful, sublime, tender, honest, lyrical and heart-felt. The Siren is erotic, but there is surprisingly very little sex.

For me it is one of the best books of 2012.

Hello world!

Posted on July 15, 2012 by setaian

My name is Ian and I live in Australia. I read a lot and wanted a place to express my thoughts. Whether people read this or not doesn’t much matter to me, but I do like people and welcome any thoughts you have so long as they’re not nasty.

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