What I did for a Duke

What I Did for a Duke

Julie Anne Long

I don’t really understand the title, since it’s more about what a duke does for her than what she does for a duke, but this book was great fun. So much so that I was up half the night to finish it.

When/where I read it: March 2011, late on a Friday night.

M(y) R:

Genevieve Eversea fancies herself in love with Harry, a secondary character with all the personality of an empty kettle. One day Harry informs her that he is planning to propose marriage to their mutual friend Millicent, breaking Genevieve’s heart.

At the same time, the Duke of Falconbridge (the name is quite silly) arrives in the Eversea home for a house party, and only Ian, one of the Eversea brothers, knows the real reason behind the social call. Bear with me because this is a bit convoluted, but seducing and then abandoning Genevieve is the duke’s idea of revenge to punish Ian for having (almost) slept with his former fiancée. Let’s just say the plan backfires, first of all because Genevieve soon realizes what the duke is up to.

The best thing about the book: Ms. Long is very good at dialogue. Generally speaking, historical romances are more likely to make me cringe than laugh out loud, but this book had several laugh out loud moments (of the kind where you're laughing with the characters, not at them).

The worst thing about it: Not that much happens in the book beyond the love story. This yields a story very rich in character detail and feeling, but lacking in action. I kept hoping something more would happen.

M(y) score: 8/10, and with a bit more action I would have given it +1 more.

On reading and ebooks

My last rant got me thinking about how the ebook has changed my reading experience, and I would be disingenuous if I didn’t admit that something has changed. Not so much my consumption of regular literature, as I still spend time in bookstores and buy those “regular” books on paper, but certainly my consumption of trashy novels.

The first ebook reader I tried changed nothing: I won't mention the brand but it was clunky and slow and had a tendency to freeze at the most inopportune moments, leaving me stuck on a page, my thumb itching for real paper. Let's just say it was quickly retired.

However my second ebook reader (and here I will mention the lovely Alex Reader, which has, alas, been discontinued -there's some story there between Spring Design and Barnes & Noble, but I haven't paid enough attention to comment on it), has none of the problems described above. It works exactly as it is meant to, and I like it so much that even the tiny clicking next-page noise has stopped bothering me. I should ask T., who sleeps next to me at night, whether he feels the same way.

Some of the changes the ebook reader has brought:

• Fits in my handbag. I am a bit of a compulsive reader and like large handbags, so there is something strangely reassuring about carrying hundreds of novels with me wherever I go. Not that I expect to find myself stranded away from home with thousands of hours to spare, and it’s not like the battery would last that long even if I did, but waiting in a coffee shop for a friend has never been this much fun before.
• Instant gratification. What’s not to love about buying a book and being able to start reading in the space of a few minutes?
• Reduced anxiety in long-haul flights. This is the new me, not afraid of finishing a novel a few hours into a 12-hr flight, and no longer forced to suffer through the lame airport book selection (incidentally, somebody in the business clearly has a sense of humor!) on the way back.
• Camouflage. I can now read all the trashy novels(*) I want, wherever I want, without people around me knowing what I’m reading. Yes, yes, call me weak of character, but just like you don’t wear your bunny slippers out in public, I don’t need to advertise my penchant for books featuring half-naked hunks or serial killers when I’m out on the town.

The ebook also comes with some distinct disadvantages, however, as it seems to have become a great leveller of popular fiction: all kinds of crap can be published much more easily, with fewer controls, and with no way for us as consumers to tell apart the good from the bad.

In my early forays into ebook stores in the last six months(**), I have purchased several ebooks that I am sure would never have made it into my hands in paper format, because nobody in their right mind would have sacrificed the life of a single tree branch to publish them. To that, add a few that dubbed themselves novels but were barely novellas (stores seem strangely reluctant to release the word count of the books they sell).

As a consumer, I rebel against this. I expect the same from an ebook as I do from a published paper book, which basically means I like to think it is a) a finished product which has b) been reviewed by an editor and c) published because somebody out there, whose job it is to make these decisions, deemed it publishable. Is that so much to ask for?

I want to keep buying ebooks in the future. I know there are some books I’ll still want to own in a paper format, books to read and re-read, lend to friends, and keep in my bookshelves at home. But for fun, one-time reads, the ebook format is sounding more and more convincing, if only I can get better at protecting myself from those ebooks that should never have been published, and to remember the really great ones so I can look for similar ones out there.

(*) I’m not into sci-fi at all, so trashy novels for me mainly = thrillers or romance, and the term is not meant to sound disparaging, as I read them and enjoy them. It's simply a way to separate these books from more mainstream "literature", since I do believe they are different.

(**) I am talking real, big-name ebook stores, here, not JoeBlowHasWrittenANovelWantToBuyIt.com

Not Bound by Blood!

Bound by Blood

Elizabeth Darvill

It’s only the first of March and this may well be the worst book I’ll read in 2011. I’ll keep the review brief because I don’t want to waste more time writing about it than I did reading it, and I admit to reading it diagonally in the first place. I finished it more out of curiosity than anything else, because this was one of those books that starts bad and only gets worse.

When/where I read it: February 2011.

M(y) R:

She is a vampire hunter who has been unwillingly turned into a vampire, he is a werewolf who hangs out with her, initially to get some answers about his brother’s death and later on it’s not clear why. Together they fight a group of evil vampires. There are many, many secondary characters. Without going into too many details, even Dracula makes an appearance towards the end, eager to book a foursome with his girlfriend and our two protagonists.

The writing alternates between plodding and sloppy, then back to plodding again. The fights all look the same, and our vampire heroine gets shot so many times, there’s a couple pages devoted to digging out the bullets from her body after every fight. Blood oozes and pours and bubbles, and it just doesn’t matter. Even the sex is sloppy. And then, just when you think the book can’t get any worse, and in the space of a few pages towards the end, the author manages to dispose of an entire breed of paranormal creature.

What I liked: Nothing.

M(y) score: Is 0/10 a possible score? In this case, it has to be. 0/10.

Note to self: Must remember the author’s name and avoid any future books like the plague.

Another thriller, The Murder Game

The Murder Game

Beverly Barton

February has been a month for choosing books that pick up where another story left off and not realizing until I’m halfway through, and this happened to me once again with Beverly Barton’s The Murder Game. On the one hand, I am an idiot and need to pay closer attention to the books I buy. On the other hand, I am happy to report this book was enjoyable on its own.

When/where I read it: February 2011. A lazy Sunday afternoon.

M(y) R:

We have a billionaire PI (him) and a tall athletic FBI Special Agent (her), working together to catch a serial killer. Griffin and Nicole are enemies from the previous book, but are forced to work together because the killer calls them both with clues about the victims in his new "game". Their relationship changes, rather suddenly, when Griffin realizes there is more to Nicole than meets the eye, and she realizes he gives a mean back massage.

What I liked: Overall the writing was good, and Ms. Barton keeps the story moving at a very reliable pace, with point of view switches between the hero, the heroine, the killer, and the victims (who incidentally might as well have been labelled victim 1, 2, 3… n). As far as serial killer thrillers go, I think this one achieved a nice balance between time spent on the murders and time spent on the detective/love story. I appreciate this because I’m not a big fan of the gentler mystery novels, if that’s what they’re called, those books where the PI is a Miss Marple look-alike who talks to her cat and the mystery revolves around a lost puppy looking for a new home. Without meaning to sound bloodthirsty, if I’m reading a serial killer novel, I expect and appreciate a few thrills.

What I didn’t like: There is a lot of flying back and forth in Griffin’s private jet, a ridiculous, contrived plot line connecting Griffin’s past trauma to the current murders, and a string of disposable female characters who come and go (go being a euphemism for die). It was easy to ignore all those because I was holding out for a big scene, which is not exactly a secret since it's alluded to in the back cover, but which when you finally get to it does not disappoint.

Incidentally, the killer’s grandmother is called Suzette, what are the chances? I fear for my firstborn, if that name keeps following me around.

M(y) score: Sure, 7/10.

A different kind of heiress

The Heiress, by Lynsay Sands

Let me preface this review with the admission that I wouldn’t have bought The Heiress if I’d known it was written by the same author as the Argeneau vampire series. I don’t think I made it to the end of the first one of those, and that’s quite a feat since I’ve rarely met a vampire story I didn’t appreciate. But I didn’t know, so I bought the book, and once it was in my ebook reader I had to give it a chance.

When/where I read it: February 2011. Started it during a short-haul flight, finished it the next morning in bed.

The short of it: I am relieved to say Ms. Sands’ historicals are, if not great, at least more interesting than her vampires.

Worst line: Ok, not a line, and I realize this has nothing to do with the book, but I hate the protagonist’s name, Suzette. It comes up perhaps 1000 times during the novel (she is the heroine, after all) and every single time the image of a thin singed pancake popped into my mind, making it difficult to concentrate on what was actually going on.

M(y)R:

The Heiress is the second of a series of three novels around the Madison sisters. It apparently doesn’t follow the previous book but rather runs parallel to it, and the copious references to the first book made me feel that reading the first one would be a redundant, masochistic activity.

I liked the cute concept, where the heroine is looking for a poor husband who will give her access to part of her sizeable dowry so she can pay off her father’s gambling debts, so the hero pretends to be just such a man even though he is (of course) very rich.

I did not like the way the plot required me not merely to suspend my disbelief, but to actually lock it up in a closet and ignore its helpless cries. To say the plot was unbelievable is to put it mildly, particularly towards the end of the book, when new characters are introduced who say and do ridiculous things without the main characters noticing.

I forgive the book a lot because it was actually a very sexy read. Whenever our two protagonists were alone in a room/carriage/stable… let’s just say Ms. Sands is particularly adept at describing the sparks.

M(y) score: Probably not, 4/10.