New at H&H: Look Me in the Eye

Online today from me at Heroes & Heartbreakers: Look Me in the Eye When We Do That.

The idea came to me while reading a particular scene in Christine Warren's Black Magic Woman. Initially Macmillan sent me the book in advance of its release so I could write a Fresh Meat about it, but my timing was way off. Instead I wrote Reading Series in Order as a result of Warren's unusual method of incorporating her Fixed series into the longer, more mainstream The Others series by rewriting the original stories as longer books, then interspersing brand new books. The first release of The Others, for instance, which was published in 2006, is actually ninth in the series' reading order.

The scene that set me off was a love scene, and after developing the concept, I got approval to write a more expansive piece, which I did last week. It's probably going to be the last of its type for me for awhile so that I don't lock myself into a specific blogger mode over at H&H. Once you read it, I think you'll understand what I mean.

I say that with a caveat, though; if you don't regularly read my stuff, don't read this one or you may end up with the wrong idea about me. Truly...I'm not pervy.

As for me, I've got two PW books to review this week, so I'm off to Starbucks to read for awhile. Yesterday, btw, I tried out the new Starbucks card app on my Droid...OMG great is how I'd describe it.

New at H&H: Look Me in the Eye

Second Chances by Lauren Dane

Second Chances

Lauren Dane

Grade: B-

I've previously read two books by Lauren Dane: Laid Bare and Sweet Charity. While the romance in the former eventually included more than two in a bed, in the end I preferred it to Sweet Charity because of the author's handling of difficult emotional content. I don't choose to read any romance for Big Issues, but Laid Bare just so happened to tackle some - surprising enough where erotic romance is concerned - and tackled them well. So when Carina Press made available via netgalley Dane's re-write of Second Chances (originally published by Loose I.D. in 2005), I asked for a copy to read. As with her other books, I couldn't put this one down, but I encountered some problems along the way.

Rori Simon returns to her small Texas hometown after ten years. She left overweight, shy, and brow-beaten by her mother for her lack of appeal to the opposite sex. Now, after college, a Rhodes Scholarship, and time living in Paris with a boyfriend she eventually found cheating on her, she's back...and confident, attractive, and secure in herself and her sexuality.

She soon appears on the radar of all the town's hunks, including Jude Callahan, the gorgeous bad boy who works with his brother Mac, also Rori's brother-in-law, on the police force. Though the two were friends in high school, now he wants her in his bed, and though she understands he's not in it for the long haul, she wants to act upon their attraction as well. The two share a night that shakes each to the core. She discovers she craves domination while Jude realizes that Rori is not only the perfect submissive - she's also the perfect woman for him in a long-term kind of way. Not only does he actually like her as a person, she is the one and only woman who matches his every sexual need. But because he's a Bad Boy Who Never Felt That Way, he throws another woman in her face and she dumps him.

Not long after she meets Zach Helm, a friend's younger brother who'd been a nerd in high school. Now he's all grown up, in a very, very good way. Like Jude, he recognizes the perfect submissive, but unlike Jude, he's not about to throw away what might be the best thing in his life. Their relationship progresses, with some obnoxious interruptions by a jealous Jude, and it looks as though Rori and Zach are the book's happily-ever-after.

But not entirely...the book's title is a constant niggle that something else is going to happen and bring Jude back into Rori's life and bed. Mac diagnoses his obnoxious behavior: Jude's being an ass because he loves Rori. He realizes his brother is right and works to redeem himself in Rori and Zach's eyes so he can at least resume their friendship.

I can't actually get into more of the "niggle" feeling without revealing spoilers, but can say that Rori's relationship with Zach is slightly "off." Zach adores Rori and seems to do and say all the right things, but occasionally he'll make a whopper of a mistake. From what I understand by reading BDSM stories, Dominants are all about psychology, and arranging a piercing for Rori without her knowledge and/or agreement and not understanding why that might bother her seemed out of character. Even more out of character was his plan to change their living arrangements drastically for a six-month period without first discussing it with Rori.

A tragedy fairly late in the book changes everything. It resolves that niggling feeling - I thought I knew what was coming, although didn't know how it would happen - but in a manner more clumsy than I expected from author Dane. On the one hand it brings the story back into balance and allows growth for Rori's mom and for Jude to become the man he was meant to be, but on the other, I expected the author to get from Point A to Point B in a better way.

That I'm still thinking about the book days after finishing it says something. This isn't the perfect book by a long shot - there are some real "wow, that's creepy" moments, but in the end I give Second Chances a qualified recommendation for those of you looking for a contemporary erotic romance offering real depth and complexity.

Second Chances by Lauren Dane

Do Over by Mari Carr

Do Over

Mari Carr

Grade: C

Mari Carr's Do Over sounded romantic and sexy - a long-married woman whose second child just left the nest and whose husband works long hours is offered a "do-over" on their 25th wedding anniversary - but didn't do much for me.

Read this review in its entirety at Amazon. It is not a Vine review; I received a digital copy from the publisher.

Do Over by Mari Carr

Still Reading After All These Years

When I finished reading Anne Stuart's The Wicked House of Rohan and Ruthless, it occurred to me that she is one of a very select group of authors I've continued reading since discovering the joys of romance novels in 1993. Of the select group of others, most fell by the wayside immediately or almost immediately. I read 23 books by 13 authors the first year I read romance, and Anne Stuart is the only one I continue to follow oh-so-closely. I don't read all of her romantic suspense, but have read every one of her Ice books and nearly all of her historicals (and have TBR some of her very old category titles). Lisa Kleypas and Teresa Medeiros are nearly auto-buys, but much less read.

Rather than going year by year, let me list my most frequent romance DIK authors (from most to fewest multiple DIKs), whether or not I continue to buy and/or read them, and if not, how long they lasted. It's not a tremendously large list, so it shouldn't take that long.

Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb, with 11 DIKs, the 11th added just last year with 2009's Promises in Death: I discovered Roberts in 1997 but didn't read her as J.D. Robb until 2006. I continue to read her as the latter, not so much the former.

Julie Garwood, with 9 DIKs: I read Garwood's 1993-published Castles in 1994, beginning a string of DIK reads. Sorry to say, but I gave her up when she moved into romantic suspense in 2000. She wrote another historical a couple of years ago, and though I bought it, it remains unread.

Catherine Coulter, with 5 DIKs: Coulter was among the thirteen authors I read in 1993. While her quality varied from terrific to horrendous - and some sub-genres went off-limits quickly - I continued to read her Regency-set historicals long after most, stopping after Pendragon, with 25 books by her under my belt..

Kathryn Lynn Davis and Anne Stuart, both with 3 DIKs: If Kathryn Lynn Davis hadn't stopped publishing with Somewhere Lies the Moon, no doubt I'd have continued to read her. As for Stuart, she continues to amaze me.

Connie Brockway, Christina Dodd, Jillian Hunter, Mary Alice Monroe, Julia Quinn, Deborah Simmons, and Katherine Sutcliffe, all with 2 DIKs: I have several of Brockway's books TBR and will probably buy her again. As for Dodd, I continued to read her long after she and her closest attacked my integrity, and that of AAR, but at some point I realized I could no longer give any author business if she actively tried to destroy my website. Eventually that extended to Julia Quinn, whose behavior was more subversive. She was the only author contacted in 2007 to participate in AAR's 10th anniversary who refused, and unless she hears of this, she probably has no idea that I know why. (Hey, as a private citizen, I'm no longer obligated to take the high road.)

I continue to buy and read Jillian Hunter, even though it's been two years since reading Wicked as Sin, which I thought was only slightly better than average. I only fell in love with Mary Alice Monroe in 2002, and until last year's Last Light Over Carolina, she'd consistently blown me away. I look forward to her next book.

Deborah Simmons only recently returned to publishing after a hiatus, and I continue to buy her books, though it's been a while since I've read one. Finally...Katherine Sutcliffe, who stopped publishing in 2005. I stopped reading her after My Only Love, which I liked, mainly because her books' premises stopped interesting me and I knew she was capable of some real clinkers. Then too, she became the poster child for Bad Author Behavior. I felt she was misunderstood and tried to help her navigate what was at the time uncharted territory, and it exhausted me.

What other authors have been published for a very long time whom I continue to read today? The first who comes to mind is Mary Balogh. I didn't "get" Balogh until 2001, but my favorite book by her to date was just published this summer: A Secret Affair. She's been published since 1985, so...wow. Linda Howard is another long-published author to have thrilled me fairly recently - with her Blair Mallory books. Though I only first read her in 1999, she was first published in 1982, so again...wow.

Other authors published way back when whom I read for quite a while, even if none of their books ever earned DIK status: Let's start with Loretta Chase, whose 1995 "classic," Lord of Scoundrels I only first read in 2006. More than a decade after publishing LOS, she published Your Scandalous Ways, which I truly enjoyed, and I happily look forward to reading both back-list and subsequent releases as time permits. Chase's first book, btw, was published in 1987. Next up: Patricia Oliver, who died several years ago. She's the only Trad Regency author I "got" for many years, and deserves mention simply for that reason. Also, Lorraine Heath and Leanne Banks - both of whom I continue to buy if only rarely read - and Elizabeth Lowell, Ruth Langan, and Jill Barnett, all for whom I have multiple books TBR, even though I stopped buying them some time ago.

I'm sure I've left out many authors I'll later wish I'd included, buts it's time for the flip side, and a few long-time authors I eventually gave up on. Obviously there are many, many, oh-so many I can't possibly list them all, but these three came to mind for three different reasons, so I'm listing them: JAK/Amanda Quick, Marilyn Pappano, and Elizabeth Bevarly. I read many books by each of these authors, and gave up on Krentz/Quick when she eventually became derivative of heself. As for Pappano, while I have many from her backlist, and even am a fan of books following Season for Miracles in her Bethlehem series, once I subsequently read SFM, I was turned off so strongly that I never bought another of her books. With Bevarly the reasons are many, and not all are book-related. Apparently I do hold a grudge. 'Nuff said.

After writing all this, it amazes me that Anne Stuart, Mary Balogh, and J.D. Robb continue to thrill after so many years in print. I look forward to additional greatness from them, others on my list, such as Loretta Chase, Linda Howard, Lisa Kleypas, and Terersa Medeiros, and still others - from Madeline Hunter (whose first book came out a full decade ago!), to Elizabeth Hoyt to Rhyannon Byrd to Cherise Sinclair - whose careers are not yet as long-lived. And if Sinclair's name comes out of thin air, know that I rarely write about the erotic romance I read, although that will likely change in the very near future.

Still Reading After All These Years

Talk Dirty To Me by Ginny Glass and Inez Kelley

Talk Dirty To Me

Ginny Glass and Inez Kelley

Grade: C

Contemporary Erotic Romance

Ginny Glass and Inez Kelley's Talk Dirty To Me continues my losing streak of this premise: Hunky guy accidentally discovers an uptight heroine yearning to get her full freak on, and tries to fulfill her fantasies either anonymously or without revealing his knowledge of her secret desires. What hinders this particular story is that Nora MacGregor is too often a pill and too much word count is devoted to the Jarod/James "secret." The result is not enough of a non-annoying Nora and an over-abundance of Jarod acting like a spurned lover once he realizes that James, his "talk dirty to me" telephone alter ego, is as much of a lure to her as he is in the more romantic flesh. Not that Jarod as Jarod didn't present his own problem for me; his literary references to James Joyce (he's a literature professor to her biology PhD candidate) canceled a great deal of the story's eroticism because of their purple proseyness.

Read this review in its entirety at Amazon. It is not a Vine review; the publisher sent me a digital copy.

Talk Dirty To Me by Ginny Glass and Inez Kelley