Grade: B-

I’m all about complete dickwads in romance novels going through a redemption arc and finding a happily ever after of their own provided that there’s lots and lots of groveling. Lots. We’re talking complete and utter humiliation, especially if he treated the heroine like utter shit. The “scoundrel” in question in this book isn’t a brooding, misunderstood loner who only keeps the companies of whores and other miscreants (sequel bait!) because of some tragic event; he’s an image-conscious, superficial, really cruel male Heather who is utterly and 100% lacking of any redeeming qualities for no solid reason. He was the guy in high school who noticed if your jeans are hanging a little high and pointed it out to everyone so they could all make fun of you for it. In this book, he basically throws the heroine to the wolves by making fun of her, saying the meanest things to her, and encouraging others to join in the good times. On top of that, he rapes her. That’s right, he rapes her. All the groveling and wooing and begging in the world shouldn’t have made it okay, but he does it ever so prettily that you just have to forgive him a little each time. Too bad that the heroine is a spineless, pathetic bimbo who pretty much throws herself at him the second he shows up at her doorstep. She should have made him suffer, tormented him at least half as much as he torments her, humiliated him… I don’t know. Am I projecting again? Damn it!
(more…)

For a regency romance, that chick is looking pretty naked. I mean, we can see her armpit and the side of her boobs… and that skirt looks pretty short, too. SCANDALOUS! Hah, maybe she’s a Cyprian or a courtesan or a member of the demi-monde or something. That might be interesting. If so, I smell a “fake ho” story! Just check out the guy she’s waltzing with. My God, those curls… did they have Soul Glo in the Regency era? Nuts and berries can’t do that, for sure. I wonder if the hair around his nuts and berries is that curly. Ewww. This chick looks pretty curly, too. I feel sorry for their kids. They’d come out looking like Buckwheat after a bad home perm. Not that there’s anything wrong with curly hair. Sometimes I wish I had curly hair. Wait… no, I don’t. Dude, is that Jason Schwartzman standing behind Blondie Bear dressed as Napoleon? Awesome!

Obviously this story involves some kind of masquerade. Maybe some kind of mistaken identity. And the girl is some kind of bluestocking who dresses up as her wilder, more outgoing sister, and gets the Duke to fall in love with her and by the time he finds out her deception, they’re already married. Something like that. Or she’s somebody’s lady’s maid who pretends to be… well, not a maid… and gets her bitchy mistress’s nobleman boyfriend to fall in love with her. Or he won her in a card game with her brother.

Thanks to Katharina for this awesome cover.

At first glance I thought that this woman had a silver neck piercing. Upon subsequent examination and Laura pointing it out to me that this woman is leaking silver, but I think it looks more like mercury. Oh MY GODDESS, this woman is made of liquid metal like the T-1000. If so, can she shape her limbs into “knives and stabbing weapons”? That would be kind of cool. Like maybe she can fashion her arm into a liquid metal dildo to violate the vampire who bites her. Tit for tat, you know. I like how April Martinez strives for realism this time, simulating bite marks on the girl’s neck. Can you see it? I bet Gil Grissom from CSI can totally take an impression of that and catch the vampire who bit her. You know, this girl has really pretty skin, too. She almost looks like a starving homeless man’s Scarlett Johansson. I would have really liked this cover if it weren’t for the mercury leaking out of her neck. Weird choice, April! What kind of creature has mercury blood? Although according to this blurb, she’s not human:

Since she was five years old, Itana has known she was something more than human. What? She didn’t know. Veris, a nasty creature of the dark, has stalked her since then for that very being she’s afraid to acknowledge in herself. If she can continue to hide from Veris until her thirtieth birthday, she will be free of his torment forever. But what can she do when the thing she wants the most, is the very thing that will bring her into his grasp?

Maybe she’s a cyborg. But cyborgs are cybernetic organisms, which means that organic material like flesh would be covering the techno parts. Or I’m thinking about this way too much again.

Thanks for the cover, Laura!

[Note: If you haven’t read my review of the book first, you probably won’t know what I’m talking about. ]

Normally after I read a book, I put it back on the shelf (if I liked it) or toss it into the Salvation Army bin (if I hated it). Once it’s out of my sight, I completely forget about it and months down the road, I won’t even remember that I’ve read it before. That’s why I have to make sure that I put the books I didn’t like in a box meant to be donated because otherwise I might pick it up again and accidentally suffer the same pain I did when I first read it. Also, once I review the book on this site, I pretty much put the whole thing out of my mind and never think about it again because in my head, I’ve already done my obligation as a reader for it. But this book bothered me like no other because apparently, I was too dense to understand it. Fellow readers Jane and Devon had the same problem with this book as I did and pointed out a section on the author’s website (you have to register to get to it) where she elaborates on the whole thing and explains it for us plebian blockheads who don’t get “high-brow” literature. If you’ve read the book and you’re as stoooopid as we are, read it and you’ll get the a-ha! moment that you didn’t get while reading The Taming of the Duke. Oh, and this is a little note that prefaces it on the author’s website:
(more…)

Grade: C+

First thing’s first: I enjoyed reading this book. I thought the interactions between the characters were wonderful and the dialogue was pretty witty and hilarious for the most part. As an ensemble piece reminiscent of An Ideal Husband or The Importance of Being Earnest (the so-so movies, not the actual plays by the awesome Oscar Wilde), it definitely succeeds as I could almost see Minnie Driver playing the role of Lady Griselda, the widowed chaperone of the Essex sisters (this is the third of the series). As a romance, however–and according the book’s spine, it is a historical romance–it fails miserably. The two leads don’t interact as much as they should, the potential GIANT misunderstanding isn’t resolved until the last few pages of the book–and was practically dismissed outright–and when the two of them say “I love you” to each other, it seemed to come out of nowhere and was totally unbelievable. If I took into account the two previous books where the two of them first appear, I guess I could say that their “courtship” began in the first book, but if I hadn’t read the other two, the relationship would never have made sense to me. The more interesting storyline is the one between the duke’s bastard half-brother and the woman from whom Imogen, the female lead, stole the man she married (who later died), if only because we saw the two of them actually “acting” attracted to each other. If this hadn’t been marketed as a romance, I think I would have been fine with it, but as it is… I don’t actually know what to call it except wallpaper fluff.
(more…)