Grade: A-

Readers of this blog know I have no objectivity when it comes to P.C. Cast. NONE. I love that woman. I am a P.C. Cast fan girl. I will read anything she writes. What I like most about Cast’s books— and I do find very little of it in other romances— is the sisterhood, the coming together of women, the “hey girlfriend” stuff. In a lot of the romances I’ve been reading lately, the friends are always shoved to the background (or relegated to annoying “matchmaker” duties) once the girl meets the hero, but this particular book is really about two girlfriends growing together as people as well as finding their own true loves. That said, even though I enjoyed the hell out of this latest contribution to the Goddess Summoning series, there were some parts that made my eyes glaze over a little bit or roll to the back of my head. You see, there are two romances in this book and I just wasn’t that interested in the second one. Who wants to read about two incredibly gorgeous people falling in love? Give me the one about the guy with the gimp leg! Oh, and because one of the heroines of this story is the Goddess of Love, the deux ex machina gets a lot of mileage. Why wouldn’t it? The literal translation is “god from the machine”. Heh.

Warning: here there be spoilerz.

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Grade: A-

[Ed. Note: Is it Dean Winchester on the cover or am I just crazy?]

Authors are either getting better at gauging what I like, or I’ve just gotten a good crop of submissions in the last few weeks. At any rate, Dirty Shame rocked. I know the conventions say not to write about people in famous professions like rock stars, actors, etc, but this story worked for me. Among other gifts, Ms. March has knack for smart banter in dialogue.

Josephine (Joey) Fiorello is a short brunette in a world of tall, leggy Barbie types. She wants to make a living as an actress, but there isn’t enough “character” work to keep her from starving and she doesn’t qualify as a leading lady. Because she doesn’t fancy being homeless, she interviews for a job as a personal assistant.
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Grade: A-

Here’s an anthology that totally made me squee like I was a teenage girl creaming myself all over the new Ben Jelen CD or something (Ben Jelen, btw? SUPER-HOT). Meg Cabot, Michele Jaffe, Kim Harrison, and Stephanie Meyer IN ONE BOOK? OMG!!!!!!! And all of these stories were sooooooo good! I even liked the one by the girl whose name I’ve never heard of (her last name is Myracle? *scoff*). My favorite? Stephanie Meyer’s, of course! She’s got a delicious good boy hero (very, very, very good) and a very, very bad girl heroine (very, very, very bad). And it worked! The rest of the stories… well, I can’t pick the second best, either! But if I had to definitely pick the one I liked the least… I’d have to say… Meg Cabot’s. While the story itself was good, I’m so not a fan of dueling first-person narratives and I had to get past that to be able to enjoy it. On the other hand, Myracle’s is creepy, yet oddly poignant; Jaffe’s is hilarious and clever; and Kim Harrison’s is suspenseful, scary, and sexy. And the theme that pulls them all together? THE PROM, of course! If you’re a fan of 80’s American teen flicks, you know how important the prom is! Everything gets resolved at the prom! Damn, I can’t quite remember my own, but if it’s anything like these prom stories, maybe I shouldn’t remember. Heh.

Meg Cabot’s The Exterminator’s Daughter is about a teenage vampire slayer named Mary stalking the mysterious, ridiculously handsome new boy hanging around her best friend Lila with a crossbow in her hand. There is a reason for this. Sebastian Drake, according to Mary, is a vampire. And Mary should know. She comes from a long line of vampire slayers and was trained by her mother who was recently incapacitated and is currently not in the game. Because of this, it is now up to Mary to stop this vampire on her own. Too bad Lila is not at all worried about her new boyfriend being a vampire and wants to become a vampire herself. Enter Adam, the cute best friend of Ted, the boy Lila dumped for Sebastian. When Adam saves Mary from being torn in half by Sebastian, Mary is forced to tell him about her vampire-huntin’ activities. And why she’s got personal beef with Sebastian Drake. Yes, it’s personal. Naturally, Lila wants to take Sebastian to the prom and Mary figures she should go to the prom too… only to watch over Lila, of course. And if Adam wants to take her…
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Grade A-

This book blew me away. Just like LE Bryce, who sold me on something I thought I could never enjoy, Ms. Midway introduced me to BDSM, and what’s more, she made me like it. Well, the book. Not BDSM. Ms. Midway didn’t come to my house and say, “Love my book, bitch!” and then top me into submission. Love My Way did that on its own.

Before now, I’ve never read a BDSM story that I liked. I always found it vaguely incomprehensible and sort of disgusting that a sane, healthy, modern woman would want some man as her master. To my way of thinking, that attitude took us back two hundred years when we’ve fought so hard to get this far. I can say now, I just didn’t understand the Lifestyle.
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Grade: A
As we all know, old skool fairy tales aren’t the sanitized happy-happy-joy-joy Disney version that we tell our children (or cats). In one version of Cinderella, the wicked stepsisters cut off their toes so their feet would fit into the slipper and when it is Cinderella’s turn to try it on, the slipper is squishy with blood. In another version, when the evil stepmother and sisters attend Cinderella’s wedding to the prince, a bunch of pigeons come along and poke their eyes out. In The Goose Girl, the villain is placed naked in a barrel lined with nails and dragged from street to street by horses until she is dead. In Hansel and Gretel, the titular siblings make it home and the father hugs them to this chest, then decapitates his wife for suggesting the plan for losing H&G in the forest. But none of these stories could ever be as grisly and macabre as Charles Perrault’s Donkeyskin. In Donkeyskin, a king is made to promise by his dying wife that he will only marry a woman as beautiful and graceful as she is. Over the years, the king is unable to find any woman who could even come close to being as beautiful as his dead wife and as each day passes, it becomes more apparent to him that his daughter, nearly identical in appearance to his wife, is the only one who fits the bill. The king decrees he will marry his own daughter and the daughter, in an effort to stall her father, demands three gowns made of impossible-to-acquire materials and the hide of her father’s precious donkey. When her father fulfills each and every one of them, the girl runs away with the help of a fairy-godmother and eventually finds a prince who falls in love with her and marries her. And they live happily ever after. Yeah, that’s not how it happens in Mckinley’s version of the tale.

Warning: This is NOT an Young Adult book. Seriously. No, I’m not joking. There are some seriously violent and disturbing images in this book. Robin McKinley does not hold back.
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