Grade: B+

I was not planning on reading Laura Kinsale again. While the one book of hers that I’ve read, Flowers from the Storm was well-written and poignant, it… slayed me. It was so emotionally exhausting that I wasn’t able to read anything with romance in it for weeks. I picked up this book because I was fascinated by the plot: two people fall in love through letters, but when they finally meet, he turns out to be a batshit crazy bastard (take note, online Lotharios!). Kinsale is one of those authors who can give you a truly unlikable hero with little or no redeeming qualities, such as Sheridan Drake from Seize the Fire, but is somehow able to make them sympathetic and sexy. But it was not the hero that had me turning the pages this time. It was the heroine. The hero, while totally hot, was kind of… meh. The heroine, on the other hand, is a hoot! She’s smart, practical, and in the end, ends up saving his butt from the sling. Her sarcastic and clever quips come a mile a minute and she doesn’t let the hero push her around. It’s really too bad that this book loses steam about halfway through. Not that it sucked or anything, but the first half of the book is so tightly plotted and poignant that when the external plots are introduced later on, the whole thing just kind of… meanders and staggers under its own weight. Kinsale introduces so many subplots (some of which were left unresolved) that they totally interrupted the development of the romance between the two leads! Ugh.
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Grade: B-

Here’s a Harlequin Blaze that features a heroine who has had many, many lovers. And a magic vagina! What, you think I’m joking? This book is actually the 1st of a trilogy about 3 sisters who have “sexual healing” abilities. The author herself makes the joke somewhere in the book, but it really is like Charmed except their magic comes courtesy of their coochies, instead of cheap, skanky outfits and low-budget CGI. Charmed: Now More Soft-Core Pornish and Still No Shannen Doherty! Boo. One sister has a vagina like a magnet—-all she has to do is have sex with a guy and he becomes her devoted follower FOREVAH. One sister apparently makes men physically ill after a romp in bed with her. Worst. Power. Ever. But that’s another book. This particular sister is special. She has magical sex with a dude, experiences a wonderful connection with him, and the next day—-well, she wakes up and he’s gone. Nothing magical about that. It just means YOU’RE EASY AND THAT IS WHY THEY DON’T WANT YOU ANYMORE THE SECOND THEY TAG THE POODY, you thick bint! Or she makes ‘em all better and feelin’ like they want to conquer the world after a roll in the hay with her. Whatev. I still had an okay time reading this book. It was filled with good-intentioned people who just don’t know how to sit down and talk, but the h/h were likable, which made it a pretty painless read. For the most part.

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[Review by Annie Dean]

Grade: B+

Well, before I started reading Ms. Bryce, I would have said m/m stories weren’t my thing at all. The few contemporaries I’ve looked at always seem to feature an alpha top and a mega-femme bottom, who is a worse pussy than any TSTL heroine. But Ms. Bryce whisks her characters away to lush worlds where our gender roles don’t hold water. Each of her stories takes place in a richly realized fantasy setting that evokes comparison to Arabian Nights, Scheherazade and her 1001 tales.

In From this Night, we meet Suryo and Alasson, a couple who has been betrothed from birth. You see, their fathers hit the bottle heavy one night, and in the way of all “I love you, man” and “No, I love you more” drunks, they pledged before gods and men that their next born children would marry to unite their families and end an old feud. The gods clearly have a sense of humor because their next born children were both boys.
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Grade: B+

You can tell that I’m feeling a little blue when you see me reading Jayne Ann Krentz. The lady was a staple in my adolescent TBR. The polar ice caps may be melting, the dead may be coming back to life to eat our brains, and our president may be a cyborg sent from the future to destroy civilization as we know it, but Jayne Ann Krentz will be writing the same damn story over and over for the rest of of her life. But who gives a shit. When you’re reading a JAK, you know you’re going to get quality: sparkling dialogue, sizzling sexual tension, a strong heroine, a brooding hero with green eyes, and lots of shenanigans. Sure, if you’ve read one JAK, you’ve read them all, but it’s kind of like watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show. You’ve seen it a hundred times, you can call out the lines, you can act out the scenes… but damn, it’s always a good time. This particular JAK piece is a little bit Family Man with a healthy spoonful of The Golden Chance for flavoring. Hero is a black sheep, but is also the most responsible one in a flighty, profligate family; though heroine is suspicious of him, she is sexually attracted to him, but insists there will be no sexin’ as it will complicate matters (they have sex anyway); heroine is steadfast in her defense of the hero to his suspicious family even though she doesn’t trust him herself; main conflict stems from deep dark secret involving either family. See? Good times. Lady is like chicken soup. You know what you’re gonna get and she always goes down easy (can also said for a five-dollar whore, but you guys… JAK charges 7.99 for her MMP, thank you).
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[Review by Annie Dean]

Grade: B+

First, let me say, the cover is hot. [Ed. Note: I second that. This cover is fierce!] After reading this story (and one by Diana Bold that I reviewed for RRT) I moseyed over to Cobblestone and did some shopping. Across the board, they have gorgeous cover art. (Diana Bold is now on my auto-buy list by the way. So is Sara Dennis.) Let’s talk about why.

Stacking the Deck offers a champagne and shrimp cocktail take on paranormal urban fantasy / romance. Though we’re all sick of the Cheez Whiz and Yoohoo version, her supernatural creatures manage to be fresh and entertaining. I hate werewolves with a passion and I even sort of liked the villain of the story, Samantha’s ex-boyfriend. Too often villains are one-dimensional and just ridiculous caricatures (You hear me, Anne Stuart? I’m talking about your crazy Scooby Doo millionaire from Cold as Ice.) Ms. Dennis avoids this trap neatly with Duff. Will you hate me if I say I kinda liked him more than Alec?

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