All I Ever Wanted by Kristan Higgins

A surprisingly sweet and funny story with some solid and charming characters.

The Bridget Jones-style beginning of All I Ever Wanted almost caused me to put this book down, but I persevered because I’d been wanting to try Kristan Higgins for some time now. I’m glad I did because the story is surprisingly sweet and funny, with some solid character development.

Callie Grey has been pining for her boss—formerly her high school crush and first kiss—and patiently waiting for the ‘timing’ to be right for their relationship. But despite one glorious five-week fling almost a year ago, Mark announces his engagement to the daughter of a key client. On Callie’s birthday. Oh, and his fiancée would now be working with the company.

Sure, she wants Mark back, but Callie gamely tries to get back into the dating pool by checking out the town’s new vet…except Ian McFarland is not exactly receptive to Callie’s charms.

It’s hard to place this book. It has a chick-lit feel and is told from the first person, but the romance features heavily in the second half of the book. It’s also not as self-centred as chick-lit tends to be. Higgins plays for laughs, but never really at the expense of her protagonist. Behind Callie’s insecurities and problems is a fairly confident, successful woman with a clear sense of who she is, surrounded by people who love her.

Read the rest of this post.

Kelly Hunter giveaway winner

Congratulations to obsidiantears83, who won our giveaway of Red-Hot Renegade by Kelly Hunter. She chose Captain Thunderbolt as the renegade who would make a fantastic romance hero:

Captain Thunderbolt. Every time I drive through Uralla, in the New England ranges, I wonder what his life story was actually like, because it is so romanticsed. There is also Thunderbolt’s Boulder just outside town where he used to hide out. He was a horse theif and was arrested, did hard labour, and then his wife’s helped him escape. They became bushrangers and lived hard, mostly between the hunter valley and the new england.

Top 10 things romance oversells

Julie of Gypsy in my soul lists of some of the most unrealistic things we might encounter in romance. And she does it with love for the genre. Hilarious. (Source: @VaVeros)

Read the rest of this post.

Burn Bright by Marianne de Pierres (Night Creatures, Book 1)

A lyrical, sensual and fascinating story let down by a disjointed plot and vague world building. Your mileage may vary.

There’s something seductive about the way Marianne de Pierres writes, and although I hesitated to pick this book up—not another young adult dark fantasy novel!—once I did I couldn’t put it down…until I got to the middle.

Retra escapes her closed community to search for her brother, who ran away to Ixion two years ago. It’s a mysterious place, where everyone lives for pleasure and newcomers are urged to ‘burn bright’. It’s a place where Retra, conditioned to be silent, calm and obedient, finds herself caught up in the politics and jealousies between the Ripers who promise to guard the young revellers, the various gangs in the city, the dreaded Night Creatures, and rebel factions who know that Ixion is not, after all, just about pleasure.

De Pierres sets the story up beautifully, taking the reader on the same journey as the bewildered Retra, for whom Ixion requires a complete reassessment of everything she knows (or has been taught) thus far. But as the story progresses, De Pierres falls into the common trap of keeping details thin in order to maintain various mysteries of the world she’s creating.

Read the rest of this post.

If you were at the ARRA convention this year, you may remember Helene Young from her fantastic book reading and launch of Shattered Sky. Her books, set in North Queensland, combine romantic suspense with the increasingly popular rural lit category. Her debut novel, Border Watch (rereleased as Wings of Fear), won the 2010 Australian Romance Readers Award for Favourite Romantic Suspense and is nominated for this year’s R*BY Award in the Romantic Elements category.

I have a stack of Orion and Little, Brown books still in my TBR shelf. Some of these were released last year, but a few of them are coming out in other formats this year.

2012 ARR Awards

The 2012 Australian Romance Readers Awards will be held on Saturday, February 11, 2012 at Cello’s Resturant in Sydney (same venue as last year). Book it in and start saving!

Am I the only one who wants to rename this to the Pirate Awards? I wonder if we can have a pirate-themed bling off?

Shannon Curtis at Burwood Library

Shannon Curtis will be at Burwood Library on July 30 to launch her debut release from Carina Press, The Viper’s Kiss. Readers are invited to bring their ebook readers, laptops and USB gizmos to the ‘digital download event’. I love this idea! You can buy a copy of the book using the library’s free WiFi and have a chat about the library’s ebook community and digital lending program. (Source: ARRA newsletter — Worth the price of membership, just for the events notices, but it has excellent articles, too!)

Going digital with Angela James

Carina Press executive editor, Angela James, will be speaking at the Australia Council for the Arts on Tuesday, August 16 as part of an if:book Australia initiative. The cost is $49.50 and you need to RSVP by Friday, August 12.

Read the rest of this post.

Death's Sweet Embrace by Tracey O'Hara (Dark Brethren, Book 2)

Ends with an excellent twist—one that I didn’t guess until the very end—but let down by the execution.

I’ll be honest. I thought I’d like this book much more than I did. Although the first book in the series, Night’s Cold Kiss, had its flaws, I generally enjoyed the story and was looking forward to more.

Snow leopard shifter Kitt Jordan’s dream is to be reunited with her estranged daughters and to make peace with her pack. It seems to be within her reach, until she’s called to be part of a task force hunting down a brutal serial killer. Kitt has to work alongside Raven, with whom she has a rather tragic history, and it seems that there’s still something between them. Despite the attraction, Kitt knows that getting involved with Raven again will pretty much scuttle her chances of a reunion with her pack and her daughters.

Meanwhile, the serial killer’s MO is to find young Bestiabeo (shapeshifters), paralyse them and rip out their hearts. There’s a lot of gore in this book.

Read the rest of this post.

Pearson-REDgroup deal to be investigated by the ACCC

The Bookseller reports that the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) is putting together a submission to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), asking for an investigation into Pearson’s acquisition of REDgroup online. ABA is concerned that the deal will reduce competition and give an advantage to books published by Pearson, which also owns Penguin. BOOKSELLER+PUBLISHER quotes several Australian bookshop managers, and their reactions are mixed.

Amazon-Book Depository deal

Amazon’s planned acquisition of The Book Depository has hit the mainstream media. So far, the word from TBD is that it’s business as usual. That would make sense because the deal isn’t in the bag yet. (It’s still subject to regulatory approval.)

Here are some things I’ve gleaned that may be of interest to readers (and if I got anything wrong please feel free to correct me!):

Read the rest of this post.

Mills and Boon author Kelly Hunter was a finalist in the 2011 RITA Awards for her Sexy release, Red-Hot Renegade, which features something not often seen in mainstream romance novels—an Asian heroine. I haven’t read this book yet (it’s on my list of books to read!) but based on Kate’s review I think I need to get to it soon.

Kelly’s latest Australian release was The Man She Loves to Hate (Sexy, 2-in-1). Her latest North American release was With This Fling (Presents), and her latest UK release was Taken By The Bad Boy (Paradise Nights anthology).