Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (Twilight Saga, Book 1)

For some reason, the Twilight craze swept right by me. Despite reading a lot of great reviews, it never struck me as a book that I desperately wanted to read. I was curious, though, and when the film came out, I finally put the book in reserve at the library so I could read it before I see the film.

Twilight has so many obvious flaws, and yet I couldn’t put it down. Here’s a sample of what went through my mind as I read this book:

Half of brain: Why are we still reading this?
Other half of brain: Shut up, I’m reading.
HoB: This is ridiculous
OHoB: OMG, so thrilled!
HoB: Teenage boys would never say that.
OHoB: Aw, so sweet…
HoB: Bella sucks. And why is her default reaction icy?
OHoB: She’s a nerd, but popular … it’s just the way I always though high school should’ve been.
HoB: Edward seems to scowl a lot. And smirk. Smirky teenage boys are beyond annoying.

Read the rest of this post.

My Favorite Earthling by Susan Grant (Otherworldly Men, Book 2)

Jared Jasper is from a very close knit California political family on Earth. In the previous book, Your Planet or Mine (which you don’t have to read to get what’s happening), he helped his sister Jana and her man Calvin of Far Star, from the Coalition, saving the earth from invasion.

The Coalition consists of a vast political entity that rules a whole lot of planets. They are peaceful, and they worship the goddess, who descends directly from a line of goddess/rulers, unbroken from the very beginning of their history. Their goddesses do not live above them, literally or figuratively, but instead live with the people and are symbols of benevolence and of what they have.

The Coalition is perpetually at war with the Drakken horde, an evil and equally vast political entity—think the Empire in Star Wars—that is basically a military dictatorship which outlaws religious worship and has a fondness for going around killing things.

Earth is a very small part of this universe—it barely registers a bleep, and it’s not advanced enough to keep up, but somehow it gets swept up in all of it,

Read the rest of this post.

The Switch by Lynsay Sands

One of the things I love about historical romances is that there are so many of them that I haven’t run out of new bestselling authors to try. The Switch by Lynsay Sands was an impulse choice. I don’t know why I’ve never tried a Sands book before, but this one was so thoroughly enjoyable that I ended up reading excerpts aloud to my husband who, of course, thought I was utterly mad. But he married me that way, so he can’t complain.

Charlie and twin sister Beth Westerly are in the process of escaping from their uncle—who plans to marry Elizabeth off to a widower who was generally believed to have mistreated his 3 former wives—when they’re discovered by the Earl of Radcliffe. Radcliffe offers to help them travel to London so they can give Beth a Season. If she can make a suitable match before their uncle finds out, then she will finally be free of his control.

At least, that’s the plan Charlie gives Radcliffe. It’s not exactly what they’d originally planned because, well, they didn’t exactly tell him the whole truth. In fact, Charlie is Charlotte Westerly, she’s disguised as a boy partly so their uncle won’t quickly find them, and she’s the one slated to marry the thrice widowed suitor.

Poor Radcliffe starts feeling a little … disturbed.

Read the rest of this post.

Untouched by Anna Campbell

You see, it’s like this: remember how horrible the hero of Claiming the Courtesan was and how much he lacked any sense of gallantry or consideration in the first half of the novel? Well, that’s because Anna Campbell saved it all up for Matthew, the hero of Untouched. Matthew embodies pretty much every trait I typically love about Regency heroes—sometimes perhaps too much—and it’s no wonder that Untouched won the ARRC award for Favourite historical romance for 2008.

On her way to meet her cousin, Grace Paget is abducted and wakes up to find that she’s been mistaken for a prostitute and is expected to be a sex slave to Matthew, the Marquess of Sheene. Although Matthew seems like a kind man, he can’t help Grace because he himself has been held captive for 11 years by a greedy uncle who doesn’t wish to relinquish control of Matthew’s fortune. At first, Matthew suspects that Grace has been sent by his uncle, but as he realises that she’s truly an innocent victim in his uncle’s machinations, Matthew struggles to resist their growing attraction.

Grace begins to understand the horrors that Matthew endured at his uncle’s hands.

Read the rest of this post.

The Taste of Innocence by Stephanie Laurens (Cynster Series, Book 14)

My first romance was a historical that I read about a decade ago and I blame Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Jane Eyre for piquing my interest. Whatever the reason, I got into historical romance well before I picked up a contemporary, and one of my early favourites was Stephanie Laurens. Her Cynsters were strong, confident, even arrogant in a hot way, but when they fell in love, they fell hard and it takes a strong woman to handle their passion and overbearing protectiveness. Now that she’s exhausted an entire generation of Cynster men, she’s moved onto the younger male relatives of the Cynster wives, who have been moulded into the Cynster image through years of exposure to their powerful in-laws.

The Taste of Innocence is Charlie Morwellan’s story (his half-sister Alathea married her childhood friend Gabriel Cynster in the fifth book, A Secret Love). After watching love ensnare his closest friends Gerrard Debbington and Dillon Caxton, Charlie decides to take the bull by the horns and choose a comfortable wife whom he can admire but not love. Like the Cynsters, the Morwellans have a history of marrying for love, and Charlie’s father allowed the emotion to control him to the point where the family estate and fortune was almost lost, and Charlie has learned from this mistake.

Read the rest of this post.

Angel's Blood by Nalini Singh (Guild Hunter, Book 1)

FIRST EVER BLOG GIVEAWAY: Read on for a chance to win a free copy of Angel’s Blood. The giveaway is open to readers overseas and ends midnight on Thursday, March 19 AEDT.

You would think a book written by a New Zealand author would manage to get to our shores by the release date. People, it took me almost a week to find an Australian bookseller that had Angel’s Blood in stock. Lucky for me, Jill from Romance Direct heard me whingeing and told me she had some on hand. They arrived packed in bubblewrap, in pristine condition, before 10am the next day. My first online book buy, believe it or not.

Angels’ Blood was one of my most anticipated books this year. Not only am I a fan of Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling series, I’m a fan of angel mythologies and I wanted to see how this book stacks up against Meljean Brook’s Demon Angel. The premise of the story and the mythology behind the creatures in the novel are different from Brook’s The Guardian series. I think if you found Demon Angel too wordy and slow paced, you’ll probably find Angels’ Blood just right.

Read the rest of this post.

Dawnkeepers by Jessica Andersen (Final Prophecy, Book 2)

Once upon a time in Central America, an ancient people known as the Mayans ruled this part of the earth. They were a highly sophisticated civilisation, with a keen interest in astrology/astronomy and prophecy. The Mayans predicted that the world would end approximately December 21, 2012, and this is the central focus of the Final Prophecy series.

Dawnkeepers, the second book in the series, focuses on Nate Blackhawk and Alexis Gray, two descendants of the original Nightkeepers, or protectors of the barrier that is meant to stop evil from being unleashed on the world and ultimately destroying it on the prophesied date. Prior to the first book, where they were brought together, most of the Nightkeepers had no awareness of their true purpose in life. Dawnkeepers focuses not only on Nate and Alexis’s relationship, but on how the Nightkeepers begin coming into their own and how they grow stronger as a group.

This is part of what I liked about this series—the continuity is quite clear, they don’t suddenly develop all their superpowers overnight, and it’s not easy for them to defeat the baddies.

Read the rest of this post.

Angel's Pawn (Guild Hunter, Companion Novella)

Nalini Singh is evil, evil, evil.

First, she writes a new series with a fresh spin on the whole angel thing that immediately sucks you into her world—there’s no warm and fuzzy touched by an angel huggy stuff here.  In Angels’ Pawn, angels run different districts where they offer immortality in  the form of vampirism in exchange for a century of service. Vampires that violate the conditions of their contract are hunted down by guild members like Ashwani, the heroine of the novel.

Ashwani has a love-hate relationship with Janvier, a 200-year old  vampire she occasionally has to hunt only to find, mid-hunt, that he’s made up with whichever vampire he’s pissed off. Ashwani approaches Janvier for assistance as she investigates and eventually conducts a rescue for a kidnapped vampire. The action is tightly written and fits well within the bounds of the novella. Click here to read an excerpt.

Read the rest of this post.

King of Sword and Sky by C. L. Wilson (Tairen Soul, Book 3)

I love this series. I’ve always loved high fantasy, but I’ve often longed for more (and happier) romance in them. When I found C. L. Wilson’s Tairen Soul series, I was hooked.

King of Sword and Sky picks up the story where Lady of Light and Shadows ended. Ellie Baristani, truemate of the King of the Fey, travels to the Fading Lands where she hopes to find a way to save the tairen—fierce magical creatures—from extinction. But far from being welcomed by the Fey, Ellie is treated with increasing suspicion and hostility, and Rain finds himself constantly negotiating small but significant political battles, indicating that the Fey haven’t forgotten the years Rain spent on the brink of madness.

Meanwhile, the evil High Mage Vadim Maur dispatches minions to find weaknesses in the Fey’s human alliances and magical defences while he continues his breeding experiments to produce powerful creatures of magic whose souls are bound only to him.

When Ellie finally discovers what she must do to save the tairen, she knows that the solution will not only cast further suspicion on her and undermine Rain’s political standing,

Read the rest of this post.

The New Man by Janice Kay Johnson (Super Romance)

The New Man by Janice Kay Johnson isn’t my cup of Super Romance, but there’s a gentless in the story which may appeal to other readers.

Helen Schaefer lost her husband after a long illness and she’s wary of getting involved with Alec Fraser. She’s had enough of loss and is unwilling to let herself be vulnerable to that kind of grief again. Alec is a widower and knows all too well the devastating grief of losing a spouse. And while he’s open to starting a new relationship, he has his own issues to sort out with his family—particularly his son, Devlin.

The pace of this novel was too slow for me. Johnson fleshes out Helen’s character beyond the romance, but for the most part, I found those bits boring. More interesting is Alec’s home life and his struggle to communicate with Devlin. Johnson evokes the love, frustration and helplessness Alec feels when his efforts fail repeatedly, and his family situation comes across as real and honest. Disappointingly, the resolution of his conflict with Devlin is much too abrupt.

Read the rest of this post.