The Mango Orchard by Robin Bayley
A charming, entertaining and very easy to read. Perfect for the summer (if we had one!).
When Robin Bayley was little, his grandmother would regale him with stories about her father, who had gone to work in a weaving factory in Mexico. His adventures seemed so fantastical and amazing. Now an adult facing a crossroads in life, Bayley decides to set out and trace his grandfather’s steps, back to the mill near a small town near the river somewhere in Mexico. Along the way he ends up in places he doesn’t expect—Colombia, for instance!—he meets an interesting cast of characters, he falls in love, and in the end what he finds is more than he expects.
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A Stormy Greek Marriage by Lynne Graham (The Drakos Baby, Book 2)
Books like this are the reason I stopped reading category romance in my mid-20s. I hope I don’t come across too many more of them in the near future. DNF.
I have five more titles in my Lynne Graham glom pile, but I’m not sure I can bear to go on. On one hand, I knew getting into this book that Graham writes domineering heroes of the 80s alpha kind. I thought I could cope with it, but this book is such a trainwreck I gave up halfway through.
Surprisingly for a category romance, this is part two of a series. (Perhaps Graham should have just written a full length book, did anyone think of that?) The back story is explained well enough to get the gist—I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t be prepared to slog through an entire book to basically learn that Alexei finally slept with his personal assistant, Billie, taking her virginity. She’s pined for him in secret but felt she was no match for the dazzling beauties that naturally flock to her rich, handsome boss.
Unfortunately, Alexei tripped and hit his head and managed to conveniently forget the two nights they were together. More unfortunately for Billie, the oblivious Alexei tried to rekindle a childhood romance as Billie coped with the consequences of their nights together—yes, the old secret baby.
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Ruthless Magnate, Convenient Wife by Lynne Graham (Pregnant Brides, Book 2)
There’s nothing earth-shattering about this story. I didn’t hate the hero or the heroine, but that might be damning with faint praise.
Back in my 20s, I would have loved this book. This may be spoilery to some readers—although if you regularly read in this Mills & Boon line it would amaze me if any of this surprises you—but Ruthless Magnate, Convenient Wife features a tycoon hero who borders on misogyny, a contract marriage, a virgin heroine, an accidental pregnancy and a Small Misunderstanding.
But as far as these things go, Lynne Graham does a decent enough job with the plot. Sergei Antonovich was saved from a troubled childhood by his grandmother, and as she gets older he wants to give her what he knows would make her happy—a grandchild.
As you do when you’re insanely rich but scarred by a money-grubbing first wife and young hotties forever flashing their cleavage in exchange for your wad (of cash, people!), Sergei sets up a business arrangement to acquire a wife and child.
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Red-Hot Renegade by Kelly Hunter (The Bennetts, Book 5)
This RITA-nominated book is sexy, angsty and deeply moving—everything we love about modern category romance. Oh, and the heroine? She’s the tycoon. This one’s a keeper.
You may have noticed that I’m in the middle of a Kelly Hunter glom. How I missed this awesome Aussie author boggles my mind, but Red-Hot Renegade (published in the US as Her Singapore Fling) is the book that made me first try Hunter’s work. Nominated for this year’s RITA awards, the book also features an Asian heroine with an Australian hero.
The back story for this novel is set up in the previous books of the series, which features the romances of Jacob Bennett’s siblings. Jacob’s estranged wife Jianne is being stalked and, having run out of options, she reluctantly comes to him for help.
Jacob is a martial arts champion who runs his dojo in Singapore. For reasons neither he nor Jianne want to acknowledge, they’re still officially married even though Jianne walked out on the marriage twelve years ago. What makes this reunion story different is that neither of them blame the other—instead, they remind each other of the guilt they feel about not having fought hard enough to save their relationship.
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Twilight: The Graphic Novel (Volume 1) by Stephenie Meyer and Young Kim (Twilight Saga)
Twilight lends itself to the shoujo manga format much better than in prose or in film. Young Kim’s renditions of the characters are disarmingly gorgeous, but even they can’t redeem Stephenie Meyer’s story of destructive co-dependency. And then there’s the font.
Jen, graphic designer extraordinaire and pop culture aficionado, generously agreed to do a guest review of this graphic novel. You can read more of her writing at Evening Hour.
Ah, Twilight, the stuff that dreams are made on. It’s not every day that one book, whose very premise was born out of a dream—so its creator, Stephenie Meyer, says—can reduce the time-honoured traits of popular culture’s great vampires to glittering giftwrap in the sunlight. When Kat offered the comic for me to review, who was I to refuse the chance to return to all the loltastic awfulness that encompasses Twilight?
These days, comic book adaptations serve as extended editions in a sea of franchise fodder. Often poor and hurried productions, they’re an easy marketing tactic to gain revenue on the side and to appease the voracious and loyal consumer. For the disinclined readers among us, comics can be a great alternative to absorb a self-contained story without sifting through the boring bits, like watching the film version in one sitting.
Unfortunately, no fast-food serving of Twilight could possibly make me hungry for more.
Yet, despite the frequent jibes I make at the popular YA book, this first volume of the graphic novel is mostly successful.
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Untameable Rogue by Kelly Hunter (The Bennetts, Book 4)
If you can overlook the daggy warrior references and underutilised Asian setting, there’s enough depth in the central relationship to make this book a pleasure to read. If you enjoy the daggy stuff…well, that just makes it even better.
This was my first Kelly Hunter book, but it won’t be my last. I don’t care what anyone says about the super daggy Karate Kid-style set up at the beginning of the novel, or the constant references to Chinese zodiac signs (I am the warrior tiger, hear me roar!), this book was thrilling!
From the outside, Madeline Delacourte seems a bit…suss. Her late husband plucks a much younger wife off the streets of Jakarta, and she later inherits and now runs his multi-million-dollar business. But like all Mills and Boon trophy wives, Maddy has a heart of gold. She rescues stray kids from the streets and brings them to her friend Jacob’s dojo to become his apprentice.
As she drops off her latest street kid, she meets Jacob’s brother Luke, who’s in between missions. Luke is a bomb disposal expert and he’s quick to judge Maddy, who doesn’t rise to the bait because, frankly, she’s heard it all before.
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Song of Scarabaeus by Sara Creasy (Scarabaeus, Book 1)
A page turner for science fiction readers who like a bit of romance, not the other way around.
Edie is desperate to escape her life of service to the Crib empire, so when she’s kidnapped by mercenaries and forced to cooperate with their plans, she’s worried but not exactly anxious to get back to the Crib.
But when she’s leashed to Finn, an ex-slave who turns out to belong to a group of highly trained fighters, she’s given no choice. If she ventures too far—for example, in an attempt to escape her new masters—Finn dies. If Edie refuses to help the mercenaries, they’ll both be killed.
Edie is a cypherteck, and her job for the Crib was to help seed newly discovered planets in order to make them viable for human occupation. After the planet is occupied, the Crib charge its inhabitants to keep the seeds viable. The mercenaries want her to extract keystones from existing planet seeds, which are then sold to Fringe planets so they can be free of the Crib’s control.
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Affection: a memoir of love, sex and intimacy by Krissy Kneen
Sometimes you find a book impossible to put down, not because of what it says about the world, but because of what it knows about you. Affection is that kind of book.
In Affection, Krissy Kneen intersperses past and present in brief but intense vignettes that readers of her blog, Furious Vaginas, may recognise. And yet the story flows—and does so lyrically, beautifully and at times enigmatically.
It begins with a playful tease—Kneen is bound, at her own request, in the middle of an otherwise perfectly domestic Sunday morning. ‘And that was just the sex part,’ she breaks off cheekily.
Kneen describes her childhood in Blacktown (NSW) and her teen years in Gladstone (Qld) almost always framed against the discovery of sexual pleasure—lying on the carpet, in a crawl space under the house, under her grandfather’s desk, on the beach—and her memories burst with texture.
When she leaves home to study in Brisbane, Kneen’s sexual exploration becomes more uninhibited and more complicated.
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On The Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
This is a book to be sped through, then read again and savoured and, when it’s tattered and the pages are curling, passed on to your kids.
This is the Melina Marchetta I thought I wouldn’t finish.
The story begins with a shocking scene of children trapped in a car wreck on the Jellicoe Road. But this isn’t the main story.
Twenty-two years later, Taylor Markham is elected to lead Jellicoe School in the annual territory wars against the Townies from the local public school, and the Cadets, who camp out in town for the summer holidays.
But Taylor has other things to worry about. Her dreams are filled by a boy in a tree who whispers in her ear. Hannah, the closest person she has to a mother, has mysteriously disappeared, and Taylor’s teetering on the brink of a breakdown—or worse.
What happened to the kids in the car accident and the boy on the bike who came along to save them? And what do they have to do with Taylor?
I was so confused, I killed a fairy before I even reached page 50.
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The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta
I’ve made up my mind. This is my favourite Melina Marchetta book. If my house caught fire, I’d probably grab it on the way out.
We have a signed copy of The Piper’s Son to give away. We’ll post details of the giveaway this week, so watch this space!
Last year I declared Saving Francesca as my favourite young adult book, but that’s not totally accurate. It’s my favourite teen novel. The Piper’s Son is a little more grown-up, and in this book, Melina Marchetta moves more firmly into young adult territory.
I was crying before I got to the end of chapter one, right through to the end, and I loved every minute of it.
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