An exciting, fast-paced and very, very sexy steampunk romance series.

I am now hooked on a new series, the Clockwork Agents by Kate Cross, and I’m cheating a bit and doing a two-in-one review, largely because what I liked in both books was the same. (I blame Mirna of Rendezvous books for another excellent recommendation.)

This steampunk series is set in Victorian England and is filled with interesting inventions, gadgets and robotics—Cross does a good job of integrating corsets, guns and gadgets. I especially liked the world building and the combination of steampunk and spy vs spy plot. I wouldn’t say it’s entirely historically accurate—they say fuck and shite!—but as this is a steampunk novel, I expected the authors to take some liberties.

Heart of Brass features Lady Arden Grey, whose husband Luke disappears on a mission for the Wardens of the Realm, a covert organisation created to protect the British Empire. Seven years later, an assassin is sent to kill her in retribution for her killing of a Company agent (their rival spy organisation) and she recognizes him as her husband, who has no memory of who she is or any of his past. Arden is a strong, very resourceful heroine, who never lost faith in her husband, Luke, who starts off being a bit of a prick before he gets his memory back.

There’s also a side plot with Arden helping out Scotland Yard in investigations using her special gadgets—she’s an inventor—and solving a mystery as to who is murdering young girls. I don’t think this side plot was necessary, though, and in some ways it detracted from the main story of Arden and Luke figuring out who brainwashed him and trying to help him get back his memories. That story was meaty enough to not need a distraction. There are also a few things I found a bit convenient—like how they have a master surgeon who has a magic elixir that can fix everything, but we don’t know what it is. I hope that’s explained when she gets her own novel.

Read the rest of this post.

You don’t have to be a fashionista to appreciate this book. Grace Coddington is a woman who loves life and what’s she’s made of it, and that comes through very clearly on the pages.

I first started reading Vogue when I was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed ten-year-old in love with River Phoenix. (I have now dated myself.) My mother worked for a marketing distributor, and aside from being sent to Paris for work on occasion, she had to read Vogue, Elle and other fashion magazines on a regular basis to keep up with the trends and check out the ads. Naturally, I read them too, and while I am the most tomboy-dressing person I know and will spend my days in thongs (flip flops) if I can, I have a slight fashionista side, more related to knowing about stuff than actually wearing anything. I know my designers, the classics, and have a list of handbags I will someday own before I die, but I am not concerned enough to give up wearing my flip-flops everyday. (Kat can also tell you that my penchant for celebrity gossip possibly will indirectly contribute to my random fashion know-how.)

Grace Coddington first became (in)famous outside the fashion world in the movie The September Issue, a documentary on Vogue and its editor, Anna Wintour. Wintour, (in)famously known for the movie the The Devil Wears Prada, was portrayed as Coddington’s adversary throughout much of the movie. As the creative director of Vogue, Coddington is responsible for the fashion shoots and styling for many of the pages in the magazine. In the movie, she and Wintour butt heads as to what should go in to ‘The September Issue’, Vogue’s biggest and most important issue every year. In real life, they are dear friends, but in the movie, it really looked like they would kill each other. At least part of the reason this memoir came to be may be because of her popularity after The September Issue.

Coddington has been in the fashion industry for 50 years. Her memoir is full of insights into the industry, and into relationships and life as a whole. The book comes to life with her words, imagination, and the charming little drawings that she has made herself, peppered throughout the book.

Read the rest of this post.

A promising debut with some snappy dialogue and delicious innuendo. Unfortunately, the rest is a little nanna for me.

This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.

Vera is recovering from a long bout of illness and is preparing to take her first leap away from her comfort zone by going to Spain when she is invited to exhibit her work in a gallery owned by her late mentor’s brother, Leeson (‘He has a Wikipedia entry and everything.’). Leeson is attracted to Vera, and he knows she won’t just go to bed with anyone, but he refuses to commit to a relationship due to personal issues he’s been harbouring since he was a kid. Vera has trust and self-esteem issues of her own, but eventually, she agrees to a fling and revels in how Leeson makes her feel—normal.

Australian author Madeline Ash’s debut shows promise. The dialogue between Vera and Leeson is snappy, modern and full of delicious innuendo. Their flirtation is subtle, wonderful and thrilling. Unfortunately, there’s a disconnect between the dialogue and the narrative, which has a more old-fashioned tone to it.

To be frank, it was a little nanna for me. This feeling is exacerbated by having a 25-year old virgin heroine who is not only an artist but an artist with no business sense whatsoever. (She prices her work according to her intuition about the buyer’s love for the work.) This character is a little too 80s for me, and I’m not sure if peasant skirts are mentioned, but if not, then I certainly imagined her wearing them.

Read the rest of this post.

A sweet romance with a delightful banter between the main characters, let down somewhat by the inability to fully explore their emotional conflicts.

This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.

Still reeling from her father’s death, Cora is determined to find The One by Christmas. Her downstairs neighbour, Matt, is disbelieving and then amused at her determination to nab herself the right man. From staging car trouble, to internet dating, to chatting up men at juice bars, basketball games, meat markets and trams, Cora is undeterred in her quest. Too bad Matt isn’t in the running, though, because the more time she spends with Matt, the more Cora wonders if any man will ever measure up to him.

Cora and Matt’s initial meeting starts off a little awkwardly. Elise K. Ackers tries just a little too hard to simulate instant chemistry between the two characters, and the humour is somewhat forced. But as the story settles into its own, Cora and Matt fall into a charming rhythm:

When Matt opened his front door and feigned surprise to see her, it made her laugh. And she enjoyed his expression when he noticed the notepad, Ugg boots, old tracksuit pants and beanie.

‘They’re the worst pyjamas ever,’ he declared.

‘These are my relationship pyjamas.’

Read the rest of this post.

One of my favourite books from 2012. And no, I’m not killing any fairies.

Karou is a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague, leading a double life. She runs errands for Brimstone, a monster-like creature who collects teeth in his store in the Elsewhere, half in this world, half in the other. She has no idea how she came to be leading this life full of secrets, but that’s changes when her life is interrupted by someone attempting to close the doors to Elsewhere and she must find out what is going on, who she is, and what that means to her.

Every wonderful thing you’ve read in a review about this book is true, I promise. I fell in love with the lyrical prose, the well-crafted world building and the creative wordcraft and characters. Like every teenager, Karou feels like both in place and different to others at the same time. There are things about herself that she doesn’t understand, like she’s trying to grow into herself and figure out who she really is.

The difference from your typical teenage novel and this one is, of course, that Karou was raised by monsters and goes around the world collecting teeth for reasons she is never told. She seems to like her life, despite the secrecy, until one day the door to Elsewhere is attacked by … angels. One in particular, who can’t bring himself to kill her.

Read the rest of this post.

A wobbly beginning belies a unique and enjoyable romance set against a compelling Kenyan landscape.

The premise of Burning Embers immediately hooked me in, simply because it seemed contradictory and potentially problematic. I know—that’s a terrible reason for wanting to read a book, but it’s the morbid curiosity I have. A contemporary historical? Set in 1970s Kenya? With a book cover using the most clichéd imagery to signify ‘Africa’? From a publisher that acquires Twilight fan fiction? So much could go wrong, as much as it could go right (not that I intentionally look for stories to rant about, mind you!).

It just so happens one of my favourite romance tropes is the 1970s/80s exotic encounter, complete with foreign locale, young, innocent Anglo heroine, and dark, smouldering hero (usually Mediterranean/Hispanic/French/North African), accompanied by a secondary line-up of quirky and/or villainous ‘natives’.

Yes, the casual sexism and racism and other -isms in these stories are bothersome. Yet for all their unsavoury colonial attitudes, I find these stories irresistible in their naiveté and datedness. Go figure.

So how would a book by a contemporary author recalling old-fashioned times hold up with a reader with modern-day sensibilities? Surprisingly well, in fact. And better yet, this story did not smell at all Twilight-esque, even though the cover literally looks it…

Read the rest of this post.

This novella has all the elements I love in Hunter’s writing. I would have preferred a longer story…but I say that about all her books, too.

This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.

Determined to raise her 11-year old son Cal ‘somewhere peaceful and perfect and full of possibilities’, Billie Temple has given up her life in Sydney to run the local pub of a small country town. Unfortunately, when Billie and Cal arrive at their rental cottage, landlord Adam Kincaid makes it clear that he expects them to find alternative lodgings asap.

Wish was originally a self-published novella by Aussie author Kelly Hunter and was re-released in August 2012 as one of the launch titles for Penguin’s Destiny imprint. Romance novellas are always tricky things—the length tends to demand a very tightly controlled pace and intense character development with little room for a fully fledged backstory.

For the most part, Hunter rises to the occasion admirably. 

Read the rest of this post.

A fast-paced, well-written urban fantasy with a flawed but charming heroine. There isn’t much romance in this book, but if you like a lot of action and aren’t put off by a high body count—usually by decapitation—then it’s a promising start to a new series.

This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.

First, a heads-up: this isn’t a romance. There aren’t even really any romantic elements, although there may be hints of it for the overarching series. Escape Publishing markets itself as a romance imprint, so I’m assuming that Chaos Born is one of those genre-bending stories and that the romance will eventually pick up in subsequent books.

With that out of the way, I’ll admit that I haven’t read much urban fantasy of late, so I’m not the best judge of what’s merely derivative and what’s fresh. All I know is that I couldn’t put this book down.

Lora Blackgoat is a smuggler and mercenary for whom things haven’t been going all that well. Her last job—an exorcism—went bad, and it’s all she can do to get a decent job these days. Plus, she’s wanted by a loanshark and a thug who wants to avenge his brother’s death. When an old friend asks her to look into some suspicious deaths, Lora ends up in it up to her neck in trouble (not that she’s ever really out of it). Worse, her questions seem to be leading her to the Order of Guides, a kind of magic police force that regulates the use of magic, specifically the darker kind.

What interested me most about Chaos Born is how author Rebekah Turner constructs her protagonist—an unapologetically flawed heroine who gambles, drinks, fights and swears with the best of them. Lora isn’t your typical urban fantasy bombshell heroine.

Read the rest of this post.

A seamless read and as close to a keeper as I’ve got with romantic suspense in the last few years.

This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.

Allegra Greenwood’s career as a top-notch defence lawyer is threatened when she receives an anonymous letter threatening to reveal naked photos taken of her while she was at uni. She enlists the help of ex-SAS Commander Luke Nielson to recover the photographs and, when the threats escalate, to protect her life.

Romantic suspense isn’t my favourite subgenre, but Lee Christine’s launch title for Escape Publishing hits all the right buttons. The weakest plot point for me—Allegra’s moment of indiscretion in her early 20s—turns out to be fairly plausible, and the suspense plot relies more on the anticipation that bad things are about to happen than actual graphic violence.

Luke is a lovely hero. He has alpha traits—physically demanding job, best in his field, somewhat aggressive when insisting that Allegra is in more danger than she thinks—but he also respects Allegra’s decisions and trusts her to see reason, rather than bulldozing her into submission. If anything, Luke has a bit of a martyr complex, but he never gets too irritating or boring.

Read the rest of this post.

The plot is just complex enough to keep you guessing, and the characters reveal just enough to make the story interesting. The romance still requires suspension of belief, but I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.

This review is part of the AWW2012 Reading and Reviewing Challenge. Click here for a list of books I’ve read so far.

When Australian author Shannon Curtis Twitter crowd-sourced the plot for her free Christmas short story, we came up with some fairly over-the-top scenarios. Many of them were tongue-in-cheek, but Curtis rose to the challenge and not only included many of our suggestions but most importantly, she included a vomit scene.

Seriously, she is awesome.

Nick Marshall is SAS on medical leave after injuring his arm in Afghanistan. As his brother’s best man, he’s on an errand to pick up the wedding rings when ‘five Santas, with white beards and wigs, streamed into the [jewellery] store, brandishing guns’. Holly Maxwell is the lead negotiator when the call comes through that there’s a hostage situation.

But there’s something strange about the case. The negotiations aren’t following the normal pattern. It’s up to Nick and Holly to free the hostages and figure out what the Santas are really after.

Read the rest of this post.