Genre: Romance

Setting: London in the 1970s

POV: 1st Person

Sensuality: Warm

Violence: No

Format: Digital

My Grade: B+

In my last post, I mentioned my delight at discovering Jilly Cooper’s old romances are now available digitally. She wrote six stand alone romance novels in the Seventies, as well as a book of romantic short stories. I inhaled them when I first read them back in the early Nineties, even though they were already dated by that time, and contain more than a few tropes which would cause outrage were they to appear in a new release. I bought digital copies of Octavia and Prudence to see if they lived up to my fond memories, and read Octavia in one sitting yesterday evening. It is still that good.

Octavia is spoilt, rich and beautiful. After the Second World War, Octavia’s grandfather and an army friend formed an electrical company. The business was a success, and  Octavia and her brother, Xander, live a life of luxury on the proceeds. Apart from the odd modelling job, Octavia has never worked. She drifts through life, shopping, partying, and stealing other women’s men.

At the beginning of the story, Octavia is in a nightclub with her latest catch. She’s already bored with him, and looking around for fresh prey. She’s stunned when an old classmate arrives with her new fiancé, the handsome poet, Jeremy. Gussie, in contrast, is exactly as she was in school: plain, overweight, and badly dressed. Octavia can’t believe Jeremy is truly in love with Gussie, and decides he’s only after Gussie’s fortune. She figures she’d be doing Gussie a favour by seducing Jeremy.

Gussie is delighted to reconnect with Octavia, and soon invites her to join them on a boating holiday. The fourth member of the group is a friend of Jeremy’s, an entrepreneur called Gareth. Octavia immediately dismisses him as being beneath her notice. He’s coarse, speaks with a strong Welsh accent, and comes from a long line of miners. Gareth also takes an instant dislike to Octavia. He sees through her scheme to seduce Jeremy, and is determined to thwart her plans. Gareth has his reasons for hating Octavia, but we don’t discover them until the last third of the book.

In the first part of the story, Octavia is a total bitch. She’s amusing, but utterly selfish. She doesn’t care who she hurts as long as she gets her way. In the second half of the book, Octavia’s life takes an unexpected turn. She finds herself penniless, friendless, and in desperate need of a job. At twenty-six, she’s considered too old to model, and she’s not qualified to do much else. She’s fired from a succession of jobs before she learns to be a semi-reliable employee. Given her behaviour in the first part of the story, it’s entertaining to watch her descent. Jilly Cooper loves to make her heroines suffer before giving them their HEA, and she certainly puts Octavia through the wringer.

Gareth is a good match for Octavia. He sees through her artifice and exposes her vulnerabilities. While he’s not an alpha hero in the Harlequin Presents sense, he definitely errs on the side of machoism. Plus this book was written in the Seventies, so there are a few incidents which would be considered unacceptable in a newer romance. In one scene, for example, Gareth spanks Octavia after she humiliates Gussie. There are also a few racist comments, gay jokes, and casual references to drink-driving.

Despite the book being very much of its time, I enjoyed re-reading it. Octavia warmed on me as the story progressed, and it’s filled with Jilly Cooper’s trademark humour. There are a couple of interesting secondary storylines, including one about Octavia’s gay brother who is unhappily married to his boss’s daughter. I plan to re-read all six books.

Ah, the joys of digital reading. When I’m not feeling my blood pressure rise due to geographical restrictions, ridiculous prices and incompatible formats, there is a lot to be said in favour of ebooks.

On Christmas Day, I couldn’t decide what to read. None of the books in my mountainous print TBR pile appealed to me, nor did any in my rapidly increasing digital TBR. I was in the mood for something different. I remembered GrowlyCub mentioning Linnea Sinclair’s Science Fiction Romances recently and I thought I might try one. A few minutes later, the first two books in Linnea Sinclair’s Dock Five Universe series were on my BeBook.

I’m focusing on the first two books in the series in this post. Both are in the 1st Person told from the point of view of the heroine.

The first book is called Gabriel’s Ghost.

Blurb: After a decade of cruising interstellar patrol ships, former Captain Chasidah Bergren, onetime Pride of the Sixth Fleet, finds herself court-martialed for a crime she didn’t commit—and shipped off to a remote prison planet from which no one ever escapes. But when she kills a brutal guard in an act of self-defense, someone even more dangerous emerges from the shadows.

Gabriel Sullivan—alpha mercenary, smuggler, and rogue—is supposed to be dead. Yet now this seductive ghost from Chaz’s past is offering her a ticket to freedom—for a price. Someone in the Empire is secretly breeding jukors: vicious and uncontrollable killing machines that have long been outlawed. Gabriel needs Chaz to help him stop the practice before it decimates imperial space. For Chaz, it’s a matter of survival. For Sully it means facing the truth about who—and what—he really is. The mission means putting their lives on the line—but the tensions that heat up between them may be the riskiest part of all.

My Thoughts: I don’t read much Science Fiction. In fact, I can list the number of SciFi books I’d read before starting this series on the fingers of one hand and still have a couple to spare. I can’t say how fans of traditional SciFi would react to this series, but I found Gabriel’s Ghost to be a fun, action-packed read with memorable characters. The world Sinclair creates is accessible and I didn’t find myself getting confused between the various alien races and futuristic gadgets. I liked Chaz a lot, but I had a few reservations about Sully. Despite not feeling fully engaged with Sully, I enjoyed this book and I read it in one sitting. B

Shades of Dark is the sequel to Gabriel’s Ghost. It continues Chaz and Sully’s story.

Blurb: Before her court-martial, Captain Chasidah “Chaz” Bergren was the pride of the Sixth Fleet. Now she’s a fugitive from the “justice” of a corrupt Empire. Along with her lover, the former monk, mercenary, and telepath Gabriel Ross Sullivan, Chaz hoped to leave the past light-years behind—until the news of her brother Thad’s arrest and upcoming execution for treason. It’s a ploy by Sully’s cousin Hayden Burke to force them out of hiding and it works.

With a killer targeting human females and a renegade gen lab breeding jukor war machines, Chaz and Sully already had their hands full of treachery, betrayal—not to mention each other. Throw in Chaz’s Imperial ex-husband, Admiral Philip Guthrie, and a Kyi-Ragkiril mentor out to seduce Sully and not just loyalties but lives are at stake. For when Sully makes a fateful choice changing their relationship forever, Chaz must also choose—between what duty demands and what her heart tells her she must do.

My Thoughts: This is a strong sequel to Gabriel’s Ghost. The war heats up and new characters are introduced. Unfortunately, there is an incident towards the end of the book which upset me and turned my already ambivalent feelings towards Sully into outright dislike. Despite this, the storyline of this book is better than its predecessor and I loved getting to know Philip better. Even if the romance was less successful for me than the plot, I finished Shades of Dark in one evening and immediately purchased the rest of Linnea Sinclair’s backlist. B

Have you read any of Linnea Sinclair’s books? Can you recommend any other Science Fiction Romance authors/books?

Genre: Mystery

Setting: South Dakota

Series: Book One of the Julie Collins Mysteries

POV: 1st Person (Julie narrates)

Sensuality: Subtle

Violence: Yes, but it mostly occurs off page

Format: Digital

My Grade: B

I’ve blogged recently about Lorelei James’ Rough Rider series of contemporary erotic romances. I was intrigued when I discovered that she also writes mysteries under the name Lori Armstrong. As I like her writing voice and I enjoy crime fiction, I wanted to give them a shot.

Lori Armstrong writes two contemporary mystery series set in South Dakota. Blood Ties is the first book in the Julie Collins series, and (I think) Lori/Lorelei’s first published book. It’s a snappy, character-driven mystery. It’s too gritty to be termed a cozy, but not gruesome enough to be a typical hard-boiled mystery. Lori describes her style as medium-boiled. In stark contrast to her erotic romances, there are no sex scenes in this book, although it is heavily implied at times.

Julie Collins drinks too much, smokes like a chimney, and has very bad taste in men. She’s bored in her job as secretary at the Bear Butte County Sheriff’s Office. She originally took the job to give her the opportunity to investigate the circumstances surrounding her Lakota half-brother’s murder. Three years later, neither the police nor Julie have any leads, and Julie is the only person to still give a damn.

To earn a little extra cash, Julie moonlights for her best friend’s private investigation business. Kevin Wells is a successful P.I. He and Julie have been friends since their school days. While they’ve never been romantically involved, neither one approves of the other’s taste in partners. Kevin dates wannabe homemakers, whilst Julie sleeps with whatever bad boy currently strikes her fancy.

Kevin’s latest case involves a missing sixteen-year-old girl whose boyfriend hires him to find her. When the girl is found in the creek with her throat slit, Kevin asks Julie to help out with the investigation. Kevin and Julie went to school with both the dead girl’s parents and the boyfriend’s father. All clues initially point to the girl’s father as the culprit, but as the body count starts to rise, so, too, do the number of murder suspects.

Blood Ties has a great cast of characters. I liked Julie a lot. I can imagine some readers wouldn’t warm to her as she has some less than endearing qualities, but she worked for me. She has a couple of potential TSTL moments. However, they fit her personality. She’s the type of person who acts/speaks first, and thinks later. This leads to her getting her ass kicked on a couple of occasions. Kevin is the more level-headed of the two. He’s cool, calm and collected. He’s a good investigator but he lacks Julie’s gut instinct when it comes to reading people.

The book also has a host of secondary characters, some of whom I hope to see in future books in the series. Chief among them is Tony Martinez, the leader of the local biker gang and owner of the bar in which Julie gets her ass kicked. Tony is a genuine badass who oozes criminal connections and sex appeal in equal measure.

The mystery is interesting. Until the last fifty pages or so, the murderer was only one on a list of possible suspects. I also approved of where the book left off for Julie in terms of the development of her story arc in future books. I had a few quibbles with the pacing of the story, and I also think the author’s use of dialogue improves in her later books. Overall, though, I enjoyed this book. I bought the rest of the series as soon as I’d finished, and I intend to start the second one, Hallowed Ground, this evening. That says it all, really.

♦ My poor blog has been sorely neglected of late. I’m still working on my edits for the Golden Heart. Frankly, I don’t think it’ll be as polished as I would like it to be by the end of the month, but then I am a perfectionist. I’ll give it my best shot. I’m extremely fortunate to have an excellent critique partner and beta readers. They’ve helped me enormously.

♦ My reading is very slow at the moment, but I did read a couple of good books. Here are a two mini reviews.

The Black Echo (1992) by Michael Connelly

Blurb: For LAPD homicide cop Harry Bosch — hero, maverick, nighthawk — the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland dam is more than another anonymous statistic.  This one is personal.

The dead man, Billy Meadows, was a fellow Vietnam “tunnel rat” who fought side by side with him in a nightmare underground war that brought them to the depths of hell.  Now, Bosch is about to relive the horrors of Nam.  From a dangerous maze of blind alleys to a daring criminal heist beneath the city to the tortuous link that must be uncovered, his survival instincts will once again be tested to their limit.

Joining with an enigmatic female FBI agent, pitted against enemies within his own department, Bosch must make the agonizing choice between justice and vengeance, as he tracks down a killer whose true face will shock him.

My Thoughts: The Black Echo is the first book in Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series and (I think) his first novel. It was first released in 1992. I was a little nervous starting it as I feared it might be dated. Apart from the obvious (e.g.: old-fashioned cell phones), the story still has a freshness and immediacy that engaged my interest and kept me turning the pages. The writing style isn’t as smooth as in Connelly’s later books, but it’s still a good story well told. I bought The Black Echo as part of an ebook bundle of the first three Harry Bosch books. I’m pleased to have more of his stories to look forward to. B

The Iron Duke (2010) by Meljean Brook

Blurb: After the Iron Duke freed England from Horde control, he instantly became a national hero. Now Rhys Trahaearn has built a merchant empire on the power — and fear — of his name. And when a dead body is dropped from an airship onto his doorstep, bringing Detective Inspector Mina Wentworth into his dangerous world, he intends to make her his next possession.

Mina can’t afford his interest, however. Horde blood runs through her veins, and despite the nanotech enhancing her body, she barely scratches out a living in London society. Becoming Rhys’s lover would destroy both her career and her family, yet the investigation prevents her from avoiding him…and the Iron Duke’s ruthless pursuit makes him difficult to resist.

But when Mina uncovers the victim’s identity, she stumbles upon a conspiracy that threatens the lives of everyone in England. To save them, Mina and Rhys must race across zombie-infested wastelands and treacherous oceans — and Mina discovers the danger is not only to her countrymen as she finds herself tempted to give up everything to the Iron Duke.

My Thoughts: The Iron Duke is the first full-length book in Meljean Brook’s new Steampunk series. The world-building is complex yet accessible, and the story and characters are refreshingly original. I think this series will appeal to a broader range of readers than her Guardians. The story is set in a post-colonial society with highly developed steam-based technology. For people who are burned out on urban fantasy and paranormal romance, this is sort of like historical romance with a twist. I’ve always thought Meljean’s writing voice lends itself particularly well to stories with a historical setting. While I’ve enjoyed her contemporary-set novels, my favourite of her books and novellas are those set at least partly in the past. I hope lots of readers buy The Iron Duke and enjoy it because I’d love to see many more stories in this new series. A-

Have you read either of these books? If so, what did you think of them?

Genre: Historical Romance

Setting: 1804 Salzburg

POV: 3rd Person

Sensuality: Warm

Violence: N/A

Format: Digital (so far, there is no print edition available)

Source: A digital ARC courtesy of Carina Press via NetGalley

My Grade: B+

Song of Seduction by Carrie Lofty is an unusual and beautifully written historical romance.

Arie De Voss is a celebrated Dutch musician who won international acclaim for his symphony, Love and Freedom. Since then, Arie has composed many pieces of music but struggles to complete his long-awaited second symphony. Arie is moody and irritable and his lies and deceit weigh heavily upon him. For Arie is a fake. His famous symphony was actually composed by his late mentor, and Arie claimed it as his own.

Mathilda Heidel is a widow who resides in Salzburg with her newly married friend and her husband. Due to her shady past, Mathilda craves respectability. Consequently, she hides her talent for playing the violin as it is unseemly for a woman to play an instrument too well. When she meets her idol, Arie De Voss, at a party, her natural reticence deserts her and she finds herself asking him to give her violin lessons.

Arie is astounded at Mathilda’s natural talent and encourages her to perform in public. In return, she becomes his muse, and later his lover. Inspired by Mathilda, Arie starts composing again. However, their happiness is threatened by his secret. Arie fears he will lose everything if it should ever come to light, and Mathilda can’t bear the thought of living a lie.

Song of Seduction is a beautiful book. Arie and Mathilda fall in love through their mutual love of music. Although I know very little about classical music, the author does a good job of describing the music without bogging the story down with unnecessary detail. I also liked the glimpses of real life composers, such as Hadyn.

Arie and Mathilda’s story is compelling. I enjoyed the unusual setting and the original premise of this book, and I hope Carrie Lofty intends to write more historical romances set in Salzburg.

Genre: Historical Romance

Setting: England 1841

POV: 3rd Person

Sensuality: Warm

Violence: Mild

Format: Digital

Source: A digital ARC courtesy of Harlequin via NetGalley

My Grade: B

Trial by Desire is Courtney Milan’s second full-length novel. Although I loved her Christmas novella, I still haven’t read Proof by Seduction. I definitely need to remedy that.

Kate and Ned Carhart have a marriage of convenience – at least they do as far as he is concerned. Despite the circumstances of their wedding, Kate still hopes to make theirs a love match. Consequently, she is shocked when Ned announces his intention to travel to China to oversee the Carhart business interests in the East India Company.

Three years later, Kate is not impressed when her errant husband makes a sudden reappearance at a less than opportune moment. She has assisted her best friend, Laura, in escaping her abusive husband. Kate helps Laura and her baby find a safe place to stay. Unfortunately for Laura, the law is strongly on the side of the husband in cases of spousal abuse, and she feels her only option is to flee with her child.

To Kate’s alarm, Laura’s husband, Alex, shows up at her home on the same day that Ned returns from his travels. Alex wastes no time in threatening Kate. He suspects she helped Laura run away and accuses her of kidnapping his wife and son. Ned is Alex’s childhood friend and he can’t imagine Alex would have hurt Laura. However, he slowly comes to realise that his friend is not the man he thought him to be.

In Trial by Desire, Kate and Ned must learn to love and trust one another against a background of intrigue. It’s a fast-paced tale beautifully told. I loved the legal details as I know next to nothing about how the legal system worked in 19th Century England.

Ned is an unusual hero. A while ago, I blogged about the dearth of romance heroes and heroines who suffer from depression. Ned is one, and I thought his battle with his inner demons was a strong point in the story. Kate is an equally strong character – or at least she has become one over the three years of her husband’s absence.

Courtney Milan has taken a conventional setting and given it an unusual twist. For fans of historical romance which is a little bit different, Trial by Desire is a good read.

Genre: Historical Mystery

Setting: 19th Century India

POV: 3rd Person

Sensuality: Subtle

Violence: Yes

Format: Digital

Source: A digital ARC courtesy of Harlequin via NetGalley

My Grade: B-

Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn is the fourth book in the Lady Julia and Nicholas Brisbane Victorian mystery series.

Newlyweds Lady Julia and Nicholas Brisbane have spent the past few months on their honeymoon, travelling the world. When Julia’s sister, Portia, and her brother, Plum, arrive in Egypt and demand that Julia accompany them to India. Portia’s former lover, Jane, is now widowed and expecting a baby. If the child is a boy, he will inherit the Peacocks, the tea plantation which belongs to Jane’s late husband’s family. Portia suspects that Freddie Cavendish’s death was not natural and fears for Jane’s safety.

Julia agree to accompany them to Darjeeling, but Brisbane abandons the party in Calcutta, ostensibly to go hunting with the Viceroy. Julia is disgusted by her husband’s desertion and they quarrel. When they arrive at the Peacocks, it is clear that all is not well. The other occupants of the house are Freddie’s aunt, Miss Camellia Cavendish, and his cousin, Harry Cavendish. In addition, the Peacocks has an assortment of odd neighbours, all of whom could have had a motive to murder Freddie.

Although the story in Dark Road to Darjeeling relies rather heavily on coincidence, I enjoyed catching up with Julia and Brisbane. Brisabane is struggling to reconcile his dangerous job with being a husband, and is afraid to involve Julia in his investigations now that she is a wife. Julia, of course, is determined to assist him in the same way that she did prior to their marriage. By the end of the book, they’ve reached a reluctant truce and I’m curious to see how their marriage/partnership develops in the next book in the series.

There are a few twists and turns in this book which I didn’t like, particularly regarding the fate of one of the characters. However, I realise that this opens up new possibilities for a particular person in future stories, so I am prepared to roll with it despite my upset. An interesting development in the book sheds more light on Brisbane’s past. This, again, will be something to watch in further books in the series.

While Dark Road to Darjeeling isn’t my favourite Lady Julia and Nicholas Brisbane book, it sets the scene nicely for future stories and it’s abound to appeal to fans of the series.

Genre: Historical Romance

Setting: 19th Century England

POV: 3rd Person

Sensuality: Hot

Violence: Mild

Format: Digital

Source: A digital ARC courtesy of Harlequin via NetGalley

My Grade: B-

Breathless is the third book in Anne Stuart’s House of Rohan trilogy.

Lucien de Malheur – known as the Scorpion – blames the Rohan family for his half-sister’s death. He is determined to take his revenge on them and targets their sister, Caroline Rohan, as his victim. He arranges for Caroline to be seduced and abandoned, thus ruining her in the eyes of society. To his consternation, Caroline is determined to make the best of her circumstances and relishes in the freedom of a life free from the constraints of societal rules.

Deciding to take Caroline’s destruction into his own hands, Lucien arranges for her to have a carriage accident from which he “rescues” her. They strike up a friendship and Lucien eventually kidnaps her, intending to force Caroline to marry him. He inadvertently kidnaps her friend, Jane Pagett, as well as Caroline, and Jane eventually starts a romance with Lucien’s associate, Jacob Donnelly, a master thief.

While I preferred Breathless to Reckless, I have some of the same criticisms of this book as I had of its predecessor. All the books in the Rohan trilogy feature Dark Heroes and it became a bit samey. I thought Lucien was more convincingly evil than the heroes in Ruthless and Reckless, but this also made his last-minute declaration of love harder to swallow.

I didn’t understand Caroline’s attraction to Lucien. He arranged for her to be ruined, plotted against her family, and put her life in danger. By the end of the book, I felt she deserved him, if only because she was determined to have him and didn’t seem to care as much as she should have over his misdeeds.

Despite my quibbles, Breathless is a fast-paced read which kept me turning the pages until the very end. The wonderful secondary romance between Jane and Jacob the Jewel Thief made this book worth reading.

Genre: Contemporary Erotic Romance

Length: Novella

POV: 3rd Person

Sensuality: Burning

Violence: N/A

Format: Digital (available from Decadent Publishing)

My Grade: B

For the Love of Mollie is the first story I’ve read by K.T. Grant, the writing pseudonym of blogger extraordinaire and newly-published author, Katiebabs.

In an effort to win the heart of J.C., her best friend and secret crush, Mollie embarks on a fitness regime to lose a few pounds and tone up. To her surprise, she attracts the attention of her new gym’s sexy owner, Conner Bean.

Conner thinks Mollie is gorgeous just the way she is. Although he’s extremely fit, he’s never been attracted to super skinny women and prefers them to have curves. In this respect, Mollie is his ideal woman. Now all Conner needs to do is to convince Mollie of this, and hopefully cure her of her crush on J.C.

Despite her reservations, Mollie and Conner embark on a passionate affair. In order for them to find true love, Mollie needs to shed her insecurities and realise she doesn’t need to be thin to be beautiful.

For the Love of Mollie is a cute story. I’m a sucker for romance heroines who don’t embody the physical “ideal” of beauty, yet who still manage to attract a hot guy. K.T. Grant’s next novella will feature J.C.’s story and I definitely plan to read it.

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Setting: Arizona

POV: 3rd Person

Sensuality: Warm

Violence: Some, but most of it occurs off page

Format: Digital

Source: A digital ARC courtesy of Harlequin via NetGalley

Why I Read It: I enjoyed White Heat and Body Heat

My Grade: B

Killer Heat by Brenda Novak is the final book in her Department 6 Hired Guns trilogy. The books are loosely connected but stand alone very well. It’s not necessary to read them in order.

Jonah Young works for a private security company named Department 6. When the bodies of seven women are discovered in Skull Valley, Arizona, the local sheriff hires Jonah to assist in the investigation. Unfortunately for Jonah, the investigation brings him into contact with a former girlfriend, Francesca Moretti.

Francesca Moretti is a private investigator looking into the disappearance of a client’s sister. April Bonner met a man on a dating website and never returned home. When a lead brings her to the home of the man April met the night she went missing, Francesca panics and calls the police. To her horror, they show up with Jonah in tow – the man who betrayed her and broke her heart ten years before.

The police refuse to take Francesca’s suspicions seriously, leaving her vulnerable to the man she suspects is responsible for the murders. The only person who thinks her theory is worth looking into is Jonah. With the police refusing to offer her protection, Francesca is forced to rely on him. As the body count rises, they need to confront their past and see if they can carve out a future together.

Killer Heat is a very good book. The pacing is superb, the plot is compelling, and the characters are people I grew to care about. My reservations about the book lie solely with the romance element. I’ve been deliberately vague about Jonah’s betrayal of Francesca so as to avoid spoilers, but it is not something I could forgive someone for. Francesca does eventually forgive him, but I was never convinced by Jonah’s remorse. I had the impression that much of it lay in anger and frustration that Francesca was still hurt by what he did ten years previously.

Despite this quibble, Killer Heat is a fast-paced read and one which is bound to appeal to a lot of readers. I enjoyed all the books in the Hired Guns series and I plan to read more by Brenda Novak.