Monthly Archives: August 2014

All Kinds of Tied Down

Book Review of All Kinds of Tied Down, by Mary Calmes

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All Kinds of Tied Down

I borrowed an ecopy of All Kinds of Tied Down, by Mary Calmes. (Thanks, L.)

Description from Goodreads:
Deputy US Marshal Miro Jones has a reputation for being calm and collected under fire. These traits serve him well with his hotshot partner, Ian Doyle, the kind of guy who can start a fight in an empty room. In the past three years of their life-and-death job, they’ve gone from strangers to professional coworkers to devoted teammates and best friends. Miro’s cultivated blind faith in the man who has his back… faith and something more. 

As a marshal and a soldier, Ian’s expected to lead. But the power and control that brings Ian success and fulfillment in the field isn’t working anywhere else. Ian’s always resisted all kinds of tied down, but having no home—and no one to come home to—is slowly eating him up inside. Over time, Ian has grudgingly accepted that going anywhere without his partner simply doesn’t work. Now Miro just has to convince him that getting tangled up in heartstrings isn’t being tied down at all.

Review:
Ok, so I’m a fairly new Calmes convert. I’ve had mixed results with what I’ve read so far. I seem to really like or dislike a book by her. There is very little middle ground. And while those I dislike I can tell you exactly what it was that put me off, those I like just kind of fill me with a vague unnamed warmth that I can’t very clearly communicate. 

I suppose this could be called a purely emotional response, because, lawdy, it can’t be the complexity of the plots or the depth of the characters. Neither are extensive, the plot is basically a series of events allowing the characters time to work their feelings out (ok, so there basically isn’t one) and the characters could be called well fleshed out only if they were, in fact, 12 year olds. As true adult males, they lack a lot. Nor can it be the realism. Seriously, bones knit in weeks instead of month and apparently every other law enforcement agent in American is openly gay and the remaining half are all open and accepting of sexual diversity. It can’t even be the consistency, since the scene that ostensibly gives the book its most obvious title actually breaks the pattern set throughout the book, going against character for at least one of the men.

Regardless, this book is no exception to my obvious preference patter and it falls on the warm fuzzy, I liked if for unknown reasons, side of the equation. I can objectively tell you it was full of cliché characters. The über alpha that secretly just wants to submit, the fashion conscious gay man and fashion oblivious ‘straight’ guy, yep I’ve seen them all before. What’s more, it’s full of cliché Calmes characters. The names change from book to book, but the characters remain largely the same. The thing is that they apparently work for me. 

I keep thinking, ‘this should be a crap book. It’s completely formulaic. In fact, even having only read a fraction of Mary Calmes vast collection, I’ve still read what could easily be mistaken for this book already.’ I keep thinking that, but then I think, ‘yeah, but can get another one, please.’ 

So, I duck my head in shame, but I admit it out loud; this book is simplistic, cliché, predictable and my god the sap at the end is enough to suffocate me (honestly, this I could do without) but I liked it. I just can’t help it. Whatever alchemic hormone mix is secreted into my bloodstream as a result of reading this particular combination of man on man action is a win, even when I don’t want it to be.

Muscling Through

Book Review of Muscling Through, by J. L. Merrow

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Muscling ThroughI bought a copy of J. L. Merrow‘s Muscling Through.

Description from Goodreads:
The bigger they come, the harder they fall… in love.

Cambridge art professor Larry Morton takes one, alcohol-glazed look at the huge, tattooed man looming in a dark alley, and assumes he’s done for. Moments later he finds himself disarmed—literally and figuratively. And, the next morning, he can’t rest until he offers an apology to the man who turned out to be more gentle than giant. 

Larry’s intrigued to find there’s more to Al Fletcher than meets the eye; he possesses a natural artistic talent that shines through untutored technique. Unfortunately, no one else seems to see the sensitive soul beneath Al’s imposing, scarred, undeniably sexy exterior. Least of all Larry’s class-conscious family, who would like nothing better than to split up this mismatched pair. 

Is it physical? Oh, yes, it’s deliciously physical, and so much more—which makes Larry’s next task so daunting. Not just convincing his colleagues, friends and family that their relationship is more than skin deep. It’s convincing Al. 

Contains comic misunderstandings, misuse of art materials, and unexpected poignancy.

Review:
I generally tend toward long rambling, somewhat rant-like reviews. But I can’t do that for Muscling Through. I just don’t think I can do it justice. I loved it. I loved Alan. I did. Everyone does. But I loved Larry too. I don’t think Larry gets enough credit for being open enough to look past Alan’s rough exterior to see the yummy, gooey-soft centre. And as a couple they are a marvellous example of opposites attracting and working oh so well together. 

But beyond having two marvellous main characters, the book is chocked full of amazingly transparent ‘Awww’ moments. You see, Alan’s simplicity (and lets face it he’s as dumb as a box of rocks) grants him the right to utterances that would, in the mouths of more intellectually capable individuals, ring false and possibly even Machiavellian. But there is no guile in Alan. You feel it. You trust it and all those wretched sappy-sweet gag reflexes relax as unneeded. 

But there is also A LOT of humour. Insults and ill intentions bounce off Alan like Teflon. He’s untouchable in his savant-like serenity. He often lets things go as unimportant, but just as often he lets them go as not understood or misunderstood. More than once I had to set the Kindle down until my laughing fit passed. There are just too many examples of stupid-happy resulting in priceless humour. Only made even better by the fact that he’s usually completely oblivious to it. 

The writing is almost painfully straightforward, as it should be when narrated by someone as literal and uncomplicated as Alan. And it’s short, but the right length for its story. So, while I want, want, want more, I admit the author knew better than to give it to us. 

This is one of those books I’ll mourn the end of. I wish I was the sort who read books more than once. This would be a re-read. Highly recommened.

Once Broken

Book Review of Once Broken (Dove Creek Chronicles, #1), by H. Anne Henry

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Once Broken

I picked up a copy of H. Anne Henry‘s Once Broke from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
Demon hunter Remington ‘Remi’ Hart likes to think she’s seen a thing or two. That’s what happens when you live in a town like Dove Creek, where the supernatural world abounds and the townsfolk are willfully ignorant of it. But when the Triple Six show up — flesh and blood human beings with powerful, superhuman abilities — Remi and the rest of her allies, the Amasai, are thrown for a loop. Old and new enemies alike come at them head on, forcing the Amasai to recognize that they are outnumbered and outgunned. Before Dove Creek is overrun, they have to find a way to solve the mystery of the new dark power and quell its source. 

During all of this, Remi is still coming to grips with the death of her husband three years ago, dealing with her barely understood feelings for the werewolf who saved her life, and flirting with the smoking hot cowboy of the Amasai who is currently pursuing her. Remi will set her personal feelings aside, though, when the bodies start piling up and her own family is threatened. What started out as a quest for vengeance soon becomes a fight for survival.

Review:   **spoilerish**
A dud, this one never really went off for me. It has plenty of good reviews, so maybe it’s just me. But I couldn’t connect with any of the characters (and there were so darned many of them, most of whom played little role), didn’t find myself invested in the outcome of the mystery, and floated unconcerned through the fight and sex scenes. (The fight scenes resolve themselves effortlessly, especially the last one, and the sex scenes are so cluttered with detail I never noticed the main event.) Nothing made much of an impression on me except for a few annoyances.

First off, the book is written in the first person. I loathe first person narratives. Now, this would have just been a matter of personal preference if I left this comment at ‘I dislike the style the author chose.’ But the primary problem here is that the main character doesn’t have enough of a personality to pull off the first person POV.

She’s emotionally distant, has no notable quirks, isn’t funny, or sarcastic, or unusually acerbic, etc. There is nothing to make her narrative pop. As a result, it all just comes across as exceedingly flat. And when we’re talking demon battles, sex with hotties, sleazy vampires, slimy witches, and broody werewolves the one word I should not be able to use is flat. But it really, really is. 

On top of that, no one has any emotional depth. Seriously, at one point a character see’s his father kill himself while possessed by a demon (having just learned that all the paranormals exist) and he doesn’t even say, “oh,” let alone OMG, Holly Shit, butt fucker, shut the hell up and get outta damn town—no freakout for him. It’s literally  just a perfectly calm, “thanks for saving my bacon.” 

Now, to be fair, I think the author tried to give the characters some je ne sais quoi when she chose to make them all so obviously Texan. And I don’t usually mind if a character has a regional accent. It does give a book character. However, and this is a big however, it can’t be too overdone or it just becomes a distractions. Here, in this book, almost everyone has a Texan accent. I couldn’t stop tripping over the apostrophies, baby girls, darlin’s, lil’ ladies, etc. The whole book was chocked full of passages like this:

“Don’tchya dare move, girly.” The gruff voice of the farmer came from behind me. “I done called the sheriff. Saw ye parkin’ in m’ bar ditch . . . Sick ‘n’ damn tired of you kids makin’ mischief ‘round here.”

Granted, not all of it is quite that uninterpretable (What’s a bar ditch, anyhow?), but it’s still too much. Far, far, far too much. If everyone’s to have the speech pattern, just tell me they do, write normally and let me imagine it. 

This was only exacerbated by the fact that a couple characters seemed incapable of using normal contractions (one was very old and one an immigrant, so maybe this was purposeful). They felt very stiff and names were used at the beginning of dialogue too often to feel natural. 

All of that was then cluttered further with a myriad of unnecessary details. Every outfit (down to the colour of nail polish sometimes), every shot in a game of pool, meals, what was passed when driving down the road (again), etc was listed ad infinitum. It was endless. 

Last there was the romance. Remi literally went from mourning her husband one moment to kissing a man in the next, only to then take up with another man a few pages later. I don’t mind bed hopping, but it all went from 0-60 in seconds.

Does anyone else talk to their kindle? I literally looked at my little rectangular BFF and said, “Where did that come from?” Out of nowhere, that’s where and it ended just as fast, with just as little warning. No time and nothing to make me care one-way or the other about the relationship, which made the fact that for a little while the book just degenerated into a series of sex scenes all that much more annoying. 

Now, the book isn’t meritless. The idea is an interesting one. There is a little spiritualism at the end that I image some readers will really connect with. It was fairly well edited and the mechanical aspect of the writing is pretty good. I just think the whole thing needed to be a little more fleshed out so that it didn’t read like a laundry list.