Monthly Archives: May 2016

Sweet Agony

Book Review of Sweet Agony, by Charlotte Stein

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Sweet agonyI purchased a copy of Sweet Agony, by Charlotte Stein.

Description from Goodreads:
New job, new boss, and he’s cold, strict, but terribly attractive. Does Molly Parker stay or does she go? Because beneath Cyrian’s chilly front, there may be a heat that’ll burn her up.

Giving in was vicious bliss.

The live-in position is an opportunity for Molly to earn and escape a problematic family. There’s just one drawback. Her employer is the most eccentric, aloof and closed off man she’s ever encountered. His rules are bizarre and his needs even more so, and caring for his ramshackle Dickensian home is far more than she ever bargained for. Only their increasingly intense conversations stop her heading for the door. Cyrian Harcroft is a man of many mysteries and secrets, and the more she learns the greedier she is for each and every one. Especially when she discovers his greatest fear: any kind of physical contact. Now all she has to do is dig a little deeper, to unearth the passion she knows he can feel…

Review:
“Oh, that was just marvelous.” This is what I exclaimed, out loud, when I hit the last page of this book. I really, truly enjoyed it. Granted, the first half more so than the second, but still an over all win. The voice was just to die for.

I call the first half the comic half and the second the erotic, and I imagine if either one wasn’t the sort to thrill you they would feel they went on forever. But for me, I ended happy. The first chapter alone had me laughing so hard I bounced the hammock I was laying in, which of course just made me laugh harder. Eventually, I just put the Kindle down and let myself have a minor hysterical moment. Alternatively, the second half left me wishing for a few moments alone with my other half. Unfortunately, my 5-year-old declared, quite innocently, “You will never get rid of me,” so…

Stein’s humor, though a little on the juvenile side for a 34-year-old protagonist, managed to hit just the right note for me and I thought the sex was hot. There was a lot of it once it eventually hit the page. It was maybe even too thick, but it still scalded my knickers. All in all, though not a perfect book (I was especially squinked out by the use of sex as a rudimentary cure for past abuse and psychological illness), it left me wanting more and I’ll be looking for further Stein novels.

Apollo Rising

Book Review of Apollo Rising (The Apollo Saga #1), by Sage Arroway

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Apollo RisingI’ve had a copy of Apollo Rising, by Sage Arroway, since Dec 2012. I’m pretty sure I picked it up when it was free.

Description from Goodreads:
Allison Graves just wanted a simple life – a decent job, a nice apartment, and the occasional refuge from Apollo City, a harbor city on the eastern seaboard whose secrets are as dark as its impending winter storm. Allie’s weekend retreat to the Adirondacks should’ve have been relaxing. But when an accident on a treacherous mountain road results in caring for a strange man while snowed in at her grandmother’s cabin, her life takes an unexpected turn.

Miles from civilization, Allie and her new guest, Tyler, must learn to trust one another as she tries to unravel the mystery of his past, and he makes a startling confession—he’s a werewolf. Until now, Tyler had never met anyone who accepted him for what he was, and the undeniable attraction growing between them only makes dealing with his condition more challenging. Will his uncontrollable nature rip them apart before the storm passes, or will this new relationship lead them down a road that Allie has been resisting for years?

Apollo Rising is the first book in The Apollo Saga – a deeply suspenseful, contemporary story set in the fantasy world of Apollo City, filled with romance, real life and werewolves.

Review:
This took what could have been an interesting idea and wasted it with complete lack of development and rushed…well, everything else. The two characters meet and within a day or so are madly, irrevocably in love. And those romantic feelings come out of nowhere. There is no slow growth or development. They have sex and they are in love. Period. What’s worse, one character uses sex to magically cure another. (Though I have to admit it’s a bit of a twist on the trope to have a magic vagina instead of a magic penis.)

Annoyingly, the author seems to pretend a character not knowing something is the same thing as a character choosing not mentioning something. Because we’re in both characters’ heads and [spolier] if you are yourself a werewolf and you run into a naked man in the middle of a snowy forest on the night of a full moon it’s going to occur to you that the man might be a werewolf and this does not occur to Allison. We are told what she thinks and that’s not among her thoughts then or at any other point. You can’t write 80% of the books AS IF she doesn’t know something and then suddenly tell the reader she does and expect it to fly. That is not the same as adding a twist to a plot, it’s falsifying your story and expecting the reader to just roll with it. Ummm, no.

The baddy is a cliche scorned woman with no depth or development what so ever. And the book basically ends where I would expect the real story to begin.

The writing and editing is fine, other than a few missing words. Maybe I’ll give Arroway another shot, but this book was not a winner for me.

Ice Planet Barbarians

Book Review of Ice Planet Barbarians, by Ruby Dixon

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Ice Planet BarbariansI picked up a copy of Ruby Dixon‘s Ice Planet Barbarians from Amazon when it was free.

Description from Goodreads:
You’d think being abducted by aliens would be the worst thing that could happen to me. And you’d be wrong. Because now, the aliens are having ship trouble, and they’ve left their cargo of human women – including me – on an ice planet.

And the only native inhabitant I’ve met? He’s big, horned, blue, and really, really has a thing for me…

Review:
You might not know this about me, but the Mars Needs Women trope is a guilty pleasure of mine. Kind of in the same vein as staying up late to watch cheesy, B-grade science fiction movies on the Sci-fi channel. Give me a bottle of red and a made for TV movie, at 2am and I’d be a happy camper. Laughing maniacally, but happily. You can’t take that shit seriously and the same goes for most well written Mars Needs Women themed books.

Ice Planet Barbarians is one such book. It is written with tongue firmly in cheek. It’s not that there aren’t serious bits, but the book doesn’t insist on taking itself seriously. Which always seems to feel like it gives me permission to laugh at it, as if I’m laughing with it. It’s freeing.

It’s not without missteps. The conversant computer is a little too conversationally chatty and well informed, not computer-like at all. The alien physique seemed a little too specialized to human female pleasure to be believable. Even without many females, I have a hard time believing every it’ll-feel-good practiced hadn’t been explored in some way. So, teaching him to kiss was eye-roll worthy and I don’t know that the rape in the beginning was necessary to make being kidnapped by aliens for an unknown purpose terrifying enough.

For the most part though, this was a fun space romp. You just have to remember what it’s meant to be (and not be) to enjoy it. It helps if you’re already familiar with the trope. I’d happily pick up more, just for the fun of it.