Monthly Archives: April 2017

Wolfsong

Book Review of Wolfsong, by T. J. Klune

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I borrowed a copy of T. J. Klune’s Wolfsong through Hoopla.

Description from Goodreads:
Ox was twelve when his daddy taught him a very valuable lesson. He said that Ox wasn’t worth anything and people would never understand him. Then he left.

Ox was sixteen when he met the boy on the road. The little boy who talked and talked and talked. Ox found out later the little boy hadn’t spoken in almost two years before that day, and that the little boy belonged to a family who had moved into the house at the end of the lane.

Ox was seventeen when he found out the little boy’s secret and it painted the world around him in colors of red and orange and violet, of Alpha and Beta and Omega.

Ox was twenty-three when murder came to town and tore a hole in his head and heart. The boy chased after the monster with revenge in his bloodred eyes, leaving Ox behind to pick up the pieces.

It’s been three years since that fateful day—and the boy is back. Except now he’s a man, and Ox can no longer ignore the song that howls between them.

Review:
Oh, I really loved that. Yes, it was a tad repetitive and the writing was occasionally more stylistic than easily readable, but overall I truly enjoyed it. It was tragi-sweet, as in most of it felt like a tragedy, but it was quite sweet too.

I think it’s fairly safe to say that those looking for a standard, straight-forward romance won’t be thrilled with this. I mean, the couple meets when one is 10 and the other is 16, so a large portion of the book happens when one is a child, no one is thinking romance. Then, just when the younger finally reached the age of maturity, he leaves. Plus, I wasn’t lit on fire by the few sex scenes there were or felt I really got to know the non-POV half of the pairing. But I loved just about everything else about the book.

This was my first Klune book and I’ll be coming back for more.

How to Bang a Billionaire

Book Review of How to Bang a Billionaire (Arden St. Ives #1), by Alexis Hall

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I received a copy of Alexis Hall‘s How to Bang a Billionaire through Netgalley.

Description from Goodreads:
If England had yearbooks, I’d probably be “Arden St. Ives: Man Least Likely to Set the World on Fire.” So far, I haven’t. I’ve no idea what I’m doing at Oxford, no idea what I’m going to do next and, until a week ago, I had no idea who Caspian Hart was. Turns out, he’s brilliant, beautiful . . . oh yeah, and a billionaire.

It’s impossible not to be captivated by someone like that. But Caspian Hart makes his own rules. And he has a lot of them. About when I can be with him. What I can do with him. And when he’ll be through with me.

I’m good at doing what I’m told in the bedroom. The rest of the time, not so much. And now that Caspian’s shown me glimpses of the man behind the billionaire I know it’s him I want. Not his wealth, not his status. Him. Except that might be the one thing he doesn’t have the power to give me. 

Review:
I’m not really sure how to review this book, because I think my biggest problem with it is that it is what it is, and that’s hardly fair. It is my understanding that this is the first in a trilogy following the same couple, which makes this book roughly a 1/3 of the story. And while it did end at a natural place and it is long enough that I didn’t go all ragey about “why is it broken up,” like I do with some novella/serials, I still FEEL like I read a third of a story and didn’t get the payout I wanted in the end. But that’s what the book is, so should I really fault it for being what it is? In the end, I really just wish I had waited until they were all out to read any of it. Then I could look at the complete arc instead of trying to judge just part of it.

Based on what I’ve read so far, I like Arden and Caspian. But so much of the book is so painfully awkward. Which makes sense, since it’s two men being awkward with one another and failing to make a ‘relationship’ work. They pull it together in the end, but most of the book is them failing.

One of the things Hall seems to really like to do is take familiar tropes and subvert them, turn them on their head. And that’s what he’s done here. It’s a pastiche of the broody, emotionally stunted alpha billionaire. He’s recognizable, but far from what you’re used to and I appreciate that. (We even have Caspian and Arden, C & A, like Christian and Anna, maybe? A purposeful head nod?)

As always, the writing is lovely and lush and, in this case, funny too. I liked it. I’ll be looking for the rest of them. But I think I’ll wait until the series is complete.

The Haunting of a Duke

Review of The Haunting of a Duke (Dark Regency #1), by Chasity Bowlin

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I picked up a copy of The Haunting of a Duke (by Chasity Bowlin) from Amazon. It was free at the time and still free when I posted this review.

Description from Goodreads:
Communing with spirits has been both gift and curse to Emme Walters. Now it’s made her a killer’s target.

Emme knows why the Dowager Duchess of Briarleigh invited her to a house party–to investigate whether the duke, Rhys Brammel, murdered his wife years ago. But Emme never imagined she would fall in love with the brooding duke. Branded by society as a possible killer, Rhys is suspicious of Emme and her alleged “gift.”

Then a late night encounter creates awareness of her other, more attractive, aspects. When Emme’s life is threatened, Rhys becomes her protector. Emme and Rhys find passion and peril as they join forces to solve the mysteries at Briarleigh.

She made him believe in spirits, but can she make him believe in love?

Review:
Mechanically the writing here is fine, if painfully repetitive with certain phrases. But the whole plot, every single aspect of it is just so cliched and overused I can’t give it any more. There is literally no aspect of this plot I couldn’t have predicted just by thinking about what motive you see most often in this sort of book and which of the characters were described to match the most common idea of villainy. Plus, it could do with more editing. I mean, the epilogue appears twice in the Kindle copy, so….

I had to just skim the sex scenes as they were so unexceptional and, to me, annoying. I find sex scenes that continuously focus on how “innocent” and “untried” and “untutored” and “inexperienced” the woman is, as well as ones that might as well just be a grocery list of which body parts the man lusts over boring to the extreme. Plus, I found it disturbing how often she couldn’t identify her own feelings. I will give her credit for at least being willing to accept her own desires once she finally identified them and she never pulled the common, “What’s happening to my body” schtick when she lost her virginity.

All in all, I keep trying to like Regency Romance and every once in a while I encounter one I do, which encourages me to keep trying. But this is a pretty classic example of why I generally don’t like the genre, even if paranormal aspects were thrown in.