Category Archives: books/book review

Bound By Blood

Book Review of Bound By Blood (Cauld Ane #1), by Tracey Jane Jackson

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Bound By BloodTracey Jane Jackson‘s book, Bound By Blood, marks the second Bound By Blood book in my week long Bound By Blood reading challenge. (Phew, that sentence is a bit of a challenge too.) As a reminder, Bound By Blood Week is dedicated to reading five books in a row titled, you guessed it, Bound by Blood. I picked this up as perma-freebie at Amazon.

Description from Goodreads:
Dr. Samantha Moore is one of the youngest and most acclaimed researchers in the world. Her specialty is blood and she has been recruited by the largest pharmaceutical company in Scotland. For what purpose she cannot begin to imagine, but in an attempt to break out of her painfully shy shell, she throws caution to the wind and leaves her family and best friend behind in Savannah. Dr. Kade Gunnach is taking a chance hiring an outsider, but he’s desperate to find out how to help his sister. He believes the key lies in her blood, but so far, no one has found the answers. When the new researcher walks into his office, he’s unprepared for his reaction to her and the life-changing ramifications her arrival brings. They’re drawn together by a force neither is prepared for, but Kade is holding something back. Something that could scare her away. When Samantha learns his secret, will she run? Will Kade be able to live with the answers he’s been desperately searching for?

Review:
This was a sweet, low angst New Adult(ish) romance. Unfortunately, I’m not a big fan of sweet New Adult(ish) romances. But, oh well. The writing and editing is fine and for those readers whose primary interests are ‘awww’ moments and endless (and I mean endless) declarations of love, this is for you.

It’s sweet, yeah, but that’s about all it has going for it. Unfortunately, I found it booorrringggg. Other than two people becoming completely self-obsessed, nothing really ever happens. Even the romance is of the insta-love, I recognise you as my destined mate variety and both parties accepted it without question. There are a few almost unrelated side events I think meant to add a little action, but they’re so secondary to the “I love you. “No, I love you more.” “I’ve missed you.” “An hour is too long to be away from you.” Bla, bla, bla that they feel tacked on, at best.

What’s more, it felt like a lot of the book is dedicated to setting up the future books. Already I know without looking what couple will be in book two and three. It made this book feel scattered and unfocused. Plus, I found myself increasingly annoyed to see two women, but especially the MC, as described as dysfunctional shy and scared and then shown to be quite bold and outspoken. The characters as presented didn’t match the characters as described at all.

So, my final say is that it’s a fine book for the sort who like this sort of book, but not for me.

On an unrelated side not, just because this kind of thing annoys me, who is that supposed be on the cover? Because Kade is Icelandic, with blond hair and blue eyes. So who is to be kissing the person we can only presume is supposed to be Samantha? Hmmm? If you’re gonna put characters on the front of the book they need to match! It’s just my opinion, but I feel strongly about it.

For The Bite Of It

Book Review of For The Bite Of It, by Viki Lyn & Vina Grey

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For the Bite Of ItI bought a copy of For The Bite Of It, by Viki Lyn & Vina Grey.

Description from Goodreads:
A vampire, a cupcake, plus one sexy cop, is a recipe for trouble.

VINCENT KAMATEROS is an exiled vampire making a routine living as the owner of a cupcake bakery in Arizona. Until a car with a dead driver crashes through the wall of his shop, bringing after it, All-American, closeted cop, JOHN REEDER. Smitten the instant he sees John, but bound to silence by the Vampire High Council, he can never reveal his true self to John. 

John Reeder can’t control his attraction to the sexy Italian baker. But as addictive as the sex is, John can’t overcome his fear of rejection for being gay, and open his heart to a man with so many secrets.

Review:
A note before I begin: There are apparently two versions of this book, one from 2011 and one from 2014. I read the newest one, which is said to have a different ending than the first. 

This book was at best OK. It wasn’t quite bad, but I can’t call it particularly good either. The vast majority of it is about two men who fall in lust/love at first sight and then spend 180+ pages fantasising about one another, while fighting in real life. Thus, they don’t get together for a long time and the reader just gets more fantasies. This is not a format that works for me. In fact, I got quite annoyed with it after a while.

This was only one of several problems, however. The men are said to feel things for one another that they’ve never felt before. But the connection is instant and there isn’t any reason given for it. The vampires don’t find destined mates or anything like that, which could excuse the mysterious rise of feeling between the two of them, but not previous lovers. If something out of the ordinary happens, I like to know how or why.

Then there are the inconsistencies. For example, Angelo encourages Vincent to “scratch the itch’ with John, then he repeatedly tells Vincent he can’t have John, then he’s daring Vincent to tell John the truth (breaking rules he previously said were the reason Vincent couldn’t have John), then he’s telling Vincent he’s crazy for trying to make a relationship work and refusing to help. Back and forwards. Similarly, John and Vincent are wishy-washy-wishy-washy, changing their minds about each-other constantly.

Worst of all is the attempt to bring a bigger story into the book. Again, the vast majority of the book is John and Vincent lusting over one another, pushing each-other away, and then pulling each-other back again. But slipped in between all of this are little bits of Vincent’s pedigree, history and future responsibilities. And this looked to be an interesting story…that isn’t developed AT ALL. In fact, every time there was a chapter dedicated to it, it literally (and I’m careful of my use of that word) feels like someone has dropped a chapter from a different book in by mistake. This was both a waste of a good storyline and an annoyance. (I wonder if Viki wrote the romance and Vina wrote the fantasy parts, or visa versa. That might explain it.)

Then there were a number of smallish irritants. For example, John and Vincent repeatedly stated to one another how good the sex between them was. However, they’d never had actual sex. (They finally did at about 98%, but this annoying habit crept in very early in the book.) If the BJ or hand-job, or fingering is good, that’s great, and maybe I’m being pedantic, but it’s not sex (at least not by erotica standards) and I found the repeated reference to it as such grating.

The editing also seemed to really fall apart for the last 15 or so percent of the book. Both inconsistencies in the plot and missing/misused words increased. (I wonder if this is about the place where the additional ending was added in the new addition.)

Anyhow, a passable read. I’m not sorry to have read it, but I’m not rushing out for more either.

The Prince’s Boy

Book Review of The Prince’s Boy, by Paul Bailey

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The Prince's BoyI won an ARC of Paul Bailey‘s novel, The Prince’s Boy from Goodreads.

Description:
In May 1927, nineteen-year-old Dinu Grigorescu, a skinny boy with literary ambitions, is newly arrived in Paris. He has been sent from Bucharest, the city of his childhood, by his wealthy father to embark upon a bohemian adventure and relish the unique pleasures of Parisian life. 

An innocent in a new city, still grieving the sudden loss of his beloved mother Elena seven years earlier, Dinu is encouraged to enjoy la vie de Bohème by his distant cousin, Eduard. But tentatively, secretly, Dinu is drawn to the Bains du Ballon d’Alsace, a notorious establishment rumoured to offer the men of Paris, married or otherwise, who enjoy something different, everything they crave. It is here that he meets Razvan, a fellow Romanian, the adopted child of a man of refinement – a prince’s boy – whose stories of Proust and other artists entrance Dinu, and who will become the young man’s teacher in the ways of the world. 

At a distance of forty years, and written in London, his refuge from the horrors of Europe’s early twentieth-century history, Dinu’s memoir of his brief spell in Paris is one of exploration and rediscovery. The love that blossomed that sunlit day in such inauspicious and unromantic surroundings would transcend lust, separation, despair and even death to endure a lifetime.

Review:
In some ways this was a wonderful book, in others it was pompous—trying far too hard to be what it is. In the wonderful column are a host of colourful characters, a strong, abiding love and some great writing.

However, I struggled to really get into the narrative. I found the dialogue almost unbearably stiff. It was purposefully so, for sure, since the characters are mostly of the upper-crust and thus constrained by the dictates and decorum of polite society. But I still found it unnatural to read.

The whole thing felt very much like a poorly done costume drama, set in the mid twenties. It tries so hard to be Paris in the 20s that it just comes off as an archetype of that time and place, rather than a believable story set there. Everyone is fashionably morose, maudlin and mawkish, voguishly liberated, libatious, and lascivious (or not), etc. Alternatively, perhaps it was striving to mimic the gravitas of the literary greats Dinu is so found of reading. But, again, it just felt forced.

I did appreciate that, while there are small joys here, this is an incredibly sad story and Bailey has allowed his characters the freedom to wallow in it. He never gives in to the popular pressure to provide everyone a sacrosanct happy ending. I also found something immensely gratifying in considering how The Prince’s gift to his boy was also so very cruel, though Razvan could never regret receiving it. It’s a testament to the duplicity of human nature, for sure.

I think that there is a lot to recommend this book to the right reader. I just don’t know if I was that reader.