Category Archives: Challenges

Book Review: Trust the Focus & Focus on Me, by Megan Erickson

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I bought a copy of Trust the Focus and Focus on Me (book 1 & 2 of the In Focus series), by Megan Erickson.

Trust the FocusDescription from Goodreads:
With his college graduation gown expertly pitched into the trash, Justin Akron is ready for the road trip he planned with his best friend Landry— and ready for one last summer of escape from his mother’s controlling grip. Climbing into the Winnebago his father left him, they set out across America in search of the sites his father had captured through the lens of his Nikon.

As an aspiring photographer, Justin can think of no better way to honor his father’s memory than to scatter his ashes at the sites he held sacred. And there’s no one Justin would rather share the experience with more than Landry.

But Justin knows he can’t escape forever. Eventually he’ll have to return home and join his mother’s Senate campaign. Nor can he escape the truth of who he is, and the fact that he’s in love with his out-and-proud travel companion.

Admitting what he wants could hurt his mother’s conservative political career. But with every click of his shutter and every sprinkle of ash, Justin can’t resist Landry’s pull. And when the truth comes into focus, neither is prepared for the secrets the other is hiding.

Review:
A sweet, if angsty, story that I generally enjoyed. I thought both Justin and Landry were fun characters to get to know and their romance felt real. (As did Justin’s difficult position.) I even enjoyed their tentative sex. I’m not generally one for ‘learner sex,’ but, again, I thought it was sweet.

I did get a little board with the ‘adventures,’ though I completely understood the purpose they served, I thought the blog posts felt a little gimmicky, and I thought that the ‘evil mother’ was a little cliché, especially given how easily her mind seemed to be changed in the end.

But my overall response to the book was, “Well, that was cute.” I’m looking forward to reading more of Erickson’s work.

Focus on meDescription from Goodreads:
Colin Hartman can now add college to his list of failures. On the coast-to-coast trek home from California, Colin stops at a gas station in the Nevada desert, and can’t help noticing the guy in tight jeans looking like he just stepped off a catwalk. When he realizes Catwalk is stranded, Colin offers a ride.

Riley only intended to take a short ride in Colin’s Jeep to the Grand Canyon. But one detour leads to another until they finally find themselves tumbling into bed together. However there are shadows in Riley’s eyes that hide a troubled past. And when those shadows threaten to bury the man whom Colin has fallen in love with, he vows to get Riley the help he needs. For once in his life, quitting isn’t an option…

Review:

Another sweet story from Megan Erickson. The writing was wonderful and I liked the characters, but this wasn’t really my style. I sometimes have an issue with encountering mentally ill characters in books. Now, I love diverse representation and mental illness is real and should be represented. I’m not saying it shouldn’t. Nor am I saying it should somehow be exempt from being usable material for fiction; or even that I won’t enjoy a book with mental illness as a theme. But sometimes, sometimes I feel like it shows up as a prop or that authors write books involving it so that they can be congratulated on their inclusive, acceptance of those living with mental illness rather than because they have a story to tell that happens to have a character with an illness.

I don’t know that Erickson was doing this. I’m not gonna go guessing her motives about writing it. But I know that as I read the book, as much as I like Colin and Riley (and I did, Colin especially), I thought Riley’s emotional collapse was so abrupt and Colin’s reaction to it so stubbornly solid that I was left wondering if I should be taking more from the enjoyment of the story or from the lesson on the importance of getting appropriate help. It wasn’t quite PSA level, but… Now, I did like that Erickson didn’t have love fix everyone’s problems. I appreciated that the men acknowledged that sometimes love really isn’t enough.

And this is probably just my issue, what I am conditioned to feel when reading books like this one. IDK. Because, like I said, it was well written and I did like the characters. I also liked how the book tied into the previous one, while still remaining a stand alone title (though, like the previous books and the blogs, I thought the emails felt gimmicky, even if it’s the only POV you get from Riley). I’ll definitely be reading more Erickson books.

Untamed

Book Review of Untamed, by Anna Cowan

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UntamedI bought an ecopy of Untamed, by Anna Cowan.

Description from Goodreads:
Outspoken and opinionated, Katherine Sutherland is ill at ease amongst the fine ladies of Regency London. She is more familiar with farmers and her blunt opinions and rough manners offend polite society. Yet when she hears the scandalous rumours involving her sister and the seductive Duke of Darlington, the fiercely loyal Katherine vows to save her sister’s marriage – whatever the cost.

Intrigued by Katherine’s interference in his affairs, the manipulative Duke is soon fascinated. He engages in a daring deception and follows her back to her country home. Here, their intense connection shocks them both. But the Duke’s games have dangerous consequences, and the potential to throw both their lives into chaos…

Review:
Oh so marvelous! I was recently bemoaning the fact that I am so often disappointed in het romance book. In fact, I’ve largely given up reading them. Then someone described this book to me and I thought, ‘well I have to try that don’t I?’

But before I do, I want to address that cover. It’s a perfectly fine cover, but it doesn’t give you a clue to the raucous characters you will find within it.  I’d never have picked it up had I not been given a very strong recommendation.

Ok, with that out of the way, I loved Kit and the Duke. I just loved them. I loved the way she was so strong and he was so fragile. I just loved it. Now, another reviewer that I respect spoke to the fact that this is only just a reversal of male/female characteristics, not a true subversion of them. And I agree whole-heartedly. Really, it just highlights them in relief, which is still reinforcing them in a sense. But, experientially, I so enjoyed reading it that I’m going to overlook this fact.

There was also a certain intensity to the writing that I just wanted to roll around in. It was lush, even if it did occasionally cut into clarity. Again, just the experience of submerging myself in it was diabolically wonderful.

And (mild spoiler) as much as I loved that the happy ending came about almost entirely at the active, purposeful hand of Kit, I did think it was all a little too saccharinely perfect. She got her man, her title, her riches and her revenge. It was too much. But I’m still going to overlook that fact simply because I otherwise loved the book so much.

Bound With Passion

Book Review of Bound With Passion, by Megan Mulry

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Bound with PassionI received a copy of Bound With Passion, by Megan Mulry, from Netgalley.

Description from Goodreads:
Lady Georgiana Elizabeth Cambury has been a “wild romping girl” all her life: dressing in trousers, riding astride, and doing just fine, thank you very much. Her father’s exceedingly generous bequest—and her mother’s liberal views of the world—have ensured that Georgie will never be a slave to the barbarous institutions of marriage or motherhood. Or so she thinks.

When she returns from five years in North Africa to boring Derbyshire for a brief, obligatory family visit, she finds herself in the midst of a legal snarl involving Mr. James Rushford and Lord Trevor Mayson—neighbors, lovers, and her two closest friends. Mayson’s father has declared that he must marry or forfeit his vast inheritance, so Georgie blithely offers to walk down the aisle, in name only. Problem solved.

But try as she might, Georgie cannot ignore the passion that quickly blazes between all three of them. When her marriage of convenience turns into something much deeper, Georgie must decide if she is willing to give up the independence she has fought so hard to achieve—or if love is worth the ultimate surrender.

Review:
Blerg. I mean seriously, blerg. I mean it made me want to toss my Kindle and have a Feminist melt down, blerg. I get that some people like this sort of heroine and this sort of story but I’m not one of those people and I feel a little tricked. Because I think the first couple paragraphs of this book’s description lead the reader to expect a strong, confident, capable main character. Instead, the only sentence you should really pay attention to is that last one about surrender.

I’ll start with a few quotes. That will make this all go by more quickly.

Trevor loved talking about her that way, as if she were some object that James and Trevor were assessing, like a fine brandy they were passing back and forth between them. And she liked it too, from the look of melting lust in her eyes.

Georgie’s body reminded him of the crucible steel he’d seen in Sheffield: all strength finally burning so hot that it nearly begged to be bent and molded into something new and useful, unlike what it had always been.

“Yes, picture him doing that to me you dirty thing.”

During the night, even after they had snuffed all the candles and collapsed onto the bed for much-needed rest in complete darkness, Trevor had somehow known how to best adjust her body in ways that were more comfortable than she herself knew how to move.

So, throughout the book she’s objectified and described as enjoying rough, dehumanizing sex (because she hates anything soft, loving and emotional–in other words anything feminine). She’s not seen as useful as a human person without a man to remold her. She’s dirty for even thinking about something that the men aren’t described as dirty for actually doing and she’s so unaware of her own body and self that she can’t even get comfortable without the man to do it for her. She’s also selfish and incredibly unpleasant. Of course she is, she has the emotional development of a child after all. BLERG!

But my main issue was with the absolute contempt for womanhood in this book. It infuriated me. But I so wanted that strong heroine that the blurb set me up for that I even spent half the book making excuses for her. I thought, maybe it’s not hatred of femaleness, but a hate for the constraints on woman of the time. But no, that didn’t seem to be the case. Then I thought, maybe she is trans and actually feels herself more to be a man. But no, that proved not to be the case either. The book simply presents the reader with a woman who despises all things female and needs to be summarily punished for being a woman before she can submit, as all good women must, to having sex with a man (which of course she loves and all is right with the world.) BLERG!

Then there is the odd fact that despite being a rare relationship model in the 1800s, everywhere the characters went they met with other poly families and LGBT+ couples. It’s great and all, but there were almost no straight people in the book at all, which isn’t so much a complaint about representation as of unrealistic simplicity of the plot. There were simply too many people in non-normative relationships who were very open about them during a repressed time period. If this had occurred only within the characters’ circle I wouldn’t mention it, just assume they surrounded themselves with people they could relate to. But its everywhere they go and everyone they meet.

Then there is the Egypt scene. I don’t want to be too spoilery, but this may be. James  is introduced to a man and has a 2 minute conversation with him about fabric, and then feels comfortable asking him if he can bring his lover and his wife to his house to let the man’s two wives seduce her in order to somehow excise the stubborn willfulness from her, so that she’ll be a more appropriately pliable wife (as they all secretly watch). First, how did he know that man would be ok with that outlandish request (or his wives)? Second, what on earth made him think being seduced by two unknown women would have that effect, especially since she’d never shown an attraction to women in the past? Third, how exactly does that work? It was this kind of magical, the author says it’s so, so it is, even if it makes no sense kind of writing that made me really dislike this book in the end.

No, this was not a winner for me. In fact, despite having a wonderful m/m pairing, it still basically represents everything that makes me reluctant to read het romance in the first place. Is it really so much to ask for a heroine who doesn’t need a man to teach her how to be human? Georgie, didn’t know herself, didn’t know her emotions, didn’t know how to love, didn’t even know how to get comfortable in her own body, family or home until these men came along and taught her. In fact, she didn’t even know that she didn’t know all those things. I say again, BLERG!