Category Archives: Challenges

Join me in the #DiverseRomanceBingo challenge.

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Those of you who read this blog on any sort of regular basis know I’m a sucker for challenges, doing several a year, most concurrently. So far this year alone, I’ve challenged myself to read a weeks worth of books with Omega in the title. Then, I felt obligated to do alphas too. I started the year with a broken wrist, so I challenged myself to read all my short stories and novellas. (They require shorter reviews, usually; less typing.) I’ve been adding on to the tail end of last year’s Annoying Closeup Guy challenge, as I’ve found I have more books with him on the cover now. And of course I’m doing the Goodreads challenge, which I pledged a shocking (even for me) 300 books this year. (I wanted to account for so many shorts, so I upped my goal. I expect to surpass it.) I say all that because I intend to add another challenge to the list and this one I think is more important than any of those.

A few weeks back, I went through the books I’d read so far this year, looking to see how diversified the authors were. I honestly went into this expecting to find that I read a fairly diverse group of authors and could feel confident in my position as alley and amplifier of minority voices. I was severely disappointed. I found that despite my good intentions and opinion of myself, nothing was being translated into actual action. The vast majority of the books I’d read were by cis-gendered, straight, white women. Have I done better than someone who isn’t paying attention? Probably, but not by much, and not by enough to feel smug about it. (Not that I should anyway.)

The simple fact of the matter is that any time I picked up a book without actively searching out and choosing a book by an author from a minority group, it was invariably by a white woman. And this was true for the characters in those books too. They were overwhelmingly able-bodied, white people. So, I committed myself to do better; to search out authors of color, authors who are trans or non-binary, or queer, or have a neurological difference, or aren’t American. Diverse characters is a natural by-product of that. And I’ve found a challenge to support this.

#DiverseRomaneBingo card

Let me introduce you to the #DiverseRomanceBingo card. I came across this in a group I’m a member of, though there has hence been a Goodreads group established for it. The challenge began yesterday, Sept 17th, and runs until the end of the year, with the goal being to complete as many squares as possible in that time. This requires reading a book that includes the descriptor in the box and reviewing it is strongly encouraged.

Some will be no problem. I read plenty of M/M books. But others will take some searching. I can’t think of a romance, off the top of my head, that qualifies as having a Desi main character or love interest. The Indian subcontinent just ins’t somewhere a lot of characters in books published in English come from. It will require effort on my part to find a book for that square and as I’d like this challenge to also support #OwnVoices (which is a square, but also a broader goal) I’m hoping to find a romance by a Desi author to boot.

But this brings us back to my earlier disappointment and the realization that truly supporting diversity in publishing takes more than happy thoughts. It takes effort and action. This is what makes the bingo card so appealing to me. It makes such action accessible and engage-able. Obviously, it’s not enough. But it creates a visible and accomplishable goal that moves the participant in the right direction.

I’ll be starting this afternoon with Karen Stivali‘s Moments in Time series. It’s my understanding that some of the main characters are Jewish and bi. Those are some of my boxes. The book is also written by a #OwnVoices author, but you’re only allowed to tick one box per book and I’m choosing this one for the bi MC box. And I will continue in just this manner until the end of the year, when I’ll write a wrap up post. We’ll see how successful I am. Intentionality is important. So, I’m hopeful. Plus, some friends and I got together and put together some ideas.

I invite anyone who is interested to download the card and join me. Drop a link to your own post and/or #DiverseRomanceBingo reviews and I’ll check them all out. I do want to add a final word of caution, however. This is something that has to be approached respectfully. As soon as it’s reduced to just a game or something done for the social justice cookie, we risk tokenizing, objectifying and even commodifying the individuals represented. No amount of amplifying the group can excuse injuring the individual. Having said that, let’s spread the word and thank those responsible for creating the card. (You know who you are.)

surrender blood moon

Book Review of Surrender (Blood Moon #1), by Evie Ryan

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SurrenderI picked up a copy of Surrender: Blood Moon, by Evie Ryan, at Amazon. It was free at the time and I believe is a perma-freebie. I read it as part of my Blood Moon Reading Challenge.

Description from Goodreads:
Daphne Storm knows how to save lives. 

As a dedicated E.R. nurse at Wyoming Mercy Medical, there isn’t much Daphne hasn’t seen: sickness, broken bones, and hunting accidents. But when a little boy is admitted one dark night after barely surviving a vicious animal attack, Daphne’s world is suddenly turned upside down. Whatever did this to him is a monster – a vicious creature threatening not just her town but the very fabric of morality, humanity itself…it is evil. 

And as Daphne holds the hand of the boy she and the doctors couldn’t save, she sees a brief mental image of black fur and white fangs. Little does she know, she is playing right into the hands of fate — even more so when she finds herself irresistibly drawn to a man with raven-black hair, one of the strange, rough men who have invited themselves to her town. 

The blood moon prophecy unfolds. 

The power of the blood moon will turn Damon’s people mad, as the prophecy foretells. During its rise and fall his men must fight the urge to shift, the desire to turn wolf, the need to kill, but when one of the men goes crazy, escapes, and terrorizes Timber Springs, Damon must stop him at all costs. 

But the rogue wolf isn’t after the people of Timber Springs. He only wants Daphne. He must be stopped, but no one knows how…

Review:
This is the second book in two days that I wouldn’t have finished if I hadn’t been reading it for a challenge. It was not good.

There was no character development. The whole Blood Moon things was poorly explained. I felt no chemistry between the characters. The heroine was a May Sue that all the men seemed to want. And OMFG the TSTL stunts she pulled darned near drove me to distraction! The editing was a mess. The sex scenes went on forever and weren’t very good.

Every once in a while a phrase would turn just right and dazzle me, but they were few and far between. All-in-all, I have little praise for the book.

Blood Moon

Book Review of Blood Moon, by Aimee Ash

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Blood Moon Aimee AshI picked up a copy of Blood Moon, by Aimee Ash, from Amazon. It was free at the time.

Description from Goodreads:
Haidee had a bright future ahead of her, that was until she was viciously attacked in the Never North forest. With a single breath of life left in her lungs she is found by a strikingly gorgeous man. With hope in her heart that this mysterious stranger will save her life, she is dumbfounded when she sees his fangs appear. With Haidee buried alive in the forest she fights for freedom, but when the sun burns her skin she fears that her worst thought is true. She has been turned into a vampire. But soon she will realize that she is no ordinary vampire, she is the chosen one and is sent on a mission by her mistress to kill the leader of the only werewolf pack left in existence. But as she finds herself distracted on her journey the fate of everyone’s lives soon rests in the palm of her hands.

Review:
Wow, that was shockingly bad. The book starts out with this TSTL move on the main character’s part.

Following my usual trail, just as I’d done many times before, my basket gently swayed comfortably on my arm. While I walked, I pictured just how beautiful my sisters would look with mauve bellflower weaved through their braids. Drifting into a daydream, I soon found that I’d lost my bearings and had roamed much further into the forest than I’d intended.

In one short paragraph, the author manages to tell us the girl knows her way, but then gets her lost. What’s more, how stupid does she have to be to wander far past the route she’s supposed to KNOW and end up in a part of the forest called the Never North that she and everyone else is afraid of?

The book had a serious case of, oh-so-special for no apparent reason. Haidee was apparently beautiful, smart, strong, alluring, her blood was sweeter than anyone else, and everyone desires her. She was given power and position for no reason and with no effort. She was too perfect.

The book then just basically turns into a list of fed from/had sex with this person and that person and that one too, interspersed with small snippets of story. She went from virgin to having sex several times a day with no time in between. Maybe this was supposed to be erotica. I say maybe because I’m really not sure. It isn’t, but the character had enough sex for it to be. Until she fell in love with a man she literally hadn’t even had a conversation with.

There were also all sorts of oddities, like her being buried overnight to become a vampire, but never needing to bath afterwards. There also wasn’t a point in which it could have happened and the author simply not mentioned it. Or up until 53% the setting was women in long dresses and cloaks, horses, bows/arrows, candles, and prudish women in teashops. I understandably assumed it was a historical setting. Then, suddenly, Haidee’s talking about her car running our of gas and getting a ride from someone. I honestly believe the author wrote it as a historical and then lost track of the story. That’s how it felt!

The whole thing was full amateurish writing. The narrator’s voice damn near killed me. The writing makes me think the author is very young, though I don’t know if that’s true.

There was an overuse and often inappropriate use of adverbs (other words too, but the adverbs really stood out). Plus, everything seemed to be pulsating, throbbing or pounding. Beyond that, the grammar was just a mess in general. Haidee’s name was used too often in conversations. There was no character development, in fact a large number of them never even speak. They were just there to highlight Haidee’s perfect, desirable self.

I’ll be honest. If I hadn’t been reading this for a challenge, I wouldn’t have finished it. I wouldn’t even have made 20%. It was quite frankly horrible. I’m not even going to pull that punch. That had to be the longest 98 pages of my life. I’d never been so happy to have an ebook end at the 80% mark!