The Devil In Her Heart

Book Review of The Devil In Her Heart, by Elle P. Charles

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Devil in her HeartI downloaded a copy of Elle Charles‘ The Devil in her Heart from the Amazon free list. At the time of posting it was still free.

Description from Goodreads:
When Cara Hansen receives a psychic prediction during a bachelorette party entailing “a demonic presence approaching her near future,” she is determined not to believe that such supernatural things exist. But when she is visited at work by a strange man with unearthly features it seems only Cara can perceive, she begins questioning everything…including her sanity.

As a string of bad events occur, beginning with the disappearance of a co-worker, she begins to uncover secrets she was never meant to know, including a realm of demons and her unexpected affiliation with them…

Review:   *somewhat spoilerish*
This was not a winner for me, for a number of reasons. To start with the author sets the whole thing up as not adhering to Christian doctrine—characters stress that the evil beings are ‘Shadows’ not ‘Demons,’ for example—but then the book repeatedly falls back into Biblical and Christian mythology. (Look at the title, even.) There are demons, angels, a Garden of Eden, a fall, prayers to God are answered, crosses hold power to save, etc. It felt very much like Charles just couldn’t help it, or maybe (worse) didn’t even notice.

The book dragged on and on, spending lots of time on trivialities like going to work or dinner with family or dating or four thousand ‘woe is me’ complaints about not being the pretty one. Then it rushes through scenes relating to the actual plot, often even falling back on cop outs like ‘that week passed without incident’ and large chunks of unaccounted for time being swept away.

Despite involving demons and such the whole thing felt very flat. Mostly because no one seemed to really ever react to anything. For example, the declaration that Cara is half ‘shadow’ is made as the last sentence in a chapter, with no build-up and is not addressed in the following chapter. So any emotional impact it might have is missed. It might as well have been a statement about it being warm this August. Or the time she woke up on a different plain of existence (maybe even in hell), having just lost her virginity to a demon (now a Demon, not a shadow, BTW) and is being hunted by the demon queen and her horde of followers, you would think she might be a little freaked out. Nope, she’s concerned about missing her shift at work and heads off for breakfast. WTF? Really?

This was pretty much the norm for the book. It doesn’t allow tension to build. As another example, at one point Cara is in the middle of a fight to the death, then, while being strangled, she suddenly wakes up in a car and it’s over. (Which is really jarring, BTW.) It’s not until pages and pages and pages later that we get a second hand, paired down account of what happened. That scene (and plenty like it) could have been really powerful; instead, it just fizzles to flat. It felt like the author didn’t know how to conclude the fight, so she just skipped it.

There are also a lot of things that aren’t really well integrated into the plot. For example, Liz is presented as a work colleague, maybe-friend. She and Cara had never even hung out outside of work. So, Cara’s determination to save her, as if she’s the most important person to her, doesn’t make sense. Also, Caymn is oddly sweet, but there is no explanation for the fact that he is such a good ‘person’ when every other demon is evil. He is still a demon of greed, so why doesn’t he act like one?

The book is basically about the dreaded girl who discovers sudden powers and then, with no real training, manages to fight and defeat a 10,000-year-old, extremely powerful, experienced, skilled enemy, with no real explanation of how. It was ineffective, to say the least.

I could not relate to any of the characters. I did not feel any tension in the plotting. The ‘romance’ was insta-lust and never felt solid. But though the writing is really flat and not particularly engaging, it is structurally sound (minus some editing issues). There may be others who like this a lot more than me, but I’m calling it a fail.

Creature of Dreams

Book Review of Creature of Dreams, by Maya Lassiter

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Creature of DreamsI downloaded a copy of Creature of Dreams, by Maya Lassiter, from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
Travel photographer, Liv Hannity, forty-one, returns to her Southern hometown on a quest to find her long lost sleep. An insomniac and a lucid dreamer, Liv is used to waking nightmares–but they’re getting worse. Parasites have infested Liv’s dreams and are eating her alive. Seriously. Or, so says Grim, Liv’s childhood dream-character playmate and a self-professed demi-god of dreams. (Or maybe he’s lying. Grim loves a good lie.)

By day, Liv must sort through her difficult past, her overbearing family, her pushy best-friend, and Liv’s new, much-too-young, boyfriend, Milo. By night, Liv battles the Creeps, with Grim’s questionable help, as well as herself–because Liv might be the biggest dream monster of all.

Creature of Dreams is a funny, scary, roller-coaster about love, friendship, getting older, facing the monsters, and waking up. As well as growing up. Finally. (Maybe.)

Review:
Wow, I really liked this…a lot…and I almost didn’t read it. You learn early on that the main character, Liv, was a victim of childhood sexual abuse. I almost put the book down right then. Not because I have any trigger issues (10 years as a Child Abuse & Neglect Investigator, I’m a bit inured on that point), but because I’ve become increasingly frustrated over the last few years about how many female characters are written with a history of sexual victimisation. (I’d almost estimate it to be along the line of 2/3 the female Romance leads I’ve encounter recently.)

The problem is that it’s often only there as basic titillation, to give a male character something to heal or as a past traumatic enough to harden the character and strengthen her (often through anger). And this just pisses me off, especially that last point. As if a woman can’t just be naturally resilient. Male characters don’t have to survive some horrible trauma to become emotionally tough, why do all female characters? Gah, pisses me off. So, as a hot point issue for me, I almost just didn’t bother with the book. I’m so glad I did.

The history of childhood rape is pretty much the fulcrum on which the plot pivots. So, there is no escaping it. To be honest, I did begin to feel that, considering this is a 29-year-old trauma, Liv was a little overly focused on it. But she has come to a point in her life that she’s made a conscious decision to face her past, so dealing with it is kind of the point.

I basically tolerated that aspect of the plot, while falling in love with the characters…all of them. I cannot express how much I appreciated seeing a 41-year-old woman presented as single, without children, confident (with the exception of the issues being addressed), sexy and sexual. She was none of the things Western Culture says women ‘past their prime’ should be and I wanted to hoop and holler for her.

Then there was Pippa. Pippa, who cheerfully said all of my secret shameful thoughts on motherhood as if they were common and normal. As if the blessed ‘Myth of Motherhood’ really could be eked around without diminishing a woman. I need a Pippa in my life.

Milo…sweet, gentle, broken Milo. I don’t think it would be possible to not love Milo. And I could easily relate to his guilt and secondary trauma from witnessing atrocities. (I’m going to call it PTSD and Survivor Guilt.) Similarly, if Milo is a balm to the senses, Grim is the quintessential bad boy (even if there is nothing boy-like about him.) I enjoyed them both very much.

Books involving dreams can easily slip into too-weird-to-read territory and I’m always a little wary of picking one up, but after a rocky start, this was a complete success for me.

Book Review of The Gentleman and the Rogue, by Summer Devon & Bonnie Dee

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The Gentleman and the RogueI bought a copy of The Gentleman and the Rogue, by Summer Devon & Bonnie Dee.

Description from Goodreads:
Lad from the streets meets lord of the manor. Both men’s lives will be changed forever.

When Sir Alan Watleigh goes searching for sex, he never imagines the street rat he brings home for one last bit of pleasure in his darkest hour will be the man who hauls him back from the edge of the grave. Despite his harsh life in the slums of London, Jem is a bright, cheerful young man. He’s also witty, irreverent, glib, and makes Alan laugh–a rare occasion since war time trauma and the death of his family have made the man a ghost of his former self.

A single night of meaningless sex turns into an offer of permanent employment. Jem acts as Alan’s valet, but offers him so much more than polished boots and starched cravats. Just as the men are adjusting to their new living arrangement, news about a former soldier under his command sends Sir Watleigh and Jem on the road to save a child in danger.

The journey brings them closer together as they travel from lust toward love. They rescue the girl from the clutches of an insane surgeon, who is as interested in experimenting on the vulnerable human spirit as he is on physical bodies. Alan realizes his love for Jem when he nearly loses him, but is Alan’s love strong enough to risk society discovering the truth about him? And is he strong enough to finally accept his sexual nature?

Review:
I have to admit that I’ve not historically been a fan of historical novels, though I’ve read a couple recently and I’m starting to convert. Further, I’ve never enjoyed stories based on the cliché ‘hooker with the golden heart’ trope, especially when that golden heart is healing some emotionally damaged wealthy patron, as it so often is in romance. So, this book had a lot going against it from the beginning. But I found that I enjoyed it despite containing elements I’ve traditionally dismissed as unpalatable.

The reason, I think, is that it never tried to play Jem off as a prostitute in name only. Think Julia Roberts in Pretty woman and how she was a prostitute, but shown to be so new as to be almost unspoilt. She’s a whore in name, but not practice. The authors didn’t do that here. They never tried to play Jem off as anything other than what he was and as such I was much more able to tolerate him than I would have been otherwise. Similarly, Alan wasn’t made out to be some pure soul who’d done something other than hire a man for sex. That something more developed is bonus, but the story made no attempt to dismiss Jem’s profession. I liked that.

The authors also never hid Jem’s motives behind pure good heartedness. He had ulterior motives in the beginning and by acknowledging them, the reader was more able to watch and believe as they changed to genuine affection for Alan (and visa versa).

I did think that the bad guy’s tendency to monologue his ill intentions was a little cheesy, I had a little trouble with some of the cant used (possibly because I’ve read so few historical novels) and I might have like a more obvious declaration of love from Alan, but all in all, I rather enjoyed the book.