Night Angels

Book Review of Night Angels, by Jessie M.

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Night AngelsI grabbed Night Angels, by Jessie M. from the Amazon free list. What can I say? I’m a sucker for a stacked man.

Description from Goodreads:
Kyle, the twin without… 

Until a chance meeting in a wood sets of a chain of events that throw him out of his comfort zone. The easy rhythm of his titled life is lost forever as he discovers a new world and a very new him. An animal version. It shocks and arouses him in equal measure. 

And her… the one who did this to him… he is drawn inexplicably…

He will be tested and pushed to his limits and beyond…

Review:
This was alright, I guess. Nothing stood out and dazzled me, but I didn’t hate it either. It just didn’t feel like it knew what kind of book it wanted to be. Did it want to be a gritty, dark werewolf tale, a light-hearted HEA, baby on the way romance, a pseudo fairytale (complete with Prince Charming and kissed frog references…not to mention the Big Bad Wolf), or a piece of heady erotica? It appears to have tried to be all of the above and fell pretty flat as a result. It would have been much stronger, I think, if it had been a little more selective.

It starts out with a fairly pointless affair and some middling sex. I wouldn’t really mind if it tied into the plot in any way, but it didn’t. So I was left feeling like the actual story didn’t start until about 15% in, and the plot that the reader thought the book was going to be about was dropped almost completely. As was the whole “twin without” aspect, as set up in the blurb and first couple pages. It played almost no part in the book. It was all just a little jarring.

Then, once the reader crosses that divide they’re faced with a hero who was rightly angry about his predicament but able to forgive his assailant in mere moments. Wait, what? I was left behind it moved so fast. The insta-love kinda had the same effect on me. As did the mysteriously experienced virgin who was up for going all night with no discomfort and a shockingly expansive sexual repertoire for a first-timer. Guess she learns fast, right?

Thrown in amongst all of this was a disturbing number of cuddles, I love yous, gentle kisses, stroke the bellies, have your baby, etc. All of the happy domesticity just felt out of place amongst the bloody werewolf battles. Or maybe the bloody battles felt out of place with the domestic bliss. Can’t really be sure which way that should go.

The writing itself wasn’t bad, and I don’t remember many editorial foul ups. So, it’s a perfectly readable book. And the right reader just might love it. I thought it felt a bit disconjointed for my liking. I do have to commend it, however, on being classy enough to mostly avoid the whole sexually abused heroine trope even when provided the opportunity. I only mention this because it’s become so common in recent publications and it was nice to see a heroine not have to play that particular victim role. Again, not a bad book, just didn’t do it for me.

Book Review of The Complete Rylie Cruz Series, by Rose Pressey

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The Complete Rylie Cruz Series

I grabbed Rose Pressey‘s first Rylie Cruz novel, How to Date a Werewolf, off the free KDP list. When I saw the compilation on sale for $0.99, I went ahead and bought it so I could finish out the series.
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Description from Goodreads:

How to Date a Werewolf
Romance can be a hairy business–especially when you’re a werewolf.

As the owner of Get a Mate Dating Service, Rylie is more than happy to step in and lend a hand to lonely lycanthropic hearts all over town. No matter how hopeless Rylie might be in finding her own soul mate, she has a knack for helping others find theirs.

Convinced that she is stuck with a family curse, Rylie is positive she will never find her true love. But when drool-worthy Jack Chandler shows up at her door, Rylie wonders if maybe the curse is finally broken.

But Rylie’s life is about to become complicated courtesy of the after-dark crowd. When she begins receiving strange notes and harassment from a jilted client, events careen out of control.

Jack knows she’s more hassle than he can handle. What he doesn’t know is whether she’s seriously in trouble . . . or simply delusional.

How to Date a Vampire
Dating a vampire doesn’t have to suck.

Rylie Cruz is the owner of Get a Mate dating service. Her specialty is matching up paranormal folks. Thinking that a curse placed on her is finally broken, Rylie hopes that her love life is headed in the right direction.

Not so fast.

Rylie has finally convinced her hunky psychiatrist boyfriend, Jack Chandler, that
she isn’t crazy and is actually a werewolf. But after a little scuffle with temperamental vampires, Rylie must now convince Jack that he may be a part of the paranormal club.

How to Date a Demon
A Match Made in Hell

Rylie Cruz loves playing matchmaker. She even does it full-time at her matchmaking service, Get a Mate. Since she’s a werewolf, she feels that gives her expertise when dealing with the paranormal crowd.

When Rylie’s best friend, Jennifer Matthews, asks her to set her up on a date, Rylie is hesitant. Jennifer hasn’t had luck in the dating department lately.

But when a good-lucking man shows up looking for a date, Rylie thinks Jennifer might be his perfect match. The date turns to hell though when Jennifer displays outrageous mood swings and a new shocking fashion sense.

When Jennifer disappears, Rylie fears the worst. Things get even stranger when a mysterious demon hunter shows up looking for Jennifer. He claims he wants to help Rylie find her friend. Rylie’s boyfriend, Jack Chandler, is trying to save Rylie from the demon hunter, but she isn’t sure she needs to be saved.

Rylie has to find her friend before it’s too late and Jennifer’s swooped off for a staycation in forever damnation.

Reviews:

How to Date a WerewolfHow to Date a Werewolf
A cute, clean read that’s basically based on one woman’s attempt to find love amidst a series of embarrassing mishaps. I mostly enjoyed it, but I felt cheated by the way none of the things that made Rylie (and by extension me) mad were resolved. She literally went from ‘I’m sprouting fur I’m so angry’ to ‘it’s ok I don’t mind’ in 2.5 seconds flat, again and again. I mean her best friend seriously stabbed her in the back, repeatedly, and she instantly forgave her without so much as an apology for any of it. Now, maybe that makes Rylie saint-like, but it left me feeling like I’d missed a few pages and some important emotional closure.

I also thought that the werewolves’ forms weren’t very consistent. There were more than a few moments when I wondered about the physiology presented. Examples included werewolves in full wolf form able to pull a gun on someone, throw a bottle or carry a plate. Even if he was smarter than most dogs, I’m fairly sure my pooch’s lack of finger dexterity…or fingers would prohibit him from being able to do these things. So how could a wolf? All in all however, a fun little fluffy distraction.

How to Date a VampireHow to Date a Vampire
Another cute, clean read in the Rylie Cruz series. Like the first book, How to Date a Werewolf, this one is almost completely made up of half-truths, misinterpretations, and withheld information. I actually get incredibly frustrated with this type of plot device. I tire of it easily and this one started to feel really quite slap stick after a while. Why can no one just say “come with me, please, because…” Nope, it all has to be veiled threats and attempted intimidations which, of course, Rylie resists. Who wouldn’t? Similarly, Rylie is constantly being stalked or followed and never once does she just stop, turn around, and say, “What the hell do you want?” Of course, if such straightforward tactics were used the story would be 15 pages long, so maybe I do understand it after all.

Though I mostly enjoyed the story, I did feel that it ended abruptly. It wasn’t a cliff-hanger, but there were quite a few open threads and the ending felt clipped. I actually flipped back and forwards to ensure I hadn’t missed a couple pages. Lastly, I notice quite a few more editing mistakes in this one than the first. It was still perfectly readable, but they were noticeable. Despite that, it was a fun little bit of light entertainment.

How to Date a DemonHow to Date a Demon
Like the first two Rylie Cruz books, I’ll give this one three stars. But honestly it’s barely hanging in there with a low three, maybe even a high two. It might be because I read the compilation and therefore all three books back to back, but this one began to feel VERY formulaic. So much so that I’d swear Ms. Pressey cut and pasted passages from one book to another! Despite that, I still found disruptive inconsistencies in the story. For example, Jack is referred to as a half-vampire at the beginning of this book, but at the end of book two Quentin turned him from a half-vamp to a full-vamp to save his life. A big deal was kinda made of it. Then at the end of this book he’s referred to as a vampire. So, um, which is it? Or the way, in this book, Rylie’s curse is said to affect the “first daughter born to each man in the Cruz family,” but in the previous books it was the “youngest daughter.” So again, which is it? This kind of thing yanks me right out of a story. As do the typos.

As for the story itself, it was ok. I’m not calling it horrible or anything. But I was just so tired of it all. It began to remind me of the opening credits of a Benny Hill episode, Rylie randomly running from one place to another, usually with someone following her. (Just like in the first two books.) Meh. Then I reached the end and a cheesy cackling baddie who claimed, “You walked right into my trap.” Really? If that’s the case she should have realistically done that on about page 8 and saved me 240 pages of aimlessness. Plus, he/she was defeated really, REALLY easily. Meh.

This is a cute clean series, with a little romance in the first two (not so much in this one). But this one fell down for me. Again, meh. It’s the best I can say for it.

Up for discussion: Short Story vs. Novella vs. Novellette, vs Novel

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Books

OK, like so many of my Up For Discussion posts, this one is a bit of a rant. It came around for two reasons.

  1.  I’m not a big fan of the modern novella. I can’t really quibble with a writing format that includes Of Mice and Men, Animal Farm and A Christmas Carol, but I’ve yet to find many modern equivalents that compare. Especially with recent authors’ tendency to end on cliffhangers and serialise. (I could write a rant on that alone.)
  2. Someone finally provided me with an obvious, technical and documented difference between the three.

I may have known the following during my Freshman Creative Writing course, but I’d fully forgotten. So, while I have been consistently annoyed at all the 20 page novellas hitting my review request box or the Amazon free list, I couldn’t quite pinpoint what I was disliking so very, very much about them. In my mind they were wrong—plainly wrong, even if I couldn’t say exactly why.

For simple shelving purposes, I generally considered anything more than 100 pages a novel and anything less a short story, but I had a vague notion that there were more detailed classifications and that surely some of the ridiculously short stories I was encountering couldn’t be novellas or even novelettes. 

Well, thanks to Goodreads member Serendi, who had the forethought of checking some of the better known literary award rules (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and Hugos), I decided to do a little digging too and found a basic consensus. While there is no official, universally accepted, numerical definition of the difference between short stories, novellas, novelettes, and novels there does seem to be a fairly firm consensus in the literary world.

, from Shiraz University posted an interesting slideshow titled What is a Short Story on academia.edu if you’re interested. But it can basically be broken down like this:

  • Novel, over ~40,000 words
  • Novella, ~17,500 to ~40,000 words
  • Novelette, ~7,500 to ~17,500 words
  • Short story, under ~7,500 words.
  • Flash Fiction, under ~1,000

Taking your average 250 words to the page, that comes to approximately 160 for a novel, 70-159 for a novella, 30-69 for a novelette, and everything below that as a short story (or flash fiction if it’s really short). Again, there is some flex in there; Carsson-Newman College for example, would set the limit between novel and novella at 50,000 instead of 40,000. But I found more similarities than differences as I searched.

My point is that there are fairly set parameters. There are generally accepted definitions to these terms. Authors SHOULD NOT be arbitrarily naming their pieces of work a novella or novelette when it is patently a short story. It’s cheap. It’s cheating. It comes across as a blatant attempt to give your work more gravitas than it deserves.

Now, I’m not trying to disparage short stories. It takes a lot of talent to squeeze a plot and meaningfulness into ~7,500 words. Some might argue that it’s harder. So there’s no shame in being a short story writer. Sure, you can’t call yourself a “novelist,” and that does have such a nice ring to it. It feels heady and heavy. While short storyist doesn’t quite feel the same. But heck, my own book is roughly 250 pages long and I still don’t know if I’d have the balls to call myself a novelist!

I’m just gonna cut loose and be a little snippy here, because what I think when a 15 page ‘novella’ hits my review request list (or I encounter it elsewhere) is that the author is either a faker who wants his/her work to seem more important than it is or doesn’t know the basics of their own art. Neither reflects well on the author.

I don’t write short stories. I don’t write novellas. I’ve never written a novelette or tried my hand at flash fiction. The stories in my head flow for pages and pages and pages. But I look at a 10 page ‘novella’ and sneer. Is this really the response anyone could be seeking from your readers? So I would really, really appreciate it if authors took the time to ensure they labeled their less-than-novel-length writing appropriately. 

Rant over.