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Partners

Book Review of Partners, by T. L. Stowe

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PartnersI picked up a copy of Partners, by T. L. Stowe from the Amazon free list. At the time of posting it was still free.

Description from Goodreads:
When two gay policemen, both desiring each other, finally discover the other is also gay, sparks fly, long time erotic desires are fulfilled, and questions of unrequited love begin to hang in the air. Will a heart be broken or will lust blossom into mutual love?

Review:
I’m afraid this review is all about the numbers. I didn’t plan it that way, but it turned out that way.

I picked this book up because I recently wrote a blog post about how much it annoys me when authors put tags in book titles on Amazon. I chose this book as an illustration of this, because it went one step farther. On Amazon it’s titled as such: Gay Romance: Partners: Gay Romance by T. L. Stowe (Author), Gay Fiction (Foreword). Seriously, did they think I’d miss that this is a book about gay men? And if I did, did they think I’d miss the first “Gay Romance” or the second? Better throw it in as an author too. And just in case I did somehow miss it, they use the word gay a further 13 times in the two-paragraph book description. The whole blurb is only 134 words long, so a full 10% of it is the word gay! I love m/m, but surely I’m not alone in thinking that’s overkill. Just how stupid do the authors think their readers are? I was astounded.

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But then, I thought it might be parody and as parody I thought it might be a little funny. It reminded me a bit of Daffyd Thomas (Little Britton) who, despite being questionably gay, repeatedly insists that he’s the only gay in village, while remaining oblivious to the fact that everyone around him is having copious amounts of gay sex (unlike him).

So, I decided I’d best just read the book. Well, it’s not a parody. It’s a serious novel, yes, about gay men. And other than having two points that irritated me, it could have been an ok read…except the numbers. The author’s tendency to overuse words, as noticed in the blurb, haunted me throughout the book. And because I read on a Kindle I can show you just how much. These words stood out, not just because they were used so often, but because they were also unnecessary. I get it; these men are cops and thus, a bit dude-bro like. But the use of direct addresses tacked onto the end of sentences was vastly overplayed.

They called each-other buddy 28 times. And it felt like soooo many more. As soon as they kissed the first time the baby & babes stared. They used those endearments 40 times. But it was man that really stood out. It was used 245 flipping times in this book! Granted, some of them are obviously used as a standard noun, as in ‘The man turned around.’ But the vast majority were used as a direct addresses, as in the last comment of the book, ‘Me too man. Me too.’ And they’re all just like that, with no comma. I would really like to know what a me too man is. You can probably imagine what the combined effect of all these extra words was. Could someone maybe lend me something to pry my eyes from the back of my skull?

With a decent editor to address the repeat words, typos (come on, there’s one in the first line of the book, the fourth freakin’ word), missing words and grammar mistakes (commas, people, commas) this might have been pretty good. It’s a very sweet, friends to lovers, first time gay, maybe GFY book…except the wife.

Now, this is a personal niggle but I have never figured out why so many MM books have to create some false competition between gay men and straight women. I didn’t like that the author went to such lengths to highlight how much better sex with Alex was for Rick than with his wife. Prefer one to the other, but don’t make it about debasing the woman just because you have a preference. Similarly, I disliked that she was made out to be such a witch because she was always suspecting Rick of sleeping with other women. Fair enough, he wasn’t and that would get old, but he was fucking a man, so it’s kind of difficult to claim the moral high ground here and this dichotomy was never addressed. Really, the wife was hardly even considered as anything other than an obstacle to them moving in together and this wasn’t fair to her. Such selfish callousness (ostensibly excused because she’s supposed to be a b/witch) made it hard for me to respect the men or their HEA.

Lastly, Alex is gay. Rick is attracted to women and men, but by the end of the book he’s calling himself gay instead of bi (his attraction to women doesn’t seem to have died or anything) and this felt a bit like…is there such a thing as gay washing, like white washing in race relations, where everything but the dominant categories are glossed over and downplayed? I don’t know. While everyone is obviously entitled to their own sense of self-identity, it didn’t feel quite right to me.

All in all, a sweet enough story but, objectively speaking, it’s a pretty rough draft.

conduit

Book Review of Conduit, by Angie Martin

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ConduitAuthor, Angie Martin sent me an e-copy of her novel, Conduit. I’ve also seen it on the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
How do you hide from a killer when he’s in your mind?

Emily Monroe conceals her psychic gift from the world, but her abilities are much too strong to keep hidden from an equally gifted killer. A savvy private investigator, she discreetly uses her psychic prowess to solve cases. When the police ask her to assist on a new case, she learns the killer they seek is not only psychic, but is targeting her.

The killer wants more than to invade her mind; he wants her. Believing they are destined for each other, he uses his victims as conduits to communicate with her, and she hears their screams while they are tortured. She opens her minds to help the victims, but it gives him a portal that he uses to lure her to him. With the killer taking over her mind, she must somehow stop him before she becomes his next victim.

Review:
I have to admit that this book just didn’t work for me. It might for some readers, to each their own.

I have been trying to come up with the right word to describe this (and writing like it), because I encounter it a lot. Maybe someone knows and can help me out. We all recognize a Mary Sue and Gary Stu (sometime Marty Stu), but what do you call it when the whole book–plot, narrations, characters, etc all have a Mary Sue feel to them. Pat, maybe?

I actually have a litmus test for this, even if I don’t have a title for it. My test is hugging. But what could hugging have to do with anything, you might ask? Well, it has been my experience, in reading several hundred books a year for several years that when you encounter a book in which there is lots and lots of hugging the author is using this small action as a weak demonstration that the MC is an open, good person, makes meaningful connections with people, etc. Similarly, it shows how comfortable those people are with him/her (usually her). Now, I’m a bit of a hugger in real life, coming from the touchy-feely hippy family that I did. But I don’t hug my BFF, my ex-boyfriend, my friend’s uncle, his cop partner and the nurse who cares for my mother in the nursing home. More importantly, all those people don’t come up and hug me.

But it’s not just about hugging. The hugging is almost always accompanied by a certain innocent narrative tone, in which small things (like a hug) are made big deals of. It’s like a pearl-clad, mary jane wearing, pastel sporting teenager swooning over their first kiss while the married 40-year-old, with the kinky nightlife that’s forced to listen to it thinks, ‘God, it really just isn’t that big a thing.’ Any romance in these sorts of books are always heavily descriptive, possibly purple, and almost all tell as the narration beats the reader over the head with how awe-inspiring one person or the other is, how meaningful the small unimpressive events are, and how in looooooove they are.

The fact that this book falls within this pat(?) grouping is a guarantee that I’m not likely to enjoy it, as I almost never enjoy these books. But this book also annoyed me in other respects. I hated that as soon as Emily got together with Jake she let him start making all her decision. I didn’t like their insta-love and, even worse, their insta-relationship, which was only compounded by their insistence on waiting to have sex until their relationship was more established. I don’t know, ‘I’m ready to let you rule my life’ and ‘I’m ready to die for you’ seems pretty established to me.

I didn’t like that the author gave Emily a rich, high-power, nice guy ex, who was still madly in love with her, just to show she was a desirable commodity. I didn’t like that Emily had all this important information that she never shared with anyone. I didn’t like that she pulled the cliché, TSTL, ‘I’ll go off and save the day by myself and require rescue’ shtick a bagazillion other TSTL heroines have pulled. I didn’t like that the villain was the same old, seen it a 100 times, man obsessed with a woman he wants to own for no discernible reason. I didn’t like that people made un-followable intuitive leaps of logic that lead them to plot points. And I didn’t like the deus ex machina-like way the characters were easily able to learn just what they needed at just the right time to save the day. Too easy!

The one thing that saved this book for me was Leo and his wife. I adored their relationship. It really is a stand alone book. The editing seemed pretty clean, I don’t remember many cock-ups and to the right reader this might be a hit.

Ascension

Book Review of Ascension (Shadow and Light Trilogy, #1), by Felicity Heaton

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AscensionI downloaded a copy of Felicity Heaton‘s Ascension from the Amazon free list.

Description from Goodreads:
A witch on the verge of achieving phenomenal power, Lealandra must turn to her half-breed demon ex-lover Taig for protection from the dark force that is after her and also from her own magic.

With her Counter-Balance dead and her coven against her, Taig’s blood and power is the only thing that can help her control her magic and survive the ascension and gain the strength to defeat her enemy.

Old feelings come flooding back as Taig allows her into his world and Lealandra finds herself fighting not only for survival but to win his broken heart again and heal the pain in their past. Can he forgive her for walking out on him all those years ago and will he ever believe her when she tells him that he’s not a monster but the man that she loves? 

Review:
Eh, wish I’d left this one on the shelf. While the idea was an interesting one, the actual execution is a mess and frankly Lealandra was the kind of heroine I always want to slap and the gender relations are so outdated and disgusting I almost couldn’t get past them.

Let me start with some examples of Lealandra’s behavior. She returns to her ex when she needs his protection. She then kisses him, but gets pissed off when he basically says, “I’ll only help you if you have sex with me” (which also makes him a big dick, even after Lea’s internal monologue says he’s only saying it to get back at her for leaving) but spends the whole book giving him very obvious mixed signals (because she really loves him and wants to have sex with him, despite refusing). She gets jealous of him speaking to another woman, so she throws herself into obvious danger and gets herself drugged and almost assaulted, requiring rescue. She get’s angry at the bad guy and then charges in to fight him, so unprepared she literally didn’t even put clothes on (yes, naked). Again, needs rescuing while thinking, “I wish I’d listened to Taig.” She allows Taig to constantly talk about possessing her, owning her, releasing custody of her, taking care of her, protecting, etc. She lived with a man for six years who didn’t “allow” her to do something she needed. Her impending ascension means that she isn’t able to control her own body or sexuality. (God, that is such a common theme in romance books and it always pisses me off.) She’s 32 bloody years old, but acts and is treated like a child.

Basically, Lea’s character, which we’re told is strong can, be summed up in this disgusting quote

Usually she was strong, but around him, she felt as though she didn’t need to be. She could be the woman she was inside, without fear of him thinking that she was weak. He would protect her.

Because apparently she can’t simultaneously be the woman inside and strong? Because obviously no true woman would want to be strong when there’s a man available. Blerg.

And this is all highlighted by the fact that she basically doesn’t do anything but cower and lust over Taig for the whole book. Even defeating the villain, who we’re told is weaker than her (but male) requires this:

It was his power that allowed her to do this, that would see her end this fight and become the victor. It was his strength all along that had helped her, through both the ascension and also through what lay ahead. She would always need him and his power, his support and guidance, but most of all his love and devotion.

Blerg. Because god forbid she both have her own strength, power and skill and be a woman!

Then there is the actual writing. It could have been ok, a bit purple but readable, if it wasn’t so damned repetitive. We are told the same things over and over and over again. Then those same things are contradicted over and over and over again. Just so we can be told or shown the opposite again. The internal monologues are endless and always focus on sex or the other person’s body, usually when the character is in pain or running/fighting for their life. Sure, his sexy abs are just what I’m thinking about when trying not to die.

The plot is incredibly weak, mostly because there is sooooo much sex, talking about sex, fantasizing about sex, refusing to have sex or, well, sex (most of which was of the hammer and nail variety. He basically just gracelessly pounds her and apparently that’s erotic and gets her off) that there is almost no room left for plot or character development. There is one side character, who gets mentioned repeatedly throughout the book, but isn’t introduced or explained until 80% in. Similarly, there is no build up to the final fight. Suddenly, with almost no explanation, they have a team fighting with them and are in the middle of it.

Very poor. I have no desire to continue the series, thank you very much, even if the hints for book two started getting dropped at about page 10.