Tag Archives: romance

Review of Beauty Like the Night, by Joanna Bourne

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A friend sent me a copy of Beauty Like the Night, by Joanna Bourne. [You know who you are and thank you.] As a bonus, here’s a picture of my pup Moto, four months old.

Description from Goodreads:
Severine de Cabrillac, orphan of the French revolution and sometime British intelligence agent, has tried to leave spying behind her. Now she devotes herself to investigating crimes in London and finding justice for the wrongly accused.

Raoul Deverney, an enigmatic half-Spaniard with enough secrets to earn even a spy’s respect, is at her door demanding help. She’s the only one who can find the killer of his long-estranged wife and rescue her missing fourteen-year-old daughter.

Severine reluctantly agrees to aid him, even though she knows the growing attraction between them makes it more than unwise. Their desperate search for the girl unleashes treason and murder. . . and offers a last chance for two strong, wounded people to find love.

Reivew:
I believe this is my first Joanna Bourne novel. I generally avoid historical novels of this ilk, especially if they have a romantic component. I so often can’t stomach the gender politics in them. But this one came to me along with a friend’s recommendation. So, I gave it a try and was pleasantly surprised. It’s the sort of book in which the hero respectfully things like this:

One did not, he suspected, write poems to Severine’s eyebrows. One slew dragons for her, or stood slightly to the left, holding her spare lance and buckler, while she did the slaying.

This is a male/female relationship I can appreciate. What’s more, the sort of man who will allow a woman that power is the sort I want to read about, and the woman who inspires such thoughts in a heroine I’m interested in getting to know.

I did find the language too purple and flowery at times, especially around the romance/sex. And as much as I loved the sarcasm and repartee, it did go overboard at times, making everyone sound quite similar. All in all, however, if all of Bourne’s work is in this vein, I’m up for a lot more.

The Glamour Thieves

Book Review of The Glamour Thieves (Blue Unicorn Book 1), by Don Allmon

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I received a copy of Don Allmon’s Glamour Thieves from Netgalley.

Description from Goodreads:
JT is an orc on the way up. He’s got his own boutique robotics shop, high-end clientele, and deep-pocketed investors. He’s even mentoring an orc teen who reminds him a bit too much of himself back in the day. 

Then Austin shows up, and the elf’s got the same hard body and silver tongue as he did two years ago when they used to be friends and might have been more. He’s also got a stolen car to bribe JT to saying yes to one last scheme: stealing the virtual intelligence called Blue Unicorn. 

Soon JT’s up to his tusks in trouble, and it ain’t just zombies and Chinese triads threatening to tear his new life apart. Austin wants a second chance with JT — this time as more than just a friend—and even the Blue Unicorn is trying to play matchmaker.

Review:
This I truly enjoyed. My only complaint was that there is a lot of history and I felt like I was reading a second book, instead of a first. It left some important information too vague. Like, why have there only been orcs for a generation and a half? What, exactly, was the Awakening? But beyond that, which admittedly is a big complaint, I loved the characters and the world. I liked the writing style and the author’s voice. And the epilogue tempted me into wanting book 2 right now. So, it’s an all around winner for me.

The Druid Next Door

Book Review of The Druid Next Door (Fae Out of Water #2), by E.J. Russell

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I received a copy of E. J. Russell‘s The Druid Next Door through Netgalley. I read and reviewed the first book in the series, Cutie and the Beast, last month.

Description from Goodreads:
Professor Bryce MacLeod has devoted his entire life to environmentalism. But how effective can he be in saving the planet when he can’t even get his surly neighbor to separate his recycling? 

Former Queen’s Enforcer Mal Kendrick doesn’t think his life could get any worse: he’s been exiled from Faerie with a cursed and useless right hand. When he’s not dodging random fae assassins in the Outer World, he’s going toe-to-toe with his tree-hugging neighbor. And when he discovers that the tree hugger is really a druid, he’s certain the gods have it in for him—after all, there’s always a catch with druids. Then he’s magically shackled to the man and expected to instruct him in Supernatural 101. 

All right, now things couldn’t possibly get worse. 

Until a mysterious stranger offers a drunken Mal the chance to gain back all he’s lost—for a price. After Mal accepts, he discovers the real catch: an ancient secret that will change his and Bryce’s life forever. 

Ah, what the hells. Odds are they won’t survive the week anyway. 

Review:
This was cute in much the same way as book one of the series, but this one I had a hard time liking. In fact, I didn’t. There is a real dominance and submission theme in it that I never got comfortable with. I considered it coerced. Period. Russell tried to dress it up as something else, but I couldn’t get comfortable with the power dynamic. I considered it essentially slavery and was basically disgusted with it. I totally see that Russell was going for something else, but I never got there. Plus, it required about a 180 degree shift in one character’s personality that I didn’t at all feel believable and the second character I didn’t feel I got to know well enough to judge, but it didn’t feel right for him either. So, fail for me.

Outside of that issue, there is no romance (just coerced lust, IMO). The quest/mystery was amusing and I enjoyed that aspect of the book. But it was the smaller portion, to be sure. The writing and editing were fine, as far as I was concerned. I’m sure others will like it. I just couldn’t.