Tag Archives: romance

Love and Legend

Book Review of Love and Legend, by Vanessa Lennox

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I picked up a copy of Vaessa Lennox‘s Love and Legend when it was free on Amazon.

Description from Goodreads:
Jules Flannery makes everyone feel better. It’s a gift. But this particular gift just may get her killed.

The day of the funeral, Jules is assaulted and loses Uncle Charles’ urn to the thief. Her Uncle’s odd last request offers Jules an unexpected new beginning. Jules, a sweet but accident-prone art teacher, and Bingham, a terse and potentially dangerous Navy SEAL, must unravel, and ultimately fulfill, their part in an ancient prophecy. Villains are out to orchestrate their own nefarious interpretation. The two lovers face Gallic and English thugs, coax a troubled boy out of his gloom, and discover that they have a strange and powerful connection. Their mission: find an Arthurian artifact kings have coveted for 1500 years. The trick is to not get killed in the process.

Love and Legend breathes contemporary life, dangerous action, cookie baking, and steamy love scenes into the myths surrounding King Arthur’s era.

Review:
Sigh. This was not a winner for me. It started off well….Or rather, the writing started out really staccato and stiff, but got better (except for the persistent over-use of names in dialogue)…But the plot started out well and quickly got worse. The action, by which I kind of mean the plot, doesn’t really start until about 80% into the book. Everything up to that point is two people flirting badly and Jules being overly perky and too mommsy, cute and perfect. Then, once the h/H get together, it’s just an endless barrage of “I love yous,” “you’re perfects” and sex/kissing. Which might be ok if this was erotica. But all the sex is fade to black, so its just sexual inferences on repeat. God, I got so tired of it. Though I did have to appreciate that Jules was comfortable with her own sexuality and there was no angst or shame about her pursuing sex and the author didn’t make her a virgin. That’s refreshing.

Then, in the last 20 or so percent of the book, when the action picks up everything is solved in a matter of paragraphs. Each challenge barely has time to develop before it’s overcome, so there is no tension in it. Even the big, final climax happens off page!

There are a number of plot holes, most of them coming down to solving problems too easily. Example, a man who doesn’t technically have custody of his nephew arranges his wife-to-be to adopt the nephew from the state in less than a day, somehow without the state representative knowing. Or how about just how he has the nephew in the first place? As a 10 year veteran of children’s services, let me tell you, if you snatch a child from a foster parent the police are coming for you IMMEDIATELY. They are putting you in jail. They aren’t sending snooty employees out to check on you and the child. And they aren’t allowing you to arrange his adoption by someone else. They SURE aren’t letting you do that without background and household checks, interviews, a waiting period and extensive paperwork that has to go through a dozen people, all of whom let it sit on their desk for weeks before sending it on. This is just one example, but the book frequently glazes over things that should take time and effort as if it doesn’t

And can I just address the ‘everyone wants to impregnate Jules’ aspect of this book? Why does every man want her so badly? We’re told they do and we’re certainly shown it. (It’s just one more aspect of her too perfect to be believed persona.) But why? It’s not really explained or shown as pertinent to the events of the plot. And why does her whole purpose in that plot need to be about being desired by men and bearing a child? WHY? And that’s before I get to why does Bingham know more about her and her body and abilities than she does? Why does she need a man to explain it to her? That drives me crazy in a female character! He can understand her body but she can’t? Do better authors. Women aren’t that stupid and men aren’t that all-knowing.

This is one of those books I keep trying to come up for a concise name for. We all know a Mary Sue character when we see one (and Jules is definitely one). We all recognize a Marty Stu (Bingham is pretty close). But what is it called when the whole book has an innocent, too perfect to be tolerated feel to it? It’s so stagnatingly sweet it makes your teeth hurt. People hug and kiss each other constantly and compliment each other so often it’s distracting. What do you call that? Whatever it is, this book is it. And I’ve not found a single such book I truly enjoy because it always strikes me as amateurish.

Outside the names in dialogue, the writings not too bad, some of it’s genuinely funny (though some of the attempts at humor miss the mark) and I love that cover. But I’m afraid I can’t overlook all the aspects of the book that grated on me.

Dragon Blue

Book Review of Dragon Blue: A Lie That’s True (The Dragonlords of Xandakar #1), by Macy Babineaux

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I picked up a copy of Dragon Blue, by Macy Babineaux at Amazon. It was free and still was at the time of posting.

Description from Goodreads:
Miranda Betts works as a waitress in a roadside diner in Oklahoma. Her life will change when a mysterious female customer leaves an ornate necklace in lieu of paying her check. Later, alone in her trailer, she tries on the necklace and is transported to a strange land full of people who can shift into other creatures, including fearsome dragons. And everyone thinks she’s someone she’s not. 

Corban Everfrost leads the clan of blue dragons and rules the Icelands after the mysterious disappearance of his father. While investigating the appearance of strange interlopers from another world, his sister informs him that he is to be wed to the daughter of the Wildfire clan who has been in exile on Earth since she was an infant. Corban wants nothing to do with a new bride or the Wildfires. But when he sees the dark, fiery woman brought to his world via a magic necklace, she stirs something within him. 

At first, Miranda thinks Corban is a jerk. He thinks she’s an outcast from a clan he despises. But soon they will learn each other’s secrets, and as they learn to love each other their relationship may be the key to saving all of Xandakar from dark forces from another world. 

Review:
WARNING: This review has spoilers and swearing.

OK, look, I knew when I picked this book up that it wasn’t going to be grand literature. I knew I was in for a little pulpy, erotic fiction/romance. But I just can’t with this shit. I JUST CAN’T.

The romance…how to say this….fuck it, it isn’t. This is in no way a romance. The writing isn’t bad. The editing wasn’t abysmal. The pacing is rushed, but in this sort of book it often is. Just like the fact that the plot is so paper thin I could see through it is not unusual. All of that I was willing to accept as par for the course.

But that this is some author’s idea of romance…Fuck you. No it isn’t. (And there’s no where near enough sex to make it erotica either.) Here’s the spoiler: she pointlessly shows up naked (because of course she does, women always seem to have to be put in an embarrassing and uncertain sexual position for no conceivable reason), he insults her and walks away. He then calls his sex slave (the book calls her consort, but she doesn’t seem to have the option of saying no when he calls her for sex and she appears to live in a sheer dress with no characteristics but sex, so I’m going with sex slave) and makes sure she sucks him off with her ass in the air toward the door, such that he smugly comes just as Miranda enters the room to ensure she knows her place and that she isn’t needed or wanted. (Said sex slave is then just dismissed with his cum still dripping off her lips, no consideration for any desire she might or might not have.) He and Miranda exchange a few insults and then she too is dismissed. The next afternoon she approaches him and flirts for some unfathomable reason. Why would she do that? He kisses her and shoves his finger in her vagina and suddenly THEY ARE IN LOVE. People that is literally their entire ‘romance.’ And I’m using literally appropriately here, not hyperbolically. There is not a single pleasant word between them. There is no concession on his part that he’s been an ass and should apologize to her. There is no point at which either opinion of the other has reason to change. NOTHING.

That’s not romance, that’s abuse dresses up as romance. So, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off for trying to pass it off as love. I thought there was nothing worse than insta-love, but I was wrong. Love that’s presented as having ‘grown’ between two people when it very obviously has been planted in such barren ash and hasn’t, is in fact worse. Who knew? Fuck it, again, I just can’t with that shit. I’m all ragey.

Then there is the rest of the book, what little there is. Every obstacle is overcome with a deus ex machina solution. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Miranda makes allies of her enemies with nothing more than a hug and easy coincidental solutions present themselves left and right. Bah!

I did appreciate the lesbian (or bi) side character and the heroine’s apparent bisexual leanings, even if it’s obvious she’s never going to pursue them. Having them there and legitimized was nice. I also appreciated that Miranda was given her own sexual agency and not made out to be a slut for having sex for pleasure. (Though this was compromised a little by her calling the sex slave a slut. Guess she can’t give others the same courtesy she receives.)

The only thing I found interesting was the epilogue setting up book two. But I won’t be reading it because I can just imagine all the ways the author could find to ruin it.