Tag Archives: romance

Book Review of To See the Sun, by Kelly Jensen

I received a copy of Kelly Jensen‘s To See the Sun through Netgalley.

Description from Goodreads:
Life can be harsh and lonely in the outer colonies, but miner-turned-farmer Abraham Bauer is living his dream, cultivating crops that will one day turn the unforgiving world of Alkirak into paradise. He wants more, though. A companion—someone quiet like him. Someone to share his days, his bed, and his heart.

Gael Sonnen has never seen the sky, let alone the sun. He’s spent his whole life locked in the undercity beneath Zhemosen, running from one desperate situation to another. For a chance to get out, he’ll do just about anything—even travel to the far end of the galaxy as a mail-order husband. But no plan of Gael’s has ever gone smoothly, and his new start on Alkirak is no exception. Things go wrong from the moment he steps off the shuttle.

Although Gael arrives with unexpected complications, Abraham is prepared to make their relationship work—until Gael’s past catches up with them, threatening Abraham’s livelihood, the freedom Gael gave everything for, and the love neither man ever hoped to find.

Review:
I thought this was really lovely. There wasn’t a lot of action, most of the tension being either in someone’s fear something might happen or in the two men tiptoeing around getting to know one another, but it was nice. Jensen’s writing is beautiful and there was a happy ending for all, except the baddies (who predominantly remained faceless).

I did side-eye the gendered representation of the men though. I don’t mean to suggest all men have to be giant paragons of masculinity, but in the face of jokes about Gael being purchased as Bram’s “wife,” the fact that he’s the physically smaller of the two and excelled at cooking, cleaning and sewing (and genre-wise, came with a kid and was the one that needed to be rescued) almost made him feel uncomfortably misgendered.

I suspect that Jensen gave him some of these same qualities in an attempt to show that a man can still be a man even if he’s not ringing each coded ‘male’ bell. Which just goes to show the thin line authors walk, trying to avoid being stereotypical in one direction only to have someone say they’re being stereotypical in another.

At least Jensen was scrupulous about consent, both spoken and unspoken, even when one partner didn’t initially understand that the other was protecting him in this regard (or that he needed it). She broke convention in not only allowing the smaller man to ‘top,’ but even addressing the ridiculous trope that it’s always the bigger man that does.

I also appreciate that both men were a little older, Bram being almost 50 and Gael 29. Plus, Bram was just one of the most lovable leads I’ve read in a while. So were Geal and Aavi, but Bram stole the show for me. All in all, I really loved this. I don’t hand out a lot of 5-stars, but To See the Sun deserves one.

Winter of the Gods

Book Review of Winter of the Gods (Olympus Bound #2), by Jordanna Max Brodsky

I won a copy of Jordanna Max Brodsky‘s Winter of the Gods through Goodreads. I reviewed book one, The Immortals, last year (almost exactly a year ago, actually).

Description:
Manhattan has many secrets. Some are older than the city itself.

Winter in New York: snow falls, lights twinkle, and a very disgruntled Selene DiSilva prowls the streets looking for prey.

But when a dead body is discovered sprawled atop Wall Street’s iconic Charging Bull statue, it’s clear the NYPD can’t solve the murder without help. The murder isn’t just the work of another homicidal cult — this time, someone’s sacrificing the gods themselves.

While raising fundamental questions about the very existence of the gods, Selene must hunt down the perpetrators, tracking a conspiracy that will test the bonds of loyalty and love.

Review:
I liked this one better than the first one, though I still wouldn’t say I loved it. I liked Selene and her brothers, as well as Theo. But it grated on me that goddesses other that Artemis were always spoken of dismissively (as so and so’s wife or mother, etc) and none were in the book. Why do even books with heroines as the main characters still never have women in them?

As in the first book, I didn’t feel the romance fit. I couldn’t see what Theo was attracted to in a woman who was so consistently rude to him. Plus, I disliked how fast he always was to leap on her if she was at all acceptive to sex. I don’t mean to strip her of her agency and suggest he should refuse to have sex with her just because she’s been a virgin for 3,000 years. But this is something she’s maintained because it’s been important to her, so, I thought a little more gravitas and a little less jumping on a bitch in heat would have been nice Because of this, I actually really appreciated the ending, as sad as it was. I hope Brodsky doesn’t pull back on it in the next book.

The mystery is fairly obvious. I figured out who the villain was quite early, the first time they saw page time, as a matter of fact. But it’s still interesting to see how it all plays out. All in all, not bad, but not my bag either.

Book Review of Happy Hour at Casa Dracula, by Marta Acosta

I picked up a copy of Marta Acosta‘s Happy Hour at Casa Dracula when it was free on Amazon (mostly because I’d earlier bought paperback of the third book in the series, The Bride of Casa Dracula, not realizing it was part of a series.)

Description from Goodreads:
Latina Ivy League grad Milagro de Los Santos can’t find her place in the world or a man to go with it. Then one night, at a book party for her pretentious ex-boyfriend, she meets an oddly attractive man. After she is bitten while kissing him, she falls ill and is squirreled away to his family’s estate to recover. Vampires don’t exist in this day and age — or do they? As Milagro falls for a fabulously inappropriate man, she finds herself caught between a family who has accepted her as one of their own and a shady organization that refuses to let the undead live and love in peace.

Review:
There were several things to appreciate about this book. There was a decent amount of humor. There was a heroine with a backbone. There was diversity; the main character is Mexican-American for example. There was appreciation for voluptuous bodies, without shaming people who are thin. But there were also things that annoyed me. It’s written in first person, which I hate. Names are dropped into almost every line of dialogue, and it makes the writing feel more amateurish than it deserved. The attraction between the heroine and hero is instant and feels unexplained, as I didn’t at all feel any spark. Previous relationships are unintentionally ambiguous. There’s cheating, more than once on a partner. The book calls out Latina stereotypes and then turns around and uses them. Nothing of note happened for most of the middle (a lot of shopping) and then the whole last quarter felt contrived and too convenient. And, despite her Ivy League education, when a solution is needed, it’s her sex appeal, not her brains she falls back on to resolve the problem. I have the rest of the series and I liked this one enough read it. But I didn’t love it enough to jump right into book two. I’ll step away for a while first.