The DNF Round-Up

My pile of ARCs is beyond out of control and if there is any hope of me seeing the light at the end of the tunnel I have given myself permission to start DNF'ing (Do Not Finish) more.  I DNF for a variety of reasons - which this round-up will ably illustrate.  Here are three titles I recently gave up on, but hey - maybe they'll work for you!

Snowbound Surprise for the Billionaire by Michelle Douglas was downloaded via Netgalley because 1) Harlequin Romance 2) Christmas read and 3) Boss/Secretary trope.  Unfortunately I ended up DNF'ing it around 30% out of disinterest.

It starts out promising, with the hero buying the heroine's family farm but stipulating that he wants her to stay on to help jump start his business plan.  She's desperate to "escape" and have a life of her own.  When the hero overhears this he proposes she travel with him to Munich on business.  His PA cannot travel with him for some reason that I forget now and heroine would serve as his temp.

This lost steam for me with the, what I felt was, odd transition from the farm to being the hero's PA on a business trip.  After that it descends into a travelogue of Munich, the heroine being a wide-eyed tourist, happy to finally escape the Australian countryside.  Nothing terribly "bad" about this per se - I was just bored by it.  It didn't grab me.  It was totally shaping up to be an "average" C read for me, and I was ready to move on.

If you know absolutely nothing about baseball there's probably a good story in A League of Her Own by Karen Rock - an author I've really enjoyed in the past.  Heroine was collegiate softball star and now coaches.  Her Daddy owns a minor league, Triple-A baseball team.  Daddy has heart attack, heroine convinces him to give her the vacant head coaching job on the team.  Hero is a washed up pitcher, now sober, who was signed by Daddy and hopes his second chance jump-starts his baseball career.

The baseball stuff here is wronger than wrong.  Triple-A is the top minor league stop before you go to the big leagues.  Minor league owners do NOT sign players.  General Managers and the front office with the "big clubs" are responsible for filling out rosters (through free agency, the draft, Rule 5 picks etc.) in the entire farm system (Single, Double and Triple A teams).  Their job, their desire, is to pick talented players who will eventually become major league baseball players.  Your farm system, at all levels, is there to serve the major league club.  Hence no minor league owner anywhere would sign a player.  A major league owner might have some sway, but not a piddly minor league owner.  It's not plausible.

Minor league owners do NOT hire coaches!  Again, GMs and the front office at the "big clubs" do that.  The major league club has drafted all of these talented players, they're not leaving those players in the hands of a some coach that the minor league owner hired who could be a total wahoo.  And while I'm at it?  There is more than one coach on any minor league team.  Using the Toledo Mud Hens as an example (Detroit's Triple-A team) you have a pitching coach, hitting coach and yes - then your manager (head coach).  Hell, when the Tigers hired new pitching coaches for both Triple A and Single A this off-season the announcement came from Dave Dombrowski's office (Tigers GM).  And while I'm at it - even though Daddy is looking to sell his Minor League team because they are losing money?  He'd have a hard time doing it without input from the major league club, who he would be under contractual obligation to.  Major League Baseball teams enter into agreements with these minor league affiliates.  Teams can even change affiliation over time (the Syracuse Chiefs, now Washington Nationals Triple A was once the Triple A team for the Toronto Blue Jays, one example) - but again, these are contractual agreements.  Like stadium deals.  You're going to be "our team" through 2017, for example.  Now if the major league club decided to not renew the contract?  Then yes, Daddy could sell the team.  But he'd also have no players - since the abandoning major league club would move their rosters to whatever city they set up camp in next. 

Then the heroine gets the job as manager and starts thinking of ways to increase attendance.  Uh, no.  NOT YOUR JOB CUPCAKE!!  Your job is to manage.  To coach.  To get the players ready for a possible call-up to the big club.  The job of PR?  The job of getting butts in the seat?  Minor league teams, especially as high up as Triple A (!!!) have front office staffs for that.  Minor league promotional departments are legendary in fact.  Best family fun a little amount of money can buy in a lot of cities.

So yeah, the baseball stuff is jacked up.  But if you know nothing about baseball and don't rightly care?  Heroine is desperate for Daddy's approval, the hero is a recovering alcoholic, and if you combine both of the chips they have on their shoulders you've got Texas.  I've liked Rock's books in the past but this one was a non-starter for me. Because, you know, baseball. 

You can all wake up now.  This concludes Inside Baseball Hour at the Bat Cave.

Texas Mail Order Bride by Linda Broday is the first book in a trilogy and doesn't release until January 6.  For that reason I hesitated blogging about it, but figure my quibbles are minor enough that they won't turn off every reader of this blog.  Heroine is a mail order bride from the South (uh, somewhere - I can't remember) who steps off the train only to realize her groom (the hero) has no idea she even existed.  He didn't write her all those letters, some impostor did - and his two brothers have assured him it wasn't them.  She has nothing to go home to so convinces the crotchety general store owner to give her a job.  Hero continues to be flummoxed by her very arrival and presence even though they were barely on page together for the first couple of chapters.  Naturally, you have the two sequel-baitin' brothers hanging around and it appears someone is out to settle a score with the hero over Lord knows what because I didn't get that far.

I DNF'ed this one because of writing style.  I've read Broday in the past and liked those books to varying degrees.  But here?  Ever start a book and feel like you should "know" the characters already?  Like you're jumping into book #3 in a series without having read the preceding two?  Yeah, that.  And since this is book one in a trilogy?  It was really unsettling.  There's just....no early character development.  I was like, "I don't know these people so why should I care about them?"  What I did read led me to believe this is going to be a "fun" historical western of the light, bantering variety - and honestly?  Those are harder sells for me.  I like dark, gritty, holy crap are we gonna die when winter hits?! historical westerns.  But if you like fun westerns?  Read a sample, see if it's your thing.  The older I get the pickier I get with westerns, mostly because I want what I want - and so very few western romance authors seem to be working in "gritty" milieus these days. 

Maggie Osborne could come out of retirement any day now.  Seriously.

Don't feel too sorry for me though.  In between the DNFs I found several quality reads, including two books that will make my eventual Best of 2014 list.  We'll see how many more of these style posts I do in the future.  One of my resolutions for 2015 is to put books on shorter leashes.  Otherwise, I'll never get through the pile. 

Digital Reviews: A Tale Of Two Cosmos

In a bid to fool myself into thinking I'm making progress on the ARC Pile Of Doom currently living on my Kindle I thought I'd knock out two quick novellas - both by authors who have consistently worked well for me over the years.  Turns out I was in for a few surprises.

Burned by Sarah Morgan is a sequel to the well-received Ripped and this time the younger sister is in the driver's seat.  Rosie Miller is hardcore into martial arts and is a personal trainer at a London gym.  She shares an apartment with her sister and loves her job.  Her personal life however?  Yeah, she's out to dinner with her latest boyfriend who is unceremoniously dumping her prior to dessert.

I stared at him, wondering whether to kill him now or wait until after dessert.  It was chocolate brownie, my favourite, so I decided to wait.  I wasn't hungry, but no woman ate chocolate because she was hungry.

As if the dumping weren't humiliating enough, sitting behind her at the next table is none other than Hunter Black.  Sexy as sin, the guy who broke her heart to the point of obliteration, Hunter Black.  And now he's there to witness her getting dumped.  Grand.  But wait, there's more!  Turns out Hunter has just purchased the gym where she works.  You know, the job that she loves.  He's her new boss.  Seriously, shoot her now.

Much like Ripped this was "fun erotic romance."  The perfect afternoon pick-me-up.  The perfect antidote when you're tired of wallowing in angst.  That being said?  Without getting into too much pyschobabble and spilling my personal history all over this blog - there were aspects of this story that hit a little close to an "emotional home" for me.  Hunter decimated Rosie and for that reason I wanted more of his blood on the page.  As in I wanted a grovel that was the equivalent of what he put her through years before.  She was young, she was desperately in love, and she was emotionally vulnerable.  I wanted Hunter to pay for that.  And he does - um, somewhat.  I just wanted more.  Still, it's a good solid read and I liked it a lot.  I just have, you know, baggage.

Grade = B-

Let me count the ways I love Megan Hart's books.  So it breaks my heart that Crossing the Line didn't work for me at all.  And I mean, really - at all.

Caite Fox works for a PR firm and one of her bosses is Jamison Wolfe.  Uptight, seriously wound, Jamison Wolfe.  Normally she works with the other partner, but said other partner has had complications arise with her pregnancy and is now out of the office indefinitely on bed rest.  Which means Caite and Jamison working together.  A tricky business since she's hot to trot for him and he doesn't seem to think much of her.  He doesn't seem to trust her very much, or find her capable in handling their new clients, a roster of reality show stars that find more trouble than the Jersey Shore kids ever did.

My problems with this story arise immediately with Caite and don't let up.  It's the way she talks to her Jamison.  The way she acts around him.  HE. IS. HER. BOSS.  She's all flirty and smart-alecky and.....

HE. IS. HER. BOSS.

Given the cut-throat, high stress atmosphere that PR work can entail, her behavior towards him smacked of unprofessional to say the least.  If this had been the real world she would have been reprimanded.  Or, you know, fired.  I suspect the author was going for "light" and "fun" - and it is that.....I guess.  But something about the interactions between the two main characters rubbed me wrong.  I didn't like her and I just didn't care about him one way or the other.

Now at only 80 pages, I should have probably just finished this.  But see first paragraph about ARC Pile Of Doom.  When I hit the 50% mark and I realized that I just didn't care what happened next?  Yeah, I was done.  Hart is capable of delivering shorter works that I enjoy (see this year's Every Part of You serial) but this one was a miss for me.

Grade = DNF

Audiobook Round-Up: Cats and Cops

My daily commute has been a bit of a trial lately so I thought it was high-time I got back into the swing of things with audiobooks.  It's better than listening to terrible DJs on the radio who play the three same songs over and over again.  Plus if I keep track of what I listen to?  It pads my yearly reading totals and I don't look like so much of a slacker.  It's win-win people!  Here's what I've listened to lately:

The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye is a book that has intrigued since an ARC landed on my desk back at The Old Job.  And naturally, since romance novels take up a huge chunk of my time, I never got around to it.  I was at a library recently for a meeting and saw it in their audiobook section and viola!

This is a historical mystery set in 1845 New York City and follows Timothy Wilde, a bartender saving up money to marry the girl of his dreams.  Until his little corner of the City literally goes up in smoke taking not only his job, but his money with him.  His brother is a cog in the political machine and gets him a position with the new formed police department.  A job Timothy has no interest in, mostly because he'd be beholden to his brother and politics (which he loathes).  But he ends up taking to it like a duck to water, and finds himself playing detective when a young Irish girl, in a blood-soaked shift, literally runs into him on the street.

This had excellent period detail, although it's what I would classify as an "ugly history" book.  There's nothing pretty about this, but then we're talking New York City in the mid-19th century.  Pretty was hard to come by.  A huge chunk of the story revolves around the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant sentiment at the time, and without going into too much politicking of my own - I think this would make an excellent book club read when you juxtapose 19th century anti-Irish, anti-Catholic sentiment against - well, what we're seeing in the United States today....and I'll just leave it at that.

That said, this is a Bad Things Happens To Kids book (two words: Child. Prostitutes.) and with the historical details comes period language (largely slang).  I know how I am, and I think this would have been a "hard read" for me - but on audio it was excellent (I'd rather see Shakespeare preformed than read it ::shudder::).  Steven Boyer was a wonderful narrator, I thought he handled the accents well, and it kept me glued to my car seat....as it were.  Highly recommended.

Grade = B+

The Cat Who Could Read Backwards by Lilian Jackson Braun is the first in a series and was originally published in 1966 - and boy does that show!  I loved this series as a teen and kept reading each new installment as an adult even though they devolved into saccharine messes featuring Stepford-like characters who lacked a sense of irony.  What can I say?  Nostalgia can be a killer.

Anyhow, revisiting this first book reminds me that once upon a time there was a little bite to this cozy series, namely Jim Qwilleran's a recovering alcoholic and his journalism career is in the toilet.  Where this series doesn't hold up is, naturally, with technology and anytime when the cost of things (oh, like rent) are mentioned.  But the really glaring instance of Oh How Times Have Changed comes in the form of a secondary character (and possible murder suspect) who is the most stereotypical depiction of a lesbian ever put to paper.  Seriously, the woman's name is "Butchy."  No, I'm not making that up.  Which reminds me of the one big quibble I always had with this series.  Braun was crap for writing female characters.  They're either obnoxious, offensive, or waif-like sparrows who need protecting from The Big Bad World.

I would still recommend this for anybody interested in the history of the cozy mystery sub genre, especially in regards to the US market.  Yeah, yeah - Agatha Christie.  But the cozy market as we know it today in the US (magical baking knitting cats that solve crimes!) can directly be led back to Braun.  Anybody not interested in genre history?  Meh.  Still, it was fun to revisit for me and I'll probably listen to more in the series.  Because, you know, nostalgia.

Final Grade = C

Afraid To Die by Lisa Jackson is the fourth in a series that I impulsive-grabbed off a library shelf because I was desperate to avoid DJ chatter until some of my holds came in.  I got through the first two CDs (out of 10) and called it a day.

The first strike against this book was the narration.  When it was descriptive passages or internal monologues I was fine.  Natalie Ross tended to be overly dramatic for my tastes - but it was still OK.  Until the dialogue portions, and then it was eye-rollingly awful.  Male voices were just....bad.  Also accents, especially Detective Alvarez's, were completely fluid.  

I might have kept up with the book though if the story had caught my attention - which it didn't.  Chalk it up to reading too much category romance, but filler drives me crazy and this story had a ton of it.  Do I care about the police station's Secret Santa exchange that both Alvarez and Pescoli are dreading?  Do I care about the secretary who is such a Little Miss Mary Sunshine that whenever she opens her mouth she barfs up stereotypical Christmas cheer?  Do I care that Pescoli's kids are terrible human beings that I want to reach through the car speakers and strangle?

The answer would be no.  To all of that.  If it doesn't pertain to the whack-job serial killer and/or catching said whack-job?  I.  DON'T.  CARE.  Where's my red pen when I need it?

Also how Alvarez reunites with a long-lost lover strains at the seams.

Nothing was happening that I liked, so back I went to inane DJ chatter.

Final Grade = DNF

Mini-Reviews: Mystery & Suspense Round-Up

I used to be a full-time mystery/suspense reader until I discovered the romance genre in my early twenties and sold my soul to Harlequin.  However, thanks to a new release from the only cozy series I still read, plus my library's upcoming annual literary event (guess who is moderating one of the mystery panels this year?) - means I've spent a good chunk of January tripping over fictional dead bodies.  Here's the rundown:

Follow Her Home by Steph Cha is a debut novel set in Los Angeles and casts a directionless twenty-something Korean American woman, Juniper Song, in the PI role.  One of her best friends is worried that his father is having an affair with a much younger woman who works at his office, and since the last time Daddy had an affair Mommy almost succeeded in killing herself?  He asks Juniper to snoop around.  Naturally, havoc ensues.

This was a pretty solid debut.  I loved that our protagonist was obsessed with Philip Marlowe and still haunted by a tragedy that pertains to her younger sister.  I also thought the author had interesting things to say about the fetishization (is that a word?) of young Asian women.  The suspense thread could have been a little tighter in spots and this is one of those Bad Things Happen To Good Secondary Characters books, so that was kind of a downer.  I've been waffling on my grade, but probably a B-.  The author has another book featuring Juniper slated for an August release and I'm curious to read it.

Yesterday's Echo by Matt Coyle is another debut and one that I highly enjoyed.  Hero was a cop when his wife was found murdered.  He was the prime suspect, but the DA couldn't make it stick - so Rick leaves the force and moves back to his hometown of La Jolla, California to work at a friend's restaurant.  That's where he meets the femme fatale character, a woman who has a bunch of hired goons looking for her.  If you can get past the set-up (given his past I thought Rick's quick and easy trust of the femme fatale strained), this is a great suspense novel.  It twists and turns and kept me guessing all the way up until the end.  Again it's another Bad Things Happen To Good Secondary Characters book, but between the suspense and the great SoCal setting?  I highly recommend it.  Oh, and at the time of this blog post writing?  It's only a $1.99 on Kindle.  My grade is a B+.

Killing Cupid by Laura Levine is the latest in her Jaine Austen (no relation) series about a freelance writer who keeps stumbling over dead bodies.  This go-around Jaine takes a job writing copy for Joy Amoroso, who claims to run an upscale matchmaking service.  Naturally Joy is pure evil, someone kills her, and since their working relationship was not all champagne and roses, the cops start snooping around Jaine.  This means Jaine starts doing her own snooping and uncovers a whole host of suspects.  Levine used to be a sitcom writer and her books read like it in both good, and bad, ways.  The stories move along at a great clip, there's a lot of humor, and she writes very capable mysteries with enough suspects to keep the reader guessing.  On the downside?  Sometimes that humor can be a tad on the broad side - which it was in this book thanks to a scene involving squirrels (yes, squirrels).  Still, it delivered exactly what I wanted, it was amusing, and the mystery was solid.  Levine is also one of the very few cozy writers who hasn't fallen down the Magical Baking Cupcake Knitting Cats hole and for that reason I think all cozy fans need to be reading her books.  A solid B.

Dating Dead Men by Harley Jane Kozak is the first in a four-book series and was, I'm sorry to say, a hot mess for me.  Our heroine, Wollie Shelley, designs greeting cards and runs a Hallmark-like store.  Then her schizophrenic brother calls from the mental hospital claiming to have witnessed a murder.  When she goes to check up on him, she finds a dead body in the middle of the road, and gets "kidnapped" by a man she only knows as "Doc" who has a pet ferret in his coat pocket.  She doesn't call the police and even after "Doc" lets her go - she continues to help him even though he tells her nothing and the mob is somehow involved.  Oh, and did I mention Wollie is going out with 40 guys in 60 days as part of a pop psychologist's "research" project?  I got 120 pages into the book and just couldn't take it anymore.  There was nothing I liked here, and I mean nothing.  I skimmed my way through the rest of the book, skipping chunks of pages along the way.  Humor is one thing, cozy is another, and I'll even read zany - but when the characters don't behave like rational adults?  I'm out.  Hey, I don't read Janet Evanovich anymore either - so there you go.  My grade is a Big Fat DNF.

Anatomy Of A DNF

It's the rare author that writes nothing but winners.  For one thing, authors are human and for another, readers are nut-jobs (and I mean that in the best possible way).  For every one of my favorite authors, I can think of at least one book that didn't work for me, personally.

I requested Thunder On The Plains by Rosanne Bittner from Netgalley.  This book was originally published in 1992, and Sourcebooks reissued it last month.  I read, reviewed, and really enjoyed another Bittner that Sourcebooks reissued earlier this year so naturally I was game to try this one.  After 130 pages, I finally decided to throw in the towel.

This book tells the story of Sunny Landers, a young, vibrant, gorgeous, young woman who is the apple of her Daddy's eye.  Bo Landers is All Rich And Powerful, and is currently gunning to get a railroad built linking the eastern and western half of the United States.

Maybe you've heard of it?  That little thing called the Transcontinental Railroad?

Anyhoodle, Daddy brings Sunny and one of his sons out west to see if the railroad is a feasible idea.  They need a scout, so hire Colt Travis, who is half-Cherokee and half-white.

A couple of things I tend to really like about Bittner's westerns is that she paints the landscape very well.  She doesn't sugarcoat the reality that living in the west would be a dangerous proposition.  She also does well with "outsider heroes."  Guys like Colt.  Also a good chunk of her backlist was written during an era when historical romance was pretty much the same thing as historical saga.  This particular book clocks in at over 500 pages, making it a unicorn in today's romance marketplace.

So why did I DNF it?  Well, contrary to popular opinion by those who are ignorant about the genre, romance has evolved over the years.  What was "in vogue" 20 years ago has either gone out of fashion or is totally repugnant to today's readers.  In the case of Thunder On The Plains, it's more of a matter of out of fashion.  Originally published in 1992, the story suffers from one of the more Mary Sue-ish heroines I've come across in sometime.  Sunny is the sort of character that sets my teeth on edge.  She's literally perfect.  She's charming, beautiful, graceful, yada yada yada.  Also, even though she's like 15 at the start of the story, she's also "smart" and has a head for business.  Her brothers think Daddy is insane, but Sunny is so devoted to him that she just KNOWS the railroad idea is super gee-whiz fantastic.  In turn Daddy dotes on Sunny to the point of creepiness.  He brings her out west, which is honestly a pretty dang dangerous place to bring a 15-year-old genteel girl, because he can't bare to leave her in Chicago while he's scoping out the feasibility of this railroad idea.  It's because he loved her mother, who died in childbirth, soooooo much....

Whatever dude, it just comes off as creepy.

Naturally Colt and Sunny get tingly around each other, but this being a Rosanne Bittner book, readers should know the path to happy ever after isn't cut and dry.  Sunny goes back to Chicago with Daddy, Colt stays out west and eventually marries.  What boggled my mind was that Colt literally meets his wife, marries her, has a kidlet and then that marriage is dissolved, in like one chapter!  Then there's this big war scene with Colt riding against the Pawnee (revenge dontcha know) that takes place entirely off-page!

It was like the author wanted to include more information about all of this extra stuff, but even in 1992 maybe her publisher was gun shy about a 700 page romance novel (pure speculation on my part).

Ultimately, that's the rub.  It felt like the author wanted to do more, and didn't (for whatever reason).  This leads to quite a bit of "telling" instead of "showing."  That, coupled with a heroine who is such a paragon of virtue that I wanted to bean her upside the head?  Who knows, maybe if I had stuck with it Sunny would have grown more three-dimensional and actually grown some faults - but I just....couldn't take it anymore.

Bittner is a good, solid writer and I'm happy to hear that Sourcebooks is releasing something new from her in 2013 (yippee!).  But yeah, this one just didn't do it for me.  I'll still go on recommending books like Wildest Dreams and Outlaw Hearts to readers, but this one?  Probably not so much....

Final Grade = DNF

Side note: I know I probably have a smattering of western fans that read this blog.  Anyone read this book back in the day (or recently)?  I'd love to hear your opinion in the comments!

Lust In The Library? Yeah, Not So Much.

Just look at that cover, and while we're at it?  How about that title?  Short skirt, cute shoes, excellent hosiery = librarians being naughty.  It's probably a given since I'm currently employed in the most stereotyped profession on the planet that I like to read books, especially erotica, where stereotypes are turned on their head.

So yeah, getting a copy of Lust in the Library by Amelia Fayer just about made my month.  It also didn't hurt matters that Avon sent it to me all special like, with a very flattering promo letter, soft blankie, and a box of chocolates.

My reading so far this year, outside of an older Molly O'Keefe Super, Conor's Way and Rosanne Bitter has been really lackluster.  I had just DNF'ed another book by an author I normally enjoy, when I started debating on what to try next.  I wasn't going to pick this one up.  My good angel was whispering in my ear, "You're not in the mood for erotica right now," but damn it all, my bad angel whispered, "Oh Wendy, it's only a novella - it'll take you like 30 minutes to get through - just read it already."

Next time I see that bad angel I'm punching her in the face.

This novella is essentially two connected short stories following the adventures of Sara (an assistant special collections academic librarian) and Veronica (a student who works at the library).  Things open up with Sara's story as her and Veronica are spying on this hunky academic researcher type that Sara has the hots for but is too brain-dead to do anything about.

The first problem arises when, speculating about Mr. Academic Hunky, Veronica gets the brilliant idea to look up his borrowing history.  OK, besides being a major breach of privacy - I can't think of any library outside of Podunk Middle Of Nowhere, let alone a Frackin' University (!) that keeps track of this.  You want to know why?  Because librarians are the last, and these days only, defenders of your right to privacy.  And most of us don't keep these records because what we don't have we can't share - even when a subpoena is thrown in our faces.  You know what we do keep track of?  What you currently have checked out, right now, this minute, and anything you didn't return on time.  When there is money attached, we keep track.  Otherwise?  Yeah, we don't.  We just don't. 

The irony being that a lot of people DO want us to keep track because apparently keeping a reading log is just so darn taxing!  Ugh, whatever.  Another rant entirely.

So yeah, Veronica tells Sara where to find Mr. Hunky in the library after her fingers do the walking and she prints out (::headdesk, headdesk, headdesk::) his borrowing history (which they shouldn't be keeping track of in the first place!  ARGHHHHH!!!!!).  Sara goes to find him.  They start swapping spit.  He asks her out.  She gets flustered when some students almost catch them groping each other, she then shushes him (::headdesk::) and runs away.  He shows up later that day to take her out and hand to God, this is what she says:

"That was....um...a mistake, I think, and I'm just a librarian and I don't think this can go anywhere and that was just crazy this morning, but lovely, but crazy....."

Yeah.  I'm done.  I'm out.  There's just....ugh!  "Just a librarian?!?!"  Seriously?  "JUST A LIBRARIAN?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?"  Like him being an academic is such hot shit?  Really?  Really?!?! 

Breathe Wendy.  Breathe.  That's a good girl.  Here, have this shot of whiskey......

But, I thought, why not try to read the second story.  The one featuring Veronica.  Yeah, I got so far as the part where she's working on her thesis to "get into the library science graduate program" and stopped dead.

People, librarians have master's degrees.  To "get into" a library science program you do not need to write a thesis.  You need to have an undergraduate degree in something (seriously, it can be anything from botany to English - it doesn't matter!) and then you need to apply for graduate school, which entails filling out some paperwork and waiting.  Depending on your undergraduate GPA (grade point average) you may or may not have to take the GRE (Graduate Record Examination). 

You do not have to write a thesis.

You know why someone writes a thesis?  Because they are clearly nuts and want to get a PhD.

That was as far as I got.  I just....couldn't take it anymore.  Coupled with the whole looking up Mr. Hunky's borrowing records.....look, I'm not expecting total library drudgery here.  I'm obviously willing to suspend disbelief and roll with fantasy if I'm reading erotica that takes place in a library (Sure it's a bit different in academia, but most days are golden for me when all the men that walk through the front door have heard of that mysterious substance called "soap" and actually used some....that day, not last month sometime).

Seriously, talk to a librarian.  Most of us are shockingly helpful and more than happy to answer questions.  I even understand that not all librarians are as awesome as I am.  That some librarians are mean and that evolution just hasn't gotten to weeding them out yet.  But hot damn, do you know how many awesome librarians there are on the Internet?  Twitter?  Blogs?  Facebook?  An obscene amount of them, more than willing to answer e-mails from strangers asking questions about librarianship.  And for that matter, do you know how many former and current librarians write romance and/or erotic-stuff?  Dude, are you a member of a writer's group?  A local chapter of RWA?  If there ain't a librarian in your group, sure as shootin' one of them does know a librarian and will pass along some contact information.

So yeah, done.  The sad thing is, some of you are probably wondering how the sex was, and I can't even tell you that because I couldn't force myself to get that far.  Honestly, I have no idea.  I was so annoyed by the lack of accurate library world-building that I wanted to punch someone and/or something.

But, to be fair, this may work for someone with no direct knowledge of librarianship, and far be it from me to say someone cannot enjoy something even though it irritated the hell out of me (Rule #1 in Collection Management: There Is An Audience For Everything.  Examples: Danielle Steel and Nicholas Sparks /end snark).  In which case, for the sake of giving you another opinion on the matter (because one should never just rely on the Wendy's Frothing At The Mouth Again side of the story) I point you to my fellow SoCalBlogger gal pal Tracy - who reviewed this novella a few weeks back and did get far enough to know how the sex is.


Final Grade = DNF