Wicked Women Whodunit

Happy Valentine's Day! And just in time, I have more good book news.

I wrapped up Wicked Women Whodunit over the weekend, which is Brava's first foray into mystery fiction. It is by far the most solid anthology I have ever read. Goofy, funny, and not too serious, there wasn't an outright dud in the bunch.

I'm also happy to report that I might at least marginally "get" MaryJanice Davidson now. I really actively disliked her last full-length novel, Derik's Bane, and thought perhaps I would have to add her to the list of authors that others love but I'm just not into. I have to say that her entry in this anthology, aptly titled "Ten Little Idiots", made me a believer out of her short story skills. I'm wondering if perhaps she might be one of those authors that works for me in one format but not another. I feel that way about countless authors who write in different time periods. I might enjoy their historical voice, but their contemporary style leaves me cold - or vice versa.

Also notable was the debut of Amy Garvey, who wrote the sexiest story in the bunch with "Single Dead White Guy." I can't wait to read her full-length debut when it hits the shelves this spring. As always, Jennifer Apodaca continues to amuse. I'm a big fan of her slightly wacky Samantha Shaw mystery series - and the Nancy J. Cohen entry was fun since a reality TV show was the backdrop. Of course, what's not fun about backstabbing?

The spine label on this one is aptly labelled "mystery anthology" but I'm sure countless romance readers will pick it up since it's being published under the steamy Brava banner. While I wouldn't classify any of the stories as straight romances, they still have strong romantic elements and are quite a bit of fun. The mysteries themselves are really light, but given the shorter page count that should be expected. The humor that all the authors add keep the pages turning, even if the mysteries aren't brain-benders.

I'm hoping to finish up another February Harlequin Historical title today, The Unlikely Groom by Wendy Douglas. Definately a book that has gotten better the further along I read. The heroine is a bit prissy for my tastes, which makes no sense because for most of the novel she's been screwed - and not in a good way. She and her brother travel to Alaska, only for her wastrel brother to get shot during a card game. She has no one, and the only person to come to her aid (against his better judgment) is the saloon owning hero. Our heroine is naturally a temperance gal and abhors spirits - but still she takes a housekeeping job at the saloon (because she has no other option) and continues to look down her nose at everyone in town. For a girl with limited options, who stubbornly refuses to travel back to San Francisco, she sure is uppity. But she's starting to come around now - thank goodness.

After that it's back to Harlequins. If I want to reach 100 books read this year I need to get crackin'.

Gift Giving 101

I have the best darn boyfriend in the whole world. Really I do. OK, so he's not perfect. He catagorically refuses to do the dishes. But he buys the best presents. I'm not just talking jewelry here. He really puts some thought into it.

So how can you get yourself a man who buys great gifts? So glad you asked! While there are exceptions to this cardinal rule, here is Miss Wendy's #1 Tip to scoring a man who gives great gifts....

Make sure he has sisters. And/or an overworked mother - take your pick. My man has 3 sisters and an overworked mother, so he's pretty with-it when it comes to understanding the female mind. Oh sure, he still gets flummoxed at times, but generally speaking he's smarter than the average bear.

Anywho, I got my Valentine's Day present early for a couple of reasons:

1. I work until 8PM on that particular day
2. The UPS man delivered my present last night

Let's rundown the last couple of gifts I've gotten:

1. A day trip to a local spa where I was pampered for 8 hours (birthday present)
2. Full English tea service (Christmas present)

This go-around I scored a bathrobe. Yes, only a bathrobe. But it's what I needed and wanted, plus it's uber-bathrobe! It's a chenille/microfiber blend and it's soooo soft. It's also a lovely dark shade of purple/red (the company calls it Merlot), so it won't suffer the fate of my last bathrobe, which was white and looked like something the cat coughed up when I finally got rid of it.

So that means I no longer have to putter around the apartment in my boyfriend's natty navy blue robe. Plus, this one is full length and has massive pockets in it.

Oh how I love that man!

Blog Contest And Dream Men

You mission for today, should you choose to accept it, is to go over to Alyssa's blog and post a comment. Any comment. A lucky comment-leaver could win one of the older Harlequin Temptation titles that she recently picked up at the UBS. All titles are endorsed with Alyssa's stamp of approval.

In other delightful news, I've finally figured out how to post pictures to my blog! Don't mind me, I'm a little slow on the uptake. I'll try to not go too picture crazy - but in the meantime, I might have a hard time controlling myself.

In frightful news, I woke up this morning from a dream about an ex-boyfriend. Thankfully, we had all our clothes on. It was a classic "confrontational dream" where I basically tell him what an ass he is, and how he did me wrong. Gawd, why not write a country song Wendy? I'm not sure what, if anything, this dream was trying to tell me. It was a relationship that ended years ago, and I've been in a wonderful steady relationship with my current beau for 7 years. I worked past all that baggage (really I have!). I mean, I still think "he done me wrong" and I still think he's an ass - but really I don't rock myself to sleep at night, weeping uncontrollably and sticking pins into the private parts of a voodoo doll of his likeness.

How come I always have dreams about ex-boyfriends? I mean, where the hell are Pierce Brosnan, Christian Bale (who I find sexy in a creepy sort of way. I think I've seen American Pyscho one too many times), or Eric Bana. C'mon fellas!



*dreamy sigh*

Fantastic Book Alert!

What are you doing reading my stupid little blog? Don't you know you have to go the bookstore! Any bookstore, take your pick!

I have just read the most fantastic book, and I'm fairly gushing over it. So brace yourself, you'll probably get very sick of me before this is all done.

I have just finished Prairie Wife by Cheryl St. John, a February Harlequin Historical, and it is simply the best book I have read in a long, long time. A true keeper - and it's been damn near forever since I've had one of those. St. John can always be counted on to write an emotional, heart-felt story, and she pulled out all the stops with this one.

Jesse and Amy Shelby had a happy marriage. A true love match, they live in Nebraska and run a way station to serves travelers heading west by stagecoach. Then their 3-year-old son, Tim, dies tragically and everything changes.

Instead of dealing with her grief, Amy shuts down emotionally. She keeps busy with work, and closes herself off to all those around her. She erects barriers so she doesn't have to feel anything, especially pain.

Jesse wants to grieve over their loss. He wants to hold his wife, make love with her, and talk with her. But Amy has distanced herself and Jesse has no idea how to reach her. So when she repeatedly pushes him away, he finds solace in a whiskey bottle.

What I loved about this book is that the author writes with an aching subtlety. She shows you what the characters are going through, and how their coping methods are doing futher damage. She doesn't beat you over the head with the internal struggles, instead showing them during the course of everyday life. When external conflict arrives, the characters begin to realize what a mess their marriage is and that they need to do something in order for it to survive.

I tend to avoid "marriage in trouble" plots in a big way - but I love westerns and I've really enjoyed St. John's work in the past. I'm glad I threw caution to the wind and bought this book over the weekend. I'm even happier that I decided to read it now and didn't leave it languishing in my TBR for eons. It's really a beautiful story. Simply breathtaking.

I'm not a crier when it comes to emtional books (I'll bawl at movies though - I'll admit it) but this story just about damn near ripped my heart out. It's been a long, long, long time since I've read a story this resonant and powerful. Please consider giving it a shot.

And that is our gushing moment for today....

Reviewing 101

I was going to keep my mouth shut - but I feel the twinge of a rant escaping my lips, and while I already rambled over at Alyssa's blog, I thought why not rehash it here over at my vain little corner of cyberspace?

There is currently yet another reviews and reviewers debate going on in romance blog circles. I won't go link crazy here - but Alison Kent has been doing a nice job of keeping up - so why not visit her? Her blog is really cool, so you should be visiting her already.

I've been reviewing since 1999 and it never ceases to amaze me how much romance writers in particular get bent out of shape over bad reviews. I'm not sure if it's a women-shouldn't-trash-other-women thing or what - but there seems to be this opinion that we should all play nice. For what it's worth here is how I feel on the matter:

I have never trashed an author. Never. Oh sure, I've trashed a book - but I always stick to things like the characters acting stupid, the plot being ridiculous and contrivances you could drive a truck through. I never say, "This author wouldn't know how to write if a madman held a gun to her head and threatened to snap the neck of her pet kitten."

And really, what's my one review? The argument that one bad review on some Interent web site will adversely effect sales is just horse hooey. You know how many people never look at reviews? A lot. I see these people every day at the library.

As for qualifications, I can't speak for other reviewers, but here are mine. I've been an avid reader of genre fiction since I picked up my first Nancy Drew. I also am grossly overeducated, am a librarian, and spent the first 5 years of my professional life actively buying, following and breathing all adult fiction. Not just romance.

Of course, I also have my shortcomings. I won't begin to know every single scrap of information about certain time periods. It's the one reason I don't review traditional Regency novels. It's been my experience that readers who love the trad are fairly fanatical about accuracy. I never have been. If someone is called Lord SoAndSo instead of Sir SoAndSo, I really wouldn't notice. Even with my dusty degree in British history stashed in my spare bedroom closet.

My MO tends to be focusing on the characters. I'll buy into just about anything if I love the characters. Historical inaccuracies, plot contrivances, run-on sentences - you name it. If the writer can make me believe in these fictional people, I'll like the story.

On a couple of final notes, I just want to remind authors who b*tch about bad reviews to remember this one fact. Every author gets bad reviews. E-v-e-r-y A-u-t-h-o-r. Hell, even John Steinbeck, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen got bad reviews. That makes for pretty good company in my opinion. No one will ever write the book that is universally loved. I'm fairly certain of that.

Also, a bad review is just one reader's opinion. One. And really, I don't think that my one little review is that important that it will effect the entire reading public. It won't. And frankly, it shouldn't. All I can do is point out why I loved or didn't love a book. It's up to the reader to make his or her final buying and reading decisions.

Also remember that reviewers are very passionate readers. For every book we hate, there are very likely a dozen others we love. Hell, we'll even gush over these books to anybody who will listen. I know I do, to the point where others are like, "Ok Wendy, we get it! You loved this book. Can you shut up now?" But no one ever pays attention to that. They only focus on the bad.

Case in point - LLB read and loved a book last year by Lucy Monroe. Hell, she even devoted a whole column to it. Unless I missed one, I didn't see any postings by authors anywhere on the 'Net saying, "Oh, did you hear about that book that AAR loved?" Instead, the focus continues to stay on "bad reviews" and how all reviewers are obviously morons who can't tell that suchandsuch a book is a true masterpiece. AAR continues to get slammed for posting negative reviews, but they literally have hundreds (if not thousands) of positive reviews listed over there that no one ever mentions. Same goes to for TRR.

Am I defending myself? Well sort of. I know I'm a reviewer, so that makes me the enemy. Even as a sensitive middle child I can live with that. But I like to think that I am fair. I like to think that I can explain my opinions in a clear and concise manner. And I don't like it when I'm accused of something I have never done. I read a product that is put out for mass consumption and offer my opinion of that product. Whether I love it or hate it, it's just my opinion. And as long as I live in a free democracy I will continue to offer my opinion. No one is forced to agree with me or even listen to me.

And that's the beauty of the thing isn't it?

Librarian Whine

Another Saturday and I'm at work.

I always laugh at people who, once they learn I'm a librarian, innocently comment that it must be a nice, quiet job with good hours and low stress.

Ha!

You know how many weekend and evening hours a librarian works? Quite a few. There are 2 nights a week I'm here until 8PM and every other Saturday I'm here from 8AM-5PM. Let me just tell you that really shoots one's weekend all to hell.

But I should stop complaining. I do get a ton of holiday time off (God bless Christopher Columbus, Martin Luther King, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln....) and I never have to work Fridays. Really, it's quite choice.

My boyfriend called me at work earlier to ask me something, and I inquired about "doing someting and/or going somewhere" tonight. His reponse? "Syracuse is playing at 6PM." So while he's hollering at the basketball team, I'll probably be hiding out in the bedroom reading more of Avenging Angel by Justine Dare. I promise to report more thoroughly on it when I'm finished. So far it's been quite good.

And Hell Is Experiencing Mild Flurries

I've been lapsing in my blog posting and for that I apologize. I seem to be suffering from a general malaise that is leaving me lazy and dissatisfied - more so than usual. It's probably just chronic whinniness and I'll get over it.

In reading news, I broke form and did something I haven't done since April 2004. I read a Regency historical. I can faintly hear the gasps coming from the peanut gallery.

I don't really have any outright prejudices against the rise of the Regency historical, I just plain never cared for that time period in British history. It's really that simple. I tend to find the Victorians much more intriguing, mainly because they were such bloody hypocrites. On the surface they were all prim, proper, and buttoned up - but I like to think that behind closed doors they were debaucherous as all get out. I've also always been drawn to mid to late 19th century history because of the rise of industrialization. With that comes sweeping technological and moral changes. I find it all terribly interesting.

So that's why I don't read a lot of traditional Regencies or Regency historicals. I could give a flying fig about Beau Brummel and Prinny. Honestly.

But all that said, I completed Yours Until Dawn by Teresa Medeiros yesterday and enjoyed it quite a bit. I didn't madly love it, like a lot of readers I know - but it was a solid read, scoring a B- rating. My only real quibble was that the heroine morphs towards the end of the story. She's refreshingly forthright in the beginning, not beating around the bush and speaking her mind. Towards the end she begins hedging her bets - and I had a time reconciling the two facets. Will I read another Regency-set book sometime this year? Well I still have several by Kathryn Smith in my TBR - so it could happen.

I'm trying to make a concerted effort these days to read through some books that have been in my TBR for damn near forever. I've found I'm in the mood for mayhem, so I pulled out a romantic suspense novel next - Avenging Angel by Justine Dare. It's been in the ole' TBR for a year now.