Spoiler-y Review: Claim Me, Cowboy

My Kindle is chock full of Maisey Yates. Having enjoyed many of her Harlequin Presents, when she made the move to single title and Harlequin Desire I kept buying.  But she's prolific and I'm a slow reader and here we are.  So I decided it was high time to try one of the Desires and randomly landed on Claim Me, Cowboy because 1) I've had an ARC languishing forever and 2) it just finaled for a RITA, so why not this one? It's smack dab in the middle of the Copper Ridge series, but it stands alone very well and Yates keeps the series-itis to the bare minimum.

The plot is patently absurd, but it tweaks the nose of patently absurd category romance plots that have come before, so I bought it hook, line and sinker. Joshua Grayson is a successful PR guy with a loving family and a big fancy house in Copper Ridge, Oregon.  What he doesn't have is a wife and his father thinks that's just no good - so the old man puts an ad in the newspaper.  Yes, an ad. To find his son a wife.  Joshua is highly annoyed with his old man so places another ad, this one looking for a woman who will play the role of highly unsuitable potential wife and just maybe his father will get the message to butt out.  Who Joshua gets is Danielle Kelly and a baby.

Danielle is all of 22, Joshua assumes the baby is hers, and she doesn't correct him.  Life hasn't been easy for Danielle, raised by a single mother (who had her at 14) who was always looking for love in all the wrong places. Finally away from Mom, working as a grocery store cashier in Portland, life is pretty OK - until the day Mom shows up pregnant.  Danielle takes her in, baby Riley is born, and while Mom says she's going to change her ways...she naturally does not.  Danielle ends up losing her job thanks to unreliable child care, and social services expects her to have a steady life and income if she's to keep custody.  She's desperate. So desperate she answers Joshua's ad and we're off to the races.

I've been reading romance a long time, meddling parents are pretty much a staple, and frankly Joshua's father is one of those guys who thinks the little woman should make a happy home, and squeeze out a passel of kids while the man of the house brings home the bacon.  So if Joshua thinks he can tweak the old man by bringing home a much younger fiance with a baby - more power to him I say.  Frankly the old guy has it coming to him.

No, what doesn't really work with this story is the romance.  I just never believed in it because I never felt like Joshua grew as a person.  He starts off the story as a jerk. The kind of jerk who uses woman but that's OK because they know the score:

He was happy enough now to be alone. And when he didn't want to be alone, he called a woman, had her come spend a few hours in his bed - or in the back of his truck, he wasn't particular. Love was not on the agenda.

My. Hero.

Not.

And then there's the matter that, while they're overstepping, his family ultimately cares about him.  Deceiving them sticks in Danielle's craw for a good chunk of this story, but our girl is desperate - a desperation that Joshua is ultimately counting on:

She was prickly and difficult, but at least she had an excuse. Her family was the worst. As far as she could tell, his family was guilty of caring too much. And she just couldn't feel that sorry for a rich dude whose parents loved him and were involved in his life more than he wanted them to be.

And there's the rub.  To counteract this, Yates gives Joshua a tragic backstory - a former fiance, a late miscarriage, and a spiral into drug addiction, which I think was supposed to make him sympathetic to the reader, but instead he comes off as even more self-absorbed and narcissistic. He doesn't seem to care all that much what became of the former fiance (he assumes she's living on the streets now) - he's more concerned that "he failed her."  Um.  Well, what did you do to, oh I don't know - get her some help?  Look, people who turn to drugs ultimately have to help themselves break the cycle - but from what I could tell Joshua pretty much leaves her to wallow in her depression and drug addiction until she cheats on him with one of his coworkers - and then he walks away to live in seclusion back in his home town and wallow in "his failure."

Which leads us through to the end of the book with Joshua and Danielle ultimately deciding to get married for real.  He proposes out of a sense of guilt.  She accepts because it means financial security for her and Riley.  Naturally Danielle falls in love with him, but knowing his baggage we get The Black Moment:

He didn't love her.  He wanted to fix her. And somehow, through fixing her, he believed he would fix himself.

I never felt convinced that Joshua moves past this. That he's only with Danielle out of a sense of guilt and atonement.  I never felt like he loved her for her.  He loved her because he could provide for her and "save" her.  As for Danielle?  Well, naturally, she's a virgin.  So is she falling head over heels for the rich dude because he can make her life easier and he gives her incredible orgasms?  Look, marriages have been built on less, but I spent a good chunk of this story feeling like she deserved better - especially since her sassy, spunky smart mouth is kind of what saves this story for me.

There's an audience for this story, no doubt.  The joy I've found in Yates' work with Presents is that she can flat-out write The Fairy Tale.  But, to be honest, Cinderella is one of the harder fairy tales for me to swallow in the modern romance genre.  Too much Rescue Fantasy for me.  But there's an appeal there for a lot of readers.  The idea that the handsome rich dude will swoop in, fix everything, and give the woman a damn break for a change.  Look, I get it.  It's appealing. Just not to me.  And Joshua never really grows as a character enough to convince me that he's past his need to assuage his guilt.  Plus, he's kind of a jackass.

Final Grade = C-

Unusual Historicals for April 2019

Spring is here, baseball season is underway, I’m finally over the head cold from Hell - things are definitely looking up around the Bat Cave. What better way to celebrate than with new historical romance? Here are some catching my eye this month: 

The Scandalous Suffragette by Eliza Redgold

Votes for women!  

Can she fight for freedom and for love? 

When chocolate heiress Violet Coombes is caught hanging her suffragette banner in a most shocking place, Adam Beaufort, Esquire, proposes a marriage of convenience! His good name will avert scandal for her family, and her money will save the estate Adam’s father gambled away. Violet accepts, but she’s determined nothing will distract her from the Cause—including her oh-so-tempting husband! 

Reader: I totally judged a book by it’s cover. The Edwardian era has always been criminally under-utilized as a historical romance setting given what an interesting time in history it was for women. Redgold’s latest features an heiress whose scandalous suffragette leanings force her into a marriage of convenience to save her monied family from scandal. I one-clicked the heck out of this.

Sugar Moon by Jennifer Hallock

The nights were their secret.  

The papers back home call Ben Potter a hero of the Philippine-American War, but he knows the truth. When his estranged brother-in-law offers him work slashing sugarcane, Ben seizes the opportunity to atone--one acre at a time. At the hacienda Ben meets schoolteacher Allegra Alazas. While Allegra bristles at her family's traditional expectations, the one man who appreciates her intelligence and independence seems to be the very worst marriage prospect on the island.  

Neither Ben nor Allegra fit easily in their separate worlds, so together they must build one of their own. But when Ben's wartime past crashes down upon them, it threatens to break their elusive peace. 

Set in the Philippines at the dawn of the 20th century, the hero is the son of a tailor (he sews!), a baseball player, and war veteran. He’s also got issues. Given my continued hunt for Domme heroines, the author shared with me that there is some light D/s. Check out Kat’s (from BookThingo) Twitter thread and the author also has a handy page on her web site with content warnings on the entire series.

At the Mountain’s Edge by Genevieve Graham 

In 1897, the discovery of gold in the desolate reaches of the Yukon has the world abuzz with excitement, and thousands of prospectors swarm to the north seeking riches the likes of which have never been seen before.  

For Liza Peterson and her family, the gold rush is a chance for them to make a fortune by moving their general store business from Vancouver to Dawson City, the only established town in the Yukon. For Constable Ben Turner, a recent recruit of the North-West Mounted Police, upholding the law in a place overrun with guns, liquor, prostitutes, and thieves is an opportunity to escape a dark past and become the man of integrity he has always wanted to be. But the long, difficult journey over icy mountain passes and whitewater rapids is much more treacherous than Liza or Ben imagined, and neither is completely prepared for the forbidding north.  

As Liza’s family nears the mountain’s peak, a catastrophe strikes with fatal consequences, and not even the NWMP can help. Alone and desperate, Liza finally reaches Dawson City, only to find herself in a different kind of peril. Meanwhile, Ben, wracked with guilt over the accident on the trail, sees the chance to make things right. But just as love begins to grow, new dangers arise, threatening to separate the couple forever. 

I believe this is technically being marketed as historical fiction, but Graham has a romance past and reviews indicate it does have a happy-ever-after. However, reviews also indicate that it’s one of those old-school style books where there’s a fresh catastrophe awaiting our heroine nearly every other page. While that can be exhausting, it can also make for a page-turning read, plus the Yukon gold rush! A mountie hero! I’m going to see if I can score a copy from work.

Highland Crown by May McGoldrick 

Inverness, 1820  

Perched on the North Sea, this port town—by turns legendary and mythological—is a place where Highland rebels and English authorities clash in a mortal struggle for survival and dominance. Among the fray is a lovely young widow who possesses rare and special gifts.  

WANTED: Isabella Drummond
A true beauty and trained physician, Isabella has inspired longing and mystery—and fury—in a great many men. Hunted by both the British government and Scottish rebels, she came to the Highlands in search of survival. But a dying ship’s captain will steer her fate into even stormier waters. . .and her heart into flames.  

FOUND: Cinaed Mackintosh
Cast from his home as a child, Cinaed is a fierce soul whose allegiance is only to himself. . . until Isabella saved his life—and added more risk to her own. Now, the only way Cinaed can keep her safe is to seek refuge at Dalmigavie Castle, the Mackintosh family seat. But when the scandalous truth of his past comes out, any chance of Cinaed having a bright future with Isabella is thrown into complete darkness. What will these two ill-fated lovers have to sacrifice to be together…for eternity? 

The start of a new series, my ears perked up (or maybe it was my eyeballs) over a doctor heroine who is wanted on both sides of the conflict - by the British who want her to name names and by the Scots who fear she’ll do just that. Loyalty as conflict in historical romances always seems to work for me, and an unconventional hero paired with a ship’s captain is just the sort of jam I can’t say no to.

Claiming of the Shrew by Shana Galen

What happens when a marriage of convenience isn’t so convenient?  

Lieutenant Colonel Benedict Draven has retired from the army and spends most of his days either consulting for the Foreign Office or whiling away the hours at his club with his former comrades-in-arms. He rarely thinks about the fiery Portuguese woman he saved from an abusive marriage by wedding her himself. It was supposed to be a marriage in name only, but even five years later and a world away, he can’t seem to forget her.  

Catarina Neves never forgot what it felt like to be scared, desperate, and subject to the whims of her cruel father. Thanks to a marriage of convenience and her incredible skill as a lacemaker, she’s become an independent and wealthy woman. But when she’s once again thrust into a dangerous situation, she finds herself in London and knocking on the door of the husband she hasn’t seen since those war-torn years in Portugal. Catarina tells Benedict she wants an annulment, but when he argues against it, can she trust him enough to ask for what she really needs? 

Galen continues with her Survivors series with another hero haunted by his war experiences and the wife he wed to protect. He never forgot the passionate kiss they shared, but it’s still a surprise when Catarina shows up on his London doorstep asking for an annulment - their marriage of convenience no longer being, well, convenient. Also, depending on which side of the fence you land on - this is a May-December romantic couple. I figure that will, in equal measure, have some of you one-clicking and others running far in the other direction.

What Unusual Historicals are you looking forward to?

Review: The Captains' Vegas Vows

I won't tell you how long I've had an ARC of The Captains' Vegas Vows by Caro Carson languishing on my Kindle. Suffice it to say, awhile. Unfortunately, I tend to not hear the plaintive pleas from really good books once they're buried in my TBR Pile of Doom.  No, I simply need to wait until I stumble across them in a fit of dumb luck while haphazardly clicking and hoping, "Please God let this one not suck."  Reader, this one most definitely did not suck.

Captain Helen Pallas' divorce from her no-good husband Russell is finally final and she has orders to report to Fort Hood in Texas.  The ink barely dry on her divorce decree, she's driving from Seattle, why not take a slight detour for some post-divorce fun in Las Vegas?  Of course she didn't expect to end up married, to the most gorgeous hunk she's ever laid eyes on, oh and with no memory of how or why she got married.  I mean, SHE JUST GOT DIVORCED!

Captain Tom Cross met Helen in a Las Vegas casino at 11:00AM and they were married by 1:30AM the next day.  It was whirlwind. It was love at first sight.  He's head of heels, completely ga-ga, a total goner.  Then his blushing bride wakes up in a panic, declares she has no clue who he is, and can't get out the door fast enough.  Not exactly what he expected the morning after his marriage and some of the best sex he's ever had.

What happens next is coincidence, but this is a romance - so roll with it.  Turns out Tom is also stationed at Fort Hood.  So Helen keeping the whole embarrassing affair quiet until she can quietly investigate a divorce or annulment is out of the question.  Turns out that in Texas there's a cooling off period of six months and the commanding officer, once he finds out about the marriage, orders that the two will live together in Tom's quarters and attend marriage counselling sessions.  Helen is furious, mostly because she's a woman in the Army and after getting out from under Russell Fort Hood was supposed to be her fresh start, her new beginning.  Instead she ran off and eloped with a complete stranger.

As much as I love romance, there's been a trend the last few years for books to be ALL ABOUT THE FEELZ!!!!  Look, I love feels.  Who doesn't love feels?  But feels alone does not a book make.  You know what makes a book?  When an author is firing on all cylinders and the book reads like they gave a flying fig.  What we have here, ladies and gents, is a book with some actual craft to it. 

I've often said that there's magic in a really well-done category romance.  The shorter format, the hyper-aware, nearly claustrophobic emphasis on the romance, I won't come up for air between starting page one and finishing the epilogue.  A well-done category romance will literally keep you reading.  You can't stop.  Carson hits all her beats, pours in all the feels, and paces her romance to  emotional-wringing perfection.

Is this perfect?  Well, no.  There were things that annoyed me a tinch.  It's a surprise amnesia book, which there's really no indication of that by reading the back cover blurb.  I don't dislike amnesia books per se, but still...it's a surprise.  Actually the whole back cover blurb is a mess (Tom Cross doesn't believe in love?! Whoever wrote the cover copy DID THEY READ THE BOOK?!?!) so just take my advice and ignore it. 

Also, I'm not entirely sure I buy the reason behind Helen's amnesia, but I'm also not about to research the heck out of it either - and well, stranger things and all that.  Also, Helen is...well, not always terribly nice to Tom.  She requires an empathetic reader.  Her divorce decree was literally just finalized two days prior.  Our girl is still reeling.  Russell did a number on her self-esteem and she doesn't have closure.  And now she finds herself married to a guy and no understanding of WHY she hastily married him.

Tom is a man with serious Daddy issues, although he has a big brother figure in his life.  He desperately wants to be loved and now he's got a wife he does love, who loved him enough to marry him, but has no memory of why she married him and can't seem to divorce him fast enough.  The whole thing is like pining for his father's approval all over again.

The storytelling arc in and of itself is quite clever.  It starts the morning after in the Vegas hotel room and goes to Fort Hood where our couple needs to learn to be a couple, even though they're already married.  It's like a slightly different spin on a mail-order bride or a marriage of convenience trope.

Yes, I had quibbles but it's so well written, and so well executed well...who cares about quibbles?  Now to find what other Caro Carson books may be languishing in my TBR.

Final Grade = A-

#TBRChallenge 2019: Going Full Spoiler on Texas Daddy

The Book: Texas Daddy by Jolene Navarro

The Particulars: Inspirational contemporary romance, Love Inspired #1085, 2017, First book in trilogy, Spin-off from previous series, Out of print, Available in digital

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: I heard the author speak on a panel about cowboys at RWA.  There were several authors on this panel but Navarro lives in Texas and touched on Mexican cowboy culture (and Mexican rodeos) and that was enough to intrigue me and pick up this book.

The Review: For this month's Something Different theme I decided to go with a New-To-Me Author and a category romance line I had never read before.  I've read Love Inspired Historicals and Love Inspired Suspense, but have never read anything from the contemporary line.  This reminded me a lot of the Special Edition line...just with more God Stuff.

This is one of those books that left me feeling disoriented and out of sorts.  There's stuff I really liked in this book and then there was stuff that enraged me to the point where my head almost exploded.  So, this should be a fun review.  Anyway, there's no way for me to talk about the problematic crap without giving spoilers so you've been warned.

Adrian De La Cruz is a single father to his 10-year-old daughter.  He got his girlfriend pregnant in high school, gave up his dreams to travel the rodeo circuit (he was pretty good) and with the help of his family got down to the business of raising Mia and starting a construction business with his twin bother.  Mia's mother, being young, sinking into addiction, and with a crappy home life, willingly gave up custody to Adrian and took off for parts unknown almost immediately after giving birth.

Nikki Bergmann is back home in Clear Water, Texas not because she wants to be, but because an accident has jacked up her knee.  Nikki is a travel guide, one of those outdoor adventure types who takes folks on tours in the Grand Canyon. Past ready to leave Texas in the dust, she decides to take her busted up knee off-road biking on her late mother's ranch, gets in an accident, jacks up her bike and knee (again) oh...and a storm has blown in.  Adrian was checking a downed fence line on the border of the property and rescues her.  He had a terrible crush on her in high school, but she was three years older (translation: out of his league) and blew out of town before he had the guts to approach her.  He hadn't heard she was back in Clear Water, which is pretty amazing since it's a small town where everybody is up in all y'alls business.

This story starts off in a very uninspirational way.  For one thing Nikki has got to be the most prickly, standoffish heroine I've read in a dog's age.  Adrian is Mr. Nice Guy who tends to let his mouth run away from him - one of those that can't seem to let a silence just linger.  So she's on her guard and he's trying to stop himself from sounding like a blithering idiot.

The small town world-building is great, the characters are well drawn, and the relationship between Nikki, her younger twin sisters, and youngest half-sister is dynamite.  Mia is just enough kid and "wise beyond her years" without being a plot moppet.  She is also recovering from a knee injury, the result of a rodeo accident that has turned up all of Adrian's over-protective instincts - so she and Nikki take to each other right away - despite Nikki's wariness and Big Secret.

And that's where this book went to Hell.  Nikki's Big Secret is that she fell for the wrong boy when she was 17 and got pregnant.  He was using her and two-timing on his girlfriend (a woman he later married and knocked around before she dumped him).  When she tells him she's pregnant he's like "get rid of it" and "if you tell anybody I'll deny it's mine and everybody will know you're a lying slut."  Things aren't great at home for Nikki at that time thanks to her stepmother so she hides the pregnancy from her Dad, her sisters and goes to live with her Mom's aunt who gets her through the pregnancy and has the baby boy adopted by distant relatives who want children but are unable to conceive.  Nikki stays away from home and builds a life in Arizona - only to have an accident and another disastrous relationship send her back to Texas to recover.

So yeah. We all know where this is going right?  Nikki knows she has to tell her family the truth of why she left home and why she hasn't been back in, like, 12 years.  Adrian does not think highly of his Baby Mama for "abandoning" Mia to his care and she, naturally, blows back into town - now sober for 3 years - and hoping to meet her daughter.  Adrian freaks his shit out, which Nikki witnesses.  So when Adrian finds out about Nikki having a baby, and giving that baby over to another family to adopt?  He freaks his shit out.

And...that's the rub.  The author may want me to think that Adrian is this dynamite, sacrificing single father but he is so blindingly insensitive that I started screaming at my Kindle screen.  He's completely incapable of looking at anything outside of his own perspective.  He doesn't "get" that his Baby Mama was scared, young, not ready to be a Mom, and had NO family support.  He thinks, "Well, she had me and my family and she left anyway so she sucks."  He doesn't think that Nikki was young, scared, her life at home was strained and the boy she thought loved her used and abandoned her.  No, Nikki just threw away her baby without so much as a by-your-leave.

By this point in the story Nikki goes from prickly to a bit too downtrodden for my tastes, but at least once the light dawns for douchecanoe Adrian and he goes running off to beg her forgiveness, she gets a few choice words in.  Not nearly as forceful as I would have liked, but frankly I felt like Adrian should have suffered mightily, crawling over broken glass through colonies of fire ants.  Mores the pity.

Since this is an inspirational, let's talk God Stuff.  On a scale of 1-10 this is probably hovering around a 6.5.  The characters believe that God has a plan for their lives.  They attend church.  They socialize with people they attend church with.  They pray.  The God Stuff is fairly light in the beginning but gets heavier starting around the halfway point.

All in all I'm left with conflicting feelings.  Navarro is a good category-length writer, hitting her beats, building an interesting world, writing interesting characters, and throwing in some good smooching scenes to build romantic tension.  But OMG, Adrian's reaction and judgmental attitude towards his Baby Mama and once Nikki's Big Secret comes to light ENRAGED me.  I have no idea how to assign one grade to encapsulate my yo-yo emotions so I'm assigning this a catch-all C grade and calling it done.

Final Grade = C

Review: Marrying Her Viking Enemy

One of the reasons I enjoy medieval romances is that they lend themselves well to the Enemy to Lovers trope and, what I call, "high stakes conflict."  Certainly, you can find lighter medievals, but they're a rarer bird - which suits me just fine.

Marrying Her Viking Enemy by Harper St. George is an Enemy to Lovers romance for people who think they don't like the trope.  The author avoids a lot of the pitfalls, and our couple doesn't spend a lot of time needlessly bickering to the point where you want to smack them and tell them to "grow up already!"  No, these two crazy kids are pretty much attracted to each other from the get-go.  The problem lies with her family - like, isn't that always the way!

This is the first book in a duet about two sisters, but it's a spin-off from St. George's previous Viking series, with the couple from The Viking Warrior's Bride playing an integral role in this romance.  For this reason it took me a couple of chapters to get my sea legs under me, but once I did it was off to the races.

Elswyth and her younger sister Ellan have been sent by their father to serve Gwendolyn of Alvey's household (a distant relation), despite the fact that Gwendolyn married a hated Dane.  Daddy Dearest isn't the biggest fan of the invading Danes, given that his wife ran off with one.  Elswyth has spent her whole life trying to prove to everybody in their small village that she's not like her faithless mother, so when Daddy asks her to learn all she can, to spy, while he throws his lot in with the Scots to the north, she reluctantly agrees, though her heart isn't in it.  Gwendolyn has been nothing but kind to her, and while she is loyal to her father, knows she could never marry a Dane, she doesn't share the same fervent hatred that he or her brothers do.

Rolfe returns to Alvey from a skirmish in Elswyth's village.  From a distance, he's intrigued and when she is assigned to tend to his wound well...let's just say our guy is sunk.  He's captivated by her. So when Gwendolyn and her husband, Vidar, strongly suggest that he marry a Saxon woman to help promote peace among their people, Elswyth is seen as an ideal choice.  Naturally though, there are complications.  Her father is a known agitator, so there's the very real question of where Elswyth's loyalty lies.  Also, while her sister seems agreeable to entertaining a potential Dane suitor, Elswyth might as well have a No Trespassing sign emblazoned above her head.  But Rolfe is intrigued by this woman, the first woman who has managed to get under his skin since the only woman he thought he loved done him wrong.

What I really enjoyed about this story is that while Elswyth and Rolfe are enemies, they're not adversarial.  She flat-out knows she's not marrying a Dane, largely because even if she wanted to her father would never allow it.  Also she's got her mother's reputation to live down, and that's a hard habit to break yourself of when you've spent your entire life going through those motions.  For his part Rolfe is sweet, values Elswyth and her abilities (he's taken with her skill throwing a hatchet and how quickly she's become skilled as an archer) and figures out rather quickly that's the way to win her over.  Don't underestimate her, and reward her natural curiosity.   Offering to teach her sword fighting is surely the ticket.

The conflict of the story is wrapped up entirely in Elswyth's family loyalty.  She doesn't share her father's hatred, but she also doesn't trust the Danes.  Not entirely.  And how do you cut yourself off from your own father and older brother?  From some of the others in her village that she grew up with who now seem to be conspiring with the Scots?  And when it appears her younger brother is in danger?  Elswyth wrestles with what to do, even though she knows she doesn't have a lot of choice in the matter.

Rolfe's Big Secret regarding the battle in Elswyth's village, along with his past romantic betrayal do play some role in the conflict, but blessedly he isn't one of those heroes who tars and feathers all women just because he had the misfortune of falling for the wrong one.  That said, when the conflict boils to a head towards the end, when he discovers Elswyth stole something from him (she had her reasons), that past betrayal comes to the forefront.

There's some loose ends left in the end, namely involving Elswyth's various relations, and for the shadow she casts, readers don't get any real answers as to where Mommy Dearest might now be.  But, Ellan's romance is due out in September (2019), and it's likely safe to assume that some of this will be revisited then.

For an Enemy to Lovers romance, there's a gentleness to the romance that I enjoyed and the angst isn't so high drama that I felt hungover or wrung-out after finishing the final chapter.  I closed this book safe in the knowledge that this was a romantic couple well-suited for each other, despite all the outside obstacles standing in their way.

Final Grade = B

Reminder: #TBRChallenge Day is April 17!

Hey, hey, hey!  For those participating in the 2019 #TBRChallenge, a reminder that your commentary is "due"on Wednesday, April 17.  This month's theme is Something Different!

This theme can mean anything you want it to. Maybe an unusual setting? Or a new-to-you author? A sub genre you don't read very often? Or maybe even another genre other than romance?

But what if you need comfort food this month?  Hey, no problem! A reminder that, as always, the themes are completely optional.    The goal is to read something, anything, that has been languishing in your TBR.

If you're participating on social media, please remember to use the #TBRChallenge hashtag so people can follow along.

And it's not too late to sign up!  Simply leave a comment on this reminder post.

You can learn about the challenge and check out the full list of blogging participants on the information page.

Review: Seduced by the Badge

Seduced by the Badge marks Deborah Fletcher Mello's debut with the Harlequin Romantic Suspense line and the very first book in her To Serve and Seduce series about a family of Chicago civil servants (OK, so there's a private eye in there - but they're mostly cops, lawyers, council members and such).  I had a few quibbles (hello, this is me) but I ended up really enjoying this one.

Armstrong Black has been assigned a sex trafficking case and when another girl turns up dead, he finds himself getting an out-of-town partner.  Danni Winstead is Atlanta PD and is sent to Chicago when links are discovered with an Atlanta case.  That case?  Danni's sister - who was targeted by these traffickers, but managed to escape.  Danni's a good cop, but a bit of a lone wolf and with a very real score to settle. Will Armstrong's strong personality and her independent attitude spell disaster for their case and their simmering attraction to each other?

I like romantic suspense, but let's be frank - the sub genre has some fairly common pitfalls.  I am, of course, talking about the heroine who runs off half-cocked.  The heroine who doesn't listen to the hero, or disregards what he says, and puts herself in danger at every turn to the point where he has to play white knight and rescue her.  What I loved about this story is that while Danni DOES run off half-cocked, she's competent about it.  She's good at her job.  She can protect herself.  She's got some street smarts.  When things get a bit dicey she can tap-dance her way out of trouble and the author isn't slapping the reader upside the head with Macho Hero Saves The Day clap-trap.

The bulk of the plot revolves around Danni going undercover, making herself appear young, vulnerable and ingratiating herself with the main players that are orbiting the sex trafficking ring.  Danni appears younger, so can pass herself off as a vulnerable runaway.  What I loved about this is that Mello doesn't fetishize Danni's looks.  The hero doesn't "get off" on the fact that Danni looks like a teenager.  Her being able to play younger is seen as an asset for the task at hand and bringing the bad guys to justice.

Like a lot of romantic suspense novels, this one doesn't always pass the smell test.  Danni being loaned from Atlanta to Chicago and then poof! Suddenly she's undercover with nary a whisper of departmental red tape.  I have zero intimate knowledge of how police undercover works, so take this quibble for what's it worth.  I'm just saying that I feel like it's probably more complicated in Real Life.  Depending on reader baggage, this could be fine or it could annoy the stuffing out of you.

But, I'm not reading this story for Real Life.  I'm reading it for the romance and the suspense.  I will say I found the suspense thread more compelling, especially in the second half when Danni's undercover work starts to bear some fruit.  The romance is nice, but not as robust - largely because of plot constraints.  Danni's undercover.  Armstrong is handling stuff behind the scenes.  They don't spend a super ton of time together.  That being said, I will say the progression of their relationship was well thought out.  Mello takes her time getting to the first kiss and we don't get a sex scene until towards the end.  So no annoying "Oh gosh, the bad guys are chasing us - let's stop and have sex now!" moments (I seriously hate those).

I know reading about a Chicago police officer might be a non-starter for some readers right now (thank you recent-ish current events) - but I love the idea of the Black family being notable Chicago citizens, many of them having civil servant-type jobs.  When the siblings get together, that familial relationship plays well on the page.  It's a really attractive set-up for a series, and I'm definitely interested in reading future books.

This wasn't a keeper for me, but it was very good - and I enjoyed the suspense thread.  It does involve sex trafficking, and while mileage will definitely vary on this, I didn't find the descriptions overly graphic.  That said, Danni meets some of the girls and, true to form, some of them are young.  While I do think Danni and Armstrong could have been quicker on the uptake during the climactic finish, I practically inhaled this book the closer I got to the finish line.  The Big Baddies are caught and I'm sucked into wanting more Black family stories. 

Mission accomplished.

Final Grade = B