Review: The Gunslinger's Vow

I can't help but feel like me ending 2018 with a "meh" read is some kind of metaphor.  Ask any reader what their definition of a "C" (or a meh) read is and the answers you get will vary.  For me, it's usually "I liked some stuff, thought other stuff wasn't so good, and it all came out in the wash."  That's how I felt about The Gunslinger's Vow by Amy Sandas, her first historical western with Sourcebooks and the first book in a new series.  What's good here is very good, but the rest of it? Meh.

Born and raised in Montana by a widower father, Alexandra Brighton has spent the last five years in Boston getting schooled on how to be a proper young lady by her Aunt Judith.  The hard work has just culminated in a marriage proposal from an eligible bachelor with political ambitions.  In a moment of panic, Alexandra agrees - quickly realizes what she's done and can only think to run.  She doesn't know who she is anymore.  Is she the girl she left behind in Montana?  Is she the girl her aunt has molded into a society princess?  One thing is for sure, she can't marry anyone until she finds out.  So she packs a bag, sneaks away, and heads home to Montana to reunite with her father - who, naturally, has no clue she's coming.

So we all know what happens next.  Alexandra survives the train ride west intact, but a broken down stagecoach and vagaries of travel means she's now stranded.  But never fear - she's gotten wind of a bounty hunter in town who just so happens to be heading towards Helena, Montana on business.  Surely he can be hired to take her the rest of the way. 

Malcolm Kincaid is hunting the man who murdered his brother, and his latest intel suggests The Belt-Buckle Kid (seriously?!) is holed up north of Helena.  This is vengeance a long time coming, so needless to say taking a pampered looking Bostonian princess along for the ride is not high on his list.  He turns Alexandra down flat.  However looks are deceiving and the Eastern lady is made of sterner stuff than Malcolm gives her credit for.  After a series of misadventures, they do end up traveling together.

I have to be honest - the pampered Eastern lady who finds herself out west is not a plot device I'm wild about, but the fact that Alexandra was born and raised in Montana, plus I'm always looking for new western writers, sold me on giving this one a whirl.  Unfortunately it never solidified for me, in large part because of Alexandra's uneven characterization and pacing issues.

Here's the thing: I'm supposed to believe that Alexandra is smart, resourceful, and prepared for the trials that an uncivilized western landscape can throw at her.  And, at times, she is.  But then she does boneheaded stupid stuff where I'm like, "Seriously, girl?!"  Oh, like not packing any practical clothing for the trip out west (this is explained away by her wanting to show her father what a "lady" she had become).  When Malcolm turns her down flat, and even though she has reservations, she hitches a ride with another party heading north who quickly rob her and leave her stranded in the wilderness (although to the girl's credit, she stays alive and doesn't panic).  And while her fiance' is no prize (typical guy with political ambitions who sees the heroine as a means to an end) - the fact is she accepted his proposal and immediately runs off - never mind she doesn't give her Aunt Judith a second thought.  We never meet Aunt Judith on page, and while she sounds like a positive snore, she also doesn't sound like a cruel witch.  In other words, the woman deserved some consideration.

To be frank, a lot of this nagging stuff smacked of convenient plot devices not terribly well executed. It didn't feel authentic or natural to the characters.

Alexandra's character isn't done much favors by the pacing of the story.  I was 30% through the book before the story started to go anywhere.  Then, after "stuff" happens and our couple has to spend a couple of weeks holed up in a cabin, the author sets about having the characters fall in love and succumb to their passions - which, great...but it drags on so long that by the time we get to the finish, the Big Moments of Alexandra reuniting with her father and the final showdown between Malcolm and The Big Bads isn't given nearly enough page count to spin out.  It feels terribly rushed.

Which makes it sound like there was nothing I liked about this book.  Au contraire!  As uneven as I found Alexandra's character at times, the author does a good job with her "self-discovery" arc and there were moments of insight that stopped me cold.

It was long past time that she stopped trying to please everyone else and finally accepted all of who she was. There would always be someone to find fault, but at least she would be real. She would be free.

++++

He wanted to keep his distance today? Pretend he wasn't passionately involved in what had occurred between them?  Then fine. That was his choice.  She didn't want to doubt herself anymore.

When we talk about romance being a genre where women "win?"  I basically want to wallow in those above two passages for a couple of days.  So even if I found her an uneven character, by the time I rolled on to these moments in the story I was all about Queen Alexandra living her best damn life.

I'm not sure I'll read the next two books in this series (two more Eastern ladies heading west? Jury's still out), there's enough on the page here that I would read a Sandas western in the future.  Not a blazing success, but there were moments that carried me through.

Final Grade = C+

Review: Far From Home

Far From Home by Lorelie Brown is a book I meant to read ages ago.  When it was first published (a lifetime ago in 2016...), it garnered a number of positive reviews (including a couple of "starred reviews" in the professional journals) and finaled for Best Contemporary Romance: Short in the 2017 RITAs.  But, as I perpetually do with most of the books I want to read, I pushed it off until, finally, my hand was forced (Day Job related project...).  I had quibbles but Brown does so much right that it's easy to see that the praise was well earned.

Rachel is a Southern California girl, a recovering anorexic, and drowning in student loan debt.  She thinks she's straight, but given the state of her life (did I mention her relationship with her mother is eff'ed up bordering on neglect?) romantic entanglements aren't exactly high on her list to fret over.  So it's pretty outrageous when an flippant remark at a party leads to her accepting a marriage of convenience.

Pari is Indian and came to the States on a work visa sponsored by her employer.  However her ambition is to start her own consulting business which means bye-bye work visa, hello get a green card.  Cool, calm, put-together Pari is going to marry Rachel - at least for a couple of years until the green card goes through.  Pari gets to stay in the US, Rachel gets to live in Pari's very nice condo rent free and get some help paying off her oppressive student loans.  It's win-win really - well, except they both have emotional baggage.  Pari with her large, Indian family and past hurt over a relationship gone sour ; Rachel with her dissatisfaction in her career, her mountain of debts, her messed up relationship with her Mom and her anorexia recovery.

There was a lot I really liked about this story.  This is first person from Rachel's point-of view and Brown knocks her characterization out of the park.  She felt so real to me that I'm pretty sure I may have gone to college with this girl.  The romance is also of the slow burn variety, with Pari and Rachel working their way towards friendship that eventually combusts into full-blown passion.  The author sets her stage and it takes time for the characters to "get there" - which frankly in today's genre that seems to constantly be harping on "faster, sooner, yesterday..." was a welcome breath of fresh air.

The California setting is picture perfect (Rachel "thinks" like someone who lives in SoCal - for lack of a better description) and the added addition of Pari's Mom as a secondary character was inspired.  Mileage will vary here, but I also loved the way the author handled the interracial aspects of this romance and Rachel's complicated relationship with exercise and food.  I'm not sure how to describe it - it felt authentic and well-written without the author trying too hard to convince the reader that she's "woke."  There was a maturity and matter-of-factness to the story and relationships among the various characters that simply clicked into place, like puzzle pieces finally put in the correct order.

So, what didn't work as well?  Well, this is a short read - around category length - and some of the issues here are hard.  But I'm also a reader who likes characters to flail themselves on the rocks for a bit before settling into the happy ending.  Also, as richly drawn as Rachel is, it takes a bit longer to wrap your arms around Pari.  Part of this is her personality and part of it is because of the first person point-of-view.  For example, there's a past relationship that burned Pari badly but it's pretty well dashed off in a few short sentences and not given the same depth as Rachel's baggage.

There's also the small matter of Rachel being straight...well, she thinks.  There's references to past male sexual partners, but and here's the thing, prior to Pari there hasn't even been a whiff of a lesbian fling for Rachel.  Not even a "I kissed a girl and I liked it" moment. Not even a "Oh look at that woman across the room, she's hot and I'm physically attracted." Brown gets around to explaining this but....it smacks dangerously close to Gay For You territory for me.  It's not Gay For You precisely...but...yeah.  No questioning.  No attraction to women before Pari.  The slow burn to the romance helps out considerably (and it was a smart move on the author's part) but...yeah.

Mileage of course will vary on this.  Again, it's not Gay For You precisely - but I'm a reader who has a HUGE issue with that particular "trope" so anything that flirts around the edges and my red flag comes up to at least half-mast.

But, happy sigh, the ending is so lovely that any quibbles I have are washed away in a pitch perfect epilogue.  It simply works and I read the last sentence with a song in my heart and waving a fond bon voyage to the characters, picturing in my mind's eye their incredibly happy future together.  Which, at the end of the day, is how I want a romance novel to make me feel.  Brown has created a lovely world, interesting characters, and a happy sigh on my lips.

Final Grade = B

Review: An Extraordinary Union

Yes, I just now read An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole.  Yes, I know y'all told me it was amazing, but that was the problem.  Unless I'm in on the ground floor, hype has a way of making me dig in my heels.  I've been burned before by the ol' Everybody Loved It, I Didn't So It Must Be I'm Being Difficult (Again!).  So this sat.  And sat.  Until finally a Day Job related "thing" had me digging this up from the depths of my Kindle.  And seriously, I could just kick myself into next Tuesday.  This is easily the strongest historical romance I've read in a dog's age.

Elle Burns is a former slave living a fairly quiet life when the powder keg finally blows hurtling the country into Civil War.  Elle will do anything to ensure a Northern victory, and with her amazing talent (she has a photographic memory), she is recruited by The Loyal League, a network of spies aiding the Union cause.  Elle's current assignment is to pose as a slave in the household of a Confederate Senator in Richmond, Virginia.

That's where she meets up with a new contact, Scottish immigrant Malcolm McCall.  A detective for Pinkerton's Secret Service, Malcolm is posing as a Confederate soldier and plays the part so well that Elle, at first, fears for her safety around him.  He's immediately intrigued, not to mention smitten.  She's, quite naturally, wary as hell.  But they both have a common goal and that means working together - even if their mutual and undeniable attraction for each other puts a serious wrench in the works.

People read fiction for a variety of reasons - but let me tell you why I read it: I'm in it for the emotional response.  I want to be juiced in.  I want to be swept away by a story.  Regardless of genre, regardless of the writer, I want to FEEL something when I read a novel.  Which helps explain why I love romance so much.  All fiction plays on reader emotions in some form or another but romance lives and dies by it.  Romance is all about emotion.  It doesn't work otherwise.  The author has to make you feel for their fictional characters, otherwise what's the point?  And that's what makes this book so remarkable - Cole, simply put, nails the emotion.

The stakes in this book are so incredibly high for all the characters, but most especially Elle who has absolutely everything to lose (her freedom, her dignity, her right to exist!).  This is life or death conflict.  Failure is unthinkable and unfathomable.  Sure, are the stakes high for Malcolm?  Yes. But he's a man and he's white. Yes, he is playing a dangerous game but at the end of the day he has some measure of power.  Elle, while a more confident, self-assured heroine you'll ever meet, doesn't even have the illusion of power.  She's working undercover as a slave and, for all intents and purposes, is completely on her own - even after Malcolm shows up as a partner, of sorts.  She has to trust him, but that doesn't mean it comes easy - and really, you can't blame her.

Cole has a way of writing with such empathy, that you immediately feel everything these characters are feeling and why they're feeling it.  The author made me feel like I was there - witnessing what Ellen was witnessing, the indignities, the depression, the fear, the complete sense of helplessness that she cannot allow to take over because she MUST succeed.  The South winning is unthinkable and not an option.

Malcolm's a compelling hero, the spy plot is interesting, but this is Elle's book y'all.  It just is.  This story lives and dies at her feet.  The richness of her character, the depth of emotion that Cole wrings out through her character, it's remarkable.  Add to this a compelling romantic arc with high stakes, a well-drawn historical backdrop, it's easy to see why so many readers loved this book to the hills and back when it was published in 2017.  I'm late to the party, but as they say...better late than never.

Final Grade = A

Top 4 Unusual Historicals for December 2018

I’ve been a collection development librarian long enough to tell you that publishing in December is traditionally a dead zone. You’d think that would have changed somewhat with the mainstreaming of self-publishing, but not really. Things still seem to bunch up around the fall and spring months of the calendar. But I can always count on my old friend Harlequin Historical and there’s two westerns this month that are prodding me to take a closer look.

The Governess’s Convenient Marriage by Amanda McCabe

A lady turned governess…  

 A life-changing proposal!  

When Lady Alexandra Mannerly last saw Malcolm Gordston, he was a poor crofter’s son—someone a sheltered duke’s daughter would never be allowed to marry. But scandal has rocked her arrogant family, and Alex now leads a quiet life as a governess in Paris—where she meets Malcolm again! Now he’s a wealthy, powerful department store owner…and determined to make her his bride! 

Sometimes I legit wonder if authors have a window into my soul because OMG WHY AM I NOT READING THIS BOOK RIGHT THIS SECOND?! A heroine now living a life below the privilege she was born into, and a hero who is a department store owner. Oh, and it’s a marriage of convenience story! Happy holidays to me!!!! 

A Scandalous Winter Wedding by Marguerite Kaye 

From one snowy Christmas…  

…to a sizzling-hot reunion!  

 A Matches Made in Scandal story. Kirstin Blair has spent seven years trying to forget brooding Cameron Dunbar. Now self-made man Cameron needs her help to recover his missing niece, and Kirstin must face the truth—seeing him again sparks the same irresistible attraction that first brought them together! She must decide: resist, or give in to temptation and risk Cameron discovering everything she’s fought so hard to protect… 

This is the fourth and final book in Kaye’s Matches Made in Scandal series and it’s time for the mysterious Procurer (a Regency era “fixer”) to get her romance! This one features a reunited lovers theme, and a bit of a mystery, as the heroine is helping the hero track down his missing half-sister. I’m behind on this series, but I’ve found The Procurer so intriguing just from brief glimpses, I’m half tempted to jump ahead and read out of order. I’ve seen reviews indicting this stands alone, so I just might throw caution to the wind!

Bound for Temptation by Tess LeSue 

Having survived the Oregon Trail, Emma Palmer is ready for a fresh start, even if it costs her all the gold in California.  

Emma Palmer has had many jobs and has gone by even more names, but most recently she is known as Seline, madam of her own establishment. Her place is clean, her booze is cheap and her bedrooms are fancy. But when a would-be patron won’t take no for an answer, she is forced to don a new disguise and flee for her life. While the schemes she cooks up might seem outrageous to an outsider, they haven’t failed her yet.  

Tom Slater is a taciturn cattleman at the tail end of a long, hard season on the trail. He’s looking forward to a quiet winter at his old family homestead in Mexico. What he doesn’t plan on is escorting a group of women on the run to safety south of the border. Tom doesn’t need to be a trailsman to know that the woman with the sly, green eyes—the one he can’t keep out of his thoughts—will only lead to trouble. 

The third in a series, this book is prodding me to check out the first book currently languishing in my TBR. I love historical westerns but I’m not a “funny ha-ha” sort of reader by nature and reviews for book one indicated it was of the light, humorous variety (I like my historical westerns to run toward dark, angsty, are we going to survive winter?). But the heroine is described as a madam and frankly that means I at least need to download the sample to take a look.

The Valentine’s Curse by Jodi Thomas 

As a Yankee in Texas two years after the Civil War, cowboy Broderick Monroe is given the jobs no one else wants to do—including keeping company with the cursed Widow Allen at the annual Valentine’s Day dance thrown by his boss’s wife.  

After losing two husbands to the war, Valerie Allen has become a local pariah. Rumor has it that if a man touches her, he’ll be dead by morning. But Brody believes in curses about as much as he believes in love.  

One secret embrace in the moonlight leads Valerie to think she has found a kindred spirit, but fate—and the curse—aren’t done with her yet . . . 

This novella was originally published in the multi-author Be My Texas Valentine anthology in 2012 and is now available separately for the first time. It sounds positively delightful and nearly every review for the anthology singled out this Thomas story as the true gem in the collection. I nearly broke a nail one-clicking this.

What Unusual Historicals are looking forward to reading this month?

#TBRChallenge 2018: Wish Upon a Snowflake

The Book: Wish Upon a Snowflake by Christine Merrill, Linda Skye, and Elizabeth Rolls

The Particulars: Historical romance anthology, Harlequin Historicals #1207, 2014, Out of print, Available in digital

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: It's a holiday anthology from Harlequin Historical. How could it not be in my TBR?

The Review: Anthologies, by their very nature, can be wildly uneven affairs.  Not every reader is going to find a good fit with every author.  Case in point, I'm trying to think of the last anthology I read where I liked all the stories, and my hazy memory is coming up blank.  Which is what makes this book really interesting.  There are varying degrees here, but I enjoyed all the stories!

Christine Merrill is grossly under appreciated for her willingness to take risks with the Regency setting.  I've read some really "out there" stories by her.  Have they all be raving successes for me?  No. But she's a risk taker, and I've always appreciated that about her work.  The Christmas Duchess features some refreshingly different elements from a normal ol' Regency Christmas tale and I quite enjoyed it.

Generva Marsh is having a very bad day.  Her daughter, who was supposed to be married on Christmas Day, has just been jilted in a very public and embarrassing fashion.  Naturally, though none of it is her fault, the girl is suitably ruined.  So the last thing Generva, a widow, is in the mood for is for the once-intended groom's uncle (a Duke!) to show up claiming victory because he was able to secure the special license in time for a Christmas wedding.  Thomas Kanner, Duke of Montford, is a bit surprised by Generva's response - which is to say she hits him over the head with a broom.

What I loved about this story is that it features an older, forthright heroine and a Duke hero who is, well, charming as heck while being a genuinely nice guy.  He's immediately smitten with Generva, sings Christmas carols, and reckons to fix the mess his heir has made. Generva loved her husband, but as a sea captain he was away an awful lot, so she's learned to be self-reliant.  She's past the age of believing that Prince Charming is going to show up on her doorstep and rescue her!  Bonus points for a well-written child character, the heroine's school-age son, who provides some nice comic relief at just the right moments.

Grade = B+

Once upon a time Harlequin experimented with shorter digital lines, one of which was Harlequin Undone.  These were marketed as short spicy reads set in a variety of time periods, and featured more sexy times than your standard Harlequin Historical.  As I was reading Russian Winter Nights by Linda Skye, I was struck that it read very much like an Undone and...I'm a genius (plus I read a lot of Undones!) - this is a reprint.  It was first published as part of the Undone line in 2013.  What's shocking is I hadn't read it until now - although a quick look in my Kindle Dumpster Fire of Doom shows I have this in my digital TBR!!!

Ekaterina Romanova is the niece of Empress Anna of Russia, who is naturally vile since hello - she's a Russian ruler (seriously, it's basically a job requirement).  She was summoned by her aunt to court, which frankly doesn't bode well, so Ekaterina has been aiming to keep a low profile.  She was succeeding until she meets Andrey Kvasov.  Their encounter is a chance one, suitably steamy, and naturally neither finds out right away who the other one truly is.  This leads to many complications, especially since it becomes quite clear that Aunt Anna has marked Andrey as her next conquest.

Skye does an excellent job of creating the backdrop in this story.  There's intrigue and political shenanigans aplenty, and it creates very high stakes for the lovers.  But after the somewhat traditional read that is the Merrill story, jumping into this one which reads more erotic felt like a bit too much of a tone shift.  The language in the love scenes tends to flirt too much with "overwrought" for my tastes, but it's not the purplest shade I've read in my day.  Also while the ending ties things up somewhat satisfactorily, it lacks a sense of finality. The story ends with the lovers getting the upper hand but do they really?  I mean, the villain is the Empress of Russia!  I'd have preferred them riding away from the Catherine Palace together.

Grade = B-

A Shocking Proposition by Elizabeth Rolls reads a bit more traditional than the previous two stories, in that we have a young, unmarried heroine determined to save her virtue, and her home, from an oily cousin trying to force her into marriage.  Madeleine "Maddy" Kirkby's solution is to propose a marriage of convenience to Lord Ashton Ravensfell, the younger brother of a Duke.  They knew each other as children, he's recently returned from fighting on the Continent, and he's obsessed with antiquities.  Given that part of Hadrian's Wall is on Maddy's property - well, it seems like a reasonable solution to her predicament.  Of course the evil cousin won't go quietly into that good night...

The main leads are charming, and well matched.  The villain, while one note, is suitably vile to give the story enough heft of conflict to spur us forth to the happy ending.  It's not quite as steamy as the Skye story, but still quite steamy - what with the heroine getting deflowered in the carriage ride back from the wedding! - and while the hero has a bit of a White Knight Complex, he's protective of the heroine, obviously smitten, and a breath of fresh air from the recent Alphaholes invading the genre.

Grade = B

All in all, this was not a bad way to spend my time and I inhaled the anthology in nearly one sitting.  Given that the book I tried to read before this one got DNF'ed out of indifference?  This was a big win!  It's a really solid holiday collection and I'm glad I chose it to close out my TBR Challenge reading for 2018.

Overall Final Grade = B

ETA: I just found out that the Rolls story was also originally published as a Harlequin Undone short!  Which explains the deflowering in the carriage scene!  But unlike the Skye story, it wasn't languishing in my digital TBR.

Review: Delicious Temptation

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Readers Are Nuts.  Case in point, despite Sabrina Sol being a local author and despite picking up this book during a 99 cent promotional sale, I let Delicious Temptation languish in my TBR because, to be honest, it features a theme I'm generally not wild about: Best Friend's Little Sister.  The big brother always thunders around like a jackass and there's a paternalistic vibe to the theme that tends to bother me.  So why, when Sol's take on this theme features some of the same stuff that has annoyed me in other books, did I inhale this story in a matter of hours?  Let's see if I can talk my way through the conundrum.

Amara Robles had just accepted a job as a pastry chef at a Chicago area resort when her parents summoned her home.  Her father has injured his back and they need Amara to run the family bakery.  Being the quintessential good Mexican-American daughter, Amara comes home to East LA.  The problem is bigger than her father's bad back however - the bakery is in trouble.  Sales are slumping, customers are few, and her parents are resistant to all of Amara's suggestions to turn the bakery around.  Why?  Because a few years ago they loaned her money to start her own business in downtown L.A. and...it flopped.

Eric Valencia was her brother's BFF in high school and the local bad boy.  The kind of boy mothers told their daughters to stay away from, the kind of boy always pulling her brother into scrapes much to her mother's horror.  After leaving town 12 years ago without a word, he's back to help his mother take care of his ailing grandmother.  A recovering alcoholic, he's also taking the opportunity to work on Step 8 ("making amends") and shows up at the Robles' bakery with a letter for Miguel.  Who he sees instead is Amara who va-va-va-voom is all grown up now.  But she's too good for the likes of him, and worse still?  Everybody knows it.  Well, except for Amara, who is beyond frustrated with her parents and feeling trapped by her good girl reputation.

With older books like this one that I'm just now getting around to reading, I'll go back and read other reviews from readers who aren't horrible procrastinators.  The general consensus by some is that the characters read like teenagers, not grown adults in their mid-to-late 20s.  I can "see" where they're coming from even though I think they missed the point entirely.  What small town contemporary fans sometimes fail to acknowledge is that you can create that "community" vibe in urban settings.  That's what Sol has done here - setting her romance in East LA, where a lot of the story takes place in a bakery that's been part of the community for generations.  Yes, it's a city - but it's a neighborhood where everybody knows everybody.  They support each other, attend church together, their kids all go to the same schools - it's exactly like a small town where once you get pigeon-holed it's next to impossible to break free.  Everybody expects you to play your role until the day you die - so once a good girl and bad boy, always a good girl and a bad boy.

This story is about two people bristling at the bonds and expectations others have placed on them, and yet they're both still too scared and vulnerable to tell everybody to go pound sand. Nice girls like Amara don't tell their parents to get bent.  When your best friend tells you not to mess around with his "nice girl" sister?  You listen.  Well, you try to listen but dang, the insta-lust is so intense and she's more than willing - I mean, a guy can only resist so much.

I woke up early on a Sunday morning, started this book, and finished it by lunch time. It all spins out the way you'd expect, with the characters keeping the relationship on the down-low and telling each other it's "just sex" until pesky feelings end up getting in the way.  Then they both have to admit to themselves, and to each other, how they really feel.  It makes for some good tension and very well done "fight scenes."

Sol does a very good job hitting her emotional beats, and for category romance fans I'd probably put this one in the same universe as a Harlequin Blaze.  There's plenty of spicy love scenes to warm you up on a cold winter's night.  But what really worked for me in this romance was the well-drawn setting, the community feel, and one of my favorite themes ever - that is characters who are stuck in their pasts, desperately trying to break free.  That's what Eric and Amara are trying to do at the start of this story, and they end up getting there, together, by the end.

Final Grade = B+

Reminder: Final #TBRChallenge of 2018!

Hey, hey, hey!  For those of you participating in the 2018 #TBRChallenge, a reminder that your commentary is "due" on Wednesday, December 19.  The theme this month is Holiday (any holiday!)

Yes, it's the annual Wendy Can't Say No To a Christmas Romance and Has To Make the Rest of Us Suffer theme! It doesn't have to be Christmas - if you can dig up New Year's, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Valentine's etc. those are fair game too.  But if you don't like holiday romances? Hey, no problem!  Remember that the themes are optional and really, you can read whatever you want.  The whole point of the TBR Challenge is to read something that has been languishing in your TBR.

Reminders:

1) If you're participating via social media, remember to use the #TBRChallenge hashtag

and 

2) This is the end of the 2018 TBR Challenge! Why not consider signing up for 2019?  All the details can be found here.

Announcing the 2019 #TBRChallenge!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: once a month pull a dormant book out of your TBR pile and read it.  On the 3rd Wednesday of the month, talk about that book.

Participation is as easy as being on social media!

• If you're on social media all you need to do is use the #TBRChallenge hashtag - there's no need to sign-up and your participation can vary throughout the year.
• You can use this hashtag on any day, at any time - but we're still going to concentrate on the 3rd Wednesday of every month to kick our commentary into high gear.  
• The idea is to have at least one day a month where we can always count on there being book chatter.

Want to let your blogging freak flag fly?  If you have a blog and want to post TBR commentary there, drop me a comment on this post with a link to your blog or hit me up on Twitter and I'll post it on the information page so followers and other participants can find you.

Sound good?  Of course it does!  So what are the themes for 2019?  So glad you asked!

January 16 - We Love Short Shorts! (shorter reads)
February 20 - Series (book that is part of a series)
March 20 - Favorite Trope
April 17 - Something Different (unusual setting, sub genre you don't read all the time, etc.)
May 15 - Backlist Glom (author with more than one book in your TBR)
June 19 - Historical
July 17 - Contemporary
August 21 - Random Pick
September 18 - Kicking It Old School (original publication 10+ years ago)
October 16 - Paranormal or Romantic Suspense
November 20 - Sugar or Spice (closed door "just kisses" or super steamy!)
December 18 - Holiday (any holiday!)

As always, the themes are optional.  Don't like 'em, don't have to use them.  See how easy this is?  I mean really, how could you not want to join in on the fun?

Review: One Frosty Night

One Frosty Night by Janice Kay Johnson is the sort of a book that exists to punish me for having a ridiculous TBR pile.  Had I read this book back when it was newly published, I think I would have liked it a lot better.  Don't get me wrong, what Johnson does well (she's dynamite at writing conflict) is on full display here - but it doesn't always mesh well with the romance and quite frankly I found a lot of the secondary characters rather gross.

Olivia Bowen came home to Crescent Creek, Washington to run the family hardware store after Dad's health began to fail.  Shortly before her father finally passed, the body of a young girl was discovered out in the woods.  As if that wasn't shocking enough for the small community, nobody knows who the girl is, how she ended up in the woods, or even how she died.  It's like she just curled up outside in the snow and froze to death. 

Ben Hovik is the high school principal and ever since Jane Doe's body was found, the teenagers in the community have been acting strangely - including his stepson, Carson.  He raises money to give the girl a proper burial, is keeping his ear to the ground, but continues to be distracted by Olivia.  He came home to Crescent Creek after gaining custody of Carson hoping to reunite with his first love - a complicated prospect since it was Ben who broke up with her after he left for college and she was stuck back in Crescent Creek because she was still in high school.  Needless to say, she's not terribly anxious to let him back into her life and besides, she's got problems of her own.  Her relationship with her mother has become incredibly strained since her father died, and the woman just dropped the bomb on her that she plans to sell the family home and business as soon as possible.

If you're familiar with Janice Kay Johnson's work at all, you'll know she doesn't write happy sunshine fluff books.  So I can't help but think that the cozy outdoor sledding scene that screams "meet cute!" on the cover does this book a huge disservice.  Also, I wouldn't go so far as to say the author "struggles" with the tone of this story - but it's easy to get whiplash going from a burgeoning reunion romance to the harsh realities of an unidentified dead teenage girl found out in the woods!

It takes a while for the conflict and plot to gain some forward momentum, and once it does we're then regaled with characters behaving in a gross manner.  Look, is this the author's fault?  No.  I mean, how was she to know when she was writing this book that 2016-2018 was going to happen and I was going to be full-up on gross people always seeming to "fail up" in life.  The high school students were bad enough - but then they're teenagers.  No, it was the adults in this story - specifically Olivia's mother who made me SO VERY ANGRY to the point of seething.  I was so tempted to give up on this story because it was all so unsavory and...well, gross.

But this is Janice Kay Johnson and gods bless her - she can write the hell out of some conflict.  Once everything comes bursting out into the open, I couldn't tear myself away from this story.  I had to keep reading to see how it would all end.  Also, if romance readers are brutally honest with ourselves, we know the genre has a nasty habit of romanticizing (I mean, it's what the genre DOES!).  If you're fed up with idealized small towns, yeah - this is your book.  Johnson does not romanticize Crescent Creek in the slightest.  She writes about all the crap that makes small towns annoying - certain small-minded citizens, everybody all up in your business, the mean-spirited gossip, the obsession with high school sports, the lack of opportunity and dying main streets.  Crescent Creek is not a town with cutesy cupcake shops that somehow miraculously seem to stay in business even though the population is maybe a couple thousand. 

Unfortunately, the good stuff tends to get overshadowed by the bad.  While it's not blatant, I couldn't help but feel that Ben's ex-wife (Carson's Mom) was demonized for her addiction and mental health issues.  Also, there's some veiled slut-shaming of a high school girl that bothered me.  Does all this crap go on in small towns?  Yes (heck, everywhere - small towns don't hold the monopoly) - but again: Wendy Tired of Gross People.

The ending felt lackluster.  Almost like Johnson may possibly have been setting up a series (or at least a book 2) that, from what I can tell, didn't happen.  There's one rather large nugget in particular that doesn't get answered and since it's a BIG DEAL for the majority of the story, it's pretty hard to swallow.

So yeah. In the end I'm left with a feeling of malaise.  Is this terrible?  No.  I don't think Johnson is capable of writing terrible.  But it's also nowhere near as good as she's capable of.  The darkness of the conflict doesn't really mesh with the romance and Wendy Tired of Gross People made this one hard going in parts.  If it's in your TBR?  Look, you've probably got worse there and this isn't anywhere near a disaster.  But if you don't own it?  I'm not necessarily going to say you need to drop your life and one-click this baby either.

Final Grade = C

Mini-Review Round-Up: Hurricane Hottie, Mostly Sunny, Weddings and Scrooge

Sometimes I feel like I have a lot to say about the books I read, and other times?  I just can't be arsed.  I've been on stretch of the latter lately, coupled with blogging ennui - which makes for a particularly deadly cocktail.  Plus, I just sort of feel like I've been very meh about everything I'm reading lately, but a girl's gotta prop up the flagging mojo, so it's time for a round of patented Wendy mini-reviews.

The Bridesmaid and the Hurricane by Kelly Maher - First the disclaimer that the author is a friend, we've presented together at conferences, and I beta read 2 (?) early versions of this book.  The hero is one of those impossibly good-looking men that women lose their minds over, but he's genuinely a very nice guy who only has eyes for the heroine.  The problem?  They had a one-night stand months ago and now they're working together.  She's been burned before by an office romance so is not keen to mix business with pleasure again.  Another added complication is that the heroine's boss is an evil piece-of-work.

The conflict of the heroine's Evil (and naturally, female) Boss is one I'm not a big fan of, but Maher chooses a wise course of action by creating a large cast of sympathetic and interesting secondary players living in the hero's and heroine's orbits.  In other words, while there are two women who put aggressive moves on the hero in this story, they're outnumbered by female characters who do not.  Also, it was just so nice to read about a hero who wasn't a massive Alpha jerk with a whole bunch of Mommy Didn't Love Me baggage.  Bonus points for a well-drawn Washington D.C. setting that doesn't rely on political shenanigans (because, Lord - I just can't right now).  Hard for me to grade given my relationship with the author - but taking that out of the equation?  Probably somewhere around a B-.

Mostly Sunny by Jamie Pope ended up being a DNF around the 40% mark.  It starts out great.  Abandoned by her mentally ill mother, Sunny was raised in the New York City foster care system.  She's now a social worker working on the official adoption of a young girl when the birth mother makes contact with the foster family.  She's afraid the mother will throw a wrench in the works, and goes to the hero who is a lawyer.  He doesn't have experience in the type of law she needs, but she won't take no (or excellent referrals) for an answer so...yeah.

The connection between the heroine and the young girl relies on an amazing coincidence that, I'm sorry, I ain't buying when the book is set in NEW YORK CITY!  The heroine propositioning the hero to try and get her way struck me as wildly out of character and the hero is a jerk.  He doesn't believe in love, proposes to his older, savvy businesswomen girlfriend like it's a business proposition, and she turns him down flat.  Naturally this makes the girlfriend "the problem" while the heroine is then painted with a "not like other girls" brush.  Yeah, I didn't like her, the plot strains, and I wanted him to burn in a pit of fire.  Life's too short and my TBR is too mammoth.

Best Man for the Wedding Planner by Donna Alward features my second least favorite bit of conflict after Fated Mates.  The heroine breaks up with her college sweetheart after she gets cancer that renders her infertile - and he's from this Big Family, naturally everyone is always talking about babies, and instead of talking to him she cuts him off so he won't stand by her only to end up resenting her.  They reunite some years later when she's the wedding planner for a wedding where he's the best man.

I have issues with "I can't give him his OWN children" plot lines for various and sundry reasons, but this is how much of a pro Alward is - I inhaled this book in one sitting.  Yes, it features all the crap about this conflict that I hate, but the heroine's Big Secret is out of the bag before the 50% mark, and the emotional fall-out of the second half gutted me in parts.  Also, I liked that the author actually addresses issues that so many authors ignore with conflict like this - namely that you don't need to squeeze a kid out of your birth canal to be maternal, that family is what you make it, and that just because you lack the lady parts doesn't make you less of a woman.  This is Alward's return to Harlequin Romance and it's like she took no time away at all.  It's very much not my thing, but I recognize that there's very good elements at work here.  My personal grade is probably somewhere in the C range - but readers who dig this sort of conflict will likely grade higher.  Also, something to note: there is definitely NO Miracle Baby Epilogue here.  The heroine no longer has a uterus - so, yeah.

Death of a Neighborhood Scrooge by Laura Levine is the 16th book in the Jaine Austen cozy mystery series.  I used to devour these books, but much like Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, the repetition of the various gags have become stale and I found the last book so offensive that I toyed with the idea of quitting cold turkey.  But, a series you've been invested in for 15 books is not a habit that's easy to break, and I got an ARC for this one so...

This time out Jaine and Lance are Christmas house-sitting in fabulous Bel Air, next door to a sour, cheap-skate former child star who turns up dead.  There's no lack of suspects, but the cops seem to be zeroing in on Jaine.  While the gags have grown stale, Levine returns to form with this book crafting a good mystery with plenty of suspects to choose from.  There's a backhanded slap to the romance genre here (because, of course there is - what the actual hell?!) that annoyed me and the ending is pretty abrupt, but it didn't make me frothing at the mouth angry like the last book, so win?  I guess?  Also, the final chapter is extremely intriguing but my gut tells me Levine will self-destruct the development off page when the next book comes out.  Which, mores the pity.  If she sees it through it may spice up the next entry past the usual, quickly growing tired, gags.  For fans only.  I'm waffling between a C+ and B-.