Mini-Reviews: Scorched Earth and Terrible Teens

 *tap, tap* Is this thing on?  Between lingering vacation brain, work, RWA imploding yet again (so many thoughts, so many feelings) and me not doing ANY reading at the moment, this blog has been a vast desert wasteland.  So let's do a round up of a few books I got through in July, including two vacation reads.

Lady Derring Takes a Lover by Julie Anne Long is the first book in her Palace of Rogues series and was a book club read with the SoCal Bloggers. Delilah Swanpoole, the Countess of Derring learns after her husband's unexpected death that he was flat broke. His fortune, their lifestyle, was all smoke and mirrors.  And, naturally, now that Dear Dull Derring is dead, the creditors have come calling. The only thing she has left is a rundown house near the docks.  But that's not the worst of it. Oh no. While sitting in her husband's solicitor's office in barges Angelique Breedlove, her late husband's mistress. The two women, both tired of being at the mercy of men, decide to pawn what few valuables they have left and turn the dock property into a boardinghouse.  They're not open for business long when Captain Tristin Hardy comes sniffing around.  He's the King's man tracking down smugglers, and the late Earl of Derring was up to his eyeballs in it.  Which leads him to the Countess's door.  How much does she know? And is she part of the operation?

The premise here is dynamite and I'm a sucker for boardinghouse settings in historical romance, which is what carried me through for a long while.  The secondary characters, the women, the various shenanigans - I liked all that.  The romance?  Meh. Honestly it fell fairly flat for me. This was the quintessential meh, it's OK, C read for me until the Black Moment.  When Delilah finds out Tristan's Big Secret, who he really is, and she feels used and hurt.  When that happens? Scorched. Earth. It's simply devastating.  She fires both barrels at him and the author ripped my poor wee reader's heart clean out of my chest.  What was a C read bumps up a notch with the ending and, to be honest, I am HERE for Angelique's book - just as soon as I find some reading mojo again. Final Grade = B-

Corner Office Secrets by Shannon McKenna is the second book in her Men of Maddox Hill series.  I'll be honest, I plowed through this on an airplane and it's the kind of book that I should have reviewed right away because now the details are fuzzy. That pretty much is the definition of a C read for me, although I do think this one worked a bit better than the first book in the series.

Sophie Valente takes a job at Maddox Hill to track down her long lost father. Instead she finds herself distracted by her boss, Vann Acosta.  Just as Sophie starts sniffing around, Vann gets wind of a security breach at the firm. An oily secondary character thinks Sophie is involved which Vann thinks is preposterous, but he's got to check it out.  

This was a quick read that was made in the final third of the book during the Black Moment. Yep, Sophie finds out that Vann was checking her out in more ways than one, and on top of that her long lost father is a jackass.  Sophie, bless her heart - Wendy gets another book where the heroine leaves behind Scorched. Earth.  Which leads to the hero chasing after her and, you guessed it, a grovel.  This didn't change my life but it kept me entertained on an airplane and I love a grovel. Yes, I'm shallow.  Final Grade = C+

Where the heck were all these teen thrillers when I was a kid? The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Modavsky is a horror/suspense/teen hybrid about Rachel Chavez, your typical teen girl who survives a home invasion while she's home alone. Fast forward a year and she's the new girl at an elite prep school in New York City that her Mom teaches at. Having turned to horror movies to deal with her trauma, she soon uncovers a secret club among a disparate groups of kids at her new school - the gay teen, the Goth girl, the film geek, and the popular jock. By day they completely ignore each other. By night they're The Mary Shelley Club, devotees to fear and horror films. Part of the club is The Fear Test, a competition that plays out popular horror tropes on unwitting targets. The goal is to get your victim to scream.  Naturally the club has secrets and naturally things start to go horribly wrong when one target is seriously hurt and another ends up dead.

This is a slow burn thriller, part high school teen drama, part horror, part suspense.  There's not a lot of fast-paced action until the second half, and once things start to go wrong is when this books really begins to cook.  I'll be honest, I've been reading books of this ilk for a long time and I did have some of it figured out early on.  That said, the author still managed to pull a rabbit out of her hat and surprise me with her reveal.  Also, man - teenagers can be the worst! Seriously.  This book kind of reminds you of that little nugget.  I liked this one quite a bit and dagnabit why didn't this book exist when I was teen?  Final Grade = B