Mini-Reviews: Aggressively Fine

Part of my reading resolution for 2024 is taking a deeper dive into my Kindle and pulling out long lost ARCs.  Unfortunately my first two picks for the new year fell into the "aggressively fine" category.  I don't know about you all, but there's something about average reads that can be just as depressing as the duds. 

Harlequin Blaze was never a favorite line of mine, but a few still ended up finding their way into my TBR, usually because the back cover blurb tickled my fancy in some way.  Make Mine a Marine by Candace Havens was published in 2016 (yikes on bikes Wendy) and is, from what I can gather, part of a series featuring hunky Marines. 

Chelly Richardson is marking time in Nashville when an obsessive ex who won't take the hint that they broke up has her making the drastic decision to get out of dodge. She heads to Texas only to discover the friend she was planning to crash with took off to elope (and said "friend" knew Chelly was on her way). She's near broke, her car is on it's last gasp, so Chelly decides to do the one thing that always gives her some comfort - she comes across an estate sale and stops.  That's where she meets said hunky Marine, Matt Ryan. His parents have died and he's left with their house full of "stuff" (Mom was a bit of a collector with plans to remodel the house) and instead of hiring an expert to liquidate the holdings, he's doing it himself - and a terrible job of it. Chelly tells him he's underselling stuff and before you know it - bingo bango she's staying in his pool house, takes on liquidating his parents' stuff, and will help him remodel the house to put on the market. He gets the help he obviously needs and Chelly gets a leg up in starting her own business.

On the surface this story is fine. Unfortunately it takes enough wrong turns that ultimately sink any hope I might have had for a solid category romance. Look, I get that the police do not have the best track record with domestic situations but Chelly doesn't even take a whiff near the cops about the obsessive ex. She just runs. In fact that's her solution to every problem life throws her way - she runs. Yeah, she's one of those heroines. Then there's the fact that she's a hot mess and our frickin' Lieutenant Colonel hero just offers her the keys to the kingdom even though he acknowledges she's a hot mess. She's flighty and artistic, he's so uptight he probably starches his underwear. The conflict in the story centers entirely around their inability to communicate with each other and assuming the worst. 

Is this the worst category romance I've ever read? Absolutely not.  Is it pretty ho-hum? Yes.

Final Grade = C

Dead Dead Girls by Nekesa Afia was a debut historical mystery that I was pretty intrigued by when I downloaded the ARC in 2021 - and well, here we are.  And of course I was intrigued! It's set in the 1920s during the Harlem Renaissance!  What's not to love about that concept?  Unfortunately, while I found the heroine intriguing, I was let down by the pacing and writing.

It's 1926 and young Black women are turning up dead in Harlem. Their bodies are being dumped in front of Maggie's Cafe, where Louise Lloyd works as a waitress and where the dead girls all worked in the not-so-secret speakeasy run by the proprietor's son ahem serving the customers more than bootleg liquor if you catch my drift. Ten years earlier Louise escaped the clutches of a kidnapper and rescued captive girls in the process. She was dubbed the "Hero of Harlem" - notoriety she's been running from since and that helped lead to her estrangement with her father. Through a series of happenstance (OK, it's Louise's temper getting the better of her) she ends up in the cross hairs of the cops - and the lead detective on the dead girls' case says they won't press charges on one condition - she has to help them.  Frankly Louise can get into places, talk to people, that the white cops cannot.

What I liked best about this book was Louise as a character - she had depth and contradictions that I found intriguing. Her estrangement from her father, her relationship with her three sisters, her relationship with her girlfriend. The author really embraced the era and setting and it's also a book that is unapologetically queer. 

Unfortunately the pacing is a mess. Most reviews cite a slow beginning, but I was more bored with the final 1/3 of the story - which by then our "bad guy" has been unmasked and the whole thing slogs on until I literally noticed there was less than 5% left and we were rushed to the final showdown. The transitions between chapters were also a problem which didn't do the pacing any favors.  To give one example: in the final chapters of the story Louise breaks into an apartment and finds a secret compartment. Then the chapter ends.  One would think that at the start of the next chapter would be Louise still in the apartment revealing what she found, right? Nope. It's a completely different scene - we have no idea how Louise got out of the apartment undetected, and what was in the secret compartment isn't revealed until several pages into the next chapter. 

Nothing about the pacing of this story was smooth and while I liked the story for the most part, I was just ready for it to be over by the time I got to 60%.  I will say this though, the author wasn't afraid to "go there" and kill her darlings. There's a shocking turn towards the end that actually made me gasp in a "Oh wow, I can't believe she did that..." sort of way.

Will I read the next book in the series? Jury still out but it's looking doubtful. Frankly I found Louise's lover a little annoying and it seems like she plays a more prominent role in Book 2. Maybe? But honestly, I'm feeling kinda meh about the idea at the moment...

Final Grade = C+