#TBRChallenge 2023: The Night Before Christmas

The Book: The Night Before Christmas by Brenda Novak, Day Leclaire, and Molly O'Keefe

The Particulars: Contemporary romance anthology, Harlequin, 2009, Out of print, not available in digital (but at one point it was so check your digital pile and/or local libraries).

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: Molly O'Keefe is an autobuy. Her story won the RITA for Best Novella in 2010 and it's a Harlequin Christmas anthology. I am but a mere mortal.

The Review: Once again I waited until the 11th hour to pick out my TBR Challenge book, let alone actually start to read it - so I did what I always seem to do - I went diving into my cupboard of Harlequins and hit upon this anthology.  And like most anthologies, it was a wildly uneven affair.

"On a Snowy Christmas" by Brenda Novak is distasteful and insulting, especially when you account for the fact this story was published in 2009 (I realize that was 14 years ago - but hear me out...).  Spoilers Abound!

Adelaide and Maxim are political rivals, facing off in the primary. Maxim took over the Senate seat after Adelaide's husband died in a car accident.  Maxim has since strayed from her husband on matters of politics and also implied not nice things about him - which makes Adelaide mad enough to take a run at the Senate seat. She's already garnered support from several wealthy donors which has knocked Maxim back on his heels, but he's not out yet. They're both on the same charter flight down to Los Angeles for a political engagement with the governor when they crash in the Sierra Nevadas. In the middle of a snow storm. One thing, naturally, leads to another.

There's probably a decent story here somewhere but the whole politics thing already had me turning up my nose.  Add to that Adelaide behaves a bit like a dumb bunny, and the Big Secret about her dead husband that Maxim has uncovered, but chosen not to use in the campaign against her?  Well, there's corruption - which would frankly be enough - but no, Dead Hubby was also having an affair with an 18-year-old intern.  A male intern. To be fair, the fact that he was having an affair with a teenager is portrayed as distasteful.  Unfortunately just as much distaste is spent on the fact that it was a gay affair. And folks, I'm just too tired and too old to read this bullshit in 2023 and know it was published in 2009.  This isn't a Harlequin Presents from 1985 (not that it wouldn't have been annoying back then either - but you catch my drift).  Oh, and did I mention Dead Hubby was infertile but bumping uglies with Maxim two times results in Adelaide getting knocked up?  And the first time they have sex she pretends it's her dead husband and Maxim knows she's pretending he's her dead husband? Ugh. I wanted to light this on fire.

Final Grade = D-

"The Christmas Baby" by Day Leclaire starts out distasteful but the author pulls it off in the end by leaning in on the farce. Carrie is having the worst Christmas Eve ever. She woke up late for work, got caught in terrible weather on her commute, showed up to work only to be laid off, and came home to her crummy apartment to receive an eviction notice. Then, her ex, Chaz, has the nerve to show up. She ended things with him when it became apparent that he was a workaholic who would continue to push off making any sort of serious commitment to her because it was never going to be "the right time."  Well, Chaz may want her back, but she's not convinced he's changed. She kicks him out only to have the next knock on her door be an elderly lady leaving a Christmas gift a Chaz. A large box with, wait for it, a baby inside. 

So yes, distasteful. Instead what ensues is a bit of comedy of errors between Chaz, Carrie, Chaz's brother, the brother's former girlfriend and Chaz's estranged parents.  Misunderstandings and shenanigans ensue. The whole thing feels very cinematic and would make a decent Hallmark-style rom-com. Naturally, in the end, all the couples are back together - although I'm nowhere near convinced that any of the male leopards have truly changed their spots because....novella length.  Not my thing, but I can recognize this was well-executed.

Final Grade = C

"The Christmas Eve Promise" by Molly O'Keefe is the gem of the bunch and worth tracking this anthology down at a library or used bookstore.  Merrieta "Merri" Monroe is back home helping out at the family diner and she feels like an utter failure. No job, no more fiancé, and she's 3 months pregnant. A teeny little fact that nobody but her and her rat-fink ex know about. Also back in town?  Gavin McDonnell, the boy she made herself a fool over and the boy she done wrong back in high school.  He and his brother now run a shop repairing and building motorcycles. Gavin is divorced and his teenage son has just come to live with him.  Lucas has become a regular at the diner, him and Merri get roped into helping with the town's annual Christmas celebration, and they both end up spilling their secrets to each other. They agree - she has to tell her parents about the baby and he has to be honest with his Dad by Christmas Eve. 

This was a cozy, small town read with just enough angst to keep the plot humming along. O'Keefe typically does well writing younger characters, and Lucas is a gem. A scared 14-year-old boy at a crossroads, already turned out by his mother and afraid his dad will do the same. Merri is the woman who had big ideas on how her life would turn out and naturally it's been one curveball after another. She needs to learn to be open, honest and to stop running away from happiness as it's smacking her in the face. 

I'll be honest, the romance is a little light here. The author leans hard into the fact that the couple has a past history to help carry us to the finish line, but I could have used a couple more chapters, a few more pages, to beef up this aspect of the story.  But it's a heartwarming story that, frankly, washes away most of the distaste left in my mouth over the Novak entry.  This was fairly early on in O'Keefe's career with Harlequin and you can see all the groundwork here for the superior Harlequin SuperRomances she published while writing for them.

Final Grade = B+

So yes, a fairly typical anthology reading experience. A story I wanted to light on fire, a well-executed story that just wasn't for me, and a superior story that made the experience worthwhile. Added bonus that the best story was also the last in the bunch - meaning I ended the 2023 TBR Challenge on an upbeat note.

#TBRChallenge 2022: My Wicked Prince

The Book: My Wicked Prince by Molly O'Keefe

The Particulars: Contemporary romance, 2019, In Print, Available in digital

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: O'Keefe is an autobuy dating back to her days writing for Harlequin SuperRomance. 

The Review: I'm so old that I remember the days when 99% of romance readers would have a fit of apoplexy if you had the nerve to suggest that very good romances could be capably written in first-person point of view. Point of fact, I might have been the only resident of Romancelandia at that time willing to admit I LOVED first person - having started out life as a mystery reader where it's much more common.  Then a funny thing happened. Self-publishing.  And suddenly everyone and their dead grandmother was self-publishing romances in first-person, often with shifting head-hopping chapters (hero and heroine point of view).  And you know what?  A lot of them suck...and not in a good way.  Because trust me gentle readers, there is such a thing as terribly written first person and we're neck deep in it here in the waters of Romancelandia.  

I'm not sure why this is exactly (other than me being cranky and old) but I think it's a diluting of authorial voices. There's just a lot of blah, interchangeable first person out there.  I'll read one and a couple days later I struggle to recall anything. Characters, plot, title, maybe I'll remember the author? - the book I just read is like a black hole in my memory.

Then there's Molly O'Keefe. I'll walk off a cliff to read her first person, and I suspect it's because she has certain writing tics (and plot bunnies) that feed into the id part of my brain.  Her heroines always seem determined to save the world (or at least their little corner of it), her heroes positively wallow in angst, and the tension!  The sweet, glorious, delicious tension!

My Wicked Prince reminded me of a longer Harlequin Presents, but with hotter sex. Brenna's mother is a bartender in their tiny Nordic country of Vasgar when she agrees to marry the King. It's basically a marriage of convenience. Mom wants to be Queen and the King wants to distract everyone from the fact his country is broke. Brenna can barely be bothered, attending college in Scotland and with dreams of one day working for the United Nations. But with Mom negotiating her the title of princess, it is expected that Brenna will attend the wedding - which immediately sets her in the crosshairs of her soon-to-be stepbrother, Gunnar Falk.

Gunnar is the poor little rich boy prince with Daddy Issues. He's a manwhore who parties his life away and likes to make things as embarrassing as possible for the old man via the press. Now there's this marriage and a new stepsister, and it's all just so bothersome.  Then he locks eyes on Brenna and everything changes.  Oh sure, there's sparing and he says some awful things - but she dishes it right back even as she does a terrible job of hiding her vulnerabilities. She also challenges Gunnar at every turn, which makes him want to be a better man, even if he won't quite admit that to himself.  The attraction is very much there and very much not a good thing. They're now siblings (yes, they're grown-ass adults but still...) under the glare of a royal spotlight, trying to help a country on the verge of bankruptcy as the King continues to be a terrible leader and Gunnar's uncle pulling strings behind the scenes to claim the throne for himself.  Oh, and did I mention that it's expected that Gunnar marry an heiress to bolster the country's coffers? Then, as inevitably happens in a romance novel, they succumb to their attraction and it all blows up in their faces.

This is the first romance I've read this year that kept me fully and actively engaged to the point where I wanted to keep reading. That being said, I didn't love it and most of that is due to authorial choices O'Keefe made.  The first chapter opens in present day, with Brenna confronting Gunnar at his posh nightclub in New York City.  It's a great opening chapter. Angst and sparring and lots of sizzling tension.  Then we get to Chapter 2 which immediately dumps us in flashback mode, a couple weeks prior to the royal wedding.  90% of this story is in flashbacks - which...not a fan. Especially since the first chapter sets up the reader for the present-day experience. I still liked the story, but the execution wasn't necessarily what I wanted.

It's also one of those stories where there is just SO much angst and SO many roadblocks centered around "obligations" - that it does get exhausting after a while.  Both Brenna and Gunnar hiding behind their defense mechanisms, Gunnar flat-out lying to Brenna to push her away which necessitates the third act separation. What I did like about this portion of the story however is that O'Keefe removes Brenna's tendency for rose-colored glasses.  The gloves are off and if Gunnar is going to be a dickhead, well she's going to save their country without him.

I have an interesting history with royalty books (I don't actively dislike them, but neither are they favorites) and I mostly liked this one.  There were times I wanted to slap Gunnar into next Tuesday and there were times I wanted to shake Brenna for wearing her foolish heart so prominently on her sleeve - but there's great tension, the anger and attraction between the two electrically leaping off the page.  It's trademark O'Keefe with a royalty candy-coated shell.

Final Grade = B-

#TBRChallenge 2020: Pencil Him In

The Book: Pencil Him In by Molly O'Keefe

The Particulars: Contemporary romance, Harlequin Flipside #15, 2004, Book 2 in duet, out of print, available in digital

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR: It's a truth universally acknowledged that when Wendy falls hard and fast for a new-to-her category romance writer, she will then scour the Earth for said author's entire backlist. Which is what happened after I picked up my first O'Keefe Harlequin SuperRomance. Yes, I bought the romantic comedy stuff she wrote for Harlequin Duets and Flipside despite that they were published by Duets and Flipside.  My history with romantic comedy is bumpy.

The Review: I read the second book in this duet as part of the 2015 TBR Challenge so this month's backlist theme seemed like a good opportunity to read the first book...5 years later. Don't hate the player, hate the game.  Anyway, this was only O'Keefe's third published book and unfortunately I was pretty meh about it. I probably would have tolerated the plot a lot more had I read this any other time in the years this has been languishing in my TBR, but 2020 was the absolutely worst year to pick.  Let me explain....

Anna Simmons is a workaholic. At 18 she told her nomad, runaway-from-her-problems, mother that she was now an adult, she was done moving, and she was staying in California. She got a job as a receptionist at an ad agency and worked her way up.  How far up?  Her boss, the owner of the agency, has told Anna she's retiring in 6 months and she's going to hand over the keys to the kingdom to her - on one condition: Anna is taking a forced, paid, 6 month sabbatical.  No arguments. Non-negotiable.  Her boss is worried that if she leaves the company to her that Anna will literally end up dead. She works that hard. She runs herself (and her poor assistant) that ragged. She has no life.

And Anna freaks out.

OK, look - maybe this is the stress of being a public librarian in the time of COVID talking - but WHY IS MY BOSS NOT GIVING ME 6 MONTHS OFF WITH PAY AND DIRECT ORDERS TO DO ZERO WORK AND GET A DARN LIFE? I get that Anna is a workaholic but wide swaths of this book are her moaning about how she's been "fired" (does she not know the definition of the word fired?) and she's wound so tight I half expected a bathroom scene where she's pooping out diamonds.

Naturally all Anna can think about is getting her job back (never mind she's not fired and on a paid 6 month sabbatical - just roll with it).  So her brilliant idea is to show her boss (who she is friendly with) that she is getting life, that she has a boyfriend! She just needs a fake boyfriend, and through a series of misadventures she lands on hunky, ex-firefighter (he was injured in the line of duty) Sam Drynan.

Sam is - OK, I guess? A nice guy, I guess? He's got a well-meaning family, he's still dealing with baggage from his work-related injury and he won't play second fiddle to Anna's work (when she, predictably, falls off the deep end for our Black Moment).  As a couple they're not on page very much together but O'Keefe does have me half believing they've fallen in love, at least a little bit, by the end.

Besides the "conflict" which isn't really conflict and I'm frankly covetous of, I think my problem may be the Flipside line.  The romantic couple just aren't on page enough to satisfy my romance reader needs. This is really a book about Anna's personal growth with the romance not coming into play until the second half.  And this is category length.  Waiting until the second half of a book that clocks in at just over 200 pages to give readers a romance (which they're reading a Harlequin - readers showed up for the romance) probably says all that needs to be said on why this line died a quick death.  It's closer to the chick lit end of the spectrum and not far enough over towards the romance one.

The internal baggage for both Anna and Sam is decent. However Sam's baggage is dealt with superficially and Anna's - I get why the girl is a workaholic but I still can't help but think her moaning about being fired WHEN SHE HASN'T BEEN FIRED is weak sauce. Look, I get it - her entire self-worth is wrapped up in her job. Childhood trauma has molded her into the diamond pooping mess she is today.  BUT SOMEONE IS GIVING YOU 6 MONTHS OFF WITH PAY AND THEN TURNING OVER THE BUSINESS TO YOU AND YOU'RE MOANING ABOUT IT?!?!?!?!?

Where can I sign up for this problem?

Final Grade = C

Mini-Reviews: A Mini Molly O'Keefe Glom

Outside of inhaling the shorts for this month's TBR Challenge, I've had trouble setting a reading rhythm at the start of 2019.  Case in point, after the Challenge I promptly DNF'ed two books.  When this happens I always fear that the problem is with me, so I decided to stop futzing around and read a Molly O'Keefe already.  It worked for me in January 2018, surely it can work one year later.  And it did.  While both Bad Neighbor and Baby, Come Back are full of problematic elements, I fell so hard into this world that I pulled out 24 hours later feeling a mixture of drunk and hungover.

Bad Neighbor finds our heroine, Charlotte, bailing out her beautiful, impulsive twin sister, Abby, yet again.  Their entire relationship has been like that.  Charlotte the mature, responsible one with social anxiety.  Abby, the one who skates through life on her looks, manipulating men along the way, and always going to her sister to bail her out with the heat gets too intense.  Well, Abby has done it now.  She's fallen for a bad man - a mob enforcer who she saw kill a man.  Charlotte, not even blinking an eye, prices her condo to sell, gives Abby half the money to take off, and moves into a seedy apartment complex near the airport.  That's where she meets her smoking hot new neighbor, Jesse, who puts the grump in grumpy asshole.  Who fights in underground MMA matches that are held in the complex's equally seedy basement.  Oh, and guess who is older brother is?  Yep.

The conflict does rely on an amazing coincidence, especially given the story takes place in the Bay Area, but I was able to roll with it.  O'Keefe has a knack for writing asshole heroes who aren't too far gone, and Jesse resides in the same zip code as Dylan from the Everything I Left Unsaid series.  Charlotte is innocence and light to Jesse's dark and scary - their respective baggage makes them a good fit as a couple and you understand why they are the way they are and why they would be attracted to each other.

After finishing Bad Neighbor, there was no way I wasn't starting Baby, Come Back right away, even though I knew it was going to be choppier waters.  Abby is on the run and Jesse's big brother (the mob enforcer), Jack, is determined to find her.  Jack was forced into the life to pay for his degenerate father's gambling debts and who he really is has been slowly eroding away.  This book opens prior to the events of Bad Neighbor, when Abby first meets Jack and does all the stupid crap girls like her always seem to do.

Ultimately it's my own baggage that kept me from enjoying this story as much as the first one.  Girls like Abby get on my last hot nerve.  Girls who play the part, manipulate, throw their hair around, because the gods have gifted them with beauty. Yes, society plays a part in this. And yes, for girls like Abby life isn't the sunshine and roses girls like me necessarily think it is. Time and again Jack tells her he's not a good guy.  Time and again she doesn't listen.  And when she's confronted with what Jack and her instincts have been telling her all along?  It's like some great big ol' shock to her.

Our hero murders a man.  He's a bad man.  A very, very bad man. But murder him he does. That's, um, a little hard for me to reconcile.  Looking at other reviews, it doesn't seem to have been as much of a problem for other readers.  Depending on the type of reader you are?  Mileage is gonna vary.

Anyway, once we're past the set-up then the book moves into Jack finding Abby and them working through "stuff" and hello happy ending.  Did I swallow it as a reader?  Well, I wanted to, so I did but....problematic.

I'm making this sound really gross.  It is...and yet it isn't.  Don't ask me how I'd grade this.  It sucked me in and I couldn't stop reading, but how does one recommend a book featuring a beautiful manipulator as a heroine and a murderer (even if you consider it justifiable homicide) as the hero.  I'm falling on the side of "liking this" because again, sucked in couldn't put it down, and at the end of the day it's totally OK to like problematic "stuff" if you're fully aware it's problematic.

Assigning one grade to the books as a pair: Final Grade = B.

Reading Year in Review 2018

I think we all can agree that 2018 was a dumpster fire of a year and yet, somehow, I managed to get through 95 books.  My reading goal is always 100, so while I did fall short, 95 is the most I've managed to get through since 2014 (when I read an incredible 119).  Here's how it all broke down (and yes, I count DNFs):

5 Stars (A Grade) = 7

4 Stars (B Grade) = 27

3 Stars (C Grades, includes some "low B-") = 38

2 Stars (D Grades) = 10

1 Star (F Grades) = 3

DNF (Did Not Finish) = 10

Audiobooks = 28

My A grades were up this year (although pretty consistent from previous years - I rarely assign 5-Stars in the double digits), my DNFs were up a smidge, my audiobook numbers were down (shorter work commute after I moved last year!), and my C grades outpaced my B grades (which is not great).  But, I'll take it.  This was the most productive reading year I've had in a dog's age.

Now, for what everybody cares about: the books!  A reminder that this is a recap of what I loved and read during 2018, but not necessarily books published in 2018.  I'm perpetually behind, so most of my Best Of list will be books that will, hopefully, be lurking in TBRs already or easy to score at your local library.

Note: Title links will take you to full reviews

The Romance:

Burn Down the Night (2016) and Wait For It (2017) by Molly O'Keefe - After not a single romance garnered an A grade from me in 2017, I vowed to start off 2018 on the right foot - with an author who consistently works for me.  The final two books in a quartet series, Burn Down the Night gives me the closest thing I've read to a true Bad Girl Heroine in the genre and Wait For It is an example of an Asshole Hero done right.  I didn't read these books so much as inhale them.

Breathe (2016) by L. Setterby - My contest judging this year was largely meh, but holy hell where has this book been all my life?!  A perfect example of starting a book, reading the first sentence, and just falling head over feet right into the world.  I'm so hooked that I downloaded the Wattpad app to read the next book in the series (still being released in weekly installments as I write up this post).

An Extraordinary Union (2017) by Alyssa Cole - A historical romance with legit high stakes conflict.  I loved this heroine so much I'm thinking of taking the Gone Fishin' sign off of my ovaries.

The Tycoon's Socialite Bride (2014) by Tracey Livesay - Here it is, the best category romance I read this year.  Livesay hit all her emotional beats, right on time.  I loved the heroine's family baggage and the hero bent on revenge but not needlessly cruel (although this one does rip your guts out in parts).  Don't think you like category romance?  Try this one.  It's damn near magical.

Indigo (1996) by Beverly Jenkins - Arguably the book that Jenkins is best known for, and it's easy to see why.  She puts so much into this story, addressing racism, colorism, and sexism, without preaching from the pulpit or losing sight of the romance.  Also, I've always felt that Jenkins' strength (well, besides her dynamite heroines) is her world-building.  The community she creates in this story, using the Underground Railroad as a backdrop, was so well done.

The Soldier Prince (2018) by Aarti V. Raman - This is my cracktastic read of the year, basically a category romance about a former Black Ops-style soldier, who is really a prince, who falls in love with a struggling college student waiting tables in a New York City deli.  This one is full of ALL THE TROPES and I couldn't get enough of it.  Raman needs to publish the next book in this series, like, yesterday.

Delicious Temptation (2015) by Sabrina Sol - Believable baggage (seriously, families can be the worst), and I loved the East LA family bakery backdrop.  Is it because I live in southern California and know the area?  Maybe.  Because Sol writes it so very well.  My runner up for best category read of the year.

Not Romance, Still Awesome:

The Broken Girls (2018) by Simone St. James - It's to the point now where I'm a squee'ing unreasonable fangirl for Simone St. James, but seriously, I loved this one.  A time slip novel with converging 1950 and 2014 plot treads and a nice "romantic elements" secondary thread involving the 2014 heroine and her cop boyfriend.  

Grant (2017) by Ron Chernow - A long book (47 hours on audio!), this one is worth the time investment.  Grant's life exemplifies the old "truth is stranger than fiction" adage.  That this man, basically a failure is every other aspect of his life, defeated the Confederacy, saved the Union, and became President is simply remarkable.  This is my new Read A Book Already book.  Plus, I learned stuff.  Which is always nice when reading non-fiction.

Jane Doe (2018) by Victoria Helen Stone - The revenge thriller I didn't know I needed.  A cool, methodical heroine who exacts her revenge against the worst sort of hypocritical DudeBro.  I loved every blessed minute of it.

Charlesgate Confidential (2018) by Scott Von Doviak - A crime novel set in Boston with three converging timelines. It did take a while for me to sink into this story and I did have to read about the damn Red Sox way too much for my liking, but this one is excellent.  Excellent world building.  Excellent mystery.  Interesting characters.  It kept me guessing all the way to the end.

Comfort Read/Author of 2018:

Marcia Muller - Every reader I know has what they call "comfort reading."  Either a favorite book or author, maybe a favorite genre.  For me, that's mystery.  I fell in love with reading via mysteries.  I devoured them as a teen, so there's a really high nostalgia factor at play here.  Given what a mess 2018 was, it's probably not surprising that I read 14 books in the Sharon McCone series this year.  I got through books 3 - 15 and one short story collection this year, in a mix of audio and print.  Technically these were all rereads for me, revisiting books I first read or listened to on audio as a teenager and in my early 20s.  Yes, some held up better than others, but the world building! The character arcs! I wanted to read more in the series this year, but other obligations have kept me from them.  I plan to pick up again with book 16 in 2019.

And that's my Year In Review for 2018.  I'm quite pleased with myself, but continue to hope for bigger and better in 2019.  The goal, once again, is 100 books.  Let's see if I make it.

Review: Redeemed

Note: This novella was originally published as part of an anthology entitled Gambled Away (no longer available for sale).  Check your digital TBR before one-clicking.

+++++

 "Suffering a little is always better than forgetting who you are."

I love historical westerns and much to my delight, they've made somewhat of a small resurgence.  Unfortunately the resurgence seems to have largely been felt in the "cozy, small town" areas of Romancelandia.  Now, nothing wrong with this.  I like cutesy historical western towns in Romancelandia.  But my very favorite westerns are the dark, gritty ones.  The Will We Survive Winter? variety of westerns.  And there's just not a lot of those around these days.  So the fact that Molly O'Keefe has been self-publishing dark historical westerns featuring characters still dealing with the aftermath of the Civil War?  I've been all in.  Redeemed is the third book in the series and while I wasn't madly in love with it, there's still a lot to recommend.

Dr. James Madison has fallen far from grace.  He's off the chloroform that he was using to blunt his memories of the Civil War, but like any other drug addict, is still fighting his demons, wrestling with his cravings.  He moved into a brothel where the madam helped to get him clean and he's still there, drifting through life, trying to fight the urge to go back to the little green bottles of oblivion.  Then one day, a distraction wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a mystery arrives.  Helen Winters, a former Union spy.  Her odious "guardian," Charles Park, has her sing two nights while suspended in a bird cage (seriously).  On the third night?  A high stakes poker game where the players compete to win the chance to divest Helen of her virginity - presumably still intact since Charles never loses.

When James meets Helen he immediately deduces that something is rotten in Denmark.  The woman is drugged out of her mind.  Turns out with a combination of morphine and laudanum.  But deciphering the truth of Helen is harder than he imagines.  She says one thing, her body language and eyes say another.  What is the truth and what are the lies that Helen is spinning in the name of self-preservation?

This is a dark book featuring two characters with very dark back stories.  The shadow of the Civil War has featured prominently in this entire series, but nowhere is it more keenly felt than in this book.  James spent the war amputating limbs from young boys begging him not to - that's not just something you get over.  Helen, it turns out, really was a spy.  A beautiful genteel Southern belle who, along with her mother, played a very dangerous game.  James went to chloroform to forget ; Helen had drugs thrust upon her by the villain who has now ensured she's properly addicted. 

This is a compelling read but one that really could have benefited from a longer word count (and I like novellas, as a rule!).  There's just a lot of back-story here that the author doesn't invest a lot of time on.  James has been estranged from his family ever since he ran away to Paris to pursue his medical degree.  There's mention of sisters and a father, who is still alive, but then...nothing.  Helen is from Charleston.  Her father, naturally, fought for the Confederates while she and her mother used their social standing to spy for the Union.  The question here is why.  I need reasons for this.  Was her mother originally from the North?  Did she have abolitionist leanings?  She's married to a Southern man who fought for the Confederates.  How do you go from that to spying for the Union?  This bit of back story is never fully addressed.

Because of this, and the fact that the "truth" of Helen takes a little time to ferret out, the romance itself is slow going.  It does eventually show up in the later chapters, when an actual "courtship" begins and that immediately elevated this from a good, solid B grade to a B+.  Because the courtship stuff is wonderful.  I'm not going to lie, it truly is - complete with exchanging of letters.  Also, by this point, James is beginning correspondence with doctors on the subjects of addiction (on the rise thanks to the introduction of the syringe) and "soldier's heart" (what we now call PTSD).

I liked this, but didn't love it.  There were elements here that I thought were extremely well done, and O'Keefe is a fine practitioner of dark, gritty westerns (of which there are sadly few these days).  The only "bad" thing I can say about this novella is that I wanted more - which really, by way of criticism, isn't all that bad.  O'Keefe has created an interesting, multifaceted world with this series and she easily has room for more books.  Here's hoping she entertains the idea.

Final Grade = B+

Review: Wait For It

Because the alternative - that this gorgeous, rich man was somehow attracted to me - was a fairy tale.  And fairy tales were just shitty stories that no one really believed.

There's this long standing tradition in Romancelandia that readers like to call "glomming." (I'm going to credit this term to All About Romance because that's where I first heard it).  Anyway, it's the practice of discovering a new author and then going on a merry chase to acquire backlist in order to go on a reading binge.  I'm very good at acquiring the backlist thing.  The reading a bunch of books by the same author in a row?  Not so much.  Call it fear of burnout.  But, you see, I had a major book hangover after Burn Down the Night and frankly, Wait for It is the last book in this particular series by M. O'Keefe.  So despite my trepidation over the hero (who I found to be a flaming a-hole in the previous books in the series) - I tucked in to start reading.

And finished the book in a matter of hours.  I may need to go lay down for a bit after finishing this blog post...

Tiffany is 26-years-old, has three kids and an abusive husband who won't stay gone.  She finally got the courage to leave him a year ago.  Packed up the kids and moved to a dumpy apartment.  But, naturally, Phil came sniffing back around, she called the cops, and things got ugly.  Her and the kids scampered down the fire escape, got in the car, and went to her friend Annie's (see Everything I Left Unsaid and The Truth About Him).  What she didn't plan on?  That Annie and her husband would be throwing a Christmas party.  Oh, and that her asshole brother-in-law, Blake Edwards, would be there.

A while back Blake found out about Tiffany.  The entire family has cut Phil out of their lives, so the fact that the man had a wife he liked to beat up on and three kids he enjoyed terrorizing was unknown to them.  Blake has spent his entire life cleaning up after Phil and something inside him breaks.  He finds out about Tiffany and automatically assumes the worst.  In one of the best scenes I've ever read in a romance novel, he pays her off to make her "go away."  Blake is the kind of guy who used to have nothing and now has money - so to his way of thinking?  Money solves everything and keeps life from getting emotionally "messy."  Tiffany had stayed gone, until she literally had no other option.

This sets off a chain of events.  Blake, in a moment of clarity, realizes that he may have been wrong about her.  It probably helped when he saw her three kids in the back seat of her crappy Toyota.  He knows all too well what his brother is capable of and he sees this as another mess.  A problem to solve and make better.  But it's very complicated.  There's guilt, there's baggage, and then there's the fact that he likes Tiffany.  He really likes her.

How big of an ass was Blake in the earlier books in the series?  Let me put it this way - I found Max, the head of a criminal motorcycle club more sympathetic.  That scene where Blake "pays off" Tiffany is enough to get your blood boiling.  So I had reservations about him as a romance hero and naturally, O'Keefe makes it work.  How?  Well, it helps that he realizes early on that he was wrong and yet the author doesn't make the mistake of morphing him into a choir boy.  He has a lot to answer for once he and Tiffany enter into a "relationship" and to be fair to Tiffany, she's so emotionally screwed up after Phil you can see how she's terrified on one hand and grabbing at anything resembling a brass ring with the other.

This is another hard romance about hard people.  What keeps it all humming along is Tiffany, who despite years of abuse is never portrayed like a damsel in distress.  By the time our girl gets her own romance she is ALL out of fucks (pardon my language).  She is full up and has had enough.  But she knows she can't do it alone.  And loathe as she is to accept anything resembling help from Blake (who she doesn't trust, at all), she has no other choice.  This is a man with money, connections - frankly he can get her a good lawyer.  She NEEDS him, and she knows it.  But that doesn't mean she's going to make it easy for him.

As much as I loved Burn Down the Night, I think I may have liked this one a teensy bit better.  I found the trust issues and obstacles to the romance believable and heart-wrenching.  I loved Tiffany's strength and fire.  I loved that there was a good, decent guy inside Blake yearning to be set free.  My only quibble is I felt like the ending (once Phil is dispatched with...) was a bit rushed.  With all the baggage, I think I wanted to wallow around in the happy-ending a bit more.  Oh, like 50 pages more.  Plus, you know, it's the last book in the series.  But this is me being a glutton.

I only had two A reads all of 2017, a fact that left me horribly depressed.  I vowed to start 2018 off on the right foot and I knew that my Kindle held a treasure trove of possibilities.  O'Keefe has delivered two and I'm not done with the glom just yet....

Final Grade = A

Review: Burn Down the Night

First, yes I'm just now reading Burn Down the Night by M. O'Keefe.  Yes, I'm aware it's the third book in a series that everyone was talking about back in...oh, 2016.  What can I say?  You obviously have not had the pleasure of seeing the absurd contents of my Kindle.

Second, this is the book that helped inspire my recent post about "bad girl" heroines.  Unfortunately, on that score, this book is problematic.  Oh who am I kidding?  On all scores this is a problematic read.  But you know what?  I didn't care.  I was riveted from the moment I started to the moment I finished.  It had the same impact on me as the first book in the series (Everything I Left Unsaid) and wiped away any lingering malaise I had leftover from the second book (The Truth About Him - which frankly I thought was a rather pointless endeavor outside of anything involving the secondary characters).

This is the book where we finally get Joan as the heroine.  Joan is a stripper at the local seedy strip club that is a front for various criminal activities.  It's also a hangout for Max Daniels, the president of the Skulls Motorcycle Club.  Joan is the sort of character who, when caught in a bear trap, would gnaw off her own arm to escape.  She's a hard woman, as evidenced by her interactions with the other characters in the first two books.  She's also a woman with secrets.  A lot of them.  She's working some sort of angle but up until now readers were left wondering what game she was actually playing.  Turns out it's a game to save her younger sister, Jennifer, who is trapped in a cult that is a front for drug running.  And Max, our MC president, is naturally all wrapped up in the business of those drugs.

Max "got out" of the MC in the previous book.  He left.  He was in Arizona.  But when his brother called him home, he came.  And now the shit has really hit the fan.  Joan has found out that the cult leader is coming into the club to complete the drug deal.  She has plans.  Involving a couple of homemade bombs (yes, really) and a gun - all in the name of getting the psychopath cult leader to tell her where her sister is.  Max being there puts a fly in the ointment and naturally it all goes horribly wrong.  The cult leader gets away, Max gets beaten to a pulp by his "brothers" and shot for good measure.  Since Max is the last potential remaining link to finding her sister, Joan does the only sensible thing she can think of.  She kidnaps him and takes him to Florida.  She's going to convince this man to help her find her sister if it's the last thing she does.

I loved Joan in the first two books.  I LOVED HER!  She was brittle, all rough edges and very, very hard.  This is the sort of woman who could literally spit nails.  When I found out O'Keefe actually had plans to make her a heroine I was so excited, but also nervous.  Because I loved hard Joan.  I didn't want hard Joan to morph into a Rescue Me Princess all because she was finally getting a romance.  And praise jeebus, she doesn't.  That being said, there are obvious "reasons" Joan is the way Joan is.  I will say this, at least O'Keefe doesn't turn her into a tragic, misunderstood victim.  Joan is in the situation she is because she's made terrible choices.  She's spent her whole life pushing people away.  She's the sort who never dithers over fight or flight - she's the sort who will always choose flight.  Joan is looking out for Joan but feels this incredible amount of guilt over what has happened to her sister.  This guilt is what drives her character to the brink of exhaustion.

Then there's Max.  There's no way to sugarcoat this - Max is a criminal scumbag.  The guy is the president of an MC and was working out a drug deal with the cult leader.  I mean, there's no way to sugarcoat that - or is there?  O'Keefe is smart.  She doesn't make apologies for Max.  What makes his character from being totally unpalatable is that he was looking to get out.  He DID get out.  But family brought him back and having been in "the life" for that long - getting out isn't all that easy.  It's literally all he knows.

What we have is a romance between two cornered animals and it makes for fascinating reading.  Max is the one who comes around first.  Partly because he's looking for a way out anyway and also because he totally "gets" Joan.  I loved the fact that their big emotional Black Moment in this story is Max asking her if she ever gets tired of running, of being alone; of never asking anybody for help, even when it's blatantly obvious that's exactly what she needs - help from other people who care about her.  It's just that Joan makes it nearly impossible for those around her to care about her.  She keeps pushing them away.

This is a compellingly addictive story with a lot of really interesting edges to it.  It's also problematic as hell.  I can totally understand readers not wanting to read about an MC president and a stripper heroine who plants bombs and compulsively pushes everyone who gets anywhere near her far, far away.  These are hard characters.  But it also brings pretty high stakes into the potential romance.  Because O'Keefe has to "redeem" these characters enough so that you root for them, but also not morph them into pod people in order to accomplish that.  And I think she does.  Joan isn't my perfect "bad girl" heroine, but she's the one I have at the moment.  And you know what?  I'll take her.

Final Grade = A

#TBRChallenge 2016: A Man Worth Keeping

The Book: A Man Worth Keeping by Molly O'Keefe

The Particulars: Contemporary romance, Harlequin SuperRomance #1486, 2008, Out of print - available digitally, The Mitchells of Riverview Inn #2.

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?:  After discovering her through her SuperRomances, I glommed O'Keefe's entire backlist.

The Review:  My original plan for this month's TBR Challenge was to read a historical romance.  But after it failed to grab me within the first 50 pages - I decided to pull out the big guns.  O'Keefe rarely lets me down and I read the first book in this series as part of the 2014 TBR Challenge.  So it certainly qualifies for this month's Series Catch-Up theme.

Delia Dupuis and her eight-year-old daughter, Josie, are on the run.  Delia's ex-husband, a cop, is a Very Bad Man.  Delia finds out just how bad and he almost kills her.  As if this weren't complicated enough?  Josie doesn't know the whole story.  All she knows is that her mother "abandoned" her for months to go to France (in reality, Delia's mother was dying of cancer) and that Daddy Dearest dotes on her like she's a princess.  So this "vacation" her Mom keeps trying to sell her on is a little hard to swallow.  Their latest landing spot?  Riverview Inn, where Delia gets a job running the newly completed spa facilities.  The plan is to lay low, make a little money, and then take off again.  Standing in her way?  Max Mitchell.  The owner's brother, resident handyman, and a guy with enough scars (physical and emotional) to clue her in that he's Trouble with a Capital T.

Max is a former cop and he can smell a lie like a fart in a car.  He knows there is more to Delia than meets the eye.  The trick is finding out what that is before she scurries off like a jack-rabbit and/or he totally loses his carefully guarded heart to her.

As emotionally hefty and draining as the first book in this series was, this story suffers from a classic case of the Middle Book Blahs.  I get it.  Delia has to lie.  But because she's lying, because she's so skittish around Max, this doesn't exactly translate into 1) trust and 2) them spending a lot of time on page together.  When they are on page together?  She's too busy being freaked out that he'll discover her secrets.  It's hard to build a romance on that, even in a "longer" category book like a SuperRomance.

The other problem?  I think this book was published right around the time that Harlequin lost it's mind and shortened the word count on the Supers.  This story clocks in at 240 pages.  Supers, generally speaking, land around 280 pages.  40 pages might not seem like a lot - but trust me - it is.  Especially when you're cooking up a family drama plot like O'Keefe has with this series.  Besides Delia and her kid, Max has a long lost mother who comes back into the picture and a father who hasn't been totally honest with his two boys.  It's a lot to cram into a 240 page book (Secretive heroine, ticked off eight-year-old, hero's Mommy Issues, hero's baggage from being a cop, Psycho Cop Ex Husband and....oh yeah!  A romance!).

The romance just never comes together and I kept thinking of ways this story could have been rewritten to make it work better (for example: no Josie - but then you don't get the juxtaposition of ticked off eight-year-old and Max's own childhood baggage so....what does Wendy know?).  I mostly kept reading because, having already read the first book in the series, I wanted more of the Mitchell Family Drama to spin out...which it does.

So what am I left with here?  A classic case of Meh, It Was OK.  If you're new to O'Keefe's work, this is not a book I'd recommend starting with.  In fact, I think I'd only recommend it if you've already read the first book in this particular trilogy as it sorta, kinda stands alone but...not really.  A diversion that kept me flipping the pages, but nothing I'm going to crow about.

Final Grade = C+

Mini-Reviews: The Meh Strikes Back

I want to start off this latest round of mini-reviews with the disclaimer that my reading mood is all over the place right now.  Now, I know me.  I suspect if I was in the best of reading moods I'd likely still have had a similar reaction to both of these books - but given that I seem to be in the extreme minority with one (if not both) of them - well, I figure it's worth the disclaimer.

Mini-Review #1: The Truth About Him by Molly O'Keefe

The Meh: OK, so I really, really liked the first book in this duet (Everything I Left Unsaid) and given that it ended on a cliffhanger, it was pretty much a guarantee I was going to dive into this follow-up book immediately afterward.  I didn't dive so much as slog.  You know how sometimes you get hooked into a series and inevitably there's an entry where you find yourself feeling "full up" with the characters?  Yeah, that.  And this was only book two.

The stuff I loved in the first book just didn't carry over to this one (for me at any rate - every other review I'd seen for this has been SQUEEEE!).  Annie's innocence and naivety were totally understandable in book one, but in book two I was just over it.  Given the stuff that goes down at the end of book one and the beginning of book two?  I started thinking of this as Poor Little Innocent Good Girl Rescue Me Schtick.  Also, what I really loved about the first book was that it was a blend of erotic romance, suspense and women's fiction.  With this second book - way too much time spent on the erotic romance.  In fact I found every single sex scene in this book to essentially be filler.  As in, blah blah blah don't care get back to the good stuff.  What I wanted was much more of the "personal relationship stuff" between Annie, Dylan and all the secondary characters.  Dylan's father.  Dylan's brother.  The residents of the trailer park.  Joan.  DEAR GOD I WANT ALL JOAN ALL THE TIME!!!!

I finally found a reading groove in the final third of the book when the suspense kicks up and the author spends more time putting Annie and Dylan on page with the secondary characters - but the ending kinda ticked me off.  Yes, Dylan and Annie ride off into the sunset - but every other secondary character (save one) is left twisting in the breeze.  Also the epilogue takes place three years into the future, so some stuff was "told" to the reader after the fact, which I found very frustrating.  Especially given how invested I became in the secondary players.  I wanted to read that stuff in "real time, on page" and not have the author tell me what happened after the fact.  No idea if O'Keefe plans to revisit this world in future books, but frankly I'm glad to leave Annie and Dylan to their happy ending and move on.  But if she revisits the world?  Especially if she writes about Joan?!  Shut up and take my money.

Final Grade = C+

Mini-Review #2: Finders Keepers by Stephen King

The Meh: Earlier this year I listened to the first book in this trilogy, Mr. Mercedes, and enjoyed it tremendously.  I had some quibbles (mostly repetition and pacing issues) but by the end of the book I had bitten off all my fingernails and was thinking about taking up chain-smoking.  There were some minor twinges of horror, but essentially King had written a bang-up thriller and totally deserved his Edgar Award.  So it was inevitable I would listen to Finders Keepers, the second book and....meh.

The set-up here is pretty good.  In 1978 a whack-a-doodle breaks into the country home of a reclusive writer (think JD Salinger) with some compatriots.  His partners just want the rumored cash the old guy keeps on hand but our villain is after the rumored unpublished writings.  Bingo bango - author dead, compatriots dead, but before our villain can spend the money or read the stolen unpublished writings?  He's sent to prison for another crime entirely.  He buried his loot before he got nabbed however, and it's eventually found by a young teenage boy whose father was badly injured during the events of Mr. Mercedes.  He uses the money to help his family, but keeps (and reads) the notebooks for himself.  Everything is going along swimmingly until our bad, bad man gets paroled.

As good as the set-up is, the pacing is a real issue.  Remember those great characters we meet in Mr. Mercedes?  Bill, Jerome, and Holly?  Yeah, they don't even show up until halfway through this book.  Prior to that it's all set-up.  Then once we finally get to the "cat and mouse" portion of the story?  It lacks all the urgency of the previous book.  With Mr. Mercedes I couldn't wait to start my commute to and from work so I could listen to more.  With this book?  I pretty much listened because I had it in the car and wanted to return it to the library on time. 

The teaser for the third book also doesn't inspire much hope.  Half the fun of Mr. Mercedes and the concept of this trilogy in general is that King was writing suspense.  A crime novel.  A thriller.  In other words he was doing something a little different.  But the teaser for book three pretty much goes whole hog into supernatural territory and....meh.  Look, I'll likely listen to it because at this point I feel like I want to finish the trilogy - plus more Bill, Holly and Jerome.  But supernatural woo-woo?  Meh.

Final Grade = C

Everything I Left Unsaid

I'm over at Heroes & Heartbreakers today with a First Look of Molly O'Keefe's Everything I Left Unsaid.  First Looks aren't really designed to be traditional "reviews" - and my writings at H&H tend to be a bit more "professional" than my writing here on my own personal blog.  So for the sake of full disclosure, here's some nitty-gritty details about my reaction to the book that didn't make the cut over at H&H.

1) This did make the cut on the H&H piece - but it bears repeating....

THERE IS A CLIFFHANGER!

The second book, The Truth About Him is due out in November though, so the wait shouldn't kill you.

2) This is a departure for O'Keefe.  The sex scenes are on par with erotic romance, but I'd label them Hot Vanilla.  Some kink (hey, there's a voyeurism scene in a strip club), but nothing overtly shocking if you've been around the E/R block a time or two.  Also, it's not a non-stop boink fest.  The sex is hot, but it's not on every other page.  This is part romance, part women's fiction and part suspense.  I've seen some references to "New Adult" - but the heroine is 24, and the hero is 29 so.....yeah, I'm having a hard time with the NA label.  Unless we're now labeling everything angsty as New Adult - in which case shoot me now and get it over with.

3) The heroine grew up on a farm, in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma and her mother had "issues."  Hence the heroine was VERY sheltered growing up.  Then she married her husband who is an abusive asshole.  So she's inexperienced, naive and a little innocent.  The hero is turned on by her innocence - which smacked of fetishizing (is that a word?) to me.  This is a LOOOOOOONG standing pet peeve of mine (Issues. I Haz Them.) but I can recognize that other readers may not read it the same way, or have the same reaction that I did.  So take this for what you will.

4) Motorcycle Club Ahoy!  Sigh.  But to be fair to O'Keefe, at least her MC guys aren't criminals masquerading as heroes.  No, they're just criminals.

5) The writing style is....well it takes some getting used to.  The heroine portions of the story are told in first person.  The hero portions are told in third person.  So you get this deep point-of-view for the heroine, but not the hero.  It was....odd at times.  That said, given the cliffhanger ending, I've already started my ARC of The Truth About Him and it flips.  Hero = first person POV.  Heroine = third person POV.  So there you go.

6) I have no idea how to grade this.  I'm pretty sure it's not an A, as I don't think I'll ever reread it.  But it's really good - even with my quibbles.  So probably a B+.

Head on over to H&H to read my entire First Look.

The book comes out on Tuesday, October 13.

Digital Review: Tempted

Last year I had my skirt blown up by Seduced by Molly O'Keefe, her self-published foray into historical western romance.  This was two-fold: 1) Holy crap, O'Keefe has written a WESTERN!!!, and 2) Holy crap, it's really frickin' good!!!! It also was the closest any author has come to filling the cavernous hole in the Earth that Maggie Osborne left behind when she retired.  I finished that book and immediately wanted the sequel, of which I knew there would have to be one.  The heroine's sister plays too prominent of a role in Seduced for there not to be a sequel.

A year later, Tempted is finally here and, as promised, it's the story of Anne "Annie" Denoe and Steven Baywood, the man she saved from death after he was shot by her no-good brother-in-law.  When we left Anne in Seduced she had made the decision to move to Denver, which is where she is at the start of Tempted.  She owns a boardinghouse and one of the strays she rescues is Dr. James Madison, who is addicted to chloroform.  Technically Anne is his nurse/assistant, although the reality is closer to her enabling the good doctor.  When he's too addled to perform his duties he tells Anne what needs to be done and she does it.  Anne is desperate to continue working in medicine, something she did with her father (a doctor), during the war, and nursing Steven back to health.  She freely chose to come to Denver "for reasons," but finds herself lonely.  Madison, when he's sober, is desperately charming and has proposed.  The fly in the ointment?  She's in love with Steven, a man she knows in her heart is unavailable "for reasons."  But when Steven rides back into town?  It doesn't stop her foolish heart from springing back to life.

Steven loves Anne, but doesn't really know what to do about it.  The War changed a lot of people, and really changed Steven, who spent time in Andersonville.  Needless to say, Steven has issues, most of them resulting in the fact that he literally cannot deal with anyone touching him.  He also finds that his uh, "equipment" doesn't necessarily respond the way it did prior to being a prisoner-of-war.  So while he loves Anne, he's also not foolish enough to think that loving her will be enough.  How can he be any sort of husband to this amazing woman when he feels like less of a man?

What I've loved about O'Keefe's foray into westerns (thus far) is that you never quite know where she's going with them.  Seduced opened up with a heroine already married.  Tempted brings in the added complication of Dr. Madison.  For readers who loathe love triangles (I would be one of those, by the way), that's not what we get here.  Anne contemplates Madison's proposal for a minute, before discarding it almost immediately for two very important reasons: 1) The guy is a drug addict and 2) She loves Steven.  But that doesn't mean she doesn't think about it.  She's lonely and wants a family.  Is pining away for an unavailable man really going to get her closer to her goal?  Not really.

"What would you and your sister talk about?" he asked. "Besides cotton."
"Boys. Boys were always a popular topic."
"I might have guessed."
"My sister was a terrible flirt."
"And you?"
"I was too serious to flirt."
"Hasn't stopped you lately."  He arched a golden eyebrow at her.
"I have been quite scandalous haven't I?"
"Totally shameless. It makes me doubt this picture you paint of yourself before the war.  The shy wallflower. I don't credit it."
"No one saw me."
"I see you."

 As Anne once helped Steven, stuff happens that lead to Steven helping Anne in this story.  The latter half of the story is the detailing of how the friends become lovers, and navigate their way through a sexual relationship given Steven's PTSD.  It's truly heartbreaking, portrayed with a sensitivity that, frankly, you don't always see with Alpha heroes in romance novels.  While undoubtedly some readers will likely grouse at the fact that this is a novella, I felt the length of the story was just right and we leave our couple in a really good spot by the end.

The door is open (huzzah!) for more westerns, with the next book reported to feature Dr. Madison as hero.  The author also introduces a local madam, and I was pretty much ready to marry Delilah by the end of the story.  Here's hoping we haven't seen the last of her.

While I didn't love this quite as much as Seduced, I really enjoyed it immensely.  I think, in it's favor, Seduced had the element of surprise going for it.  Going in I had the question: "Can O'Keefe pull off a historical western?"  Now knowing the answer to that question (a resounding yes!), Tempted didn't have quite the same level of reader anticipatory anxiety attached to it, for me at least.  That said, it's still frickin' good.  Start reading these now, says Wendy.

Final Grade = B+

#TBRChallenge 2015: Crazy Thing Called Love

The Book: Crazy Thing Called Loved by Molly O'Keefe

The Particulars: Contemporary romance, Third in Crooked Creek trilogy, 2013, Bantam, In Print, RITA Winner Best Contemporary Romance 2014

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: O'Keefe is an autobuy.

The Review: All readers have their quirks, and Molly O'Keefe's career trajectory illustrates one of mine.  I love category romance.  Love it. Gimme, gimme, gimme.  And when I find an author I like in category I'll read them until the wheels fall off and they're driving me over a cliff a la Thelma and Louise.  But when/if they leave category to jump to single title?  It's like my brain freezes up.  I'll be blunt: a very common issue I have with single title contemporaries is that they feel bloated.  I'm so in tune with the category format that it's like I go into single title contemporaries with a mental red pen poised in my hand.  I don't feel this way about historical romance, just contemporaries.  Yes, I know it's discriminatory and makes no sense, but there you have it.

Crazy Thing Called Love marks my first single title read by O'Keefe, which means I'm confident in saying that this third book in a trilogy stands alone well.  I also tore through it.  1) Because my own TBR Challenge snuck up on me and 2) Because I literally could not go to sleep one night until I finished every last word.  This story flowed for me from the first word to the last. And given that this is The Year of the Slump?  Cue the music, commence with the happy dancing!

Madelyn Cornish is picture perfect. Host of a local Dallas TV morning show, she's come a long way from the girl who grew up poor in Pittsburgh.  She's everything you expect from a TV host - polished, confident, razor sharp, and thin.  Her entire life is diet, exercise, work, control.  She took the lump of clay that was Maddy Baumgarten and has her eye on the prize - a shot at the big leagues.  What Would Matt Lauer Do?  However what nobody knows?  When Maddy was 18 she married her high school sweetheart, Billy Wilkins.  Billy Wilkins, notorious NHL enforcer (ahem, goon), who her producer now wants to feature on their show.  Maddy did a lot to bury the past, she's not about to dig it up.

Billy's career is in a tailspin.  Everyone loves a goon until they get old and the league decides they want to "clean up" the game.  After a devastating loss that kicks their team out of the playoffs, Billy who has been riding the bench, kinda, sorta - well punches out an opposing player during the hand-shake line at the end of the game.  The owner is pissed, his coach is pissed, his agent is practically begging, and the NHL is likely to bring the hammer down.  What he needs is spin. Damage control. While he'd normally run in the other direction of a "make-over" on a daytime TV show he ends up saying yes.  Not so much because of spin but because it means Maddy.  Billy is still in love with her and moving on since their divorce has been impossible.

The prologue opens with their marriage imploding and kicks things off with a devastating start.  What I enjoy about O'Keefe's couples is that she rarely makes one person "the bad guy" when things go south.  I suspect some readers will have issues with Maddy who is very hung up on "losing herself" in Billy's wake, who has a way of sweeping her off her feet and making her forget she's her own person.  I got this though - as let's be brutally honest - women losing their own identities in the wake of becoming wives (and/or mothers) isn't exactly uncommon.  Also given Maddy's background (loving parents, but still kind of a tough childhood), her hang-ups make sense.  For his part Billy is young and a touch selfish.  There's plenty of blame to go around when their marriage implodes.

As the author carries the story along the angst gets progressively heavier.  On the surface we have the fairly common reunion theme.  In reality, with Billy and Maddy back in each others orbits, the skeletons of their past don't stay buried for long.  Things get real complicated, real quick - which leaves Maddy, in particular, running scared.

This book got a fair share of praise when it was released, and obviously winning the RITA means a lot of folks really loved it.  I'll be honest, it was just pleasant for me for the first half.  A good, solid B read, but nothing that I was squee'ing about.  And then the second half happened.  I was hesitant, at first, about the turn O'Keefe takes, but it ended up really working out well.  So well in fact that by the time I was finished reading the epilogue it was 1AM and I was choking back tears.  Always a good thing.  Well, maybe not the 1AM on a "school night" - but, oh happy sigh!  I'm still undecided if I'll ever reread this, but hot damn, it's a good 'un.

Final Grade = A-

TBR Challenge 2015: Dishing It Out

The Book: Dishing It Out by Molly O'Keefe

The Particulars: Contemporary romance, Harlequin Flipside #37, 2005, Book two in duet/series, Out of print, Available digitally

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: I glommed O'Keefe's entire backlist after discovering her through her SuperRomances, which means yes - I picked up the two Harlequin Duets and two Flipsides she wrote even though I was never a huge fan of either lines.

The Review: O'Keefe definitely has a "style" and for those of us who love her books we know it's 1) Characters half a step away from rock bottom and 2) Angst-O-Rama-Jama.  And yet this is the same author who started her publishing career with Duets and Flipside.  A couple of speed bumps in a long line of doomed "romantic comedy" lines for Harlequin.  God bless Harlequin, I love them to death - but lighter rom/com lines have historically not gone well for them.

Marie Simmons is working her butt off trying to create some stability for herself.  After a nomadic early adulthood, she has settled in San Francisco and opened up a small cafe/bakery.  She's broke.  She's burning the candle at both ends.  But she's got style, a good "look," and she's been doing cooking segments for a local TV morning show.  Now they want to take the show weekly, but on one condition.  Giovanni "Van" MacAllister is to be her new cohost.  Her nemesis.  The guy who outbid her for the restaurant space she wanted across the street.  The guy who called her cafe a "cute little coffee shop" during one of his recent interviews.  And now the asshat thinks he can horn in on her gig and ride her coat-tails.  No thank you Mr. Man.

What follows is, of course, these two becoming cohosts.  Van isn't exactly Mr. Smooth and he "gets" why Marie isn't exactly his biggest fan.  But perception is everything, and Van needs this gig.  He's hoping the TV spot will help get his restaurant off the ground.  Marie may think he's Mr. Big Shot, but whoa baby - he's anything but.  So the two start working together only to realize that their sexual chemistry may just muck it all up.  Neither one is anxious to mix business with pleasure.

While this was a super quick read, I could tell that it was early on in author's career.  It's the sort of book that picked up steam as it went along.  It opens a little slow, and we don't even get Van's point of view until around page 60 or so.  Up until then it's all Marie, prickly as a wet cat, putting him through his paces.  For a while I was dreading a set-up of these two constantly trying to "one up" each other, and braced myself for various mean-spirited shenanigans - but blessedly the author does not travel that route.  Marie has stipulations, which Van accepts, and the rest of the book is spent with them figuring out how to coexist together - in business, and in pleasure.

This is a "romantic comedy" in the sense that it feels like a rom/com visually speaking.  It's easy to see this translating to the big, or small, screen.  But thankfully it's not "comedy," as in the Funny Ha Ha variety.  Readers are spared slapstick, forced attempts at humor, and other brain-bleed inducing endeavors that very rarely translate well on the page.  It's a rom/com in tone, light and breezy, carrying you along.  It's a textbook example of what I call a Chocolate Chip Cookie Read.  It's tasty and fun while you're consuming it, but three minutes later it's like you never ate anything at all and you're back scrounging in the cupboard even though you told yourself, "Only one cookie....."

Where things get intriguing is towards the end, when the O'Keefe we know "today" starts to creep in.  Things are really, really light until the author needs to get to the "black moment" to spur her characters towards our happy ending.  This is when Marie's past baggage creeps in (major trust issues), which will likely annoy some readers, but worked for me considering how badly she had been spurned in the past.

This was interesting.  It's not a perfect read.  I felt the character development was a little light in the pants mostly because the author never quite dives deeply enough below the surface of her characters. It also took a few chapters for the story to really pick up any sort of steam (as a general rule, category romances really need to hit the ground running).  But it's a pleasant read, and reading it as an intellectual exercise on Author Development + History, it's really intriguing.  Had I read this back when it was published, prior to O'Keefe making the jump to SuperRomance - I'm not sure I would have "seen" her taking that path.  But in hindsight?  It makes a lot of sense.  Especially when looking at the character baggage she concocts for this story.  Certainly she doesn't delve into it too deeply (hey, Flipside!), but you can see she very easily could have.  And that's the stuff that SuperRomances are made of.

This was a perfect example of an "OK" read for me until the second half, when the angst really began to go from simmer to boil.  I'm not sure I would recommend readers drop their lives and read this right now, but if you're already an O'Keefe fan?  I think this is well worth a look.

Final Grade = B-

TBR Challenge 2014: Baby Makes Three

The Book: Baby Makes Three by Molly O’Keefe 

The Particulars: Contemporary romance, Harlequin SuperRomance #1460, 2007, Book 1 in The Mitchells of Riverview Inn trilogy, Out of Print, Available digitally

Why Was It In Wendy’s TBR?: After discovering the awesomeness of O’Keefe’s Supers I glommed her entire category backlist. I picked this one for the Recommended Read TBR Challenge theme because it’s a favorite of Miss Bates.

The Review:

Suddenly, the reality of her life hammered home like a nail in her coffin. She worked shifts at a chain restaurant and was hungover at three on a Friday afternoon. 

If O’Keefe has a “formula,” I would say it’s in her highly damaged, a half-step away from rock-bottom characters. This story is no different. That cliché “you always hurt the ones you love?” Yeah, this book. I wouldn’t be surprised if the author had that written on a post-it note and stuck to her computer monitor during the writing process.

Gabe Mitchell has built his dream on the Hudson River. An inn with breathtaking views, private cabins and a state-of-the-art kitchen. The problem is he cannot seem to find a chef and the few who have applied (and crashed and burned the interview process) have told him nobody would want to work in “the middle of nowhere” anyway. Gabe is desperate. He’s a few weeks from opening, has a society wedding booked at the last minute, and….no chef. Only a man this desperate would show up, hat in hand, on his ex-wife’s doorstep.

Alice is a great chef. A great chef working at a crappy chain restaurant after her marriage dies a slow, painful death and her own restaurant goes down in flames (figuratively, not literally). She’s living life at the bottom of the nearest bottle and is barely hanging on by her fingernails. Gabe showing up opens a lot of old wounds that haven’t even scabbed over yet. But he’s desperate and turns out so is she. So she agrees to bail him out, work at his inn for a couple of months, and then she’s gone. Or so she thinks.

What makes this story so incredibly gut-wrenching is that you’re reading about two people who still love each other but are in a serious pain. Gabe and Alice were passionately in love. Until reality hit. Reality that they both wanted family, wanted to build a life together, and two miscarriages (late ones) rocked their foundation. They’re both devastated, but instead of grieving together, they end up tearing each other apart. Now they’re back in close quarters out of desperation. Alice essentially a drunk. Gabe unable and unwilling to “deal” with anything. His idea of “dealing” is to sweep everything under the rug and pretend like it never happened.

It’s a hard, hard story. The kind of book that emotionally exhausts you while you’re reading it and the kind of book I tend to back-hand category naysayers with when they say “::sniff:: I don’t read escapist fantasy trash about sheikhs and princesses ::sniff::” 

Gah. Seriously. Shut-up.

If I have any quibbles about this story it’s that it’s so heavy that I’m not sure even a SuperRomance is enough to really flog out all the “issues.” Plus it reads very much as a trilogy. As a stand-alone it doesn’t entirely work. Yes, our couple ends up together, but there’s a development later in the story that leaves me with a worried pit at the bottom of my stomach (will it work out OK?). Also we have series baggage (Mommy Issues Ahoy!) that is blatantly left dangling at the end to feed the next two books in the trilogy.

Still, it’s a really good book. The sort of book that romance readers know exist in the genre, but naysayers don’t have a clue about since they’re too busy sneering at us about sheikhs, secret babies, Greek tycoons and/or Fifty Shades. There’s nothing in this story that I couldn’t see happening in “real life” – which made it all the more poignant.

Final Grade = B+