Basia's Bookshelf Book Reviews — Book reviews for the romantic, slightly snarky nerds in all of us

Mercy (Mercy #1)

May 19, 2011 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 6 Comments

By Rebecca Lim

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Publication Date: May 17, 2011
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal
Source: Netgalley

There’s something very wrong with me. I can’t remember who I am or how old I am, or even how I got here. All I know is that when I wake up, I could be any one. It is always this way. There’s nothing I can keep with me that will stay. It’s made me adaptable. I must always re-establish ties. I must tread carefully or give myself away. I must survive.Mercy doesn’t realise it yet, but as she journeys into the darkest places of the human soul, she discovers that she is one of the celestial host exiled with fallen angel, Lucifer. Now she must atone for taking his side. To find her own way back to heaven, Mercy must help a series of humans in crisis and keep the unwary from getting caught up in the games that angels play. Ultimately she must choose between her immortal companion, Lucifer, and a human boy who risks everything for her love.

Goodreads Summary

Mercy has no body. She knows what she looks like, or what she used looked like a long, long time ago but she has no form until she falls into a temporary and unwitting host. Her curse is to be torn from one to another, over and over. The only constant presence in her mind is Luc, the boy she believes she’s destined to be with, who comes to her at night promising that she’s getting closer to finding him but warning that she must always be on guard against the Eight Brothers who want to keep her in her endless cycle of body to body transference.

This time Mercy abruptly awakens in the body of scrawny misfit Carmen Zappacosta, on her way to a town called Paradise to stay with a host family for a week while she prepares to sing at an event with her school choir. All is not right in the Daley household when Carmen arrives – both parents are just a little too cheerful and a little brittle and Carmen’s room obviously once belonged to their daughter – one that they no longer have. It doesn’t take long for her to find out that their daughter Lauren was kidnapped a year earlier and that her older brother Ryan hasn’t accepted that she might be dead and is still looking for her on his own. In her dreams, Luc warns her that she must do nothing or risk losing her chance to be with him again, but something compels Mercy/Carmen to help Ryan. In a bizarre twist, Mercy enhances Carmen’s own talents as a star soprano and may end up linking her to Lauren’s disappearance with deadly results.

I absolutely loved the concept of this story and Mercy’s character. It was very easy to forget she inhabited the body of a girl who was described as having the body of a ten-year old with eczema and crazy curly hair, especially when there were any whispers of romantic feelings with Ryan. Mercy didn’t retain memories of the bodies she’d been in for long, but she always tried to leave them in a better place than when she’d dropped into them. What they did after she was gone was up to them, but getting them out of abusive relationships or cleaning them up felt like her duty. I think the concept just provides endless opportunities for stories while still maintaining the core characters – I had an impression that Mercy was a bit like a paper doll. She was the same doll, but you could hang different people on top of her for each story. It seemed fascinating to me (and I had a zillion paper dolls when I was a kid, so I just had to have that in my head).

(ETA: A very smart person – Katelyn, who has her own blog of awesomeness - jump-started my brain, and I was thinking that I didn’t do a very good job of explaining Mercy’s body switching. I added it in the comment section, but for anyone not getting that far, here’s what I said:

Mercy’s like a loose soul, for lack of a better term. She keeps her own consciousness, but she’s essentially reincarnated for only a short time and only in “pre-existing” bodies. She gets thrust into one with no warning of who it will be or where [she's yanked into Carmen on the bus, mid-conversation with someone], although she does have sort of a sense of when she’s running out of time.

The body she’s in has no memory of being taken over and has only a blank area for the time she’s been in the body which is why she tries hard not to leave a big “footprint” of herself.

A big thank you to Katelyn for getting me to knock myself on the head to add some clarity!).

Since this really is Mercy’s book, Ryan felt more like a half-character. His obsession with his sister’s disappearance felt almost creepy sometimes and while I believed his friendship with Mercy, when I thought of him with “Carmen,” it just didn’t work. I liked Luc more, I think because there was so much about him that was left unexplained. There already was a relationship between he and Mercy before the story started and Lim captured that feeling of intimacy very well.

The mystery of Ryan’s sister’s disappearance was well-done and I didn’t find the tie-in to Mercy hard to believe at all if it’s possible she can be dropped in certain places for certain reasons. There was a little Scooby Doo feeling to Ryan and Mercy’s wrap-up of the case, but it was still suspenseful and it worked within the context of the story.

My Summary: This story occasionally suffered from a case of too many characters muddying the waters, but I still thought the mystery was well-played with the central characters. I really like the idea of a soul being dropped into body after body, with the question left open that each time there might be something Mercy needs to do – but she doesn’t know if that something will lead her closer or push her away from Luc. I desperately hope the author doesn’t try for a continued love triangle but instead lets Mercy and Luc’s story continue to play out on its own because that’s the one I’ll continue to pay to read.

My Rating: B+

Filed Under: *A Rating, Paranormal, Reviews, Young Adult Tagged With: Rebecca Lim

Under Wraps (Underworld Detection Agency #1)

May 18, 2011 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 3 Comments

By Hannah Jayne

Publisher: Kensington
Publication Date: March 1, 2011
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Source: Purchased

Sick of wrongful-death lawsuits every time a full moon comes around?

Call the Underworld Detection Agency.As a human immune to magic, Sophie Lawson can help everyone from banshee to zombie transition into normal, everyday San Francisco life. With a handsome werewolf as her UDA boss and a fashionista vampire for a roommate, Sophie knows everything there is to know about the undead, the unseen, and the uncanny. . .

Until a rash of gruesome murders has demons and mortals running for cover, and Sophie finds herself playing sidekick to detective Parker Hayes. Dodging raging bloodsuckers, bad-tempered fairies, and love-struck trolls is one thing. But when Sophie discovers Parker isn’t what he seems, she’s got only one chance to figure out whom to trust. Because an evil hiding in plain sight is closing in. . .and about to make one wisecracking human its means to ultimate power. . .

Goodreads Summary

Trolls, Vampires, Demons and every other paranormal creature you can imagine (except bogeymen – c’mon, those are just a myth) are required to register at the clearinghouse also known as the Underworld Detection Agency. If they want to head topside, don a disguise and blend with humans, then the UDA will help them out with unemployment insurance and all sorts of other benefits. There’s a lot of paperwork to be done and the UDA is a bustling hive of workers, headed by werewolf Pete Sampson. His executive assistant is Sophie Lawson, the daughter of a seer and the only human working there. Sophie’s immune to any sort of magic and can see through spells meant to veil things from regular eyes.

Someone’s killed a couple of people in San Francisco and while normally that wouldn’t rate a visit to the UDA by police, this time is different. It looks like a paranormal is responsible – or someone who wants to make it look like it’s a paranormal. Detective Parker Hayes is sent down and somewhere between tripping over her lolling tongue and wanting to impress her boss and the detective, Sophie finds herself as Hayes’ rather unwanted new topside partner.

One of Sophie’s very important jobs as Sampson’s executive assistant is to chain him up at night and while she’s going to be working topside, her roommate Nina has been charged with the task. Except Nina’s a little…self-centered and ditzy. And she forgets. By the time Sophie races back to the office, the room is destroyed and Sampson is gone. When Parker and Sophie’s next case turns out to look a lot like a werewolf mauling, she knows someone’s setting up the paranormals. The case is very personal now as she’s trying to save her boss, avoid who – or what – is stalking her and decide how much she wants to play with the handsome detective.

If this book were to be graded just on truth in advertising, it’d get a D. I might have given it less, except the blurb actually does follow the storyline for the most part. The cover looks nothing like the story describes Sophie and it absolutely doesn’t convey the tone of the book. This isn’t urban fantasy, really. It’s closer to Stephanie Plum, which isn’t a bad thing but if I wanted to read that sort of story I wouldn’t go looking for it in a book that had a chick dressed in leathers holding a sword with her hair blowing in the wind, glaring at me on the cover.

Sophie is something of a stammering, klutzy nerd. Her physical description of herself is really not that flattering and her wardrobe doesn’t contain a bit of leather except perhaps a pair or two of shoes; her handling of weaponry is frighteningly bad. I wish I could say more about her but frustratingly, the writing seems to be around her rather than about her. I want to say that she’s funny, but it’s the situations that she’s in that are funny and her reactions to them that are funny, not necessarily that she is. She’s a good straight man, I guess. I wish like mad that more had been done with her anti-magic abilities because that really interested me. I can count on one hand the time she used them and may have fingers left over. It was disappointing because it was just another instance that I thought something was promised in the blurb and not delivered.

I didn’t like Parker much. It didn’t help that there wasn’t much “detecting” going on with the detective (or Sophie) beyond running from crime scene to crime scene looking grim or doing other silly “undercover” things, but he seemed a little seedy to me. He was very cute and charming but also a really big tease and he kept a big secret from Sophie for no reason that I could figure out. He bugged me and the ending just confirmed every single thing I thought about him.

The mystery plot was a bit thin. It really didn’t make sense and felt a little tossed together by the time Sophie and Parker figured it out. There were really other things going on in the story that I had more fun reading about so I just didn’t care one way or another why the killer was doing what he was, I was just waiting for the big ending.

So why not a DNF, F or D? The highlights of the book were the supporting characters. They were funny – sometimes to the point of silliness – but they were a nice distraction when Parker and Sophie’s story started to drive me crazy. Sophie’s roommate, the vampire Nina and her nephew Louis (that’s Vlad) were a riot and Sophie had a crazy, stinky lovesick troll named Steve that kept popping up in the weirdest places proclaiming his adoration for her.

My Summary: It probably goes without saying that this should have a sticker on it saying not to judge this book by its cover. I didn’t really see a strong paranormal angle beyond the “race” of the characters and the teaser romantic story didn’t work for me at all, mostly because I found Parker to be manipulative, something that his ending confirmed for me. It’s undoubtedly damning with faint praise, but this really isn’t a bad book. Some of the situations and supporting characters are funny and I think Sophie would work in a different setting. She’s just no UF heroine.

My Rating: C-

Filed Under: *C Rating, Reviews, Urban Fantasy Tagged With: Hannah Jayne

Interview and Post: L.J. DeLeon, Author of the Warriors For Light Series (Re-Post)

May 15, 2011 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf Leave a Comment

I’m reposting this because the original, which had been posted on Thursday the 12th, had been a victim of Blogger’s 20+ hour breakdown and had been temporarily removed. When it reappeared it had formatting errors that couldn’t be repaired. My apologies to anyone that’s receiving my reviews in their e-mail who’ll end up seeing this twice.

***

I’m absolutely thrilled to have L.J. DeLeon, author of the Warriors For Light series and The Ultimate Game, come and chat with me. She was kind enough to send me the first two books in her Warriors For Light series, Warrior’s Rise and Dragon Child (my review for Dragon Child will follow my interview with L.J.) and I loved them so much I took the plunge, begged her to be gentle with me and invited her over. I wanted to talk a little bit about the series, the new book which has just been released and writing fantasy.

The new book Absolution is going to feature someone close to Moira?Yes and no. Absolution, which has just been released, goes back to Warrior’s Rise. Lucan “Luc” Woods has been tormented by his actions. The heroine Allana is the Fae princess switched for Moira. While she’s lived most of her life in the Goddess’ dimension, hIfreann, her early years were in the Dark Lord’s Abyss and the repercussions from that time are affecting Earth today.From the title, it seems like it’s going to be a have a deeper focus on the emotional elements and less on the battlefield. Is that so? Will we still be seeing the Cáidh Arm and the rest of the gang fighting away?

You’re right; Absolution is deeply emotional. It focuses on the healing of two wounded souls. While you will see a little of Deva, the Cáidh Arm, and her mate Padraig, the focus is on Luc and Allana, with Fritz in more prominence, along with Raziel and Rice, a daemon you will love, and a surprise or two about a previous character. While there are a couple of action sequences, the central theme is forgiving yourself enough so that you can accept love.

It sounds gorgeous. Dragon Child had some really emotional scenes for Moira and Steve, I’m looking forward to more of the same. I can’t wait to read more about Raziel too – I’ve loved how bits and pieces of him keep getting revealed. What a wonderful character he’s turning out to be!

Any sneak peek about whose book might be next (my lips are sealed, I promise)?

LOL. Well, I have a short—around 10,000-15,000 words—titled Defiance, coming this June or July. This is about Raziel and his wife, a moment in time, and we experience the Dark Lord’s fall from grace. However, the next two books will be about our twin werewolves and their twin sister mates—Allana’s missing daughters. Jamie’s book is Sophie’s Challenge and Mark’s book is Kate’s Army. Both of these books are scheduled for November or December 2011. Carlson, Sophie’s estranged, arch-villain husband, will torment her and Jamie. Deva will be in both Jamie/Sophie’s book and Mark/Kate’s book.

These books, while fantasy, center on the eternal struggle of good versus evil with love complicating—or is it simplifying?—the hero’s and heroine’s choices. To paraphrase Captain James T. Kirk, “Good can triumph over evil, but it must be very, very careful.” Fantasy follows real life. We struggle against odds. We see the best and worst of people in crucial moments.

This is why I love to write fantasy. It allows me to deal with situations that might otherwise be too sensitive in a real life setting. In Warrior’s Rise and Dragon Child, books one and two of the Warriors For Light series, I’ve tried to show even good, decent people can be forced to make horrible choices that haunt them. Inherent goodness and love enable the characters to win. The heroes and heroines of each book are stronger together than apart.

I love creating different worlds. Throughout the series, in addition to Earth, I have three other worlds.

The magickal world of the Fae is Otherworld, inspired by the Celtic Land of Eternal Youth. In Warrior’s Rise we visit this world. Poor Deva, she’s a warrior and has never been in a Fae Royal Court and must learn how to navigate this world. We also see this world in Dragon Child through Moira’s eyes. Both women suffer the same problems. The racially pure Fae aren’t fond of mixed breeds, although in Moira’s case her heritage comes as a surprise.

In both Warrior’s Rise and Dragon Child, we experience the Dark Lord’s domain, the Abyss. Even in this world, all is not as it seems. There are degrees of bad, and more often it’s shades of gray.

While we see a little of the Goddess’ world of hIfreann in Warrior’s Rise, it is in Dragon Child we experience the truth of this world. King Raziel rules this world, second only to the Goddess. He is the leader of her Paladins, the Seraphim, and their weapons, the Saraphs, über shapeshifters who can take any form but are most comfortable as fire-breathing dragons. Luckily for Moira, she was switched at birth and raised in Otherworld. Poor thing has a rough time dealing with her true Mommy Dearest.

I love each of these four worlds. The good, the bad, and the ugly, but then I love life. I believe if it’s lived to the fullest, sometimes it feels like a fantasy.

I’d like to invite every to stop by my website. They can read excerpts of my Warriors and Max Turner books plus some free flash fiction or short stories. My blog is written primarily by the characters of the Warriors series, has some wonderful animal pictures, and also has excerpts from the Warriors For Light books. For those of who have read the books, please drop me a line via either website. I’d love to know which characters you want to read more about, including stories ideas or title suggestions.

My books are sold at all major e-bookstores. Print versions will be available by December 2011.

Bio: LJ DeLeon is an Army brat and a world-traveled former CIA Intelligence Analyst who has seen enough of this world to appreciate other worlds. Working for the CIA was great training for writing fantasy, paranormal, and futuristic romance—and understanding the warrior mentality. Amazing how real life and fiction overlap.

L.J. DeLeon’s Website
Warriors For Light Website

I second, third and fourth the suggestion to stop by L.J.’s websites – they’re loaded with information and excerpts and just a lot of fun to navigate around. Having read the two books, I personally had some fun with the reference page.

Thank you so much L.J. for taking the time to answer some questions for me and write such a thoughtful post! I did some rather juvenile form of dancing in my chair when you said that Raziel, Mark and Jamie’s books will all be out this year in addition to Allana’s book. I don’t want to be pushy (which means I do) but there’s a certain Seraphim that I’m getting a little squirmy for a story for. Not that two books in I’m chomping, right?

Dragon Child

By L.J. DeLeon
Publisher: Dark Hallows Publishing
Publication Date: March 22, 2011
Genre: Adult Paranormal Romance
Source: Author

A fire-breathing dragon, Moira O’Neal, was exchanged at birth for a Fae princess. Discovering the truth, she escapes the cage of the royal court and joins forces with the sexiest wereleopard on Earthworld. She fights the urge to mate and the trap that comes with it as they race against time to find the missing princess and a master of the black arts who covets her power.Major Steve Taylor, a wereleopard in the Army For Light, partners with the impetuous Moira in the middle a dangerous mission where failure means all their deaths. Worse, his leopard decides Moira is his mate, leaving the man at war with his cat.

Goodreads Summary

Even with her mass of curling red hair and brown eyes as evidence, no one at the court of the Tuatha de Danaan in the Otherworld seemed to figure out that Princess Moira O’Neal wasn’t related by blood to her blond, blue-eyed royal family, not even Moira herself. It wasn’t until she secreted herself away in one of her mother’s rooms using a newly discovered power that she hears the truth – she was a changeling, swapped at birth with Queen Graciela’s real child by Beliar, the Dark One. Graciela is begging Major Steve Taylor, a wereleopard fighting the war against the Dark to find this daughter, whom she thinks is now on Earth.

Heartbroken at the thought of not really being part of a family anymore, Moira vows she’ll help find Graciela’s daughter and in the process, find her own birth mother and figure out exactly what she is. She’s been discovering all sorts of emerging powers and having dreams of soaring high in the sky as something other than fae. She’s allowed to train as a warrior, quickly earning her leathers, then tricking her family into letting her go to Earth where she wants to join the search with the intriguing, arousing Steve.

When Moira’s finally found out and her story told, Steve is tasked with watching her on his mission. His cat purrs in pleasure while the man in him groans in frustration. She’s completely unstable in the use of her powers and has trouble following orders. His cat wins most of the arguments, including one that involves mating, which is dangerous in the midst of a war with a woman who doesn’t want it.

Steve and Moira’s quest for the fae changeling Alanna ends abruptly with a horrific murder at the hands of the evil Senator Carlson, someone the Warriors for Light have been chasing since the beginning. Vowing to hunt him down before looking for her sister, Moira joins the search, only to be swept away by family treachery and held away from the man she loves by someone she should have been able to trust.

I probably ought to start by saying I can’t stress enough how much you ought to read Warrior’s Rise before you start this. It really isn’t necessary – this still can stand on its own as a good book and there are enough explanations of characters and situations that you get the gist of what everyone is and their motivations are, but it enriches everything so much that I just can’t recommend it highly enough.

There’s a huge war going on between the Warriors For Light and the Warriors For Dark, initially brought on when humans were told they needed to fear supes (all supernatural creatures). The “good” supes were ushered into safe territories, leaving plenty of places for demons and other nasties to portal through and take over. The Warriors For Light are tasked with making sure they don’t. The books are filled with exciting action, military and supernatural – lots of heads get lopped off and if you’re a gun aficionado, you’ll have something to smile about.

In Warrior’s Rise, Steve was the epitome of the big macho man and he has the title to go along with it. The leopard clans are divided into leaps and his father is the head of all of the leaps on Earth, The Felix, making Steve the heir someday. Alpha times a million. Here though, once his cat gets a sniff of Moira, he finds himself purring and out of control. The beast begins to rule the man and it’s an interesting juxtaposition to see Steve being the one who’s begging Moira for a commitment and who’s deteriorating without her. Usually it’s the other way around, gender-wise. I really liked the way that he initially turned to Deva and his family for help but then eventually trusted that Moira would come back to him.

I just ached for Moira. I wanted to cry (okay, I did) when she found out she wasn’t really Graciela’s daughter or Padraig’s sister, felt like she was just less, then thought the only path she could take was replacing herself at the palace with the real Princess and finding her own birth mother to see what she really was. She wanted Steve but she wanted freedom and didn’t know how to have both yet – caught up in her anger and hurt she made rash decisions she kept regretting.

There are some seriously good secondary stories emerging that seem to take place right along with the main story barely even disrupting anything (except for one). Moira has a very intriguing brother who pops in who’s a fae spy; she has an impassive trainer who may or may not have had feelings for her; there’s a prophecy about Moira’s best friend and most interesting to me, the newly created Seraphim Sabina and her minder/bodyguard Azrael. I’m going to trust that L.J. has a purpose for sticking with the Dark One/Belios story, because it seems to not be doing anything but making me cranky at this point – he really just growls and yells for Sabina or Raziel – but I’m going to trust.

Ah, time for the sexy part, because I like to leave it at the end. Teasingly. Steve and Moira have some really inventive sex and I don’t mean things like hanging from trees or anything. They do have some sizzling human to human encounters and then there are other things in other places – still human, just a little inventive which is sweet. Their first encounter is pretty hot, in a very, very odd way. I just can’t spoil it.

My Summary: Most of the time I stay far away from books that throw too many elements at me at once and then expect me to even want to keep them straight. This isn’t completely the case here, but there are a lot of things happening: mythology of Seraphim and their Seraphs, paranormals of all types, human witches and warlocks, complex military maneuvers as well as coordinated fae and shapeshifter attacks. There’s also a strong romantic and emotional line woven in. It all works well because it’s delivered in measured doses with breaks between all the information delivery. As someone who reads for “feel,” I loved that this had such an emotional punch, that Steve and Moira didn’t just fall into each other but had to grow into their relationship.

My Rating: A-

Filed Under: *A Rating, Author Interview, Reviews Tagged With: L.J. DeLeon

Starcrossed (Starcrossed #1)

May 11, 2011 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf Leave a Comment

By Josephine Angelini

Publisher: HarperTeen
Publication Date: May 31, 2011
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal
Source: Netgalley

How do you defy destiny?

Helen Hamilton has spent her entire sixteen years trying to hide how different she is—no easy task on an island as small and sheltered as Nantucket. And it’s getting harder. Nightmares of a desperate desert journey have Helen waking parched, only to find her sheets damaged by dirt and dust. At school she’s haunted by hallucinations of three women weeping tears of blood . . . and when Helen first crosses paths with Lucas Delos, she has no way of knowing they’re destined to play the leading roles in a tragedy the Fates insist on repeating throughout history.

As Helen unlocks the secrets of her ancestry, she realizes that some myths are more than just legend. But even demigod powers might not be enough to defy the forces that are both drawing her and Lucas together—and trying to tear them apart.

Goodreads Summary

All of her life, Helen has tried to pretend to be less than average. She slouches, doesn’t try very hard to do well academically and while she plans on getting a college scholarship through the high school athletic department, she still makes sure she doesn’t try too much in track. She knows she’s a freak because everyone at high school makes sure to tell her on a daily basis, but lately things have been getting extra weird between the nightmares and the strange cramps. Thankfully she’s got a super best friend and even though her mom ran out on them when she was a baby, her dad is her rock.

Word spreads fast on the island that the big Delos family has moved into a long-vacant mansion and that several of them will be attending the high school. Helen’s reaction is neutral until she sees Lucas Delos and is overcome with the need to kill him and has to be pried off of his neck. After more attempts on his life (which he warns he wants to reciprocate) and a lot of nosing around his family, she finally learns why she’s so different and what her relationship to the Delos family is. She’s actually a demi-goddess, descended from Greek mythology as are the Delos’. They’re all part of a horrible tragedy handed down from the ages, parts of warring Houses trying to prevent an epic war by keeping ancient history involving Helen, Lucas and his brother Hector from repeating itself.

Oh yeah, you can guess what Lucas’ name was supposed to be when he was born.

Actually, there are a lot more twists than the classic Helen of Troy story, so it truly isn’t that simple. There are no love triangles (thank God) and the tale of the demi-gods and their Houses that are at war is fairly complicated/convoluted. I say convoluted because some of them have the same names as their historical predecessors, some don’t, some have similar faces as a few of their relatives, some don’t, everyone has powers that are different that don’t seem to be related to anything except one of Lucas’ sisters who’s an Oracle…. While you’re in the middle of reading the whole book it’s a little jumbled, although if you can suspend belief for a while it’s not intolerable.

I did really like Helen. Just erase the fact that she was a demi-goddess and she still would have been worthy of her own book. Angelini did a lovely job portraying how frightened she was of just being herself and even how she was bullied at school. I really liked her relationship with her insanely funny friend Claire. She added some much-needed support for Helen and had a fairly shocking secret for her near the end.

Lucas, oh Lucas. Sometimes he was really supportive of Helen and helped her understand her growing powers and her heritage and other times he was extremely Broody McBroody and borderline mean to her. I knew the entire basis of the romantic story is that Lucas and Helen needed to be kept apart but I didn’t like the path Angelini took with Lucas’ personality.

The Delos family was an utter mishmash. Honestly, other than his sister the Oracle, his brother Hector and his mother who was human, I couldn’t tell you who was who. I know there was an Ajax in there and I think he was dead, but other than that I haven’t a clue and I don’t even remember their names because I think most of them were sort of strange. Sometimes when I read things on my Kindle I look at the length indicator before I start and compare it to other books so I get an idea of how long it’ll take me to finish. I remember when I was in the middle of reading this that I kept thinking that it felt like it was taking me ages to read even though it wasn’t really a bad story. It just felt really long.

My Summary: This is another book that I feel very conflicted about grading. While I was reading there were things that made sense and kept me interested in the story and when I was done there were things that I really liked and would have made a good book on their own. There were also times that I think the author may have thrown too many elements and characters into a book that as the first in a series might have benefited from a lighter touch. I’m not generally a stickler for accuracy when it comes to mythology – if it’s a good story, I’m fine with suspending belief – but this went a little too far sometimes, possibly because it just got too complicated. Will I pick up the next book? Likely not, because while some elements were good, the ones I’ll need a refresher in before I read Starcrossed #2 weren’t good enough.

My Rating: C

Filed Under: *C Rating, Paranormal, Reviews, Young Adult Tagged With: Josephine Angelini

Breaking Point (I-Team #5)

May 10, 2011 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 4 Comments

By Pamela Clare

Publisher: Berkley Sensation
Publication Date: May 3, 2011
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Source: Purchased

Denver journalist Natalie Benoit and Deputy U.S. Marshal Zach McBride find themselves captives of a bloodthirsty Mexican drug cartel. Working together, they escape through the desert toward the border, the attraction between them flaring hotter than the Sonoran sun. They fight to stay ahead of the danger that hunts them as forces more powerful than they can imagine conspire to destroy them both…

Goodreads Summary

His reward for pretending to trust the wrong woman has earned Zach McBride nearly a week of torture at the hands of some thugs of Los Zetas. They think he’s grabbed a load of their cocaine and they want it back – only he hasn’t stolen a thing. Zach has one thing worth more than their drugs – his identity as a U.S. Marshal. The cartel could do all sorts of damage if they knew who he was, so Zach is prepared to die rather than let it slip.

Denver reporter Natalie Benoit was traveling with her colleague Joaquin Ramirez in Mexico for a conference when their bus was boarded by Los Zetas gang members who kidnapped her and threw her in the same prison that’s holding Zach. After he warns her that she’ll likely be raped and murdered, Natalie is desperate to escape. When she finds a way out, Zach comes up with a quick plan and the two of them make a run for it after a bloody gunfight.

The head of Los Zetas, Arturo Cardenas, is obsessed with recapturing Zach and Natalie and sends his men to shut down the border crossings, forcing them to head into the desert on foot for the four day trek back to the U.S.

It feels strange to say only five books in, but I haven’t always really liked this series even though I’ve read every book in it. The first couple of books were suspenseful but didn’t really feel romantic and seemed a little same-y for me, even though technically they were really good. It wasn’t until Naked Edge that I really felt the love and I think part of it was because of something that Clare carries over here too – she’s willing to show that her heroes aren’t always indestructible, that people really get physically hurt in ugly ways that scar, bruises last more than a couple of days and injuries don’t heal overnight.

That said, I’m going to be a little contrary and say that Zach is very much larger-than-life and a tad superhuman. If I were going to be in the Mexican desert chased by an insane drug lord, I might rather have just him with me than a couple dozen armed guards. When the action shifted back to Denver he was less in control of the situation and I liked him more. Zach’s suffering from PTSD and survivor’s guilt and the only way he’s been able to cope is to keep putting himself in danger. He told Natalie not to expect a commitment and he believed it until he had to go to Denver.

Natalie has generally just been portrayed as someone who was sad with a history tied to New Orleans in past I-Team books. Her story about surviving hurricane Katrina was moving and explained some of her own issues with PTSD. In places it contrasted the ways in which she’d been able to make peace with some parts of her past while Zach hadn’t.

One of the highlights of the story was the full-scale gathering of the characters from all of the other I-Team books to help Zach and Natalie. While it was exciting – and yes, the best of the reunion part – to have the guys together, it was fun to have action at the newspaper too. Crabby Tom is growing on me, which could be dangerous.

There was some sex (did you think I’d forget?). Okay, there was a lot of super hot sex in the desert which seemed a little weird when you’ve got some really bad people chasing you – but maybe it was a good outlet? Then there was some amazingly super hot sex when Natalie and Zach got back in the States and some more when they were reunited in Denver. It was fan-yourself hot. That’s Jed Hill on the cover, by the way – the same Jed Hill that did the infamous cover for The Perfect Play. He might be objectified as a sex object if he continues doing covers for these sexy books (sigh).

My Summary: While Naked Edge is still my favorite I-Team book to-date, this is a close second. I bought the suspense story, loved the chemistry between Zach and Natalie and really felt their emotional stories. The addition of the whole I-Team gang was a great choice – it tied this story together with the series beautifully and made me like some characters that I’d been pretty lukewarm about before.

My Rating: A-

Filed Under: *A Rating, Contemporary/Romance, Reviews Tagged With: Pamela Clare

Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke’s Heart (Love By Numbers #3)

May 6, 2011 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 2 Comments

By Sarah MacLean

Publisher: Avon
Publication Date: May 1, 2011
Genre: Historical Romance
Source: Netgalley

She lives for passion.Bold, impulsive, and a magnet for trouble, Juliana Fiori is no simpering English miss. She refuses to play by society’s rules: she speaks her mind, cares nothing for the approval of the ton, and can throw a punch with remarkable accuracy. Her scandalous nature makes her a favorite subject of London’s most practiced gossips . . . and precisely the kind of woman The Duke of Leighton wants far far away from him.

He swears by reputation.

Scandal is the last thing Simon Pearson has room for in his well-ordered world. The Duke of Disdain is too focused on keeping his title untainted and his secrets unknown. But when he discovers Juliana hiding in his carriage late one evening—risking everything he holds dear—he swears to teach the reckless beauty a lesson in propriety. She has other plans, however; she wants two weeks to prove that even an unflappable duke is not above passion.

Goodreads Summary

I’m going to try to restrain myself with some sort of synopsis, but really all I want to do is get to the gushing on this one.

Even if she decided to be a nun, Juliana would likely still find a way to light a fire under the gossipmongers. Being the daughter of a woman with questionable morals is bad enough, but with an irrepressible spirit and mouth to match, she’s a walking scandal. Most outrageously enough – she doesn’t seem interested in changing her behavior.

Juliana’s polar opposite, the icy Duke of Leighton can only look on with horror at her antics. He’s been friends – albeit gingerly – with her less scandalous brothers for years. He even had a single innocent tryst with Juliana before finding out whom and what she was – inappropriate for the Duke of Disdain, who lives for his sterling reputation and position in society, one that could be threatened by his own brewing family scandal. While the Duke in him may find her appalling, Simon, the man behind the title is perplexed, fascinated and attracted to her. It’s an impossible situation – his family’s standing has to come first.

Juliana can’t help but wish Simon would let go of his rigid views of society and when he announces his engagement to a bland society mouse, she challenges him: give her two weeks and she can prove to him life is better lived with passion than without. Determined to teach her a lesson – as well as keep an eye on her for her brothers’ sake – he agrees, knowing she’ll never win this bet.

There are probably one hundred and eleven reasons why I loved this book. Juliana was so completely charming, she bowled me over. She speaks Italian when she’s angry or excited and sometimes she put the wrong English word in a sentence in a critical place and it’s hilarious. Juliana loved to say what she thought but she wasn’t malicious and while she did what she wanted, she was reckless and bold rather than rude. Externally she was so strong in the face of the public scorn she faced every day because of what her mother was – no small amount of it from Simon – but internally she was full of self-doubt and pain. I really wanted to just hug her to death.

Normally a rigid, icy Duke wouldn’t really be terribly likable, but almost from the start there are enough glimpses into Simon’s real personality that I started wondering what exactly his problem was – something that was answered a little bit later when his mother appeared and the reasons why he had been drilled into maintaining the Duke of Disdain persona were made clear. Once Juliana started getting under his skin, he didn’t run hot and cold, he ran hot and warm. When she finally gets close enough to really fluster him, he’s angry at himself and doesn’t know any way to fix it other than to revert back to iciness, even if it hurts them both.

Juliana’s brothers and their wives appear here as well (from Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake and Ten Ways to Be Adored When Landing a Lord) – two books I hadn’t read yet but picked up immediately after finishing this.

My Summary: Because I read a number of different genres, I only read a handful of historicals each month at best and rarely find any that move me enough to review. Call it a cliché, but I was captivated by the passionate characters, the grand story, the effortless dialogue and the ending that had me grabbing my Kleenex. Yes, I’m fairly sure I’m calling this one a must-read.

My Rating: A+