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

Road Signs

March 17, 2011 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf Leave a Comment

By MJ Fredrick

Publisher: Carina Press
Publication Date: March 14, 2011
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Source: Netgalley

Briefly captivated by the idea of romance and pretty, shiny weddings, Willow Hawkins agreed to meet her potential boyfriend’s family and quickly realized she’d made a mistake. Stranded in small-town Nowhere, Willow calls her best friend, Cameron Trask, for an escape.

Even though he’ll miss an important job interview, Cam comes to her rescue. When Willow starts to see Cam with new eyes, she wonders how she never made the connection from best friend to best lover. Willow has one chance to help the man she loves – join him on a cross-country road trip to get to the interview on time. On the way they’ll face a jealous puppy, an unreliable automobile and weather that threatens to trap them alone..together.

The biggest roadblock she’ll come up against? If Cam gets his dream job, Willow may lose him for good.

Goodreads Summary

At loose ends for Thanksgiving since she and her best friend Cam decided not to go to his sister’s house like they always do, Willow made the impulsive decision to go to her new boyfriend’s parents’ home instead. Big Mistake. Her first clue was when her boyfriend’s mother started showing her the house next door – the house that Willow was going to live in after she married her son. Then the previously-normal boyfriend started going frat-boy/caveman on her in front of his friends and getting angry with her when she tried to remind him that they were only dating casually. In a panic, she grabbed her luggage and made a break for it, calling Cam, begging him to rescue her and bring her home.

Willow’s call put Cam in a bind for more than one reason. He’d been trying to distance himself from her for a while, stretching their contact out to just some phone calls a few times a month now. He’s been sick in love with her for years and it’s just time to move on. He’s got his dream job interview lined up halfway across the country in a few days and if he gets it, he won’t even need to be anywhere close to her anymore. He doesn’t have a car either, so he has no idea how he’s supposed to pick Willow up anyway. Hearing the panic in her voice though, he can’t say no and when he gets to her, rather than tell her about the job interview and that he needs to get to Seattle, he takes her where she wants to go, to his sister’s place for Thanksgiving.

Cam comes clean about his job interview the next morning, when he plans to send Willow back to her place with his brother while he continues on by himself. When his plans get screwed up, she decides since she’s the one who interfered in the first place, it’s her job to get him to the interview, but the train and flights are all booked so they’ll have to drive the entire way there. Cam can’t decide if it’s going to be torture to be with her, a chance to get her out of his system or a chance to finally make her notice him. For her part, Willow feels something different for Cam but she doesn’t know what it is or if she’s even interested in finding out.

I love, love, love the friends to lovers trope. I’m even capable of being happy with a healthy dash of unrequited love mixed in, as long as it doesn’t involve anyone who’s TSTL. I really wanted to like this because there were things about it that were lovely to read, but there were too many times that I just didn’t think Willow was likeable or that the situations she and Cam found themselves in were close to believable, even for Romancelandia.

Willow was completely a Type-A personality, career-driven woman to Cam’s more tentative, almost beta guy. This job interview was more than just a meeting to Cam, it represented a clean break from everything Willow. Yet when she called him to come get her, he was reluctant for about a minute before he caved. At nearly every obstacle the two encountered on their trip west to the interview - and there were many, this was a long, long trip and whatever could go wrong, did - he kept taking it as a sign that maybe he wasn’t meant to take this job. Cam constantly searched for reasons to keep waiting for Willow and she kept giving them to him without ever really promising him everything.

Willow has a mother who only depends on other men for money and as a result, resolved never to be without a career or her own income. It made her totally focused on her job to the exclusion of a romantic life with any meaning. She never even paid that much attention when Cam started drifting away, except in retrospect. When he came to pick her up, she noticed he’d made some physical changes and she felt odd about it. When she found out about his job interview, she felt odd and sad about it. When he needed help getting west to his interview she felt responsible for it. As their interminable drive continued, she felt attracted to Cam, but she didn’t want a relationship with him really, and she didn’t admit that she loved him. She knew how he felt – he never hid it and even told her about it – but she didn’t reciprocate, even after they were together. Her lack of any real emotional investment in his feelings, whatever her reasons, made her very hard to like. Worse, the longer the trip dragged on and the less likely it looked that she’d ever figure out what she felt for Cam, the sadder he looked for waiting for her at all.

While this had some funny moments and elements that were road-trip funny (like rooms with heaters that worked at one stop and wouldn’t turn off at the next), this isn’t a romantic comedy. In the case of the heaters for example, the hot room was used so they could be tortured by each other wearing next to nothing. The erotic elements were nicely done and the one area where Willow and Cam could come together perfectly without any imbalance. I liked them there – they ought to have gotten there earlier.

My Summary: I turned this story over in my head a lot after I read it and I wondered if part of the problem I had with Willow was that for a friends to lovers trope, there just wasn’t a lot of back story to show why Cam loved her in the first place, so all I had to go on was what I saw of her here and I didn’t like much of it. In this day and age of planes and trains getting you anywhere (even the weekend of Thanksgiving), a long, necessary road trip plagued with every mishap you can think of probably wasn’t the most plausible plot choice but it was still a unique way to throw Cam and Willow together, even if I thought he deserved better.

My Rating: C

Filed Under: *C Rating, Contemporary/Romance, Reviews Tagged With: M.J. Fredrick

Lucky Leprechaun Giveaway

March 16, 2011 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 13 Comments

Welcome to my stop of the Lucky Leprechaun Giveaway Hop, organized by Books Complete Me and I Am a Reader, Not a Writer.

The giveaway is open from March 17th until 11:59 p.m., Sunday, March 20th.

I’m giving away a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com to be e-mailed to the winner. This giveaway’s for U.S. only, but the next one in a couple of months will be for international entrants as well, I promise!

The rules are super simple:

*Be a blog follower (required) and if you’d like an extra entry, you can follow me on Twitter.*

Comments and deep thoughts are always welcome, but not required.

The winner will be selected using Random.org.

Thanks for entering everyone! I’ll be posting the winner sometime on Monday and notifying them by e-mail as well.

Filed Under: Giveaway

Bleeding Violet (Portero #1)

March 15, 2011 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 2 Comments

By Dia Reeves

Publisher: Simon Pulse
Publication Date: January 5, 2010
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal
Source: Purchased

Love can be a dangerous thing…Hanna simply wants to be loved. With a head plagued by hallucinations, a medicine cabinet full of pills and a closet stuffed with frilly, violet dresses, Hanna’s tired of being an outcast, the weird girl, the freak. So she runs away to Portero, Texas in search of a new home.

But Portero is a stranger town than Hanna expects. As she tries to make a place for herself, she discovers dark secrets that would terrify any normal soul. Good thing for Hanna, she’s far from normal. As this crazy girl meets an even crazier town, two things are certain: anything can happen and no one’s safe.

Goodreads Summary

Sixteen year-old Hanna has traveled to Portero from Finland along with her father’s ghost to find her mother, who had abandoned them both years ago. She had to bash her aunt’s head in with a rolling pin to get there – she might have killed her but she’s more concerned with the stains she didn’t get out of her dress - but it’s worth it to finally be in her mother’s house. Rosalee is horrified to see Hanna and wants nothing to do with her, especially when she finds out Hanna’s bipolar and only occasionally takes her meds. She repeatedly orders her out of her house, calls her aunt in Finland to try to get her to make her leave – she didn’t die – and eventually grudgingly gives Hanna two weeks to either fit in or leave forever.

She doesn’t fit in well. Labeled a “transy” – short for transient, a new person in town who’s going to see what’s going on and leave skid marks when they leave – the kids at school mock her, especially since she doesn’t seem to have any idea about the dangerous and weird supernatural things that fill the town. On Hanna’s first day at school, she found out about the colored glass Lure at school that tries to get students to come to the window so it can turn them to glass - the kids are all issued earplugs to keep from hearing their irresistible call. She ends up finding her “in” with her classmates when she walks in on cute guy Wyatt fighting the Lure and rather than freaking out and running, she helps him capture it and ends up being whispered about as the girl who helped him make the school safe again.

Wyatt is an initiate with the Mortmaine, a sort of quasi-military unit in Portero who fight the paranormal evil that’s infested the town. Hanna blackmails Wyatt into taking her with him on a couple of his missions and after some initial queasiness – even for her, being killed by Wyatt then eaten by a giant bug was a little gross – decides she loves the power and notoriety she gets from doing it. She’s hoping that by being a badass and proving to her mother that she can fit right in with Portero’s freaks, Rosalee will have to love and accept her, which of course she really doesn’t, leaving Hanna to want to - and do - some amazingly warped, repugnant things for her.

First and probably most importantly, I wouldn’t let anyone younger than thirteen anywhere near this without thinking hard about it. I bought it specifically because I’m going to read the second Portero book, Slice of Cherry that I’d already ordered from Amazon, and when I went to pick this up from Border’s, it was in the Young Adult section (which I’d expected, since it’s labeled as YA). But this is gory and there’s one passage that’s so flat out nasty, I flinched. I’ll give a little taste of it under some colored text – you can highlight it if you want to read it:

Rosalee is possessed by the spirit of a rotten former Mortmaine who’s in search of his daughter. In order to find her, he needs to get the key to open the right portal – the key that’s stuck to the door of Wyatt’s house and is charmed so that anyone who touches it will be stuck to it. Rosalee has Hanna lure a boy that’s skinny dipping to the two of them and she tortures him by carving glyphs all over the helpless boy – he has an uncontrollable erection the whole time that they giggle over – then they send him to Wyatt’s house where he tears his arms off trying to get the key. Hanna later wakes up to find the bloody, dead, armless boy in her bed. Unfazed, she wakes up to ask her mother if that’s normal and what should they do with him.

Despite the weirdness and the gore, I actually really liked this, although it might be hard to tell. Hanna was a strangely sympathetic character in spite of her questionable sense of right and wrong and the sense of glee she had when she hurt people sometimes. She was so determined to make people love her in spite of what she worried was her unsurmountable, incurable insanity. When she saw the things Wyatt could do, she saw a kindred spirit in him and she latched on, then was terrified when he seemed to have other interests. Sex with him seemed like almost an afterthought – something like putting on makeup, something you did to be more appealing to someone but not really something that meant a greater emotional connection. That came in the sharing of her hallucinations, of her weirdness and his belief in her and his reciprocating with his admitting his oddness and the separation he felt from everyone else in town. Wyatt ended up being the most normal character though, which was a welcome respite from the craziness – he was Hanna’s moral compass at the exact place when she needed one.

My Summary: Portero, every nook and cranny of it, is wildly imaginative and deeply disturbing - sometimes too much of both. There were times I wished Reeves had dialed it back a few notches and at least left a few corners of the place normal. By the end of the book, I was still hanging on right along with Wyatt and Hanna but I was also thinking that some things would have been best left as her hallucinations. A little mystery about what was real and what might not have been would have made this an A+ book.

My Rating: B+

Filed Under: *B Rating, Paranormal, Reviews, Young Adult Tagged With: Dia Reeves

Out of Time (Out of Time #1)

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

By Monique Martin

Self Published
Publication Date: February 2, 2010
Genre: Paranormal/Romance
Source: Purchased

New York in the 1920′s is the world of Prohibition, speakeasies and an underground run by the underworld. Vampires and mobsters vie for power in the seedy underbelly of Manhattan.

A mysterious accident sends Professor Simon Cross and his assistant, Elizabeth West back in time to face demons real and imagined.

Simon Cross has spent his life searching for vampires and now that he’s found one, it just might take him from the only woman he’s ever loved. Simon’s life has been a ritual of research into the occult and stoic solitude. He prefers it that way. Until he meets Elizabeth West.

A gambler’s daughter, Elizabeth knows a bluff when she sees one. Behind Simon’s icy glares and nearly impenetrable armor beats the heart of a man in desperate need of love.

Goodreads Summary

UC-Berkeley Occult Professor Simon Cross has been in love with his much younger graduate teaching assistant Elizabeth West for a long time but has vowed never to let her know or ever, ever do anything about it. Lately, he’s been having horrible nightmares of her death – nightmares that he believes are really visions, destined to become real just like his visions of his grandfather’s death did.

Elizabeth is equally in love with Simon and figures the taboo professor/student dynamic is just one of the things keeping him from showing even the slightest bit of interest in her. He’s completely locked down emotionally and she’d have given up on him, but there are moments when he cracks and she sees the way he looks at her.. Now lately he’s looking exhausted and distracted and he’ll barely speak to her at all.

One night Elizabeth is at Simon’s, delivering some papers she’s graded for class, when she spies an antique box with some artifacts he’s received. Inside are a scarab ring and a lovely fob watch. When she and Simon sit together to examine it, the watch suddenly starts and a vortex pulls them back through time to the 1920′s. Stuck together, they have to find ways to fit in, a place to stay and a way to earn some money to pay their way until the next lunar eclipse, when they believe the watch will activate again and take them back to the present day. Forced to spend so much time together and depend on each other, Simon finally lets his feelings for Elizabeth out.

When Elizabeth finds work as a speakeasy waitress she draws the attention of mobster King Kashian, which drives Simon wild with jealousy and kick-starts his protective instinct. He gets a job at the same joint as a pianist to keep an eye on her, but he can’t keep things with the mobsters from going wrong – and Simon finally gets his validation that vampires really do exist.

I liked Out of Time, but I kept thinking it would have been fine with me if the paranormal stuff had been tossed out and this had just been a straight romance.

Despite being a little bit of a “stereotypical older British professor” (starchy, overly mannerly, outwardly chilly), Simon is actually rather sweetly vulnerable. Elizabeth is completely out of his realm of experience – she’s nearly twenty years younger, bright, tenacious and reckless where he’s become almost painfully cautious. The setting suits both of them perfectly – they landed at just the right time for her natural “moxie” to be appreciated, while his gallantry and protectiveness towards Elizabeth wouldn’t make much of a stir either. I liked Elizabeth most of the time – she was a little unrelentingly vivacious sometimes and had the bad habit of being willing to toss herself in the path of danger even when it upset Simon.

If this had just been a romance with a little side story about a jealous mobster, it really would have been enough. Some of the paranormal elements here didn’t add anything and ended up just muddying what was a fine story without them. The time travel part was a necessary given, but I just don’t know what the addition of ancient demon vampires with and without souls added to the story. If there had been more time in the story focused on it, it might have fit, but the bulk of the story was really about Simon overcoming his hangups and being able to just accept his feelings for Elizabeth. I don’t know that there needed to be a big huge conflict based on vampires when there already were a couple of other big issues to be resolved at the end of the story.

My Summary: This really worked for me as a romance – Simon and Elizabeth were a terrific couple and even if things didn’t get spelled out explicitly, their bedroom activities were still hot. The characters were likeable, believable and I had fun with their time travel storyline. I didn’t get the addition of the vampires almost at the end though and it took me out of their story and turned it into something that felt a little awkward.

My Rating: C+

Filed Under: *C Rating, Paranormal Romance, Reviews Tagged With: Monique Martin

Wilder’s Mate (Bloodhounds #1)

March 8, 2011 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf 3 Comments

By Moira Rogers

Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
Publication Date: March 15, 2011
Genre: Steampunk/Paranormal Romance/Western
Source: Author

Wilder Harding is a bloodhound, created by the Guild to hunt down and kill vampires on America’s frontier. His enhanced abilities come with a high price: on the full moon, he becomes capable of savagery beyond telling, while the new moon brings a sexual hunger that borders on madness.

Rescuing a weapons inventor from undead kidnappers is just another assignment, though one with an added complication—keeping his hands off the man’s pretty young apprentice, who insists on tagging along.

At odds with polite society, Satira’s only constant has been the aging weapons inventor who treats her like a daughter. She isn’t going to trust Wilder with Nathaniel’s life, not when the Guild might decide the old man isn’t worth saving. Besides, if there’s one thing she’s learned, it’s that brains are more important than brawn.

As the search stretches far longer than Wilder planned, he finds himself fighting against time. If Satira is still at his side when the new moon comes, nothing will stop him from claiming her. Worse, she seems all too willing. If their passion unlocks the beast inside, no one will be safe. Not even the man they’re fighting to save.

Warning: This book contains a crude, gun-slinging, vampire-hunting hero who howls at the full moon and a smart, stubborn heroine who invents mad-scientist weapons. Also included: wild frontier adventures, brothels, danger, betrayal and a good dose of wicked loving in an alternate Wild West.

Goodreads Summary

Ask me to give you a good example of what steampunk is and I’ll probably direct you to Gail Carriger’s terrific Parasol Protectorate series – sort of fussy Victorian people in nice suits and dresses with awesome inventions. I wouldn’t have thought to put steampunk in the wild west, then naughty it up and throw some vampires in the mix, but if you’ve followed any of Moira Rogers’ other series, it shouldn’t be too surprising that if anyone could do it, they could. And look at that yummy cover!

In this wild-west, a woman’s career choices are limited to prostitution and mostly just other kinds of prostitution. Against all convention, Guild weapons inventor Nathaniel took Satira under his wing and nurtured her love of chemistry and science and in return, earned her loyalty and love. When he’s kidnapped and taken into the Deadlands, even though the Guild has sent their best bloodhound to track and rescue him, Satira couldn’t stay behind. Wilder expected to have to spend his time protecting Satira until he saw her bag of chemical weapons and gadgets and found she had an attitude as stubborn as his. Knowing there was a possibility they’d be trapped in the Deadlands during the new moon, Satira told Wilder that she wouldn’t be unwilling if they ended up together.

Unwilling turned into enthusiastic by the time they reached the Deadlands border and everything heated up (and I mean everything). Creepy creatures started coming out from all over the place, Satira started unloading some awesome weapons, there was treachery around every corner and Wilder discovered his bloodhound was a little protective and possessive. They also ended up stranded in the Deadlands during the new moon. Oops.

As a geek, I was duty-bound to be half in love with scientist-girl Satira before I even opened this up. When the story started, she was inside a steam-operated elevator, in men’s clothing with a tool case, trying to figure out how to fix it. She travels with a saddlebag full of bottles of chemicals that when mixed, can blow up a building. Swoon. I loved her unwavering loyalty to Nathaniel and her willingness to risk everything to get him home even if some of her reasons were selfish. She didn’t let Wilder intimidate her and their conversations were wonderful to read. Satira ended up as the super sexy one when during the new moon she told Wilder it didn’t matter what he did, if he wanted it, she trusted him to take care of her. She said she enjoyed Wilder talking dirty but the girl could give him a run for his money. Rawr.

Wilder is rough and dirty and half-hound – what’s not to love? He’s also dedicated to his job with the Guild and determined to find Nate no matter what. The first thing he notices about Satira are her assets (he uses a different word, rhymes with bits) and it’s a cute joke a couple of times. He’s got a wry sense of humor and an unexpected tender streak. He’s very much a loner – because he’s a bloodhound, because he’s bound to the Guild, because of what happens during both the new and full moons, he’s always set apart from everyone else. When Satira offers herself unconditionally, it makes him vulnerable. More swooning happens.

Obligatory sexy part discussion: Wilder and Satira are stuck in a hotel for several days and then again in the Deadlands for a few days during the new moon. In the hotel, Wilder and Satira are practicing their “let’s not go all the way,” thing. In the Deadlands, it’s the new moon and Wilder’s in the grip of a sexual fervor, wanting to pleasure Satira until she’s senseless before he takes his own. This is Moira Rogers’ most explicit book so far. There’s more serious swooning occurring, seriously.

The kidnapping plot wraps up in a way that makes sense, although it’s a little hurried which I’d expect for the length of the story and the right amount that was dedicated to the couple. I loved that Satira finally gets to use some things in her bag of stuff plus a new invention and there’s more geek talk. There’s some good action, followed by a neat little resolution – maybe a little too clean, but I don’t know enough about the big bad Guild yet, so I’m holding judgment on that one. I’m hoping the continuation of the series will explain more about the Guild, the origins of the hounds, the vampires and the Deadlands.

My Summary: I’m really excited about this series. To be honest, a lot of steampunk doesn’t have enough romance for me, but this had it in spades. Wilder is sexy, determined and more than a little dangerous and Satira is his perfect match (plus all sorts of smart-girl awesome). The wild west setting was gritty and the perfect setting for the bloodhounds and I can’t wait for the next book.

My Rating: B+

Filed Under: *B Rating, Reviews, Steampunk Tagged With: Moira Rogers

Evercrossed (Kissed by an Angel #4)

March 7, 2011 by Barbara at Basia's Bookshelf Leave a Comment

By Elizabeth Chandler

Publisher: Simon Pulse
Publication Date: March 8, 2011
Genre: Young Adult Paranormal
Source: Publisher

It’s been a year since Ivy’s boyfriend, Tristan, died. They’ve both moved on—Tristan to the other side of the afterlife, and Ivy to sweet, dependable Will. Now Ivy’s heading to Cape Cod, hoping to leave the horror of last summer behind. She wants nothing more than to lie on the beach, sip lemonade, and hang out with her friends.

But then a car crash ends Ivy’s life.

As she floats to the beyond, looking down on the life she’s left behind, Tristan breathes life back into her with a passionate kiss. She wakes up in the hospital, surrounded by Will and her family, but all she can think about is the love that she lost.

But memories aren’t all that’s come back from the past. And this time, Ivy’s not sure love will be enough to save her.

Goodreads Summary

I was under the impression that this was supposed to be a trilogy (#3 was originally released in 2005!) but has obviously ended up being four books and given the end of this one, it looks like it may to stretch to five. To be honest, I was so ticked off (I said a much more colorful word) when I got to the end, I’m not sticking around for the next book – it has nothing to do with the story, just with the feeling of being manipulated for the sake of being drawn into buying the next book. Your mileage may vary though, and if the series has kept you happy so far or the sound of this one intrigues you and you’d like to start from the beginning, then there’s a book that includes the first three stories bundled-in-one available. It’s less expensive and it’s easier to get into the flow of the series if you just read the books-back-to-back if you can. Chandler’s writing has improved a great deal from the first book, so if you started the first and dropped it because you had that issue alone, perhaps you still might be interested.

There are going to be some necessary spoilers at the beginning of my review as I have do a very quick summary of what led up to the beginning of this book.

Here’s the rapid-fire summary of books one through three: angel-worshipping Ivy meets and falls in love with Tristan, who dies in suspicious car accident. He comes back to her as an angel because he has a mission to protect her, as it turns out from her super creepy step-brother Gregory who’s in lust with her and tries to murder her when he realizes he can’t have her. Tristan manages to save her (it’s complicated), and completing his mission, says goodbye to Ivy, who moves on with her life with friend and new love Will.

When Evercrossed began, Ivy and Will and their friends Beth, Dhanya and Kelsey are in Cape Cod for summer vacation, working at the bed and breakfast owned by Kelsey and Beth’s aunt. Ivy, her best friend (who’s a little psychic) Beth and Will are all feeling a little uneasy and sad, since it’s the one year anniversary of Tristan’s death, but the other two are a little clueless and decide it’d be fun to break out a Ouija board on their first night there. Ivy and Beth reluctantly decide to go along with it, thinking the two couldn’t possibly manage to do any damage, but almost as soon as they get started, things go wrong. Beth throws out some protection chants and eventually things calm down enough for everyone to get yelled at about letting bad stuff through portals.

One night when Beth and Ivy were trying to pick up a drunken Dhanya and Kelsey from a party, a car ran them off of the road – and Ivy was killed. She had a clear memory of her death, of being lifted up toward Tristan and then he tells her he’ll always be with her. When Ivy wakes up, she’s in the hospital and everyone’s marveling over the fact that she came out of the accident almost completely unscathed. When she tries to tell Beth and Will that it was Tristan that saved her, they get angry and accuse her of not being able to move on. As she’s moping, she hears another patient – named Guy, because they don’t know who he is – who was brought in around the same time she was. He’s young, handsome and has absolutely no memory before the moment he was pulled from the beach not far from where her accident happened.

Bells, they are a-ringing.

Ivy, of course, sees what she wants to believe – that Guy may have Tristan’s soul. Beth is furious with her because she thinks Ivy just doesn’t want to let Tristan go and will think of any excuse to keep him with her and Will is hurt and angry, especially when she starts blowing him off. The more time Ivy spends with Guy, the worse Beth gets, insisting that there’s something evil stalking Ivy and that she thinks that portal the four of them opened when they got to Cape Cod may have let Gregory’s spirit back through and she’s in terrible danger because she is only seeing what she wants to.

Ivy’s a difficult character to like. She’s self-absorbed, thoughtless and a little bit of an airhead, to be perfectly blunt. She hurts everyone around her because she can’t even keep from thinking about Guy when she’s talking to them. Even when she warns herself to stop and be careful, she forgets five minutes later. I’m searching for a redeeming quality and I guess what I come up with is that she loves Tristan beyond measure. She’ll do some crazy things for him. The rest of the gang is generally fine – Guy is what you’d expect in an amnesiac homeless hero (written with a smile, I assure you). He’s a tad creepy at first, then nicely romantic and drops all the right hints about who he might be but leaves them open enough that by the end, there’s room for doubt. Beth is a nice concerned best friend in the beginning who morphs into a nagging mother later; Will’s the typical too-nice guy that Ivy walks all over and Dhanya and Kelsey are hilariously ditzy.

My Summary: Take out the “my boyfriend may have come back from the dead,” element and this could work as just a good summer love-triangle story. I liked Ivy’s friends, I liked Ivy’s love interests and I liked the setting. As a reader, what I don’t like is being manipulated to the last three pages only to be left on a cliffhanger wondering if there’s going to be another book and if so, am I going to have to wait several years for it. If I could go back in time and DNF this I would, but the story before the end was decent enough that I’m not going to wreak my vengeance on the grade.

My Rating: C-