Archive for August, 2010
Friday, August 20th, 2010
Pros: Enjoyable on multiple levels
Cons: You need to be a fan of the show to get any real depth out of it
Rating: 4 out of 5
With all the review books I have on my To Be Read stack, I hadn’t expected to get around to picking up “Richard Castle’s” Heat Wave
. Then I found myself hanging around in a Borders cafe after a root canal, and it seemed like a nice, distracting treat. Odds are you’ve at least heard of the TV series “Castle,” in which writer Rick Castle is shadowing detective Kate Beckett as research for his novels about detective Nikki Heat. Lucky for us fans, someone came up with the brilliant idea of publishing the fictitious Castle’s books so we could enjoy another layer of the game.
I’ll get this out of the way straight out: if you don’t watch the show, you probably won’t get that much out of the book. It isn’t particularly meaty if you can’t enjoy the extra nuances brought out by knowing that the characters in the book are based on those in the show. That said, if you really just want a quick, easy, entertaining mystery, you could certainly do a lot worse!
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Tags: mystery, Nikki Heat, Richard Castle, romance, thriller
Posted in Thriller, Adventure & Mystery | Permalink | No Comments »
Friday, August 20th, 2010
Pros: Emotionally complex; the story grabs you and won’t let go
Cons: It would have been nice to have a little bit more background on some of the characters.
Rating: 4.75 out of 5
Advance Review book courtesy of Penguin Group
Expected publication date: September 7, 2010
Just when October Daye is starting to think that her life may be calming down, she gets a frantic call from her friend Stacy. Stacy’s two youngest children have disappeared from their home, and one of her other daughters won’t wake up. Then Toby finds out that that some of the young Cait Sidhe have gone missing as well. It turns out that they’ve been taken by Blind Michael. Now Toby must journey to his realm by one of three roads to get the children out before her candle burns out, or she and the children will be trapped in Blind Michael’s lands forever…
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Tags: adventure, fae, Fantasy, October Daye, Seanan McGuire
Posted in Fantasy, Thriller, Adventure & Mystery | Permalink | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
Pros: Wonderful humor, and the scope of the book includes a lot more interactions between characters other than the hero/heroine.
Cons: Some of the comments and events might be difficult to put in context for readers who haven’t read the other books in the series.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Review book courtesy of Penguin Group
Sophia Dalby is up to her matchmaking tricks again! This time, she’s helping her friend the Duke of Edenham court the lovely young Jane Elliot, who has just arrived from New York. Jane, however, has other ideas. What does she need with a duke? Especially one who is handsome, witty, and completely unintimidated by her brothers? It’s a battle of wits and persistence in front of the cream of London society, and Sophia’s not the only one engaged in setting up a romance…
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Tags: Claudia Dain, Courtesan Chronicles, romance, Sophia Dalby
Posted in Historical, Romance & Erotica | Permalink | No Comments »
Thursday, August 12th, 2010
Pros: Gorgeous romance, fun characters, fascinating look into the wedding preparation business
Cons: Love seemed to come before the chemistry was truly evident
Rating: 4 out of 5
Review book (uncorrected proof) courtesy of Penguin Group
I didn’t expect to get swept up in Nora Roberts’s “Bride Quartet” series when it started. I’ve never been one of those “perfect wedding” dreamers, so the topic didn’t hold much interest for me. However, Ms. Roberts has brought the wedding business and its attendant ups and downs alive so beautifully that I couldn’t help but be drawn in. Happy Ever After
is the fourth and final book in the series, exploring super-organized Parker’s unlikely fascination with bad-boy mechanic Malcolm.
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Tags: bride quartet, marriage, Nora Roberts, romance
Posted in Chick-lit, Romance & Erotica | Permalink | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, August 11th, 2010
Pros: Lush, complex magical and societal systems and characters that I fell in love with.
Cons: Some of the magical elements meant to be mysterious were fairly easy to figure out.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Review book courtesy of Penguin Group
October Daye is a changeling, half fae and half human, and she’s also a knight in the service of Sylvester, the Duke of Shadowed Hills. When he asks her to check up on his daughter in the County of Tamed Lightning (otherwise known as Fremont) she figures that it will be a pretty straightforward assignment. But all is not what it seems. Although Sylvester’s daughter January runs a fantasy game company, her county is a precariously-perched buffer between Sylvester and his rival. To top it all off, there’s a murder while October is there, and that’s the third one on several weeks. Things get complicated quickly, and Toby’s going to have to think fast if she wants to protect January – and herself…
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Tags: fae, Fantasy, mystery, October Daye, Seanan McGuire
Posted in Fantasy, Thriller, Adventure & Mystery | Permalink | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, August 4th, 2010
Pros: Variety of erotic situations.
Cons: All of the stories are from a woman’s point of view; the voices of the different stories don’t always feel very distinct.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Review book courtesy of Penguin Group
Madame B is a woman that other women feel that they can confide some of their deepest secrets to. In The Notebooks of Madame B: Desire
, she presents some of the steamier stories that she’s collected about women and their adventures and fantasies. Just as women’s desires differ, this book contains a variety of erotic short stories about women whose hidden desires come true.
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Tags: desire, erotica, Madame B, short story
Posted in Fiction Books, Romance & Erotica | Permalink | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, August 4th, 2010
Pros: Delicious, easy food; lots of information on eating green, organic, sustainable, etc.
Cons: Binding issues
Rating: 4 out of 5
Review book (published 2010) provided courtesy of Chronicle Books.
Anna Getty’s Easy Green Organic
is a great place to start if you want to “green” your kitchen but aren’t sure how to start. It will help you decode food labels, explain the differences between organic, sustainable, fair trade, and other terms, tell you which types of produce retain the most pesticides, and so on. There’s information on composting, making environmentally friendly changes to your cleaning and cooking habits, and more. Getty is realistic—she encourages you to pick one change you’re comfortable with and get used to it before you move on to the next.
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Tags: Anna Getty, Cookbooks, cooking, organic, recipes
Posted in Healthy | Permalink | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010
Pros: Phenomenal sense of humor; the book is also unafraid to poke fun at elements of urban fantasy.
Cons: It was fairly easy to figure out some of the more mysterious plot elements.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Review book courtesy of Penguin Group
Esther Diamond’s life isn’t going the way that she hoped it would. She’s just lost her acting job, and her cop boyfriend suspects she had a lot more to do with the death of an evil sorcerer’s apprentice than she’s telling him about. In her defense, he wouldn’t believe her if she did tell him. To top everything off, Esther witnesses a mob hit on her customer at the restaurant she’s working at to pay the bills and the police think that she knows more than she’s telling there too. She does, but telling them about doppelgangers, magical doubles of victims that signify their imminent death, is not exactly the witness testimony that the police are looking for. Getting herself embroiled with a mobster, a sorcerer, and a familiar so that they can stop what is quickly becoming a series of magical murders may not be helping her love life, but it’s a lot better than being next on the hit list…
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Tags: doppelganger, doppelgangster, Esther Diamond, Laura Resnick, paranormal, urban fantasy
Posted in Fantasy, Horror & Paranormal, Thriller, Adventure & Mystery | Permalink | No Comments »
Monday, August 2nd, 2010
Pros: Heartwarming story; plucky heroine.
Cons: Heroine can feel a little whiny at times.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Review book courtesy of Penguin Group
Penny, a banker’s daughter, has been waiting thirteen years for her marriage to Viscount Westfield. Since neither of them asked for the match or even want to see it through, the two of them attempt to convince her father to annul the agreement. He will have none of it, and the two are wed. The more time that Westfield spends with his bride, the more he begins to realize that this arrangement might not be as bad as he was afraid it might be. But will Penny be able to move past her anger at being abandoned for thirteen years? And what will happen when the strength of their marriage is tested?
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Tags: arranged marriage, Barbara Metzger, Bargain Bride, historical, romance
Posted in Historical, Romance & Erotica | Permalink | No Comments »
