Reviews

Wildflower Bay

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This month’s SuperWendy’s TBR challenge is for a random pick. I read Rachael Lucas’s Wildflower Bay. Firstly, here is the blurb and be warned that I discuss spoilers beyond it including my opinion of the love declaration:

Wildflower Bay by Rachael LucasThis little island has some big secrets…

Isla’s got her dream job as head stylist at the most exclusive salon in Edinburgh. The fact that she’s been so single-minded in her career that she’s forgotten to have a life has completely passed her by – until disaster strikes.

Out of options, she heads to the remote island of Auchenmor to help out her aunt who is in desperate need of an extra pair of scissors at her salon.

A native to the island, Finn is thirty-five and reality has just hit him hard. His best friends are about to have a baby and everything is changing. When into his life walks Isla . . .

Earlier in the year, I read both Rachael Lucas’s Sealed With a Kiss and Coming up Roses. Neither book set the world on fire for me in the romance corner but I did enjoy the overall stories. Her books are romances but they lean heavily toward the community and friendship, Aga-saga, small-town/village stories. Continue reading →

The Hating Game with a side of vomit

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Last week, having begged my work library’s lovely and conciliatory acquisitions staff whose desk was piled way-high with books, to dig out my reservation, I indulged myself in a procrastiread of author Sally Thorne’s debut novel The Hating Game. I deeply enjoyed this gorgeous book and I have lots to say about this book but first, the blurb:

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

The Hating Game

by Sally Thorne

Nemesis (n.) 1) An opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome.
2) A person’s undoing
3) Joshua Templeman

Lucy Hutton has always been certain that the nice girl can get the corner office. She’s charming and accommodating and prides herself on being loved by everyone at Bexley & Gamin. Everyone except for coldly efficient, impeccably attired, physically intimidating Joshua Templeman. And the feeling is mutual.

Trapped in a shared office together 40 (OK, 50 or 60) hours a week, they’ve become entrenched in an addictive, ridiculous never-ending game of one-upmanship. There’s the Staring Game. The Mirror Game. The HR Game. Lucy can’t let Joshua beat her at anything—especially when a huge new promotion goes up for the taking.

If Lucy wins this game, she’ll be Joshua’s boss. If she loses, she’ll resign. So why is she suddenly having steamy dreams about Joshua, and dressing for work like she’s got a hot date? After a perfectly innocent elevator ride ends with an earth shattering kiss, Lucy starts to wonder whether she’s got Joshua Templeman all wrong.

Maybe Lucy Hutton doesn’t hate Joshua Templeman. And maybe, he doesn’t hate her either. Or maybe this is just another game.

Continue reading →

ShallowreaderBingo! August edition!

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It’s the end of August and for the THIRD time this year, Willaful from A Willful Woman has won the Bingo call! Woooooot! There was some fierce competition this month so a big congrats to all who have played and to a whole lot of new players this month too! Yay to more Bingo players! For a few tasters Valancy and Keira Soleore already have awesome reading wrap ups for this month.

Jim Carrey running around like a madman hugging audience members

As for my own Bingo! reading this month…..

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I blame it on the name

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So I have been trying to read a book called Tribal Law whose heroine is named Vassiliki Verity. I am not on an ego trip when I claim that this character is named for me. She is. I know this because I was told by both the author and Kat Mayo of Bookthingo.

Tribal Law by Shannon B. CurtisSo here is the story: Tribal Law is a crowdsourced story. Author Shannon B Curtis (full disclosure: Shannon and I have twittered together, supped together and presented on a panel at a library event together so are on pretty friendly terms) wrote a story whose plot and main characters were given to her by members of the Australian Romance Readers Association (another full disclosure: I am not a member of ARRA though I have attended all their conventions to date). There was a big meeting, I was told it was rather raucous and fun and I was also told that Kat Mayo – friend, borrower and romance reading mastermind – insisted that the heroine be named for me. Because she loves me. Or should that be loves torturing me.

I am up to Chapter 7 of this book and though it is well-written, interesting and funny I just cannot continue (at least at this point) because  of the heroine being called Vassiliki and there are sex scenes and I just can’t stay in the story because I keep seeing my own name and I have no idea how all you “normal” named people can cope with reading books where you constantly see your own names.

Especially when I see the phrases such as “Vassiliki is a vamp” before my eyes.

I purchased my own copy of Tribal Law.

PS This book has a hatchback driving hero. I will return to read it just for this one reason!

 

 

The Betty then is no better than The Betty now

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I very nearly didn’t post anything for August’s TBR challenge even though Kicking it Old Skool is one of my favouritest topics in romance reading. I adore reading older romances especially from the 70s and 80s. I regularly reread old favourites and I also seek out titles from markets and op shops. My only foray into Old Skool romance this past month was revisiting Betty Neels.

Now let me start by telling you – nay showing you! how I felt about Betty Neels as a teenager:

Bored person slumping in their seat from the tediousness of what they are listening to

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I would see her books I could feel my skin crawl. Continue reading →

ShallowreaderBingo! July Edition!

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It’s the end of July and @Bardsong over at Flight into Fantasy won the call early in the month! Wooot! Here is a link to her entry. Meanwhile, the audience goes wild!

As for my own efforts…well! Having had a rather dismal fiction reading month, I was all prepared to admitting to only crossing off one square and then a few days ago I decided to read the last book left on my library TBR. It has been sitting on my shelves for 3 months and I could not renew it again. I thought I would give it a shot, DNF after 2 chapters and wallow in my fiction slump. But no! Not only did I get out of my slump but I also scored EVERY SINGLE SQUARE ON THE JULY SHEET WITH THE ONE BOOK!

Continue reading →

Superquick post

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July has been a bit crazy involved for me. Lots of family stuff and study stuff has kept me occupied and away from the interwebs. I have been able to occasionally mini-blog over on Twitter but even my engagement there is minimal.

I always knew that there would come a time in my thesis that I would go on hiatus with my blog. I feel that time is coming nearer but I don’t want to stop altogether. I have decided that I need to curb my propensity for 2K+ posts and just bring over to my blog some of my meanderings from Twitter, Instagram and Goodreads (but rarely ever Facebook). I will also continue with my Bingo cards. Even though there are only a handful of people playing, I love creating the cards (so much fun!) and I adore that handful of people. They all blow me away. I always thought I was a big reader but they are such avid readers I remain in awe of all of them.

So here goes with a super quick review:

Required to Wear the Tycoon's RingRequired to Wear the Tycoon’s Ring

Maggie Cox

Seth Broden needs this last deal to achieve the success he’s always desired—but to close it, he must make the one acquisition he’s never wanted: a wife! A chance meeting with pretty but penniless Imogen Hayes gives Seth the chance to propose a mutually beneficial arrangement… 

Jilted bride Imogen vowed to save herself for her wedding night—but she never expected to be walking down the aisle to Seth! With the brooding tycoon waiting for her at the altar, will Imogen succumb to his charm and be his wife in more than name only?

Continue reading →

Lynne Graham and the disappearing case of an As-If-O-Metre

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I love a good As-If novel. For the most part, this is one of the most excellent aspects of reading category romance fiction. Plot lines are so absurd that they test a reader’s suspension of disbelief. Done badly, the reader rejects the story with disdain. But when As-If is done well, despite all the impossible, ridiculous plot bunnies you become lost in the emotional wellbeing of the two characters that you are reading about. So to test my As-If-O-Metre, I read Lynne Graham’s 99th novel The Sicilian’s Stolen Son.

Lynne Graham's The Sicilian's Stolen SonThe only link Jemima Barber has to her troubled late twin sister is her nephew. So when the boy’s father storms into their lives to reclaim the child that was stolen from him, Jemima lets the forbidding Sicilian believe she is her smooth seductress of a sister. Though his son’s mother might be gentler than Luciano Vitale remembers, he’s resolved to make her pay in the most pleasurable way imaginable. But when he discovers she’s a virgin, her secret is out! Now Luciano has a new proposal: Jemima can atone for her sister’s sins–by becoming his wife!

 

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Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm and my TBR: Favourite Trope

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It is time for SuperWendy’s TBR challenge again and this month the theme is Your Favourite Trope. Let it be known that there are lots and lots of spoilery spoilers ahead so look away if you one day plan to read Flowers from the Storm.  You have been duly warned….

Flowers from the Storm by Laura KinsaleFlowers from the Storm

by Laura Kinsale

narrated by the sublime Nicholas Boulton.

He’s a duke. He’s a mathematical genius. He can’t talk and he’s locked in a lunatic asylum. Only a modest Quaker girl can reach him, but when she helps him to escape, she’s swept into his glittering aristocratic world, her life torn apart by his desperate attempt to save himself.

 

I really love Secret Baby Tropes and though I would not list it as Numero Uno trope (which is Friends to Lovers) it is however the trope for which I have read a TBR book for this month.

I’m reallllly late to the Flowers from the Storm party. I have known about this novel since forever – how could I not with Kat Mayo as one of my borrowers. But I dragged my feet. I have read Kinsale’s The Prince of Midnight and (shameless name dropping here) had a rather interesting twittversation with Kinsale about its ending back in the early twitter days of yore.   Continue reading →