What I Did For Love by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Posted on April 8, 2009 by janicu

Susan Elizabeth Phillips

OK if you've been following me on twitter, my quest for this book has taken a while. What I Did For Love is popular, really popular, in my library system, and it was a good month and a half before I could get hold of it. The reason why I wanted to read it was the 70 page excerpt of the book that HarperCollins had up on it's Browse Inside feature.

The Premise: This story is about Georgie York, a famous television actor. She's most famous for her starring role as Scooter Brown, a feisty young heroine in the wildly popular sitcom Skip and Scooter. Her costar Bramwell (Bram) Shepard was Skip, the responsible son of the Scofield family and who always took care of Scooter whenever she got into trouble. In real life however Georgie was a responsible, well brought up kid, while Bram was the bad boy who came to the set drunk and disorderly and ultimately was the cause of the show going off the air.

Now Georgie is all grown up, and fodder for gossip magazines. Her marriage to famous movie star Lance Marks has just broken up in a very Brad/Angelina way (with Georgie as a spurned Aniston), and she hasn't had a hit movie for a long time. Her young crush on her costar Bram has withered away a long, long time ago, and now she just actively dislikes him. Their paths cross in Las Vegas, and after an unfortunate incident which left them both incapacitated, Georgie finds herself married to Bram. In an effort to make lemonade out of lemons, Bram and Georgie agree to pretend the wedding was planned. This gives Georgie a way to save face against her ex-husband, and Bram a way to show his respectability. After all, if America's Sweetheart Georgie agreed to be his wife, he can't be that bad, can he? Of course they both have a hard time convincing the people around them, including Bram's surly young punk housekeeper Chaz and Georgie's emotionally cut-off father Paul.

My Thoughts: I thought this was really well written and I could see why it was in high demand. I read most of the book in one sitting and just zoomed through easily. The dialog was especially humorous, with many laugh out loud moments. I truly liked the banter between the main characters, their give and take was well written and the romance wasn't taken over by sex early on. No purple prose either. And I really liked the secondary characters who played large roles (Georgie's father, her assistant Aaron, Bram's housekeeper Chaz). There are also a couple of other secondary romances which I also liked which good because sometimes I find secondary romances more cheesily done than the primary one. I'm not really a big romance reader, and I'm not as sensitive to some of the romance cliche's that I'm sure romance readers are used to, but I still noticed some things that I've heard people rant about in contemporary romances. For instance, we keep seeing characters from other books (or their grown-up children) and I couldn't care less about them. I think we see people from Glitter Baby and other books here, but I haven't read much SEP to tell and so they were just extraneous people to me and didn't add much to the book. There was also an epilogue with the happy family, including precocious kids, which I also noticed in Match Me if You Can. I've decided I'm not a fan of this.

These things lowered my enjoyment of the book, but I could live with them. What really didn't make this book a home run was two things. First of all, I never understood one of Bram's terms to the marriage – he has to have sex, because he just can't go without months of no sex. And Georgie doesn't really question the believability of this (is this just a given, he HAS to have sex)? So that was weird and it put me off a bit in terms of believing the story. The second thing was the ending and the way Bram declared his love. I honestly thought "What was that?" when I read it. Bram, after acting like an ass, suddenly *realizes*, very dramatically that he loves Georgie, and then he chooses to tell her through metaphor. Which Georgie accepts. Sorry, it didn't work for me at all, it was too hokey and unbelievable, and as the last thing in the book, it stuck in my head.

Overall: Really close to wowing me and being one of my better reads for the year, but doesn't quite make it because of the ending and my inability to suspend belief in the romance. But still a really good read with great banter and secondary characters, so worth an afternoon for contemporary romance or SEP fans. For an idea if you will like it, I recommend reading the excerpt.

Review at Bookbinge (I agreed with their 4/5)

Haiku at Dear Author (they gave it a C)

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Close Encounters by Katherine Allred

Posted on March 27, 2009 by janicu

Close Encounters: An Alien Affairs Novel, Book 1

Katherine Allred

This is science fiction romance and the cover blurb compares her to Linnea Sinclair, so when the opportunity to read the ARC for this book came up, I jumped on it. I've been very excited about this new series by Katherine Allred when it first came on my radar last year during a "you choose the design" poll at Eos books, and then I read a 20 page excerpt and wanted to read it even more (now Harpercollins has the first 20% available to browse inside).

This book is told from the first person point of view of Kiera Smith, a Genetically Engineered Person – someone who was created in a test tube out of various superior genes of other people. This process is extremely expensive so GEPs are usually created and paid for by a company and then throughout their lives they are expected to pay off the initial expense of their creation. Kiera however, is special even among GEPs. Rather than being made from genes spliced from Naturals (normal non-enhanced people), she was made from other GEPs. This difference is a big issue for her and she's always thinking about it. Kiera works for Alien Affairs – a branch of the government that oversees life in new planets. Basically she is one of the first people to meet a newly discovered alien civilization and introduce them to the rest of the universe. She makes sure that they aren't exploited by greedy corporations only interested in their planet's resources and is an advocate for their rights.

At the start of Close Encounters Kiera's vacation with her rock-cat Crigo and her AI ship Max is cut short for a special assignment. Dynatec has applied for ownership of Orpheus Two under the law that if the intelligent life living there dies off in 100 cycles, they can take over. The indigeneous people are a race of very tall, very beautiful people with hair the same color as their eyes, which the first explorers have decided to call the Buri (after a Norse god). The new world, the technology, and the Buri was plenty of fodder for the mind's eye. This book was very much a Tarzan meets Jane if they were both super beings surrounded by high technology.

This is a science fiction romance, but the romance was secondary to the main plot which was Kiera finding out why the Buri was not reproducing at the rate they should have been. The Buri don't know what Kiera is saying and viceversa so for more than half of the book Kiera can't really hold a conversation with her love interest. She doesn't even know his name and just nicknames him Thor. Because Kiera can't really fully understand the Buri and only mostly understands their emotions, communication is minimal, and is often held through body language, gesturing, and Kiera's ability to read emotion. This means that the romance is very physical rather than cerebral, and we have the soul mate concept used to bring the hero and heroine together.

I'm not a big fan of the use of soul mates, but the story was well-written and because the romance was secondary it didn't bother me much. I did have a couple other minor problems along with this though. First of all, there were some things in here I found a bit inappropriate for a representative of Alien Affairs to do. Kiera is supposed to be their best and yet I had the feeling that if an anthropologist read this book, they'd be disagreeing with some of her actions. For example, I was surprised when I read how Kiera showed the Buri how to use shampoo. Was it really necessary for her to get naked and then soap the leader in front of the tribe? OK it linked into the plot, but this is one of the scenes I found hard to swallow. Another issue I had was that a lot of things were too idealized. When we're first introduced to Kiera who is not only a blonde bombshell but even more enhanced than the usual GEPs. Then we're introduced to the Buri who have surprisingly almost the same super-human qualities as our main character, who live in a planet which itself is unique and full of mostly friendly, ideal flora and fauna. Kiera is extremely lucky throughout the book with the way things went for her. It was a bit too easy.

Despite those issues, there were a lot of interesting ideas in here. I enjoyed all the devices Kiera used in her ship for food and for temporary shelter, what she used to communicate, her knowlege of Galactic Federation law, her weapons and fighting, and all the details that descibed her techologically advanced life. A life which contrasted nicely with what she met in the new planet – the jungle, the strange creatures, the Buri costumes and their food preparation – it was all very well thought out and keep me turning the pages with curiosity.

Overall: From the very beginning of this book I could understand the comparison with Linnea Sinclair's writing, and I think you should definitely pick this up if you are a science fiction romance fan. This was a fun space opera read with an interesting world and characters. I did find things a bit convenient and the main character a little perfect, but I would still recommend this for science fiction romance lovers, and I will pick up the second book.

Katherine Allred's website (there's a book trailer for Close Encounters there)

Galaxy Express's review

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Match Me if You Can by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Posted on March 8, 2009 by janicu

Match Me If You Can

Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I was in the mood for a HEA on saturday and I'd never read a Susan Elizabeth Phillips book (something that I heard should be remedied), so I picked up Match Me If You Can on a whim.

Here's the premise: Annabelle Granger is a vivacious redhead who is starting off in the matchmaking business in Chicago. The business used to be her late grandmother's but Annabelle is modernizing it and changing the name to Perfect For You. She just needs a big name client to help spread some buzz – that's where super sports agent Heath (The Python) Champion comes in. Through Heath's searching for the perfect wife, and Annabelle's connections to some famous footballers and their wives, gives her an in to speak to Health about hiring Perfect For You.

Thoughts: At first I found Heath to be a bit unlikeable but despite a few jerky moves, his overall motivation seemed honest and he did acknowledge his mistakes and felt guilt over them. Health had a strange notion of the perfect wife – refined, intelligent, beautiful, but at the same time willing to be his slave and raise his kids without complaint. His ideas were all about image and his life plan, which stems from wanting to shed his beginnings as trailer-trash, living with a drunk father and no mother, only an endless parade of his father's girlfriends who always ended up leaving. Of course Annabelle is the one for him, but he didn't really realize it. In the meantime they spend a lot of time together, and Heath began to grow on me. His teasing of Anabelle was fun because she gave as good as she got. Annabelle was an interesting character, I had a harder time really pinning her down, I wish I had more time in her head. Sometimes she's vulnerable and insecure, but other times she's confident and articulate.

There were a lot of secondary characters (some from previous books), and also a secondary romance which I liked as much as the primary one. Some of these characters I really found interesting (Dean Robillard, Portia, Bodie) but some of the cameo characters I wasn't as interested in. A couple of characters I could have done without, for example Annabelle's ex. His story felt like a red herring that didn't really add much other to have something for Annabelle to have a complex over. It felt out of place to me, because I didn't think her that deeply affected by it, but perhaps this is splitting hairs.

Overall: This was a fine read. Funny in places, good happy ever after with hero doing some decent repenting and being raked over coals, and good interaction between characters. I also liked how the romance built up slowly and you could believe these two fit together. But it didn't quite do it for me. I have to say that it's one of those times where I can see others loving this book but something didn't work for me personally. I can't put my finger on it really. Maybe the overall plotline just didn't excite me? Maybe it was a couple of odd phrases that jarred me (guinea fowl breasts? use of the word 'spunk'?) that may not even be noticed by others. Maybe it was my mood? I feel like I will very likely find a SEP book that I will love (I really want to read her newest release), but this didn't quite get there.

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Baby Bonanza by Maureen Child

Posted on February 11, 2009 by janicu

Baby Bonanza (Silhouette Desire)

Maureen Child

OK, a quick review here. This is another one of the 16 free Harlequins, this time from the Silhouette Desire line.

Jenna Baker worked for Nick Falco on one of his cruiseships, but after a week long affair together, Nick fired her because she didn't tell him she was his employee. Jenna got pregnant, but Nick ignored all her emails, phonecalls and messages for months and has no idea that he's a father. Jenna just wants Nick to know and to ask for child support for the twins, so she buys a ticket on his newest cruise to approach him in person.

Overall: OK, but I ended up not really liking this one. I thought Falco sounded like a big jerk. For example: "His plan to seduce Jenna and then lose her was backfiring […] Time to take her to bed. Before they got the results of the DNA test." He thought she was a liar but he didn't mind sleeping with her – and then discarding her. When his assistant tells him she thinks Jenna is being straight with him - "He shifted uncomfortably because he didn't want her to be right. It was much easier on him to think of Jenna as a liar and a manipulator. Those kind of women he know how to deal with". Um.. Ok so what is Nick's view of most women? Liars? After this I was somewhat disappointed at how easily Jenna jumped back into bed with Nick. His player persona was off-putting, and I had a hard time buying the transformation into a family guy – it seemed superficially done. The sex to romance ratio was more on sex, little on romance. At one point they were doing something in what I think was in the same room as their sleeping babies! Ack. Page 159 by the way. At least his trying to get back into her good graces was alright, but after what he put her through I think Nick should have had to work a little harder than he did.

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Stargazer by Colby Hodge

Posted on February 8, 2009 by janicu

Stargazer (Oasis Series, Book 1)

Colby Hodge

Lilly is the princess of an agricultural paradise of a planet (named Oasis), who is at war with it's neighbor, a desert planet that squandered it's environment and is now after Oasis' resources. Hoping to ask for help from the galaxy's governing body, Lilly is on a transport ship headed towards the Senate when her ship is suddenly attacked. She escapes with Shaun, a prisoner who was in a cryogenic chamber on the same transport. Shaun is an mystery; a man with rare grey eyes who can communicate mentally, something that before only Lilly and the women of Circe could do.

The cover: I just had to say that I think this book has possibly one of the worst covers of any book I own. It's awful.

Overall: I'd put this down as an average read. The writing had a stilted quality to it and the story was predictable, but if you want space opera, this certainly qualifies. Stargazer jumps at a dizzying pace from one location in the galaxy to another, from swamp planets with prehistoric lizards, to mining planets where everyone lives underground. I kept feeling like it was vaguely familiar and I realized that a lot of things remind me of Star Wars and of Dune. We have a princess needing help from the Senate, a prisoner in a cryo-chamber, and a male with powers only women had before among other things.

Despite sometmies feeling deja vu, there were some moments that stood out. My favorite part would be the when Lilly and Shaun finally arrive at the Senate. Here there seemed to be some time spent on describing some of the culture of their enemies. The reader sees how the Circe women treat their men as slaves, shuttling them around with neck braces that inhibit their will, and the gladiator games that went on there showed the dark underside of the galaxy. I felt like this was the most absorbing part of the book for me, but unfortunately most of the book didn't seem to have the same focus on world building as this section did. I wanted things to slow down and have more context. For example, I thought Lilly and Shaun were in Oasis at one point only to be informed they were somewhere else, without any transition or explanation that that's where they were going. And for about the first third of the book I started wondering when they slept. I know that on the transport Lilly had to go into a sleep chamber, but after escaping, all space travel afterwards seemed to take no time whatsoever. There were other places like this where missing details threw me out of the story.

Another issue I had was the predictability. I could tell from the first 10 pages what the big reveal was going to be and it's not hard to guess from Shaun's grey eyes. Yet this is kept a surprise for a long time. It was also not hard to guess what characters were going to do because hints would be dropped beforehand.

Maybe this can be attributed to it being the first book for the author in the genre. I'm still willing to keep reading. Oasis' enemies have been stopped for now, but they won't be down for long, so the ongoing intruiges and plotting will continue. Shaun's devil may care pirate friend Rubin was a major player here so I wasn't surprised to find he's the hero in book 2, Shooting Star. The trilogy concludes with Star Shadows.

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The Price of Passion by Susan Napier

Posted on February 3, 2009 by janicu

Price of Passion (Harlequin Presents: Pregnant Mistresses)

Susan Napier

Hohoho, I read another one of the 16 Harlequin free books this weekend, this time the Presents line (according to Amazon, this one belongs to the subset Pregnant Mistresses!!). This one is the line I think of where the hero does those punishing kisses. Harlequin says the heroes are "ruthless, dark and powerful". Indeed.

The setup: Katherine (Kate) is a researcher for a publishing house, who is pregnant with the baby of Drake Daniels, a wildly famous author whose "speciality was constructing tough, gritty, anti-heroes who were rude, crude and lethal to know". He often disappears for months, no one knows where, to write his novels, but Kate has figured out that he has a house in Oyster Beach, New Zealand. She follows him there to try to break the baby news. Kate and Drake and he have a "no strings" relationship, and Kate believes the only reason she's lasted two years with him was because she never sleeps the night and never disturbs his work. Both are the product of tough childhoods, she has an ambitious, cold mother who had no time for a kid, and his father walked out on his mother, who was so grief-striken, she eventually committed suicide, leaving Drake to take care of himself.

Overall: The best Harlequin I've read so far. I'd recommend this one. If I graded, I'd say B+?

What I liked:

I loved that this wasn't set in the U.S. The writing has a New Zealand slant, and uses non-American words for certain things. Quite a refreshing change.
The banter was fabulous, both of them using lines from classics and old movies on each other. It flowed well and was fun to read. You really feel a connection between the characters and the romance felt believable because of it.
Kate I liked for keeping in character most of the time by exuding a calm exterior even when she's nervous, she may be thinking about something that will reveal her secret, but she doesn't do anything TSTL. Basically, she was good at recovering and I liked that she had spine.
Drake is very manly and whatnot. Do people like this exist? He came off extremely gruff at first but then warms to a "hard shell, soft center" kind of guy. Drake had one really big jerk moment in the book, but he did grovel afterwards and admitted his communication issues so he was decently likeable overall. He is also dyslexic which made him a bit more human.
They both had childhoods that reasonably explained their actions; like Kate learning from her mother never to bother someone when they are busy with their career or life, which is why she thinks Drake doesn't want her bothering him.
Cute pets. A three-legged dog (!!) and a kitten who squeaks. And they move the plot along, not just there to be cute.
My favorite lines in this book:

"'I'm not good with words -"

Her eyes widened. 'Drake, you're a writer.'"

I guess my only nits would be that a couple of things were a little cliched. Maybe Drake sometimes. And the description of him on the first page made me roll my eyes. She too is drop dead gorgeous of course, with almost silver eyes. Mmm hmm. And something about the ending that was a bit too pat.

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Speed Dating by Nancy Warren / Free Books from Harlequin

Posted on February 1, 2009 by janicu

OK, if you're like me and subscribe to a good 80 some book blog feeds, you'll have heard this news several times over. Harlequin celebrated its 60 anniversary by putting up 16 ebooks to download for FREE. I was going to go see what I liked and just download those, but I ended up downloading them all! Ha..

Here's the link for downloading: www.harlequincelebrates.com

Harlequin has pretty much something from every one of it's lines. I am going to try to read all 16 books, we'll see how that goes. So far I have one down.

Speed Dating (Harlequin NASCAR)

Nancy Warren

Taking my little Lenovo Ideapad S10, I started reading the NASCAR offering by Nancy Warren: Speed Dating. I know, I am so not interested in NASCAR, but eh, why not? At least there's a smiling guy on the cover who looks semi-cute and not bare chested. I'm tired of guys with creepily shaved chests, likely on steroids, with a silly dramatic expression on their faces being on romance covers. Is that sexy to people?

Anyway. The premise is that stiff, 31 year old actuary, Kendall Clarke finds out that her equally bland fiance Marvin has been having an affair with another coworker, and that coworker is pregnant. This is hours before Kendall is supposed to be awarded at an association dinner. Reeling from the blow, Kendall gets locked out of the room in her slip. Of course, she sneaks into another guest's room at the hotel when she sees 3 of her bosses walking down the hallway, and through a misunderstanding ends up pretending to be the girlfriend of stock car racer Dylan Hargreave at his ex-wife's wedding.

Yes, a hokey beginning! I was almost going to write this off as pretty cliched. Kendall wears bland suits in various shades or beige and brown, quotes statistics and calculates risks in her head, while feeling like she's not spontaneous enough. She acts completely out of character to prove something to her ex, and spends most of the evening in her underwear at a wedding?!

But – crazy as this start was, about midway, the book got better. I ended up thinking: hey I may actually kinda like some things in this book. Let's list:

The characters ended up having more depth. Well, Martin was sort of a jackass but he was forgotten soon enough. Dylan, the hero, was a truly nice guy. He treated women respectfully, was polite to fans, has cold parents, but turned out OK for the most part. I didn't quite buy why he thought he wasn't a guy someone should commit to, but that was minor. His ex-wife Ashlee acted like a spoiled drama queen, but she had her own nice qualities, and the love triangle between Dylan, Ashlee and her husband Harrison was an interesting plotline as was the way it was finally resolved. I kept expecting characters to just be one-dimensional and was pleasantly surprised when they were not.
Kendall does grow a bit, and she becomes much less stiff and boring and more like a normal person. And she is smart which was nice.
The relationship starts out as more of a friendship than a result of raging hormones. How refreshing. Although there's a lot of kissing going on as part of their cover relationship, and ok, lots of touching which didn't seem like just friends only to me, they ease into their feelings for one another over several weeks. The sex was very minimal in the book, the romance was a bigger focus. In fact, the sex happens literally behind a closed door.
When Kendall and Dylan spend time together alone, especially the down time at his house, they were kind of a sweet couple.
And I learned a couple of things. NASCAR related facts. Plus this book used the word "animadversions". Nice!

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Two Quick Harlequin Intrigue reviews

Posted on January 18, 2009 by janicu

Manhunt in the Wild West (Harlequin Intrigue)

Jessica Andersen

Manhunt In The Wild West by Jessica Anderson (Bear Claw Creek Crime Lab): Chelsea Swann, medical examiner at Bear Creek gets kidnapped by escaping prisoners from nearby prison, ARX Supermax. The four escapees are 3 terrorists and undercover operator Jonah Fairfax. Jonah manages to keep Chelsea alive and both must work together to stop the terrorists from an evil plot.

Overall: Rather one dimensional bad guys (the leader was named Al-Jihad, which amused me), a hokey plot involving many law enforcement professionals not following procedure, and I didn't really buy the attraction between the two main characters. I felt irritated by the continual repetitions of Jonah thinking of Chelsea as being "sweet", and seeing her as a representation of all that is good about America (apple pie, picket fences, the American Dream), and of Chelsea taking note of Jonah's piercing blue eyes. There was also a weird back story where Jonah's first wife cheated on him and died during a miscarriage, which Jonah remembers as a "betrayal" which pushed him into his current loner state. What? She's DEAD now you know! What I did like in this book was the eventual backbone and self-awareness that Chelsea develops through the book. I'd give this book an "Eh". ALSO: He never wears a cowboy hat in this story!

Around-The-Clock Protector (Harlequin Intrigue Series)

Jan Hambright

Around-the-Clock Protector by Jan Hambright (Intrigue's Ultimate Heroes): Carson Nash saves Ava Ross from russians in a mission mission with his team (a CIA rescue operation). He's shocked to find that Ava is who he rescued because she was supposed to have died in a plane crash 4 months ago. Now she's alive, with little memory of the last 4 months, and pregnant – with HIS baby!

I swear the model in this cover is the same guy as the model in the cover above!

Overall: OK. I believed more in the romance between the two characters here and saw more reasons for their attraction. There was more showing then telling there and I liked Ava in particular. I was somewhat annoyed at the "raging" lust Carson keeps feeling for Ava though, even when she's unconscious and beaten and he just rescued her. Time and a place buddy. There were also big plotholes (or maybe I missed something and was just confused), like exactly how Ava wasn't on the plane when it crashed and how she had amnesia and didn't know who she was but walked around free without going to the police? I feel like I missed something? Did I? Ava talks about getting up to go to the lavatory on the plane, but that didn't make sense as an escape from the crash. Finally – I didn't like this sentence: "Ava relaxed, letting the total-man-dominance thing sweep her into ecstacy". Total-man-dominance thing…

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Netherwood by Michele Lang

Posted on January 10, 2009 by janicu

Netherwood (SHOMI)

Michele Lang

I've been wanting to read Netherwood ever since Tez pointed it out as a Shomi release that may have been overlooked by people. It does seem like this one got less press than other ones and it's release came and went in March 08 without me noticing. The blurb sounded interesting – a futuristic story about a Sheriff after a criminal she knew in virtual realities "bad part of town" – the Netherwood while she was Amazonia and he was Avenger, competitors and lovers. Sheriff + wood makes me think Robin Hood so I was hoping that we'd see some kind of space age retelling perhaps, but this book doesn't exactly go there.

The book started off very promising with Talia Fortune, heir to FortuneCorp and new Sheriff reviewing holographic recordings of her time in Netherwood, specifically her last meeting with Avenger. She knows he's a criminal (as are all people in Netherwood), and she's tracked him to Fresh Havens where her Uncle Stone is mayor. When she arrives on the planet she discovers grave sabotage on Fresh Havens and two missing technicians. Talia *knows* the senior technician is Avenger and sets off into the Gray Forest to catch him.

Overall: I really liked the premise but the execution did not work. There were too many ideas going on which weren't very well thought out. Everything sort of sounded cool and interesting but were so vague that my suspension of disbelief wouldn't stay suspended. We have:

The real vs virtual world where more people spend their lives in the virtual one over the real. And within the virtual world there is the seedy underbelly called The Netherwood.
Big Corporations (6 of them) that took over everything.
Machines starting to take over everything, and people being tools for them to take over (vaguely reminds me of The Matrix).
The Gray Forest idea – a strange forest with strange bloodthirsty beasts. But it has it's own soul and thinks?
Kovner's strange abilities like viewing the future and reading/speaking into minds
Talia herself being "foretold" as being the only one who can save them.
People being able to do strange things somehow without any real explanation
The concept of being able to download your consciousness to the virtual world when you die and living forever, but at an unknown price.
Cloning, space travel, the speed of technological advances, biowarfare and so on..

If some of those ideas were taken out and saved for another book, and if more time spent on making the plot strong, I would have liked this book more. With all of the above going on, I kept seeing plot holes, inconsistencies, and incomplete explanations which weakened the whole story.

On top of that - while the hero and heroine were interesting, they began to annoy me. Kovner's zen know-it-all attitude and smiles in spite of bad news was annoying. Talia going from a gung-ho, confident young thing, to realizing she doesn't know it all, to martyr annoyed me. I believe she got very dramatic towards the end about three times about being a threat to the group! Enough already woman, we got it! And the romance itself wasn't interesting. Maybe most of it happened off-screen before they met – there was a back story to the two of them. Although Talia wants to capture Kovner, he wants to save her because of their back story, but I got no hints about what that was. I don't see why they like each other other than they are the two main characters.

Lastly – the ending – it sort of petered off and didn't really satisfy me. I can't say much more than that.

What that didn't make this book a complete failure for me was that the writing itself was okay. Despite a couple of typos (FourtuneCorp, fingr), it flowed well (it was a first person past tense point of view in case people wanted to know). There were some interesting ideas in there, I just wish there was less. So in the end this became an average to below average read to me rather than a good read. I would not completely close the door on reading something else from this author because I think there's potential, but I'd prefer a tighter plot next time.

Other reviews:

SciFiChick review (positive)
Gwen from The Good, The Bad and the Unread Review (she felt about the same as I did)
Alicia from The Good, The Bad and the Unread Review (she loved it and gave it an A)

The Outback Stars by Sandra McDonald

Posted on January 5, 2009 by janicu

The Outback Stars (Tor Science Fiction)

Sandra McDonald

I’ve been keeping this book in mind ever since I was recommended it by calico_reaction based on my love of space opera romances. I think she made the comment on one of my Linnea Sinclair reviews that I should read this book. Finally I broke down and got it, but only the hardcover copy was available when I did. Now, I love the book, but I want it in soft-cover, so I’m going to buy it *again* in paperback, and I want to give away the copy I read to someone who will enjoy it. I’m the type of person who uses bookmarks and gentle handles the book while reading, so the book is practically new, comes with the dust jacket, and it’s a really great read. If you don’t care that this book isn’t completely new, I’ll be hosting that giveaway in a few days.

First of all – isn’t this a great cover? It’s pretty cool and unearthly – conveys outer space, a female main character, and the colors are fantastic. I believe the second book in the series (The Stars Down Under) has a similar look.

Lieutenant Jodenny Scott is an officer whose last ship, the Yangtze suffered massive fatalities when it blew apart. Scott was one of the few survivors, a hero who helped save many crewmembers on that ship. At the start of this novel, Jodenny is bored from being forced to spend months planetside recovering from the disaster, so she pulls some strings to board the Aral Sea as it’s newest crewmember. Unfortunately she is put in charge of Underway Stores, the most troubled department in the ship – rumored to be full of incompetents, criminals and misfits. Past supply officers in charge of Underway Stores are either missing or had mysterious accidents, and Jodenny has to confront suspicious activities going on with her division and elsewhere in the ship. All of this is set against a backdrop of a military with Australian origins, and odd mystical things that seem rooted in Australian folklore also happen.

Overall: I think if you are a fan of Elizabeth Moon you will like Sandra McDonald’s books, particularly because of the military aspects. If you like Linnea Sinclair and Ann Aguirre you may like this as well. The author was an officer in the U.S. Navy and her knowledge of the day to day workings of he military seems to really show in this novel. In The Outback Stars Jodenny has to deal with a mix of personalities both below and above her in the chain of command. Not everyone is a hard worker and trying to get the bad seeds working in harmony with everyone else is a challenge. However, it was refreshing to see Jodenny tackle the challenge with creativity and toughness, which didn’t always help her make friends, but did make me respect her. She’s a very competent character who knows her job and is good at it. I also liked seeing how she reserved judgement on people until she saw things for herself – particularly with Terry, an accused rapist. It was also interesting to read a book where the main culture was Australian, not American (even though the writer is American!), but there was a also a big mix of races and religions and ethnicities on the ship too. The romance itself was satisfying to read – it wasn’t the main focus, and is slow-building. The tension comes from the fact that Jodenny is interested in a subordinate, which is a no-no within the milirary, so she spends most of the book supressing her feelings. I sighed a happy sigh at the end of this book. Although it seems like it will continue in The Stars Down Under, this book ended in a good place, without cliffhangers. I didn’t feel like major strings were left undone, but there is enough undiscovered territory to keep me wanting to read book 2.

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