Novella Round-Up: APPLES SHOULD BE RED, THE TIME TUTOR, and YOUR WICKED HEART

*Scroll down to the end of this post for a chance to win a paperback copy of The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway!*

Apples Should Be Red by Penny Watson

Beverly and Tom are in-laws whose children are married, and they HATE each other (Bev and Tom, that is, not their children). Tom hates how uptight Bev is, Bev hates how Tom swears and smokes and pretty much only cares about his backyard garden. When the two of them are forced to spend a few days alone together before Thanksgiving, their kids joke that they might wind up killing one another. Well, you know what they say about there being a fine line between love and hate...

This was a cute and funny romance. Tom reminded me of Mr. McGregor from the Peter Rabbit books ("This garden isn't some pansy-ass annual border with mari-fuckin'-golds. This is war. We're at Defcon One." <-best line of the entire book) and Bev was cartoonishly uptight, like Alison from Orphan Black in about 30 years. The "twist" on the traditional romance here is that the main characters are 62 and 59, respectively, instead of the usual 104 and 16 (haha! Twilight references FTW). Anyway, despite the unconventional set-up, Apples Should Be Red is actually very traditional in its promotion of community, family, love, and second chances. A feel-good romance with lots of foodie and gardening references. And who doesn't like that??

Your Wicked Heart by Meredith Duran

Amanda finds herself in a nightmare situation: broke, unemployed, and abandoned in a foreign country by a man who SAID he'd marry her. Turns out that's not the only thing he lied about, either—instead of being the Viscount of Ripton, he was an imposter. Now the real viscount is in Turkey and he is determined to drag both Amanda and her so-called fiance back to England to answer for their crimes.

I thought Duran told a great story with Your Wicked Heart. From the beginning it was non-stop twists and turns. Very exciting! I also really liked the three main characters—Amanda, Ripley, and Amanda's fiance, Charles. That said, I didn't feel any romantic chemistry between Amanda and Ripley, and didn't really care if they got together or not. The romance portion was just so predictable and cheesy, what with the smelling and the stupid misunderstandings and the smelling and the uncontrollable bodily reactions, etc. etc. Boring. But overall this novella evened out to an okay read.

The Time Tutor by Bee Ridgeway

Note: the publisher provided me with a copy of this book for review consideration. To find out more about my review policies, please see my full disclosure page.

In this prequel to The River of No Return, Alva is a favorite in the Guild, a society of time travelers. She's ambitious, hungry for both knowledge and power, and the only person she knows who can give her what she wants is the vampiric Hannelore. Then she meets Lord Dar, the leader of the Guild's enemies, the Ofan. They fall in love, but can they remain together and still defeat Hannelore?

I loved The River of No Return, so I was more than willing to read The Time Tutor, even though prequels are not my favorite. And this definitely reads like a prequel—there's no real ending or resolution, it's all basically a set up. That annoying fact aside, before I got to the end of The Time Tutor, I was really enjoying it. Whatever gift or skill is required to pull a reader into a story and make them care about the characters, Ridgway has it in spades. I loved the meet-cute between Dar and Alva and thought they were amazing together. I also liked the hints of an Arthurian tale running through The Time Tutor, with Dar mentoring the young "Arthur," yet betraying him with Alva. I wouldn't recommend The Time Tutor to people who haven't read The River of No Return yet; but for those of us who have read it, I think it's a nice appetizer for Ridgway's next novel. Which hopefully will be released soon!



GIVEAWAY

The publisher is offering a lucky reader of this blog one paperback copy of The River of No Return (US and Canada only). To enter, just fill out the form embedded below or click here. The giveaway will run from March 10th to March 17th.

Wicked Becomes You by Meredith Duran

In which Tasha has a case of the blahs.



Dear Historical Romances,

You and I, we used to be so close.  You gave me escapism, long sighs, and swoon-worthy heroes.  Long nights staying up way past my bedtime to find out what would happen next.  I gave you... well, money.  But I was glad to give it!  So long as I got a wonderful romance in return that transported me to another place and time.

But now, I'm just not feeling it.  I haven't for a while.  It's not you--well, sometimes it is you.  Okay, MOST of the time it's you.  But in this case it's not.  There is absolutely wrong with this particular book.  On some level, I recognize this, and thus I kept reading until the bitter sweet end.  Sweet because it was a HEA (naturally), bitter because all I felt was bored.  When the hero and heroine first kiss--meh.  When they start throwing glasses and pitchers of beer at one another in public--yawn.  When they purge deep emotional issues--are you freaking kidding me?  Is this supposed to be the tortured emotional part?  Because BLAHHHH.

Gwen is the perfect debutante, but the men she agrees to marry keep ditching her at the altar.  Why???  After the second one, she has a breakdown and decides she's done with being good--she wants to be wicked!  Fortunately, the person she comes across just as she arrives at this deep personal realization is Alex Ramsay, her brother's bestie and a notorious kick-boxing rogue.  Or is it roguish kick-boxer?  Whatever.  They travel to Paris, Monte Carlo, Alex shows her how to be wicked, blah blah blah.

Did you hear that?  "Blah blah blah."  That's what I kept thinking while I was reading this book.  But it's really not the same old thing--it's set in exciting locales, is cunningly researched and written, and... well, those are the only positives I can think of at the moment.  I did really enjoy the parts of the novel that showed me settings I'd never seen in a romance before, like the freaking Moulin Rouge (!); I should have been geeking out something fierce, but instead all I could keep thinking while I read it was, "This book would be so much better if it wasn't a romance!  Then I wouldn't have to suffer through this rigmarole of a relationship."

I didn't feel any chemistry between the hero and heroine at all.  Alex's contempt of Gwen's innocence was more believable (and off-putting) than his sudden breakdown into admitting, "Oh, I've been in love with you all along!"  Suuure.

Meredith Duran's greatest strength has always been her fascinating heroes, but Alex isn't terribly interesting.  He doesn't do very much and I never got a sense of his history or emotions, or even what he looked like for that matter.  Gwen, meanwhile, was hard to take seriously, and every time she said she never wanted to get married, it made me roll my eyes.  Perhaps I would have found her protestations easier to believe if this wasn't a romance novel.  Or if she hadn't been raised to believe her entire roll in life was to marry an aristocrat.

As the book went on, the only thing I really cared about discovering was why Gwen's fiances kept dumping her.  Sadly, the explanation was stupid and unsurprising.

Of course, perhaps someone who isn't a jaded old crone in the course of a genre breakup would feel differently.

I'm sorry, historical romances, but I don't think we should see each other any more.  At least not for a while.  I thought we were true loves and nothing would ever be able to keep us apart, especially with a book like this one.  But Wicked Becomes You has served to show me that even the best relationships have to come to an end eventually, and I'm not sure I have the fortitude to read another book by a great author and feel nothing.

Sayonara,

Tasha B.

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My Year in Reading

"Everything Men Know About Women" by dailyinvention

It's the end of the year, which means it's time to start reflecting on my year in reading.  I guess.  The only problem is, 2009 pretty much sucked on the reading front.

I read very few books, even fewer of which I liked.  I burned out on two of my favorite sub-genres, historical romance and urban fantasy.  But on the plus side, I started book blogging, made a lot of bookish friends, and discovered new books.

So, instead of doing a top-ten list of books, which would only serve to torture me as there were barely three books I loved that much in 2009, I decided to do a montage o' highlights.



Favorite new author:  Meredith Duran

Duran is definitely an author to watch.  I've really enjoyed all her books so far, and Bound By Your Touch is probably my favorite historical romance of 2009.



Favorite new genre:  Manga

OMG, so addictive!  Manga is my new crack.  Seriously, you can't stop reading the stuff; it should come with a warning label.

Favorite challenge:

This is a tie between Jenner's Take a Chance Challenge and Galleysmith's Harry Potter Reading Challenge.  The Take a Chance Challenge was really fun and creative, but I think reading-wise the Harry Potter Challenge has been the most rewarding.



Things I ignored:

Dystopian fiction, m/m romance, e-books, chick lit, and most of my challenges.

Things I didn't ignore (completely):

Angels, The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, YA, erotica, Jane Austen adaptations



Jumped the shark:

Christina Dodd.  The books she published this year that I read (Danger in a Red Dress, Storm of Visions) were pretty all-around horrible.  It's like she's not even trying anymore.

Subcategory--Authors who are going to get one more shot:  Gaelen Foley.  My Wicked Marquis was simply a train wreck.

Chunksters:

Despite my loathing of overly long books, I managed to read Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Drood, and The Lost Symbol.

Things I wish I'd read more of:

I read hardly any sci-fi/fantasy this year, I don't know why.  Usually that's my second-favorite genre after romance.



Biggest surprise (in a good way):

Water for Elephants, which I read as part of A Buckeyegirl Reads' bookclub (when are we going to read another book for that, btw, Colette?).  I was pretty sure this book was either going to be horribly boring and/or depressing, but it was absolutely brilliant.  I also read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society for Colette's book club, and that was really good, too.



Hmm, now that I've broken it down, it doesn't seem like my reading year was that horrible after all.  What were the highlights of your year in books?

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Written on Your Skin

Written on Your Skin by Meredith Duran

The follow-up to Bound By Your Touch, this book is about the romance between the broody Phin and the so-Blonde-she's-smart Mina Masters.  It's not as good as BBYT, but it is a good romance novel that I would recommend.

Phin was a super-spy, but now that he's become the Earl of Ashmore, he can't be ordered around by his arch-nemesis, Ridland.  Then Ridland captures Mina, who saved Phin's life four years ago in Hong Kong.  Phin decides to keep her in his house, even though he doesn't trust her (or himself), and one thing leads to another.  Meanwhile, Mina is trying to find her mom, who was kidnapped by her evil ex.

I loved BBYT, so perhaps my opinion of WOYS was scewed by unfair expectations, but there were several things that annoyed me in the beginning of this book.  First of all, the first three chapters are actually a prologue.  As I mentioned in this week's Sunday Salon, I hate prologues.  Furthermore, I was really psyched about the Hong Kong setting because I love books set in historical China (even though technically Hong Kong was part of Britain at this point...),  but Hong Kong could have just as easily been Delhi or even London--there were no details as to the setting at all; it was purely incidental.  Finally, once the story starts, the conflict between Phin and Mina is one of those that feels like it could be easily resolved if they just sat down and hashed it out; but instead, they either ignore one another; or when they talk they do so in circles, which drove me crazy.

So because of those two things, I was a little underwhelmed by the romance once it started to get going.  But the book isn't terrible by any means, and if you don't have a problem with prologues or misunderstanding plots, you likely won't be bothered by it at all.

By far the best part of the book was Phin's character.  In my review of BBYT, I said Sanburne was like an animé character (still love Sanburne better, btw).  Well, Phin is like Batman:  he operates under this façade of a wealthy socialite, but there's another side to him that's dark--very, very dark, and powerful and controlled to within a millimeter.  Even though that side of Phin is essentially good, it has tortured and murdered people, and done terrible things.  Mina says Phin's problem is that he doesn't trust himself, but I don't think that's his issue at all; I think his real problem is that he's suffering from an identity crisis.  He doesn't know who the "real" Phin is--the man who can kill with nary a thought, or the useless (and harmless) artistocrat living in civilized luxury.  He's terrified it's the former; and is haunted by the possibility that if he is his darker identity, when will it come out and take over?  Duran captures the loss of control Phin feels when he's in the grip of his dark self beautifully with a rush of words that makes you feel like you've stuck your head out of the window of a train and they're whipping past you.  There were times when reading this book where I felt truly breathless and dizzy with the unstoppable speed of Phin's thoughts.

Mina is harder to like--actually, I never warmed up to her.  She's the polar opposite of Lydia from BBYT:  Lydia is in-your-face intelligent and bookish, and almost incapable of pretending otherwise; Mina is like a 19th Century version of Marilyn Monroe, always playing up her role as the "dumb blonde" even though she's very sharp.  What bothered me about this is that she never really seemed that dumb to me, and the fact that she was able to fool so many people for so extended a period (like her stepfather who lives in the same house) is a bit difficult to believe.  Also, I never forgave her for letting Phin fall literally on his face after he'd been poisoned.

This is another beautifully written romance from Duran, and she's still my favorite new writer.  I personally didn't like Written On Your Skin as much as Bound By Your Touch--I would have prefered it if the book started in 1884 London, and if Phin and Mina got the I-don't-trust-you-because-you-might-have-alternative-motives part of their relationship out of the way much quicker--but someone who preferred darker romances could certainly have an opposite preference.  I'm definitely looking forward to Duran's next book!

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Bound By Your Touch

Bound by Your Touch by Meredith Duran

Despite the truly sucky cover (and it does suck), this book is excellent.

As this book is so character-centric, I think any summary of it should start with a description of the characters. 

James, Viscount Sanburne, is a complete and total non-conformist.  One might get the impression from reading the back of the book that he's a "bad boy," but he's really not--he just makes a concerted effort not to do anything that other people expect of him: 

...whenever he found himself in a situation where his position gave him advantages, he tested himself with Phin's rule:  Is this interesting?--which soon came to mean, Is this original?

Because of this, at the beginning of the book, James seems like an animé character--which is awesome.  He takes drugs (side note:  don't do drugs, kids!), barges into dinner parties uninvited and demands to be seated, dresses flamboyantly, wears tons of glittering jewelry, and doesn't wear a mustache (!).  James hangs out with a clique of high-society elites who like to party and break the rules.  Although they sound like a bunch of degenerates, it's actually a very a close-knit group of friends.

Just as there is more to James' friends than first meets the eye, there's also a lot more to James and his personality than just flash--as we find out during the course of the book.

Lydia Boyce is a very intelligent and practical woman who has completely given up on finding a husband due to her bookishness and the fact that she doesn't think she's pretty.  Instead, she's devoted her life to helping her father with his scholarly research in Egypt.  Unlike Sanburne, Lydia always follows the rules; but then, being a woman and not a member of the aristocracy, she has to.

While it's easy to fall in love with James right away, Lydia is more difficult to warm up to.  After about fifty pages, however, she started to grow on me; and then she began to remind me of someone I actually know.  It was spooky, actually, but that's how well-drawn her character is. 

Being an extremely intelluctual sort, Lydia is not going to fall in love with someone based on how beatiful they are (which she can't help but notice James is), or on physical attraction (which she and James definitely share).  She's only going to fall in love with a person with whom she shares a true melding of the minds; and through some strange chemistry, Lydia and James develop this as the novel progresses.


The romance in this book is absolutely perfect.  Even though I spent a good portion of the beginning wondering how in the world these two people were going to get together, I was completely convinced by the progression of their relationship and how they finally fell in love.  Although Lydia and James seem like completely disparate personalities on the surface, it becomes clear (though only at the very end of the novel) that they are actually quite similar.

I also loved Duran's writing style.  She doesn't lay everything out for the reader on a silver platter, but puts the pieces out and expects us to be smart enough to put them together.  What the hell am I talking about, you wonder?  Simply that Duran shows and doesn't tell, and she shows in a very elegant way.  One of the more memorable examples:

"You seem to like it," he said.

His tone was so mild that he might have been commenting on her reaction to a flower arrangement.  But as the meaning registered, a flush swept her.  She cleared her throat.  In a low voice, she said, "A cold bath does the same."

His delighted laugh ghosted along her neck.  "You are so amusing," he purred.  "Let me put my lips there, and I will convince you of the difference."

That a small snippet of one of the most memorable scenes in the book, and it has such a strong impact because of the way Duran sets it up and writes it.  It's sexy and suggestive, but it's not salacious, which is exactly the right tone for this novel.

The book is also very well-researched, and took me as a reader to places I've never been before.  The visit to the gin house, with the art on the walls and the oddly-named drinks, was particularly fun.

The only thing I didn't like about Bound By Your Touch was that I thought it had pacing issues.  The beginning is a bit slow, and it seemed to take a long time before the narrative started moving.  Then, all the lose ends of the plot are wrapped up in the last fifty pages.  Seriously, at page three hundred, I was honestly concerned about whether I was going to get a conclusion to the two subplots or if they were going to be left hanging.  I did get my conclusions, but they sort of felt tacked on at the end and a bit haphazard, at least in comparison to the rest of the book (although I did really like the ending).  And speaking of, did the the copy editor stop reading at page 250?  Because there were at least five errors I noticed in the last hundred pages.

That didn't really detract from the overall wonderfullness of this novel, however.  I would highly recommend Bound By Your Touch to anyone who enjoys historical fiction, whether they like romance novels or not.  This definitely not your typical romance novel; and for me it was a keeper.

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The Sunday Salon

I didn't get much reading done this week, what with job interviews and trying to throw together a presentation about Counter-Reformation art in a day.  I did finally finish Bound by Your Touch by Meredith Duran on Monday night.  It was a very good book that I would definitely recommend to anyone who likes historical romances (review forthcoming).  Then I started Kill the Dead by Tanith Lee.  I'm reading this book for the Take a Chance Challenge and it was due at the library about two days ago. =/  The guy who is in charge of Interlibrary Loans is going to kill me.  Did I mention he used to be my Earth Sciences teacher in high school?  Oh, yeah, and he also is a member at the bank my mom works at, and the last time I was late returning a book, he told my mom about it! o.O On the plus side, though, I always get the books order.

I don't know why, but it's been really difficult for me to focus on reading these past two weeks (hence the loooooong time it took to read Bound By Your Touch, even though it was a good book).  Maybe the heat is just getting to me and I can't concentrate.  Nevertheless, I still acquired my usual pile o' books the past two weeks.  I even bought some books (the first time I've bought a book since March--very exciting!).

Here's what I bought:

• Don't Tempt Me by Loretta Chase
• My Wicked Marquess by Gaelen Foley
• Bending the Rules by Susan Andersen
• What Happens in London by Julia Quinn
• Bound by Your Touch by Meredith Duran

Here are the books I got at the library:

• The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson (heard about it at I'm Lost in Books)
  
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (recommended by just about everybody)

I also read "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier for Summer of Hitchcock (review of both story and movie forthcoming).  And I won a contest at One Literature Nut.  Yay, me! ^_^

So hopefully this next week will see me out of the summer doldrums and I'll be able to get some serious reading done.  And hopefully I'll finished Kill the Dead soon, because I'm determined to do so before I return it.  Even if I risk the wrath of the librarians. :P

What did you read this week?

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