Dream Lake by Lisa Kleypas

Dream Lake is the third book in the Friday Harbor series by Lisa Kleypas. It’s been a while since I read the first two, but when I saw this one sitting on the library shelf I grabbed it anyway. I’m a bit behind, as the fourth book has already been released. Dream Lake is about Alex, the most troubled of the Nolan brothers. In the first two novels he seems almost unredeemable, but by the end of Rainshadow Road (book 2), I found myself interested in how Kleypas would pull off making us like Alex.  Alex is the youngest brother and lived with their alcoholic parents the longest. Unlike the other brothers, he wasn’t able to escape the neglect and addiction that plagued their parents, and as Dream Lake opens he’s in the middle of a divorce, close to bankruptcy, and drinking himself into oblivion every day.  Real hero material, no?  In contrast, Zoe is sweet, naïve, and despite one clichéd failed marriage is open to falling in love. Zoe’s grandmother Emma suffers from dementia, and Zoe is in the position of needing a home remodeled so that she move into it with her grandmother and take care of her. With Alex’s life falling apart, he’s looking for a few small jobs to bring in some income. Zoe knows that Alex is a bad risk from the beginning, but she also knows that she can’t stop herself from wanting him.

I was fascinated by the idea that you could take a full blown alcoholic at the beginning of a romance novel and remodel him into a hero by the end. I’ve seen it done occasionally in a historical, but never in a contemporary romance.  Despite my misgivings, Kleypas manages to pull this portion of the book off really well. The book itself isn’t rushed, taking place over a couple of months, and Alex has time to both fight his demons and dry out. We are repeatedly told what an awful, selfish person he is, but  Alex’s behavior is anything but. There are a few scenes with his ex-wife that are supposed to demonstrate just how selfish he is, but even those don’t make you believe that he is as bad as he believes himself to be. I was completely able to buy the love story, and that these two opposite people could find something to love in each other.

Which brings me to the rest of the book. If you’ve read any reviews or synopsis of this, or the previous book, you know that this is a paranormal. There is a ghost. The ghost makes his first appearance in Rainshadow Road, as the end of that book and the beginning of this one overlap (which I love, I wish more series overlapped like this.) I was not thrilled with the idea of a ghost, but as it turns out, the ghost didn’t really bother me. I was able to feel his pain when Alex did and laughed at some of his comments. I wanted to see what happened with his unresolved past.  I am more bothered by the fact that the first novel is NOT a paranormal, and the types of magic that appears in book two and with Zoe bother me a lot more than the ghost itself. It seems like she’s throwing magic at the book to see what works and then not fully developing some of the lines. There’s a scene near the middle with another character, the heroine of book four, that makes it clear that that one will have yet another type of magic.  This feels very scattered and awkward to me, and I’d have preferred she just stuck with the ghost and left the rest out.

Overall, an enjoyable read, especially if you’re reading it for the romance and character development and are not bothered by unfinished threads. I will still look for book four in order to see how the series continues, even though it does not focus on a Nolan brother. It seems possible that Kleypas (or her publisher) has seen the success of series like the Lucky Harbor or Fool’s Gold series and is trying to develop another small town series.  I am afraid that my suspension of disbelief may not take me to an entire town with magical abilities, but another book or two would not be a hardship.

Friday Harbor novels by Lisa Kleypas

My recent binge on Lisa Kleypas' Hathaway novels led me to pick up the first two novels in her new Friday Harbor trilogy at the library. (Oddly, it's a trilogy of four books about three brothers. I can not explain.)  The first two in the Friday Harbor trilogy are Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor and Rainshadow Road. It seems that maybe Christmas Eve is a prequel of sorts, although it is the story of the oldest brother.  I read them back to back and am pretty curious who the 4th book will be about.


Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor opens with a tragedy. Mark Nolan's sister has died in an accident and left him custody of her 6 year old daughter Holly. Because of his horrible childhood, Mark is pretty committed to being a bachelor.  He moves in with his brother Sam (also a bachelor) and they start raising Holly. Holly hasn't spoken since her mother's death, but a chance meeting with a toy shop owner has her find her voice. Mark is drawn to this woman (Maggie) and they fall in love fairly quickly.  This one is really short, only 211 pages of fairly large print, so it all happens quickly and you're left feeling a bit short changed, for a novel. I think maybe this would have been better suited to being a short story prequel. I enjoyed it, but I didn't really fall for any of the main characters and I think if I didn't already have the next one sitting here I might not have gone on.


Fortunately, Rainshadow Road is much more fleshed out. Rainshadow Road is called book one of the trilogy, and is about the second brother, Sam. I enjoyed Sam much more than Mark, even in Mark's book. Sam has a great sense of humor and is a charming, handsome geek.  He finds himeslf falling for Lucy, who has recently been dumped by her boyfriend and had to start her life over. Lucy is cautious about jumping into a new relationship, for about a week. Sam, like his brother, is never getting married.  This one takes place over a much longer time frame and I felt like it was possible that these two did fall in love.  Despite this, I did have some issues with the book. First, the problem if her ex-boyfriend is neatly wrapped up emotionally fairly quickly. Secondly, this one introduces an element of fantasy that I wasn't sure needed to be there and was completely absent in Christmas Eve. I didn't mind it so much, but it made Christmas Eve seem even weaker and less thought out.

Overall, the series so far has been good, but not great. I'll certainly pick up the next two (the last brother and someone unknown!) as they show up at the library, but I won't be waiting with as much impatience as I am for the next Nora Roberts.

Lisa Kleypas's Hathaways Series of romance novels

Last week while my husband was out of town, I sat myself down and read a book a day for three days. It was crazy. And lovely. I chose to finish up the Hathaway series of romance novels by Lisa Kleypas.

There are five Hathaway novels, to be read in this order:

1. Mine Till Midnight (my thoughts here)
2. Seduce Me at Sunrise (my thoughts here)
3. Tempt Me at Twilight
4. Married by Morning
5. Love in the Afternoon

I recommend that you try to read them in order, if for no other reason than to see how the men come to interact with each other. 

Now that that's out of the way, what about these three?

Tempt Me at Twilight is the story of Poppy Hathaway and hotelier Harry Rutledge. Poppy, like all the Hathaways, is intelligent and unusual and at the end of her third season is still unmarried. She has secretly fallen in love and finds that all in uproar when a ferret steals her love letter. Harry discovered said letter, and Poppy, and decides he has to have her.  So. Harry is kinda a jerk at the beginning, albeit a smart and sexy one, and you really wonder if he's going to be able to overcome it. Poppy is just perfect, of course. It's ok, as romance novels go, but not one of my favorites. The entire book takes place over about a month, and it's just too fast for both the falling in love and for Harry to overcome his own person issues. Harry isn't a peer and has made his own money, and of course the Hathaways are a bit unusual, so it's not the typical romance.  Additionally, there is a bit of unnecessary drama at the end that could have been left out altogether.

Married by Morning is Leo's story. Leo is the only brother in the Hathaways series, and he really reforms over the course of the four books, from complete reprobate to respectable gentleman. In his defense, he had a good reason for falling off the deep end, so you always kinda like him. Leo finds himself inexplicably falling in love with his younger sister's companion, who he has always fought with and who, of course, has a secret. Married by Morning is a variation on my favorite plot (friends turned lovers) and as such, I loved it. Leo steps up and takes care of Catherine and the scene at the inn is one of my favorites in a long time. Catherine holds onto her fears a wee bit too long, but I'm looking at it from the prospective of 2012, not the time she lived in.

Love in the Afternoon is the most different from the others, as it takes place at the Hathaways estate in the country. Beatrix is the most free spirited of the Hathaway girls. She prefers to be outdoors in the woods and she adopts every special needs animal she finds. When a shallow friend of hers refuses to write letters to Captain Phelan, whom Beatrix can tell is wounded inside, she steps in and writes the letters, and signs them from Prudence.  Of course they fall in love! But Bea is a real weirdo (for her times) and she can't admit it was her because it would shame Phelan to know that he fell for her. Captain Phelan is, understandably, hurt and angry by the deception, but then, suddenly (too suddenly?) he is over it and they are in love.  There are still problems but of course they overcome. As with Tempt Me at Twilight, there is a bit of "extra" baggage near the end that was completely unneeded.

Taken as a whole, a very good series. My memory of the first two is a bit hazy, but I loved the family interactions, and in particular the way all the men relate to each other. I would enjoy nothing more than having dinner with the Hathaway family. Kleypas does write a bit more sex in her books than Julie Quinn, but otherwise I'd suggest them to the anyone who enjoys Quinn.

TBR Day, more than a week late.

Like many of you, life is running away from me faster than I can catch it. TBR Day was on February 18th, and it flew right by. We went out of town that week and reading wasn't on the To Do List. (Well, it was, it just didn't make the "Got Done" part of it.) This week I managed to sit down and finish my book, but I'm only now getting around to the review.

This month's mini-challenge was to read a book that had been granted DIK (Desert Island Keeper) status from AAR, if you had one of those on the shelf. I happened to have a couple of them, but the one I chose to read was Seduce Me at Sunrise by Lisa Kleypas. Seduce Me at Sunrise is the sequel to Mine Til Midnight, which I read back in December 2007. It is loosely tied to the author's wallflower series of which I still have one book left to read.

Ok, so what's it about- Winnifred (Win) Hathaway.. you know what? here, read this summary...

Kev Merripen has longed for the beautiful, well-bred Winnifred Hathaway ever
since her family rescued him from the brink of death when he was just a boy. But
this handsome Gypsy is a man of mysterious origins-and he fears that the
darkness of his past could crush delicate, luminous Win. So Kev refuses to
submit to temptation-and before long Win is torn from him by a devastating twist
of fate.Then, Win returns to England-only to find that Kev has hardened into a
man who will deny love at all costs. Meantime, an attractive, seductive suitor
has set his sights on Win. It-s now or never for Kev to make his move. But
first, he must confront a dangerous secret about his destiny-or risk losing the
only woman he has lived for-

On the surface, this has one of my favorite romance plots- friends who fall in love. Or who have been in love but deny it until BAM! If you take away all the side plots (Kev's secret past, for example) then that's the bare bones. They love each other. They both know it. They just have to get from knowing it to doing something about it. There's a little bit of drama, there's the second suitor, there's a little (obvious) mystery to be solved. It's all good. Both Win and Kev are believable in their issues. Kev is a great hero, and I didn't think she went too far with his particular hangups. Amelia and Cam from Meet Me at Midnight play big roles and I loved seeing them. I think I liked Cam more in this one than in his book, actually. I think she may have taken the secret history a step too far at the end, but I can forgive that.

Kleypas seems to have set up the book so that she can write about the remaining three siblings. While I'm not so drawn to the other sisters, I'd like to see how she gets Leo to fall in love. I suspect with the right woman he might turn out to be her finest hero. I really enjoy romance novel series like this. It makes each book seem a little more fleshed out when you have the information from the other books, but you could reach each alone without missing anything.

Lisa Kleypas can be found online here.

Seduce Me at Sunrise

Lisa Kleypas

St. Martin's Paperbacks

2008

384 pages

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Three more books completed!

Despite having what seems like very little time to myself, I have managed to finish up three books in the last two weeks. I'm not entirely sure how this happened. The three books have pretty much nothing in common, but I'm going to talk about them in the same post or else I'll never do them all.

First was Innocent in Death by JD Robb. This is the 28th(29th? 27th?) book in the series. They are predictable, easy reading. You know how the story is gonna go, you know all the characters, you even know a lot of the dialogue. (Hello, we know. Eve and Summerset do not like each other. Got it. It's getting a little old.) In this one, a woman from Roarke's past shows up and makes Eve jealous. Eve solves the murder of someone no one should have wanted to kill. For a change of pace, Eve does not get beaten up nor does anyone try to kill her. Regardless of all this, the book is good, in that predictable kind of way. By this point in the series you don't really expect something fresh, do you? (3/5)

Then I read Mine Til Midnight, which is Lisa Kleypas' most recent historical. Again, it was what you would expect from a familiar author. I had read online that this one was reminiscent of Dreaming of You, which is my (and everyone else's) favorite Kleypas. I didn't really see that. I was much more interested in the connection between the two Roma than the romance. I did love Cam (first seen in Devil in Winter) and the book wasn't at all bad. It leaves me wanting for the perfect romance though and I have too many other books to read a bunch to find it. Any suggestions? (3/5)

Last night I finished reading Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs. This is the second Mercedes Thompson book. Mercedes is a walker who was raised by werewolves. She does a favor for a vampire at the beginning, which sets of a chain of events that require the cooperation of the vampires, werewolves and fae. This one started slow for me because it has been a while since I read Moon Called, and the details of Brigg's paranormal communities were slow coming back to me. Once the action picked up it was very hard to put the book down, and I stayed up VERY LATE to finish. (OK, I stayed up til 10:30. But I usually go to bed well before 9! Yeah, I'm pathetic, but I am also pregnant and growing a baby is tiring work!) It looks like book three (Iron Kissed) is out in a couple weeks and I might just have to buy it new so I don't forget the details again. I love the Adam/Samuel/Stefan??? problem in this one. I even found myself liking Ben by the end of it! (5/5)

In other news, I'm all shopped out for Christmas. I have a few things left to sew for in town people and then the wrapping and the gifts will be DONE. I want to make one, maybe two, batches of cookies with the monkey this weekend. I can't WAIT to put out cookies for Santa and tuck him in for the night on Christmas Eve. As a child (ok, as a teenager) (ok, as a college student) (ok, ok, up til last year) I could never sleep on Christmas Eve night. I always laid awake waiting for dawn so I could see what Santa brought. I suspect I will not sleep well this year either.

I have a few book related posts in mind for the end of the year, and am having to restrain myself from posting them now, so hopefully it won't be all silence over here until 2008. I hope everyone has a great holiday and gets all the books they could ever read.