Close Enough to Touch by Victoria Dahl

Regular readers of Books. Lists. Life. know that I am always willing to read a good romance novel. I have an affinity for small town series (Nora Robert's MacCade brothers, Susan Mallery's Fool's Gold series, Jill Shalvis's Lucky Harbor series) and it seemed likely that Close Enough to Touch , which is set in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, would be the beginning of another such series. I requested a copy through Net Galley after seeing a few positive reviews floating around.

Grace has fled her job as a makeup artist in Hollywood after being fired, cheated on, and mistaken for a thief. She stops to spend a few weeks in her aunt's apartment building in Jackson, Wyoming on her way to Vancouver for a fresh start. Cole Rawlins is an injured cowboy. He spent the past 13 years saving money to buy a ranch, and then got injured and his future is up in the air. Both Cole and Grace have a lot of negative history with Hollywood, and the appearance of a film shoot in Jackson Hole brings it to the surface for them both.

Grace is very damaged. She doesn't trust herself and she doesn't trust anyone else. She's sure that no one will love her, so she pushes everyone away so that she doesn't get hurt by their rejection. (SPOILER: Of course people like her!) Grace had a really bad childhood and a example of what not to do for a mother, but sometimes I felt that she went too far in not giving other people a chance, the very extreme end of jumping to conclusions.  It was really hard to like her at times and ultimately I didn't feel like she ever came around to a point where she could trust anyone enough to fall in love. It seemed like a very fast extreme switch, and I didn't quite buy it.

Cole isn't damaged so much as willfully blind. He's physically injured and it's not certain if he'll be able to ride again. It's hard to be a cowboy who can't ride a horse. This is weighing heavy on him, and I felt like this aspect was handled really well.  However, 13 years in his past he was briefly lured to Hollywood by (surprise!) the same director who is on his ranch now. He is unable to leave the past in the past and see what really happened, and it's really hard for me to see this as anything more than a cheesy excuse. I did like Cole more than Grace, but he was awfully perfect aside from his reliance on the past as an excuse.

In the end, while the book was enjoyable, I didn't think it went quite far enough as a romance. There wasn't really any sort of falling in love. There was a lot of lust and sex (holy graphic sex, batman! Probably the most explicit sex I've ever read in a straight romance) but I just didn't see enough tenderness and companionship to believe that they had fallen in love. At the end of the book everything is wrapped up in a tidy bow, and neatly sets up a handful of possible next-in-series contenders. I won't lie and say I won't give the next one a chance, but this one won't make any top ten lists for the year.

Top Ten Tuesday: Series I really should finish

There are a lot of really great series of books out there, and like many of you, plenty of series I've started but never made it to the end. I thought that I'd join up with The Broke and the Bookish this week and list a few for you.  In no particular order...

1. The Black Dagger Brotherhoodby J. R. Ward. A local friend even loaned me her copies and I never made it to the end! They were really good though, and I really want to get back to them.
2. The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. I was flying through these until we moved, and then I seem to have lost the one I was in the middle of and never bothered checking the library for it.
3. The Hollows by Kim Harrison. I love these while I'm reading them, but as soon as I put them down I forget about them.
4. Weather Wardens by Rachel Caine. Are we seeing an urban fantasy theme here? Mike loved these.
5. In Death by J.D. Robb. I'm making real headway on this series. I think I'm somewhere around book 36 with only a handful left. I don't read the novellas.
6. Kitty Norville series by Carrie Vaughn . I have no explanation for all these urban fantasy series, except there are just SO MANY of them!
7. Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter by Laurel Hamilton. And honestly, I won't finish this one, too many characters and too much going on to reacquaint myself with.
8. I gave up on the Stephanie Plum Novels by Janet Evanovich. The one good thing about them was the humor, but even that was getting stale and repetitive.
9. Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. Ok. I never finished the first one. BUT I WILL. (I'm looking at you, Andi.)
10. The The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. No, I never read 2 and 3, and I want to! Somehow they are never the most compelling books on my shelves.

What about you? What series are you stalled on? Is it because it's boring or outdated or because there just isn't enough time? Should I be jumping back into one of these?

All links go to the first title in the series.

Lucky in Love by Jill Shalvis

Lucky in Love is the first book from Jill Shalvis' Lucky Harbor series that continues past the story of the three sisters. Mallory, Amy and Grace meet at Eat Me, Lucky Harbor's diner, on the night of an intense storm. Mallory is an ER nurse who tries to save everyone she meets. For her, this means starting a community health center for people who can't afford health care. Due to a tragedy in her past, it's very important to Mallory not to let anyone slip through the cracks.  Ty is the "Mysterious Cute Guy" who lives outside of town and keeps to himself. Through a chance meeting, Ty ends up meeting Mallory and finds himself interested in getting to know another person for the first time in years.

Lucky in Love holds true to form. Ty is big and strong and handsome and rich.  I found that he differed a bit from the other men in that his past really was heartbreaking, and recent enough that he wasn't just using it as an excuse. I loved that he struggled with real demons, both mental and physical. Mallory doesn't set out to save Ty, but with the urging of her friends she does set out to HAVE him. I love that she is willing to finally enjoy herself with someone without ever expecting more, even when she started wanting more.

As with the other Lucky Harbor novels, the town itself becomes a character, with Lucille and her Facebook page leading the action. There is a shift in supporting characters with this book- while the innkeepers from the first three are mentioned, this time we see more of the people at the diner and the ones who work with Mallory. I appreciate that Shalvis didn't try to jam everyone we ever met into the book in a meaningful way (like Robyn Carr seems to do with her Virgin River series.)  The focus of the books stays with the main characters, with just enough town interaction to make a cohesive series. Lucky in Love is believable as well, it doesn't happen completely overnight and you can believe that they fall in love.

I requested this one from NetGalley and was awfully exited to have both it and the final book in the series waiting for me on my Nook.

(For those of you who aren't romance fans, only two more Jill Shalvis posts to go, for now. )

Head Over Heels by Jill Shalvis

Head Over Heels was probably my favorite of the Lucky Harbor novels, with Forever and a Day coming in second (review on that to come!) Head Over Heels is the last of the three sisters. Chloe is the wild child, the one you can only count on to be flaky, the one who lived with their free-spirited mother the longest. She has very severe asthma, so she can't be counted on to do any heavy lifting at the inn the sisters inherited (and the sisters don't resent her for this at all, it's very refreshing.) Chloe is who she is and for the most part everyone loves her that way.  Naturally, being the wild child often leads to a little disregard of the law (mainly in regards to stupid ideas like hang gliding at night, not like theft) and that's where Sheriff Sawyer comes in. Sawyer takes his job as sheriff very very seriously. He can't quite forgive himself for his own youth and believes that if he slips up at all that the town will see him as the same screw up he was then. (Note: Not true, the town obviously loves the man.) (Note the second: The town's Facebook page, maintained by the lovable, snoopy, Lucille, is a complete character all its own, in all the books.)

This one was easily my favorite of the series. I loved that Chloe lived for what she believed in and that even though she had a hard time verbalizing love that she loved everyone with her whole being. I Loved that she had a serious health problem, but that she never used it as a crutch. I loved that she was insecure in how other's felt about her, but not really in a self-pitying way.  And Sawyer! While he did exhibit some of the same characteristics as all the other men, he had a bit more depth to him. His relationship with his father really colored his entire adult life, as did the Event in his youth. Sawyer really had to let himself take a chance to be with Chloe and I loved that he did so.

Shalvis continues to impress me with her writing, it's like she's listening to me talk. She doesn't shy away from the F-bomb (like I just did!) or other profanity, but she also doesn't throw it away like confetti. The men refer to themselves jacking off (occasionally, and only in private) and they tease each other like you'd expect men to do. (Not being a man, I can't vouch for this, but has to be somewhat accurate.) You can find her online at JillShalvis.com and on twitter.

The Sweetest Thing by Jill Shalvis

You didn't think I wasn't gonna write about the rest of them, did you?

The Sweetest Thing is the second Lucky Harbor novel by Jill Shalvis (but the third that I read.) The first three (chronologically) are about three sisters (Maddie, Tara, and Chloe) who inherit a falling down in from their mother.  Tara is the Southern belle sister. She's refined. She dresses well. She has her Stuff Together. (Supposedly.) Tara has her own private reasons for not wanting to return to Lucky Harbor and they are all wrapped up in Ford Walker.  If you've ever read a book, you know the reasons are going to come out. In fact, the reasons are revealed near the end of Maddie's book (Simply Irresistible). In addition to dealing with this, Tara's ex-husband shows up in Lucky Harbor, looking to win Tara back.

I'll be honest, this wasn't my favorite in the series. In fact, looking back on it from a couple weeks ago, Tara is pretty unforgettable. She does the right thing with the love triangle, and she never lets either man hang, which I really appreciate (love triangles being one of my least favorite things ever).  Ford is pretty much a carbon copy of Jax from Simply Irresistible. Despite these issues, I continued to love the writing style and flew through this one to get to the next one, which I think was my favorite of all six.

Nora Roberts' Key Trilogy

I'm addicted to Nora Roberts lately. (You may have noticed.) I don't think it's possible to read all 200+ of her books, but it sure looks like I'm trying! I recently reread the Key Trilogy on impulse (if I keep rereading them I'll never get to new ones!) My library has these as a box set, so you check out one item but get all three books, but if you're reading them on your own the order of the Key Trilogy is as follows:

Key of Light
Key of Knowledge
Key of Valor

I think that it's fairly important to read these in the correct order, as the books center around a quest and you would want to read about it from beginning to end. This series centers around three women who are destined to save the souls of three Celtic demigoddesses from an evil sorcerer. (Not at all far fetched, ahem.) Each woman has her own book, and her portion of the quest will center around her own strengths. The magical aspect of this series is treated as a central element of the stories, unlike the way the supernatural aspects are treated in a series like the Inn Boonsboro books. The three mortal women have to come to believe in magic, and fight it, without any magical powers of their own.

As with most of her series, the relationships between the women (or men) are what draws me to Roberts' books. It's slightly unbelievable that the three strangers will become immediate fast friends, but less unbelievable than the bit about the evil sorcerer. Despite being strangers, I enjoy seeing the women together and wish I could pop in for a girl's night with them. The same can be said for the three men of the series, life-long friends who find themselves integral parts of the quest.  The relationships between each couple is strong, of course, but it's not what draws me to the books.

My favorite of the three books is probably Key of Knowledge, though I'd be hard pressed to call Jordan my favorite hero. Key of Knowledge is a friends to lovers to enemies back to lovers type story, and you all know I can't resist best friends falling in love. Brad, from Key of Valor, is a terrific hero, determined to get prickly Zoe to fall for him as hard as he has for her. Sadly, Zoe is my least favorite of the women, as I felt she hung on to her excuses a bit too hard, in the face of overwhelming evidence otherwise, and then caved in a matter of a page or two.  This series didn't feature a money-hungry, selfish, absent mother figure, so that's another point in it's favor.  I don't know that this is a favorite Roberts' series of mine (I still love the Chesapeake Bay brothers and the Bride Quartet an awful lot) but if you're a Robert's fan, it's worth a read.

Other links of interest:
Nora Roberts' Chesapeake Bay series
Nora Roberts' MacKade series
Robyn Carr's Virgin River series
Susan Mallery's Fool's Gold series

Comments on Promises in Death and Kindred in Death by J.D. Robb

Over the last two weeks of heart attack /pinkeye / not heart attack/ head cold/ pinkeye AGAIN (HI! Me this time! Grrrrrr....) it's seemed like a major committment to pick up an actual book. I look at them and I want to read them, but ehhhhhh. What has been easy for me is to read books on my phone, I have no idea why. I was lucky enough that my library system had the next two J. D. Robb books available as e-books and I downloaded them both. Promises in Death is #34 in the series (if you count the short stories), and Kindred in Death is #35 (duh.) (For a complete list in order of the In Death books, click here.) This is one series that I think you should read in order, so that you understand the relationships between the reoccuring characters. I have an awful memory for plot, so if you were to talk about Thing X happening in Book #Z, I'd have no idea what you're talking about, but I do remember the arc of the characters as it progresses along the books. I also have no idea how the titles relate to the plot, and the titles do nothing at all to help me remember what happened in any one book.

Promises in Death and Kindred in Death actually turned out to have a lot of similarites. In Promises, it's a cop that is murdered, and in Kindred it's the child of a cop, so in both books you have a lot of interdepartment cooperation and Eve barely has to bribe anyone to get faster results. I'm not going to go into great plot detail, but I will say that both books follow the series well, and most of the characters behave as past books would indicate. Robb is able to flesh out one of my favorite characters (Morris) quite a bit more, and there are a couple of nice scenes with Trueheart and Baxter. Once again I'm a little tired of the Eve/ Summerset antagonism (get over it already), and I'm really bored of Eve's fear of Trina.  I thought that these two both has instances of humor between Eve and Roarke that seemed out of character, even if they were funny. Obviously, little things like this won't stop me from reading, but I would kind of like to be completely current on the series. It looks like there are five more published and one coming out in September. Sadly, I think two in a row is about all the Eve I can handle in any given period.


(Please excuse the complete incoherence in this post. I'm not quite operating at 100%.)

Robyn Carr's Virgin River Series

I'm a huge fan of contemporary romance series that feature a town or extended family and after seeing multiple reviews of the books in  Robyn Carr's Virgin River series (of which there are 20 titles! Click here for a full list of the titles in the series), I decided to give it a try.

The first book in the series is the aptly named, Virgin River. Midwife Mel Malone is starting over in tiny Virgin River after the death of her husband. After the initial shock of small town life, she settles in quickly and finds herself falling for ex-Marine and local bar owner Jack Sheridan. This one includes an abandoned baby, a drug farmer, infertility and pregnancy, and teenage sex.  Despite all these external things, the love story itself is fairly smooth and easy, which I like.  Both Jack and Mel are perfect, which is a bit of a bore, but it seems that everyone in Virgin River is perfect so it makes sense. There is one scene about halfway through involving some secondary characters that almost completely turned me off the book and the series, but in the end I got over it and gave it a three star rating on Goodreads.

The second book in the series is called Shelter Mountain , and it features another ex-Marine and an abused woman. Paige has run away from her husband before he beats her to death and Preacher (not an actual member of the clergy) steps in and saves her. Paige's situation is horrible but almost seems glossed over when it is finally resolved. Meanwhile, this one has teen pregnancy, non-teen pregnancy, a good guy drug dealer, a random drunk woman, and gang warfare. There's a lot going on for such a small town.  This one focused much less on the actual romance, with much of the book being the ongoing, but still perfect, story of Jack and Mel. This got two stars on Goodreads.

After reading the first two Virgin River books, I feel pretty confident that I won't be continuing with the series. Despite my appreciation of and love for nice easy romances, these just didn't work. The obstacles, which are major on paper, were way too easily overcome, like they were just on the surface. ("Ok, what can I throw in for THIS person to define her personality? How about an abusive husband!") My love of continuing series didn't even save them, because as much as I love a good set, I also need for each book to focus on someone.  The books focus very much on big town issues, by having them be part of the characters past, but if she wanted to write about gangs and drugs and shootings, perhaps making your setting an isolated town of 600 happy people is not the way to do it. And last, both books read like billboards for safe sex and STD screening. Wear a condom! Get screened! Teen sex will mess you up! Your life will be ruined! or worse! Etc etc on and on. Carr picked the wrong audience, because I doubt there are any teenagers reading these books.

For a much more satisfying series of romances, I recommend Nora Robert's Chesapeake Bay or Bride Quartet series, or Susan Mallery's Fool's Gold series, among others.

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.

Susan Mallery's Fool's Gold series

Susan Mallery's Fool's Gold series of romance novels became a total guilty pleasure for me last fall. I picked the second on in the series (Almost Perfect ) up first, based on the review of another blogger and whipped right through it in one day, during the busiest time of the year, when I should have been doing other things (see, not guilty because it's a romance, guilty because I should have been doing other things!)  I immediately fell for the town and the people. I felt like Mallery might be similar to Nora Roberts for me- strong relationships between the people, not just the main couple, strong family and friend bonds, and a solid sense of setting. I enjoyed the first three in the series quite a bit, reading them all in a similar all-at-once fashion.

Then the fifth one came (Only Yours ) and I was unimpressed. I felt like maybe Mallery was just phoning it in on this one, or maybe my love affair with them was over.  Despite this I forged on to the last one (Only His ) and while it was better, it still wasn't as strong as the first three had been. I ultimately read book four last (via Kindle for iPhone, also from the library) and was least impressed with it. There was just too much stuff going on to make it feel like a successful romance, but too much romance to take it out of that category. I suspect that if I had read them in order, instead of in the order that the library supplied them to me, that I may have bailed at book four.  I almost wish I'd just read the first three and stopped there, as they were by far the strongest of the bunch.  I have one other quibble, if you're curious, that I'll discuss at the end of the post, as it is a spoiler for the series.

The series has an entire website devoted to it, as if it were a real town, complete with photos.
You can find Susan Mallery on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.  The books have a solidness to them that a lot of romance novels don't and I"ll be picking up more of her work, in hopes that I find another family that draws me in like those first three did.

If you're interested in reading them, the proper order of the Fool's Gold series is as follows:
Chasing Perfect
Almost Perfect
Finding Perfect
Only Mine*
Only Yours*
Only His*

(*Does the title of these three remind anyone else of the Elizabeth Lowell series with the same names from the 90s? I loved those books. Please don't tell me if they are actually full of old school romance themes that would make them distasteful today.)







My other quibble- Without going back to check, the heroine in at least 4 of the novels ends up pregnant by the end of the book. If it had happened once or twice in the series I would not have noticed or cared. But this was just too much.