A Most Devilish Rogue by Ashlyn MacNamara

Remember last year when I looooooved A Most Scandalous Proposal by Ashlyn MacNamara? I couldn’t stop raving about that book for months.  Sadly, MacNamara’s follow up, A Most Devilish Rogue, didn’t strike the same note with me. I wanted to love it. I went into it fully expecting a repeat performance and I didn’t get it.  It’s not a complete loss, I can see the potential in the book (and the author) but I wasn’t swept away.

Here’s the summary from Goodreads:

Years ago, when Isabelle Mears was still a young miss too infatuated to know better, she surrendered her innocence to a dishonorable man. Though ruined and cast out from society, she has worked hard to shelter her illegitimate son, Jack. Having sworn off men in her quiet but dignified life, Isabelle is unprepared for the deep longing that rips through her when a handsome stranger rescues her rambunctious six-year-old from the pounding ocean surf.

George Upperton is a man in trouble with debts, women, and a meddling family. He is, by all accounts, the last gentleman on earth Isabelle should be drawn to. But loneliness is a hard mistress, and caution gives way to desire . . . even though Isabelle is convinced that happiness can’t be found in the arms of such a devilish rogue. Only when Jack is kidnapped does Isabelle discover the true depth of George’s devotion—and how far a good man will go to fight for the woman whose love is all that matters.

Ok, so, the good: I LOVE that romance novels are branching out more from the peerage. I love that not every hero is a duke and not every heroine is a young pretty heiress.  I love that while this book does have ties to the first, they have very little to do with each other. I don’t remember George being in the first (tho he very well could have been, maybe he was the best friend and I don’t remember) and this book spends exactly zero time rehashing the first. If you didn’t know better, you wouldn’t know there was a first book, but since you do know, it’s nice to revisit the characters. This is a terrific compromise between a series and standalones.

The bad: I didn’t like George OR Isabelle. The title of the book leads you to believe that George is a scandalous rake. He’s not. He’s pretty darn average, aside from being greatly in debt. He is pretty honorable and it’s great points in his favor that he immediately jumps to her aid when Jack disappears. Unlike much of the peerage, he doesn’t ever judge her for her past or make her feel shame. But I also didn’t find him to be a romantic hero.  Isabelle was not at all sympathetic. Here’s this young mother, cast out by family, whose child is missing and she’s much more concerned with her past and her class than with her missing kid. I just never really thought Isabelle had any emotion other than shame.  Unfortunately, it’s hard to fall for a romance novel if you don’t fall for the main characters, so this one just didn’t work for me.

One other thing to note, about both this book and romance novels in general: It seems to be more and more common, or maybe just more obvious, that authors are trying to give their characters a Thing. This is always something that makes them quirky or unique and that would not be accepted by Society, for example, they read trashy serial novels, or they are members of a geological society, or they want to do away with the practice of wearing gloves (I might have made that one up. Maybe.)  MacNamara doesn’t hesitate to do this as well. In this case, it didn’t really work for me either, but it’s entirely possible that my problem was in not loving George. I just couldn’t see his quirk as something to be hidden away in secret.

Despite not loving this book, I will still go ahead and read MacNamara’s next book as I think she’s an author to watch, and I am thankful to NetGalley for giving me the chance to review this one.

A Most Devilish Rogue will be released on August 27^th.

Back to the Good Fortune Diner by Vicki Essex

After being evicted and fired, Tiffany is back home in tiny Everville. She's mortified to be working at her family's diner again, and desperate to pay off her debt and get back to her dream life in publishing. To that end, she takes a side job tutoring the son of the man she tutored in high school. The man she still has a crush on, of course. Chris is determined that his son not be stuck on the farm like he was, and to get away he will need a college education, so when he finds out Tiffany is back in town, he immediately runs her down and begs her to tutor Simon.  Spending time with Tiffany again makes him realize how little he knew her back in high school, and he's suddenly very interested in getting to know her better. But what will happen when Tiffany finally is back on her feet?

Back to the Good Fortune Diner has a great premise. It's not really a reunion story, as they were never even friends, let alone a couple, and it's not a story of complete strangers either. In the introduction, the author explains that she has the same Chinese- American heritage as Tiffany, and that she wanted to write a story from that perspective as well. I thought both of these things would be fascinating. Unfortunately, I was wrong on both counts. It wasn't completely awful, but there's really no part of it that I'd recommend to anyone else.

First, the romance. Tiffany has a huge crush on Chris, and always has. She's completely unable to even look at him, let alone talk to him, without being speechless at how incredibly HOT he is. Every. Single. Time.  There's no past history basis for this- Chris wasn't mean to her in high school, but he didn't see her as a person either, and he wasn't a hero for any other reason.  He's just hot. Oooo-kay then!  About midway through the novel, Chris realizes he never gave her a chance to have a personality in high school, so he asks her out to dinner. This is a bit more believable, but honestly, I didn't really see them getting to know each other now either. They just suddenly become a Thing. And the entire time Tiffany is still struck dumb by his beauty. I never saw a progression of romance, or a falling in love, or even a sexual tension that went both ways. Having sex does not a romance make.

Second, the cultural aspect. I'm from South Dakota by way of Alabama. I don't have a ton of experience with different cultures beyond knowing the stereotypes. I could have written this. There wasn't one part of Tiffany's experience growing up Chinese-American that I found to be surprising or illuminating. I don't want to cast doubts on the author's upbringing, but honestly, it was just like she included all the stereotypes and called it good. Perhaps, as a white person, I shouldn't even go here, and I wouldn't mention it if SHE hadn't mentioned it first, you know? Anyway.

As a whole, just skip this one.

Disclosure: I received this from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Wild For the Sheriff by Kathleen O'Brien

When Rowena Wright returns to her childhood home after 16 years and the death of her father, she's prepared for it to be a difficult return. The house hold a lot of dark memories, as does the local sheriff, Dallas Garwood. Rowena's mom died suddenly when she was a teenager, and she and her sisters were sent off to live with relatives without a backward glance. Rowena was known as a wild child, the one who tempted Saint Dallas into Temptation, and got caught. (No secret babies, it does not go there, thankfully.) She's certain the close knit locals hate her, and she's shocked to find that Dallas actually doesn't hate her. Dallas is cautious, but never assumes she's the same person she used to be. He's cautious, because he has a child, but he's definitely interested in pursuing Rowena.

If you read the back cover of Wild for the Sheriff , it sounds like a totally different book. Even the cover imagine brings to mind a fun reunion book. Instead, there's a lot of processing of both of their pasts, and there is a lot of darkness. This isn't a light and fluffy romance, and there's a good bit of doubt about what will happen. There's a lot to like in these pages and for the most part Rowena and Dallas are both reasonable adults. Rowena worries a good bit about what she inherited from her parents, and discovers that she is a lot more different than she thought. Dallas has a son from a failed marriage and as any good parent does, he worries about the effect that a failed romance with Rowena will have on his child. Despite this being a Harlequin romance, the majority of the book isn't really focused on the romance. It's largely about Rowena herself coming to terms with her family and her past, and making a decision about how she wants to live her future. The romance is a little bit steamy (the bridge!!) and largely just a quiet side story until the final resolution. It worked for me, but it wasn't typical of a Harlequin, in my experience.

The book has flaws, of course, the secondary characters are about as fleshed out as you'd expect from a Harlequin, while still setting us up for a series. Rowena has two sisters, and it falls for the common trope of "we were raised separately after the death of our mother, so we are totally different and don't know each other well." (See Also: the first three Lucky Harbor novels.) Dallas has a younger brother who is an actual adult but Dallas is still overly invested in raising him and making sure he goes to college. (See Also: Only Mine from the Fool's Gold series by Susan Mallery.) Rowena is a bit fickle and selfish and I'm not sure I really appreciated her rashness, but she does come to her senses quickly enough.  Despite all this, I couldn't really stop thinking about the book after I finished, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series as they are released.


This title will be published in February 2013.

You can find Kathleen O'Brien online here (tho it does not appear that she updates it regularly), on twitter, and on Facebook.

I received a copy of Wild For the Sheriff from NetGalley for review purposes, but the opinions are my own.

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.

The Half-Life of Planets by Emily Franklin and Brendan Halpin

Liana is a girl with a reputation for being easy, a slut. The note in her locker at the end of the school year proves it. So this summer she's decided to prove to herself that she really isn't (because she isn't), and decides not to kiss any boys.   Hank is a nice enough boy, but he's also a boy with Asperger's Syndrome, with means he sometimes says the wrong thing, at the wrong time. He's also cute and funny, and Liana thinks maybe this no kissing will be harder than it seems.

The Half-life of Planets is a really cute book, told in alternating chapters. The voices of both Liana and Hank are really well done, and while I have no direct experience with Asperger's, I think this is probably pretty accurate. Hank is very literal, and guileless in his mistakes. His obsession with music would make me crazy, but Liana seemed to tolerate it, so it worked. I definitely liked Hank more than Liana, but both are well done.

The romance is slow and not heavy. There are no moments of crazy desire but several moments of incredible sweetness. It's not all light and rainbows either, as Hank has a hard time figuring out what's going on and Liana is a little gun shy. Both Liana and Hank manage to screw up, so nothing is entirely one sided.

 My only real problem with the book is the need to have a reason for why she kisses boys. Just wanting to kiss boys isn't enough. I felt like it was trying too hard to connect her "problem" with an underlying cause, which in itself is annoying, since kissing (and not more) doesn't seem like a problem to me. It is every more annoying though because the authors don't go far enough in connecting it. It's a very weakly explained cause and effect to me, and I felt like if they wanted to go there, they should GO THERE. Despite this it's a sweet little book and one I would recommend to other young adult romance fans.

Simply Irresistible by Jill Shalvis

After the success of At Last, I ran to the library and scooped up every Jill Shalvis title on the shelf. Luckily, one of those was Simply Irresistible, the first book in the Lucky Harbor series. (I also requested books 4 and 6 from NetGalley, and got book 3 from the library, leaving me with a book 2 gap that I corrected with a $2.99 ebook for the Nook.) I was fairly worried that it wouldn't hold up and that At Last would be a fluke, but I wasn't disappointed. I pretty much read Simply Irresistible straight through to the end. Once again, Shalvis has a fresh easy style that matches how I think and talk and it never felt stilted or fake.

Simply Irresistible starts the Lucky Harbor series off by setting up a run of three half-sisters- Maddie, Tara and Chloe. Raised independently, they are thrown together by the inheritance of a rundown inn after the death of their mother. (Prepositional phrase anyone?)  Maddie has come to Lucky Harbor looking for a fresh start, she's lost her boyfriend, her home and her job and needs a place to recover. She's determined to make the inn a success, even when her sisters would rather sell and run. Jax is a local favorite, a jack of all trades. Maddie first runs across him as she almost runs over him, and then finds him tending bar, and then again when she drunk dials him for some construction contract work on the inn.

Maddie and Jax have immediate chemistry.  Things start off hot and heavy and then stay hot and heavy. When I read At Last I wondered if the book felt so fast because I'd missed the build up, but Simply Irresistible was also very fast. Maddie isn't in town a month before they are madly in love. (Oh, come on, not a spoiler. It's a romance novel fer cryin' out loud!)  Maddie and Jax are also much more fleshed out that Amy and Matt (from At Last) are, but Matt and Jax follow a very similar mold. Despite this, I enjoyed Simply Irresistible and had no hesitation about diving right into the next title, The Sweetest Thing .

For my thoughts on At Last, click here.

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.

Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood

Everybody knows Cate Cahill and her sisters are eccentric. Too pretty, too reclusive, and far too educated for their own good. But the truth is even worse: they're witches. And if their secret is discovered by the priests of the Brotherhood, it would mean an asylum, a prison ship—or an early grave.

Before her mother died, Cate promised to protect her sisters. But with only six months left to choose between marriage and the Sisterhood, she might not be able to keep her word...especially after she finds her mother's diary, uncovering a secret that could spell her family's destruction. Desperate to find alternatives to their fate, Cate starts scouring banned books and questioning rebellious new friends, all while juggling tea parties, shocking marriage proposals, and a forbidden romance with the completely unsuitable Finn Belastra.

If what her mother wrote is true, the Cahill girls aren't safe. Not from the Brotherhood, the Sisterhood—not even from each other.

Born Wicked is another book selection for the BlogHer Book Club. When they sent the request out  I didn't read the description quite as well as I could have and was taken by surprise to discover that it takes place around 1900. This detail alone made it a slow start for me, as typically the only historicals I read are romances. After a few chapters I was able to into it a bit more and from around page 50 it (or I) sped up and zoomed through the rest in a matter of days. As regular readers know I'm a big fan of paranormal, though usually more of the vampire/witches/werewolves variety than the presented-as-actual-historial-reality variety. (And only readers of paranormal will likely get that distinction, if even they do.) Born Wicked is also a bit of an alternate history book, taking place in a different New England from the one that really existed, with a much heavier religious setting and different country borders. There is a romance and a love triangle (though it is very clear who the true romance belongs to) and some fairly intense moments all around.

If you're interested in reading more about the book you can find the BlogHer discussion of the book here, and the first discussion question here. The author can be found online here and on Facebook here.  You can also watch the book trailer on her website, and it's really a lovely trailer (tho I could do without the sketchy moustasche). This is the first book in a series, but book two will not be released until next February.


This is a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own.