The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler

The Basics:
The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler
St Martin's Press
Published June 23, 2015
Source: Received Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Amazon Kobo Goodreads

Why I picked up this book:

Books about books are obvious must reads. In hindsight, this one got picked up by all kinds of traditional outlets for regular media hype!

A Little on the Wild Side by Robin Kaye

The Basics:
A Little on the Wild Side by Robin Kaye
Sourcebooks Casablanca
Contemporary Romance
Book Three in the Wild Thing series
Published January 6, 2015
Source: Received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Amazon Kobo Goodreads

Why I picked up this book:

The cover looks cute, I liked the blurb suggestion of a strong woman getting help and I like the publisher.

Cinderella Week: Cinderella and the Ghost by Marina Myles

The Basics:

Cinderella and the Ghost by Marina Myles

Kensington
Historical Romance
Published February 16, 2015
Source: Received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Amazon Kobo Goodreads

Cinderella Week:

This was another easy pick-up for Cinderella week - a paranormal Cinderella sounds right up my alley!

Shadow Heart by Pamela Taeuffer

The Basics:
Shadow Heart by Pamela Taeuffer
Open Heart Press
Book One in the Broken Bottle series
New Adult, Romance
Published February 1, 2014
Source: Received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Amazon Goodreads

Why I picked up this book:

I was intrigued by the blurb, and I liked the image of the stone heart breaking open on the cover.

Frozen: Heart of Dread, Book One by Melissa de la Cruz and Michael Johnston

The Basics:
Frozen: Heart of Dread, Book One by Melissa de la Cruz and Michael Johnston
Orchard Books
Book One in the Heart of Dread series
Science Fiction, YA
Published Originally September 17, 2013
Source: Received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Amazon.ca Kobo.com

Why I picked up this book:

I was intrigued by the dystopian feel of the blurb, and I liked the cover.

Virgin by Radhika Sanghani

The Basics:
Virgin by Radhika Sanghani
Berkley Trade
Mainstream
Published August 5, 2014
Source: Received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Amazon.ca Kobo.com

Why I picked up this book:

This seemed, from the blurb and cover, like it could be an 'it book,' so I thought I'd try to get on board before the masses.

Last of the Red Hot Cowboys by Tina Leonard

The Basics:
Last of the Red Hot Cowboys by Tina Leonard
Loveswept
Book One of Hell's Outlaws
Romance
Published June 24, 2014
Source: Received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Why I picked up this book:

I've got a thing for cowboys.

Blurb:

Ava Buchanan dreams of a career on the rodeo circuit. Winning a spot on a one-of-a-kind team would be her ticket to the life she’s always wanted. Ava won’t let anyone stand in her way—not even a stubborn cowboy whose slow-molasses smile and red-hot swagger set her senses aflame . . . and whose talents as a trainer could make her a star. Rodeo might be a man’s game, but Ava knows the right woman’s touch can tame the wildest heart.

Trace Carter believes his mayor’s plan to raise the town’s profile has disaster written all over it, and he won’t allow the Hell’s Outlaws Training Center to be dragged into the fiasco. Yet watching Ava’s delectable body on horseback proves too much of a temptation, and his fantasies stray to her riding skills outside the arena. Soon Trace is fighting like hell to rein in his unbridled desire for the petite brunette before it becomes a passion hotter than the Texas sun.

My thoughts:

Last of the Red Hot Cowboys fell far short of the mark, for me. This book felt dated, with chest-beating, manly men and scheming women. It definitely reminded me of some of the first romance novels I read, that had been published in the 1980s and 1990s. The gender stereotypes were out in full force, and it made me extremely uncomfortable.

Trace is a manly man - a former military man who now runs a training center with his two best friends. It's a men-only zone - one of the foundations on which the business is built is that women aren't welcome. And of course, they live in 'Hell' - a town that's short on women as it is.

Until Mayor Judy - who basically runs around scheming and manipulating and promising her Sheriff boyfriend his Saturday Night Special if he keeps her happy - brings in three gorgeous women that she wants to train as rodeo clowns to raise the profile of her small town. Or,  you know, she wants to pair off with these three friends. Because that's what scheming mayors do. Truly, she spends so much time running around with her team and shaking her fist at Ivy, a woman who has her eye on Judy's boyfriend, I wanted to know what her actual duties as mayor were.

I felt extremely uncomfortable not only because Judy brought the women to town on false pretenses, but also because of how the stereotypes played out. Trace's thoughts were cringeworthy - women as delicate flowers or else manipulative.

This is very much a men vs women type romance and I did not enjoy it at all.

Bottom line:

Not my cup of tea, Last of the Red Hot Cowboys struck the wrong notes for me with the gender stereotyping and manipulation. This one might be fun if you can see past those things or if you're *really* into cowboys.

2 stars
For fans of cowboys.

Two For One - For Her Protection & Darkness

Today I'm going to look at two books that I basically DNF'ed.

Before we talk about them, let me first underline the name of this blog - To Each Their Own Reviews. I firmly believe that one person's DNF is another person's favourite read. Tastes in entertainment vary wildly, so take what I say here with a huge grain of salt. 

Two very different books, first up is:

For Her Protection by Amber A Bardan
Ellora's Cave Moderne imprint
Erotic Romance
Published May 30, 2014

Blurb:

You shouldn’t mix business with pleasure.

Yet pleasure seems to be the one and only thing on Charlize’s mind the moment Connor steamrollers into her life. Desperate to save her family company, prove she’s more than a pretty face and worthy of being CEO, pleasure is a distraction she can’t afford.

She doesn’t want a bodyguard, especially not one whose caveman heroics kick her libido into hyper drive. But surrounded by enemies and an attacker on the loose, there’s only one man she can trust with her life.

Connor knows better than to get personal with clients. Yet there couldn’t be anything more personal about his feelings for Charlize. From the moment he clapped eyes on her he wanted nothing more than to throw her over his shoulder and really give her something to scream about. He’ll get his uptight she-cat to unwind, preferably one orgasm at a time.

With Connor in her office, her home, driving her to sweet, merciless distraction, there’s only so long Charlize can resist his sexy, dominant brand of protection.

My Thoughts:

I put this book down at about seventy pages in and told myself I was DNF'ing. I sent NetGalley feedback to that effect, and then I picked it up again later on in the day, and skim-read most of the rest of the book. 

This book promises a dominant alpha male protecting a beautiful, focused CEO with something to prove. I was expecting a little overbearing but I was definitely not expecting Connor.

I found his behaviour too much to take. From throwing our heroine over his shoulder to extricate her from a potentially dangerous argument in his workplace (her cousin's aerobics club) and not taking the time before or after to understand why she was in the argument in the first place nor to acknowledge that the guys she was arguing with were ENTIRELY in the wrong, to the way he treats her the morning after another incident... I just found it all too much. I didn't think Charlize needed kid gloves, but she did deserve some respect. For a woman who was trying so hard to fight against 'the good old boys' in her workplace, Connor was not nearly supportive enough for my taste. 

Having skimmed to the end, I can say that he does, kind of, get there. But I still felt that he reduced a *lot* of her reactions to sexual frustration or simply her being a 'shecat' and that didn't sit well with me.

1 star

Second book:

Darkness by Erin Eveland
Selladore Press
Horror-fantasy?
Published June 10, 2014

Blurb:

One Girl. One Boy. And the Masters of Darkness. See the Shadow Creatures. They are everywhere. But you can't run from the shadows. Or the Masters who control them. 

In a world as grim as the powers within it, 16yr old Catherine has been born with a supernatural power called Darkness. Living an impoverished life, a hidden world starts to unfold with the encounters of two men in black, Masters of Darkness. Ancient enemies with the power to control the Darkness and its Shadow Creatures, the Masters will fight to the death for what one girl may hold – the ultimate power of Light. 

Darkness is an interactive novel featuring music or art at the beginning of each chapter to explore. 

My thoughts:

This one is billed as an interactive novel and I'll be straight by saying that I didn't test out that component at all. If there'd been links to follow as well as the codes to scan, I might have checked them out, but I've never tried to use a QR code and I wasn't really inspired to try.

So, Darkness started out really good. It was super, super creepy, lots of atmosphere, lots of shivers. Great. But then, as we shifted from Catherine's childhood to her present (at age sixteen), things started to drag for me. By the time Jorgen was introduced, I was blanking out for paragraphs and pages at a time. I just could not connect with the story at all. There was a lot of discussion about the Darkness, but I never felt like I got a solid concept in mind for it. And I take full responsibility for that, the many, many sections reflecting on it, I tended to skim read because my eyes were starting to cross.

The pacing of this book was just too slow for me. I ended up skipping maybe 50 pages towards the end, jumping to the final chapters to find out what happened, and that was ultimately unsatisfying for me too. Again, probably my fault for skipping that section of build up, but because so much of the book felt like building and building and building - I wanted a *huge* payoff and I never felt it really hit that point. I think, again, the pacing made my interest wan, which reduced my connection to the characters and ultimately the story. 

This book gets a lot of love in reviews on Amazon, so I guess I just wasn't the target audience. 

2 stars

Carnelian by B. Kristin McMichael

The Basics:
Carnelian by B. Kristin McMichael
Lexia Press
Book One in the Chalcedonny Chronicles
New Adult/YA
Published January 9, 2014
Source: Received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Amazon.ca

Why I picked up this book:

I was intrigued by the amulet, and the time-travel component in the blurb.

I Watch You by Irene Cao

The Basics:
I Watch You by Irene Cao
RCS Libri/Rizzoli
Book One in the Italian Pleasures trilogy
Mainstream Lit
Published June 17, 2014
Source: Received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Amazon.ca Kobo.com

Why I picked up this book:

The title made me think about voyeurism, I liked the Italian spin....

A Million Guilty Pleasures by C. L. Parker

The Basics:
A Million Guilty Pleasures by C. L. Parker
Bantam
Second in the Million Dollar Duet
Erotica
Published February 11, 2014
Source: Received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Amazon.ca Kobo.com

Why I picked up this book:

I was curious about the emotional aftermath suggested in the book blurb and how it would play out in erotic terms.

Charlotte: Prowling for Enchantment by Mima

The Basics:
Charlotte: Prowling for Enchantment by Mima
Pocket Star
Book Two in the Dare to Decide series
Erotica
Published on Jan 6, 2014
Source: Received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Amazon.ca Kobo.com

Why I picked up this book:

An erotic choose-your-own-adventure? Colour me intrigued.

Jenny: Virtuous No More, Part 1 by Nora Blackstock

The Basics:
Jenny: Virtuous No More, Part 1 by Nora Blackstock
Sunbow Press
Part 1 of the Jenny: Virtuous No More series
Erotica
Published December 10, 2013
Amazon.ca Kobo.com

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

Blurb:

Jenny was a good, devoted wife. When her marriage to husband Mark grew distant, she took matters into her own hands to find out if he still loved her. He did, but his confession, and the things he wanted her to do, were shocking. To save her marriage, Jenny embarked on a sexual journey from which there was no turning back. She would no longer be the “good girl” that everyone knew and loved.

Why I picked up this book:

I was looking for some good erotica, and I liked the implications of the blurb. I've also read a few good serial erotic novels in the last couple months, so I'm trying to keep an open mind about them.

My thoughts:

This is a very short first part of a longer series. It's about saving a sexless marriage - Jenny discovers her husband's into some particular kinks and as she shares her own fantasies, he presses her to fulfill his. This is the entire basis for the plot. Maybe there'll be more as the story develops, but I needed something a bit meatier in a first part to hook me into reading the next part. 

So, the fantasizing and sex is decent (or... appropriately indecent?). But there's not much story to pin it on. Mark is a jerk, and I wanted Jenny to divorce him and undergo her own sexual awakening as a single woman. Maybe if there'd been more tension between them, more will they-won't they, I would have been drawn in?

I did like that they take slightly risque everyday events and build on them to create a fantasy scenario - it's a good technique for erotica writers as I think it makes it easier for the reader to relate. Daydreaming and fantasizing is something I imagine most people do.

Unfortunately, that's really all there was to this book, in my opinion.

Bottom line:

This is completely about sex, with very little connection between the characters. Perhaps all the parts together work better? There really isn't enough in this first part for me. For me, disappointing overall.

Right now the first part is available for free on Amazon and Kobo, so give it a shot if you're curious!

2 stars
For fans of exhibitionism, voyeurism, wife-sharing erotica.

This Man Trilogy by Jodi Ellen Malpas

The Basics:
This Man Trilogy by Jodi Ellen Malpas
Forever
Erotica
Published starting June 18, 2013 (amazon.ca date for Kindle edition)

I purchased these books.

Basic Plot (my own words):

Ava O'Shea is a young interior designer making it big. She's personally requested by the owner of The Manor - Jesse Ward - to take care of some decorating for him. Only she doesn't understand the purpose of The Manor, he's determined to have her, and there's a whole bunch of secrets floating around....

As the two come together, break apart and then come together again, Jesse must confess about his past and their present and Ava has to decide if this complicated, sexual man is worth all the trouble.

Why I picked it up:

These books seem to be all over the place if you're looking for erotica to read. I bought the first two on sale after reading some pretty good reviews, and hoped for the best.

My Thoughts:

*sigh*

So the first one wasn't great, but there were some pros.  This series features some reasonably hot sex scenes, which, of course, is important for erotica. There's some variety, some kink, and I think it was pretty satisfying on that front (certainly it was for the Ava and Jesse!)

There's some interesting plot ideas here - we've got a woman who works with Jesse who is determined to usurp Ava's position in his life, there's a rival titan of industry who wants revenge on Jesse, there's layers of secrets for Ava to unravel....  

My problem? Jesse. He's beyond controlling to manipulative, and it made me hugely uncomfortable. The labelling of their sexual encounters as "retribution", "sense" or "reminder" and so on really drove me up the wall. Sex became a weapon between them rather than something more profound or simply passion. I found it hard to see it as creating a connection between Ava and Jesse when it was always about teaching a lesson. Even if I viewed the lesson-teaching as play between them, it still made me uncomfortable because it was a game that was *always* on.  

Meanwhile, the driving plot point of the third book, for which Jesse is responsible, was also really frustrating. I felt like it was a real violation of Ava, and that it was really the cherry on top of how manipulative Jesse was.

Now, Ava's not really a prize. She was pretty immature and I think if she'd been more capable of making a decision and sticking to it AND of sticking up for herself - then these books might have been quite a bit different and perhaps more enjoyable. But because she waffles, and doesn't hold Jesse to any kind of reasonable behaviour....  

The Bottom Line:

This trilogy is really popular - I think if you're a fan of Fifty Shades, you might like it. Unfortunately, it just did not do it for me, and though I held out through the third book hoping for a climactic turn around.... Not so much.

I cannot recommend the series, but I acknowledge that your experience with them could be vastly different.

2 stars
For fans of Fifty Shades, erotica featuring control, manipulative men.

Date with a Vampire by Raine English

The Basics:
Date with a Vampire by Raine English
Aspendawn
Romance
Book One in The Tempted Series

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

Blurb:
She gave him her heart, but he wanted her soul…

Melody Johnson dreams of meeting a man as dashing and wonderful as the heroes in the books she reads. Being a realist, she knows that’s highly unlikely. Besides, men always leave her for someone more exciting—until she wins the lottery, that is. Pursued by scores of men happy to help spend her fortune, Melody longs to have her quiet life back. When a network executive offers a reality show, she seizes the opportunity to show the world she’s off the single’s market. Melody leaves her quaint hometown in New York for a sunny island in the Pacific where twenty gorgeous bachelors will vie for her heart and where she can stage a phony engagement. What she never expects, though, is to fall in love with a vampire. 

Guystof LeBreque is a four-hundred-year-old Romanian vampire who hates the taste of blood. He’s roamed the earth for centuries, loathing the monster trapped inside him. After his mother’s death at the hands of vampire-hunting assassins, Guystof vows never to turn a woman into a vampire. But when his father gives him an ultimatum to marry a rich woman in sixty days or lose his legacy to his bloodthirsty brother, Guystof battles his conscience. Does he keep the promise he made to himself, or does he keep his brother from power? Guystof resorts to drastic measures. He becomes a bachelor on a hit reality show. What he doesn’t anticipate is losing his heart to the woman whose mortal life he must end.

What worked for me:

There are so many good ideas in this book:

• Small town girl wins a huge lottery and has to cope with the ensuing attention, romantic and otherwise.
• Small town millionaire winner goes on dating-style reality show to find true love and/or escape unwanted romantic attention.
• Small town girl falls in love with Romanian Count who happens to be a vampire, whose brother tries to sabotage relationship.
• Romanian Count/Vampire needs to woe wealthy woman, who fears being wanted/used only for her money, to become his bride to save his kingdom from his evil brother.
• Romanian Count/Vampire struggles to present himself as human while wooing wealthy woman to be his bride, while trying to cope with all the modern trappings of a reality tv show....

Lots of story to work here, many different angles to work with, lots of room for romance!

That Guy was a hot Romanian vampire who didn't want to drink blood was a nice touch. I also appreciated that his family's castle is in some disrepair due to their financial straits. Exploring that poverty alongside Melody's sudden financial windfall was another potential avenue for this book to explore.

What didn't work for me:

There's so much stuffed into this book that there's no time to explore any of it in any depth. Each new threat is introduced only long enough to propel the characters running head along into the next one. 

While this might have increased the tension, the writing isn't strong enough to support it. 

That's the part that really drags the book down for me - the writing just isn't very strong. Some of the things that are thrown out there - particularly the cannibals, their existence suspected because of some dead livestock - result in reactions so farfetched that I would have thrown the book at the wall if I wasn't reading it on my laptop. The romance happens so quickly - there's an initial attraction quickly followed by strong chemistry, but the encounters that follow don't always improve Melody's opinion of Guy and vice-versa. That they bond so quickly and so thoroughly was a bit baffling. 

Theo, Guy's brother, is also a bit of a letdown. His meddling starts by enlisting one of the other bachelors on the show to woe Melody away from Guy. However the bachelor he chooses is fairly incompetent at this, and Theo has to step in and literally take control of him. This is another wasted opportunity as he's quickly revealed to Guy, and any headway he potentially could have made with Melody is wasted. If the bachelor he magicked to his side had been a little suaver or if Theo had himself (or while in control of the bachelor) been able to woe Melody without revealing himself to Guy, there was opportunity for some really interesting conflict. Instead Theo drinks blood from, and kills, some livestock, inciting cannibal theories, shutting down production of the reality show early, and so on....

There's no subtle touch here, everything is big ideas that immediately fizzle under the speed at which they are played out. It was frustrating, because I really liked the concept presented in the blurb, and there *was* so much that could have been really, really good.

Bottom Line:

Date with a Vampire has lots of good ideas that fizzle out under the weight of so much *stuff*. This book had great potential, it needed to have a narrower focus to make it really shine. There were too many details that missed the mark for the book to be a hit. I was disappointed because there was so much promise in the basic concepts. 

2 stars
For only the most dedicated of vampire romance fans.

Desire by Marina Anderson

The Basics:
Desire by Marina Anderson
Forever (Grand Central Publishing)
Part One of the Dining Club
Erotica

I received this ebook via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Grace and David have been involved for six months. She's falling in love, he's not quite there yet. But he is prepared to induct her into his secret sexual world - the Dining Club! Can she face down rival Amber, overcome the four trials, and maybe even earn David's love along the way?

Desire is the first three chapters of this story, released in a serial form.

What worked for me:

Not a lot, unfortunately. I think if I read more, I could like Grace quite a bit. She handled David's revelations pretty well - she wasn't shocked by the prospect of kinky sex. I liked that she wasn't naive or too sheltered to understand the implications of the Dining Club.

I *am* curious about the trials, and about whether or not the story gets hotter once Grace is properly introduced into the Dining Club.

What didn't work for me:

My biggest problem was plot/character related: David being involved in the Dining Club actively and secretly while in a sexual relationship with Grace. That's a deal breaker for me.

I like serialization. It reminds me of nineteenth century literature, published in a serial format in newspapers. This kind of literature relies heavily on  cliffhangers to draw you back for the next installment. It seems a little counter-intuitive to me to write erotica in this format because you don't want to leave the reader unsatisfied - or wanting more, as it were. Erotica is about satisfaction, is it not?  On the plus side, the plot at the core here - the trials - lends itself to ever increasing heights of titillation, so there's certainly room for improvement. The way in which pain alongside pleasure was used thematically in this installment didn't really do it for me, but as David points out in the third chapter, paraphrasing, different strokes for different folks.

Bottom Line:

For something this short (three chapters), it covered a lot of ground. I think I'd prefer to read The Dining Club as a complete novel rather than in installments, but at the same time, David's not doing it for me.

2 stars

For anyone who likes their kinky sex with a little pain, for anyone wanting to get their toes wet in erotica without a big commitment