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

Stacking the Shelves - January 18, 2014 Edition

Stacking the Shelves is an awesome meme hosted by Tynga's Review.

Bloggers share the books they've received, bought, borrowed - and I end up adding a half dozen books to my 'must acquire' list. Seriously, I started a new list on Jan 1st and I'm up to 18 books, half of which have come from other StS posts!

I only bought one book this week (or two week period as I tend to StS bi-weekly) - it was on sale when I was there checking out the submission calls for Ellora's Cave:

I also received a stack of books for review - I indulged a little putting out requests for review copies this week, and I've gotten back:

The Shadow Princess by Mary Hart Perry - This one had me at London, 1888 . A Jack the Ripper investigation drawing together a cop and a princess sounded like a good romp.

Tangled Hearts by Heather McCollum - A witch, a highlander, pirates and two people forced to work together and attracted to each other despite themselves. Sounds fun to me!

Lockstep by Karl Schroeder - The cover of this reminds me of the Cal Leandros series by Rob Thurman (same artist, I'm going to guess). I generally like what Tor's putting out, and it's been a while since I've read something future-based.


Just One Night by Lauren Layne  - I read and reviewed two books by Lauren Layne last year and enjoyed them both. This one is a sequel and I expect good things!

What did you pick up this week?  Have you read any of the books I grabbed? What'd you think of them?  Is there something I should have picked up but didn't?

Sweetly Bad by Anya Breton

The Basics:

Sweetly Bad, by Anya Breton
Ellora's Cave Publishing Inc.
Erotica/Romance

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

This is the second book in the "Haizea Brood" series. I haven't read the first one, and that might account for some of my feelings about this one.

My impression is that this is one of the first in a new line of books called Curve Appeal featuring plus-sized women.

Roughly, the plot is that Drew, a playboy witch stranded with a broken-down Ferrari, must prove to his mother that he's turning his life around while being labeled kill-on-sight with the Underground.

Erica, our curvy heroine, is the irresistible mechanic who is willing to help Drew while working through some of her own issues.


What worked for me:

The author writes really consistent characters. Erica is sassy and capable, while Drew is a complete ass. I thought they were both fully realized, and believable as individuals.

Breton's also created a vibrant world that deserved better than this short book permitted. There's some interesting magic elements, some handy Cleaners to keep the witches secret from vanilla humans. Though the introduction of the paranormal into the book was both abrupt and delayed, this element was more interesting to me than the romance between Erica and Drew.


What didn't work for me:

Oh dear. 

As one of the first books in a series featuring plus-sized women, I wanted something that was generally positive about said women. Instead: nearly every speaking character comments on Erica's weight in a negative fashion, from her sister to her ex-boyfriend to the villains to Drew. Erica herself expresses some mixed opinions - I found it quite realistic that she'd both own her body *and* have some doubts. Unfortunately, having everyone else jump on the 'you can't be happy/sexy when you're size sixteen' bandwagon made it really hard to come away with positive feelings. Yes, Erica was depicted as a competent, even badass!, woman. And she, at times, was take charge about her sexuality. BUT the general lack of positivity about plus-sized women in the dialogue was just... ugh. I assume her weight was constantly raised as an issue to justify or underline the book as part of the Curve Appeal line, but because because it was always in a negative context, I found it very offputting.

There were several plus-sized cliches - a reference to a chubby chaser, inability to be happy at 'that' weight, breaking furniture. Each one made me feel increasingly uncomfortable - not a good response when reading erotica!

Ultimately I didn't think "Sweetly Bad" was a particularly erotic book. The first major sex scene was undercut by Erica's impressions about Drew. Not only was he a poor kisser, but Erica found his package, ah, lacking. It was hard to understand why the two of them were hooking up at all, given the begrudging attraction. There was very little tension between them other than in a 'will she throw him out the door or not' kind of way.

I think the book would have benefited from an increased word count - there was so much crammed in from Erica's ex-boyfriend issues to Drew being hunted by other witches to the redemption of Drew. Several more chapters would have made Drew's transition from asshole to contrite lover more thorough and believable.

The Bottom Line:

I was curious about the book (and the Curve Appeal line), which is why I requested it via NetGalley. If I'd paid money for it, I think I would have been disappointed that it didn't deliver on my expectation of a steamy erotic story featuring a plus-sized woman.

The book would have been better served if it was marketed solely as a romance. The more I thought about it, the more the story grew on me - but I can't think of many erotic novels that I've read and then spent much time analysing afterwards....

If you can get past the first thirty-five pages or so, I think there's something here to like, buried below the negatives. There wasn't enough to satisfy me, but your mileage may vary.

Two and a Half Stars
For anyone who is interested in the Curve Appeal line and isn't looking for hot erotica or anyone who doesn't mind spending some time thinking about the different elements of the novel afterwards.