Tag: romance

Review: Captive Desire

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As I am currently under the weather, this review is going to be much shorter than I’d like, but release day is coming up and so I want this to be out in the world.

I LOOOVED Toxic Desire, the first book in the Planet of Desire series by Robin Lovett. It was one of those books that had a lot of buzz among the people I follow on Twitter and I decided to check it out on a whim one day, especially since at that time I was still trying to complete my Popsugar 2018 challenge (I’ve given up on that, y’all.) and it filled the requirement for set on another planet.

Book one covers all of the world-building, and book two picks up almost immediate where book one leaves off – Assura, one of General Nemona’s fellow rebels, was thought for dead but has been spotted, delirious with fever from the desidre, the condition of nearly lethal horniness caused by the toxins emitted from the planet’s atmosphere. Gahnin is one of the Ssedez generals, under the command of book one’s hero, Oten, and before Oten and Nemona leave the horny planet on a hardware errands to repair the rebel ship that crashed in book one, he is tasked with caring for Assura, making sure she is taken care of and well. Continue reading →

Review: Bet Me

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I really wanted to like this book. It was on so many lists of great romance novels, and was even mentioned on a podcast that I enjoy, but it just didn’t live up to the hype.

Aside from the really bizarre character names, the whole thing reads like a rough first draft. Turns out, this was Crusie’s first novel after she read 100 romance novels for her dissertation. The bones of the story are good and have a lot of potential, but the descriptions are bad and the characters flat. I had a really hard time picturing almost everything. I can’t for the life of me conjure an image of those bridesmaids dresses. The side plot with David and Cynthie was exasperating and way too mustache-twirly. When I start rewriting scenes in my head as I’m
going, that’s not promising to me.

Despite my inability to imagine anything going on, the book was a fast read and the plot moved along at a pretty good pace. There were some points that I was thinking “oh, just get on with it”, but those were few. It just needed to be heavily massaged by a good editor. Considering that she has gone on to write many more books, I hope that her craft has improved, but I don’t know if I’ll be checking out more of her books.

Review: Eleanor & Park

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9781250012579

I was expecting to really like this book, and it is a fairly decent one. But it didn’t live up to the hype that proceeded it. It was definitely ruined for me by a random comment by someone who said they cried – no sobbed – at the end. I kept waiting for something big and crazy and heartbreaking to happen. I kind of felt like this book had Chekhov’s gun in it. A gun literally did go off midway through the book, but it had no consequence. But nothing really happens. Two kids meet, somehow become obsessed with each other by the process of just being repeatedly exposed to each other, and then her home life is abusive and crazy and dangerous so she runs. And … then they sort of move on but not really.

The focus here is on the love story between Eleanor and Park (I kept wondering if Park was his full name or if it was implied that it was a shortened version of something, since his brother is only referred to as Josh the entire time). All the other stories happening around them (which were, frankly, more interesting), are never explored. There was stuff with Park’s Korean mom, what happened between Eleanor’s mom and just about everyone, how Park’s parents met, who was behind all the sabotage in Eleanor’s gym class… And in the final few chapters, we don’t even get to know what happens to all of Eleanor’s brothers and sister. Why did her mom even end up with Richie? So many unanswered questions.

The book was fairly well-written. It was pretty repetitive, but that seemed to be a deliberate narrative choice. It was sort of like journal entries, mostly in a recent present, linear fashion, but sometimes going backwards to fill in holes in the plot. I normally don’t like blatant exposition, but I just felt like a lot of the interesting parts of the story were just left out to focus on the romance.

I think the most disappointing part for me was that things were really ramping up in the last third of the book and then it all just fizzled pretty pathetically. I was so on the edge of my seat (mostly because I was expecting someone to get killed), and then it turned out to be no big deal. Expectations definitely played a role here, so I can’t blame it all on the book. I was definitely intrigued by it, and the ending is also not super disappointing compared to other books I’ve read. There’s a flicker of hope at the end, which I think would play really well on a movie screen. Apparently, one is in the works, so I would be interested to see that. I hope they address what happens to those kids.

4 stars.

This book fulfills no requirements for the challenge.

Review: Soulmates

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The final story in the original trilogy of the Kissed by an Angel series was good, although I have qualms. I’ll get to those.

First, the actual story was still good, in my opinion. The action ramps up very well, and it definitely gets to that white knuckled suspenseful climax. I felt like the motivation for Gregory was believable. Ivy reacts to the threats around her in very believable ways. For instance, near the end she finds some evidence that is very damning. She immediately brings it to the police station instead of hiding it somewhere in the house or in her pocket, where it could be snatched away at the last minute, putting her in even more peril. The threats were scary and well conceived. 

I do have a few nitpicks. I thought the love story between Ivy and Will was contrived. They start hinting at it very early on, possibly in the first book, but it feels so rushed. The 3rd book takes place somewhere in the vicinity of October, just a few months after the accident which killed Tristan. Ivy and Tristan were only dating a few months but were in L-O-V-E, and then before he’s even been gone 6 months she is already in love with someone else, all the while Tristan as an angel is still around? Much too fast, even for flaky teenagers.

I also didn’t like how insane Gregory became in the big scene on the railroad tracks at the climax. A couple lines about possible drug use could have explained it away, but he seemed really unhinged despite being a calm sociopath before that. I could also have done without the screaming demons in the background. It was a little over the top, even for a supernatural romance.

Otherwise, this was a great story, and I’m really excited about reading the next three books. I think it held up pretty well over the last 20 years. The second set of three were written in 2011 so it might have an entirely different feel to it, considering how technology has changed so much.

4 stars.

This book completes the mystery/thriller requirement for the challenge.

Review: The Power of Love

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The second installment of the Kissed By An Angel trilogy was another quick read. The suspense begins to accelerate during this book as more of the pieces begin to come together.

The first book leaves off with Tristan remembering something weird about the brakes in his car, and how he wasn’t able to stop the car accident from happening. So this whole book deals with him learning how to utilize his angel powers in order to make contact with Ivy in order to warn her that her life may be in danger. The paranormal aspects were okay, nothing too bizarre. I was able to suspend my belief enough to accept them in the story, although there were things that I wondered about. For example, Tristan learns to harness his energy enough to materialize fingertips. But he doesn’t lock the door when Ivy forgets to, or go and read the police report he sees on Andrew’s (Ivy’s stepfather) desk. Minor complaints.

We begin to see a connection between the suicide of Gregory’s mother (Andrew’s first wife) and the car accident. Gregory’s friend Eric had some sort of drug addiction (although no specific drugs or types of drugs are ever named – just “pills”. Maybe pharmaceuticals?) and this is causing an issue between Eric, Gregory, Andrew, and Gregory’s late mother. 

Tristan attempts all kinds of ways to reach Ivy which mostly succeed only in freaking her out, as he speaks through her brother, her friend Beth, and new guy Will. He is able to push Will towards Ivy’s house when he suspects that she is in danger, and some unknown assailant has broken into the house and apparently cocked a gun to her head, and stop the attack.

Ivy still has no idea what is going on or that there is some sort of conspiracy, when, after a recurring nightmare, Gregory dopes her up with spiked tea and drags her off to train tracks, just in time to get bulldozed by the 2am train. Tristan is able to propel Phillip, Ivy’s 9 year old brother, out of bed and towards the train tracks to stop he tragedy from occurring. 

And then it ends. Stay tuned for the last book, suckers! 

It seems like the middle book in a trilogy always ends at a key point in the action, probably to get you hooked so you read the last book. I feel like these books are all so short, it really should be all in one. I wonder if there was some sort of page limit on young adult books in the mid-nineties. It doesn’t really work as a trilogy. 

I am both anticipating and dreading the final book because I know what happens to the cat (sad face), and I honestly can’t remember the motivations for the murders. I imagine I will complete it in a day or two.

I also discovered that the author has written THREE MORE INSTALLMENTS of this series and I’m kind of excited.

This book fulfills no requirements for the book challenge.

Review: Kissed By An Angel

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I can’t decide if I like this book because it tickles my nostalgia bone or because it is pretty good and has held up over time. I first read this book in 9th grade, and I loved it. I remember sitting in the youth center at church, devouring it. My copy had all three books in one volume, as pictured below.

Divorcing it from the other two books, however, this one is very much a prologue to the main story. I don’t really remember most of the story, other than Ivy’s boyfriend, Tristan, dies in a car crash, and later becomes an angel, and also that the cat, Ella, is a main plot point in the climax of the third book. 

It starts at the accident, then goes backwards and fills in all the context. Ivy’s mother has married a rich dude with a snotty son, and they and her younger brother Phillip go to live in their mansion. Ivy is terrified of water, and Tristan gives her swim lessons and they fall in love. There’s something fishy about her stepbrother, Gregory, and his friends. That is the entire novel. 

Actually, if this were the entire story, and not just a preamble to the following two books, this would be pretty terrible. But it does lay down some needed context, about Ivy’s family situation, her relationship with Tristan, her belief in angels, the suicide of Gregory’s mother, and of course, the cat. It just doesn’t work without the following two books, unlike many other trilogies.



This book alone only merits 2 stars, but I’ll wait to rate the entire trilogy.

This book fulfills the book from my childhood, and set in high school requirements for the challenge.