The Domino Effect - Julie Elizabeth Leto

*** - Very hot and I even bought the premise. But the ending just didn't work for me, which is always a problem with asssassination plotlines.

Domino Black was recruited into the super-secret agency known as The Shadow when she was just a teen. Her latest mission is to investigate sexy Chicago club owner Luke Brasco to determine who in his club is selling government secrets to terrorists. But Domino is usually just an assassin, she has no experience undercover - and she certainly doesn't know what to do when she finds herself falling for her target.

This certainly deserved the appellation 'extreme' - the assassin plotline, the very hot sex. This was a lot of escapist fun. The spy story was intriguing, and the scene in the cab in the beginning was very cool. Given the extreme circumstances and the chemistry smoldering between the main characters, I even bought them falling in love so quickly. My favorite scene was when the two of them went to the ballpark to watch a baseball game - it was just so quintessentially normal fun.

The issue I had was the resolution. Assassin plots in particular are very difficult - assassin characters tend to be such loners (not to mention a bit screwed up). It's hard to convincingly write a story that allows them to back out of that life and begin a more normal existence. And while the author certainly gave it a try here, it just didn't really work for me. It was too sudden, and I didn't buy Luke's motivation to take on such a huge responsibility on such short notice.

The Private Diary of Mr. Darcy - Maya Slater

** 1/2 - A well-researched account of the life of a Georgian gentleman, but there just didn't seem to be enough Elizabeth in it for me to really connect the main character to Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice. Plus, it just seemed a bit... flat.

At a sale of the contents of one of England's great houses, a diary was found hidden away in the secret drawer of an old writing desk. Upon closer examination, it was clear that this was the diary of the real-life Mr. Darcy upon whose romance Jane Austen based her Pride and Prejudice. The diary reveals his daily life fencing, boxing, and occasional wenching; his time spent with friends (including the notorious Lord Byron); and, of course, his rocky romance with Elizabeth Bennet.

I actually liked the premise a lot. It was interesting to see what Regency-era men got up to in their daily lives (much like the PBS special Regency House Party). There was a lot of sports, some shopping, some business, and a lot of hanging out with friends. This and Darcy's protective instincts toward his sister Georgiana was quite charming. I also liked the way he dealt with Elizabeth's statements to him upon his first disastrous proposal.

I also thought the encounters with Byron were interesting. He really was a fascinating character. It was nice that the author addressed this relatively uncharacteristic friendship with Darcy by making them all old school-friends. But some of Darcy's behavior, while certainly realistic for a Georgian-era man, didn't seem consistent with my conception of the very honorable Fitzwilliam Darcy. To me, Darcy seemed more the type to have kept a mistress before his relationship with Lizzie rather than one to indulge in casual encounters.

Nor am I sure that I liked the motivation the author gives Darcy for separating Bingley from Jane Bennet - it made more sense to me when he simply believed that she was indifferent. Sadly it seemed that there was more discussion of Bingley and Jane's story and romance than there was about Darcy and Elizabeth.

Georgiana also didn't seem quite 'in character'. In the book, she was described as more of a docile girl in awe of her older brother. Here her mood swings between exuberance and more subdued seemed a bit odd.

Other than that, I'm just not sure I 'bought' it. The entire idea of a diary can be quite difficult to make masculine. Here that is partly accomplished by very short, not particularly detailed entries. But there seems to be quite an emphasis on the colors of people's clothing which did not seem particularly manly to me at all. The main issue I had with this, though, was that it did not re-tell many scenes from Austen's original. Because of that, we actually only see very little of Darcy interacting with Elizabeth. I think a bit more detail, including actively re-telling certain key scenes would have tied this more securely to Austen's novel.

In the ARC that I received, the note explaining the premise that Austen based her novel on the actual story of a romance was at the very end - it would have been more effective as a set-up in the beginning of the book.

So my final verdict? It was an interesting read, and I could certainly tell that a lot of research went into this novel - the key is to keep in mind that this is supposed to be the story of the real man that Mr. Darcy was later based on. As that, it works. But I think it's less successful as a re-telling of Austen's novel itself.

Interested in others?

Author Guestpost on Jane Austen in Vermont

Austenprose and author interview

Booklust

A Great Deliverance - Elizabeth George

*** 1/2 - This is the first in Elizabeth George's acclaimed Inspector Lynley mysteries. Now that I've read several of the series, I think I've put my finger on why they always seem to be hovering just above average for me. I enjoy her writing and her plotting - but all of her stories deal with situations that make me very uncomfortable.

A savage murder has been committed in the bucolic English countryside. Fat, unhappy Roberta Teys is found near the body of her father, clutching a bloody axe, and all she will say is "I did it, and I'm not sorry." Scotland Yard's golden boy Detective Inspector Lynley (also the 8th Earl of Asherton) is sent to investigate along with scruffy, scrappy and perpetually angry Barbara Havers - who is being given one last chance to play nicely with a partner before being relegated to a position on the beat.

This is where Lynley and Havers first meet, and here more than in any of the others that I've read, the differences between their situations are absolutely glaring. Everything about Lynley seems to go right - his title, his career, and even his tragically doomed love affair only seems to lend him more empathy and intuition. He is so perfect that it's unsurprising that Havers views him with instant hostility. But she goes overboard to the point where I wondered why she was so desperate to sabotage everything she had worked for so hard.

As usual, the main thing in A Great Deliverance isn't really the case that Lynley and Havers are working on. Instead the focus is on the characterization of the investigating team and their relationship. And here, it's pretty frustrating. If I had come to this novel first (you know, that pesky thing called reading in order), and I hadn't seen some of the excellent BBC productions based on these novels, I'm not sure I would have come back to George.

This is even more true because of the issues George addresses within the mystery. There's very little I can say about what disturbed me here without spoiling the mystery, so I won't go into any detail. But these novels tend to make me quite uncomfortable - there's always an undercurrent of the sordid. I suppose I shouldn't expect any different from a novel about crime and the nastier darker sides of humanity that lead to murder, but there's something about George's writing that really drives home that this sort of thing is real. And that upsets me.

If you want a CSI, a Law & Order, or a Closer in book form, Elizabeth George's novels aren't the way to go. They're gritty and seedy - and if that's more your mystery/thriller style, I'd say go for it.

Book 3: Well-Schooled in Murder

Book 5: For the Sake of Elena

Interested in other opinions?

A Girl Walks into a Bookstore

Of Books and Bicycles

Smithereens

I Was a Non-Blonde Cheerleader - Kieran Scott

**** - A quick read with a likeable main character and a lot of really funny moments. I was actually surprised as the author also writes the Private series which really wasn't my thing. The series are nothing alike - Non-Blonde Cheerleader is much lighter.

Annisa Gobrowski feels like she just landed on another planet. When she shows up for her first day at her new high school in Florida, she's the only non-blonde in sight. Add that to a killer first day - in which she's labeled a brainiac back-stabbing klutz who also managed to break the head cheerleader's nose - and things are off to a very rocky start. Especially since all Annisa wants is to be a part of the award-winning cheerleading team...

I'm not a cheerleader. Nor did I ever want to be. I was pretty much the opposite of all cheerleaders. But I liked I Was a Non-Blonde Cheerleader a ton. I liked the characters - hunky Daniel Healy, Goth girl Bethany (who I kept picturing as Abby from NCIS), and smart-mouthed Annisa. I loved the way her voice came across - like when she referred to a certain ice cream flavor as "happiness in a carton". She's just the right mixture of goofy, smart, and boy-struck to make her believable and someone I would want to be friends with. That's always a good sign.

Non-Blonde Cheerleader was a lot of fast-paced fluffy fun. I admired Annisa for standing up to the cheerleading squad even when they have it out for her, and I was really impressed that the novel showed actual consequences to not studying for your Calculus tests (seriously, I hate books where people do all kinds of other stuff and never have to study for anything...). There was a lot of training and 'sports' stuff, romantic entanglements, and a prank war... All of the things my high school life was nothing like - but that are awfully fun to read about.

I'll be looking for the sequels!

Interested in other opinions?

Royal Reads (plus an interview)

Not Acting My Age

Corsair - Tim Severin

*** - With a name like Corsair and the cover image, I was expecting there to be more nautical adventure. The premise was interesting, but when it comes right down to it, I thought the characterization was pretty shallow.

In 1677, Hector Lynch is abducted from a small Irish village by Barbary pirates. He is taken back to the Barbary Coast where he is soon sold as a slave at auction. But intelligent young Hector is irrepressible - and lucky in his friends, including the Miskito Indian Dan. He soon becomes indispensable to his seafaring master Turgut Reis. After converting to Islam, the ship Hector is on is captured - and Hector once again enters a life of servitude onboard a French galley.

The novel reads more like an adventure novel than the historicals I usually read - something more along the lines of The Rosetta Key or maybe Louis L'Amour's The Walking Drum. But despite the more adventurous tone, there was remarkably little time spent in actual adventures. I just didn't ever feel like Hector was in peril.

This pretty much tracks with the rest of the novel. Although Hector goes through some difficult experiences - including the loss of his sister which is meant to drive the novel - there is never much emotional depth in the narrative. The entire story seems relatively superficial, and that combined with the lack of perilous action scenes means that Corsair isn't a very engrossing read. It wasn't boring, but it didn't have me reaching for it after I had put it down, either.

I liked the unusual setting - I haven't read much about the Barbary Coast, especially not during that period. There was some very interesting history (both events and different customs) in this novel, but I'm not sure I'll be reading the others in the series.

Interview with the Author

Interested in other opinions?

Libri Touches

Dark Wolf's Fantasy

The Book Bag

A Weaver Wedding - Allison Leigh

*** 1/2 - I was apprehensive when I saw that this was the infamous 'secret baby' plotline. But I enjoyed this far more than I expected to. There was a very nice suspense plotline involved that nonetheless didn't overshadow the emotional connection. I'd read more in this series.

Tara Browning owns a quiet shop in the little town of Weaver, Wyoming. But although she's lived in the town for years, she does very little mingling with the others in Weaver. But that hasn't stopped horse breeder (and protective agent) Axel Clay from noticing her. When he is assigned to protect her from a possible hit, he has no problem playing the doting lover. But he does have difficulties forgetting the wild weekend they spent with one another a few months before. And Tara is having trouble hiding her pregnancy from him.

The prologue - where Axel and Tara meet and share an amazing and wild weekend - is really great. The sexual tension was full of sizzle, and there wasn't even anything explicit. That tension continued through much of the book, though I personally found it rather frustrating that the two of them didn't end up in a few more compromising positions while he was forced to live in Tara's house.

The suspense subplot was handled nicely - it didn't overwhelm the romance blossoming between Axel and Tara, but it wasn't just a pretext to throw the two of them back together either. Tara has some definite issues that are raised by Axel's career and by his family's close relationship. It was nice to see those explored as well. Plus, Tara never did anything Too Stupid To Live, but actually listened to those trying to protect her - a definite positive factor.

While I didn't like Axel's high-handedness towards the end of the novel, I enjoyed their relationship overall. There's a nice mixture of sexual attraction and deeper caring. While I'm still not a fan of the entire 'secret baby' plotline, that was actually a relatively minor aspect of this story - and I found myself actually liking A Weaver Wedding despite myself.

Interested in other opinions?

Love Romance Passion

The Romance Reader

Tracy's Place

The Harlequin/Silhouette Challenge

The Family He Wanted - Karen Sandler

*** - Special Edition really isn't high on my list of Harlequin lines. I generally steer more towards Blaze, Intrigue, and Historicals. But when a Harlequin panel offered two Special Edition in exchange for filling out a survey, I decided to give it a try despite the baby plot. It's still not going to be a line I pick up regularly, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

Jana McPartland is pregnant - the father ran out on her, and now she must make the difficult choice of whether to give the baby up for adoption. While she makes up her mind, she goes to work for her childhood crush and idol, thriller author Sam Harrison. Sam was a foster child growing up, and he has a definite fear of commitment - one that frightens him so much that he is reluctant to explore the attraction between him and Jana.

I'm not a fan of the baby plotline. I'm just not at a point in my life where pregnancy and babies really work for me. In addition to that, I thought there was a bit much on the drama side (at least where Sam was concerned). I understand that Sam was reluctant to trust anyone and that he was afraid of commitment, but I thought the resolution needed to take longer - trust doesn't crop up overnight. His treatment of Jana because of his fear of commitment was neither particularly romantic - and her putting up with it made me lose a lot of respect for Jana.

The Family He Wanted was no more than an average read for me. I enjoyed the parts set at the ranch, but commitment-phobia isn't something I deal with particularly well. While I think everyone's motivations were believable and realistic, I don't particularly enjoy reading about people settling for less than a whole-hearted 'I love you' in a romance novel.

Interested in other opinions?

You Gotta Read Reviews

Cathy's Key - Sean Stewart & Jordan Weisman

*** - This was a fun sequel to Cathy's Book. There were interesting new characters introduced, and there were some truly hilarious hijinks - FondueGrrl, anyone? But I thought the mystery story line was weaker in this volume.

Cathy only recently discovered that her boyfriend (and a number of others) is immortal - now she's attempting to fend off Victor's immortal father who also has his sights set on her romantically (talk about creepy). When a stint on a Greyhound leads to her diary (Cathy's Book) and her identity being stolen, Cathy has even more problems than before.

Victor is absent for most of the book because he's being held hostage to work on a formula to make everyone immortal. And since he's not around, his and Cathy's relationship doesn't get much of a chance to grow, which is a bit disappointing. Cathy's relationship with her mother is still difficult (Cathy's inability to hold down any minimum-wage job doesn't help matters), but Cathy does try to make things better.

The drawings are still lovely in this volume, especially the ones on 'parchment' from the Ponce de Leon letter. And there are some really funny scenes here - I loved Cathy's work at the fondue restaurant. There is just so much that can go hilariously wrong when you combine Cathy's klutziness with boiling cheese and all the craziness of food service jobs.

The mystery here seemed less put together. I had no trouble figuring out one of the bigger mysteries, and the others were also fairly well telegraphed. Also, I wasn't sure how well the 'extras' and interactive elements fit in this case. This was still a fun read, and I'm definitely interested in seeing how it all wraps up.

Check out the website http://www.cathyskey.com/

Interested in other opinions?

Teen Reads

Books By Their Cover

Em's Bookshelf

The Zero Game - Brad Meltzer

*** - Fast-paced and set in the political world of Congress, The Zero Game was an engrossing political thriller - plenty of danger lurking and narrow escapes. Fun for the genre, but it's not one of my favorites.

Two political staffers in Washington, D.C. are caught up in a mysterious secret game - a theoretically harmless bet on peripheral issues going through Congress. The Zero Game ends up causing the death of one of Harris Sandler's good friends, so Harris goes into hiding. Soon he and a Congressional page find themselves on the run from a dangerous assassin as they try to discover the secret behind the game that people are willing to kill for.

The Zero Game was pretty much what you would expect from a political thriller. It was fast-paced and engrossing - you never had to wait too long for the next danger to pop up around the corner. There was quite a bit of running around the Capitol trying to escape from bad guys. I kind of hoped the characters would venture a little farther afield. I miss living in DC, and it would have been nice to spend some time revisiting familiar areas.

The shifting points of view had its good points and bad. It certainly adds to some of the surprise, but it also was a bit disconcerting to the reader. I don't like getting attached to one narrator only to switch to someone else. I also just didn't get much out of the sections from the killer's point of view. They didn't add anything much to the story - not even a sense of impending danger that the protagonists were unaware of. To add to that, I could have used a bit more in the way of contribution from the page. She was an interesting character, and I would have liked to see more from her.

I enjoyed the ultimate mystery and how it was set up, and the show-down wasn't disappointing. But, as with most of these types of thrillers, there was nothing about the mystery that was particularly memorable.

The Indifferent Stars Above - Daniel James Brown

**** - I don't usually read much non-fiction. The Indifferent Stars Above is a prime example of why I should branch out more - but also of why I prefer historical novels.

When I requested The Indifferent Stars Above from the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program, I thought it was a historical novel about the Donner Party's ill-fated trip toward California, not a non-fiction historical account. This is entirely due to my own carelessness in reading the description - and I have to admit, I'm glad I did.

I don't usually read non-fiction. In non-fiction works, the very things that bring history to life for me, that fascinate me - the emotions, the motivations of the people involved - tend to be frowned upon. These innermost workings of human beings are largely unknowable - or unsupportable by evidence - and therefore avoided in serious non-fiction. But those are what make up the essence of a story and save it from becoming dry recitations of facts - for me at least. I'm emotionally driven, and I'm looking for emotional resonance in my histories.

The Indifferent Stars Above really made me re-think my aversion to non-fiction. Daniel James Brown ties the story of his ancestor to a frame story of his own research journey along the route they took. His discussion of the wagon train's journey is interesting and insightful - I found his discussions of sexual attitudes, hypo- and hyperthermia and similar well-placed and intriguing. I especially enjoyed his discussions of psychological effects of the cold and hunger - Brown comes very close to discussing the kind of motivations that I crave in my understanding of history. I certainly learned a great deal that I never knew about the Donner Party and others like them who were on the trail West.

But the book also reinforced my preference for historical fiction over non-fiction. Once the party was stranded by the lake and during the brutal trek of some members toward rescue, I really would have preferred to hear the story with the emotion and the motivations of the characters. In particular what happened at the lake before the last rescue party arrived - the part of the story involving Keseberg - was left unclear. There's simply not enough evidence to conclusively claim that Keseberg killed and ate some of his fellow survivors. But I could have used some speculation - it just would have made the story more satisfying for me. I just like to know what happened!

I certainly know much more about the Donner party than I did before (which was very little), but I'd love to know if someone knows of a good historical novel about the incident!

Interested in learning more about the Donner Party?

Book Trailer

PBS site for The American Experience: The Donner Party

Interested in other opinions about the book?

Bookworm's Dinner