Wild Lady by Ann Major

Wild Lady by Ann Major
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was glad when I read the afterword and found out this was Ann Major's first book. For a first book, it's actually quite good. If this was a recent entry from an author I had read and been very impressed by, I would have been more disappointed. As it stands, it was pretty good.

Things I didn't Love
*Let's face it, Kit is very immature. She's young, with very little life experience. She's also spoiled. For all that, she is a good person. I think she always did love Ted, but her youth made it hard to express that. She doesn't quite know how to make a relationship work, and it shows.
*Ted is harder to get a handle on for most of the book because the book is from Kit's viewpoint. He annoyed me when he flipped out on Kit and put her out. He didn't give her a chance to defend her, just assumed. He should have been a bit better at relationships for his advanced years over Kit, but clearly he isn't.
*This book relies heavily on misunderstandings, which can be kind of tedious as a source of conflict. As I said, for a first book, I can respect that this was a chosen device for a novice author.
*Phyllis, Ted's sister-in-law was annoying and interfering in Kit and Ted's relationship. I wanted for Ted to tell her to butt out, but he didn't get around to it during the book. That's a shame.

Things I liked
*I did get the feeling that the love between Kit and Ted was real and strong, despite all their fits and starts. I just wish they communicated better.
*I liked that Kit was half-Mexican and half-white, and embraced both parts of heritage.
*I'm always a sucker for books set in Texas.
*Ted's daughter was cute. I wish she was in the book more though.
*Ted was a self-made man.
*Ted was red-headed.

So not a great book, but not a bad one either. It's always interesting to read an author's first book and to see how far they have come.

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A Breathless Bride by Fiona Brand

A Breathless Bride by Fiona Brand
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

I was disappointed with this one. I love Fiona Brand's Silhouette Intimate Moments series about SAS soldiers in New Zealand, and I was excited to read a new book by her. Unfortunately, I didn't feel the love or the passion in this story.

What went wrong?

Fundamentally, I like a hero who is psycho crazy about the heroine. I want to believe he couldn't live without her. Not that he was merely sexually attracted or fixated on her. In this book, I did not think Constantine ever lost his cool truly. He always stays in control. Even when he does make decisions/moves to bring Sienna back under his control, it doesn't speak of passion so much as manipulation. And even up to the end, he never really trusted her or let go with her. That failed him as a hero to me. I don't mind a manipulative hero when it's out of passion or intense love for the heroine, but I hate when a hero is manipulative out of sense of arrogance, control or just out of a sense of his incredible power. That master of all he surveys thing doesn't work for me at all. I'm was not convinced that Constantine truly loved Sienna when this over. I felt as though he was going through the motions. And worse still, I felt Sienna was always the one at risk, giving of herself, and out of control, while Constantine held all the cards. What Constantine did at the end didn't relieve me of this feeling. It felt like a move of desperation because he couldn't do anything otherwise. I'd have preferred a passionate declaration of crazy love. But that's just me.

I guess it's just a case of too high expectations. This wasn't a bad book. It was pretty good, especially if it had been by an new author, rather than one who had wowed me so much in the past. I just loved Cullen's Bride by her! Others might like this one more than I did.

Overall Rating: 3.5/5.0 stars .



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The Rugged Loner by Bronwyn Jameson

The Rugged Loner by Bronwyn Jameson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I was underwhelmed with this book. It's the case of good premise, poor execution for me.

What I loved:
* I loved that Tomas, the hero, was celibate after his wife died, and his wife was his first and only lover prior to the heroine.
* I loved that Angie was determined to get her man. I am a sucker for an unrequited love story.
* Cowboy/rancher hero

What I didn't like:
* I didn't like that Tomas was so closed off from Angie, and I never felt connected to his emotional anguish about losing his wife. It seemed more like an excuse not to fall in love, instead of manifesting as cold, hard fear about losing a woman he loved.
* I didn't like how Angie was pretty much chasing after Tomas. It just felt too desperate and kind of sad--with a heroine who came off as really needy, doing all the giving, but getting nothing back. Fundamentally, I'm not a huge fan of books where the heroine does the chasing, although The Magic of You is a book where this was done exceptionally well. This book was not a good execution of that theme. Deep down, I think every woman deserves for a man to court her. If an author strays from that, I like to see it done where the heroine doesn't read as desperate and giving the hero all the emotional power. I don't like unequal power dynamics in my romance books, and this felt way unbalanced. I can understand it more if the hero is obviously crazy about the heroine, but he's fighting his feelings. But Tomas really didn't seem that 'into' Angie for most of the book, other than lust.
* The sudden reversal of Tomas at the end felt unconvincing to me. I was reading the book and realizing I only had a few pages, and all of a sudden, in the last couple pages, he gets the lightbulb about loving Angie. It just didn't feel authentic to me.
* This book just didn't get to me emotionally, and it really should have, with the concepts of a widower mourning his wife and his friend who had been so in love with him for many years. It felt superficial to me. I have the feeling this would have been better as a Harlequin Presents--with a healthy helping of drama to give it that powerful zing. Or maybe if someone like Nalini Singh wrote it, someone who can bring on the emotional intensity.

Final Verdict:

I was disappointed with this book, and that makes me sad, because it had the kind of hero I would love to read more about. The good thing is it was a short book. Now I can move onto other books in my tbr pile. Onward and upward!




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Texas-Sized Temptation by Sara Orwig

Texas-Sized Temptation by Sara Orwig

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I don't read that many books where I think the hero needs to grow up and stop being a big baby. This is one of them. I mean, really? You are sick of your dad meddling, so you refuse to get married this year, no matter what. So you will shoot yourself in the foot and spurn a billion dollar inheritance just because Daddy Dearest is too bossy? Don't get me wrong. I'm all for independence and being your own person. But this guy was taking it way too far. Especially when you nearly let the woman you love slip through your fingers because you don't want Daddy telling you what to do. When you take it this far, you are still Daddy's Little Tool.



I guess it's obvious I didn't think much of the hero, Jake. I didn't. He was immature, spoiled, and rather shallow. The best thing he could say about Caitlin was that she was beautiful and he wanted to make love to her. I guess that's a bee in my bonnet. I think women would like to be known as more than just physically attractive, beautiful and sexy, and for a guy to spend most of their time with them in activities other than trying to seduce them into bed because she's beautiful. I'm not saying he's not a good guy, but I think he was lacking for a 34-year-old man. I could see a guy who was in his twenties being more like Jake.



Caitlin was a decent heroine. I respect her fears of casual relationships and jumping into intimacy, consider she was an illegitimate child abandoned by both parents. I think she played a dangerous game with all the flirting and deep kisses and heavy petting she was trading, half the time not entirely certain she wasn't doing it because she wanted him to sell her back her Grandmother's house, and the other half because she was wildly attracted to Jake. And yet, knowing he wasn't interested in a commitment, you keep going out on overnight dates with the guy? Do you think he wants to play chess and Dungeons and Dragons all night?



This is one of those romance books that lasted 60 pages longer than it needed to. I felt like the same scene kept playing over and over again.



"Sell me the house."

"Maybe. Ask me in a few days. Kiss me."

"Okay." Hot kisses. "Now will you sell me the house?"

"I'm not ready to say. Go out with me and let me spend lots of money so you can see what a bigshot I am. (so I can get you in bed.)"

"Okay, but I'm not going to bed with you." More kisses.

"Are you ready to sell now?"

"Not yet. You're so beautiful." More kisses. "Go out with me again."

"Okay, but I won't sleep with you."

"Whatever. I totally respect you. (for now anyway.)"



And then it was...



"I love you but Daddy won't let me play in my own sandbox."

"Well I don't want to play with you with no commitment."

"But I loves you."

"But Daddy won't like it. Can't make Daddy angry, can you? I need a guy who's not afraid of Daddy. Bye."



That didn't exactly work for me. This wasn't a bad book, but I think like I little more story in my romances than that, and a hero who acts his age.



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She's Having My Baby by Raye Morgan

She'S Having My Baby! (Having The Boss'S Baby) by Raye Morgan

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars


I had a little trouble keeping my attention on this book, although it's a good story. I was impressed and kind of surprised at the level of depth to both Kane and Maggie's emotional issues. Maggie was severely verbally abused by her father, and ended up marrying a man who wasn't much better. People thought she was sadly mourning her dead husband, but she was glad he was gone, not that he was dead, but that she was free. She wants a baby, but not the controlling husband or man to go with it, so she gets artificially inseminated, and the clinic accidentally inseminates her with her boss's sperm, which he deposited as a way to encourage his friend with cancer to bank his sperm. Kane finds out before she does that there is a woman out there who is pregnant by him. This book is actually part of a series in which the various women in the business Kane owns are the suspected baby momma by Kane. He has sleuthed his way through his list, and came up empty. The real woman is still a mystery when this book starts. I didn't read the other books, but I did get this one because I liked another book I read by this author. I may go back and read the others, if I get my massive tbr pile under control.



As I went off tangent, let me explain what Kane's issues are. He has two significant ones: his father was an alcoholic who died in a car accident while driving drunk. Kane never really got over losing his father, and I think it gave him a fear of loving someone in case they are lost. Secondly, he married a gold-digger, who tried to manipulate his affections for material gain. After extricating himself from this bad marriage, he swore never to marry. He assumed he wouldn't be having children either, but when he finds out that his child is out there, and it's like a piece of him is lost, and he knows he has to find his child. He's happy that he finds out that his efficient assistant Maggie is his baby's mother. At first, he's just going to support her and be on the edges of her life, but his sister-in-law gets him to see that he could end up losing contact with his baby if its mother remarries. He then proposes a marriage of convenience. Yeah, we know how those turn out, at least in romance novels.



Kane takes longer than Maggie to get his emotional baggage together. It's a bit frustrating the way he blows hot and cold. I felt bad for Maggie. Thankfully, Kane does get a clue.



This was a touching and heartwarming book. It was short, and it took a while for me to get engaged, but I think that's about my state of mind when I started reading it. This was my second book by Raye Morgan, and I'm happy to read more of her backlist. People who enjoy a quick romance in the vein of Harlequin/Silhouette, more on the traditional side, would probably like this one.



Overall rating: 3.5/5.0 stars.



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Millionaire Under the Mistletoe by Tessa Radley

Millionaire Under the Mistletoe by Tessa Radley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


While I enjoyed reading this book, it didn't really set me on fire. However, it was a pretty good Christmas-themed romance. I sort of got the feeling that I was marking time while I read it. I'm not sure why this was the case.



This book is set in England, and both the hero and heroine are British, but it didn't feel British to me. It was weird, because they talked about British things, such as the M6, London, Harrods, Boxing day, but it felt American to me. It's very weird, I guess.



What I liked about the book:



*The heroine was a trained-chef and caterer. I liked seeing her do her magic.

*Callum was a pretty nice guy, although he admitted that he initially just felt lust for Miranda. He did come around very quickly, and I respected that he broke off his relationship with the woman he was going to marry for business when he realized he was lusting after Miranda.

*Miranda had qualities I admire: hard-working, devoted to her family, resourceful, pragmatic.

*I liked that both the hero and heroine were close to their families.

*The idea of Miranda and Callum essentially being star-crossed in that Callum had Miranda's father arrested from embezzling money from him, which led to his suicide was an interesting direction. Callum initially re-connected with Miranda to make amends for his part in her father's suicide, although her father was culpable.

*I liked the scenes of Christmas celebration in both their families.





What I was not happy with:



*I don't like how their relationship started with a hookup in the kitchen. There didn't seem like there was more between them but strong sexual attraction. I would have liked to see more of a connection before they got physical. Miranda essentially thought of their encounter as a one-night stand. That's not my personal preference when it comes to romance stories.

*Miranda's brother and mother got on my nerves. They were way too dependent on Miranda. Her brother was constantly hitting her up for money, and instead of taking responsiblitiy for himself, he depended on her to bail him out when he got in trouble. Miranda's mother was running up bills she couldn't pay for, and relying on Callum's generosity. This just put more pressure on Miranda. I did like that Callum really was supportive to Miranda, and helped her to foster independence in her mother and brother.

*Miranda called Callum a liar a few times, when he insisted that her father was guilty. It offended me because I think it's wrong to call someone a liar unless you know they are truly an untruthful person. Callum never gave off that vibe. She even persisted in this after they were emotionally involved. I could understand why she didn't want to believe badly of her father, but she was in love with Callum, and he had no reason to lie about it.



Ultimately, I never got deeply involved with this story. I like to be sucked into a book and forget about everything else. This book didn't do that for me. But there was not an issue with the writing, we just didn't form a love connection. However, if a reader wants a quick, well-written Christmas romance that has some modern, sophisticated elements, I think she would like this book.



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