The Wedding Trap
(The Second Service series, Book 1)
Adrienne Bell
Adrienne Bell, publisher
Fiction, Romance
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Since the day she was born, Beth Bradley's been second fiddle in her own life. Her older sister got the better grades, the better school, and
the perfect husband, while Beth got B's, a state college, and a string of losers exploiting her insecurities... as her mother never lets her forget. It's no wonder she took to inventing the perfect date, a
ruse that's fooled everyone save her best friend Isobel. But now Isobel's getting married, and with a jealous ex on the scene, Beth's gotten herself into trouble (again.) This time, the imaginary "Charlie" won't be able to save her... or will he?
CIA agent Alex Tanner's after a rotten apple in the department. Nobody knows who he is or what he looks like, but they know that he's meeting one of his associates at a
wedding. There's only so much snooping Alex can do without an invitation, and thus far he's coming up empty. Then a wedding guest catches him breaking into a suspect's
car. Only instead of going to the hotel staff or police, she blackmails him: her silence in exchange for a brief appearance as someone called Charlie.
It was only supposed to be a five-minute deception, just enough to save face with Beth's family. But it quickly becomes more than that - much more. As lies accumulate
and sparks fly, the most important and dangerous case in Alex's career threatens to destroy everything.
REVIEW: I downloaded this on my Nook during a freebie window, and read it in roughly two hours. Like most romances, it keeps its promises simple: a gorgeous
woman, a handsome man, some convenient insecurities that have kept them both single, and a quick, steamy tumble from Total Strangers to True Love. On those fronts,
The Wedding Trap delivers. Beth, however, is a little too clumsy and insecure, with problems that feel more like they come from a checklist than a genuine life lived beyond
the confines of the story. Body issues: check. Overbearing, disapproving mother: check. Drinking her way through life's stresses (though never once considered an alcoholic): check. Alex also feels more like a stock character than a genuine person, a stormy-eyed
lethal weapon in a suit whose protective instincts find a perfect match in Beth, who perpetually needs protecting. As the story progresses, Beth starts developing a backbone,
but it doesn't quite flow naturally, given how easily intimidated and generally awkward she was at the start. As for Alex... well, he's pretty much perfect from the get-go, so the only thing he needs to do is open a crack in the wall around his heart. Some of the peripheral characters also felt shunted to the
side, their subplots unresolved; I'd expected more of a climax to the jealous-ex issue, not to mention more from Beth's friend Isobel, whose wedding plans are significantly inconvenienced by
international espionage. But the whole thing reads fast, and there's a decent level of steam to obscure some weakness in the overall plot. It's a competent little
romance, if not quite my cup of cocoa.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Scoundrel for Hire (Adrienne deWolfe) - My Review
Concrete Evidence (Rachel Grant) - My Review
Evidence of Trust (Stacey Joy Netzel) - My Review
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Dragons Love (Stephen Parlato)
Dragons Love
Stephen Parlato
Simply Read Books
Fiction, YA Picture Book
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Hummingbirds, jewels, books, butterflies... Dragons love the world, and everything above, below, and within it. Author and artist Stephen Parlato explores the world as dragons see it, a place full of unexpected wonder.
REVIEW: With simple, short verses and amazing illustrations, this is a gem of a picture book. Parlato's illustrations create dragons out of birds, bugs, fish, flags, and more, an imaginative visual treat that invites lingering. Young or old, any dragon-lover should make room for this one on their bookshelves!
You Might Also Enjoy:
Dragon (Jody Bergsma) - My Review
Tell Me a Dragon (Jackie Morris) - My Review
The Dragons Are Singing Tonight (Jack Prelutsky) - My Review
Stephen Parlato
Simply Read Books
Fiction, YA Picture Book
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Hummingbirds, jewels, books, butterflies... Dragons love the world, and everything above, below, and within it. Author and artist Stephen Parlato explores the world as dragons see it, a place full of unexpected wonder.
REVIEW: With simple, short verses and amazing illustrations, this is a gem of a picture book. Parlato's illustrations create dragons out of birds, bugs, fish, flags, and more, an imaginative visual treat that invites lingering. Young or old, any dragon-lover should make room for this one on their bookshelves!
You Might Also Enjoy:
Dragon (Jody Bergsma) - My Review
Tell Me a Dragon (Jackie Morris) - My Review
The Dragons Are Singing Tonight (Jack Prelutsky) - My Review
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Public Domain Books
Fiction, General Fiction
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Orphaned Pip, brought up by the cruel hand of his sole surviving sister and her long-suffering blacksmith husband Joe Gargery, was often told how miserable a child he was and how poor his prospects were. It never truly bothered him until the day he was invited to the estate of the reclusive Miss Havisham and met the old woman's ward, the lovely Estella. It hardly matters to Pip that she's a cruel, capricious young lady, whose first meeting left him in tears as she insulted his low birth and coarse hands. It hardly matters that a blacksmith's apprentice cannot hope to court, let alone win, someone of her prospects and stations. From that moment on, he determines he will become a gentleman, even if he doesn't yet know how. When, some years later, a lawyer arrives to inform him that he has great expectations - an unknown benefactor of prodigious means, who wishes him to move to London and raise himself in society - it seems the answer to his prayers... but dreams and reality are two very different things. Pip will need more than luck and money to make his fortune and his future.
REVIEW: I suppose, yet again, my general lack of education shows here. Widely considered a classic, this story nearly bored me out of reading it several times. Dickens dances around meanings and words in a way that had me wishing he'd encountered an editor as firm and swift with the switch as Mrs. Gargery. Granted, he was writing for a different audience, with different literary expectations and societal understandings, than exists today. In his time, perhaps, it wouldn't have seen impossibly outlandish that a woman would devote her entire adult life to nursing a single grudge, warping the lives of those around her and manipulating them to ridiculous extremes and degrees, or that the entire adult population of a small village would devote itself to demeaning one young boy. Pip's unreasoning obsession with becoming "uncommon" and reaching the unreachable heart of a lady who openly admits she has none might also have evoked less eye-rolling and tooth-grinding, as might his utter passivity through most of the story. I will also grant that Dickens evokes some distinctive imagery and characters, though the latter often lean toward caricatures (with a few racial stereotypes thrown in for good measure.) But it just plain takes too long in its meandering, painstaking setup. Dickens also fails to engage me in Pip's life, beyond the people he meets: for all that he's a blacksmith's apprentice, I barely saw any of the forges, and when he's partaking of his gentlemanly education and pursuits, I'm given no real clue as to how he's actually spending his time or what he's really doing. (Again, though, this may be a problem stemming from me being a twenty-first century American.) It isn't until well past the halfway point that the pace picks up and the threads of Pip's long, verbose journey begin to come together in a most melodramatic manner - and Pip finally realizes he's been an unlikable ingrate. The conclusion itself is just too neat to be believed. In the end, while I enjoyed some of the descriptions, and Dickens has a way of creating memorable characters (in the supporting cast and around the periphery, if not in the starring role), I found the storyline too contrived, Pip himself too hard to care about, and the whole thing just too long and slow for me to enjoy.
You Might Also Enjoy:
A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens) - My Review
Assassin's Apprentice (Robin Hobb) - My Review
The Name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss) - My Review
Charles Dickens
Public Domain Books
Fiction, General Fiction
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Orphaned Pip, brought up by the cruel hand of his sole surviving sister and her long-suffering blacksmith husband Joe Gargery, was often told how miserable a child he was and how poor his prospects were. It never truly bothered him until the day he was invited to the estate of the reclusive Miss Havisham and met the old woman's ward, the lovely Estella. It hardly matters to Pip that she's a cruel, capricious young lady, whose first meeting left him in tears as she insulted his low birth and coarse hands. It hardly matters that a blacksmith's apprentice cannot hope to court, let alone win, someone of her prospects and stations. From that moment on, he determines he will become a gentleman, even if he doesn't yet know how. When, some years later, a lawyer arrives to inform him that he has great expectations - an unknown benefactor of prodigious means, who wishes him to move to London and raise himself in society - it seems the answer to his prayers... but dreams and reality are two very different things. Pip will need more than luck and money to make his fortune and his future.
REVIEW: I suppose, yet again, my general lack of education shows here. Widely considered a classic, this story nearly bored me out of reading it several times. Dickens dances around meanings and words in a way that had me wishing he'd encountered an editor as firm and swift with the switch as Mrs. Gargery. Granted, he was writing for a different audience, with different literary expectations and societal understandings, than exists today. In his time, perhaps, it wouldn't have seen impossibly outlandish that a woman would devote her entire adult life to nursing a single grudge, warping the lives of those around her and manipulating them to ridiculous extremes and degrees, or that the entire adult population of a small village would devote itself to demeaning one young boy. Pip's unreasoning obsession with becoming "uncommon" and reaching the unreachable heart of a lady who openly admits she has none might also have evoked less eye-rolling and tooth-grinding, as might his utter passivity through most of the story. I will also grant that Dickens evokes some distinctive imagery and characters, though the latter often lean toward caricatures (with a few racial stereotypes thrown in for good measure.) But it just plain takes too long in its meandering, painstaking setup. Dickens also fails to engage me in Pip's life, beyond the people he meets: for all that he's a blacksmith's apprentice, I barely saw any of the forges, and when he's partaking of his gentlemanly education and pursuits, I'm given no real clue as to how he's actually spending his time or what he's really doing. (Again, though, this may be a problem stemming from me being a twenty-first century American.) It isn't until well past the halfway point that the pace picks up and the threads of Pip's long, verbose journey begin to come together in a most melodramatic manner - and Pip finally realizes he's been an unlikable ingrate. The conclusion itself is just too neat to be believed. In the end, while I enjoyed some of the descriptions, and Dickens has a way of creating memorable characters (in the supporting cast and around the periphery, if not in the starring role), I found the storyline too contrived, Pip himself too hard to care about, and the whole thing just too long and slow for me to enjoy.
You Might Also Enjoy:
A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens) - My Review
Assassin's Apprentice (Robin Hobb) - My Review
The Name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss) - My Review
Saturday, April 4, 2015
Bunnicula (Deborah and James Howe)
Bunnicula
(The Bunnicula and Friends series, Book 1)
Deborah and James Howe
Avon Camelot
Fiction, YA Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Shaggy mutt Harold and his friend, the well-read (if over-imaginative and excitable) tabby Chester, live the good life with their human family, the Mortons... until the night a stranger comes home from the movies with them. At a showing of Dracula, the Morton boy Toby found a small black and white bunny in a shoebox full of dirt, apparently abandoned, with an indecipherable note around its neck - a note that, thanks to Russian wolfhound ancestry, Harold recognizes as an obscure dialect from Transylvania. As odd as that is, even more peculiar things soon start happening in the household, causing Chester to suspect that the newcomer is no innocent little rabbit, but a full-blown vampire.
REVIEW: On one level, it's easy to see why this is a childhood classic. Though there's an overall silly air to both the concept and the characters, particularly in Chester's overreactions and attempts to protect the Mortons and Harold from the doom in the bunny cage, there's just enough of a creepy vibe in its Dracula-inspired story and imagery to give youngsters a bit of a chill - not much, but just a touch. On the other hand, it's showing its age around the edges, and not just when one Morton boy spends an evening listening to records. The narrative (written by the dog Harold) and the dialog get a little too ridiculous at times. It's also hard, especially as an adult reader, to reconcile several inconsistencies. The Mortons are supposed to be a smart family, with a professor father and lawyer mother and children willing to use a dictionary to tackle classics like Treasure Island, but they're remarkably stupid about pet ownership. Harold's favorite treat is chocolate, which he's fed quite often and in considerable quantities. Chocolate's cumulative toxic effects on canines has been known for some time, at least as far back as this book dates, and feeding it to pets is not something a children's book really needs to push. The Mortons' treatment of Chester also shows a distinct lack of knowledge about cats, and they're a bit clueless about rabbit care as well. (But, then, the ostensibly intelligent parents took an eight-year-old child to a night showing of Dracula... maybe they're not supposed to be as bright as narrator Harold thinks.) Ultimately, I wound up with a three-and-a-half star rating. While the premise is great and the story generally fun, I just found a few too many problems to completely enjoy it.
(And, yes, I'd intended to review this one at Halloween, but the book was hiding from me; Easter seemed the next most appropriate holiday.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Night of the Gargoyles (Eve Bunting) - My Review
Redwall (Brian Jacques) - My Review
Ghost Witch (Betty Ren Wright) - My Review
(The Bunnicula and Friends series, Book 1)
Deborah and James Howe
Avon Camelot
Fiction, YA Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Shaggy mutt Harold and his friend, the well-read (if over-imaginative and excitable) tabby Chester, live the good life with their human family, the Mortons... until the night a stranger comes home from the movies with them. At a showing of Dracula, the Morton boy Toby found a small black and white bunny in a shoebox full of dirt, apparently abandoned, with an indecipherable note around its neck - a note that, thanks to Russian wolfhound ancestry, Harold recognizes as an obscure dialect from Transylvania. As odd as that is, even more peculiar things soon start happening in the household, causing Chester to suspect that the newcomer is no innocent little rabbit, but a full-blown vampire.
REVIEW: On one level, it's easy to see why this is a childhood classic. Though there's an overall silly air to both the concept and the characters, particularly in Chester's overreactions and attempts to protect the Mortons and Harold from the doom in the bunny cage, there's just enough of a creepy vibe in its Dracula-inspired story and imagery to give youngsters a bit of a chill - not much, but just a touch. On the other hand, it's showing its age around the edges, and not just when one Morton boy spends an evening listening to records. The narrative (written by the dog Harold) and the dialog get a little too ridiculous at times. It's also hard, especially as an adult reader, to reconcile several inconsistencies. The Mortons are supposed to be a smart family, with a professor father and lawyer mother and children willing to use a dictionary to tackle classics like Treasure Island, but they're remarkably stupid about pet ownership. Harold's favorite treat is chocolate, which he's fed quite often and in considerable quantities. Chocolate's cumulative toxic effects on canines has been known for some time, at least as far back as this book dates, and feeding it to pets is not something a children's book really needs to push. The Mortons' treatment of Chester also shows a distinct lack of knowledge about cats, and they're a bit clueless about rabbit care as well. (But, then, the ostensibly intelligent parents took an eight-year-old child to a night showing of Dracula... maybe they're not supposed to be as bright as narrator Harold thinks.) Ultimately, I wound up with a three-and-a-half star rating. While the premise is great and the story generally fun, I just found a few too many problems to completely enjoy it.
(And, yes, I'd intended to review this one at Halloween, but the book was hiding from me; Easter seemed the next most appropriate holiday.)
You Might Also Enjoy:
Night of the Gargoyles (Eve Bunting) - My Review
Redwall (Brian Jacques) - My Review
Ghost Witch (Betty Ren Wright) - My Review
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
March Site Update
And now the year's officially 1/4 over... where did it all go?
I've archived and cross-linked the previous five reviews on the main site.
Enjoy!
I've archived and cross-linked the previous five reviews on the main site.
Enjoy!
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