Sunday 17 January 2016

Miss Fortune series by Jana DeLeon

I picked up the 1st 3 books in a box set for free. Or maybe 99cents. Regardless, the box set is now 99 cents and the 1st book is free on Kindle. Go get it.

CIA assassin goes into hiding in Sinful, Louisiana, and  she's completely out of her element. She unwittingly teams up with a couple of cute little old ladies to win the after-church-race-for-the-banana-pudding, and I haven't stopped laughing yet.

In spite of a few spelling and minor grammatical errors sprinkled throughout, and a few awkwardly written sentences, they are more than worth it.

Definitely an improvement over the last box set I tried reading. Each book so far is one week full of so much actionable conflict that I'm tired just thinking about it. Maybe a little  because I can't stop reading it.

Bottom line: I'm on book three, and I don't plan on stopping. I will even get book six at its higher price because I know it will be awesome.

The Worth series by Mara Jacobs

I got a 3-book box set cheaply via Bookbub.

I quit halfway through the second book. They were okay, and the writing isn't bad, but for some reason I found them a bit boring, and after a while I realized that I didn't really care much about the characters so I moved on.

It took forever for anything to happen.  Lots of filler. Not a lot of action or conflict.

Bottom line: it's probably okay if you're in the mood for slow and easy, and it was definitely better than a lot of the fluff I've been reading. If it's still free or cheap, decide for yourself, but if not, then please see what I moved on to:

The Miss Fortune series.

Wednesday 6 January 2016

BMBR: Almost in Love by Kylie Gilmore

This was a freebie via Bookbub. I haven't finished it. And I probably won't.

It's a Big Bang Theory-esque plot where the nerdy (but hot and has some money) thinks that the artsy chick with pink hair, and who lives across the hall, is super hot.

What it doesn't have is actual intelligence or hotness.

This version came with a prequel novella (Almost Dating) on how the characters first met, and it ends with them kissing in the building's laundry room. That should have been it, right there. Great short story, maybe not in writing style, but it has all the elements from introduction to denouement. I left there thinking, "great, and they live happily ever after!" Or, at least, imagining that they do.

In Almost in Love, I'm expecting the Guy to get the Girl by being his charming, nerdy self, but the Girl ends up being embarrassed by him, and then the Guy gets the part of the Pirate King in the local theatre, and suddenly the Girl thinks that he's hot and she wants him. Badly. (So does every female and gay man around.) And the whole time (at least as far as I've read) the Guy is thinking back to the other time in high school when he was in a play and his girlfriend thought he was hot until the play ended and then it turned out that, lo and behold, he's just a nerdy Guy, so she dumped him, and the Guy is worried that the current Girl is going to do the same, and the whole time I'm screaming in my head, "Dude! Don't change who you are just to get a Girl who's embarrassed by you! Find the Girl who thinks it's cool that you own a Fro-Yo shop and that you like to dance around in a cow costume for the kids! Because she is going to KEEP being embarrassed by you unless you're the Pirate King!"

I couldn't stop screaming that, so I gave up on the book because if it was a Girl trying to change herself for a Guy, I would hate that story too.

Tuesday 5 January 2016

Monday's Muse 2016-01-04

https://k12.thoughtfullearning.com/resources/writingtopics#Grade 5

Creepy crawly things.

John Saul, Dean Koontz and Stephen King can run with this. And, they're making a killing at it, too (or maybe that's a hopeful writer's assumption).

So, they are actually prepping the grade fiver for success!

Sunday 3 January 2016

BMBR: Come by Becca Jameson

According to the bio at the end of the novel, which, yes, I reached, but no, I probably shouldn't have, I read that Ms Jameson was an editor for years before writing her own novels. She wasn't a grammar editor. At least, I hope not. Maybe it's different when you write your own--you maybe can't see the errors--but wouldn't you therefore have an editor?

Or is this one of many in a long line of "BDSM is really hot right now, so pump them out, and don't worry about using the wrong "your" (and weirdly enough, in this book it wasn't a case of some one writing something like "your running really fast" (the common error), it was more like, "hey, is that you're pencil?") or their or spell that crinkly stuff under your heroine's dress "tool" on one page, and "toulle" on the next page. No one will notice because no one who reads BDSM romance would know the difference." (The tool/toulle error may be from another book, but I don't think it matters.)

Yeah, I take offence to that. Sure, I'm not expecting all of my sex-laden romance to be Giller-prize material, but for the love of my sex life, comma faults really interrupt my foreplay, and I find that really distracting. I'm correcting errors instead of being turned on.

And sometimes I need to read about hot sex, which gets me all hot and bothered and ready to go for when the kids are finally in bed and we're so tired that there is no way either of us has the energy for an hour of actual physical foreplay.

And I know what you're thinking: if I have time to read, wouldn't I have time for actual physical foreplay?

[Snorts.] No. This is what I do when I'm snuggling with the rugrats while they watch Paw Patrol ad nauseum before bed. You know, instead of doing the dishes or cleaning the bathroom.

But I digress, so back to the book review.

Girl meets guy, guy introduces her to his BDSM lifestyle while protecting her from a stalker. It was a freebie from Book Bub.

It wasn't horrible, and I did read it to the end, but now that I think about it, I don't remember actually ever feeling like I should drag my hubby down the hallway for a good tumble.

Bottom line: this one made me realize that just because you got it for free does not mean that you have to read it.