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Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

An Arranged Marriage – Romance in Texas – Susan Fox

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Susan Fox writes romances set in Texas ranch country, with rich rancher and a woman with some Cinderella characteristics. Her novels are empathetic and make us feel like we’re right with the characters, that they are real people with real emotion. I enjoy almost all her novels and An Arranged Marriage is quite good. It simply is not one of her best.

Allison is the orphaned daughter of a well-off, upper crust banker and lives with her smarmy uncle and kind aunt. Allison is almost too good to be true, kind and generous with her time, volunteering at church and hospital, plus lovely to look at and a gentle, sweet person. At least that’s her exterior. Inside she’s a rod of steel although that’s been mostly hidden before our story opens.

Blue pulled himself up from nothing by hard work and is now rich. Years ago Allison’s uncle tried to cheat him out of his ranch; fortunately Blue had help from his former boss and was able to keep his ranch, in time for a massive oil find. Now Blue wants a respectable, beautiful wife and kids. He wants Allison.

Allison’s uncle wants her to marry Blue to keep the family bank solvent and Allison is somewhat attracted to Blue by himself but reluctant to marry for such reasons, finally convinced to do so for her aunt’s sake. But she is quite determined not to have sexual relations with Blue until there is some emotional commitment on both sides.

The story proceeds with Allison doing her best to learn to love Blue and to get him to love her. She is determined for a happy marriage cemented with love, then kids while Blue is terrified to acknowledge – either to her or to himself – that he loves her back and his goal is to have kids – and her – now. Blue has to confront his belief in his own inadequacy which he does by shoving his past in Allison’s face, pushing her into sexual intimacy and demanding she get pregnant.

Blue and Allison’s romance happens as counterpoint while her aunt and uncle’s marriage disintegrates. Blue and Allison’s story happens in their hearts and minds. All the action occurs with other people.

An Arranged Marriage is a gentle, soft book, but not an exciting one nor is it one of Susan Fox’s best. I got my copy from Thriftbooks and Amazon has paperback in stock too here. Harlequin offers their eBook, which you can read online or via the Glose app, here.

3 Stars

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The Highest Stakes of All – Sara Craven Romance More or Less

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I’m almost embarrassed to admit liking this book. Our heroine, Joanna, along with her card shark con man father, is on the South Coast of France when Vassos brings his yacht in harbor. Joanna and Vassos see each other across the harbor and are immensely attracted.

Sadly for her, Joanna’s dad likes her to help him out by acting all seductive in skimpy dresses when he plays cards and although she doesn’t like acting like a vamp she goes along with him. Unfortunately the last person she helped con was Vassos’ nephew who lost his fiancé and job because he lost so much at cards. Now Vassos is here for revenge.

The Highest Stakes of All is not your typical strong-alpha-obnoxious-domineering-male meets sweet-virginal-girl story although both characters fit those molds. However Joanna is a bit of a gambler herself since she NEVER – repeat NEVER NEVER NEVER – says ANYTHING when her dad (posing as her “uncle”) stakes her on his last hand with Vassos. Anyone who would sit there and watch without screaming her objections in this situation is herself a gambler, wouldn’t you say?

Things progress as we expect. Vassos has his minions take Joanna to his private Greek island (just how many Greek gazillionaires are there and how many private islands are there?) where she is to wait his pleasure. Of course Joanna is a virgin and has a very painful time when Vassos semi-rapes her (i.e., Joanna doesn’t fight him but she isn’t willing either).

The twist that makes The Highest Stakes of All work is that Vassos has a young daughter, probably four, who lives on the island in a separate house with her dead mother’s former maid as nanny. Vassos doesn’t believe she is his daughter and so rejects her (huh??) and does not allow Joanna or anyone else to go there, since after all he provides food and shelter and that’s enough for this unwanted child. Joanna ignores his edict and spends time with his little girl.

Eventually Joanna brings father and daughter together whereupon Vassos realizes he has behaved criminally and summons Joanna’s father to come get her. Dad comes with his new money-grasping wife who informs Vassos he owes and owes a LOT and tells Joanna not to worry because she can surely find a husband at the country club back in America, and if she is pregnant, well, that’s easily solved. This scene makes the book.

Here’s why this whole nonsense works for me:

  • Joanna has a lot of character and isn’t willing to go along with Vassos even after she comes to love him.
  • Vassos isn’t completely a jerk. He treats Joanna with great care and consideration, if you ignore the basic situation. He tracks down his nephew and forces him to admit the truth, that Joanna did not do anything beyond flirt and cajole.
  • The interplay among the characters develops along with considerable emotion.
  • The little girl adds rationality to the story and imbues Vassos’ complete turnaround.
  • The side characters, especially dear old Dad and nasty wife, are great and add considerably.
  • There are some almost-funny scenes, especially with new step-mom.

Here’s what sticks in my throat and won’t allow me to give this more than three stars:

  • Rape is ugly.
  • How do you fall in love with someone who forces you to sleep with them? Who cares how kind and gentle or good looking or engaging he is?
  • Joanna was semi-complicit in the whole let’s-dupe-the-rubes con.
  • Joanna never said NO WAY when dear old dad put her up as a stake

But the biggest negative is that as soon as Vassos abducts her, he tells Joanna that he will sell her on to someone else and make a hefty profit from her. Folks, that’s human trafficking, sex slavery and it’s obscene. Probably Vassos doesn’t mean it, but he said it and Joanna believed it.

So let’s go with 3 stars. I’d say 5 for the sheer fun, but subtract 1 for rape and 1 for sex slavery.

I borrowed the paperback from our state library lending system. Amazon has the comic book version of The Highest Stakes of All and the omnibus His Delicious Revenge which includes this novel and the standalone paperback is available on Thriftbooks. All Amazon links are paid ads.

The Tycoon’s Mistress – by Sara Craven, Harlequin Presents Romance

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So… what’s wrong with this picture?

  • You’re English, a tax accountant, in Greece on a holiday and meet a guy on the beach.
  • You really (REALLY) hit it off with him. He’s kind, compassionate, fun to talk to and you really (REALLY) like kissing him.
  • But… You know nothing about him. Does he have a family? Is he or has he ever been married? Where does he live?
  • You think he is a fisherman who may augment his livelihood by judicious flirting with ladies on holiday and/or dancing in the hotels. But you don’t know because he kind of deflects these questions.
  • You don’t have his phone number but it apparently is possible to get in touch by phoning the local tavern.
  • You’re good at your job. You don’t know what he thinks of working wives.
  • He asks you to marry him within two weeks of meeting.
  • You say yes.

OK, I get it. He’s wonderful. But you really don’t know anything about him. Where will you live? Should you keep working? Does he in fact chat up ladies for a living as you suspect?

Our heroine first says yes, then when she returns to pack up at her hotel on a neighboring island gets a call from her uncle that her dad is in the hospital and likely to die. Now that she’s away from Draco (our gorgeous hero) and they haven’t been necking for a couple hours she’s gotten cold feet/common sense/a chance to step back and reassess the situation. Now here comes the big, huge, horrible mistake: She leaves for England and Daddy without talking to Draco!

Just as in so many Harlequins, a simple phone call could save tons of heartaches. A simple “Hey Draco. I’ve got to go home. Dad’s in the hospital in a bad way. And it’s probably a good idea to take a breather here and give us a week away from necking/each other. OK? I’ll get in touch in a week.”

Now let’s look at it from Draco’s perspective. (Sara Craven does a great job letting us see his thinking, albeit after the fact.)

  • This really (REALLY) hot blonde thinks you’re super. Super as in super sexy, super easy to talk to, super (REALLY REALLY) super kisser.
  • She’s the real thing too. You investigated her (because after all she could simply be a better schemer than all the others) and of course, why not? She truly is a tax accountant – not a profession whose adherents are known for doing crazy spontaneous things like falling in love with a guy they met on holiday and marrying them two weeks later. And her dad was rich until his sugar doll wife conned him out of every penny.
  • On the other hand you told her nothing about yourself and she might even suspect you’re a part time gigolo.
  • You’ve never talked about the future in any concrete terms. You know, stuff like where you’ll live, what you’ll expect from her (Black dresses and five paces behind? Get good internet and work from home? Cook and clean in a shack with or without electricity and running water? Two kids or eight?) Right. All those pesky detailed things.
  • You are falling in lust/love and she is/was a virgin and you really should get married some time and she said “Yes!”
  • So you organize a big hot party in your mansion (oops, you forgot to tell her that) and call all your friends and family (oops, not about them either!) and wait for her to come back from getting her stuff in the fancy hotel just across on the other island.

That’s where it went south for me. Would you seriously organize a party before she returns? Or would you possibly have just a niggle of worry that she might, oh, I don’t know, get cold feet or need a bit of reassurance or even want you to come home with her to meet her family?

The engagement party bust is not a trivial incident either but a major plot point. Draco was humiliated and fell apart emotionally when he finally twigged she took off.

Now if you’re a Greek tycoon whose expected wife failed to show you do the obvious thing. You track her down to her family home where you immediately take over all her father’s debts and issue a nasty ultimatum: Come sleep with me for three months or else! Dad’s going to be broke, your housekeeper will be homeless and, and, oh gee, gosh, well, you’ll be miserable and guilty because you didn’t help dear old Dad when you could. Yes, we now have a Miffed Greek Tycoon Seeks Revenge story.

This is the second plot point that fails. Heroine Cressida tells herself that she can find a larger apartment and move Dad in, that he has his pension so he isn’t completely destitute, that she has a decent salary. But when Draco summons her to appear before him she meekly agrees to play unmarried shack-up mistress kissy face for three months instead of telling him to go pound sand. She has very little monetary motivation to agree to his humiliating proposition.

Dad will be more comfortable in his old home. Yes. But ask yourself. Would you accept mistress-hood in exchange for your dad being more comfy? I don’t think so!

That leaves the other possible reason for Cressida to say “yes”. She loves Draco and regrets taking off without a word, especially when she finds out that he truly was heartbroken and embarrassed. So our guilty-feeling heroine agrees and trots off to sunny Greece, leaving dear old Dad behind to grieve himself into an early grave.

In the last part of The Tycoon’s Mistress author Sara Craven explains that Cressida has a hard time trusting and particularly trusting love, due of course to Dad’s disastrous second foray into marriage. That’s nice but not terribly pertinent. Even people who trust easily might find it overwhelming to marry someone after two sunny holiday weeks.

Craven could have played up Cressida’s cut and run – without any notice – which, while possibly understandable, was mean. There was no reason she couldn’t have at least left a message at her hotel or called the taverna where she stayed on the second island. Draco was justifiably angry about being stood up.

The other unsatisfying thing about the story is that Draco never did the formerly-nasty-Greek-tycoon-with-loving-bride grovel. I missed that!

Sara Craven wrote many marriage of convenience novels and a few of the tycoon-meets-innocent-girl type and I find her MOC novels are far more satisfying and better written. (She combined both tropes in a couple stories, notably Wife in the Shadows, and those were also very good.) The Tycoon’s Mistress lacks the dramatic tension of the MOC A High Price to Pay or the deeply emotional characters in MOC Wife Against Her Will. Nonetheless, I enjoyed The Tycoon’s Mistress and followed Cressida and Draco love affair and was sad to reach the novel end.

3 Stars. I’d give it 4 except the two characters fell into misery because they didn’t bother to get to know each other, too busy necking!

All Amazon links are paid ads. I borrowed this through the Archive.org and there are copies on Amazon and Thriftbooks as of October 2020. Please note there is a comic book version but I read and reviewed the original text story.

A Place of Storms – Married Forced by Blackmail in France

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At first I was not terribly impressed with Sara Craven’s A Place of Storms. It didn’t affect me the way some of her other books do, but after a bit I found myself wanting to re-read and I enjoyed the story more each time I read it.

A Place of Storms is one of Sara Craven’s earliest Harlequin Presents novels, written in 1978 and has her trademark strong emotion and well-done characters. English Andrea and older Frenchman Blaise are interesting people we want to know although the character development is not quite as strong as in Craven’s later novels.

Andrea is used to helping her flighty cousin Clare avoid richly deserved trouble and now Clare wants her help to avoid a marriage of convenience to an unknown distant relation, Blaise. Blaise is blackmailing Clare with her letters promising to marry him, to force her into marriage even though they never met. Clare now is engaged to a wonderful man and doesn’t want any part of scandal and certainly not a temporary marriage!

What neither Clare nor Andrea know is that Blaise is desperate to marry to secure custody of his nephew from his unscrupulous ex-fiancé – who is the boy’s aunt, greedy and heartless, unwilling to marry a poor man or one with a scarred face.

Blaise lives in a crumbling chateau where every bedroom room leaks, the bathrooms are ancient and fussy and the furniture huge and is barely eking a living from his vineyards. Plus Blaise himself is scarred inside and on his face from the fire in the family’s former island plantation home that killed his brother.

Blaise isn’t a particularly attractive potential husband. Unfortunately for Andrea he is also not dumb. He researched Clare’s family before asking her to marry him and knows all about Clare, her father’s ill health and her cousin Andrea and knows immediately who Andrea is when she arrives at his chateau to retrieve Clare’s foolish letters.

Andrea is shocked to see the dilapidated state of the house and by Blaise’s intention to foist not just a marriage of convenience but a 5 year old nephew onto her cousin. She is terrified because Blaise is attractive and she recognizes the huge potential he has to hurt her emotionally. Blaise will use every trick and pressure possible to get his own way and confronts Andrea when he finds her going through his dresser, threatening endless scandal and publicity if she will not marry him. Andrea agrees, assuming that he is offering the paper marriage he offered to her cousin and that he stressed the evening she met him. Fortunately for our novel, he is intending and demanding far more, a real marriage in every way.

We now have the set up for a delicious romance: A man who is ruthless and determined to marry the woman who is determined not to lose her heart. But wait! There is still more! Sara Craven has three other characters that add complexity.

  • Alan is researching the Gallic wars and lives in the chateau’s gatehouse. He is the neutral character who is a friend to Andrea and not any threat to Blaise and Andrea’s marriage.
  • Five year old nephew Phillipe lost his parents and now must live with his scarred uncle; Phillipe is not a strong child, he is polite but timid.
  • His aunt Simone is nasty, vindictive and cruel, tells Phillipe stories about a distant ancestor who threw his wife’s bastard son out of the tower window and makes him frightened of his uncle Blaise, claiming Blaise will kill him for the non-existent insurance money. Andrea learns only after a week or so that Simone and Blaise had been engaged until Blaise was scarred.

The author hints that Blaise was disillusioned about Simone even before he got hurt in the fire, but Simone implies that she dumped him because of the scar. There is no love lost between them now. Simone tries her best to make trouble with Phillipe and trouble between Andrea and Blaise and even tries to drag Alan into the mix. She’s the arch-Other Woman and nasty.

The real story is how Andrea and Blaise end up in love. Craven only tells us through Andrea’s eyes so we don’t get a good idea how Blaise feels. He calls Andrea “his heart” or “his love” (in French of course) and gives her a beautiful nightgown for a wedding gift and tries to seduce her a couple of time but we don’t see many loving gestures or comments. In fact he’s mean and uses kisses and threatens forced seduction to punish Andrea. He tells her to obey him and threatens but does not do violence. Try to ignore these (thankfully) outdated elements and enjoy the story.

One indicator of a good story and great characters is that I want to put myself in there, to come up with what I would say to Blaise, how I would react. He has a nasty habit of threatening Andrea sexually, and claiming the high ground. For instance, when he is trying to seduce her Blaise says “be a little merciful. Don’t force me to take you like this.” Andrea should say “No one is forcing you Blaise. If you don’t want to feel like a rapist then don’t be one!” (He wasn’t raping her, but he was trying to gain a response Andrea didn’t want to give.) Or when he tells her that he didn’t offer her a paper marriage as he did to her cousin, Andrea should have reminded him that he did exactly that the first night they met, and he claimed he knew who she was at the time. OK, I’m splitting hairs here but some of these overly domineering types give me a pain!

Sara Craven creates a moody, atmospheric setting too, using the gloomy old chateau set in a gorgeous hilly region of France to heighten the tension. Andrea tries to brighten the place with lighter paints and fabrics while Simone uses the setting and old history to frighten Phillipe.

Overall, on second or third or fourth reading I have to give this one 4 stars. I got my copy from Thriftbooks.com and as of this writing Amazon has copies but it is not available on Archive.org.

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Hired by the Playboy and Unspoken Desire by Penny Jordan

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These two romances by Penny Jordan feature likeble characters facing echoes from their past filled with emotional bludgeons.

Gemma in Hired by the Playboy has rich, snobby parents with whom she has little in common. Years earlier she had made friends with Luke from the wrong side of the tracks, an older guy that she spent a summer sharing everything she had picked up about the construction industry and polite etiquette. Their summer friendship ended when she asked him to teach her how to kiss in case her brother’s friend should be interested. Of course that spawned emotional trouble for her!

Now Luke is rich and even her mother invites him to larger gatherings. Gemma never realizes that Luke had been on the edge of falling in love with her years earlier and believes Luke only tolerates her. Events progress, the two fall into bed and end up married.

Unspoken Desire is less believable from both a plot and an emotional perspective. Rebecca was in love with older 2nd cousin Fraser and when she was 18 Fraser’s bother Rory had an affair while his new wife was expecting twins and convinced Rebecca that she should take the fall with Fraser as the other woman. Of course Fraser was livid and full of contempt for Rebecca; she naively thought he’d realize that the story was a lie and that Rory was sleeping with Fraser’s girlfriend, not with Rebecca.

The action centers around Rory’s 8-year old twins whom Rory ignores; the only use he has for his children is if he can use them as weapons to hurt Fraser, the brother he hates. Eventually Fraser learns the truth about Rebecca and he and Rebecca end up married and with the twins.

Both novels are preposterous in terms of plot and both have over-the-top emotional stories. Yet they work. Author Jordan makes us care about these people and her excellent secondary characters.

For example, Gemma’s snobby mother and father are stereotypes, true, but Jordan makes them people we can visualize acting as these do. Little snippets give the story verisimilitude. For example, Gemma learned to ride as a child but when her mother realized the other students in her riding class were from families just like theirs – and not the country gentry – she lost interest in Gemma’s riding. Why spend the time and money to ride if it won’t result in social advancement? This is a good way to show us snobbery instead of telling us.

Rory, the twins and Aunt Maud are great characters in Unspoken Desire. Rory is a cad, selfish, uncaring, jealous, hating, but charming. The twins are alone, essentially abandoned by their parents and reliant on Fraser, Aunt Maud and each other for any friendship or caring. Jordan shows us how they act.

Jordan makes good use of sexual awareness that simmers just below the surface and gets in the way of the two main characters as they try to navigate through painful memories. In both books she allows the characters to come together; making love initially causes even more problems that eventually get explained away.

I’m going to give both books 3 stars for the emotional content.

A Scandalous Innocent by Penny Jordan

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A Scandalous Innocent combines an unusual plot and girl-meets-boy set up with enjoyable characters who connect emotionally with each other and with us readers. It made a nice change from a run of romances I’ve read the past few days that revolved around sex. This book revolves around people.

There are a few problems with the book, mostly due to the fact it is a Harlequin and thus short, with little time to develop a love affair with trust and commitment. There is little room to explore what could have been a rich plot.

Part of the plot confuses me. Lark is on trial in England’s High Court because her cousin Gary embezzled tens of thousands of pounds from his employer, then took poison and blamed Lark for the embezzlement, claimed she had blackmailed and coerced him. Lark is alone in the world, terrified and the case has gotten immense press coverage. Of course everyone thinks she is guilty.

I was confused because the case appears to combine civil elements – the former employer hired the prosecuting counsel – and criminal because Lark faces prison if convicted. No one had to prove Lark was guilty, instead she had to prove her innocence. No one had to determine where the money went; Lark clearly didn’t have it. There should have been a paper trail, bank deposits or if not then some evidence she used drugs or gambled or sent money to a numbered account. Author Jordan wrote a romance, not a crime story but the disconnects bothered me.

It turns out the prosecuting counsel, James Wolfe, recognized Lark’s innate innocence and convinced the employer to drop the case and asked his mother to hire Lark as her assistant. Of course he and Lark fall in love and we have the usual passionate encounters mixed with distrust and fear.

I particularly liked the tension between Lark and James. She wants to love him but he terrified her at trial and Lark thinks that James believes her guilty. We can put ourselves in her shoes and imagine how it would feel to be in love with someone we think believes us conniving, cruel and vicious, greedy. Of course James could have cleared this up right away, and in fact he tried but Lark couldn’t bear to listen

Jordan complicates the plot with spoiled Charlotte who informs Lark that James and she are engaged. Add that to the mix and we have potent distrust and fear.

The romance rings true despite the melodramatic backdrop. We can see how James would see Lark and her response to him and we can enjoy and sympathize as they learn to trust each other and allow love to overcome past distrust and fear.

I would like to see Jordan rewrite this story outside the Harlequin format confines. She hints that Lark’s aunt and uncle – the embezzler’s parents who took Lark in when her parents died – may have been unscrupulous with her inheritance. Lark remembers the large house and car, lovely antiques and her aunt’s avaricious disappointment when Lark took her mother’s heirloom dresser set with her when she left home.

I would have reading James’ point of view on the romance and the legal case. The romance from the man’s point of view would have gone through the evidence, or lack thereof, and compared Gary’s deathbed accusation with Lark’s obvious lack of money, the absence of lovers’ trysts, few phone calls, and he could have dug into the blackmail claims. How exactly could Lark blackmail her cousin?

Lark suspects Gary had a rich man’s wife as his mistress and that he might have embezzled for her sake. Again, we don’t have any idea what happens to this other lady or whether Lark is right. As a longer novel, with more resolved plot and side stories and more time to develop the characters this could be a wonderful treat.

As a Harlequin novel A Scandalous Innocent suffers from the brevity, the focus on sexual attraction and the hurried brush off of the underlying crime. A sentence says it all: “Despite the time they had spent together, it seemed almost as though they had no point of contact other than as lovers.” It is still quite a good story and I enjoyed reading it.

4 Stars

The Trusting Game by Penny Jordan

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Christa has turned the fabric business she inherited from her great aunt into a profitable design enterprise and she is a member of her local chamber of commerce where Daniel Geshard is speaking this month about his motivational course that trains people to trust their coworkers. Christa wants none of this; after all her best friend married a con artist, supposedly a motivational coach, and got taken to the cleaners, eventually to suicide.

After Daniel’s talk Christa stands up to ask him for his success metrics, can he prove that his course is effective? He can’t, instead challenges her to attend and see what she thinks afterwards. The other chamber members pressure her to accept and off we go to the Welsh mountains where Daniel will take her canoeing, mountain hiking and more, putting her in positions where she must trust and rely on someone else.

Daniel and Christa are instantly and deeply attracted, and given this is a Harlequin, end up as lovers. There are a few hitches, mostly around Christa’s unwillingness to trust Daniel, until Christa goes back home and Daniel overhears one of the chamber members taunting Christa that Daniel romanced her in order to get a successful outcome. Christa doesn’t believe this but Daniel thinks she does, etc., etc., etc. Typical romance where the two characters really don’t know each other well and are quick to take offense or to run off.

I’ve experience with business programs of the day, having gone through enough to know that while they often have merit, the quick and easy courses lack substance and the more difficult ones require long term commitment and usually fail because they do not result in change. It was easy for me to share Christa’s skepticism!

Even though I appreciated Christa’s point of view, she became whiny and obsessed with being too frightened to believe that Daniel had anything more in mind than a quick seduction and course success. That made the story tedious and hard to see why Daniel bothered with her.

The Trusting Game is one of the semi-smutty Harlequins, where the plot and story revolve around instant physical attraction. Will they sleep together? How and when? I’ve read a couple other Penny Jordan romances that have a bit more story, more developed and more likable characters. This one was mediocre.

2 Stars

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Smoke in Mirrors – Romantic Suspense by Jayne Krentz

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Jayne Krentz writes romantic suspense, sometimes with a paranormal twist and sometimes without. Smoke and Mirrors is a “without” story and it’s one of Krentz’s better novels with vivid characters and a twisting plot.

Leonora is packing up her dead half-sister Meredith’s apartment when Thomas Walker stalks in and accuses her of helping Meridith embezzle 1.5 million dollars from the college endowment his family funded. Despite this unpleasant beginning the two feel a solid connection, and when Leonora receives a posthumous email from Meredith telling her how to collect the money, she contacts Thomas.

Thomas’s brother, Deke, lost his wife, supposedly to suicide about a year earlier. Deke is convinced someone murdered his wife although there is no real evidence, and Thomas is helping Deke reluctantly. Once Leonora arrives that changes because Leonora provides a link between Meredith and Deke’s wife. The brothers team up with Leonora to discover the truth.

It looks like everything is wrapped up, we have the killer and his accomplices, but look! It’s only page 210 and we have another 53 pages to go. Right about now a minor character wafts through the room and all we suspense readers know what that means. Even with the huge tell from the page count we still have to read through to the end to learn how Krentz ties up all the loose strings.

The romance between Leonora and Thomas is intense and fast with plenty of sex scenes and a recurring bad double-entendre. None the less Krentz does her magic and we care about the characters. I found Deke and his love interest, Cassie, more interesting than Leonora, and Leonora’s ex fiance, the obnoxious English professor, was all too realistic.

Smoke in Mirrors is a very fast read, figure 3 hours or so, and it grabs you and takes you along for the ride. Aside from the sex scenes there is very little vulgarity and one blasphemy.

4 Stars or a bit less

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Deception Cove – Paranormal Romance on Rainshadow Island by Jayne Castle

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Deception Cove is the second novel in Castle’s series set on the psi-drenched Rainshadow Island on her alien planet Harmony. As with the two other series novels I read, The Lost Night and The Hot Zone, the plots revolve around the extraordinarily strange Preserve at the island’s center and three rocks that the Sebastian family brought from Earth to Harmony. These rocks are dangerous when combined with the alien paranormal structures in the Preserve and someone has somehow taken them from their safe cache.

The three novels also have similar character interactions, women with very strong psychic gifts and very little money or social standing who collide with handsome, sexy men also gifted with strong psychic profiles. The pairs team up to save the island from the dangers in the Preserve.

Alice North is having a very bad year. A year ago her Marriage of Convenience ended when her husband tried to murder her; her ex husband ended up dead in his home; her ex mother in law is convinced Alice murdered her son and has stalked and harassed her, getting her fired and evicted several times over. Her luck is now changed as Drake Sebastian needs her help finding those pesky rocks and getting Rainshadow under control. Things progress emotionally and the two end up in love.

Deception Cove is quite enjoyable. I read nine other Jayne Castle Harmony novels and Jayne Krentz Arcane novels in the past week and find they tend to blur together. The plots vary but the romantic leads stay about the same, differing only a little in personality. That said, I wouldn’t have read so many books by the same author if they aren’t so darn good!

Deception Cove feels less immediate and I didn’t feel as invested in the characters. The romance feels rushed. The setting also is less vivid to me. I’m familiar with Rainshadow after reading the other novels so the spooky fog and small town vibe are there, just not compelling. I think this sense of not-quite-as-good is more because I read so many Jayne Castle books recently than due to any fault of the author, so I’m not reducing my rating.

Be aware Deception Cove has a couple more sex scenes than most Jayne Castle books and there is a little vulgarity.

4 Stars

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Evidence of Sin – English Romance by Catherine George

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Ever since I finished reading all Betty Neels’ romance novels I’ve been looking for another author whose books I could enjoy as much as I have the great Betty’s. Catherine George writes novels quite different from Betty’s; there are no rich Dutch doctors; the girls are independent; the protagonists sleep together, usually before marriage and the characters all assume this is normal. More important are the similarities. Both authors create characters that feel real, with immediate situations that are personal, not remote (even when unlikely), and both use setting, food and clothes to enhance their stories.

Evidence of Sin sounds terrible and the cover doesn’t help, does it? It is actually one of the best of the 8 Catherine George novels I read in the last week or two. Chloe Lawrence is gorgeous, tall, red hair, lovely figure, great bone structure; in fact she worked as a top model for several years. Now she’s living at home in the country while working as a PA for a pharmaceutical firm. Piers Audley is very successful lawyer, well-known for defending high-profile clients.

Piers finds Chloe grief stricken outside her home on New Years eve when she finally accepts her love is futile at the double engagement party for her brother and sister. Piers is intrigued although it’s too dark to see her, then gobsmacked when he meets her later indoors. He is determined to sleep with her, eventually admitting he wants more, he wants to marry her. Things go swimmingly for a while, until her sister’s wedding when Piers finds Chloe locked in the arms of her love and he also doesn’t know that Chloe was struggling to get away and that she now realizes she loves Piers.

This is the conflict. Will Piers eventually listen to Chloe? Possibly not. Things get straightened out pretty fast when a kidnapper grabs Chloe for ransom. (Yes, the plot is far fetched. Relax.) Chloe rescues herself. Tears, kisses, declarations of love, peace offerings ensue.

Given the plot’s silliness why did I like this so much? (Yes, Betty Neels’ novels often have silly plots too. Most romance novels do.) I’m not sure exactly but here’s a short list:

  • Chloe is independent. She’s no one’s doormat and she’s mightily offended when Piers acts like he owns her.
  • Chloe feels like someone I could like, despite her figure and looks!
  • Piers is a bit too pushy in terms of expecting sexual relations for my taste, but he cares about Chloe and shows her he is attracted to more than her looks.
  • I like the family dynamics. Even the hero-worship for the big stepbrother feels real.
  • Chloe views her modelling work as just that, a job, and is delighted to leave it when she has saved enough money. She never let her celebrity affect her common sense.
  • Author George put the situations and people together in a way that we care about them. Somehow they feel right in front of me, not something distant I’m viewing on a stage. I don’t know exactly how some authors do this, but if you pay attention to books you like vs. those you don’t, I expect you’ll see the same thing. Successful books put the people right there with you.

Evidence of Sin is a romance novel, meant to entertain. It’s written well and as noted the characters are quite well done as are the settings and accouterments.

4 Stars

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