J. Bergin

The male lead is an asshole

Revisado: 02-15-22

Nora usually writes great male leads, but this guy is an insufferable jerk. I'm sure I'll read the third book, but I don't see this as a trilogy I'll read again in the future.

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Good fit with the series

Revisado: 01-17-20

While this is the 11th book in Joey W. Hill's 16-book "Vampire Queen" series, it was only the second book in the series I had read. (I started with #16, so clearly I have no respect for order!) I have read numerous other titles by this author and this one was very much in keeping with her style but also unique to the characteristics of her Vampire Queen series.

Hill writes BDSM stories. In the Vampire Queen series, the Vampires are (usually) sexual Dominants, and their human servants are (usually) sexual submissives. In the case of this particular book, the Vampire/Dominant is female, and the human servant/submissive is a very "alpha male" sort of guy. I think Hill handles the dynamic well and respectfully: while Selene (the Vampire) certainly wants to dominate Quinn (the human servant), she doesn't want to humiliate or emasculate him, and Quinn is happy to explore their power exchange as long as it takes place in generally private surroundings.

Since this was only the second book in this series that I had read, I wasn't really well-versed in the politics of the vampire culture that is central to the series. I got an up-close-and-personal view of it in this book and, well, it's pretty brutal. Very brutal. Exceedingly brutal. Because I wasn't as familiar with this series, I wasn't really expecting the Punisher-level of graphic violence that is presented here, and it caught me off guard. (The only thing that "rationalizes" the violence in this series is that vampires and their human servants have amazing and lightning-fast healing abilities. They can withstand a great deal of physical damage, and while the damage DOES hurt, they will recover from it fully within a few hours or a day as long as they have blood and rest.)

One quibble I had with the story itself is that I thought Quinn acted very foolishly in the final chapters. Despite many others (vampires and humans alike) telling him to not act, he put his head down and bulled his way on through, which then created a situation he had to be rescued from. Since human servants can live for three or four centuries, it's reasonable to hope he'll wise up over time. But in this story, he acted like a lunkhead.

This story is co-authored by Desiree Holt and is presented as a crossover, but I can't tell which series of Holt's this one ties into. I wish I knew, because I'd maybe be interested in checking out some of the others. Her website didn't really say.

Also, this book does have elements of M/M, so if that's not your cuppa, steer clear.

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DNF at Chapter 13

Revisado: 01-16-20

The narration of this story is fine. I found it by searching for titles narrated by Saskia Maarleveld. My issue with the story was the main female character and the plot.

Chelsea is a high school math teacher and a seemingly nice, likable woman with a slew of friends in her small town. What she doesn't have -- and wants to have -- is a boyfriend. But not just any boyfriend. She's on the hunt for the Perfect Guy(tm). In order to find the Perfect Guy, she pens a list of desirable traits. These aren't character traits, because she figures that's the easy, commonsensical part of it. No, she's focused on compatibility traits. For instance, since she works days, she wants a guy who also works days so they're on the same schedule. Also, she'd like to find someone who is more wine-and-dine rather than a beer-and-burgers kind of guy. And she doesn't want a man who has been married before because DRAMA! or someone who is obsessed with sports because BORING!

As you can imagine (since this is a romance novel), the man the author has picked out for Chelsea is none of those things. In fact, he doesn't really ring the bell for ANY of the items on Chelsea's list. Bash owns a bar. He works nights and weekends. He's all about the beer (naturally!) and the burgers, and he definitely likes sports. AND he's been married before. So clearly he is not the guy for her.

And yet they have chemistry. Chemistry out the wazoo. And they're friends, and have been friends for a while, going all the way back to high school. Because they're friends, Bash even offers to help Chelsea find her Perfect Guy. (After all, he knows a lot of guys.)

So far so good, right?

But the problem I had with the story was that as the pages turned, Chelsea became less and less likable to me with every reference to her precious list and her mythical Perfect Guy. I get the feeling that maybe her parents didn't have the greatest relationship, and that their incompatibility caused problems that trickled down and made for an unhappy home life for Chelsea as a girl. As a result, and in reaction, she's determined to do better, to be smarter and more selective. But rather than coming across as sensible, she just came across -- increasingly -- as immature and shallow and really rather self-centered.

The DNF moment for me came in Chapter 13 when Chelsea announced to Bash that she was thinking about having sex with him so she could get it over with and put it aside and then focus on her hunt for her Perfect Guy. I mean...let's get real. If a man I was attracted to said something like that to me, I'd probably say thanks-no-thanks and walk away. Since I DNFd the story at that point, I have no idea if he took her up on her so-magnanimous offer, but since he's the other lead character in the story, I'm assuming he did. And honestly, that just makes HIM less likable as well.

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I had a hard time with the heroine

Revisado: 09-30-19

I DNFd this book at chapter 17.

My biggest issue was with the heroine, River. She's 20, very nearly 21, and she struck me too often as being very immature. The author tries to explain that River has abandonment issues, and while part of me could accept that given her history, she just came across as too needy and petulant and self-pitying. "Don't leave me" is a constant refrain. The hero was annoying to me as well, although less so. He was attracted to River and his attraction to her shamed him and made him uncomfortable because she's fifteen years younger than he is, so his behavior with her was frequently brusque, rude, and angry.

I enjoy age-gap stories, and I appreciated that this one wasn't all-sex, all-the-time (as so many of them can be). While I listened to the book instead of reading it, the writing itself seemed fine and the narration was very good. My issue was largely with the characterization. I simply wasn't drawn to River and eventually found her very off-putting.

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Was surprised by how much I enjoyed this

Revisado: 10-07-18

I am not a big fan of sci-fi books. Movies, yes. Books, not so much. But I AM a big fan of R.C. Bray, and that's how I stumbled onto this title. l found myself really engrossed in the story from page one. I do agree that the AI Skippy is a bit of a deus ex machina, and his constant stream of snark can be a little annoying at times, but just when I found myself wishing the snark-scene would end, it would, and I was engrossed once more. I devoured all 6 of the main arc books in ten days, then went back and started Book 1 over again. The performance is great. If you're not familiar with Bray's work, let me reassure you that he doesn't merely read the text. It's a performance. Lots of emotion, inflection, and a smooth and easy transition between accents. And so funny! LOTS of laugh-out-loud moments. (I also own the e-book version of books 5 and 6, and yeah...Bray's performance really adds to this story for me. I'm not at all surprised that Columbus Day was nominated for 2018 Audiobook of the Year, although I didn't realize that when I purchased this title.) This is military sci-fi, and since I'm not a military person myself, nor a particular fan of sci-fi books, I was afraid at first that I would become disenchanted with the story as it wore on. Nope! I enjoyed the battle scenes and the camaraderie among the soldiers. The characters are appealing. Somewhere around Book 4, I began to think of Skippy and Joe as a version of Spock and Kirk. Skippy, of course, is way more emotional and irreverent than Spock, but he's got Spock's science, analytics, and logic. Joe, who comes up with crazy, illogical, "monkey-brained' ideas, is Skippy's perfect foil. And he's a really good guy. Hard-core decent, which is nice. Anyway. I was surprised by how much I liked this book and I definitely recommend it, even if military sci-fi is not your thing.

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Riveting

Revisado: 03-24-18

Fantastic story. Moves well, likable characters. Kept me interested the whole way. Surprisingly humorous. I'm not science-minded myself and thought my brain would glaze over in those parts, but that wasn't the case at all. I admired Mark's ability to break the problem down to base components and then "science" or "engineer" his way to a solution.

I listened to the audio book, read by R C Bray. Definitely now one of my favorite audio books ever.

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