Is anybody out there??? Good.... because I have a question!

I've always enjoyed reading romance novels but in the last month I've started reviewing them.  I've learned a lot.  I was completely unaware of the erotic romance sub-genre and I'm VERY excited to have found that!  In the process I've started seeing the common themes.  You may have read last night's post about "the secret baby" theme.  I think it's funny how some people absolutely refuse to read certain themes and some will only read others.  

I know there are a million themes but I'm curious what is your favorite/least favorite theme and a book that you've read representing why it's wonderful (or why you needed to pour Draino in your eyes after reading it).  

I look forward to hearing from you!

Why do we love to hate a good "secret baby" story?

A better question would be:  Why are there so darn many "secret baby" stories.  

I've been catching up on my Susan Mallery novels and going through the Fool's Gold series.  I recently finished Almost Perfect.  Since these books are not brand new I thought that rather than sticking to reviewing each one of the books individually I could give a "if you liked this, then you'll like that" list.  So I start digging through some books I've read to find some that were similar and suddenly realized the popularity of the "secret baby" theme.  I hadn't really given it a lot of thought before but then I start finding discussion threads that are dedicated to how much they hate the "secret baby" theme.

Reasons to love it:

If a couple can overcome that, even in fiction, anything is possible.

Reasons to hate it:

Why didn't they use a condom?  I want to love the hero/heroine of my romance novels and in order to love them I really need them to be intelligent people.  I would hope that most intelligent people could find their way into a small foil packet with only a minimum of complications.

Could a real person ever really get over that?  The fact that the baby was "hidden" or kept away from someone was somebody's fault.  Maybe the dad was an ass or Mom was being secretive or only wanted the baby for herself... who knows but someone did something REALLY bad to get to this point and it involved a child.  I don't know if people in the real world would ever get over that.

Even if they can get over it there is going to be some serious "discussion".... I read romance novels to have fantasy and escape the "discussions" of reality.  Every plot is going to have to have some sort of conflict but this one seems to be an invitation for more conflict than I want to deal with in one book.

Regardless... a good author can overcome any of these problems.  (Condom broke, they WERE stupid when they were 16, someone came between them or there was confusion and the information wasn't passed along, understanding and forgiving people can overcome anything, space aliens abducted the main character etc...)  I can see the reason why the theme would be tedious but I look at it as a good author/bad author problem and not a problem with the theme in general.

So I think if you are picky with your authors then you can feel safe with the "secret baby" theme, but until you know the author you might want to start with a safer topic.

I feel safe with Susan Mallery and she did not disappoint in Almost Perfect.  I'm really loving these books.  This is already a long post so I'll give the basic information quickly:

• Third person, his/hers POV
• She is a best selling mystery author and he is a former tour de France contending cyclist turned contractor and wind turbine manufacturer.  (I don't know I just went with it... it sounds worse when it's all on paper together.)
• Obviously there is a secret baby.  He is actually 11 so not so much a baby.  The theme is handled well.
• This is the 2nd book in the Fool's Gold series and I think that while it may not be strictly necessary the book would be less enjoyable without having read the first in the series.
• My only real complaint is the same as the first:  there is a LOT going on in this little town.  Lots of tragedy and drama and extremely successful people but no one seems to notice that it's not a typical small town.
• I would definitely recommend!

If you like this then you might like other "secret baby" contemporary romances told in third person with multiple POV such as:

1. Still the One by Robin Wells:  Katie gives up the baby she and Zack had together though she's never told Zack she was pregnant.  The baby is now 16 and finds Zack while searching out her birth parents, Zack obviously then finds Katie.
2. The Girl Most Likely To... by Susan Donovan:  Kat gets dumped by her high school boyfriend right before she tells him about her pregnancy on the same day some other horrible things happen to her, her parents kick her out of the house so she runs away and changes her name.  20 years later she comes back to show off her new amazing self and how wonderfully she turned out only to find out that her ex-boyfriend/father of her child has known about their son for some time and has been searching for them and is not happy.
3. Simply Irresistible by Rachel Gibson:  On the day Georgeanne leaves her fiancé at the alter without so much as $10 to her name she has a one night stand with hockey star John only to be sent on her way with a plane ticket to her hometown the next day.  She cashes it in to get her started on a new life. 7 years later they run into each other again only for John to discover he has a daughter.

Life before Nook

Just a quick funny before I work on a review.
I love romance novels but I will admit that I don't proudly display them on the shelves in my living room.  While romance occupies the majority of my time.... my shelves are full of what people "expect" me to read.  My romance novels (that haven't been completely torn apart, given to a friend to read, or thrown out because I wouldn't ever read them again) are on the plastic shelves I used in college in my bedroom closet.
Needless to say they are not necessarily organized in there.  I was looking for a certain book tonight so I could comment on it in a post I'm working on and this is what the floor of my normally tidy room now looks like.
Many people don't like the idea of an electronic reader and being a person who loves books, I understand.  But WOW... my Nook sure does make it easier to keep track of my favorites!!

Well slap my ass and call me Judy! A review of Susan Mallery's Chasing Perfect

No seriously... knock me over with a feather!  Susan Mallery has been sitting in front of me all this time and I had it in my head that I didn't like her books and I don't know why!  Chasing Perfect was exactly what I had been looking for.  I feel like I've been in such a dry spell I'm so happy to know that I have a whole back list of books I can read.

Let me give you the highlights:

• Third person with his/hers POV
• Straight up contemporary romance with no suspense, vampires or bizarre plot twists
• Strong and physically perfect male "lead".  He is an athlete and a superstar with the name to match his image "Josh Golden" and she is just the kind of heroine I like:  strong but feminine, never whiny, real and attractive in a realistic way.
• Good sex scenes but coming off a couple of erotic romances it's hard to tell if the mild let down on the steam factor was due to less than exceptional "romantic" moments or a little desensitization.  (Mild spoiler alert here:  Since the first time they are together he does her up against the wall I'm thinking the latter is more likely.)

What I loved:

• A lot of romance novels try so hard to build in a point of tension between the characters that a problem that could/should be easily solved becomes a huge issue in the relationship.  Eventually it just feels like the characters are whiny and spoiled or just annoying brats.  I felt like Josh and Charity were actual grown ups who handled problems the way most real people (out of high school) would.
• Funny writing.  Some good lines:  
• "She did not want to shake his hand, given the symptoms she'd already experienced.  Actual physical contact might lead to heart failure, or something even more embarrassing."
• "Pia, don't try to be funny."  "I don't try.  It just happens spontaneously.  Like a sneeze."  "Get a tissue and hold it in."
• "He's like a son to me.  I'd like to see him settle down with someone special."  Charity would like to see him naked, but she wasn't going to mention that.

What I could have done without:

• I understand in fiction we sometimes have to have a little suspension of disbelief but I was starting to wonder if everyone in this town was cursed.  They didn't seem to know it either.  Everyone had horrible things happening to them but they were all convinced of how charmed their lives were.  In trying to keep from any sort of spoiler I'm going to do a basic run down of the more prominent characters' problems without naming names:  child abuse, abandonment, neglect, runaways, had a "fall" leaving a child crippled, friend died, cancer, husband died in war, father of a child died in war, husband died in car accident, estrangement, more estrangement, embezzlement, watched a friend die in accident, crash left permanent physical damage.  There may be more.  But seriously, it was like all of this was in the background and it wasn't a big deal.  I just wondered how much more bad stuff could happen to any of these people!!!

In the end... I LOVED this book.  I think Susan Mallery is great and if this review has lots of spelling errors in it it's because I'm ready to finish writing this so I can move on to the next in the series!

It could have been worse. It could have been longer.

I guess it's not a good sign if the best thing you  can say about a book is that it wasn't too long but I was always told "If you don't have anything nice to say.... don't write a blog."  Or something like that.  I never was good at doing what I was told.

The Doctor's Baby is not a new book but I hadn't read it because I didn't like the cover or the title.  It sounded/looked like the contemporary equivalent of anything with Fabio on the cover.  I don't have anything against those but they just aren't my cup of tea.

I have read Cindy Kirk before and enjoyed the two books I did read:  When She Was Bad and One Night Stand (both of which I would recommend).  But based on the title and cover art I didn't have extremely high expectations of this book:  The Doctor's Baby.  It started off OK but the heroine just seemed to get wimpier as the book progressed.  She HAD been through a lot in her life but I just had a hard time respecting her.  I wanted her to have some fight in her but everything she had been through made her want to crawl into a corner.  I felt sorry for her but I didn't really think she would pull through it.  She just made me feel sad.  Also, I thought she was a bad mom.  She went back to work maybe two days after leaving the hospital with her premature son and left him with babysitters and then would go out afterwards to have some "me" time.  I'm all about "me" time but not when your baby is 4 weeks old, you're a single mom, and you've already worked for 12 hours that day! 

I don't really want to give the details (my bare minimum will be contemporary romance written in third from his/hers POV) because I don't think it's worth reading.  I think I would have not finished it except there wasn't a lot left.  I wouldn't waste your time on starting this one unless you are looking for a book that you won't mind putting down to clean your house.  DON'T let this be your example of Cindy Kirk.  DO read the other two I mentioned above.

A note on butt plugs....

Just finished reading Playing the Field by Sophie Oak and Chloe Lang.  I don't think I can review it.  I'm not a prude.  I mean my blog's title is a tribute to my vibrator and alcohol.  But.  Oh.  My.  God.  That was waaaaaaaaaay out of my league!

So I don't feel like I can review it as a romance because I think of a romance as something a little more traditional... one on one.  This was something..... different.  1, 2, 3 and sometimes 5 men at a time and not the one on one happy ending that one would expect of even erotic romance.

There were butt plugs and anal sex and spanking and submission and group sex and leg spreaders... holy crap.  I learned a little about BDSM and female submission and all sorts of alternative lifestyles.  I also learned that I have a hard time keeping up with who belongs to what body part in group sex scenes.

So again, I don't feel like I can really judge it on the same rules as I do what I normally read so I'll just give my basics:

• Written in third person with multiple POV, seriously, many multiple POV and angles and... um... orifices.
• Attractive, successful woman (who has body issues that you don't really get into until the middle of the book) and multiple alpha males/professional athletes.
• While I may be saying it's not even an erotic romance... technically it is:  story line focuses on a love story (just not a "normal" one), characters meet early on and there is a happy ending.  Several happy endings.
• Not for the faint of heart.
• Not to be read at work unless you want your employees to ask you if you brought a fresh pair of panties.  True story.

For what it was I would give it two thumbs up but I think that would be inappropriate but I think I'm too embarrassed to say what's actually pointing upwards, but apparently there are 5 of them.

A review of Playing Dirty by Susan Andersen

I was so excited when I saw that I had a new Susan Andersen to read.  There's really only one book of her's that I've gone back and re-read but she is definitely one that I'm never disappointed with.  Playing Dirty was not an exception.  In either sense.  I wasn't disappointed, really, but I'm not going to be reading it again.
It was all very expected.  This is the third book in a series and the last one came out in July of 09.  I'm glad she released the third because there were things left hanging that I needed a conclusion for.  I did not re-read the first two in the series before I read this one and I'm glad I didn't because it felt very much like the first book.  There were certain places that I felt like names, descriptions and jobs had been changed but the plot was the same.  Of course there are differences and this is often my complaint with a series but 1.  I felt like I had "been there, done that" and 2.  I want the fantasy of romance but I want it to be believable and I just have a hard time believing that these three friends really go through such similar experiences on the road to love.


What you might want to know:

Written in third person with his/hers points of view and also the POV of the "bad guy".
Contemporary romance with some mild adventure/suspense thrown in but that doesn't consume the plot of the book.


Good Parts / Bad Parts

• If this was the first one of the series I probably would have liked it a lot more, it just felt a little redundant.
• I liked that she was an average size for a real person and was gorgeous and guys loved her curves.  I liked, even, that she was so insecure about herself because it made her feel real.  I felt like it got old after a while.  OK, her Mom thinks she's fat, she went to fat camp, she was the "fat girl" in high school.  Can we move on?
• I had an issue with the language sometimes.  I want people to write like they talk and so phrases like "to make him see she in no way disregarded his declaration" would make sense for the character because she was so high brow but when she also used phrases like "that she would give her left boob to have..." it made the more verbose parts less believable.
• Best quote from the book:  (after a comment on her apartment's color choices)  "We have uteruses-- they give us magic color sense."
• If you've read the rest of the series you need to read this one because there is some closure.  I would recommend, at the very least the first book, so by default I would recommend this one.  **Don't read them all back to back!**

I love wine!

Wine enhances the romance novel experience.  And the TV experience.  And pretty much everything.  That is all.

These are a few of my favorite things....

I'm working on trying to find a good way to compile some sort of list of "if you like blank, then you will like blank".  I'm sure there's a great way to do it and I'm sure I'll be struck with devine intervention.  Until then I thought I'd do a quick run down of some of my current top 3 favorite authors.

Jennifer Crusie
Why:  She's smart.  She's hysterically funny in a dry sort of way.

What is her writing style:  Almost always a less than physically perfect woman and by that I mean a REAL person that most women can relate to and generally speaking a REAL man.  Are they all beefed up quite a bit?  Sure!  It is a romance novel, after all.
Favorite book:  By far and away Agnes and the Hitman.  (This was written with Bob Mayer.) Love, love, love it!  I don't know if I have one that I don't like although Fast Women depresses me a little because I want fantasy and that was just a little bit too real world for me.

Rachel Gibson
Why:  She's just fun and sexy.  Well written and the perfect example of contemporary romance.
What is her writing style:  Anything you think you'd find in a contemporary romance  you will find with Rachel Gibson.  She has a lot of connected books.  Even the books that don't directly have a connection with another may have a connection through someone who knows someone and are mentioned in the book somewhere.  Most books either involve a hockey player or a law enforcement person of some sort.  Her men are high testosterone uber males and her women are generally (though not always) above average, attractive and glamorous.
Favorite book:  Depends on the day but probably See Jane Score when I want a sports story or Lola Carlyle Reveals All when I want a lighter Romantic Suspense.

Victoria Dahl
She hasn't been around as long as the other two but I've loved every book she's ever written in the contemporary romance style.  She also writes historical romance and if I ever decide to read one of those, she will be my first.
Why:  Sexy!  Her books are about as sexy as they get before you start getting close to erotic romance.
What is her writing style:  Almost always some sort of suspense but it's really light suspense.  Funny and super sexy.  Her women are hot, her men are hot and when I read it I think I must be hot too!  The sex scenes are great.  I was lending books to my mom for a while but felt funny about giving her my first Victoria Dahl.  The pages around the "good parts" were a little dog eared and I felt like me and the book had a bit of a relationship.
Favorite Book:  Her first contemporary romance:  Talk Me Down.  I loved that there was a "sex scene" with her vibrator and that the main character was an erotica writer.  I really loved that she published The Wicked West under the name Holly Summers which was her main character, Molly's, pen name and was the book the Molly was writing throughout Talk Me Down.

Holy Guacamole! Where are my cigarettes? A review of Indulgent Pleasures by Karen Erickson

I think my face might be red but I'm smiling!  This was my first trip into erotic romance and I LIKED IT!
I'm a contemporary romance kind of girl.  My favorite authors are probably Jennifer Crusie and Rachel Gibson.  If those two are filet mignon and lobster then Karen Erickson is a giant piece of chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream and hot fudge and chocolate sprinkles.  And then maybe some more fudge.
I don't know what I expected from Indulgent Pleasures.  I have to admit that I stumbled upon it and probably would not have bought it except it was only 99 cents.  I think I assumed that I'd get some great sex scenes but that I would be sacrificing the story.  But I got the story too!
The basic idea is:  She is a reporter, he is a famous former baseball player that is media shy (of course).  She is researching women's sexual fantasies and wants to try some out and he is a willing participant.  I'm sure you can figure out where the sex scenes come in.
If you like contemporary romance should you read it:  Yes!  Obviously if the sex scenes in a Susan Andersen book make you uncomfortable then don't, but if every now and then you want a little more but don't want to sacrifice the story then this is what you want.
What I'm looking for:

• Written in third person with multiple points of view.  For most of the book it was written with his/hers POV but towards the end we get the POV of two lesser characters.  I understood why it happened but it threw me off a little to get that only at the end.
• OK... cover your ears (or eyes) if you don't want "language" but it was actually a little refreshing to see a phrase like "her pussy was wet" instead of "her womanly center was glistening with desire".
• I may have been too turned on to notice but I'm pretty sure I didn't see the word "throb" at all.
• My only real complaint, and it's not really a complaint, was that it was long.  756 pages on my nook. I am often disappointed at the end of a book because I wanted more but I think I, personally, want something longer than 400 pages but shorter than this.  I am a girl with a limited attention span!  I was anxious to find out what happened!

In short, I will be reading more Karen Erickson and probably more erotic romance in general. Can I live off chocolate cake?  No.  I still love steak and lobster but I know where to get dessert now!