Chao, Readers! I've Off for a Week!

It's that time of year, again - my University choir is going on its annual tour to various small towns, spreading joy and madness and song and glitter with our voices and handbells. I had a great time on my last two tours, and I'm looking forward to this one. I have my camcorder, I have my music binder, and I'm ready to go.

The downside of this is that I won't be posting any reviews on my blog for a bit more than a week. We leave tomorrow and don't return until May 3rd, and by then I'm usually exhausted from the crazy amounts of fun-ness (fun-ity?) I've had. However, as a parting gift before I'm whisked out of personal contact, I present a preview of the books I will be reviewing soon - that is, the books I will be reading on my trip for the long busrides. I chose these books from my TBR pile very carefully - I made sure to mix it up a bit to make sure if I was bored with one book that I wouldn't be stuck with the exact same type of book for the rest of the trip. This means I didn't bring books all by the same author, or all by authors I knew, or all in the same subgenre, so, without more ado:

The Book I'm Already Reading:
The Perils of Pleasure, by Julie Anne Long. But why are you reading this, you may be wondering, since you gave her debut novel such a spanking on your blog? Well, two reasons - 1) despite her short-bus characters in The Runaway Duke, Julie Anne Long has truly beautiful writing that I've found has been rarely matched in other romances, so I thought I'd try again on one of her later novels and 2) I won this novel in a contest so it was already on my TBR pile and I'm too much of a book whore to throw out free books. So we'll see how that goes.

The Historical By the Author I Know:
To Sir Phillip, With Love, by Julia Quinn. Truth be told, I'm a little worried about this one. Many readers consider Romancing Mr Bridgerton to be the peak of the Bridgerton series (even though I was wasn't entirely impressed with it), with the other entries going downhill from there. Also, while reading RMB, I quite disliked Eloise (and this is her book) because I thought her a shrill nosy hypocrite who will annoy the everliving shit out of her friends to get at their secrets but retreats in offense if anyone asks after her own. But who knows? Maybe she'll meet her match who annoys the everliving shit out of her and gives her a taste of her own medicine.

The Historical By the Author I Don't Know:
Untouched, by Anna Campbell. Campbell is a relatively new author on the scene whose debut novel Claiming the Courtesan caused a firestorm of controversy in the "does forceful seduction equal rape" department. I really can't comment on it, because I made a conscious decision not to read Claiming the Courtesan and I don't think I ever will. The story (hero falls in love with heroine, heroine leaves to start new life, hero kidnaps heroine and makes love to her under slightly less than romantically consensual circumstances, hero and heroine fall in love) frankly does sound rather repugnant to me and altogether not that interesting - so considering the size of my TBR pile I decided there's no point in bothering with it. But again, I can see how this could be one of those Taming of the Shrew is-it-abuse-or-do-they-both-need-it-to-be-better-people arguments.

However, just because one of her novels doesn't interest me doesn't mean I have to write her off altogether, and the plot of Untouched really caught me: hero has been trapped in his house since he was fourteen, has never touched or really spoken with a woman, and somehow has to learn to adapt to the heroine, who is suddenly chucked in there with him by hero's evil uncle to work off his "man needs." A virgin hero, you say? I've encountered too many Duke of Slut heroes to count these days so a story with a virgin hero always catches my attention. Plus, it got good reviews.

The Contemporary By an Author I Know:
Fast Women, by Jennifer Crusie. The last one of hers I read was Welcome to Temptation and it was a hella long time ago. It's time I caught up, wouldn't you say?

A Fantasy By an Author I Don't Know:
Lord of the Fading Lands, by C. L. Wilson. I started out a fantasy reader and then become a romance reader later - so I was intrigued by the book, as well as the crazy-good reviews it's been getting. There's always been something about immortal heroes that turns me off, somehow - I think I have trouble imagining how everyday troubles and problems and relatable angst could be experienced by a dude who's lived for a thousand years, but again - fantasy. Romance. Crazy good reviews. Also - thanks to a bizarre conglomeration of random luck that caused me to win several draws at once, I won the first three books of this series for free.

So, dear readers, even though you won't have new posts of mine to read for a while, at least you'll have an idea of what to look forward to once I get back. See you soon!