"Altered," by Jennifer Rush

The Protagonist: Anna O'Brien. Raised in backwoods New York with her workaholic single father, she likes to help out with his important work...
Her Angst: ...experimenting on four super-hot super-powered guys in the secret lab in his basement. Four super-hot super-powered guys who are not very pleased about being locked in that secret lab.

Secondary Characters:

Sam: The Super-Mysterious Love Interest One. He's so mysterious!

Nick: The Angry One! But he's got a Tragic Past!

Cas: The Dumb Blond! He's so cute but so stupid!

Trev: The Nonthreatening Bestie! He knows all of Anna's secrets!

Connor: The leader of The Branch, the super-shady outfit that funds Anna's father's research on Operation Hot Abs for Science.

Riley: Connor's second in command, who tracks the escaped subjects of Operation Hot Abs for Science.

Angst Checklist:

• Absent Parents
• Free Will
• Gee, Could There Be Ethical Implications to Keeping Hot Boys In Cages?
• Gee, Could There Be Ethical Implications to Being In Love with a Hot Boy I Help Keep in a Cage?
• Who's Your Mama Drama
• Abs For Great Justice
• Identity and Memory
• Mad Science!

The Tweets: I Live-Tweeted this little masterpiece here.

The Word: Well, I don't know what I really expected with this book. I picked up the ARC at last year's BEA because the idea of a heroine dealing with Hot Boys In a Science Lab sounded interesting.

And I pretty much got exactly that - Hot Boys in a Science Lab. And nothing else.

Anna is just an ordinary, everyday girl with a Mysteriously Dead Mother and a Secret Science Lab in her dad's basement. Imprisoned in that basement are four Desperately Hot Amnesiac Boys who have undergone genetic enhancements at the orders of Daddy's Totally Not Shady Organization, known as The Branch. 

Anna helps take care of the boys, who are being groomed and altered to become either a) super soldiers or b) the World's Most Expensive One Direction Cover Band. We have Trev - the Non-Threatening Happy One. Cas - the Dumb Blond One. Nick - the Angry But Damaged One. And finally, Sam - the Extra-Mysterious Love Interest One. Anna has been in love with Sam for five years and inexplicably reconciles this really well with the fact that she helps keep him and his bros in cages and doses them with happy gas once a week in order to perform non-consensual tests on them.

But it's all good because she also bakes them cookies and gets them library books. You know, almost as if they were people.

Everything changes when two head honchos from The Branch arrive with a small army of minions to take the boys away because this latest stage of the project is shutting down. Anna is distraught, and suspects the honchos are up to no good - but since her morality radar doesn't so much as beep at the idea of Underage Boys Being Experimented on in Glass Boxes, it's hard to tell whether her fears are legit or she if just doesn't want strangers taking her living Ken Dolls out of her Barbie's Dream Science Horror Basement.

However - surprise! Sam's not as helpless as they assume and he brutally kills eight minions before breaking the other boys out. Anna's dad grows a conscience in three seconds flat and helps them escape, and orders Anna to escape with them. Of course, Anna is still in True Love with Sam, so nothing as pesky as the mass murder of eight people will dim her Speshul Feelings for him, so she flees into the night with Happy, Dopey, Angry, and Love Interest.

There are a few glimmers of originality in this story, I'll admit. Apparently, before Anna started helping her father in the lab, Sam escaped a bunch of times and had to have his memory (and the memories of his bros) wiped each time, but not before leaving a series of clues tattooed and scarred on his own body (and on the bodies of his bros!) that indicate the coordinates of safehouses, the contact information of potential allies, and even the location of hidden evidence that might be enough to buy Happy, Dopey, Angry and Love Interest's freedom. These sorts of clues kept up my interest in the story, but only barely.

Because honestly? This book was like one, big, stinky pile of stale fan service. Oh gee, the boys have clues literally written on their abs that only Anna with her keen eyesight and a UV flashlight can detect?  Boys who all (with the exception of Angry Nick) adore and want to protect Anna because, hey, in between being drugged and gassed and poked with needles and having their memories erased and their rights infringed upon - she made them cookies! That counts for something, doesn't it?

None of the boys have any serious character development beyond displaying Their One Personality Trait. The Dumb Blond One makes Dumb Jokes. The Angry one acts Angry. The Happy One is Anna's sexually nonthreatening Bestie. Their abs and glutes have more dimension then their personalities do.

This all would have been bad enough if Anna had been anything more than the most empty and passive of Placeholder heroines.

Unfortunately, she's not. She spends the vast majority of this book tagging along with the boys and doing whatever they tell her to while trying desperately not to get shot at. She has no ambitions because leaving would mean spending a life without her Precious Boys. She has no moral identity until the plot demands it - she was happily complicit in the boys' imprisonment for five years and the book never examines this nor does she feel a shred of guilt for it. She makes no decisions, performs no actions that are not ordered, influenced, or motivated by a man - either the boys or her father. 

And guess what? She is one of only three female characters in the entire novel, and the other two get shot in the head mere pages after their introductions, and one of those is a minion who isn't even named.

The characters are empty ciphers for Blatant Wish-Fulfillment, the sci-fi worldbuilding is laughably shallow, and while the clues and puzzles are slightly clever, it's not enough to support an entire novel, much less a series!

If you like the idea of the Mad Science of Frankenstein and The Bourne Identity mixed with the troubling gender dynamics of Twilight, then this is your book.

If that last sentence terrified the living crap out of you, than do what I wished I'd done - and avoid this novel entirely.
D+

"Seize the Fire," by Laura Kinsale

The Chick: Olympia St. Leger, Princess of Oriens. Born and raised in exile in Britain, she's at the mercy of her evil uncle who seeks to marry her in order to secure the throne for himself.
The Rub: She has a plan to introduce democracy to Oriens to prevent further terrible monarchies, but to do that, she'll have to place her trust in the famous Captain Sheridan Drake - who has some dark secrets of his own.
Dream Casting: Kristen Schaal.

The Dude: Sheridan Drake. The famous war hero returns from the Navy to discover his deceased father bankrupted him and left his own fortune to be dispensed of at the discretion of his ex-mistress - who happens to hate Sheridan's guts.
The Rub: When an incredibly gullible princess sitting on a priceless jewel collection comes to him for help, he figures separating her from her gems will be easy pickings - but what if she separates him from his heart?
Dream Casting: Wes Bentley.

The Plot:

Sheridan: OMG I HATE THE NAVY, THE OCEAN, AND EVERYTHING! *tries to kill commander, trips an saves everyone*

England: HOORAY!

Olympia: Please help me save my country from the oppression of monarchy!

Sheridan: Please help myself to your jewels? Don't mind if I do!

Olympia: Hey, while you do that, why not introduce democracy to the sailors on our ship! *sparks mutiny* Why not reveal Sheridan's secret identity to a totally trustworthy sailor whom I've never met! *nearly gets shot* Why don't I start screeching about my jewels in front of some escaped convicts? *nearly gets raped*

Sheridan: Wow, you totally fell out of the Stupid Tree and hit every branch on the way down. It's a good thing you're hot.

Sheridan and Olympia: *stranded on desert Island*

Sheridan: Now I love you.

Sheridan and Olympia: *rescued and on board a ship*

Sheridan: ....and now I don't. Because I'm dark and damaged and stuff. Why don't I develop a mental illness, just to make things more interesting?

Olympia: Now it's time for me to fix you!

Plot: *Pirates* *White Slavers* *Possibly Gay Sultan BFFs*

Random Villains: *kidnap Olympia*

Olympia: Never mind. Back to being helpless until I'm rescued!

Sheridan: Hey look I'm suddenly rich now for no reason and your kingdom doesn't want you anymore, also for no reason. Let's hook up!

Olympia: HOORAY!

Romance Convention Checklist:

• 1 Antihero Hero
• 1 Evil Ex-Mistress
• 1 Unscrupulous Servant
• 1 Case of Body Issues
• 1 Case of Daddy Issues
• 1 Unfortunate Shipwreck
• 1 Desert Island Romance
• 1 Somewhat Incongruous Penguin
• 1 Band of Pirates
• 1 Case of Hand-Waved Plot-Propelling PTSD

The Word: I honestly never believed I would be typing the following words, but, I disliked a Laura Kinsale novel and thought it was horrible.

My safe, comforting worldview has been shattered. There's some things in this world that you think are just indisputable facts: Snow falls in winter. A full moon comes every 28 days. And Laura Kinsale novels are awesome.

That belief lasted until I read Seize the Fire, an inexplicably boring and haphazardly plotted mess of a novel.

Naval Captain Sheridan Drake is a famous war hero - entirely by accident. When his crazed attempt to murder his incompetent commanding officer during a sea battle results in him accidentally saving the fool's life and the lives of his shipmates (for reals), he is knighted and his name hailed across the nation as a brave selfless hero. Too bad he's completely broke - thanks to his apparently insane father who left him a demonically booby-trapped house while placing his fortune in a trust ruled by his manipulative ex-mistress, Julia.

Olympia is the princess of the tiny nation of Oriens, but she has lived her entire life in genteel exile in England after her despicable uncle murdered her parents. She has spent her twenty-four years of life stewing in self-loathing and French philosophy with her governess, Julia (yes, that Julia) and when she discovers her uncle is about to petition the Pope to marry her and seize the throne (consent-optional), she pays a call on the one man she knows will aid her in her plight - Captain Sheridan Drake. Surely, this glowing paragon of manhood will help escort her to Oriens to introduce democracy to her loyal subjects, or at the very least to Rome so that she can prevent her marriage by asking the Pope nicely.

Now, you might think Sheridan would be the harder character to like, as he immediately decides to fleece the plump little princess of her crown jewels and leave her in the lurch. Except not. As Sheridan rapidly comes to learn, Olympia is a breathtakingly stupid and obnoxiously pathetic heroine who is Literally Terrible at Everything except for crying, biting her fist in terror/misery/self-loathing, and almost getting Sheridan shot in the face. Poor Sheridan has to spend the next 500 pages of this massive book babysitting, protecting, getting waterboarded for (!), and Not Boning 160 crybaby pounds of narrative deadweight.

The sheer number of times Olympia almost gets Sheridan killed would be funny if she wasn't such a self-rightous TSTL dimwit about it. I hated Olympia - I thought her one of the worst and most useless heroines I've ever read. She never develops any spine, intelligence, or even any ambition beyond the incredibly shortsighted one of bestowing democracy upon everyone she meets. Once she has a protector her desire to free her people slips into the background. What does she want to do with her life? What does she do in her spare time? Who is she beyond this chubby, whinging, constantly complaining mess of a person? Her "kindness" and "purity" are supposed to be the Polysporin to Sheridan's Scraped Knee of Angst, but otherwise Sheridan seems to like her mainly because her breasts are the only things more impressive than her tear ducts.

Of course, most of the romantic progression involves Sheridan yo-yo'ing between Total Adoration Despite Being a Dark, Damaged Dude and treating Olympia like a turd in order to push her away from him because he's a Dark, Damaged Dude. You can imagine how quickly this becomes repetitive in a 583-page novel.

The thing is, the whole structure of the novel is a hot mess. The plotting is like a suitcase packed by an absentminded traveller - the type who forgets crucial items, only to shove them in at the last minute, one on top of the other, even though they don't really fit. The characterization of everyone except for Sheridan is atrocious, as their storylines are picked up and dropped, seemingly at random - Julia Plumb, for example, is depicted as a villainess even though she's only "on screen" for one chapter, in which she acts quite concerned and surprised. The only reason we even know she's a villainess is because Sheridan explicitly tells us how evil she is. Or Sheridan's father, who's mentioned in the initial chapters as a madman fascinated with pranks and booby traps, until his character and his impact on Sheridan is abruptly abandoned, never to be mentioned again except in passing.

In the last act of the novel we have, without any previous development of such plot points: the sudden insertion of severe and constant PTSD into our hero's character description, an entirely random violent past, an aristocratic dandy sidekick who appears 20 pages from the end and serves no narrative purpose whatsoever, a nonsensical misunderstanding that ensures the hero has a massive fortune by book's end, and an ambiguous Arabian Sultan who is apparently crazy in love with Sheridan until he's abruptly written out of the plot.

The thing is, Kinsale's written whackadoo plots before - evil cults, poisoned shellfish, kidnapped bulls, oral sex lessons from Catholic priests, white ninjas, and magic-sword-eating sharks, to name only a few. The thing is, in those cases she developed those ideas so that they made sense as one read them within the context of the story. She didn't just cram them in with no notice or precedent.

And it's just as likely that those plots appeared believable because they were populated by realistic, well-realized and sympathetic characters. The characters and their motivations and anguish felt real, so their adventures seemed real as well. In Seize the Fire, Sheridan's backstory is too vastly complicated to take very seriously (his previous positions include naval captain, harem slave, jewel thief, death goddess assassin, and gigolo - not making this up), and, as mentioned before, Olympia is such a pathetically incompetent twit that I had no empathy for her or her travails.

Laura Kinsale's writing is solid enough, but with such a randomly plotted storyline and dippy characters, there's just no reason to go on. Seize the Fire is all noise and no substance.
D+

"Wake," by Amanda Hocking

The Protagonists: Gemma and Harper. Harper is the overprotective older sister who's spent nine years raising Gemma after their mother was incapacitated by a car accident. Gemma just wants to swim and be a regular girl dating regular guys without her sister breathing down her neck.
Their Angsts: Three creepy, possibly-supernatural girls want to add Gemma to their special circle of BFFs - whether she wants to or not.

The Secondary Cast:

Brian: Gemma and Harper's dockworker dad. Does a good enough job, but hasn't gone out and socialized since his wife's head injury.

Alex: Harper's friend, and Gemma's crush. May also have a thing for Gemma.

Daniel: A hot twenty-year-old who does odd jobs around town and lives in a tiny houseboat. Harper hatelikes him because he's hot and jobless.

Thea: One of the Three Girls -  the Reluctant Redheaded One.

Lexi: One of the Three Girls - the Bubbly Blond One.

Penn: Leader of the Three Girls - the Bitchy Brunette One.

Marcy: Harper's unpleasant and venomous coworker at the local library.

Angst Checklist:

• Absent Parents
• Friends to Lovers
• Attractive, Confident Women in Groups Are Scary
• You're a Scruffy Loser and I Openly Judge You But Damn If You're Still Not Sexy
• Do Boys Really Care, Or Is It Okay To Eat Them?
• Sister-Sister Relationships
• Responsibility vs. Living Life to the Fullest

The Word: Gemma and Harper are sisters who live in the picturesque seaside town of Capri. Gemma is a talented swimmer with Olympic aspirations and a serious crush on Harper's geeky friend Alex - however, she seriously chafes under Harper's repressive replacement-parenting. Ever since their mother was mentally handicapped by a car accident and their grief-stricken father decided parenthood was a part-time gig, Harper's taken over and turned Shrill Overreacting Mothering into a science.

And then there are the girls: Thea, Lexi, and Penn, three mysterious, preternaturally gorgeous and confident girls who have suddenly moved to Capri. Everyone assumes they're tourists, but because they're extremely forward and unbearably pretty, everyone in town either hates or is afraid of them. When they start following Gemma around and inviting her to swim with them in the bay, both Gemma and Harper are extremely Weirded Out but the three girls won't be denied - they'll make Gemma one of them by hook or by crook.

I'll be blunt and say this novel supremely disappointed me, and I didn't have the highest hopes in it to begin with. This was a book I picked up at BEA thanks to the gorgeous cover, but the story inside is shoddily constructed out of cliches, flat characters, hamfisted writing, and troubling messages. I don't even know why I'm spoilering this, but the Three Girls are sirens. Really, really, obviously sirens. The book makes no attempt at suspense or surprise or development. Instead of giving us any spooky build-up as to why the Three Girls are eery and off-putting, the story simply gives us a bloody prologue that tells us right at the start that the Three Girls find boys Magically Delicious. No surprise. No discovery.

However, everything about this book is hammered over the head with the author's Tell Over Show writing style. There's no description, there's no opportunity for the reader to explore and interpret what's going on in the story - it's just plunked down in front of us like a day-old fish, whether it fits with the character's POV or not.

As well, all the characters and their relationships are so predictable and moth-eaten. Harper is the Girl Who Can't Have Fun, who spars with Daniel, The Slacker Boy With Hidden Depths - so naturally they fall for each other. Gemma's crush Alex is the Geeky Nerd - but of course, despite being on no teams and not exercising, he's still got fantastic muscles! Most disappointingly, the Three Girls are superficially-depicted almost to the point of parody.

I will grant this book points - Daniel and Alex are both very nice, respectful boys, with no jerkiness or stalkery behaviour written off as "boys will be boys." I also appreciated the gender-reversed dynamic of Gemma and Alex's relationship - in this paranormal YA, the boy is the sweet-natured, innocent human who's snooped at through his bedroom window and the girl is the man-eating creature who craves love more than human flesh (at least for now).

However, so much of this story is left open-ended - it has all the structure of a leaking bag of flour. There is no build-up, there is no resolution, there is no climax excepting a half-hearted, last-minute confrontation at the end that goes nowhere. I had a similar problem with The Vicious Deep - I've noticed recently that a lot of first novels set in prospective series don't have a conclusion or answer any questions because they're so bent on saving the interesting stuff for later books.  

Every novel, regardless of its series order, requires a problem and a resolution. It's basic storytelling, and a series strong enough to stretch out over several novels should have more than one major problem or obstacle behind it, anyway. I might suggest the author read The Hunger Games trilogy (which, for all its faults, knew how to resolve a storyline while leaving an opening for future books) or some classic high fantasy trilogies.

Finally, my last problem was with the themes behind the depictions of the Three Girls. Thanks to an over-explainy prologue, the reader knows the Three Girls are up to no good, but the way the other characters justified their suspicion and hostility towards them was troubling. The Three Girls are depicted as off-putting and terrifying, to the point where people will cross the street to avoid them - and why? Because they're too pretty (and wear revealing clothing). They're too confident. And they travel in packs. To be fair, they do eat people, but I kept asking myself, why is their beauty, their confidence, and their friendship depicted as a threat? Why are we expected to fear pretty, confident girls who stick together?

The book skirts the line with this theme, with off-the-cuff scenes like one where Harper ruminates on how she doesn't have prejudices against anyone, even pretty girls, and I wanted to ask, "why EVEN? Why should pretty girls EVER be subjected to prejudice?" And there's another awful scene where Harper's venomous female coworker out-of-the-blue insults the Three Girls by accusing them of being bulimic. Because they're so hot, you see - and that's somehow offensive. If this was an attempt at satire, it's a poor one (and Jennifer's Body did it a bajillion times better), and comes perilously close to body- and slut-shaming.

All in all, Wake is a novel to avoid. If man-eating hot girls is your bag, I'd recommend the far superior and snarkily clever Jennifer's Body instead.
D+

Still interested? Wake comes out August 7th. You can preorder here.

"The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell," by Chris Colfer

Our Protagonists: Connor and Alex Bailey. After their loving, storytelling father dies in a car accident, they have a hard time seeing the magic in everyday life - until their grandmother's mysterious book of stories sucks them into a world where fairy tales are real.
The Rub: The trouble is, now they can't go back - unless they go to each of the kingdoms and find the ingredients to create the Wishing Spell, the only magic powerful enough to send them home.

Secondary Cast:

Froggy: A frog (surprise surprise!) who's under a curse because of his vanity. Fond of lily pad tea.

Goldilocks: An infamous outlaw who's had to live her life on the run ever since she was unjustly accused of burglary.

Red Riding Hood: Queen of the Red Riding Hood Kingdom (who'd have guessed?) - a queen who'd prefer to wear pretty dresses and pose for portraits than run her kingdom (her granny does most of the work).

The Evil Queen: Snow White's stepmother. Recently escaped from prison, she also seeks the Wishing Spell to further her life's ambition.

The Huntress: The mute daughter of the Evil Queen's Huntsman who's racing to get the pieces of the Wishing Spell before the Bailey twins do. 

Middle Grade Fantasy Convention Checklist

• 1 Saintly Deceased Parent
• 1 Magical-Object-Turned-Interdimensional-Portal
• Several Nasty Wolves
• 1 Awkward Love Triangle
• 1 Kick-Ass Female Bandit
• 1 Physics-Defying Arrow (it bounces of a sword, then off a wall, then hits a villain in the back and kills him)
• 1 Well-Aimed Cannon Ball

LiveTweeted It? Yes - my better reactions are Storify'd here.

The Word: I had to admit I was a little nervous when Chris Colfer (the actor who plays "Kurt" on Glee) announced he was working on a novel - but then he gave the speech at BEA's Children's Book and Author Breakfast (where I coincidentally received an ARC of this book). He made his novel sound like a real labour of love for him, and I love fairy tales, so I was eager to give this novel a shot.

Unfortunately, The Land of Stories did not measure up - mainly because it didn't seem ready. It read like the first draft of a very young, promising, but untutored writer: the book's not missing for creativity or wit, but the writing style is amateurish, the narrative is disorganized and contrived, the tone is patronizing, and the ham-handed messages the story tries to force down the readers' throats are either vague, unhelpful, cliched, or wrongheaded.

Alex and Connor Bailey are twin siblings who are struggling to move on after the death of their father. Their mom has to work double shifts to make ends meet and they're not doing much better at school - Alex is an overachieving know-it-all who is ostracized by her classmates, and Connor is forever failing tests and falling asleep in class.

Things are so stressful they almost forget the arrival of their twelfth birthday, which their mother has to work through, but thankfully their beloved grandmother arrives in the nick of time with her bright blue car and her book full of stories. They have a lovely birthday, and while their grandmother has to leave the next day, she leaves them her copy of The Land of Stories.

As expected in a fantasy middle grade novel, the book starts glowing and humming and a few pages later the twins end up falling into the book and landing in The Land of Stories, where all the famous fairy tale characters are real. However, it's a world of dangers as well as of wonders, and they  discover the only way they can get home is to summon the Wishing Spell - a powerful magic that will require an object from every major fairy tale. Unfortunately, the notorious Evil Queen (Snow White's stepmother) has escaped from prison and is also looking for the Wishing Spell, and she'll stop at nothing to get it.

Now, this is a decent enough set-up, but The Land of Stories is hobbled right out of the gate thanks to an incredibly distracting reliance on passive language. What is passive language, you ask? Passive language is a writing style that over-relies on the verbs "to be" and "to have." Example: "Connor's eyes were bulging out of his head." The primary verb in that sentence is were, a passive verb, when it could have so easily been bulge, an active verb (as in, "Connor's eyes bulged out of his head").

Long story short, passive language is horrible and annoying because it is literally "telling instead of showing." It keeps the reader at a distance instead of placing her in the middle of the action. The whole book is written like this - the reader is simply told "this magical thing was gorgeous" or "the castle was enormous" or "this character looked sad" instead of being shown these things with description.

This, of course, leads me to my second problem with the novel: its tone. I don't know if the author has read very much Middle Grade, but there is a definite sense in this novel of "talking down" to readers. Thanks to oversimplified, passive language as well as the "moral lessons" (more on that in a bit), the novel often comes across as patronizing. I don't know about you, but kids don't like being told what to do, what to think, or what to notice - they like to discover.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot to discover here. The world building for The Land of Stories is colourful, but disappointingly undefined and convenient. The minute the twins mope that they'll never find that one thing they're looking for - that one thing or the one person who could produce that one thing miraculously turns up and hands it to them.

My last problem was with the book's "moral lessons." Now, normally I'd let such things lie, because everything about literature is pretty much open to interpretation, but The Land of Stories proves the exception because the use of fairy tales to teach social lessons is a major theme of the novel. And some of those "lessons" that are unsubtly hammered home are so uninformed and naive as to be ridiculous, but because I want this blog post to end at some point, I will focus on one.

Snow White's Evil Stepmother is the central antagonist of the book, but in the prologue, where she's sitting in prison being interrogated by Snow White herself, she quips, "What the world fails to realize is that a villain is simply a victim whose story hasn't been told." Wait, what? For most of the book, as the story keeps dropping hints about the Evil Queen's mysterious past, I hoped that this sentence would simply prove to be a woefully poor choice of words. Unfortunately, the rest of this review require spoilers, so you have been warned.

*****SPOILERS*****

By the end of the book, we learn that the Evil Queen was once an innocent woman in love who was kidnapped by an Enchantress, who then cursed her true love into a magic mirror. The Evil Queen's subsequent actions were all fueled by her desperate search to get her lover out of the mirror before he lost his identity. Now, that's an interesting story and provides a deeper motivation for the Queen's actions than simple vanity - however...

HOWEVER - the novel treats her tragic quest for love as justification for the terrible things she did. As in, the fact that she did it for love (cue singing birds) makes it okay. Her loyal Huntsman calls her a saint. All the other princesses cry when they hear the Queen's story and gush about how it was all for love (cue dancing mice) and how cruel the world was for senselessly hating her, and how nobody would give her compassion and understanding.

Yeah, how dare the world hate her - for neglecting, imprisoning, and MURDERING her subjects (including Snow White's parents!). Couldn't they offer her a little compassion and understanding when she was busy poisoning apples and ordering the Huntsman to cut out a teenage girl's heart, because it was all for LOVE (cue showers of rose petals)? Even Snow Freakin' White says the Evil Queen's "broken heart" was punishment enough for her actions - um, you mean, like HER PREMEDITATED MURDER OF YOUR PARENTS? 

And of course, this all culminates in the twins realizing that most villains are "villainized by circumstance."

How about NO. NO NO NO a million times NO. There is a difference between humanizing a character and justifying their actions. The Evil Queen's backstory does an excellent job of revealing her human motivations and frailty - does it make her a deeper, more interesting character? Sure! Does that make her a morally good character? NO. She was not villainized by circumstance, she became a villain by choice. No one forced her at dagger point to poison Snow White's parents. No one forced her to try to feed a bunch of people to wolves. She made a conscious choice to do those things and I cannot BELIEVE that such a naive, irresponsible message of the ends justifying the means would be one of the MAJOR MORALS OF THE NOVEL.

Especially since, as I recall, quite a few fairy tale heroines were dealt crappy hands by fate but nevertheless managed to avoid MURDERING PEOPLE WITH COMBS. Here endeth the rant!

*****END OF SPOILERS*****

As it is, despite a few poignant scenes and, admittedly, quite a few hilarious lines of dialogue from Connor, The Land of Stories is a profound disappointment. Its worldbuilding is inconsistent and trite, its pacing is all over the map, its writing is clumsy and immature, and it doesn't reveal as many original things about fairy tale characters as the back cover blurb would have you believe. I wish Chris Colfer all kinds of success in his acting and screenwriting career, but I won't be visiting The Land of Stories again.
D+

The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell is available for purchase July 17th. You can pre-order it here.

"Darkfever," by Karen Marie Moning

The Chick: MacKayla "Mac" Lane. A bubbly, blond Georgia bartender who goes to Ireland to find out how her sister died while studying abroad.
The Rub: Once there, she discovers the answers are weirder than she thinks - her sister might have been able to see the magical sidhe that have begun infesting Dublin's darker neighbourhoods. And now Mac can see them, too.
Dream Casting: Revenge's Emily VanCamp, slightly dumber.


The Dude: Jericho Barrons. Asshole extraordinaire and all-round waste of character development and fictional oxygen. Has a bookstore, lots of money, and a dark, mysterious past.
The Rub: TOO BAD HE'S A COMPLETE JACKASS.
Dream Casting: Keanu Reeves.


Urban Fantasy Convention Checklist:

• 1 Inconveniently Dead Relative
• 1 Untested, Just-Discovered Magical Power that Is Way More Magical Than Regular Magical Powers
• Several Ugly Fairies
• 1 Intentionally Stereotypical Vampire
• 1 Magical Spear
• NO Magical Power Training Montages (for SHAME!)

The Word: Thanks to lovely Commenter Suggestions, I Storify'd my LiveTweets here. 

I came across this book at my second RWA - it came in a lovely package that included a free book and a soundtrack. And several friends of mine enjoyed the book. Sadly, I did not.

MacKayla is a sweet-natured Georgia peach chilling by the pool when she receives a phone call on her parents' landline that informs her that her beloved sister Alina, who had been studying abroad in Ireland, has been murdered. MacKayla is further shocked when she replaces her old phone (which she'd dropped in the pool a few days prior to Alina's murder) and finds a host of confusing, frantic voicemails from her sister about how the world's in danger and they have to find something called the Shi-shadu.

Against her protective parents' wishes, MacKayla flies to Ireland, determined to find Alina's killer. Unsurprisingly, this goes nowhere, and soon MacKayla finds herself having creepy visions - where beautiful people suddenly appear ugly and inhuman.

Her quest for justice eventually brings her to Barrons Books and Baubles - a mysterious bookstore run by a particularly nasty individual masquerading as a hero, Jericho Barrons. He's violent, callous, manipulative, misogynist, and cruel - but hey! He's hot! So that makes everything okay.

He identifies MacKayla as a sidhe-seer, a rare human capable of seeing through a fairy's glamour. This puts MacKayla in more danger, since fairies take serious umbrage with buzz-killing humans who can warn people of their tricks. As a bonus, MacKayla's new power also extends into detecting magical objects, which Barrons hopes can prove useful in finding the Sinsar Dubh, a powerful spellbook and the same thing Alina warned MacKayla about in her last voicemail message.

MacKayla responds to this exposition with a violent denial and flees, nearly killing herself several times in a whirlwind of Too Stupid To Live decisions.

Once she's tired herself out Almost Getting Killed For a Really Stupid Reason, she returns to Barrons, who promptly holds her hostage and drags her (all but on a leash) to the homes of various Shady Paranormal Criminals in order to see if she can detect if they're hiding the Sinsar Dubh.

I really just did not like the protagonists of this novel at all. MacKayla, in particular, is a borderline-infantalized character - an immature, thoughtless girl who goes out investigating the paranormal in overly-described "cute" outfits, spouting "cute" swearwords (she says "petunia" instead of ass) and "cute" Southern wisdom - only to get into not-so-cute scrapes.

I get that Moning was trying to write Mac as a bit of a departure from the standard UF heroines (who tend to be described by most or all of these words: hardbitten, bad ass, no friends, leather jacket, dress in black, foster kid past, sullen demeanour). However, in this novel, Mac just came across as shallow and frequently TSTL. There's nothing inherently stupid about liking fashion or make up or blond hair - but there is if that's what you think about first when you're in mortal danger, to the detriment of your personal safety.

As for Barrons, I don't want to dwell on him too much because, frankly, he's a terribly written character. He controls and harasses the helpless and hapless Mac for much of the novel, often violently, with no discernible character traits or motivations beyond Whatevah, Whatevah, I Get What I Want.

I understand the whole "anti-hero" attraction, but in such cases, the author usually gives the character understandable flaws, background, and actions to humanize them, so that our understanding of them as a person helps us like them despite their flaws. Barrons remains completely opaque - in saving his actual motivations, heritage, and backstory to try and get people to read future books, the author left too little actual development in this book to make him anywhere near appealing enough for me to care about how he does in future books.

As for the writing, the author employs a very irritating Future-Narrator technique. Darkfever is told in the first person by Mac - but by a Mac in the future who already knows everything that's going to happen. In an increasingly-frustrating habit, the Future-Narrator will drop irritatingly obvious hints, often giving away the ending of a scene before the scene even starts:

[Barrons] "I'd rather you screw up while I'm with you, so I can manage the situation, than have you attempt your first kill on your own and get yourself killed instead." I had no idea how prophetic his word would prove (p.259).

Or:

In retrospect, I'm still stunned that I went into the abandoned neighborhood alone that day. It's a wonder I survived. [This is written BEFORE SHE GOES INTO THE NEIGHBORHOOD] (p.298).

Wow, way to completely suck the suspense out of a scene. Way to make the writing even more hamfisted. Because Heaven knows we wouldn't be able to figure it out on our own just by reading the damn scene!

Or else she will hint at something that is not explained or doesn't happen in this book:

Something nagged at me, something I couldn't quite put my finger on. It was a thing that I would stupidly fail to put my finger on until it was too late. Before long, I would understand that nothing had been what it seemed that night, and the reason Barrons had faced-off so coolly with the blood-sucking Master was because he'd gone in with the quiet assurance that, no matter what, he would walk out alive, and not because he had Malluce [the vampire] by the proverbial fiscal balls. (p.155-156)

Or how about:

One day I would stop taking off my clothes in V'lane's [hot fairy prince who induces uncontrollable horniness] presence, but the cost of that resistance would be a piece of my soul. Today, here and now, strolling through the National Museum of Archaeology and History ... I had no idea that pieces of one's soul could be lost.

I have honestly no idea what these excerpts mean, because they're not explained in this book - clearly, they're meant to hint at future books. It's simply confusing and annoying. It's understandable for some sequel-baiting to occur in the first book of an intended series, but the best type of sequel-baiting is to write a coherent and creative first book. If the first book isn't good, I don't care how many "secrets and answers" you promise me will be in later books. And if your first book spends more time hinting at cool stuff to come then writing an understandable and cool story happening right now, then you've failed.

And in that scene, Darkfever fails, because not only does it sequel-bait like it's going out of style, but there's no solid conclusion to the book at hand. Do we find out who Barrons is? Nope. Do we find out, definitively, who Alina's killer is? Nope. Do we find out Mac's true heritage? NOPE. None of the plot threads started in this book have a conclusion. I finished this book with almost no answers at all. I'm sorry, but even a first book in a series is still a book. A story. And stories require a beginning, a middle, and an end. Concluding the initial plot doesn't mean you can't continue into the next book with new plots that cropped up along the way, but every book needs a payoff.

I'm sorry, but I did not enjoy Darkfever, on any level. I'm off to go read books that live in the now.

D+

Disagree? Purchase Darkfever here.

"Tumbling Through Time," by Gwyn Cready

The Chick: Persephone "Seph" Pyle. When a magical pair of high-heeled shoes sends her back in time to meet and help the main character of her theoretical first romance novel, it's not exactly the dream-came-true she thought it would be.
The Rub: Even as she starts to develop feelings for her character, Drum, she also realizes she's always had feelings for the real-life man she based Drum on, Tom Fraser.Dream Casting: Maggie Gyllenhaal.

The Dude: Tom Fraser. Seph's best friend, they shared an almost-torrid affair on top of a recycling bin until she called it off. Inexplicably, he still carries a torch for her.
The Rub: Trouble is, he's about to leave the company for a cushy position in Paris, working with a terribly fashionable and attractive female partner.Dream Casting: Colin Firth (per the author's express instructions.)

The Other Dude: George Drummond, a.k.a. "Phillip," a.k.a. "Drum." He was just living a normal life circa 1706, until some crazy 21st century author took over his life, populating his ship with anachronistic characters - one of whom steals some incredibly sensitive war documents that Drum was supposed to be guarding.
The Rub: He needs this author to come to his time and fix this mess she's created - but what if he falls in love with her? And isn't that bizarrely incestuous in some way?Dream Casting: Also Colin Firth (aaaaaawkward).

The Plot: No plot this time. Too crazy. Read the review!
Romance Convention Checklist

1 Awkward Love Triangle

Several Scientific Impossibilities

1 Pair of Magic Shoes

1 Deus Ex Machina Heroine

1 Flogging (Unsexy Variety)

1 Bout of Bathroom Lovin'

1 EXPLOSION

1 Fake Red Wig

The Word: *We are in a stark, white room, furnished only with a single table and two folding metal chairs - one of which is occupied by Dr. AnimeJune, Novel Psychologist. The door opens, and two handsome, tall, but charmingly Beta orderlies drag in Tumbling Through Time. She is tightly laced into a straightjacket, but that barely slows her struggles.*

Tumbling: You don't understand. You've made a mistake!

*the orderlies pay no attention and forcibly seat in her in the chair opposite Dr. AnimeJune.*

Dr. AnimeJune: *crossing her legs, the better to show off her fabulous candy-apple red heels* Tumbling, do you know why you're here?

Tumbling: I know why you think I should be here. You think I'm crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm not. Okay, so I'm not Keeper Shelf material. I get it. There's no need for restraints.

Dr. AnimeJune: Well, why don't we go through a few questions and see how things progress from there. *flips through chart* Let's see - you're a contemporary romance with a bit of an historical paranormal twist, am I right?

Tumbling: That's right.. I'm fluffy. I'm cheeky. I'm light and bubbly and irreverent. I have Colin Firth!

Dr. AnimeJune: You have a hero who happens to "look" like Colin Firth.

Tumbling: Correction - I have two heroes who happen to look like Colin Firth. It's like Bridget Jones' Diary, but with no Hugh Grant and twice the Firth! You'd be crazy if you didn't want two Colin Firths, am I right? Wait - what are you writing?

Dr. AnimeJune: *scrawls Lacklustre description of heroes into her notebook* Oh, nothing. What's your story, exactly?

Tumbling: Well, I have this heroine, see? Seph Pyle. She works for a pharmaceutical company. She's very buttoned up. Uptight. She's very uncertain about relationships - except for a special friendship she shares with a coworker, Tom Fraser, a friendship that continues even after she let him feel up her boobies only to call it off at the last minute.

Dr. AnimeJune: He's the guy who looks like Colin Firth?

Tumbling: One of the guys, yes. So you see, you should really be locking up Seph Pyle. She said no to Colin Firth! *nervous giggle*

Dr. AnimeJune: ...

Tumbling: *anxious cough* Anyhoo, Seph has this secret fantasy life - she's thinking of writing a romance novel.

Dr. AnimeJune: She's written a romance?

Tumbling: No, thinking of it. Anyway, while on route to a conference in Venice --

Dr. AnimeJune: Why Venice?

Tumbling: Why NOT Venice? Seph comes across a Nine West in an airport that has a fabulous pair of shoes. Magical shoes. *jazz hands* That are magically just her size and make her feel like she's walking on baby ducks.

Dr. AnimeJune: Made of rubies, I presume? Or silver?

Tumbling: No - pink taffeta. And MAGIC. *jazz hands*

Dr. AnimeJune: Go on.

Tumbling: Once Seph puts on the shoes, she finds herself magically transported onto a ship in 1706. There, she finds herself captured by the handsome, Colin Firth-esque captain, Phillip Drummond. He's the unwitting hero of her very own romance novel, and being stuck in her story has ruined his life! For instance, there are "romantic" full moons every night, and his ship somehow has walls instead of bulkheads, and his favourite table has a cannon in it since for some reason Seph thought that would be a great idea. Seph clearly hasn't done enough historical research! Hahaha! Isn't that just whimsical and clever?

Dr. AnimeJune: But you said Seph hadn't written her book yet. Not even an outline.

Tumbling: No, she only thought about it. Yearned about it.

Dr. AnimeJune: So she's in a book?

Tumbling: No, no. She's in the past! The actual past! The sexy Master and Commander past, only instead of chubby Russell Crow, we have dashing Colin Firth.

Dr. AnimeJune: Your heroine changed the past with her mind?

Tumbling: *pales* I didn't say that.

Dr. AnimeJune: Yes you did. Somehow, without writing anything down or even doing an outline, your heroine affected the moon's rotation and the architecture of a ship just with the power of her thoughts. *checks notebook* Moreover, when she finds a way to return to her own time, she discovers Phillip Drummond's ship (which she "unwittingly" named after a shoe store) actually exists in historical records, demonstrating her ability to completely alter the course of human history without any conscious thought or effort on her part. Did you intentionally make your heroine a superhuman, omniscient being?

Tumbling: No! It's not like that at all! It's just irreverent, sparkling comedy! It's not anything serious. It's MAGIC! *jazz hands*

Dr. AnimeJune: Mmm-hmmm. *writes Plot makes no damn sense in notebook* So Drum looks like Colin Firth - which means he looks like Tom?

Tumbling: Of course. He's the hero of her novel. Her romantic ideal. Isn't that sweet? Unfortunately, one of her other creations --

Dr. AnimeJune: Which she hasn't actually written yet.

Tumbling: Ahem. One of her other characters found their way onto Drum's ship and stole important papers for the war that he was supposed to be guarding. So, with some help, Drum transported Seph to the past to see if he could get her to bring those papers back and save his sexy Navy bacon.

Dr. AnimeJune: Help?

Tumbling: A Gypsy. Who has magic. *jazz hands* She magically transported the magically fabulous shoes to the present day and gave Drum some pieces of the same fabric.

Dr. AnimeJune: Why? Why would this Gypsy do this?

Tumbling: ... Because.

Dr. AnimeJune: Because why? *flips through notebook* I've read you end to end and not once is this magical Plot Device character or her motives ever explained. She literally just shows up, blathers on about how only The One For Seph is capable of physically taking off the Magic Shoes and curing her spontaneous time-travelling, and then she scurries away like a rat, never to be seen again.

Tumbling: Because it's magic! *jazz hands* Whimsy and mystery and sparkling, irreverent wit!

Dr. AnimeJune: Really? It's irreverent that whenever Seph zips back to the present, she discovers that while she was in 1706, being forced to trade inadequate handjobs to sexually-repressed Admirals for information, her body in 2010 was possessed by a strange entity (again - never explained) who gave her tattoos - one of which was on her boob - and tried to have sex with a bunch of people without her consent?

Tumbling: It's bubbly because it happened even though it's impossible! It's magic! *jazz hands*

Dr. AnimeJune: Why tattoos? Why boob tattoos?

Tumbling: M-magic! *slightly-less jazzy hands*

Dr. AnimeJune: BOOB TATTOOS ARE SERIOUS BUSINESS.

Tumbling: Sparkling....wit....*limp, defensive hands*

Dr. AnimeJune: *exasperated sigh* Listen. You're not hopeless - you have a very nice comedy voice. Well suited for light, breezy contemporaries. And the main hero, Tom, is quite a decent chap. Heroic, even. But the fact remains that the basic story runs on sheer comedy value without any structure, rules, logic, or worldbuilding to back it up.

You don't explain or ground anything. We never learn who was controlling Seph while she was on autopilot in 1706. We never learn why the gypsy gave her the shoes in the first place or why George Drummond looks like Tom, and therefore also Colin Firth, since he is inexplicably both an real and a fictional character.

Even fantasy novels with magical, all-powerful characters have established rules and boundaries because that gives the story structure and allows the reader to experience suspense. If your heroine had, say, actually written a manuscript and discovered some random Plot Device person or object that allowed her to enter the book, that might have been fine.

Instead, you don't outline her capabilities or weaknesses at all because she hasn't written anything solid yet - and so you unwittingly establish Seph as some astoundingly oblivious super-being who can literally conjure Colin Firths out of the air. How is this power controlled? Where did she get it? Do all her brain storms spin off into alternate realities? Will Tom end up in the cornfield if he forgets their anniversary? And how come she never uses this power - like, whenever they're in a naval battle, why doesn't she just concentrate really hard on a story she should write about an enemy ship that sinks when you throw marshmellows at it?

I mean, otherwise, this book reads like an incredibly imaginative and elaborate excuse to have a woman make out with Hot Historical Darcy Firth and Witty Contemporary Love Actually Firth at the same time.

Tumbling: ...

Dr. AnimeJune: ...

Tumbling: ...Okay. That makes me mildly obsessed - and a haphazard and incredibly silly novel - but certainly not crazy.

Dr. AnimeJune: You know what? You're right. That doesn't make you crazy.

Tumbling: *relieved sigh*

Dr. AnimeJune: I mean, it's not like your heroine at the end of the book doesn't have the Hero remove the magical shoes, as the Gypsy foretold.

Tumbling: ...

Dr. AnimeJune: I mean, because you obviously realize that your entire story was built around the fact that Seph's incapable of removing the shoes without help from her Soulmate (tm), and that despite how nice they feel, she has to shower and jog and clean floors in heels unless she finds The One. Since you're not crazy, clearly your heroine has a scene at the end where she has her hero untie the shoe ribbons and release her feet from pink taffeta bondage.

OH WAIT. SHE DOESN'T.

Tumbling: Eep.

Dr. AnimeJune: She decides it's "HEALTHIER" not to "TEST" the man she ends up with, with an "ARBITRARY" magical phenomenon.

Tumbling: B-but...

Dr. AnimeJune: SHOWERING IN HEELS IS SERIOUS BUSINESS. SERIOUSLY SLIPPERY BUSINESS!

Tumbling: No! You don't understand!

Dr. AnimeJune: My decision is final - your story is mind-bogglingly nonsensical, your tone shifts inconsistently from inane and bubbly to graphically violent, you do not finish any plot threads you start, and YOUR HEROINE CHOOSES TO HAVE PINK SHOES WELDED TO HER ARCHES BECAUSE SHE'S THAT DESPERATE FOR A MAN. Take her to solitary, boys!

Tumbling: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

D+

"A Certain Wolfish Charm," by Lydia Dare

The Chick: Lily Rutledge. When her young nephew starts experiencing an especially painful version of puberty, she decides to visit his absentee guardian, the Duke of Blackmoor, to remind him of his responsibilities.
The Rub: The Duke quickly takes charge - the only problem is, he seems to be want to take charge of her as well.
Dream Casting: Kate Winslet.

The Dude: Simon Westfield, Duke of Blackmoor. He feels bad for neglecting his best friend's son, but wowza! The kid's aunt is so hawt.
The Rub: While he totally wants to bury his bone in her backyard, he can't let on that he's secretly a werewolf. Because, you know, werewolves are just so reviled and unsexy these days...
Dream Casting: Robert Downey, Jr.

The Plot:

Lily: Raise your ward!

Simon: No thank you! *flees*

William, Simon's Sequel-Baiting Brother: *sniffs* A lady's been in your house! OMG are you in LOVE?

Simon: Wait, what?

Prisca Hawthorne, Sequel-Baiting Neighbour: WOW, you two should get MARRIED!

Lily: Are you crazy? I've known him for a day!

William and Prisca: OMG they're FATED to be together! By the way, isn't our INNUENDO-LADEN banter so INTERESTING and SUGGESTIVE? Don't you wish WE had our OWN BOOK?

Simon: OMG, I am so in love that I must violently threaten every man who touches you and control all your decisions!

Lily: What are you doing?

Simon: Run with it, toots.

Prisca: *tricks Lily and Simon into marriage* OMG, aren't I DARLING and CLEVER how I manipulate other people? Don't you just WISH you could read about me PERSONALLY and my SECRET DESIRES?

William: Not at all! I am TOTALLY NOT IN LOVE WITH YOU. At least, not in the way that MERITS AN ENTIRE NOVEL. I am going to MYSTERIOUSLY LEAVE after saying some INSULTING THINGS that will TOTALLY not provide conflict for a FUTURE NOVEL.

Prisca: I HATE YOU! ...See you in book 3, sweetie!

Simon: How DARE they be more interesting than me! I better keep my BIG GIANT SECRET to myself for way longer than necessary to up my angst factor!

Lily: What big secret?

Simon: What secret? I don't have a secret? I'm totally not a werewolf with an insatiable sexual appetite! Totally! No secrets at all!

Full Moon: 'Sup.

Simon: *poof!* Woof.

Lily: Uh-huh. Insatiable sexual appetite, you say?

Simon: WOOF! (translation: HOORAY!)

Romance Convention Checklist:

1 Angsty Werewolf

1 Single Adoptive Mum

1 Broken Desk

1 Ripped Bodice

2 Sequel-Baiting Brothers

1 Sequel-Baiting and Incredibly Intrusive Neighbour

1 Rebellious Tween

1 Forced Marriage

1 Scorned Mistress

The Word: You know, I've enjoyed a couple of werewolf stories - mainly in the movies and television. In books, well, let's just say that most of the shape-changer novels I read didn't wow me. Werewolves have had their moments but up until now, I haven't really understood the literary appeal of werewolves and the reason they've gotten as much romantic attention as vampires.

According to A Certain Wolfish Charm, however, the appeal is simple:

Lycanthropy is Male PMS.

Think about it: a dude who's a werewolf has a surefire biological excuse for acting like a dominating caveman dickhole when it's his time of the month - the better to satisfy your dominating caveman dickhole fetish. And, hey, he can go back to massaging your feet and shopping for your favourite brand of tampons the other 28 days of the month. And you can totally love him despite the fact that he's a dominating caveman dickhole because - aww, it's his furry menses equivalent. It's not his fault. Give him a few days in his room with chocolate-flavoured dog biscuits and some Lassie films on DVD and he'll be as good as new.

This notion isn't restricted only to Lydia Dare's relentlessly contrived and silly debut, but sweet chocolate Moses, this author milks this idea and milks it HARD.

Our heroine, Lily Rutledge, is in a bind. Her oh-so-precious orphaned nephew Oliver, whom she looks after, is being body slammed by a particularly large, furry version of the Puberty Fairy and she's worried about his well-being. However, the boy's guardian - the scandalous Duke of Blackmoor, refuses to answer her letters for aid. So she does what any self-respecting romance heroine would do - she goes to his house unaccompanied to demand he live up to his duties.

However, she calls at the worst possible time. Simon (the duke), is a secret werewolf, you see, and the days leading up to the full moon when he makes his transformation render him painfully horny and angry, too horny and angry to be around civilized society. He just wants to be left alone, with his heating pad and Tylenol - *cough* I mean whores and whiskey - and Lily's presence in his house calls to him with the power of a thousand chocolate-covered pretzels. He promptly chucks her into a moving carriage and hopes that'll be the last of her.

The dim, neglected lightbulb in his head flickers when his butler informs him about Lily's worries about his ward's angstier-and-furrier-than-usual adolescent development. Suddenly, the ward he curiously never gave a damn about (despite the fact that Oliver is the son of his deceased BFF) becomes Priority #1. Of course, his flippant sequel-baiting brother William shows up at the exact same time, smells chocolate pretzels in the air, and immediately deduces that Simon's got a new girlfriend.

Simon and William track Lily down in her carriage and inform her of their change of plan: or rather, Simon tells Lily that Oliver should come and live with them in Westfield Hall. William, realizing Lily is Simon's Chocolate-Covered Pretzel, chooses to flirt with her instead in order to drive Simon completely batshit insane in time for them all to be confined to a small, airtight carriage for an extended length of time. Smooth move, bro.

So we are, like, 26 pages in and Simon is already entertaining graphic and violent thoughts against any man who even glances at Lily out of the corner of his eye. Um, what? Oh, right. It's that time of the month. Dominating caveman dickhole. As you were.

Of course, now Simon is all gung-ho for training Oliver in the ways of Secret Regency Wolfman Mojo - but less gung for the chocolate-pretzel 'ho who's all up in his grill. The full moon's a-comin', which means he's surging with enough Dominating Caveman Dickhole potency to turn poor Lily into a pile of pretzel crumbs if he loses control. Suggesting she mosey on home and leave the Secret Regency Wolfman training to the professionals causes her to lash out with her pure tears of goodness and her delicate pretzel fists. How dare they try and help her nephew after she asked them to! Don't they know that as a totally undesirable, decrepit 23-year-old, she has nowhere else to go?

We are now 60some pages in, and while Simon is convinced he'll only grind Lily to a fine powder under the Pestle of his Dominating Caveman Dickhole Masculinity, the far-thinking William is already convinced that Simon and Lily should just get married already, so he encourages Lily to rev up Simon's already murderous and stalkery behaviour by being petulant and defiant. And here, of course, is where the sequel-baiting neighbour Prisca Hawthorne shows up, she who is the Salt And Vinegar Potato Chip to poor crampy *cough* - I mean angsty William. Prisca is gorgeous and talented and full of Secret Longing as only the best Future Heroines are, and is as equally convinced as William that Simon and Lily belong together, regardless of the protagonists' personal opinions or choice in the matter.

So guess what? Prisca trips off to the vicar's gossipy wife and spreads rumours that Lily's ho'in' it up with the Westfield brothers - because Lily will totally appreciate being forced to marry a man she's known for less than a week amid speculation that she's a whore. Best Friend of the Year material, right here. So now Lily has to fight her inexplicable insecurities and Simon has to restrain his Dominating Caveman Dickhole Masculinity - all the while keeping his werewolf nature a secret.

When dissecting this hot werewolf mess, let's start with the characters, shall we? Characters that are never fully explained, leaving gaping holes in their reasoning and motivation. Unanswered Question #1 : How come Simon completely and conveniently forgets the existence of Oliver, his dead best friend and cousin's only son for SIX YEARS? Not only Simon - but his two brothers and his mother. I'm not talking about forgetting a birthday here and there - I'm talking about absolutely no contact other than an occasional bank draft for six years. It's never really explained why no one in his family bothered, although the implication is that Simon was too busy spreading his Dominating Caveman Dickhole Masculinity around England's sex trade worker community. Oh and he just doesn't check his mail that often - I'm not kidding, ignoring his mail is a repeatedly-mentioned character trait. What excuse does the rest of his family have?

Which leads me to Unanswered Question #2: Whose bright idea was it to consign the care of an orphaned six-year-old boy to an equally orphaned, unmarried, virgin 17-year-old girl? When you have a widespread family tree of Handsome, Rich, Potent Secret Regency Werewolves who could raise Oliver in their secret ways? Seriously - why did Lily get that job? Oh, right, so she can be both the dewy, chocolate-pretzel innocent and the mothering fussbudget to a child who's barely 11 years younger than she is. Of course!

Lily's little more than some Disney Princess attributes bound up in unexplained insecurities. She acts under the belief that she's entirely undesirable and way beyond her Best Before date - but she's only twenty-three. Hardly the point of no return, even by Regency standards. Even when she goes to a ball and is hit on by nearly every guy there (including two of her BFF's brothers), she remains convinced it's only because of her new dowry. Do we get an explanation or backstory for why she believes she is Utterly Unloved? Not a peep.

The only other major characters of note are William and Prisca, but their constant attempts to force an acceptance of their inevitable sequel down our throats pretty much ruin their characters' likability. Elijah and Jemma have stains on their monogrammed towels with better personalities than these two. William's not too bad, if a bit blank, but the manipulative Prisca is borderline hateful and the shit she pulls on page 135 is inexcusable.

As for Simon, he's the ultimate Dominating Caveman Dickhole - he really only has two modes: the Don't You Look At My Woman BITCH, I WILL KILL YOU Mode and OMG OMG Can I Have Sex Now? Can I Have Sex Now? Mode. Yup - he's either looking at men with murder in his heart or looking at Lily with lust in his heart - or he's doing both.

It's funny maybe the first one and a half times he "jokes" about dismembering his own brother when Lily smiles at him, but as it escalates into Simon threatening violence upon men who look at Lily, to hurting Lily's elbow as he drags her off into an empty room, to Simon panting with rage in the bushes as a harmless fellow pats Lily on the cheek, to Simon hauling Lily over his shoulder and taking her to the woods to "punish" her for letting another man touch her, to threatening her custody of Oliver if she doesn't return home with him - over and over ad nauseum. It's not funny. It's not romantic. It's even a little dull and repetitive, considering he feels and acts this way from page 20 in a 350 page book.

But oh right, this behaviour is permissible because it's that time of the month. Wolves are just bitches like that. Congratulations, you have a biological free pass to be a douchebag!

See, this use of the werewolf mythos might have been easier to swallow if Lydia Dare had bothered to develop it in her novel beyond a blatant excuse for Dominating Cavemen Dickholes as heroes. But no - the worldbuilding is just as contrived and lazy as the rest of the book. Werewolves and their existence are not explained, the first change (where Simon and William introduce Oliver to the world of Manly Wolfness) is completely glossed over in a brief told-over-shown scene, the "soul mate" aspect is literally sprung on us fifteen pages away from the end, and the wildly inconsistent climax goes completely against what little paranormal development Dare's produced.

So if you're looking for an interesting werewolf paranormal, you're screwed. If you're looking for an accurate historical, you're screwed. If you're looking for understandable characters with realistic motivation, you're screwed. I'd say this book screwed the pooch, except Lily already did (oh yes, I went there). Avoid this book - it's a dog.
D+

"Too Wicked to Kiss," by Erica Ridley

The Chick: Evangeline Pemberton. On the run from her appalling stepfather, she tags along with her neighbours, the Stantons - unaware that Lady Stanton plans to use her (and her psychic "Gift" of reading people) as a pawn to help her daughter snag a husband.
The Rub: Evangeline doesn't want to trap any groom, even a suspected killer like Gavin - but she has nowhere to go if she doesn't comply.
Dream Casting: Felicity Jones.

The Dude: Gavin Lioncroft. While he'd much rather stay in his giant house and mope, his sister (whom he hasn't seen in a decade) decides to throw a houseparty, in his digs, without telling him. At least he gets to see his nieces.
The Rub: When his sister's awful husband is murdered under his roof, all suspicion points to him.
Dream Casting: Hugh Jackman. Why? So that even as this book became irredeemably silly, I could think about Hugh Jackman. In a cravat.

The Plot:

Evangeline: Save me from my evil stepfather!

Lady Stanton: Sure - PSYCH! We're taking you to an evil houseparty run by an evil rich dude!

Evangeline: Wait, why?

Lady Stanton: Because we need your psychic powers to help trap my daughter in marriage with a murderer!

Evangeline: That makes no sense.

Lioncroft: Gar! Why are people at my house?! Who DARES disturb my brooding angst!

Evangeline: Wow - despite the fact I think he's a cold-blooded murderer, I totally want to bang him!

Susan, Lady Stanton's Daughter: That makes no sense.

Lord Hetherington, Wife Beater: *dies*

Lioncroft: Who could it be?

Evangeline: Was it Tipsy McDrunkard? Or Consumption McGee? Or SlutWhore TotallyPreggers?

Lioncroft: Why aren't you actually, uh, using your psychic powers?

Evangeline: No reason.

Lioncroft: That makes no sense. But I can't love you! I'm too angsty! I'm a murderer!

Evangeline: Dude, I thought you were hot even when I thought you were a murderer.

Lioncroft: HOO--

Evil Stepfather: Yoink! *steals Evangeline*

Evangeline: *shoots stepfather*

Lioncroft: --RAY!

AnimeJune: That makes no sense!

Romance Convention Checklist

1 Broody McAngstyPants

1 Psychic Broody McAngstyPants

1 Evil Mutha

1 Evil Mutha-To-Be

1 Not Quite Evil But Still Spineless and Untrustworthy Mutha

1 Crazy-Ass BFF

1 Cranky Old Man

1 Case of *cough cough* Convenient Consumption

1 Evil Rapist Batterer Pedophile Stepfather

2 Inconveniently Dead Parents

1 Secret Passage

The Word: First of all, I would like to thank Erica Ridley, who offered me a free ARC of her debut novel, Too Wicked to Kiss. To return the favour, I would like to advise that she not read this review. I didn't enjoy your novel, Ms. Ridley, but I'm sure other people will. That being said, unless you're in the mind for some constructive (and some not-so-constructive) criticism, this review might not send you to your happy place.

Our heroine, Evangeline Pemberton, wakes up in a carriage that's not going where it should. She thought she was mooching a ride to a London houseparty with Lady Stanton and her daughter Susan. Her mother, who for years protected Evangeline from the dastardly machinations of her eeeeevil stepfather, took an assisted swandive down a flight of stairs five days past. Now Evangline has no one and needs to get the hell out of Dodge by any means necessary.

However, Lady Stanton, who's so evil she might as well be Evangeline's stepdad in drag, has other plans. Thanks to some shenanigans, her daughter's reputation is in tatters so the two are off to the country estate of one Gavin Lioncroft, a man who is believed to have murdered his parents, thus making him the only man in England who ranks lower in public opinion than Susan. If Evangeline doesn't want to hitchhike through the empty English countryside, than she'll have to help Susan to compromise herself with Lioncroft and force an engagement.

By this point, the reader has to suspend disbelief and just buy that Susan is apparently so compromised that the only man she can marry is one that even her mother thinks is a cold-blooded killer. And this is the first chapter, ladies and gentlemen.

Lady Stanton also wants Evangeline's particular assistance because she knows of Evangeline's special "Gift" - like that dude from The Dead Zone, Evangeline gets visions (along with wicked migraines) whenever she touches people. Gal can't even give a handshake without discovering you've cheated on your taxes.

Anyhoo - they arrive at Blackberry Manor (Lioncroft's crib), only to discover that the host has no idea a houseparty was even planned. His sister Lady Hetherington, whom he hasn't seen since the *lowers voice, waggles fingers* incident with their parents, needs his help snaring a suitor for her daughter, Nancy, who has also been up to shenanigans. Gavin, in typical Alpha Male With an Obvious Predator Metaphor In His Last Name fashion, growls and snaps and makes an ass of himself in an attempt to scare his guests away with bad behaviour and terrible home decor.

During this time, we are introduced to the other guests, all thinly-drawn caricatures who rely on repetitive character traits: Edmund (Tipsy McDrunkard), who is Always Drunk, All the Time, and is never found without an alcoholic beverage on hand; Benedict (Consumption McGee) who cannot move, sit, or pass wind without coughing suspiciously into a handkerchief; his wife, Francine (SlutWhore TotallyPreggers) who always clutches her belly at important moments in the story as if asking the unborn fetus for advice; and Lord Teasdale, a crotchety old dude who Lady Hetherington is intending to betrothe her daughter to. As well, we have Lord Hetherington, casual Wife Beater and All-Round Douchebag, but he's not that important since he dies early on in the narrative.

Of course, everyone seems convinced Lioncroft murdered him, including Lady Stanton, but even that doesn't diminish her determination to trap him in marriage. When she asks Evangeline to use her gift on Lioncroft, it's not to discover if he's innocent of the crime, but whether he'll be caught and hanged for it.

Trouble is, Evangeline's tried touching Lioncroft - several times, in fact, even though she's convinced he's an awful violent brute just like her stepdad. I guess the idea of parental murder just makes her freak flag fly, since she can't even look at him without tripping, falling, and accidentally shoving her tongue down his throat. However, in a quirk a la Twilight and the Sookie Stackhouse books, Lioncroft is the only person she's ever touched who doesn't give her headaches and visions. So she'll have to grope elsewhere for clues.

As explained in the author's note at the back of the novel, Too Wicked to Kiss is another entry in the recent bizarre resurgence of Gothic Romances. In this novel's case, this entails reams of melodramatic and florid description, stilted and often anachronistic dialogue, and spooooky home decorating (carpets the colour of blood, creepy statuary, "undulating" grey wallpaper, etc.), all of which only serves to make this novel about as dark and shady as a game of Clue. Mr. Lioncroft - in the bedroom - with the blood-stained pillow!

However, easily the worst element of this book is the fact that not a single character - not one - is sympathetic or worth reading about. I would gladly push any of them into the path of a speeding train. The author utterly fails to give any character a reasonable or understandable motivation for their actions.

I mean, we have the obvious Murder Motivations for our four one-note murder suspects (Edmund, Benedict, Francine, Teasdale), but why do they stick around after Hetherington dies? Some of them really think Lioncroft is the murderer, but they continue to eat his food, sleep under his roof, and continually insult him to his face. Um, what? Okay, if I had to pick a favourite it would probably be Teasdale, since his main "character flaw" is that he's crazy-old and says whatever he wants to, which makes him kind of awesome, actually. But still - where's the motivation?

We also have Lady Stanton - who seems desperate to marry Susan off to a man she (in her mind) knows is a murderer. ***Mild Spoilers*** Susan's so-called shenanigans involved getting caught repeating nasty gossip - it wasn't like she was caught in the middle of a Devil's Threeway! ***Mild Spoilers*** Are you telling me that recruiting a psychic to forcibly trap a reclusive murderer who lives several miles in the middle of nowhere was your only option to marry off your daughter? Really? It was murderer or nothing? Lady Hetherington was willing to marry her shenanigan'd daughter off to the Regency equivalent of Mr. Burns. Were there no rich old farts around at this time of year?

Then, we have her daughter Susan, a young woman with the intellectual speed of a hamster on a broken wheel. Her favourite activities include Jumping on the Popular Bandwagon, Being Easily Led, and Inconveniently Interrupting Important Conversations. And those are her consistent traits - in nearly everything else, she's a cipher for whichever character trait is most irritating at the time, whether or not it relates to her previous behaviour. Want her to make a lot of Stupid and Ignorant Assumptions in this chapter? Sure! As long as she can make an Unexpectedly Wise Pronouncement in the next chapter! Let's have her Wail About People Remembering Her Past Shenanigans in this paragraph - and then she can Wail About Another Character's Past Shenanigans in the next!

Perhaps that's why no one in Society wants to marry her - not because she spreads gossip, but because she's the character equivalent of an elementary school student's collage of Annoying Tropes raggedly cut out from old issues of Highlights and National Geographic magazines from the '70s. And guess what - she gets a freaking sequel.

Now let's discuss our heroine, shall we? Also a breathtakingly inconsistent and unmotivated character, she claims to hate violent, murderous men because they remind of her rape-happy step-father, and yet just a look from Lioncroft (before she even shares a conversation with him) sets her all a-flutter. Um, what? She spends the greater part of the first half of this novel believing he's a killer, but she continues to make out with him and get crazy-jealous of Susan and harp on his personal appearance. Why?

Because of this, Gavin and Evangeline don't really have any positive interactions for the first half of the book - every time he stops to talk to her she treats him like dirt and makes a lot of ass-hat-y comments. Of course, by the second half, despite the lack of interaction, Evangeline is mostly convinced Gavin is innocent - why? Again, because he makes her horny - heaven knows they haven't spent nearly enough time together in the narrative to indicate anything else. Um, I'm sorry, but if female genitalia were capable of telling the difference between good and evil then Bernie Madoff would have died a virgin.

As well, even though Evangeline's tasked with engineering Susan's compromisation, she and Lioncroft are repeatedly discovered by several people in tawdry situations that should have been compromising in and of themselves, but everyone conveniently fails to notice.

And even when Evangeline's mostly convinced of Gavin's innocence, she takes every excuse to demean him. She implores him to be kinder to people, but of course, if he shows a spark of kindness to a woman, Evangeline bitches at him and storms off in a huff. If he shaves, she throws a shitfit. I suppose Ridley gives us an interesting gender-reversal of the popular romance trope: this time it's the heroine who's overjudgemental and self-righteous and asshat-y, and the hero lies down and takes it.

As well, her power is never really developed or explained. Why is she unable to "read" Lioncroft through touch? It's not explained, we're just supposed to accept it. As well, even though two people (including one she's growing to care very deeply for) entreat her to use her powers to find out the murderer, she nods her head and agrees - and does nothing. Eventually, most of the touch-visions that help her to solve the crime occur accidentally - when she slaps someone, or when she falls and someone catches her. The villain actually ends up revealing him/herself in an egregiously clumsy, contrived and silly manner. Why did Evangeline have to have a secret power at all, if she rarely uses it even to save a man's life?

Now, our hero. In order to have her novel fit the criteria of a Gothic Romance, Ms. Ridley tries to give us a dark, brooding, angsty hero with a deep, dark past. Unsurprisingly, he's not nearly as dark as he seems. In fact, most of the time he's just somewhat rakish, very needy, and more than a bit amusingly ridiculous. He's more of a "sad Rake" from a lighter Regency - it's like he escaped from a Julia Quinn novel in order to set up shop as Heathcliff Lite - All the Broodiness, None of the Insanity.

The only thing really dark about him is the hinting he makes about the deaths of his parents, and, just like nearly everything else about this book, the payoff to the big reveal of this is incredibly lame. The book isn't out yet so I won't spoil the actual details, but it's very much of the "while fighting with my brother, I sneezed on him, and he caught consumption and died" pseudo-guilt variety.

Too Wicked To Kiss fails to impress, mostly since I could have done without any of the characters at all. We have melodramatic writing, hamhanded plotting, nonsensical character motivation, an unsatisfying climax, and a needless paranormal element.
D+

"Order of Protection," Kathleen Creighton

The Chick: Joy Lynn Starr (yes, that's her real name - and she has siblings with worse: Jimmy Joe and Sammi June apparently show up in previous novels), a five-foot-nothing forty-something wannabe mystery novelist, believer in psychic powers, and all-round selfish, air-headed moron who can't get anyone to believe that her fashion-reporter friend has gone missing (what?? A cop won't believe that her friend is an "infant soul" because she's an Aries? What is this world coming to?).
Shady Past: 3 miscarriages, 2 failed marriages, and a partridge in a pear tree.

The Dude: Scott Cavanaugh, a sheriff's deputy who is charged by Joy's brother Roy to take care of his "ditzy sister" (thankfully, his own words), to keep her from flying off the handle. He's also a father to a 14-year-old son who insists on acting like he's ten.
Shady Past: His ex-wife divorced him because she couldn't stand the attention he paid to his job and not to her -- but still calls him once a day to get him to do her housework.

The Plot:

Joy: My psychic powers tell me my friend is in trouble! WHY WILL NO ONE BELIEVE ME?

Scott: You are a moron, and manipulative to boot.

Joy: Moi? That's impossible! *sexy eyes*

Scott: ...I feel a sudden urge to investigate your concerns! *investigates* Looks like your friend shacked up with a Latin mafioso's son, and is probably on that private island that they own, that is heavily guarded because they have more money than God, along with several shady ties to international terrorism and drug-running.

Joy: Great! Now I can go rescue her all by myself because I'm way too cute to get hurt and the cops are big stupid meanies!

*island explodes*

Joy: Oopsie, my bad!

Scott: I want to love you, but you DO SUCH STUPID THINGS!

Joy: I want to love you, but my karma's out of whack!

Scott: We found your friend, but let's let the FBI handle it. Just to make sure... *handcuffs Joy to toilet*

Joy: Handcuffs are no match for my totally natural, non-manipulative, perfectly-morally-okay wiles. *sexy eyes*

Ryan, Scott's teenage son: Will you be my mommy? *unlocks cuffs*

Joy: *rescues friend*

Scott: Wow, and they would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you meddling woman!

Romantic Convention Checklist:

1 Hot Cop

1 Mafia Connection

2 Moments of ESP (fer real)

3 Heroine Rescues by Hero

1 Romantically Lackluster Ex

1 Southern Drawl (used intermittently)

The Word: I had low expectations for this book to begin with -- this was literally a book I picked out at random from a black garbage bag my Romance Literature prof provided for his class. Last week: romance comics. This week: harlequins! Or to put it more accurately, Series Romances - mine's a Silhouette Intimate Moments. The writing was actually a bit better than I was expecting -- I dunno, I guess I was expecting something egregiously bad that would make it instantly recognizable as different from Single Title Romances (i.e. Nora Roberts - Lisa Kleypas territory). As I kept reading, though, I definitely saw a LOT of flaws.

First of all, Creighton uses similes way too often - such as ALL THE TIME. I don't mind a good simile, and I don't mind people who use them all the time if the similes match the mood or the job or the thinking patterns of the character in some way (i.e. an accountant describing a mysterious hero like an "algorithm she couldn't solve" or something). Creighton's, however, are just plain inane - she plasters lame, obvious, or weird similes as descriptions all over the place (worst example: "her heart melted like a chocolate bar in the sun"), which has always been an indication to me of lazy writing.

Secondly, her CHARACTERS. As you may have guessed from my previous descriptions, I absolutely despise the heroine. She's an annoyingly self-centred nutjob. I guess it must be one of my pet peeves, but I can't stand stories where some feather-brained twit with no forensic experience defies everything that trained law enforcement officials tell her to do and ends up saving the day. I HATE those. I don't mind characters who contribute to a case with their natural intelligence or ingenuity, but Joy puts herself in harm's way for absolutely NO reason other than selfishness.

Her character (who, hilariously, wants to write mystery novels but hasn't bothered with ANY research other than watching CSI once a week - yeah, good luck with that honey) believes her roommate is missing. Fine. She has this sort of extra-sensory intuition that her friend is in trouble, and her friend said she'd call but she didn't, so Joy is worried. That's fine and reasonable. Her concern is understandable, as is everyone else's skepticism.

However, she INSISTS on rescuing her friend, Yancy, herself - even after things blow up to the point where nearly every law enforcement agency in the country is looking for the same thing she is: she doesn't care that she has no training, she doesn't care that she's putting her best friend's life at risk, she doesn't care about the hot cop who cares about her - this book is all about her and her own pathetic problems. Wah, wah, her daddy died, wah, wah, she's had miscarriages - boo hoo, that totally gives her an excuse for doing inexplicably idiotic things that endanger other people's lives to satisfy her own personal missions, because if she isn't the one who saves her friend, personally, by her own hand, than by some measure she's failed. I have no idea where such a narcissistic character acquired the delusion of grandeur that convinced her that she is in a better position to save her friend from a CRIME SYNDICATE other than FBI agents and cops.

Joy's not only annoying, however - she's poorly written. All her plans for rescuing her friend are: "Wander onto restricted Mafia area. Play stupid. Jiggle my boobs. Use my psychic powers to grab friend and ride into the sunset on my magical unicorn." Not only that, but the author TELLS us about Joy rather than shows us - and she tells us poorly. We're told Joy believes in psychic powers - but it only really comes up when it's important. It doesn't affect anything else she thinks about, and seems to be put there just to be a sickeningly cute irony ("Oh! She believes in spirits but she doesn't believe in love! How adorable!"). We're told Joy is an aspiring mystery writer - yet she doesn't show any interest in writing, any creative thought, or any desire to research. If I was an aspiring mystery writer and found myself being babysat by a cop for three days, I'd be asking a shitload of questions - who knows when I might get another chance? Nope - Joy's "writing" aspect only comes up when it's convenient to the storyline, and then vanishes. There is no aspect of her character that SHOWS us she's a writer.

The worst thing, though, is that we have to be TOLD that Joy is 42 years old. I didn't know she was 42 until she explicitly said so 50 pages into the novel. That's 50 pages of me believing she must be in her early twenties because there's no way such a basketcase who acts so irresponsibly and is so self-absorbed could survive to be 42 and still have friends. All the descriptions that Creighton lavishes on Joy show her to be younger than the book tells us she is - and that's a BAD thing, by the way. Joy is descriptively compared to babies, children, and kittens (at least 9 times in the novel she's compared to a kitten - ugh) -- all young, small, vulnerable, cute things. Give me a break. Either she's a cute, vulnerable, doe-eyed naif or she's a go-get'em rescuer, Creighton. You can't have both.

The only redeeming factor of this novel is Scott -- because, for one thing, he actually calls Joy on her sexually manipulative bullshit. From the get-go, he outs her for using the seductive gestures she "unconsciously" uses to have men do what she wants (like looking out at people from under her lashes - a move she uses about once every two pages). Secondly, after the first time that Joy breaks her promise to him to not get into trouble by grabbing onto a ludicrously arbitrary loophole, Scott isn't retarded enough to fall for it again. My favourite part of the novel is when he actually handcuffs her to a toilet to keep her from running off and ruining the FBI's stakeout, because he knows that if left unchecked, she'd go and do it because (say it with me) it's all about her and no one else matters because she's the one with the boo-hoo personal demons.

Still, he ends up loving her anyway, and I can't imagine how. Joy Lynn Starr disrespects everyone she meets and has no consideration for other people's training or intelligence and endangers other people to fulfill her own needs and everyone just shakes their heads and chuckles, "that's our Joy, it's just her nature, ain't she a cute free spirit?" Gag me with a tarot card. D+.