Category: romance

Books I’m Looking Forward to this January

So, I think we all know I love to read at this point. I have done numerous posts about some of the books and characters I enjoy. Now that it is a new year, I don’t want to talk about resolutions, so let’s talk about a few books I am looking forward to this January as I reset my goals and habits.

J.R. Ward – Blood Fury, releases January 9, 2018. This much-anticipated third installment in the Black Dagger Legacy series actually becomes available on the day of this writing. I stumbled upon the Black Dagger Brotherhood series years ago and was enthralled from the first. This series deals with a race of vampires just trying to live their lives steeped in their antiquated caste system while keeping their identity safe from humans. The Brotherhood is an elite group of warriors led by a king who doesn’t want the throne and tasked with keeping the worse of their society policed as the community is broiled in politics and plots that don’t care about remaining secret. Great world building, great action, and love too! The Legacy series is a spinoff/followup to the Brotherhood that deals with the training of the next generation of warriors. Blood Fury is the story of Peyton and Novo, an unlikely duo of warriors, both out to prove themselves.

Christine Feehan – Judgement Road, releases January 23, 2018. Christine Feehan is prolific and her worlds are full of vampires, shapeshifters, magic users, and those with extrasensory abilities. I have reviewed her writing here on the blog before. This book is the first in a new series called Torpedo Ink. It takes place close to Sea Haven, a town used in both her Drake Sisters and Sisters of the Heart series. There are motorcycles and trained killers, secrets, and love. I look forward to learning a whole new world of these men and women and how they are going to overcome circumstances the rest of us would run from.

Susan Mallery – Sisters Like Us, releases January 23, 2018. Susan Mallery writes great contemporary romances with the sort of real world feeling that makes you feel it could be you and your friends in similar situations. This new book revolves around sisters who appear to be opposites but are grappling with similar problems involving kids and their mother. I have a sister and we often feel dissimilar even though we love each other fiercely, but we have certainly felt even closer with adding kids to the mix and with the hi-jinx of our aging parents. I feel this story is one I will relate to in a fun way.

J.D. Robb – Dark In Death, releases January 30, 2018. J.D. Robb is the pseudonym of Nora Roberts and the vastly different books she rights under the two names has always fascinated me. Robb writes a close futuristic crime thrillers featuring the bitingly literal Eve Dallas and the people who inhabit her life as a police lieutenant in New York. These circle includes her mysterious husband Roarke, a thief turned billionaire business guru. This marks the 46th book in the series and most of the joy, for me, comes from Eve’s confusion over everyday sayings and items along with her keen mind for crime and seeing her dragged kicking and screaming into friendships. In this installment Eve is trying to find a killer employing scenes from an author’s stories. It sounds similar, but I am sure it will be fun anyway!

Ronen Bergman – Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, releases January 30, 2018. I have never read a Ronen Bergman book, but the title and premise of this one caught my attention. I love the fictional Israeli Mossad agent, Gabriel Allon, written by Daniel Silva. I have reviewed him on the blog, here. So, this real account of how Israel’s Mossad agents use something I have only read about in fiction sounded like my kind of book. I look forward to reading it.

Book Review: The Darkest Torment by Gena Showalter

What better way to start a new year than with a review of a scrumptious book? I can’t think of one, so let’s go!

I recently  finished the long awaited title The Darkest Torment by Gena Showalter. It is number 16 in the Lords of the Underworld series. I have read each book, I have genuinely enjoyed each of them too, which is why I still reading 16 books in. The Darkest Torment tells the story of Baden, recently returned to life, sort of, and a dog trainer caught in the wrong place at what turns out to be the right time. Baden has recently been returned to life to rejoin his friends who comprise the Lords and of course such a thing comes with a lot of strings. Not only does every story build upon the previous ones, but they each stand alone as a complete story and can be enjoyed if you stumbled over, say number 10 first. You may discover them out of order, but I am sure your curiosity will get the better of you and force to you go back and get each person’s complete story for yourself. Ms. Showalter’s world is richly imagined and vivid with details. One of my favorite visuals this time around was the fact that Lucifer’s palace was built of blood and bones and surrounded by a moat of acid and tears of the damned! Just reading that made me want to turn around and run. Baden is described by referencing Jamie Fraser of Outlander book and now show, fame. It is a series many of her readers will be familiar with and brings the contemporary believably into her fantasy world. As Baden and Katarina, the dog trainer, collide we have some typical butting of heads with one or both lying about themselves and their situations. I always think, “Can’t anyone tell the truth so we can have a little bit of a smoother ride?” But let’s face it, most of us love the conflict and enjoy screaming at our books when the characters make ridiculous choices (I certainly do). I didn’t like Katarina a lot at the beginning because I was so caught up in what I saw has her needless tales, but it didn’t last and you will have to read it to see if you feel the same, but I came to enjoy her story more as it unfolded and my first impression was definitely changed.

One of the other things that often go into serial books is secondary stories as set up to forthcoming books. When they are done well, as Ms. Showalter does here, they are integral to the current story and whet your appetite for the other character’s book as well. There are two major secondary stories in this installment, that of Cameo (a female Lord, so a Lady of the Underworld?) and of William the Ever Randy (great name, right?). I wanted both these characters to have their day in the spotlight right now based on the continuation of their private situations that came to a bit of a head in this book. I don’t know which one will be next, but I can’t wait!

Back to the main story, as Baden and Katarina are forced into a longer and longer involvement, they start learning truths not clearly evident in the beginning and feeling proprietary towards each other. It is played out masterfully with a return of hellhounds, a decisive independent stance by Katarina in a world populated by demons and immortals, and an explosive twisty ending that shows smart character development. The Lords are also collectively battling to save their lives as they each fall in love, every story expounds on this and shows a maturing of the characters and their thoughts from a simple black/white and good/bad outlook, to one that is nuanced and shaped by caring for others and understanding that we all want to live.

I have long enjoyed Ms. Showalter’s writing and Lords of the Underworld was the first of her books I enjoyed, but she writes seemingly as voraciously as I read and has other series you may enjoy including contemporary romance with no fantasy worlds involved! I hope you get a chance to read The Darkest Torment, it was a delicious treat filled with misunderstood people trying their best, like you and me.

Book Review: Dark Promises by Christine Feehan

I have loved the Carpathian novels, The Dark Series by Christine Feehan for a while now, and I hadn’t read any in a moment and when I saw Dark Promises on my library shelf, I got myself caught up with the series in order to read this. I was only one novella and one novel behind and I quickly read those. I completed Dark Promises in one day, this is a bit unusual as I don’t normally have a day to commit to nothing much more than reading and laying around, so this was a treat. Read on to see how I thoroughly enjoyed it!

In having read the series up to this book, I went into it prepared for the normal story arc as presented in the realm of the unique circumstances of the main characters in this book, but was totally rocked off my chair (out of my bed) of normal Carpathian storyline in Chapter 1, page 24 (hardcover edition)! This installment in the world of the Carpathians is NOT the same and already I am so shocked by what is happening I had to put the book down and process my feelings about it.

Now, to be honest, these books are not for anyone triggered or with a general dislike of themes where the woman is dominated both mentally and physically by the man. I don’t find the domination to be overtly sexual in the way of BDSM (as recently popularized in fiction writing), but in the Carpathian world, the males have strong personalities and often come from a time centuries earlier when the main objective was keep your woman safe and cherish her at home. Often a woman is brought into the Carpathian world (they are not human) without her full knowledge of it and this heavy handedness, as some may call it, is usually tempered by seeing that the woman has a feeling this is the right man and the right thing to do, but doesn’t mindfully know it is. She wants this new reality but will probably have a very difficult time admitting it. In this installment, this theme is very prevalent. In some past installments, the woman is less dominated, often has a dominating personality herself which then has to be understood by a male working on a centuries old dynamic of his word being law. That is not the case in Dark Promises. If you can get past that, keep reading.

In Dark Promises, someone at odds with herself all her life has been forced into a new life. Now she is being ripped from her perfect fantasy life and trying to claw her way out of it into reality. This reality also has the benefit of showing her what strengths she has always had. The essential theme in Carpathian novels is the immutable bond between life mates, and one of the things I love most about Ms. Feehan’s world is that the players involved always find out that the bond isn’t the real glue in the relationship, it is the trust and care built, even in a short time, that makes you root for the couple. It makes you scream in frustration and weep in joy as they stumble through learning trust and care in a strange, exciting, often terrifying new world. Also, the couples often feel the lifemate bond has it wrong due to the vast gulf of differences and opposite personalities, but often this bond cements the idea that a loved one’s opposite demeanor helps expand our perceptions and makes us stronger. This story actually covers two couples and moves the story of The Dark Series along well. The two couples’ lives are intertwined and while one couple’s story is prominent and the other secondary, both are told well and fit in the realm of one book. This installment in the storyline depends heavily on the book immediately previous, Dark Ghost, but if this is the first Carpathian novel you have picked up, it won’t be hard to follow. But, I will warn you, if you read it and love it, you will likely want to go back and start at the beginning to see all the great lives changed in the world of the Carpathians.

Dark Promises gave me a jolt out of my preconceived notion of how things and people worked with the Carpathians, and that was great. Especially since I didn’t know my notions needed a jolt. Yet, this didn’t feel forced or contrived, it was plausible in the world Ms. Feehan has built. While it moved the overall storyline and ended with my own searing need for the next book in the series, it was still a lovely, self-contained story of people being grown outside of the box they have forced themselves into by an otherworldly and all encompassing love. And that, my friends, was superb.