Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Fast forward a few years, and we meet our statuesque heroine and orgasmless widow, Kate Abbot. To her credit, Kate loved her husband, even if he was weedy and bespectacled and lousy in bed and womanish enough to die of consumption. (Side note: my personal experience has been that weedy, bespectacled boys tend to be good in the sack because they KNOW they have to compensate for their lack of studly good looks. Also: they’re usually very, very happy to get a girl and tend to be, well, accommodating, shall we say… Anyway, enough TMI, back to reviewing.)

Kate moved to Barbados following her husband’s death to be with her brother, who’s a commodore. One day, while accompanying her brother on parade inspection duties on a military compound, she notices a prison warden brutally beating a chained prisoner with a riding quirt. What does a gently-reared, recently widowed Englishwoman do?

The only thing she could do, of course. Run over (with skirts hitched up to her knees, no less), wrench the quirt from the warden and start beating the everloving snot out of him, while the prisoners watch on, appropriately speechless.

Naturally, she feels indignant when her brother tells her off for being a crazy-ass bitch. Now, I’m fairly used to feisty romance heroines, but this woman deserves a whole new category. Like, a “Tonya Harding On Altruistic Crack” category. OK, I’ll admit I enjoyed how the prison warden got his ass handed to him, because I generally enjoy watching and reading about women kicking patoot, but there was a definite “Oh are you SHITTING me?” feeling to the whole scene.

Anyway, one of the prisoners immediately decides to take advantage of the proximity of convenient hostage material and nabs our winsome Kate. This man is, of course, no other than Colin Wyndham, scheduled to hang for the crimes of patricide and piracy in just a few days. Using Kate as his bargaining chip, he manages to free his fellow prisoners (including the members of his crew who were captured with him) and scarper back to his ship, the Blackbird, conveniently anchored, unguarded and fully-manned, in a nearby cove. Which, again, are you SHITTING me? The pirate captain and key members of the crew are caught, but the military made no effort to find and secure the ship when it’s just minutes away?

The rest of the story involves the chase as the Blackbird tries to make its way to the relative safety of Tortuga, and Kate’s seduction by Colin, who is, as Kate’s brother noted, “ever popular among the strumpets” (hee!). Oh, and then there’s a plot twist, which I won’t give away—no, not even with the turn-text-to-white spoiler thing I do every now and then—but trust me: out of all the hostages in all of Barbados, Colin is lucky indeed to have nabbed this particular chippy because she’s the key to saving his ass and proving his innocence.

Overall, Draven’s writing style isn’t too bad. It does verge towards lilac in spots, especially the love scenes, but I’ve read a lot worse. The use of some standard romance cliches (the orgasmless widow, the feisty heroine who’s willing to take on all comers and come on all takers [no, wait, I only WISHED Kate had come on all takers] despite what one presumes is a sheltered upbringing, the emasculation of the first husband) didn’t thrill me, either, but at least Draven didn’t take it all the way and make, say, the husband abusive on top of being sexually ineffective.

The story does suffer from significant pacing problems, though. The novella starts in a very leisurely fashion, as if it were a full-length novel. The set up is quite good as a whole, aside from Kate’s impression of a certain batshit insane figure-skater-turned-pugilist, but it’s not suited to a 54-page story. As a consequence, the last few bits are incredibly rushed, and Kate happily tumbles into bed with her captor after only a few days at sea and a really good dinner conversation. It’s not that I don’t think this sort of thing can happen; I just didn’t buy into it in this particular instance because I didn’t get to see Kate interact all that much with Colin, and what little interaction there is, is antagonistic up until the dinner and the performance of the humpty dance. And as I noted before, I didn’t know this wasn’t a stand-alone story, and the ending perplexed me until I e-mailed Draven for confirmation that yes, there WILL be a sequel.

In short: this novella would’ve been a lot better if it had been much more even in tone and pacing, instead of being crispy on the outside and doughy and unset in the middle. And not in a good way, like a chocolate lava cake. More like a chiffon cake that hadn’t been baked long enough.

Sarah:

We need to make a category for “erotica/romantica” on our site because Candy and I both like us some romantic nookie action. That being said, there was not nearly enough erotic action for this to be an historical erotica novella. There was a hot, descriptive, cock-laden love scene, but there wasn’t a powder-keg build-up of tension or any other sexual interaction, just a minor spat over dinner that led to some in-and-out sex.

The other element that I felt was missing was a full twist on the established cliches. Draven already made her heroine tall, and curvy, and buxom, and contrasting her with the dainty and petite sister in law made it clear to me she wasn’t the average romance heroine. Add to that her incredibly short-sighted assing of the prison guard and I get it loud and clear: she is not average.

But then, to make her an orgasmless widow, it’s like when a figure skater (to keep up with the Tonya-Harding-on-Altruistic-Crack analogy) goes up in the air to spin four times before landing, and her leg pops out and she manages just one half of a twist before landing. Making Kate an Orgasmless Widow is the author’s leg popping out of her midair twist-on-cliche. Candy is right: the nerdy guys learn fast how to get it on. So why not have her a multi-orgasm widow? Why not have her hungering for some man action as she sits in her black dresses unable to really socialize with anyone aside from family? The restrictions of mourning on women at that time were pretty daunting; granted there was tremendous freedom once one came out of mourning, but still, being able to take a lover and finding that same companionship as she had with her husband would be very difficult. To make Kate this tall, strong, powerfully tempered woman, then to sell her short in the sex department, left me with a, “Darn it, why not go all the way, here?” feeling. And really, it’s an erotic novella; it should go all the way, circle around, come back, and go all the way again.

Now, I feel like a right heel for doing this, because I’m second guessing the author’s decisions, but I have to say it. Suppose for a moment that she was a multi-orgasmed widow, desperate for action. And she gets herself kidnapped and held on board a pirate ship with a hot, manly captain who has been in prison for quite awhile, and prior to that on a ship full of men. Now thems is some sex-crazed individuals, and a ripe scenario for an erotic novella. As it is in present form, the orgasmless widow and the well-sexed-but-not-recently hero who just got sprung from prison, is a solid thump back into cliche-land. While I am shamed to find myself being something of a backseat writer in this review, I have to point out that this particular cliche was surprising to find in an erotica novel, many of which exist to twist cliches of romance and sexuality on their ears and spin them around some more.

Aside from the TPS report Candy sent from the Too Much Reality Suspended Department, from the eagerly awaiting pirate ship, to the fierce attack on the guard, my disappointment in this novella rests mainly in the lack of action - nookee action. I have no problem suspending reality, and really, sometimes some over-the-top fantasy in a romance makes me very happy to leave my own reality and live in such a completely convenient world. But leaving me with an, “Oh, but...” feeling is not enough of a reality suspension.

However, that all being said, the writing style is snappy - there were parts of description that could have been explicated, but Draven does have an ear for language that depicts an engrossing image, and her dialogue, particularly between Colin and Kate, is snappy enough to keep me reading. Even if the cliches piled too high for my liking, good dialogue will redeem a story with me any time. Arrrrgh. 

The book starts off promisingly enough, then degenerates into a morass of misunderstandings that includes every one of the not-inconsiderable secondary cast of characters. The ending is also one of the most odd, drawn-out resolutions I’ve ever read; it’s almost like watching clowns pouring out of a car: just when you think “OK, the last clown is out, show over” another one hops out, does a soft-shoe then drags out yet another compatriot hidden in the trunk, who in turn reaches into the car and presents to us a midget hidden under the back seat.

Gina, Duchess of Girton was married to her childhood friend Camden when she was only 11 and he was only 18. Why exactly they had to be married remains a mystery to me. It’s all incredibly silly: Gina is illegitimate, the product of her father’s liaison with a hot French countess (gotta love those wacky, slutty French countesses). She was unceremoniously dumped at his household when only a few weeks old because the countess didn’t want to be burdened with a child. Her father and her stepmother decided to raise her as their own, and the secret is quite neatly kept until she’s 11, when a blackmailing letter arrives out of the blue threatening to out Gina’s bastardry.

So what do these seemingly rational adults do? Well, Gina’s stepmother’s brother—then the Duke of Girton—calls his son, Cam, down from Oxford to marry the 11-year-old he’s known as his first cousin all his life. How or why this averts scandal or foils the blackmailer completely escapes me, but for whatever reason it worked. Maybe the tactic was so outrageously silly that poor blackmailer was confused and reckoned he’d better stop demanding money from a bunch of lunatics.

Unfortunately, Cam is so outraged by the whole business that he literally leaps out the window after the ceremony (yes, this is indeed a silly book, and the more I have to recount the plot the sillier it seems) and runs away to Greece, where he is free to follow his heart’s desire: sculpt naked women out of marble.

Eleven years down the road, Gina falls in love with Sebastian, Marquess Bonnington, and writes to Cam requesting an annulment. Cam decides to be a good sport. He’s quite fond of Gina, after all, and has kept up a correspondence with her all these years; he just doesn’t want to be married to her. So he returns to England to file the papers. It seems simple enough—that is, until he meets Gina at a house party.

Oh my, the little girl has filled out. He finds himself attracted to the lively, somewhat dashing young woman Gina has become. Then he meets her fiancé, Sebastian. He very accurately classifies him as a prig, and he rapidly realizes that the two of them will be miserable together. Gina is coming to the same realization as well. Sounds good, right? But there are so many obstacles in their way…

Oh, wait. There aren’t. But this doesn’t stop them from manufacturing a few from thin air, of course.

And then there are the secondary romances. First of all, there’s Gina’s friend, Carola Perwinkle. She has been estranged for years from her husband, Tuppy. Why? Because losing her virginity hurt. Oh, and because Tuppy likes to fish and talk about fishing. No, I shit you not. Boiled down to its essence, these are the two reasons for the estrangement. Carola abandons Tuppy in a fit of hysterics mere days after wedding, then in a series of increasingly silly misunderstandings, pushes off the possibility of reconciliation further and further.

Their eventual reunion is sweet enough that it made me go “awwww,” but it also left me feeling incredibly depressed because I just absolutely KNOW Carola is going to pitch a shit-fit over something inconsequential a couple of days down the line and poor Tuppy will be too thickheaded to figure out anything and she’ll just end up moving out in a huff again and really, when I think about Carola all quivering and teary-eyed YET AGAIN I want to bawl out of sheer exasperation myself.

And then there’s Esme Rawlings. You know how in a group of fictional girlfriends there’s always the smart one, the stupid one, the tomboy and the slut? Heh. Anyway, Esme and her husband, Miles, have been estranged for years and years, though for much better reason than Carola and Tuppy: Miles is much older than Esme, and he meets and falls in love with a woman he’s much better suited to after he’s married. Esme has quite the reputation for being a heartbreaker and harlot du jour, though of course it’s quite exaggerated. So guess which completely inappropriate hunka burnin’ love she longs for. Just guess. To give James due credit, she gave plenty of clues but I still didn’t see it until it was right in front of me.

But man, the showdown between her and her light o’ love (I understand their love story becomes a running theme in the three books that follow Duchess in Love) towards of the end of the book just about takes the cake for Dumb Misunderstanding. Ah well, at least the author puts a fresh new spin to it, instead of resorting to conniving parents, cross-dressing and/or long-lost brothers with criminal tendencies.

Oh, wait, scratch the last one, because believe or not, there IS one of those in this book, though he doesn’t belong to Esme, and he doesn’t really cause any misunderstandings. Why exactly he’s in the book at all is a mystery, but then why anything is in this book tends to be pretty enigmatic on the whole, so why mess with a system like that?

The only reason why this book doesn’t dip right into the D range is because of the extremely engaging characters. Gina, Cam, Esme, Sebastian, and yes, even Carola and Tuppy are adorable and fun to read about. Just when I think that, say, Gina and Carola have shot right into the stratospheric heights of stupidity, never to return, they redeem themselves and figure shit out. Or at least Gina figures shit out; Carola just whimpers about how chubby she is and quivers like warm jelly, which, come to think of it, pretty damn well represents what’s sloshing around in her brain box.

So in short: a very entertaining book on the whole, though the plot is… frantic? Yes, frantic and somewhat incoherent. Again, not unlike Carola. Hmmm. I do have to give it this: I did keep turning the pages very briskly just to see what the hell else was going to happen. I just wish I didn’t get the sense that while writing the book, James had a huge wheel in her office labeled with every plot contrivance known to literature (and a few new ones she made up on the spot) and that every 55 pages or so she gave it a vigorous spin, just to keep us on our toeses.

If You Dare features a non-cartoon cover, thankfully, and an art thief, Damien Black, who has just retired to Atlanta, where a scurrilous restaurateur has asked him to take on one more job. Not sure if he wants to trust the client, Damien visits the art museum where the heist is to take place, and meets the new director of the Atlanta Musuem, Angel Lafonte, who is smart, sophisticated, stunning, and the sister of Damien’s rather greasy, pushy potential client.

Angel is immediately knocked flat by Damien, and a puddle from a rainstorm, and he steals her cell phone and leaves her with his in order to ensure that he will see her again. Petty thievery and pickpocketing is a new technique in my experience of “ways the hero meets the heroine” plot devices, and instead of making Angel feel threatened and controlled, it causes her to up the stakes and steal something of his right back. A backbone she has, yes.

But only where the hero is concerned. Her sleazy brother has a tendency to treat her like an object – his object – and it’s more than creepy and gross. He has men following her, forcing her to dodge them in shopping malls, leaving her car at one entrance then hailing a cab from the other side of a crowded store. She tells him repeatedly to have his “goons” stop tailing her, but of course it continues.

He also has significant gambling debts, and has loan sharks after him, hence his pressuring Damien to take on one last job for him, a multi-million dollar heist from Angel’s art museum. Protecting his sister from himself is not something on darling brother’s mind, apparently, but woe be the man who gets near her while his goons are watching.

Meanwhile, a French cop, after Damien on the theory that he is le Phantome, a famous art thief who has eluded capture, has come to Atlanta, and begins following Damien wherever he can, tracking down his childhood friends and guardians, and generally shadowing Damien every step, regardless of what the Atlanta police think of his actions. Sadly, rental cars can’t keep up with Damien’s collection of sports cars, so Damien can lose him on the highway – so long as there’s no traffic.

Wait. I’ve been to Atlanta. How is this thief dude can zoom all over the city without getting stuck in traffic, while the minute I touch down I spend most of my time in Atlanta in bumper-to-bumper traffic jams? So not fair. I want an art thief chauffer in a Maserati, next time I’m in Atlanta.

The romance in this book is tricky, since the forces working against the couple consist of her brother, and their own unwillingness to be fully forthright with each other, leaving her brother ample room to sabotage their romance by revealing all the things Damien has been hiding from Angel, such as the true nature and origin of his evident fortune.

As an aside: is it not a fantasy complete when one reads a romance with a spectacularly wealthy hero or heroine? I dig contemporaries with seriously wealthy individuals; it’s one thing when the hero is a construction worker or a pharmaceutical salesman. It’s quite another when the hero is a master at his craft and is fabulously successful and well off for his efforts.

My problems with this book are simple: one, there are serious holes in the story, and by the time you realize how the entire puzzle fits together, which I can’t reveal without entire blowing the ending, you feel cheated of the experience of knowing what the technicalities of the art thievery entail. For example, in Mission:Impossible, did you care about the preparatory work, the assignment, or the romance, or did you care about the hero descending from a wire into a room to type on a computer suspended in midair, evading notice from the security system? Is it not much cooler to check out how Charlie’s Angels jump across security beams and trip alarm systems than it is to see them sprawled on Charlie’s couch? Anyone see the movie “Sneakers” with Robert Redford? There’s one scene where his team heats a room up to 98.7 degrees so he can walk very slowly across it, evading both the heat sensors and the motion detectors, to steal something. It’s the best scene, and the ingenuity of the heist is half the fun. So to have an art thief as the hero, and not pay any attention to describing the thiefing that goes on is disappointing, to say the least.

Further, Angel as a character is a bit of an enigma. First, she’s a strong woman who has earned a position as a director of an art museum. She’s knowledgeable about several types and eras of paintings and sculptures, and she’s attractive and savvy, able to go up against a charming, suave and attractive man who swipes her cell phone from her purse and match him charm for charm.

But then she allows her brother to push her into dangerous situations, and never ceases to give him more rope of forgiveness and excuse with which to hang himself. She’s a classic enabler, which makes sense in that he is her family and she feels she should stand by him, but by the time she has realized he has placed her in significant personal danger, she’s forced to rely on others to get her out. Her brother owes significant amounts of money to a uber-villain named Merrick, and Merrick demands Angel as repayment: the opportunity to sleep with her. And her brother doesn’t say no. He begs Angel to go out with him, even knowing that Merrick is dangerous, certainly homicidal, and not above raping her should she say no to giving him what he truly wants.

Even then, she refuses to give her brother the assing he truly deserves. If a sibling offered me up like that, I’d come seriously close to doing them lethal harm. Yet his actions have no satisfying consequences, and as a reader, seeing the villain figure be told his penalty is to have his sister cut him from her life, when she wasn’t all that pleased to have him there in the first place, is disappointing and irritating, especially when you want to root for such an otherwise brave and clever woman.

The primary characters are Meredith “Merry” Vance and Nicolas Craven. The cock in question belongs to Nicolas, in case you were concerned that it was that kind of romantica. Merry is the daughter of a Duke with three older brothers, all merrily married (sorry couldn’t resist that one). Merry is older than she should be to be “on the market” and is a outspoken tomboy, with freckles, frizzy curly hair, and no delusions that she’s beautiful. She’s horse-mad and quite the competent stable master, but her family, particularly her mother, despair of seeing her married.

Merry has decided that she doesn’t want to be married at all. She inherits a small estate from a grandmother in ten years’ time, and is trying to hold out and remain a spinster so she can become a modestly wealthy spinster in the future.

Her mother, however, is being blackmailed into seeing her married off to her husband’s estate manager’s son, a shy, but kind and good-looking man named Ernest. Merry’s mother has gone to great and cruel lengths to keep her daughter from being pursued by other eligible men, and as a reader, you want to hate her. And that’s just fine because the mother is eminently hateable.

Nicolas Craven is a painter with a slowly-growing following among the ton. He’s just finished a portrait of Merry’s father, and he, and Merry, once she sees it hung, feel he’s captured the essence of the older aristocracy: haughty, but completely confused as to what the world is becoming, and powerless to stop it from changing.

Craven is popular as a portrait artist, but only among male members of society, as he is a known rake who frequently entertains loose women in his home. “No decent woman would sit for him,” Merry’s mother says. Oh, ho.

Merry’s mother has meanwhile employed similar blackmail techniques to persuade Merry to marry Ernest, and Merry finds herself in a position to lose those things she truly loves and cares about, including her maid and her stable of horses, in order to preserve her precious freedom.

And so Merry decides, after a deus ex machina encounter with Nicolas in the street, to run off to his house, and sit for him as a portrait subject, thereby ruining herself for marriage and getting her insistent parents off her back.

Merry does not tell Nicolas she is the Duke of Monmouth’s daughter and agrees to sit for a nude portrait of herself cast as Lady Godiva, while living in Nicolas’ house. Further, she agrees to learn the arts of the nouque. Nicolas does not allow Merry to think she is anything but another woman in a long series of conquests for him, even though he finds himself falling for her, and reminds her that her time with him lasts as long has he has any interest in her physically. His friends imply that there is no alternative ending to their story, even as Merry equivocates whether the erotic pleasures she experiences with Nicolas would feel half as good if she weren’t head over curls in love with his Craven self. He wants to hump her; she’s in love with him and therefore is able to enjoy the humping. Odd how I didn’t expect a emotional-attachment-precludes-sex element in a historical romantica, even if it is a Holly novel, where there is a happily ever after ending for at least two of the principal characters in most of her stories.

Nicolas gives Merry a thorough education in the erotic arts, but within the realm of his cock lies the first problem I have with this book. I know that the strict sensibilities of the Victorian era were marked with outrageous subtexts to express all that repressed sexuality. Flower language, for one - I once read a brief article about how one bouquet of the wrong flower -or the right one - could send some serious humpty dance messages. And it’s not like I’m talking about the giant sex flower, either.

Because I was expecting some subtlety in the erotica, or perhaps some acknowledgement of the societal suppression or their deliberate release from that repression, the erotic language of the book struck me as jarring. I can’t decide if it is truly fair to discredit the author for historical details that I was expecting, but I can demerit my rating of the book for the often-startling introduction of the naughty talk used by the characters, particularly the hero. At one point, they’re dancing around their feelings for each other, after the heroine has been ill to the point that the hero worried for her life, then the hero says he wants to “cram her full of every inch of [him] [she] can take.” Well, now. Just slap me over the head with your giant wang, why don’t you, and tell me what you really want to do?

My other problem with this book was the multiple lies the characters tell one another. I could see the big crisis of their relationship coming a mile away: Merry would be able to see past Nicolas’ deceptions and forgive him, but Nicolas would feel that Merry had deliberately made a fool of him, and lied about her true name and social standing to trap him. Aside from the ever-popular “I lied but your lie was much worse” device, how did this man not realize the woman posing for him was not at all a housemaid, and was in fact well-born and well-bred? I mean, he remarks upon her posture, her bearing, her manner of speech. She knows how to dress, and has excellent social skills, even with his friends, who are certainly of a lower class than both Nicolas and Merry. How did he not figure out who she really was?

Further, MINOR SPOILER, he never thought to wonder why a boy the exact age as his estranged and distant son has suddenly taken up a position in his house, exhibits no training or skills in the house-caring department, and wears a scarf over his head to hide his face. I couldn’t even tell you the number of times I thought to myself, “Oh, come on, dude.”

This almost became a novel wherein I could write in the review that the hero was indeed too stupid to live, except that he didn’t so much endanger his life blithely doing what he pleased; he just couldn’t get a clue if he danced naked in a field of horny clues wearing clue musk during clue mating season. 

Another odd piece about this book was that it couldn’t seem to decide whether it was a romantica with exceptional sexual activities featured within it, or if it was a historical romance with some hard-core sex talk thrown in. If it were anyone but Emma Holly, I’d say that the author didn’t really understand what romantica and erotica were. It’s not a romance with the word “cock” and “pussy” thrown in like icing on the cupcake. Having read other Holly books, I expected some elements of sexual exploration, not just explicit descriptions of his ranging wang and her endless orgasms.

There is some mention in reference to the hero’s backstory of ménage a trios with two of his friends who are a Victorian version of a swinger couple, though they seem to engage in affairs to inspire jealousy, but there’s no specific mention of sexual adventures on the part of the hero or heroine, aside from deflowering her and then having sex in untenable positions.

For example, at one page, the heroine mentions how she is petite when she stands in front of the hero. Then, two pages later, they have sex with her facing a door, with the hero behind her. Completely unrealistic – I’m 5’4” and Hubby is 5’8”, and there’s not any way we could have sex standing up. I mean, the height difference is impossible. Even in the few pornos I’ve seen, I’ve spotted a small bench or stool under the female so she can be propped up to the correct height. A nitpicky point, perhaps, but enough to yank me out of the story and dump me back into reality. Unfortunately, I was at that moment sitting next to a particularly stinky person on the train who didn’t cover his mouth when he coughed, and would have much preferred to stay in the story than experience the reality next to me.

To define specifically why I scored this book at the low grade that I did, I have to explain that the story itself was good. Twists and turns, adventures to other countries, and protagonists that I did indeed like, though they often got on my nerves, all made finishing the book a pleasure. But did this book need to be an erotic or romantica novel? No. Did the erotic elements add to the story? Were they elements of his or her character, and did they serve to develop or explore new facets to their personalities? No. It was a fairly done romance with erotic language thrown in. It wasn’t even a spice, like a saffron or a nutmeg taste to a fine sauce. It was like finding whole gherkin pickles in your consommé – jarring and not entirely enjoyable.

The shades of the hero’s backstory and sexual history were interesting, but there wasn’t enough specific interest to make it a valid or valuable part of the story. Further, if he really was that much of a sexual libertine, there was a lot more he could have done with the heroine than what all they did, particularly as a device to explore trust in another person even on a shaky unknown foundation to a relationship. She didn’t know all that much about him, and he didn’t know who she really was, but there were all kinds of soul-shattering orgasms going on. Sexual acts that require trust would have certainly added a spicy element to the development of their characters and to their relationship, and would have justified this being an “erotic historical.” As it was, it was a romance with a giant plastic cock glued on the front.

Then one day she gets a bad feeling about Ginger. So bad, that merely trying to call her on the phone fills her with dread. Always one to obey her instincts, she leaves for Atlanta immediately.

What she finds is a mess indeed: her sister is nine months pregnant, her shady boyfriend, Malik, has gone missing with a huge amount of money and the thug he stole the money from just got out of jail. As Malik’s girl, she’s a prime candidate for some not-so-gentle interrogation about his whereabouts and where he stashed the money.

Enter Malik’s brother, Rick, and woo damn, does Bless receive the shock of her life when she meets him. He’s the dark, handsome stranger in her dreams. He’s also a cop, and he’s determined to protect Ginger and the foetus. Even more shocking, however, is another realization that shoots through Bless: Ginger’s unborn child is going to be a key leader and savior when Armageddon arrives, and Ginger is just as determined to kill the baby one way or another. She’s so determined that she has enlisted assistance from various demons, who proceed to make Bless’s life very interesting indeed. Between finding love with Rick, protecting the baby from Ginger and fighting off demons, there’s more than enough to occupy Bless (and the reader) in this slim 250-page novel.

And really, the biggest peeve I have with the book is how it needs another hundred pages, easy, to do the story justice. I mean, there’s some kind of crazy apocalyptic fight going on between people of Light and these wack-ass demons, and it’s driving me crazy because the supernatural aspects that don’t involve actual demon fight scenes are almost completely glossed over. For example, Bless can heal, cleanse the spiritual atmosphere and all that good stuff. Do we get details on what this process involves, or even what it feels like to channel energy? Nope. There are some very vague descriptions of seeing auras, of pushing out the darkness, and that’s it—nothing about the sensations that go through Bless as she draws on the healing power and then guides it into someone else. Not even something basic like “There was a sense of pressure on her neck, then a warm tingle in her palms and stomach as she drew the bla bla bla from the bla bla bla and oh behold the dying child healeth etc. etc.”

Bless also has to be skooled in the ancient art of demon asskicking. Do we get details on that? Nope, just some rather vague descriptions like “She blasted some light from her palms, the demon burst into flame, then she woke up sweating and sore because she learned how to ‘splode some demon butt in her dreams.” I’m dying here. I want MORE. I want to know what it feels like to kick demon ass. Again: what does it feel like to channel psychic energy like that? Even the most basic of sensory descriptions would’ve helped: cold, hot, painful, pleasant, tingly, shocking.

So in short, I can see the action, but I can’t feel it down in my bones the way I want to. I spend much of the book feeling as if I’m floating above the characters, completely removed from them, instead of living their lives, breathing their air, feeling their pain and happiness. It wasn’t until the last few chapters of the book, when Bless really starts whupping some serious demon patoot and the action sequences become more detailed, that I felt truly engaged.

There’s also a truly complex, fascinating backstory going on that’s more-or-less ignored. See, Bless, Maris and Ginger are part of an ongoing cycle of three souls who are doomed to re-live the same pattern over and over until somebody breaks the cycle. We get the barest hint of how the cycle got started, but that tantalizing taste is all we get. MORE, DAMMIT, I WANT MORE. That’s the refrain that ran in my head as I read through the book.

The love story itself was all right. Bless and Rick are extremely nice people, but I think of this book as another Soulmates Gone Wild story. Wendy the Super Librarian covered this recently in her Romancing the Blog column, and while the book conveyed very strongly how Bless and Rick are Meant To Be, the actual chemistry between them is no better than luke-warm. I, for one, would’ve liked more scenes from Rick’s point of view. I know why Bless is attracted to Rick; I mean, hell, the man’s been sexing her six ways to Sunday for years in her dreams. I’m just not quite sure why Rick is attracted to Bless. I’m told “she feels right” and that he likes curvy women who know how to cook, but something about the attraction just didn’t ring true. I don’t want just to be told that she feels right, I want to be shown it. The book’s breakneck pacing doesn’t allow this, however, which is a shame.

There are bright spots in the book. Some parts are laugh-out-loud funny, often in a rather dark way. For example, Ginger describing how the Universe tried everything to stop her from having an abortion, up to and including having birds spray her with avian bombs from the air as she’s walking to the clinic, is almost worth the price of admission. And the fight scenes, especially the ones at the end, are really, truly fun to read.

When it comes down to it, I would’ve enjoyed the book so much more if it had much more detail than it did, and if it had engaged in more showing, less telling. I think the concept and characters held a whole lot of promise, they just needed fleshing out—especially the supernatural backstory. But then looking at the other reviews for this book, some people were freaked out by the supernatural bits and thought the book was way too graphic. Shit, I thought it wasn’t nearly graphic enough. Which just goes to show: you can’t please everyone all of the time. The only logical conclusion to this is: screw everyone else, Monica. Write books that will please me. I’m all that matters, because dammit, my taste is impeccable and I’m AWESOME.