Mini-Reviews, May 11, 2018

[fa icon="calendar"] May 11, 2018 11:26:54 AM / by Suzanne

May mini-reviews, activate! A bunch of DNFs this month, plus a contemporary Suzanne loved.

Rating refresher! Categories are based on whether or not we recommend them to fellow readers -  DNF (Did Not Finish), Pass, YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary), Read it Eventually, Read it Soon.

 

the-second-timeThe Second Time, by Jade Winters
Margrethe says: DNF (but also YMMV) 

While THE SECOND TIME is a second chance romance, it’s not the sort where they broke up because one wronged the other. Madison and Darcie first met in a foster home and only parted when Darcie left the foster home. The book opens with this glimpse of the girls as they are torn apart without warning. Then, we jump to the present day when Darcie has a PR firm with a friend and they are proposing for a job with a hotel chain that needs to repair its image. But, surprise! The hotel chain belongs to Madison’s uncle. The two women meet and while Madison knows who Darcie is, Darcie doesn’t recognize Madison because she is missing the scar she had at 16. And I stopped reading shortly after Darcie learns who Madison is.

THE SECOND TIME has good prose, a decent hook, and good pacing. I stopped reading because the conflict of that meeting felt too forced and unlike the characters. Instead of feeling warm and fuzzy, both heroines seemed to go for defensive immediately, which when you’ve spent ten years thinking this other woman is your soulmate seems unlikely. And then, their nemesis from the foster home works for a competing PR firm and that’s when I could see the puppet strings of this story. Up until that very peculiar misunderstanding (at about 30%), I was into this book. There’s nothing like characters behaving out of character to throw me out of a story. But I am totally going to look up more by Winters. There’s also a chance that I might come back and finish this book.

You can buy it or read more at Amazon.

 

The Code Of Love, historical romance mystery from Cheryl SawyerThe Code of Love, by Cheryl Sawyer
Eva says: DNF

I was drawn to this book due to its unusual setting: The Isle of Mauritius during the Napoleonic wars. That the hero and the heroine are on opposing sides of the conflict was another selling point (enemies-to-lovers are my weakness).
Sadly, it turned out very quickly that the book was not for me. The book starts mid-action and explains nothing. The reader has to piece everything together from what characters say and the author doesn't make it easy. Only a few pages in I had to go back and re-read passages to figure out what was going on. Then the hero meets the heroine for the first time and his thoughts boil down to the fact that she’s not like the other women which made me seriously side-eye him. The book completely lost me when the hero attempts to flee, attacks the heroine and she decides not to scream because that would be too much like the actions of a panicked girl. I was willing to ignore the rather confusing beginning but I really can't stand the 'not like the other girls' heroines.

Read more at Amazon.

 

Hold Me, contemporary romance trans latina heroineHold Me, by Courtney Milan
Suzanne Says: Read it Soon

HOLD ME is the second in Milan's Cyclone series, which takes place nearby a fictional version of Apple, with characters who are loosely or directly connected to the company. This one is about Maria, who lives with the couple from the first book, and Jay, a college professor who works with Maria's brother. They have an enemies-to-lovers arc, mostly because Jay makes some assumptions about her based on the fact that she dresses very femme. She's almost aggressively feminine, daring anyone to think less of her for the way she looks. Jay's kind of a d*ck for the first part of the book, in all honesty. I ended up with the same feeling as the first book - I love Milan's heroines, and I'm glad she makes her heroes work for their approval. Maria is a trans woman with attachment issues, due to the fact that her parents kicked her out when she was 12. She runs a blog about different ways the apocalypse could happen, which Jay has been following for years. Unbeknownst to either of them, they've been chatting with each other for about 18 months and it's gotten flirty. I really liked the way Milan handled The Big Reveal and the ways in which Jay had to work around his unconscious bias. He's sort of bowled over by the fact that he could be so feminist in some ways and yet misogynistic in others. It reads as very timely and realistic. 

One note - I read this as an audiobook and the male narrator does a terrible job with British accents and with female voices. Both books are in Audible's Romance Package, which is how I read them.

You can pick up a copy at Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, The Ripped Bodice, etc.

 

must-love-chickens, lesbian romanceMust Love Chickens, by Jea Hawkins
Suzanne Says: DNF, but YMMV

If you follow me on Twitter, you're probably aware that I have chickens and that I love them. So when I saw MUST LOVE CHICKENS one day while browsing the lesbian romance category on Amazon, I knew I had to read it. Sadly, this was the last time I would feel so excited about the book.

The premise is that Natalie is forced out of her job in NYC as director of an art gallery and takes a job as a farmhand a couple of hours upstate, working for Jess. There's a lot to like about the book, but I gave up at around 35% because the author was continually having two secondary characters tell the heroines (and the reader) things about the other person. It was immensely frustrating and felt like a prime example of telling, not showing. I would have preferred that the chemistry between the two main characters had grown organically rather than being forced upon them by this older couple. In the end, I do love chickens, but I didn't love this book.

Read more at Amazon.

Topics: review