Can We Skip to the Good Part? by Melissa Brayden

 

Charm, with, engaging dialogues, a solid cast of supporting and supportive characters, high heat levels — these are my expectations from Melissa Bayden.

I'm sure that this one has it all too, but unfortunately, I just couldn't get into the book. I tried. I really tried.

Ella Baker is so overlooked that they even 'forget' to fire her at work. Brayden has used this 'overlooked loveable MC' in The Last Lavender Sister so she seems to like the concept. No issues with this profile. Almost immediately after she's fired, her best friend, Rachel, is there for Ella, opening her home and heart to Ella. 

Ella shifts states and cities and lands at Rachel's — who is warm, welcoming and pretty much the best kind of friend. 

Then Ella joins a book club and meets Em — who is Max, Rachel's ex. 

It's not that the writing is bad. It's fine — though not up to the level I expect from Brayden. 

I think that my real problem with getting into this book is how instantly likeable Rachel is. How intensely supportive she is.

I couldn't truck with the concept that Rachel would be recast, and Ella would probably be less than the same stellar friend to Rachel that Rachel was to her. 

So for now, I've kept this one away — I don't want to say in my DNF pile — so into my 'aybe later' pile.

Fusion by Diana Kane

 

Review-lite

…because…MC cheats on a perfectly lovely partner because the partner wants a stronger, deeper relationship

• One of the fastest abandoned books for us (reason, above)
• Cheating a loving partner is never something we can understand in any way

The Secret Ingredient by KD Fisher

Review-lite

…because… 

 

We’ve noticed a trend in romances that disturbs us.

One of the characters behaves in ways that border (or even cross over into) abusiveness. In lesfic, this is mostly emotional and/or verbal abuse. (Ghosting comes under emotional and/or psychological abuse.) The abusive behaviour is justified by portraying the person as an Ice Queen or attributing their behaviour to past baggage. This person is pretty normal in all their relationships – except with the romantic interest. 

Usually the other lead is a beautiful person. Open, loving, giving, accepting, mature, honest, sexy. They overcome their own issues, make themselves vulnerable and go out on the limb for love. 

The disturbing part in the dynamic of these two typical MCs is that the one behaving like an asshole seldom ever takes corrective actions or apologises. The person who is loving and know how to love, care and be in a relationship bends over backwards to have a relationship at all. She becomes all about appeasement and takes on the full emotional burden of the relationship.

When this is how a relationship starts it sets the template for the interaction between the couple for the future. And this kind of template for the future marks an awful partnership.

We find this particularly disturbing because frequent use of this kind of dynamic by multiple authors normalizes this behaviour. It sends subtle messaging and makes emotional, verbal and psychological abuse acceptable. Worse, it makes people believe that if they do not accept such behaviour and make good with the abuser, they fail.

We sincerely hope that authors desist from writing MCs behaving like assholes without facing serious repercussions for such behaviour. Yes, they do deserve a second chance, but only if they realise that their behaviour is unforgivable, they correct and change their behaviour and most importantly, they apologise and make good with the other leading lady.

The Unexpected Dream by Nicole Pyland

Review-lite

...because we dropped it like a hot potato

• Mia is someone we really liked immediately 

• In practically her first scene, Skylar is being self-centred, selfish and mean to her absolutely love girlfriend of two years. She compounds her despicable behaviour with jealousy and uncaring.

• Existential Question: We like Mia but hate Skylar with a passion...should we waste time reading this one further?

• Follow-up Question: Do we like Mia enough to tolerate Skylar?

• Mia does deserve love, romance and happiness, but it will be with Skylar. And we hate the thought of Mia being saddled with her as a partner. Ergo: Abandon asap.

Playing For Her Heart (The Ashforth Series Book 1) by Melissa Tereze

Dominique (Dom) Simmons works in a coffee house and plays football. At one of her practise sessions, the team notices a tall, beautiful, posh lady hanging around. Unwittingly Dom bumps into the posh lady’s expensive car and is at the receiving end of some (deserved) attitude. The lady, Blair Harrington, gives Dom her number with the expectation that Dom will speak to her insurance company and get back to her. Dom drags her feet on this till Blair reappears.

Dom begins to know Blair more and discovers that under the posh, put together exterior is an intense lived life and a woman struggling with her own complexes.

Big trigger warning: domestic violence plays an important part in the book and is a big part of both the characters’ backgrounds, albeit in different forms.

Right in the beginning it is established that Dom is a hook-up specialist and has a long-term friends-with-benefits thing going on with her roommate Charley. But at the same time, she is described as honest (particularly about her disinterest in relationships), considerate and kind.  

Blair is much more complex. She’s recently divorced from a verbally, emotionally and physically abusive man after twenty years of being married to him. She’s had therapy to deal with many, many things in her life. She obviously has a lot of self-worth and self-esteem issues. She has a son in university who is gay. All these things make Blair a real person with depth and dimensions.

The writing is good, yet we struggled through half the book because Dom was just so meh (despite all the virtues attributed to her). She was seemingly all sweet and considerate but in her actions, she kept rejecting Blair in many ways, practically ghosting her and constantly giving Blair the message that she was unimportant. And then, with her words, Dom said otherwise to Blair. Despite all good intentions, we didn’t find her behaviour with Blair okay.

Then there was Charley. Another person who was always there for Dom, was obviously interested and whom Dom kept rejecting. Again attributed to Dom’s cluelessness rather than uncaringness.

We confess that at the point where Dom is completely breaking Charley’s hear we had to abandon this book. We have a huge thing about love being returned. About love being treasured. About love being treated with gentleness. We think it takes immense self-absorption and absence of niceness or caringness for a person to be so clueless and callously break hearts (Charley’s) and confidence (Blair’s). It takes a huge amount of being emotionally absent with everyone to not see them at all.

We found Dom totally not nice. However, we’d like to be fair – the book is doubtlessly well written and draws you in. You actually feel Blair and feel for her every step of the way. While we have certain idealistic expectations, admittedly, Dom will not be a write-off for others. Even up to the part we read (which may be a little over 50%) there are certain sweet scenes.

However, this one wasn’t for us. At. All.

Make Believe Wife by Berri Fox

This has perhaps one of the best synopsis that we’ve ever read. The synopsis grabbed us and made us pick the book immediately.

Helen is in a good place in her professional life. Successful at her work and a boss who looks out for her.In fact, the boss looks out for Helen so much that she is concerned about Helen’s singlehood and promises her a wonderful opportunity provided Helen is no longer single. (Huh?) Good girl, rule-abiding Helen is a deeply buried secret which she unearthed about herself on a visit to Cosy Nook – she is a little kinky Roxy is a drifter bouncing from place to place, person to person. She is dedicated to pursuing pleasure. She is told about Cosy Nook and goes there only to be escorted out real soon. Helen follows her with the thought that this girl could be one she presents as her partner and snags the opportunity and promotion at work.

The premise is fine. (Did we also mention that we loved the synopsis?) However, we didn’t like Roxy from the start and the concept of picking up someone literally from the gutter and taking them home made us way to uncomfortable despite knowing this is just fiction. No matter how awesome Roxy might turn out, her first interaction with Helen is quite off-putting – the time Helen takes her to the diner and Roxy shamelessly takes advantage of the kindness. In fact, after Roxy’s behaviour in the diner, we were even more uncomfortable with the idea that Helen still took her home – and we had to abandon this book at that point.

Clearly this flight of fancy and fantasy is not our cuppa tea.

In Helen's Hands by Nanisi Barrett D'Arnuk

Picking up a BDSM novel is uncommon for us. This is not a genre that appeals to us or even one where we can understand the characters even slightly. This one ensures that we don’t venture into that genre ever again.

Mickey transcribes music and sometimes plays piano as one of the unseen back up musicians in the pit. She has idolised Helen Robins, a famous jazz pianist forever. When she gets an opportunity to actually play, albeit invisibly, in one of Helen’s shows, she is thrilled. At the after-party, Helen offers Mickey a transcribing job. Mickey completes it diligently and Helen invites Mickey to New York (from Boston) to work with her for a few weeks (months?). When Mickey starts working with Helen, she soon stumbles upon an unexpected scene which shakes her but also arouses her. Immediately after, Helen offers and Mickey accepts a BDSM relationship.

This book is intense in its depiction of sadism, bondage and dominance. From what we know, there is a lot more discussion (than shown in this book) around the rules of engagement between the parties before they get into this kind of a relationship/lifestyle. A lot of it felt like plain cruelty and torture to us and we just had to abandon this book. This far surpasses the BDSM benchmark set for us by The Story of L. Couple of other BDSM books that we could read without totally cringing were Ticket to Love and At Her Feet (though the ‘mommy’ aspect in this put us off). So far the one BDSM book that we’ve enjoyed has been Never Knew Until You – call it BSDM 101, but that is just about how much we can really take.