Kiss the Girl by Susan Sey

Skeptic scale: ♥♥♥

The cover of this book really threw me for a loop. It suggests that the story would be one of those cutesy rom coms featuring a strong silent hero, a chattery but adorable heroine, a strict father figure with a heart of gold, a gay best friend and an eternally single and hilariously bitter bff. 

And I was wrong because despite what the cutie-patootie cover suggests, this story is the total opposite of that.

He: Heart surgeon who volunteers his time with the poor and downtrodden of D.C.'s rougher neighborhoods. Along with his best friend Mary Jane, he helps run a clinic to help the poor get access to healthcare.

She: A famous trust fund-rich do-gooder from a family of famous do-gooders who has spent her whole life in the poorest parts of the world trying to bring attention to the plight of the people there. Her mother is described as an Angelina Jolie-type of character with an almost brutal beauty and the ability to turn everyone who beholds her into a whimpering fool. Our heroine on the other hand is more of a Princess Di sort with a sweetness and charm that ingratiates her to anyone she meets. Her life has  been charmed in terms of wealth and public adoration, but she's a lonely girl at the heart of it. Plus she has a nasty and dysfunctional family.

Conflict: The hero's mother is a senator and he always resented the fact that she was never there for him and his father. He is determined never to marry someone who was so much in the public eye that it would preclude any sort of true private life. So when H meets h, although there is some attraction, he feels like her intensely public profile means that he can never really get into a relationship with her.

Liked:
1) Interesting premise and probably not too far off the mark as far as how the media affects people's private lives. 

2) The story wasn't as "soft" as your typical chick-lit novel. There were some rather serious issues being dealt with here - poverty in America, the abominable state of the healthcare system, the responsibility of the rich to lend the poor some of their luck, how the media both manipulates and is manipulated by people in the spotlight - among others.

3) The writing was snappy and many times funny, and the characters were really nicely drawn. They were all complicated and tricky and not at all the regular characters who usually pop up in chick-lit.

What was sort of meh:
1) I thought the hero was an ass. The big stick up his heinie was that his mommy was too busy for him (um hello, she was a senator, his dad could have moved his saggy butt to where his mom worked instead of insisting she leave her job and ambitions to come work on his farm). 

As a result of this feeling of abandonment, his whole problem with the heroine is that she's "too famous" to be a suitable wife and partner. Why? As a thinking adult, could he not open his eyes and see that being famous and busy isn't the real issue - the issue is what that person does with their fame and work. And once he gets to know her and realizes that she ISN'T a spoiled brat, then what is his issue with her? 

I really just didn't get why he let his dislike for the fact that he felt like his mom didn't bake him cookies when he was little color his whole entire perspective on Every Famous Female in the World.

2) There is a scene where he forces her to eat meat even though she says she's a vegetarian because he doesn't believe she's a vegetarian for "the right reasons". Say what now!!?? Who the heck is HE to tell her what the "right" reasons are. 

Her reasons were actually pretty sound - she thinks the meat industry is extremely energy intensive and thought she would do her little part in cutting back on the waste. That isn't the worst reasoning I've ever heard. But he insists that she eat a burger. Turns out she likes it and he feels all vindicated and smug. Well... the fact that burgers are DELICIOUS is not really in dispute here - it's just that even though they are delicious a person has a right to choose not to eat them if they feel like they are doing something to cut back a little on the general excess. 

Whatever. 

3) He asks his best friend to marry him even though he doesn't really love her that way two SECONDS after he finishes making out with the girl that he does like that way.

Skeptic's last word: Ok - it occurs to me that everything I dislike about this book has to do with the hero. So I guess that's that then. If you don't mind douche-y, bitter, antagonistic heroes then this is the book for you! I do like Ms. Sey as a writer though so I will try something else of hers to get the taste of this silliness out of my mouth.

Goddess of the Hunt by Tessa Dare

Skeptic scale: ♥♥♥♥

Lovely, beautifully written and so, so sweet.

Lucy loves Toby. Toby loves Sophia. And Jeremy loves Lucy. Love is so complicated, n'est pas?

This could have turned into a hilarious romp in the vein of The Importance of Being Ernest (one of the most wonderful books I have ever read), but it was just too sincere and well, earnest, to be anything other than a darling story about love growing between friends. 

She: Lucy is the younger sister of a slightly distracted, but loving brother who has practically grown up with her brother's two best friends Toby and Jeremy. She has formed a tendre for dashing and handsome Toby who had playfully crowned her Diana, Goddess of the Hunt once when he was in a particularly flirtatious mood. She is convinced that he's the man for her even though everyone else disagrees and sets out to seduce him in order to prove her point.

He: Jeremy is the serious one of the three friends and has been the self-appointed look-out for Lucy and her various scrapes with disaster. He has always known she is special but doesn't really let himself go for it with her because she is his best friends sister and there are Rules against that kind of thing. Plus he's an Earl and has to marry someone suitable - Lucy, for all her charms, hardly fits the mold for his perfect countess.

Conflict: First of all there is a whole love triangle. That one is solved in the first 50% of the book. The last 50% deals with a whole series of misunderstandings that keep the two apart.  

Loved:
1) The words. I LOVED all the WORDS. I cannot say enough about romance writers who treat this genre like it's "proper" literature. 

2) The heroine is a bit of a dummy (she's young), but she's a ball of unstoppable energy that just made me smile. She does a lot of dumb things but she's pretty funny doing them, so I didn't mind too much. And despite her youth, she doesn't really need anyone to take care of her which is also a departure as far as young-girl-weds-older-man tropes go.

3) The female friendships in the story. I liked that the ladies were complicated and wanted different things but still found a way to bond. I liked that there was honestly between friends and that the women showed true regard and sympathy for one other.

What wasn't as awesome:
1) I think the "Series of Misunderstandings" conflict is a bit overdone. I realize this book was written years ago, but I just think when all the tension between the hero and heroine can be instantly dissolved with a single honest discussion between the characters, then it's all a bit silly that it isn't being instantly solved with that conversation. 

Favorite lines:
"Goddess he may have dubbed her, but the worship was all on Lucy's side"

"He employed six-and-twenty footmen - in London alone - to heed to his every command. Now he catered to the whims of a despot in dotted muslin."

"This wasn't a blind, mindless craving for anything woman and willing. This was needing with a name."

Hot For Him by Sarah Mayberry

Skeptic scale: ♥♥♥♥

This is a cute little hate-becomes-love themed story about a couple of rival TV producers who manage competing daytime soaps. He's her nemesis because they're fierce competitors but otherwise we see that they would actually be great together - they're both fantastic at their jobs, both love what they do, they're both from large Greek families and have a similar sense of humor. Plus they're both attracted to each other, in a way that only people in Romancelandia can be - you know that intense groinal aching and swelling that seems to grip people in romance novels? Actually it makes it sound like they have Chlamydia when I say it like that... but you know what I mean, right? They're hot and heaving for it.

Anyway, the conflict is that he's attracted to her wants to go for it. In fact, he is ready to start a family and really wants to continue in the footsteps of his own happy My Big Fat Greek-style family. She, on the other hand grew up facing the dark side of what can sometimes happen in large, enmeshed families. She never wants to have kids because she's convinced she needs to break the cycle.

What I liked:
1) I liked how aggressive the heroine is. Not aggressive as in rude and bitchy - just aggressive in her attitudes towards sex, her relationships and her job - just going for it when she wants something. Fierce and awesome.

2) Ms. Mayberry painted the hero as totally alpha but not really in the King of His Job way. He likes his job and is good at it, but he's perfectly happy admitting that his job is just work and what really matters to him is family. I feel like in most romances, the hero comes to that conclusion right at the end after being "convinced" of this by his love for the heroine. In this case, the dude manages to come up with it all by himself. 

3) The complications didn't all get solved after she finds her Big Love. My eyes always hurt from all the eye-rolling I do whenever I see writers just tie everything up with a pink ribbon at the end of the story. Give me some messiness, dang-it!

4) The Epilogue. I LOVE Sarah Mayberry's epilogues. She's so creative and awesome about them I wonder why EVERYONE doesn't just do epilogues like hers. I am so sick of the happily married couple + mini me (or bun in the oven) scene where everyone is laughing and its all gooey romantic looks and sunshine and no actual furthering of the plot at all. In Sarah Mayberry's books, the Epilogue actually finishes the story, helps further her characters and let's you create a whole vision of how you think the rest of the character's lives will go. 

What I didn't like so much:
1) There was this somewhat contrived event that occurred that throws the H & h together - I see why the author wrote it that way - how else to get producers of rival tv shows together? But it was a bit over the top to me.

2) The way they conflict was resolved meant that one of the characters moved all the way over to where the other character was - instead of more of a case of BOTH characters being willing to change and then maybe one actually having to change their position. I guess it's ok for one person to change their opinion in a couple - that happens all the time in real life. But it's so much nicer when BOTH change a little bit.

All Out of Love by Lori Wilde

Skeptic scale: ♥♥♥♥

Look at this cover. No, you're not listening - LOOK AT IT. I actually think you don't need to read this or any other review at all to enjoy this book. You may not even have to read the book when it comes down to it... 

The Skinny -

He: The Most Popular Guy in school - football jock, gorgeous, cool AND nice - fulfills his youthful potential by becoming the QB for the Dallas Cowboys but then when everything goes horribly wrong - with his own health as well as his father's - he returns to his hometown and finds that the girl who had had a crush on him all through school is still around and has become pretty, darn hot.

She: Chubby, awkward high school teen gets her deepest secret - an unrequited crush on the school's most popular and out-of-her-league guy - outed in the most mortifying way possible. She spends a lot of the next 10 years or so getting past that and becomes a confident, fun, fulfilled person. But then The Crush rolls back into town and she has to deal with all the small town's commentary as well as his totally of arrogant assumption she would still be into him.

Conflict: Leftover effects of the trauma of teenage embarrassment on her part, and a probable end of his sterling football career mean that they both have a bunch of issues. Plus the fact that even though she's a pretty confident person, she still feels the twinge of insecurity watching all the ladies in town throw themselves at him.

Liked:
1) Both characters were fun and confident and pretty happy with themselves. No one needed "fixing" and both were able to deal with their own emotional lives without acting like asses.

2) The chick was described as cute and hot and a size 14. I am given to understand this is the US average size for a woman, so although the point that she wasn't exactly skinny was made, it wasn't belabored to the point of being annoying. In fact the hero doesn't really remark upon it at all. Nice.

3) The female character had a passion - plant biology of all things! I love it when characters have interests and passions outside of their romantic lives. It just makes me feel like they are people with the capacity for fulfilling their OWN happiness and the fact that they found a partner with whom to share that happiness is just a wonderful bonus. 

Didn't like:
1) Not that I disliked this exactly, but I do find the corn-fed, salt-of-the-earth, good old boy Texas jock a bit of a tired hero archetype. I guess there's nothing not to like about this hero - he was a nice guy along with being a hot, successful athlete - but I guess I would have liked to see a "twist" in the character somewhere. Something unusual about him that would make him be something more that the other jock heroes I read. Apart from his predisposition to like average-sized woman, that is.

Here Comes the Groom by Karina Bliss

Skeptic scale: ♥♥♥

I've been on a Australasia binge lately! A lot of Karina Bliss and Sarah Mayberry. Fun stuff. 

So... I liked this one okay. 

There was something about the friends-to-lovers thing that didn't really strike me as believable in this one. I know friends-to-lovers is a popular theme for many romance readers, but I don't really like them because I feel like it gives more ammunition to the side of the world that believes that girls and boys can't be friends - something I absolutely do not accept and do not believe at all.

In this case, H & h have been friends since childhood and there has been no hint of a romantic interest between the two of them that whole time. Well, except for this one tiny kiss they share when she's drunk and lonely. 

Then he comes back from a traumatic experience while fighting in Afghanistan and announces he wants to marry her.

He: Ex-soldier, insists that 'everything is fine' but we sense that he's going through some terrible stress. And even though he's always been a good friend to her, he's kept himself apart. 

She: She's a strong, independent, competent lady. She's always been capable of taking care of her own affairs and has never played the damsel in distress with him - something that he has said he truly appreciates. But then when she goes through this terrible stressful situation, she feels like she shouldn't really burden him with her crap, especially since he's clearly been affected by the war and she doesn't want to add to that.

Conflict: This is the part that felt a bit "off kilter" to me. I see why the would be a good match, but how come they never saw it all those years they were friends. And then, I wasn't quite sure how they each SUDDENLY knew this was the right decision? I guess in life, people don't necessarily have a seminal moment that explains everything they do, but surely they had hints? 

Anyway so the story conflict is that when she does realize she loves him, she wants them to marry for the right reasons, not because they are both too scared of life. 

There is some weird stuff right at the end where he goes through this whole "Grand Gesture" that is supposed to prove that they are meant to be together - that they are both facing their fears and taking real risks to be with one another. But honestly, I really didn't get it. The main trouble for me was that the gesture didn't really seem to be tied to their actual fears - except maybe in a distantly symbolic way.

Skeptic's last word: So. All in all, a decent read, but I thought the "falling in love" stuff was really rather abrupt and there was none of the regular tension built up between them that would convince me that they really wanted each other. I came away feeling like they were both kind of just "settling" for their best friend. Not a terrible way to begin a relationship, of course, just not really the way you'd hope.

What the Librarian Did by Karina Bliss

Skeptic scale: ♥♥♥♥

Vintage-clad librarian gets it on with jaded, alpha-hole, ex-rocker dude. I thought I would totally hate it. But I totally, TOTALLY loved it. 

He: Earring wearing, ex-rocker and basically a stuck up jerk for most of his famous life. He had been a substance abuser and a womanizer and a wearer of purple boots. He's in New Zealand, in retirement and to escape from his rollicking LA life of dissipation.

She: A goody two shoes librarian who's got a big secret. Ohhh. I WISH I could tell you the secret. But I CAN'T because it's such a good one and I want everyone to read this book.

Conflict: They do NOT get along well. She thinks he's stuck up and he thinks she's lame. They're both right, of course. But then they spend some time together and it's sparky and hot, and super fun.

What I loved:
1) SO funny. The characters play off each other wonderfully. And it's not the cheesy way you'd expect with all the jokes at her expense (school-marmish, dowdily dressed librarian?) with him coming across as a rakish tease. The insults fly both ways and it's awesome.

And honestly even though the H is described as arrogant, he is actually hilarious about it. Supremely confident but aware of his shortcomings the way we wish all our men would be.

2) There are some intense themes (feelings of abandonment, self-discovery, family struggles) but it's all dealt with a light hand and great humor so you don't feel mopey and sad the whole time.

3) I love that the h's focus wasn't ALL about the H. She had this other secret thing she's dealing with and for more than half the book she's pretty focused on that. She recognizes the attraction between them but that doesn't overshadow her own stuff. I really don't like it when authors describe how the heroine is going through this whole life changing thing and then all of a sudden the hero swoops in and all she does is stress over HIM. 

My favorite line: 

"I'll just get my cardigan"

Cardigan? He may not be a hell-raiser anymore but Devin valued his reputation. "Haven't you got anything sexy?"

"Yes," said Rachel. "My mind."  

You said it, sister.

All He Ever Needed by Shannon Stacey

Skeptic scale: ♥♥♥♥

Famous last words: It's just sex, we're not serious or anything.

Why do people even say stuff like that? If I've learned anything from romance novels (and believe me, I've learned PLENTY) saying dumb sh!t like that is like waving a baby mouse in front of a irate cobra. Pretty obvious how that story ends.

Anyway, obvious-sauce aside, I really enjoyed this story. To think I almost gave up on this series! After 3-hearting Yours to Keep, I almost threw in the towel with the Kowalski brothers because it was getting rather same-y same-y. But I guess all I needed was a break because this story, as "standard" as it was, was pretty darn fun.

He: Mitch, the town's favorite bad-boy panty-charmer rides back into town after a long absence and seems to immediately inflame the female population of the small town like a match on dry kindling. The ladies of the town chatter unceasingly about his many feats of sexual prowess so we quickly learn that the man is kind of a big deal bedroom-wise.

She: The owner of the main diner in town who is taking a break from men. She has some history and doesn't want to be the kind of woman her mom turned into - the kind of twists herself into uncomfortable shapes to please a man. Not bedroom-wise, but life-wise.

Conflict: He's just in town for a quick stint to help his brother out, she doesn't want to get into anything to wreck the careful peace she's put together for herself so they agree to just be casual. Yeaaaaah. Then one of them decides that maybe they could have something serious. But then they get their heart broken because the other one hasn't gotten there (yet). I won't say who moved faster in this case because that would be giving it away. But I'll give you a hint. 99.9% of the time it's the chick who moves too fast. And this book wasn't really that original. So...

I don't know why I'm being so mean to this book! I really liked it! It was funny, hot and even managed to be realistic in parts. It was just so regular that I actually amazed myself by not getting annoyed by all the cliches.

Skeptic's last word: At the end of the day the question I ask myself whenever I read a romance was answered: why the heck do these guys like each other? Ms. Stacey showed us clearly why these two characters liked and then loved each other and why we the readers should find them lovable, and ultimately that was all that mattered.