First, the book I read: Space Junque by L. K. Rigel. It hooked me right into the story and the world; I liked how she created a future both recognizable and horrifying to a reader of today. It reminded me of the works of Sheri Tepper, which to those who know my reading taste is high praise indeed. I didn’t find it to be as complex and intricate as Tepper’s longer works, but the type of world and the issues characters faced were similar, especially the kind of creepy paranormal element, which I won’t spoil here. The romance made me happy; there’s a satisfying, hopeful dynamic when romance happens against a background of violence and uncertainty, and Rigel got that balance just right for me. WIN

While I’m on a roll, let me mention some other good science fiction romance. I also recently read Chain Reaction by Zoe Archer, the second book in her series about the 8th Wing versus PRAXIS, a universe with a Star Wars feel to it. It has Archer’s trademarks, including instant sexual attraction, deep emotions, kick-ass heroine, very capable hero, and lots of action of both the sexual and the adventure variety. I loved the role reversal of the super-competent woman pilot and the kind of overlooked engineer wallflower, and I read the book in a single sitting because I had to know they succeeded at the end. WIN

Also highly recommended in this genre are Anne Aguirre’s Sirantha Jax novels, Sara Creasy’s Song of Scarabaeus and Children of Scarabaeus, and the Liaden universe books of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, beginning with “Local Customs.” Good fiction, interesting science, strong romance.

Historical Romance

The standout authors for me in this genre were:

Courtney Milan — her Turner family books were all terrific, and her novella Unlocked was one of the best things I read in any genre all year.

Miranda Neville — The Amorous Education of Cecilia Seaton was funny, sweet, sexy, and all-around enjoyable.

Julie Anne Long — despite the occasional anachronism, Long writes love stories that really suck me in. I’ve enjoyed all of her Pennyroyal Green books so far, especially What I Did for a Duke, and I also liked her re-issued backlist title, To Love a Thief.

Meredith Duran — A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal was a wonderful book; my favorite by this author since Duke of Shadows. I loved how the book explored issues of class, much like Milan’s Turner books, and didn’t focus solely on characters of the upper class or with unbelievable rose-colored glasses on characters of the lower classes.

Joanna Bourne — what can I say? She writes beautifully, and I can’t imagine not loving anything that comes from her pen.

Victoria Dahl — It’s Always Been You was a really wonderful reading experience for me. I loved how brave and vulnerable the main characters were.

Contemporary Romance

I enjoyed a number of books in this category this year, mostly by three authors:

Victoria Dahl — I have an automatic bias in favor of a book about a micro-brewery, and the Donovan brothers books were all good. It was the second book, Bad Boys Do, that spoke most strongly to me, but that’s probably a biography thing. Dahl’s heroes are all men I can imagine knowing, and wanting, in real life, and her heroines are incredibly varied and interesting — vulnerable (a word I use a lot in reference to Dahl’s characters), yet ultimately strong.

Julie James — A Lot Like Love was a great book, but this year I also read an older James title, Practice Makes Perfect. That’s now on my short list of books to recommend to my friends who aren’t regular romance readers.

Jill Shalvis — I have to say that sometimes Shalvis’ characters make me want to grab them and shake them. But I keep reading, which isn’t the case with some other contemporary writers; in fact, I have trouble putting her books down.

Science Fiction Romance

My big discovery in this genre was the writing team of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller — their Liaden Universe stories are amazing, and I can’t believe I didn’t listen to my friend and Twitter buddy GrowlyCub sooner. “Local Custom” was the story I started with, and I read five or six back-to-back right afterwards.

Sara Creasey’s Scarabeus books were great. Interesting scientific speculation, and she engages the kinds of questions about human power and frailty that I believe are best suited to futuristic fiction.

Zoe Archer, whose Blades of the Rose books were among my very favorite books of 2010, published science fiction romance this year that I really liked. A lot of my favorite science fiction, even when romantic, is not particularly sexy. Archer writes both hot sex scenes and hot action sequences, and I highly recommend Collision Course and the upcoming Chain Reaction.

Paranormal Romance/Urban Fantasy

A few authors continue to be reliable for me in this genre:

Meljean Brook — the Guardian books are complex and compulsively readable. I know this series is ending soon, but I’m excited for the big finale and confident that Brook will continue to write terrific books in whatever genre she chooses. Her Iron Seas series is fabulous — both the novella “The Blushing Bounder” and the full-length installment Heart of Steel released in 2011 were great, and I am eager for more!

Nalini Singh — the Archangel series is branching out into new couples now, and so far I really like that. Singh has created some very intriguing characters around Raphael, and I find myself wanting to read more about all of them.

Carolyn Jewel — it feels strange to include a friend on this list, but it felt even stranger when I tried to leave her off. I first met Carolyn because I liked one of her books, and I continue to admire and enjoy her work. Her Immortals series is smart, sexy, and gripping — I have to be careful when I start one, because I usually can’t stop in the middle. In addition, she has been able to re-issue some of her older books, along with Liz Maverick and other writers, in the Crimson City series.

Ava Gray/Ann Aguirre — the two installments in Gray’s Skin series that came out this year were quite good, and I’m disappointed that there are no more books scheduled. Whether the focus is the paranormal, as in Aguirre’s Corinne Solomon books, or the romance, which is meant to be the distinction under the Gray pen name, this author rocks. She writes believably, with strong world building, and her characters often face moral dilemmas or trade-offs that feel real, not contrived or with obvious solutions. She writes tough, smart characters and isn’t afraid of moral ambiguity.

First, let it be said that I am a huge sucker for literature related to Eleanor of Aquitaine. I researched her when I played her in The Lion In Winter in the late 1990s, and I just adore her as a historical figure and as an interesting character to speculate on in works of fiction. While she is not the central character of this novel, her influence is heavy and she makes frequent appearances, all of which are delightful. Norton writes historical fiction the way I prefer it; it’s a story, not a history lesson, so details of history that are not important to the plot are left alone, allowing the story to move more quickly, but the historical event are accurate and interesting. Since the main characters are not well-known historical agents, we can be surprised by their choices even if we know how the events of history unfold.

The main character is Juliana, who begins the story in a convent. (The main male character begins in a brothel; nice contrast.) She refused an arranged marriage to a much older man, and now, with her parents dead and no siblings, there is no one to arrange a match she’d like better. Not really wanting to take religious orders, although she enjoys the intellectual side of life in a convent, she agrees to let Eleanor choose a husband for her, thus allowing her to hold on to the family estate. Eleanor chooses Guerin de Lasalle, a mercenary with a terrible reputation; neither party is happy about the marriage, and both spend much of the book expecting, even hoping, to have it anulled.

The balance between the political intrigue and the personal/romantic comflict worked well for me. Juliana and Lasalle are caught up in King John’s attempts to hold his lands in Brittamy as well as his crown in England; they are not major players, but neither are they passive pawns. Without that dimension, the romance probably wouldn’t have been much to my taste, as there’s a lot of misjudging, big secrets and denial of obvious feelings. Against the political canvas, however, that didn’t bother me as much.

Fortunately, the romance has a happy ending, which you can’t always count on in historical fiction. And while the sexual encounters verge on being too much forced seduction for my taste (Lesalle drinks a lot, and acts like a pig when he does), there is a wonderful scene where he intends to take her by force, but cannot, because she talks so much that he loses his desire. Lasalle tells Juliana that there are “five means of gaining a well-guarded citadel” (“siege, storm, surprise, subterfuge, suborning”), but there’s also a sixth — surrender. In the end, he surrenders to her as much as she to him.

Win.

The title of the book confused me, because to me Lord Sin suggests that the book’s hero has a reputation of vice and naughty behavior, and certainly Ivo Dauntry is no golden boy. But it’s the heroine, Georgie Exley, who has the reputation. People think she has had a string of lovers since becoming a widow, and she rides, shoots, drinks and hunts with men in a way that causes quite a bit of talk. Not what I was expecting, but I love a merry widow, and George is a fabulous character.

Years ago, Ivo came upon Georgie being manhandled, and he killed the offender, creating a scandal. His family, in particular, was mortified, and he and Georgie haven’t met since. He’s been abroad, she’s been in England, and he doesn’ even know she’s a widow until he encounters her at a boxing match in chapter one. I thought that was an interesting premise, but I admit I didn’t care for the next step — both characters realize their mutual sexual attraction, so they agree to six nights of sex because she “owes” him for rescuing her all those years ago and causing himself trouble by doing so. That bothered me, even though Georgie doesn’t feel so much obligated as lustful, and they both are in the “get it out of my system” trap.

Of course, “it’s just lust” eventually becomes more, although so slowly that I wanted to slap them both for their failure to distinguish between physical attraction and emotional engagement. Ivo resists, at least in part, because of how angry his family will be over his attachment to the woman he’s already been a fool over. Georgie’s resistance was harder for me to believe, because she’s so brave and unconventional in other ways, but it does make sense that she’s reluctant to give up her independence (a wealthy widow has more social freedom than almost any other woman) and give a man control over her again.

Eventually the threat to Georgie’s life, at the hands of the killer, becomes both another obstacle to their relationship and the means through which Georgie realizes both that she loves Ivo more than she fears marrying again and that he isn’t going to expect her to become subservient — he loves her as she is. That’s really what made this book work for me; Ivo wants Georgie just the way she is, “fierce, defiant and oddly masculine.” How could I not love a heroine of that description, or the man who finds her irresistible?

This author now writes for a different publisher, as Isobel Carr. You can be sure I’ll be reading both Lord Scandal, this book’s sequel, and the books written under the new pen name.

WIN.

The other good news is that I am making a strong recovery from wrist surgery. I still have a ways to go to get my right hand back to full capability, but it is improving steadily. The latest milestones are that I can again hold a mass market paperback comfortably for reading and I can wear my partnership rings again.

I’ll be working my way up to trade paper and eventually hardcover again, although I’ve pretty much been converted to digital for most of my reading. I have a few books TBR that I am eager to read, and I have reactivated my request queue at the library. I will be back with monthly reading recaps and some spotlight reviews for books I really want to share, and hopefully we’ll manage some more Mom & Kid features, if the Kid herself can find time to read something that isn’t for school.

KID: “Upon my word,” said her ladyship, “you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person.” Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 29

It’s Always Been You is the sequel to Victoria Dahl’s A Little Bit Wild, a historical romance that my daughter Kate and I both loved. (You can read my thoughts about it here.) Since she’s in the Midwest for graduate school, we don’t get as much time as we used to for talking about books we’ve both read. So we thought it would be fun to write a joint review, sort of along the lines of our usual conversations.

MOM: Whom did you want to slap more, Aidan or Kate? Both are delightfully imperfect characters, and they each say and do some things that push the other one away.

KID: That’s an excellent question. They were both so stubborn, but I think I wanted to slap Aidan more. I think it’s because he wooed her like she was a frightened animal, terrified of shattering an illusion that he kept about her. She’s a very strong woman, and I don’t think he wanted to see that, because he wanted to be the one to save her and protect her – he missed his chance before, and he wants to recreate that opportunity now.

MOM: Although this starts out as a classic plot of lovers kept apart by outside forces (primarily her family), that’s almost all backstory, which I think makes the book much more interesting and unique. They have changed. grown and lived in the years they were apart, and that’s the territory they have to navigate in order to get back together.

KID: I agree. Having the mistakes they made and the hurts they felt haunt them in the present day adds a weight to their obstacles that is really interesting – it’s more like their imaginations created obstacles that don’t really exist. Phantom obstacles. Like Aidan’s illusion about who she is and who he is. He has this whole setup in his mind of what her life was like because she won’t talk to him about it. For me, the conflict centered on perceived past versus perceived future. Aidan is more interested in who they were before, Kate is worried about who they are now and whether they’re compatible. Or, at least, she convinces herself she is until the idea of his past comes to the forefront as an obstacle.

MOM: Recently on Twitter, and in the comments to my TBR Challenge review last month, the subject has come up of dishonesty between main characters in romance. These two have been separated by lies that other people told, so they say they value honesty. And while both of them are angry about the ways in which the other has been less than honest, they each cling to their own lies and secrets until forced to acknowledge them. Does this mean they should be unable to trust each other in future? Does all the lying undermine their happy ending, or does something make you believe that they will have mutual trust going forward?

KID: I think Aidan and Kate more hold secrets than tell lies. Aidan’s big secret feeds Kate’s insecurities about whether they can love each other now. Kate’s withholding of her big secret is what causes Aidan’s imagination to keep feeding him horrible images of what her life was like. So it was definitely necessary to keep the tension going and to add to those phantoms. But the delightful thing about these two is that although they are older and wiser, they still feel innocent because of the joy with which they fall into each other. I think they will succeed going forward, now that the only things they were keeping from each other are out. And Victoria Dahl is very good at letting us know that this keeping of secrets is not a typical thing. They are terrified of keeping secrets from each other and, at least on Kate’s part, once the love is acknowledged the secret is something to be shared, not withheld.

MOM: I liked Aidan a lot as a hero. Poor guy, loses the woman he loves and then almost loses her again because of how he chose to cope with losing her the first time. It’s incredibly moving when he muses on the difference between making mistakes and making “awful, awful choices.” (ch. 28)

But Kate? Wow! Her determination and bravery just blew me away. The end of Chapter 31, when she puts herself out there emotionally, makes me weepy every time I reread it. I was really pulling for her in this book, after all she endured, to fight for what she wants and to win. The number of different ways she has to fight made the victory very rewarding to me as a reader.

KID: I admit to having an instant bias when a character is named Kate. It became very very difficult for me not to see myself in her, because I’ve been in that “I need to make a name and a place for myself without a man” position. She grows more over the course of this book than her time away before the book begins, I thought. I loved the analogy of her re-building the crumbled wall, putting each brick painstakingly in place. By the end of the book, she is strong enough to take action rather than letting her fears keep her frozen in inaction, and she can take the emotional risk in the passage you mentioned.

I was SO happy to see Marissa again! She hits the nail on the head with Aidan: “Is your pain so precious to you?” (ch. 28) The only thing about the ending that made me want to gnash my teeth is exactly that. Aidan is so used to the pain that, several times in the final chapters, he doesn’t notice Kate’s bravery and strength – and her willingness to see past the flaws to the beautiful man beneath. He’s blinded by his pain. But the gnashing of teeth is something I love about these characters, because they are, as Kate says, “good, not perfect.” Something Victoria Dahl does consistently well.

MOM: So those are our thoughts on this book. Congratulations to Victoria Dahl for being the first author double-teamed by Mom and Kid. Hopefully you won’t be the last; this was fun.

The book is The Player by Rhonda Nelson, the first in her Bachelors’ League trilogy. The basic set-up is that four friends from Alabama were selected to form an elite and hush-hush Army Ranger team; one guy, Danny, was killed on a mission and the other three decide they want out of the army to run their own private security company. Their discharge is held up over a disciplinary action (they got in a fight with someone who insulted their dead friend), so their commanding officer offers them a deal: he will sign off on their discharge, but in return they each owe him one favor, no questioned asked. Of course they agree.

This book spends a lot of time setting up the trilogy; too much, in my opinion. It felt slow to get going because of all the words spent telling about the three guys and how different they were and what each one’s backstory was. Add in the words it took to set up the specific situation for this book and you’ve got a lot of exposition. Much of which is told, not shown, in somewhat clunky (to me) info dumps.

The Colonel calls in his first favor from Jamie Flanagan, nicknamed “the Player” because of his pattern with women. The members of the Bachelor Society have basic rules about not getting too involved with women (including dumping them after the third date), but Jamie racks up the conquests because he’s using sex to drive away the pain of Danny’s death. His mission is to go stay at the Colonel’s granddaughter’s resort and get her attracted to him, so that she will turn down her boyfriend’s proposal. But he is NOT to actually seduce her, as the Colonel makes clear with threats of violence.

Unbeknownst to her grandfather, Audrey isn’t planning to accept the proposal. She knows her current boy friend is not “the one,” but some of his flaws are welcome because of her history. She is an empathetic and giving person, so she attracts some very needy men. Derrick is self-centered and arrogant, but he doesn’t drain her emotionally, and she needed that after a previous relationship. But he doesn’t satisfy her sexually (of course), so she plans to tell him no when he returns from a business trip — the trip that made her grandfather (and her best friend and co-worker, who also wants her to dump Derrick) decide that the time was right to bring another man into the picture. The Colonel tells her about Danny, and that Jamie needs her special therapy to help him deal with the loss of his friend.

So a classic set-up, even if the premise is a bit short on credibility: they’re lying to each other about their goals and motives, and each has a reason to fight off any urge to get involved with the other.

The book isn’t badly written; there are some cute turns of phrase and some funny dialogue. But it didn’t work very well for me for several reasons.

The overall plot structure and resolution bothered me. The main characters are lying to each other until 90% of the way through the book; they become intimate, Jamie unloads about Danny, and the phrase “I love you” is used, but he still hasn’t told her why he’s really there, and she’s still hiding how much of his war story she already knew from her grandfather. She then ends up forgiving him quickly, and he never blames her for her part of the deception. Plus I didn’t feel that either of their sets of issues was resolved; why is this needy guy okay, when previous ones emotionally drained her? The answer seems to be her magic hoo-ha — he throws aside his bachelor promises to his buddies, he cries it all out in her arms, and all’s well. Even though his pain and need affect her powerfully, this is different. Somehow.

It bugged me all the more because the sequence goes like this: they become lovers, then she tells him about her past and he realizes that she shouldn’t be with a needy man in need of her healing. But she pushes him to tell her about Danny because she can feel his pain and it hurts her anyway, so he might as well share. He does, and by telling her how he feels and listening to her rather obvious responses (it’s not his fault, he did his best, Danny wouldn’t want him to blame himself), he feels a lot better. So they have sex again, this time without a condom, and it’s better than ever — she declares her love for him in the aftermath of their unprotected sex. That’s right.

That’s even MORE upsetting because the book took a very early and rather preachy stand on the issue of sexual protection. From Chapter Six:

“Audrey was a big girl. She was sexually experienced and sexually responsible. She didn’t share her body with just anyone and she always made sure she was protected. She had too much self-respect to do otherwise. Though she longed to have a family of her own someday and imagined raising that family on this very shore, she instinctively knew that neither the time—nor sadly, the man [Derrick]—was right.”

That passage sort of comes out of the blue, in the midst of her thinking about how irresistible Jamie is. It suggests that she’s using birth control, but Jamie doesn’t know that, and sexual responsibility goes beyond pregnancy prevention. This really pushes my buttons; I’m tired of romances where protecting yourself from pregnancy is a sign that you’re in the wrong relationship, bare-back sex is much more satisfying than sex with a condom, and everyone KNOWS these characters can’t have STDs because they are the hero and the heroine.

There’s not much of the book after that. The next night, after she has dumped Derrick, they are settling in to watch a video, they talk a little about the future, he STILL doesn’t tell her the truth, and then her grandfather barges in. She finds out everything and kicks him out, he comes back to fight for her, he tells her that he seduced her despite her grandfather’s instructions because he couldn’t help and he loves her. and all is forgiven. Nothing left but (of course) the epilogue to provide the obligatory pregnancy and the set-up of the next book.

FAIL

The sailing from Oban to Barra, the southern island where we began our exploration, took five and a half hours. I was miserable and seasick the last three hours, although I managed not to “cast up my accounts,” as we’d say in a good Regency romance. It was rainy and gray when we arrived, plus there was a confusion over our B&B reservation, so by the time I found my bed for the night, I was glad to have the first leg over and done.

The next day dawned much brighter; our delightful landlady gave us a wonderful big breakfast, and we drove pretty much the entire circumference of Barra before getting on the next ferry. We saw lovely beaches, including the one that’s home to the unique Barra airfield, and we had a nice view (from shore) of the local castle, Kisimul, a stronghold of the MacNeil clan since the 11th century.

Dosed up with anti-nausea drugs, I was pleasantly surprised at the smooth crossing we had to South Uist. Although the ferry was a lot smaller (usually a bad thing for me), I enjoyed the trip. We spent the crossing out on the front deck, seeing some seals and some sea birds, including guillemots, artic terns, and my personal favorites, gannets.

The Uists are beautiful. We visited more lovely beaches, met some local sheep, and bought some of their wool — I was pleased to learn that the woman minding the local crafts store had personally spun the yarn that I bought!

No more ferries that day, because South Uist, Benbecula and North Uist are all connected by causeways, so we could drive up the spine of the islands with side trips to the pretty beaches on the west side.

Day three began with another ferry, this one to the Isle of Harris. Again we had calm sea and good viewing; this crossing involves a lot of turning, because the channel is so full of shallows and small islands. We drove across Harris to the Isle of Lewis and up the coast to see the standing stones at Callanish.

I’m a sucker for neolithic ruins, standing stones in particular, and these are very impressive Also not too crowded, which made it easier to get good pictures.

We also saw the remains of traditional island homes, called blackhouses. The name might stem from the fact that they had no chimneys and so the fire blackened the walls and ceilings. They housed both people and animals, as opposed to the later “white houses” which relegated animals to a separate building or addition.

Ruins dot the islands, but some are being restored with an eye towards traditional building methods.

We visited an excellent example of an Iron Age broch at Carloway; it’s fascinating how sturdy these buildings are, since they are of drystone construction (stones stacked together without any mortar or mud to hold them together).

On this last night of our time in the islands, we had a delicious fish dinner of freshly caught megrim, a left-eyed flatfish that none of us had tried before. It was delicious. We then retired to our B&B on the isle of Scalpay, which we had to leave very early the next morning for our last ferry.

The early ferry to Skye gave us a chance to see some more of that beautiful island. I’ve been there once before. but we only saw the southern end that time. We stopped several times for pictures, but really you could photograph lovely views from almost any spot.

We left Skye via the bridge at Kyle of Localsh (it was a toll bridge the last time I was there, which I think was five years ago). The drive south to Conell was also very pretty; the Highlands are beautiful.

Eilean Donan

Invergarry

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