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Book Review: Tough Boy's Tender Kiss by Melanie Marks

Entertaining, G-Rated YA contemporary romance

The Tough Boy's Tender Kiss (plus: Hot Boy) by Melanie Marks[image error]

Reading Level: Young Adult
Release Date: June 27, 2016
Pages: 279 pages
Source: Purchase
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

Ms. Marks has written a series of books about high school hockey players. Walker is one of those hockey boys. This is a novella about him written from the point of view of both the male and female lead characters. It is a G-rated, young-adult story with no swearing, sex, drugs or drinking.

Walker has been interested in Stormy, an innocent teenager, for several years, but they have never dated. Stormy has recently broken up with her handsome boyfriend because he cheated on her. Unable to accept that she would dump him, rather than the other way around, her ex is behaving in a manner very close to being a stalker. In order to convince him, once and for all, that she is through with him for good, she impulsively claims that Walker is her new boyfriend, grabs Walker, and lays on him what she hopes will be a convincing fake kiss. Much to her surprise, Walker doesn't simply pretend to kiss her to do her a favor. Instead, he enthusiastically participates in the kiss as well as firmly and believably backs up her boyfriend lie. Afterwards, Stormy can't stop thinking about him and that scorching kiss. Walker feels the same way, and this is the story of him "wooing" her--his term--in order to convince her to become his girlfriend for real.

This is a cute story, and a nice change from the many dark and often PG- or R-rated YA books flooding the market these days, both from indie authors and mainstream publishers. Walker is a very sympathetic character in the main portion of the story, especially in his relationship with Stormy and her younger brother, in spite of the fact that the author makes it clear in his backstory, some of which is presented on stage, in flashback form, that unlike the heroine, he is anything but a virgin. In fact, the author clearly implies he has had sex with multiple girls, even across a long period of time when he is secretly crushing on Stormy. So there is a bit of an old-fashioned double-standard in the story of a pairing of a quite sexually experienced male with a virginal female.

There isn't a lot of romantic conflict, mainly that Stormy sees Walker as too "tough." It would have been an obvious choice to up the romantic conflict by having Stormy concerned that Walker has been sexually promiscuous in the past, given the fact that her previous boyfriend cheated on her. However, since this is a novella, it was not necessary for there to be a great deal of romantic conflict to sustain the short plot.

Overall, I enjoyed the story because I liked the main characters and I was not craving any increase in the amount of dithering angst the heroine might feel that would keep her from ultimately reaching a HEA with Walker.

This novella recycles the plot of another one of this author's books, His Kiss. I purchased that book three years ago and did not pay close enough attention when I bought this ebook to realize it was very similar to that story. However, I think that the two leads in this story are different enough from the two leads in His Kiss that I felt I got my money's worth with this rendition. In fact, I appreciate very much that this author is always honest with her readers about the fact that she frequently takes a book she has already written and rewrites it again with different characters. As an avid romance fan, I have personally experienced over the past few decades that many mainstream-published romance authors do the same thing, without ever admitting that they are, and they manage to create a very successful, prolific writing career in that manner.

In addition to this novella, this ebook compilation includes information on many other ebooks by Ms. Marks as well as the bonus of a full novel called “Hot Boy.” That book is also a rewritten story. The author states that it is a paranormal version of her previously published book, High School Boys. Teens who enjoy paranormal romance will very likely enjoy that story as well.

I rate Tough Boy's Tender Kiss as follows:

Heroine: 4

Hero: 4

Subcharacters: 3

Romance Plot: 3.5

Writing: 4

Overall: 4

I rate Hot Boy as follows:

Heroine: 4

Hero: 4

Subcharacters: 3

Romance Plot: 3

Writing: 4

Overall: 4

Book Review: Defending Taylor by Miranda Kenneally

Enjoyable, YA, family/social drama

Defending Taylor (Hundred Oaks) by Miranda Kenneally

Reading Level: Young Adult
Release Date: July 5, 2016
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Pages: 304 pages
Source: NetGalley
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

Taylor is the 17-year-old daughter of a powerful U.S. Senator from her home state of Tennessee. She is delighted with the very expensive, exclusive, private boarding school she has attended for years. She and her boyfriend, Ben, are in love and have been together for almost a year, and have lost their virginity together. Taylor is a hyper-achiever, and her biggest goal in life is making her father proud. He expects Taylor and her two-years-older, twin siblings, a brother and sister, to get business degrees and work for the family's financial firm when they graduate. Though Taylor loathes math, and constantly struggles to keep her grades up in her advanced-placement math classes, she is determined to follow the expected, father-mandated, life course.

Then, suddenly, her entire life falls apart due to a moment of altruistic impulse. While spending an afternoon in the woods near her boarding school with Ben, he briefly leaves her side to use the restroom while she has fallen into a doze. She is abruptly awakened to discover two of the school's teachers going through Ben's backpack. She is as shocked as they are when it is revealed that Ben has a stash of 30 illegal, prescription, pep pills in his backpack. She always thought he acquired them on an as-needed basis only from a buddy of his whenever he or Taylor needed help staying awake late to study. But this discovery makes it obvious that he is a drug dealer. Half asleep and working on automatic pilot, Taylor claims that the backpack is hers and the pills are hers for her own use. Her motivation is that Ben is a scholarship student and the first from his working-class family to have the possibility of going to college. She assumes that if he steps up and takes responsibility for his actions, his life will be ruined. Not only because his family cannot afford an expensive attorney to represent him, but because he will lose his scholarship and be expelled. She figures that, as a privileged rich girl with a Senator in her pocket, if she covers for Ben, her powerful father will cover for her and she will not be expelled and will get no more than a slap on the wrist in the form of community service.

Unfortunately, Senator Dad is not feeling particularly like doing what all the other powerful, entitled, rich men with disorderly kids at Taylor's school have done for their offspring, following the predictable script for rich, powerful men from time immemorial, making sure their kids never pay any price at all for their illegal actions. Yes, he does bring in a pricey attorney who pleads down Taylor's criminal drug offense (which would land a poor kid with a cheap or court-appointed attorney in jail, possibly for decades) to no criminal penalty at all, not even any community service, and a guarantee of a sealed, juvenile criminal record. However, dear, old Dad refuses to go as far as insisting to the school that his daughter not be expelled, and Taylor is kicked out of her school. Further, Dad informs Taylor that she is on her own getting into Yale, his own alma mater, because he won't be writing on her behalf the typical reference letter that a rich, powerful alumnus of such schools invariably writes for his offspring, demanding that they get first crack at attending a highly competitive, ivy-league university, graduation from which guarantees a lifetime of being plugged into the privilege-sharing-and-expanding, "old boy network" of the societal elites. In addition, though Taylor, in the moment of covering for Ben and afterwards, urged him to not come forward and admit the drugs were his, she resents him terribly for not overriding her noble deed, falling on his sword, and rescuing her from her own quixotic actions. As a result, she summarily dumps him and refuses to respond to any of his subsequent texts or calls.

Taylor finds herself forced to attend the fictional public high school, Hundred Oaks, in her family's home town, Franklin, an actual, real-world, small, rural town in Tennessee. There are no excellent advanced-placement, college courses at this plebeian venue; she has no friends; and where she was previously captain of a terrific girls' soccer team led by an outstanding coach, now her only option is to be a second-place, discounted member of a poorly trained, unmotivated team with a coach who spends their practice sessions playing with his smart phone rather than coaching.

Taylor is an attractive girl, and immediately several guys show interest in her, including, most worryingly, her brother's best friend Ezra. Having just come off a bad relationship with Ben, Taylor has no interest in dating in general, but especially not with Ezra. They have a history that was another big heartbreak for her, and she has no desire to get involved with him in any way.

Miranda Kenneally is a very talented writer, and I've read every one of her young-adult books. She tends to have two types of plots in each of her YA novels: a family/social-drama plot (often surrounding in some way, as in this book, the female protagonist participating in a sport) as well as a romance plot. It varies from book to book which of these two is the main plot and which is the secondary plot. I personally much prefer it when the primary plot is the romance, because Ms. Kenneally writes romance very well. However, in this particular book, the family/social-drama plot is the main one, because most of the focus is on Taylor's relationship with her father, and her intense need to please him and gain his approval, at all costs. The relationship with Ezra in the romance subplot is enjoyable, and I like Ezra a lot, but there is little of the complications and complexity that occurs in other books by Ms. Kenneally when she opts to make the romance the main plot, such as in her most recent book (which I adored and is my top favorite of all her books), Jesse's Girl.

Every YA novel, to some extent, is a "coming of age" novel, and this book is no different in that regard. The main arc of the book, in the context of her relationship with her father, is Taylor figuring out what's most important in life, and what it means to be true to herself. As such, this is a well-written, engaging story, and fans of that type of story will be particularly pleased with this book.

I personally rate this book as PG-13, because there is swearing, illicit drug use, underage drinking, and pre-marital sex. The sex scenes, however, are tasteful and not explicit.

REVIEWER DISCLOSURE: I received an Advance Reviewer Copy (ARC) of this book from NetGalley. The publisher's projected release date is July 5, 2016.

I rate this book as follows:

Heroine: 4

Hero: 4

Subcharacters: 4

Family/Social Drama Plot: 4

Romance Plot: 4

Writing: 4

Overall: 4

Book Review: The New Guy (and Other Senior Year Distractions) by Amy Spalding

Cute, G-rated chick lit comedy

The New Guy (and Other Senior Year Distractions) by Amy Spalding

Reading Level: Young Adult
Release Date: April 5, 2016
Publisher: Poppy
Pages: 320 pages
Source: NetGalley
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

Jules is a senior in high school who is a driven overachiever. The motivation given for her over-the-top perfectionism is that she believes her two moms--a very loving, supportive lesbian couple who have been together for decades--are spending a fortune raising her, and she feels very guilty if she doesn't make it well worth their while by hyperachieving, due to her very existence costing them so much money. The romantic interest in the story is the titular "new guy," Alex, who was a member of a classic "one hit wonder" boy band several years ago, a band much like the Monkees of the 1960's who were put together by a band promoter, not a group who, as their band's promoters claimed, came together organically on their own. Until she meets Alex, Jules is determined to not date at all until she gets to college, and her huge goal in life is to get accepted into the highly competitive, Ivy League school, Brown University in Rhode Island. But soon after she meets gorgeous, adorable Alex, she can't resist him and soon starts dating him. Unfortunately, when Alex is drawn into taking the side of her greatest rival at the school, and he doesn't understand that in Jules's eyes by doing so he has betrayed her, their two-week romance hits the rocks when Jules dumps him.

I'm a huge fan of YA comedy, and there is not nearly enough of it offered by publishers or indie authors in my opinion, so I was delighted to encounter this book. My only quibble with the book is the way the publisher has chosen to market it as primarily a romance novel. The center of Jules's story universe is not "the new boy," Alex, as one would expect in a romance novel. Instead, the main plot, what one might call the "A Plot," is a comedic, chick lit version of a classic, YA storyline, the "coming of age" plot. In contrast, the romance is a secondary B Plot in that Jules and Alex spend most of the book not on stage together.

Once I got clear in my mind what kind of story this actually is, I was able to go with the flow of it and enjoy it. If I were thinking of it as a romance, however, I would be disappointed in that we never really get to know Alex. His personality isn't very well developed, though I will say that what we do know of him is sympathetic. He's a very sweet, understanding, mellow guy with a strong sense of tolerance and a well-developed sense of humor--all traits he definitely needs to handle being in a relationship with Jules who, as I've indicated, is very tightly wound.

Anyone who enjoys situation comedies, with their high population of slightly (or totally) narcissistic comic characters, will recognize in Jules a classic comic character who is frequently self-absorbed in her singleminded pursuit of her goals, sometimes to the point of not noticing she is running down other people in her path on her way to where she wants to go. However, like most sympathetic comic characters, she has many redeeming characteristics, in particular her love and loyalty for her pets and her parents. I always enjoy plots, as well, where the lead protagonist's greatest strength is her greatest flaw. In this case her virtue/vice it is her enormous self-discipline. In the positive this trait has brought Jules enormous academic success. In the negative in this story it gives her an imbalanced life and leads her to inadvertently harm herself and others.

There is an excellent growth arc in this book, and overall Jules is a likeable character.

This book is G-rated, without swearing, drinking, drugs or underage sex and, as such, can be enjoyed by all ages.

I rate this book as follows:

Heroine: 4

Subcharacters: 4

Romantic Interest: 4

Coming of Age Plot: 4

Romance Subplot: 4

Romance Subplot: 3

Writing: 4

Overall: 4

Book Review:Lord Perfect by Loretta Chase

Review of audiobook--wonderful romance and great narrator!
Lord Perfect (Carsington Brothers #3) by Loretta Chase

Reading Level: Adult Romance
Audible.com Release Date: July 14, 2015
Publisher: Recorded Books
Listening Length: 10 hours and 8 minutes
Source: Purchase
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

Benedict Carsington, Viscount Rathbourne, is the eldest son and heir of the politically powerful Earl of Hargate. He has four younger brothers, none of whom have ever been expected to shoulder remotely the number of responsibilities he has. He is currently 37 years old, and he has been groomed since childhood to be, at all times, perfectly bred, perfectly groomed, and perfectly responsible. Because he has lived a life of blameless rectitude since his teens, his nickname in the ton is “Lord Perfect.”

Also in keeping with perfectly fulfilling his assigned role in life, in his 20’s, Benedict made a marriage of convenience to a fellow aristocrat in which he and his wife were polite strangers, he filling his life with politics and she filling hers with a religious fervor for good works which ultimately killed her when she contracted a fatal fever in a back slum three years ago. His loveless marriage produced no children, and he has continued in the years since working for socially progressive legislation in the House of Lords and helping his father oversee the vast wealth, extensive properties, and endless employees connected to the earldom of Hargate.

Exquisitely beautiful Bathsheba Wingate is a member of the aristocratic DeLucey family, and technically is the social equal of Benedict. Unfortunately, there are two branches of the DeLucey family, and Bathsheba hails from the corrupt side, notorious throughout the ton for several generations because this branch has had no inherited wealth and has been forced to rely on their physical beauty and charisma to support themselves by cheating others. Bathsheba’s feckless parents were among the worst of the bad DeLuceys, but from early childhood her greatest desire has been to achieve a life of respectability.

At age 16, due to her mother’s machinations, Bathsheba came to the attention of young Jack Wingate, the eldest son and heir of the Earl of Fosbury. He fell madly in love with Bathsheba and, vehemently returning his affection, she blissfully accepted his marriage proposal. However, she would have given him up for his own sake, over her mother’s strenuous objections, because his family viciously lined up against her, insisting that she was ruining Jack’s life and assuring her that he would be cut off without a penny if he married her. Jack refused to allow her to nobly give him up, however, declaring that his life would not be worth living without her, and convinced her that nothing mattered more to him in life than her.

As promised, after their marriage, he was disowned by his family, but Jack seemed far more content living the roaming, gypsy lifestyle of the disreputable side of the DeLucey family than Bathsheba. He loved the freedom of their untamed lifestyle abroad, and he ultimately died as he had lived, thrown from a too-wild horse that Bathsheba had begged him to avoid for his own survival. He left behind the grieving and completely impoverished Bathsheba and their 9-year-old daughter Olivia. Three years later, at age 32, Bathsheba has still not recovered fully from losing him, and has returned to England from living abroad the past 16 years, hoping to somehow create opportunities for a better life for Olivia, who is now 12.

Bathsheba is an extremely talented artist and, unlike her family, she ekes out an honest living selling her watercolors and giving drawing lessons to the daughters of wealthy bourgeoisie who desire to instill gentility in their offspring. Her highest goal is to make at least enough money to move to a better area of London than the dangerous area where she and Olivia now live, and to hire a dragon of a governess such as her mother provided for her in order to improve Olivia’s manners. Bathsheba desperately wants to raise Olivia as a lady so she can make a decent marriage to a good man, not necessarily of the aristocratic class, even though Olivia’s parents are both aristocrats by birth—but at the least a lawyer, merchant or banker so that Olivia can enjoy comfort and security.

Olivia is a great worry to her mother, however, because she is a DeLucey in the worst way, gifted with good looks and filled with the fatal DeLucey charisma and acting ability, which together allow her to, chameleon-like, fit into any social situation and convince any person she meets of anything which will serve her own ends. Like all the best DeLucey pathological liars, she is easy to believe, even for those who are not particularly gullible, because she spins tales so believable, she often falls for her own lies.

The worlds of Bathsheba and Benedict collide at an art museum in London when Olivia strikes up a conversation with Benedict’s 13-year-old nephew-by-marriage, Peregrine, the eldest son of a Marquis, when Olivia negatively comments on a drawing he is making. The conversation soon shifts to the fact that Peregrine is determined to be an adventurer in Egypt when he is grown, and Olivia is determined to be a knight errant when she is grown. They nearly come to blows while criticizing each other’s dreams, and Benedict and Bathsheba, who have been bowled over by each other at first sight, receive an informal introduction to each other as they separate their quarreling children.

Afterwards, Benedict keeps finding ways, against his better judgment, to run into Bathsheba, and it takes all her willpower to resist this gorgeous, intelligent, obviously kind man, whose witty repartee is a strong complement to hers. She is well aware that a man like him, unlike her poor dead Jack, is not going to marry her, be ostracized by his family and society as a result, and run off to the continent with her. No, Benedict is much older and wiser than the dearly departed Jack was, and the only thing he might offer her is the unsavory role as his mistress, which she would never agree to, because it would defeat her need to establish Olivia well in a good marriage.

In spite of his better judgment, Benedict grants Peregrine’s vociferous wish to take drawing lessons from Bathsheba, as excellent drawing skills will be vital to him in his Egyptian-adventurer life of the future. These lessons inevitably throw the two adults together, increasing their longing for each other. Unknown to them, however, Olivia has begun a secret correspondence with Peregrine, which culminates in her confiding to him that she is determined to solve her mother’s financial woes by setting off on a knight-errant quest to recover the buried treasure of a disreputable DeLucey ancestor, at a crypt on the estate of the head of the socially upright branch of the DeLucey family, hundreds of miles away.

When they discover the children have vanished, neither Benedict nor Bathsheba will allow the other to pursue their young charges and be left behind, but their mad dash to avoid Olivia setting off a scandal may very well ignite a far bigger scandal if Lord Perfect is revealed to the ton to have fallen off his social pedestal into the arms of the notorious Bathsheba Wingate.

I have read and appreciated very much the first two books in the Carsington Family Series, but so far I’ve appreciated this book the most. The romantic conflict in the book comes from my very favorite source: both protagonists are highly honorable people whose principles create seemingly insurmountable obstacles between them.

This story also achieves the highest goal of a truly outstanding romance novel: The author makes an utterly convincing case that the lives of these two wonderful people will be blighted forever if they cannot end up with each other.

In short, this book has everything a jaded romance reader could want: witty banter, emotional intensity, highly romantic and passionate sexual encounters, and extremely admirable and sympathetic, romantic protagonists.

I experienced this story as an audiobook, narrated by Kate Reading. She does an outstanding job in every way, particularly her ability to deliver male voices.

Another point I would like to make is this: In my experience of listening to audio versions of books, very few of them can stand up to the intense focus of being read aloud, which is much slower than reading silently to oneself. This relative snail's pace acts to draw attention to every problem of dialogue, pacing and plot. I am happy to report that under that intense spotlight, I experienced not a single flaw in this book.

On a final note, I’d like to mention that while experiencing the highly entertaining subplot of the two children, I conceived a tremendous desire for the author to dedicate a book to their love story as adults. I was therefore delighted to find out, soon after I finished this book, that this book indeed exists as the fifth book in this delightful series. It is called, Last Night's Scandal.

I rate this book as follows:

Heroine: 5

Hero: 5

Subcharacters: 5

Romance Plot: 5

Writing: 5

Narrator for Audiobook: 5

Overall: 5

Writing: 5

Lord Perfect by Loretta Chase

Review of audiobook--wonderful romance and great narrator!
Lord Perfect (Carsington Brothers #3) by Loretta Chase

Reading Level: Adult Romance
Audible.com Release Date: July 14, 2015
Publisher: Recorded Books
Listening Length: 10 hours and 8 minutes
Source: Purchase
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

Benedict Carsington, Viscount Rathbourne, is the eldest son and heir of the politically powerful Earl of Hargate. He has four younger brothers, none of whom have ever been expected to shoulder remotely the number of responsibilities he has. He is currently 37 years old, and he has been groomed since childhood to be, at all times, perfectly bred, perfectly groomed, and perfectly responsible. Because he has lived a life of blameless rectitude since his teens, his nickname in the ton is “Lord Perfect.”

Also in keeping with perfectly fulfilling his assigned role in life, in his 20’s, Benedict made a marriage of convenience to a fellow aristocrat in which he and his wife were polite strangers, he filling his life with politics and she filling hers with a religious fervor for good works which ultimately killed her when she contracted a fatal fever in a back slum three years ago. His loveless marriage produced no children, and he has continued in the years since working for socially progressive legislation in the House of Lords and helping his father oversee the vast wealth, extensive properties, and endless employees connected to the earldom of Hargate.

Exquisitely beautiful Bathsheba Wingate is a member of the aristocratic DeLucey family, and technically is the social equal of Benedict. Unfortunately, there are two branches of the DeLucey family, and Bathsheba hails from the corrupt side, notorious throughout the ton for several generations because this branch has had no inherited wealth and has been forced to rely on their physical beauty and charisma to support themselves by cheating others. Bathsheba’s feckless parents were among the worst of the bad DeLuceys, but from early childhood her greatest desire has been to achieve a life of respectability.

At age 16, due to her mother’s machinations, Bathsheba came to the attention of young Jack Wingate, the eldest son and heir of the Earl of Fosbury. He fell madly in love with Bathsheba and, vehemently returning his affection, she blissfully accepted his marriage proposal. However, she would have given him up for his own sake, over her mother’s strenuous objections, because his family viciously lined up against her, insisting that she was ruining Jack’s life and assuring her that he would be cut off without a penny if he married her. Jack refused to allow her to nobly give him up, however, declaring that his life would not be worth living without her, and convinced her that nothing mattered more to him in life than her.

As promised, after their marriage, he was disowned by his family, but Jack seemed far more content living the roaming, gypsy lifestyle of the disreputable side of the DeLucey family than Bathsheba. He loved the freedom of their untamed lifestyle abroad, and he ultimately died as he had lived, thrown from a too-wild horse that Bathsheba had begged him to avoid for his own survival. He left behind the grieving and completely impoverished Bathsheba and their 9-year-old daughter Olivia. Three years later, at age 32, Bathsheba has still not recovered fully from losing him, and has returned to England from living abroad the past 16 years, hoping to somehow create opportunities for a better life for Olivia, who is now 12.

Bathsheba is an extremely talented artist and, unlike her family, she ekes out an honest living selling her watercolors and giving drawing lessons to the daughters of wealthy bourgeoisie who desire to instill gentility in their offspring. Her highest goal is to make at least enough money to move to a better area of London than the dangerous area where she and Olivia now live, and to hire a dragon of a governess such as her mother provided for her in order to improve Olivia’s manners. Bathsheba desperately wants to raise Olivia as a lady so she can make a decent marriage to a good man, not necessarily of the aristocratic class, even though Olivia’s parents are both aristocrats by birth—but at the least a lawyer, merchant or banker so that Olivia can enjoy comfort and security.

Olivia is a great worry to her mother, however, because she is a DeLucey in the worst way, gifted with good looks and filled with the fatal DeLucey charisma and acting ability, which together allow her to, chameleon-like, fit into any social situation and convince any person she meets of anything which will serve her own ends. Like all the best DeLucey pathological liars, she is easy to believe, even for those who are not particularly gullible, because she spins tales so believable, she often falls for her own lies.

The worlds of Bathsheba and Benedict collide at an art museum in London when Olivia strikes up a conversation with Benedict’s 13-year-old nephew-by-marriage, Peregrine, the eldest son of a Marquis, when Olivia negatively comments on a drawing he is making. The conversation soon shifts to the fact that Peregrine is determined to be an adventurer in Egypt when he is grown, and Olivia is determined to be a knight errant when she is grown. They nearly come to blows while criticizing each other’s dreams, and Benedict and Bathsheba, who have been bowled over by each other at first sight, receive an informal introduction to each other as they separate their quarreling children.

Afterwards, Benedict keeps finding ways, against his better judgment, to run into Bathsheba, and it takes all her willpower to resist this gorgeous, intelligent, obviously kind man, whose witty repartee is a strong complement to hers. She is well aware that a man like him, unlike her poor dead Jack, is not going to marry her, be ostracized by his family and society as a result, and run off to the continent with her. No, Benedict is much older and wiser than the dearly departed Jack was, and the only thing he might offer her is the unsavory role as his mistress, which she would never agree to, because it would defeat her need to establish Olivia well in a good marriage.

In spite of his better judgment, Benedict grants Peregrine’s vociferous wish to take drawing lessons from Bathsheba, as excellent drawing skills will be vital to him in his Egyptian-adventurer life of the future. These lessons inevitably throw the two adults together, increasing their longing for each other. Unknown to them, however, Olivia has begun a secret correspondence with Peregrine, which culminates in her confiding to him that she is determined to solve her mother’s financial woes by setting off on a knight-errant quest to recover the buried treasure of a disreputable DeLucey ancestor, at a crypt on the estate of the head of the socially upright branch of the DeLucey family, hundreds of miles away.

When they discover the children have vanished, neither Benedict nor Bathsheba will allow the other to pursue their young charges and be left behind, but their mad dash to avoid Olivia setting off a scandal may very well ignite a far bigger scandal if Lord Perfect is revealed to the ton to have fallen off his social pedestal into the arms of the notorious Bathsheba Wingate.

I have read and appreciated very much the first two books in the Carsington Family Series, but so far I’ve appreciated this book the most. The romantic conflict in the book comes from my very favorite source: both protagonists are highly honorable people whose principles create seemingly insurmountable obstacles between them.

This story also achieves the highest goal of a truly outstanding romance novel: The author makes an utterly convincing case that the lives of these two wonderful people will be blighted forever if they cannot end up with each other.

In short, this book has everything a jaded romance reader could want: witty banter, emotional intensity, highly romantic and passionate sexual encounters, and extremely admirable and sympathetic, romantic protagonists.

I experienced this story as an audiobook, narrated by Kate Reading. She does an outstanding job in every way, particularly her ability to deliver male voices.

Another point I would like to make is this: In my experience of listening to audio versions of books, very few of them can stand up to the intense focus of being read aloud, which is much slower than reading silently to oneself. This relative snail's pace acts to draw attention to every problem of dialogue, pacing and plot. I am happy to report that under that intense spotlight, I experienced not a single flaw in this book.

On a final note, I’d like to mention that while experiencing the highly entertaining subplot of the two children, I conceived a tremendous desire for the author to dedicate a book to their love story as adults. I was therefore delighted to find out, soon after I finished this book, that this book indeed exists as the fifth book in this delightful series. It is called, Last Night's Scandal.

I rate this book as follows:

Heroine: 5

Hero: 5

Subcharacters: 5

Romance Plot: 5

Writing: 5

Narrator for Audiobook: 5

Overall: 5

Writing: 5

Book Review: More Than Music by Elizabeth Briggs

Fun and sexy, rock-star romance

More Than Music (Chasing The Dream #1) by Elizabeth Briggs

Reading Level: New Adult
Release Date: June 10, 2014
Publisher: Elizabeth Briggs Books
Pages: 311 pages
Source: Purchase
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

Maddie Taylor is a musical prodigy who is classically trained, plays multiple instruments, and after completing her junior year of college as a music major, is all set to participate in a prestigious, summer internship at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She is a certified "geek," by her own estimation, living a very quiet, hard-working existence. But she has a secret passion that none of her classical-music professors and professional contacts know about: in the privacy of her own room, with the occasional living-room performance for her two best girlfriends, she rocks out on the electric guitar. Then one day her whole life changes when she is at a party at the home of a friend from school, who performs in an up-and-coming rock band whose music she loves, and the lead singer, sexy Jared Cross, whom she's crushed on for years, catches her playing one of their songs on his guitar. He is blown away by her talent and obvious joy in music that he himself wrote. He begs her to join their band and take the place of their female bass player who has abandoned the band within days of the most important event of their band's career--a chance to perform on a reality TV show which involves a battle of various types of bands. Both excited and scared at such a wonderful opportunity, with trepidation Maddie agrees, and only later learns the full story of the female band member's departure--she had become obsessed with Jared after a single sexual encounter and walked out on the band due to screaming jealousy every time he dared to seem interested in another woman.

Once on the show, Maddie learns, little by little as she spends time with him, that she and Jared have a great deal in common, in spite of the obvious huge difference between her "good girl," quiet nature and his "bad boy," bigger-than-life, flirtatious persona while onstage and while interacting directly with female fans. When Jared makes it very clear to Maddie that he is as attracted to her as she is to him, she is extremely tempted to get involved with him, in spite of the fact that she has no desire to be his latest fling, and the warnings from their mentor on the show that the show's producers absolutely will not allow a band to win in which two members are involved romantically with each other. The winner gets a record deal and goes on tour, and not long ago, a previous winning band blew up and abandoned their obligations when the marriage between two of the band's members ended in a very public, highly publicized, combative divorce.

For fans of new adult who like sex, there are multiple sex scenes in this book. There are a few more than I was personally interested in reading, but I really liked the fact that these two protagonists develop a believable, fascinating friendship based on their mutual musical genius and shared interest in geeky things like comic-book heroes. In short, they have much more in common than raging hormones, which is all too common in NA romances where there is frequently far more sex than story.

I don't personally watch The Voice, a reality TV show on which this story is clearly based, but I have read multiple, fairly recent, self-published romance novels set in the midst of various types of reality shows, and I personally enjoyed this one the best of that type of plot because I'm a sucker for well-written teen, rock-star romances.

The writing in this book is smooth and well developed. The characterizations are strong, and each of the band members is quite sympathetic. For those who liked these band members as much as I did, the good news is that the author has written a romance novel dedicated to each of them as lead protagonist. I intend to purchase and read them all.

I rate this book as follows:

Heroine: 4

Hero: 4

Subcharacters: 4

Romance Plot: 4

Battle of the Bands Subplot: 4

Writing: 4

Overall: 4

More Than Music by Elizabeth Briggs

Fun and sexy, rock-star romance

More Than Music (Chasing The Dream #1) by Elizabeth Briggs

Reading Level: New Adult
Release Date: June 10, 2014
Publisher: Elizabeth Briggs Books
Pages: 311 pages
Source: Purchase
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

Maddie Taylor is a musical prodigy who is classically trained, plays multiple instruments, and after completing her junior year of college as a music major, is all set to participate in a prestigious, summer internship at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She is a certified "geek," by her own estimation, living a very quiet, hard-working existence. But she has a secret passion that none of her classical-music professors and professional contacts know about: in the privacy of her own room, with the occasional living-room performance for her two best girlfriends, she rocks out on the electric guitar. Then one day her whole life changes when she is at a party at the home of a friend from school, who performs in an up-and-coming rock band whose music she loves, and the lead singer, sexy Jared Cross, whom she's crushed on for years, catches her playing one of their songs on his guitar. He is blown away by her talent and obvious joy in music that he himself wrote. He begs her to join their band and take the place of their female bass player who has abandoned the band within days of the most important event of their band's career--a chance to perform on a reality TV show which involves a battle of various types of bands. Both excited and scared at such a wonderful opportunity, with trepidation Maddie agrees, and only later learns the full story of the female band member's departure--she had become obsessed with Jared after a single sexual encounter and walked out on the band due to screaming jealousy every time he dared to seem interested in another woman.

Once on the show, Maddie learns, little by little as she spends time with him, that she and Jared have a great deal in common, in spite of the obvious huge difference between her "good girl," quiet nature and his "bad boy," bigger-than-life, flirtatious persona while onstage and while interacting directly with female fans. When Jared makes it very clear to Maddie that he is as attracted to her as she is to him, she is extremely tempted to get involved with him, in spite of the fact that she has no desire to be his latest fling, and the warnings from their mentor on the show that the show's producers absolutely will not allow a band to win in which two members are involved romantically with each other. The winner gets a record deal and goes on tour, and not long ago, a previous winning band blew up and abandoned their obligations when the marriage between two of the band's members ended in a very public, highly publicized, combative divorce.

For fans of new adult who like sex, there are multiple sex scenes in this book. There are a few more than I was personally interested in reading, but I really liked the fact that these two protagonists develop a believable, fascinating friendship based on their mutual musical genius and shared interest in geeky things like comic-book heroes. In short, they have much more in common than raging hormones, which is all too common in NA romances where there is frequently far more sex than story.

I don't personally watch The Voice, a reality TV show on which this story is clearly based, but I have read multiple, fairly recent, self-published romance novels set in the midst of various types of reality shows, and I personally enjoyed this one the best of that type of plot because I'm a sucker for well-written teen, rock-star romances.

The writing in this book is smooth and well developed. The characterizations are strong, and each of the band members is quite sympathetic. For those who liked these band members as much as I did, the good news is that the author has written a romance novel dedicated to each of them as lead protagonist. I intend to purchase and read them all.

I rate this book as follows:

Heroine: 4

Hero: 4

Subcharacters: 4

Romance Plot: 4

Battle of the Bands Subplot: 4

Writing: 4

Overall: 4

Book Review: Jesse's Girl by Miranda Kenneally

Young adult romantic comedy at its very best
Jesse's Girl (Hundred Oaks) by Miranda Kenneally

Reading Level: Young Adult
Release Date: July 7, 2015
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Pages: 304 pages
Source: NetGalley
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

Seventeen-year-old Maya’s passion is playing guitar and performing. When she started her band, The Fringe, it was an eighties tribute band, but over time the lead singer, Nate, took over control of the band, insisting they play only heavy metal, and ultimately engineering a mutiny to kick Maya out of her own band.

Then, while Maya is still depressed from her band’s betrayal, her principal insists that she shadow his nephew for career day, a young man who just happens to be the massively famous, gorgeous, country-music star, Jesse Scott. Maya hesitates at first because, though she was born and raised in Tennessee, where country music is king, she’s never liked it, much preferring her music hard and fast rather than slow and sad.

However, the more Maya considers the opportunity to meet Jesse, the more she comes to believe it would, as her principal declares, be a great opportunity for her. After all, Jesse won TV’s Wannabe Rocker when he was only ten, and at eighteen, he has already achieved three Grammy’s. He’s great on the guitar, and he has a stunningly beautiful voice. At the very least, she figures she might pick up some useful pointers from Jesse about the professional music business, so she ultimately decides to go along with her principal’s plan. Unfortunately, within her first minutes in Jesse’s presence in his huge mansion, the entire encounter seems doomed to failure. He’s even more depressed than Maya, and on top of that he’s opinionated and pushy. But as the day goes on, he begins to make suggestions about her music that ring powerfully true, and as they share confidences about their lives and their musical ambitious, it begins to seem that, even though their worlds—and music—are poles apart, it just might be possible that the two of them have something important to offer to each other than no one ever has.

There are so many things I love about this wonderful romance, which is romantic comedy at its very best. I am a huge fan of romantic comedy in general, and YA romantic comedy in particular. Unfortunately, it is so rare in the YA genre as to be almost non-existent, so for that reason alone I was ready to love this book. When I added on top of that fact that the book was written by the massively talented Miranda Kenneally (MK), whose every teen novel I have excessively relished, I knew that I was in for a treat with this book. I am delighted to report that not a single one of my greatly inflated expectations were disappointed.

Let me list some of the ways I reveled in this book:

First, and most important for a romantic comedy, the “meet cute” is fabulous. It's a highly visual scene, as is almost every scene in the book, and as a result, this story would make a wonderful teen movie. I adore it when romantic protagonists start out on the wrong foot and stumble along from there. I love it as well when the comedy comes from witty repartee, as it does in this novel, rather than relying on slapstick (which is a form of humiliation humor).

The ideal of all romance fiction is to believably present the protagonists as soul mates. Unfortunately, too few authors make their case for that ideal. Not this book. It totally succeeds in achieving that goal.

Maya is a wonderful heroine, strong, assertive, intelligent, talented, caring, but with enough human flaws to make her a rounded, very real person.

Jesse is a tremendous romantic hero. He has plenty of flaws, but they don’t make him unsympathetic, rather they humanize him, because he has many virtues. I really enjoyed him and his relationship with Maya. I greatly appreciated how they bring out the best in each other and help each other grow both as musicians and as caring human beings.

One of my favorite themes in a romance novel is when the romantic protagonists develop a wonderful friendship over time rather than forming a relationship that is 9 parts lust to 1 part affection and respect, as so often is the case in romance novels, not just for teens but adults as well. The friendship in this book is superb, but I have come to expect nothing less of MK. She excels at believable, deep friendships between her teen, romantic protagonists.

Maya’s family is wonderful, including her adorably protective older brother, Sam, whom we first met in Catching Jordan from 2011 (it is great to catch up with Sam and Jordan and see how their relationship has progressed over the years—in this novel, they have graduated college, are in sports-related jobs, and are in their twenties). It is such a rare treat for a YA heroine to have loving, involved, functional parents and caring siblings. Though I will admit that Jesse’s parents are the much more typical, YA, messed-up parents. However, I didn’t mind their melodramatic dysfunctionality since they never appear onstage.

As always in her Hundred Oaks series, MK creates authentic, fascinating Tennessee settings. In this book, we are allowed the treat of experiencing the local color not only of small town Tennessee, but of the famous city of Nashville, which is the “home of country music.”

I talked to a friend of mine, who played professionally as a lead guitarist in a rock band in his teens through his twenties much as Maya does, about the musical scenes in this book. He agreed with my own non-musician perceptions that the musical scenes are authentic and very well done. It was very exciting reading about Maya and Jesse’s shared skill and joy in performing.

It is great to read a YA novel that doesn’t read like a clichéd version of a 1980’s John Hughes’ movie—there are no “mean girl” cheerleaders, no bullying jocks, no drunken, debauched parties. However, this is not a G-rated book in that there is some sexuality in it, and thus many parents will not consider it appropriate for preteens and younger teens. However, the sensuality is not at all graphic, and it is tastefully and romantically done, without any of the harshness or crudeness that has found its way into so much of the so-called “edgy,” dark YA over the past decade.

In short, though I received a review copy of this book through NetGalley, which is a very rough, unpolished ARC version of the book, I love it so much, I’m going to buy my own published, polished Kindle version when it becomes available in July, 2015, because this book is a keeper—a wonderful love story that I will want to read again and again.

I rate this book as follows:

Heroine: 5

Romantic Interest: 5

Subcharacters: 5

Romance Plot: 5

Setting: 5

Comedy: 5

Writing: 5

Overall: 5

Book Review: The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer

Review of the audiobook version of The Reluctant Widow narrated by Cornelius Garrett

The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer

Reading Level: Adult Romance
Audible.com Release Date: April 7, 2009
Listening Length: 9 hours and 26 minutes
Publisher: Audible Studios
Pages: 373 pages
Source: Purchase
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

I am posting this audiobook review using the format that Audible recommends:

Overall: 5 stars

Performance: 5 stars

Story: 5 stars

Q. If you were to make a film of this book, what would the synopsis be?

A. In England of the Regency period, Miss Elinor Rochdale, an attractive, twenty-six-year-old, orphaned gentlewoman, reluctantly arrives on the stage at the village of Billingshurst in Sussex for her first position as a governess since her father’s death left her in poverty. She is met by a carriage she wrongly assumes has been provided by her new employer, a married lady with a young son, when the driver asks if she has come in response to an advertisement. On arriving at a dilapidated mansion after a long drive through the night, she is introduced not to her employer, but to a distinguished gentleman in his mid-thirties named Lord Carlyon. Like the woman requiring a governess, he placed an advertisement in the paper, hence the confusion. However, he advertised not for a governess, but for a woman willing to wed his cousin, Eustace Cheviot. Elinor is appalled at the suggestion that she participate in a marriage in name only with Eustace, whom Carlyon freely admits is a drunken reprobate. His motivation for this excessively odd arrangement is that Lord Carlyon is Eustace’s primary heir and does not want to inherit from his cousin, whose loathing of Carlyon is fully reciprocated. Unfortunately, before Elinor can make her refusal immutably clear to him, Lord Carlyon’s 18-year-old brother Nicky precipitously arrives, exclaiming that he has accidentally stabbed Cousin Eustace, who now lies dying in an inn a few miles distant. Lord Carlyon increases the strength of his matter-of-fact persuasion of Elinor to marry his cousin to such an extent that she is carried away by the force of his personality and the utter confidence in milord expressed by every person in his vicinity. Within hours she is Eustace’s wife, and within hours after that, she becomes a reluctant widow.

Q. What does Cornelius Garrett bring to this story that you would not experience if you just read the book?

A. For a novel to work well as an audiobook, two factors are essential: (1) It must be exceptionally well written in order to thrive beneath the intense scrutiny of being read out loud at a fraction of the pace that a reader could read the book silently to herself. The Reluctant Widow passes that test with flying colors. (2) The narrator must be an excellent performer, able to convincingly portray every kind of character, from old to young, male or female, and different nationalities. Cornelius Garrett is one of the best narrators I’ve ever listened to, achieving all of these requirements magnificently. When I had previously read this book to myself silently, I thought it was mildly amusing but not one of Georgette Heyer’s funniest books. Mr. Garrett does such a fabulous job of acting out each of the characters, however, I was frequently laughing out loud due to the skill of his remarkable performance.

Q. What was one of the most memorable moments of The Reluctant Widow?

A. There are endless things to love about Georgette Heyer’s Regency comedies, but a particular brilliance of hers as an author are her quirky casts of subcharacters, each drawn with a wonderfully unique voice. In this particular book, my two favorite subcharacters are Nicky, Lord Carlyon’s youngest brother, and his gigantic, sweet-tempered, but poorly trained dog Bouncer. The two of them are absolutely hilarious, both separately and together. Heyer creates a great deal of comedy from lovable Bouncer’s well-meaning, guard-dog mistakes. The funniest scene with Bouncer for me is when he misunderstands Nicky’s command to keep Elinor safe by guarding her while Nicky runs an errand. Bouncer wrongly interprets Nicky’s order to mean that he must guard Elinor as if she is a dangerous individual whom he must not allow to escape. As a result, dear old Bouncer refuses to allow her to stir out of her chair for long, irritating hours until Nicky returns and calls him off. The many failed efforts of Elinor and the household staff to bribe Bouncer to let her go are hilarious.

Q. Which character--as performed by Cornelius Garrett--was your favorite?

A. It is hard to pick only one. Of particular note is Mr. Garrett’s performance of Nicky’s adorable, youthful enthusiasm, the country wisdom of the butler Barrow who has a thick Sussex accent, and the sweet, unworldly remarks of Elinor’s middle-aged, former governess and current companion, Miss Beccles (nicknamed Becky).

Q. Any additional comments?

A. I was delighted to discover this recording, which offers me the opportunity to enjoy one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors in the form of an outstanding audiobook.

Overall: 5

Performance: 5

Story: 5

Book Review: The Bargain by Mary Jo Putney

Review of audiobook version of this exciting Regency romance novel narrated by Emma Newman

The Bargain by Mary Jo Putney

Reading Level: Adult Romance
Release Date: 2011-04-05
Audible.com Release Date: February 11, 2014
Publisher: Zebra Books
Pages: 373 pages
Listening Length: 11 hours and 7 minutes
Source: Purchase
Reviewed By: Kate McMurry

I am posting this audiobook review using the format that Audible recommends:

Overall: 5 stars

Performance: 5 stars

Story: 5 stars

Q. If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

A. A beautiful aristocrat must wed by her 25th birthday in order to inherit a fortune under the terms of her father's will. With the deadline only days away, in desperation, she makes a mad marriage bargain with an impoverished officer dying of wounds from the Battle of Waterloo, but her presumed immediate widowhood becomes instead a marriage in fact when her convenient husband inconveniently recovers.

Q. What was one of the most memorable moments of The Bargain?

A. I enjoyed the entire course of this highly entertaining "marriage of convenience" plot. The heroine is strong and dynamic, and the hero is intelligent, compassionate, and both physically and ethically strong.

Q. What does Emma Newman bring to the story that you wouldn't experience if you just read the book?

A. For a novel to work well as an audiobook, two factors are essential: (1) It must be exceptionally well written in order to thrive beneath the intense scrutiny of being read out loud at a quarter of the speed it would take a reader to read the book silently to herself. The Bargain definitely passes that test. (2) The narrator must be a very good performer, able to convincingly portray every kind of character, from old to young, male or female, and often different nationalities. Ms. Newman is a fine performer able to deliver these dramatic necessities really well.

Q. Where does The Bargain rank among all the audiobooks you've listened to so far?

A. I listen to such a wide variety of audiobooks across so many different genres, it would be difficult for me to attempt to make that kind of ranking because I would be comparing not just apples to oranges, but bananas and peaches and pears.

Q. Any additional comments?

A. I was delighted to discover this recording, which offers me the opportunity to enjoy one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors in the form of an excellent audiobook.

Overall: 5

Performance: 5

Story: 5