Crystal S’s Comments (group member since Jan 07, 2011)

Crystal S’s comments from the SOS: Serious Overload of Series group.

Team 6

Week 8
Card: 6 of Spades
Space: #125
Color: Orange

Team 6 Reviews for Week 7

I have no desire to be captain, but since I'm awake I thought I'd go ahead and post our reviews and draw a card.

Hope things get better Karen. Are you leaving altogether or just as captain?

Week 7
Card: 2 of Diamonds
Space: 121/Blue

Reviews
Karen - Review of When You Give a Duke a Diamond ★★★1/2
Regina - Review of Eddie's Prize ★★1/2
Paris - Review of Opal ★★★★★
Dawn - Review of Beauty Awakened ★★★1/2
Crystal - Review of Kiss of the Night ★★★★

Week 7: Space 121/Blue


Finished 03/15/13
★★★★

Another great Dark Hunter book by Kenyon. That said, I didn't like it as much as Dance with the Devil. I think I'm just a sucker for bad boys and Wulf wasn't really a bad boy. LOL. He was bad-ass, of course, but actually a pretty kind-hearted and sweet hero. Loved his interactions with Chris. I hope that's not the last we'll see of Chris. I enjoyed getting a smidge more background info on Acheron. I'm still salivating for his book. Great new characters (Kat, Urian). I've actually read this before, but it was long enough ago that I remembered literally nothing about it. Looking forward to the next book, which I also have read, but remember nothing about.

I'll read .

Week 6 - Space 116/Green


Finished 03/09/13
★

What. A. Snoozefest. It was so boring I wouldn't have finished it if I didn't have to for this game. By the time I had time to get some reading done though, I didn't have time to find and start a whole new book. The overall plot was too thin to cover a whole 275 pages. About halfway through, when the hero and heroine (Matt and Annalise) reconcile their differences, would have been a good time to end it, making it a dull but perfectly acceptable and complete story. Instead we were treated to a few stupid plot contrivances to extend an already weak storyline.

But really, let's talk about what drove Matt and Annalise apart in the first place. Years ago, Annalise left her fiance, Matt, to go to medical school. He wasn't ok with it, but he accepted it. Until (view spoiler)[lo and behold, Annalise writes to him that she has miscarried his baby that she didn't know she was pregnant with. (hide spoiler)] He assumes that she's lying (view spoiler)[ and knew she was pregnant when she left (hide spoiler)] and left anyway. He never writes her back, breaking her heart in the process. So we understand why she isn't a fan of him. But I never quite fell for his reasoning that she was lying to him. Ok fine. About halfway through the book, he finally realizes she wasn't lying, apologizes, and their relationship appears to be nearly back on track, although she is slow to trust him with her heart again (who can blame her?). Plot contrivance. Plot contrivance. Then, another incident involving his dad and a surgery she performs on his dad. The procedure has complications and once again Matt irrationally flies into a rage at DOCTOR Annalise claiming she lied to him about his father. Ok, at this point, I would have washed my hands of this "hero" and said buh-bye, don't let the door hit ya on the ass on your way out. And truthfully, Annalise is a lot slower to forgive this time. But she still does forgive, where I never would have. (Of course she does. It's a romance novel.)

Other problems with the book include way, way too many characters from past books in the series and future books in the series. The author repeatedly used the word massive to describe the hero. Massive conjures up in my head Fezzik from The Princess Bride (mentally insert an image here, cuz I don't know how). That's my own problem with the word though. There were other mini-rage inducing problems I had with the plot, but at some point I stopped writing them down to avoid having a really, really long review. This review is already too long for a 275 book.

Rant done!

I am reading . I'm about halfway and struggling sooooo much. So if I haven't made more progress by Friday I'll switch it to something else.

Huh. I didn't think we were all that chatty a team, but we've got all the other teams beat for number of posts. LOL

Week 5/Spot 110/Green


Finished 02/28/13
★★★★

I got this one free from Amazon awhile back, so I admit I wasn't expecting much. Most of the free kindle books, while not terrible, still aren't all that great. So I was pleasantly surprised that I really enjoyed this one. It was a nice change from the usual vamps, weres, and demons/angels. Lots of action (but not too much), not too much sex, flawed characters. It all added up to a pretty good book. I figured out long before Talia did that she (view spoiler)[was a banshee. The second she started screaming early on in the book I knew (hide spoiler)]. Not sure if I was meant to or not.

Adam was a bit too "revenge-y" for my taste and for too long into the book was hell-bent on using Talia to destroy wraiths against her will. Then later he was too much of a martyr for the cause IMO. Talia also flirted with being TSTL through most of the book, although of course it always worked out for her (how can these TSTL heroines learn if their stupid actions work for them?!?) ;-) There were a few minor plot holes that I remember noticing when I was reading, but neglected to write down so now I've forgotten. And searching through my Kindle for them is NOT happening. So whatever. LOL

Despite these issues, I loved it and definitely plan on reading the sequel, which I also picked up free on for my Kindle. Yay!

I finished my book earlier today. I'll review it when I get home from work in the morning.

Works for me.

I have approx 60 book series that I have started and am try to avoid starting a new one as much as possible while I whittle that number down. But as much as I hate to start a new one, I think I will read . New series AND a new-to-me author. Luckily, if I find that I can't stand it, I've got a couple of back-up green covers.

Here's that spreadsheet. Post 9 on the Game Movements thread.

Steph has a spreadsheet that lists current locations. Let me go find it.

Me too. :-)

Week 4 - Space 106/Purple


★★★★
Finished 02/23/13

This wasn't my favorite in this series, but it was still pretty darn good. Julian was a super romantic hero (thus the title, obviously ;-) ), having been secretly in love with Penelope since they were teenagers, writing love stories and poems and never-sent-letters to her over the years. The book didn't seem to adequately explain why he didn't let her know before she was married, or if it did, I missed it. Which brings me to a certain point, the heroine was married for the vast majority of the book. Now, she has been separated from her husband for the length of the series, and in The Romantic we finally find out why (and it's pretty horrific), but this may or may not be a deal breaker for some readers.

The first 1/2 of the book was spent following our hero and heroine around England, trying to escape the clutches of her husband who was finally demanding she give him an heir. (Our hero, Julian, is Penelope's solicitor, and as such, he was the only one who knew why she left her husband, was the one who arranged their separation in the first place, and was who she turned to when her husband commanded her to return. That's why they were on the run together.) Unfortunately, Julian kept leaving her at "safe" places and the Earl (her husband) kept finding her, forcing a last minute/extremely lucky rescue. When this kept happening I got concerned that I was going to end up throwing the book in disgust, but luckily it only happened twice. Finally Penelope decides to force the Earl to divorce her by having an extremely public affair with Julian. Our hero and heroine finally start to fall completely in love, or technically, Pen starts to fall for Julian, since he was already in love with her.

Julian was probably the sweetest, most romantic hero I've met. His demeanor was so stoic and calm. His "manliness" was less obvious than other, more alpha heroes. I don't really know how to describe it, perhaps it will come to me later, but I did like it. It was nice for a change. Penelope was a bit of a bluestocking, but we hardly got to see that at all.

There was one scene at the beginning of the book with Julian remembering back to when he and Pen were young teens and he first saw her in a light other than friends. I would have really loved to see more of these scenes. Of him falling more in love with her, of him finding out she was marrying someone else, etc. More of this could have raised the book to 5 stars for me.

I'm reading . Probably won't be able to finish it before Friday night/Saturday morning.

Paris wrote: "Thanks. There better not be any more purple squares ahead of where my team is. lol These purple covers are killing me..."

LOL, no joke. I have a ton of purple historical romance covers (apparently it's a popular dress color), but paranormal purples are few and far between. Especially since I'm trying desperately to avoid starting a new series. So, that being said... I know paranormal is preferred, but it's not required, correct?

Are we gonna get a card? Or did we miss it for this week?

Karen wrote: "Wow ! We are finishing really fast this week... "

Yeah, I figured out that if I don't get the book read before I go to work on Monday, then I have to rush through it after work Friday to get it done before Saturday afternoon. LOL. That's why I finished so fast.

Finished 02/11/13
★★★★★

I love it when an author takes a character than I don't think I'll like and transforms them into one of my favorite in the series. I was wary of Sin going into this book. She seemed like one of those heroines with a bad attitude that treats everyone terribly for no good reason. Luckily in Sin Undone, we find out why she pushes everyone away. And at one point, (view spoiler)[the hero, noticing that she is holding in all her guilt and torturing herself instead of releasing it, encourages her to let it all go. She breaks down crying and lets the hero comfort her. (hide spoiler)] It was an unexpected move to me, and one that isn't often shown with these super strong, alpha women. And instead of seeming weak to me, she seemed real. This book had the very rare occurrence of me liking the heroine more than the hero. Not that I didn't like Conall; he was pretty great too. But I think Sin is my favorite heroine of this series so far.
Nice secondary semi-romance with Luc the werewolf paramedic. I wish that this could have been fleshed out more/been more "HEA" OR, even better, been a whole separate book.

Is this the last of this series? Does anyone know? I noticed that Ione's Lords of Deliverance series is apparently a spinoff of this one, since we met one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.