Book Review: Four Dukes and a Devil by Cathy Maxwell, Elaine Fox, Tracy Anne Warren, etc.

• Title: Four Dukes and a Devil
• Author: Cathy Maxwell, Elaine Fox, Jeanene Frost, Sophia Nash, Tracey Anne Warren
• Type: Romance Anthology
• Genre: Regency, Contemporary, Paranormal
• Sub-genre: Long short stories
• My Grade: C (3.3*)
• Rating: PG-13
• Where Available: Everywhere books are sold

I’ve been reading a lot of collections and anthologies lately, something I usually avoid as there is no room for character or plot development.  But thanks to Paperback Swap, I’m well supplied with both multi-author and single author anthologies aplenty this summer.  When a short story or novella is extremely well done, it can be a gem.  Look at O. Henry’s work or Guy de Maupassant.  Can you even get out of grade school without reading The Ransom of Red Chief and The Gift of the Magi? Alas, romance and short stories are very tough to do, and this anthology is no exception to my basic Rule of ‘Meh’ on the genre – with one glaring mispositioned piece.

Short Reviews – Erotic Romance Novellas July 09 One

Well, in lieu of a round-up, I’ll be doing a couple of installments of a variety of genres, good, bad and indifferent.

• Title: Legend’s Passion
• Author: Jaci Burton
• Type: Romance
• Genre: Paranormal
• Sub-genre: Werewolf – mistaken identity
• My Grade: B (3.9*)
• Rating: NC-17 to X
• Where Available: Ellora’s Cave

Legend’s Passion is the latest installment of Ms Burton’s Devlin Dynasty series about the Devlin werewolf family.  Dylan Maxwell is in meeting a female snitch in Golden Gate Park at night hoping she can lead him to the serial killer that’s been tearing women apart.  Chantal Devlin is a werewolf with a hot mystery date in Golden Gate Park for some down and dirty sex so she can safely blow off some steam.   She’s a career lawyer, loves her job and works really long days, so she isn’t about to mate, she’s enjoying life far too much to tie herself down that way.  Dylan sees a beautiful woman approach him, his snitch?  Then she offers him sex and he’s so hot he doesn’t even care abut the risks.  Right up until she bites him.  As Dylan sinks to the ground, Chantal tries to figure out what just happened – other than mind blowing sex – and then she sees Dylan, who is out cold on the ground, isn’t healing immediately.  She didn’t just screw a human, she bit one.

Book Review: It’s Hotter in Hawaii by HelenKay Dimon

• Title: It’s Hotter in Hawaii
• Author: HelenKay Dimon
• Type: Romantic Suspense
• Genre: Contemporary
• Sub-genre: Tracy/Hepburn do the Maltese Falcon
• My Grade: D+ to C- (2.6*)
• Rating: PG-13
• Where Available: Any bookstore

This is a follow-up to Dimon’s Your Mouth Makes Me Crazy.  Crazy is just the word for how annoyed It’s Hotter In Hawaii made me with the annoying bickering between the hero and heroine.  The story arcs of the two books are very similar, even the personalities of the hero and heroine are similar.  As with Your Mouth Makes Me Crazy, we start with out heroine, Cassie Montgomery, up to her neck in trouble as she’s out to prove her half brother Dan’s plane crash in Waimea Canyon was not really an accident.  With Kane Travers and his new wife Annie off on a honeymoon on the mainland, Ted Green is in charge of the Kauai police department and she can’t get anything out of him – not even after she reports getting shot at when she goes to her brother’s house.  Then she catches Caleb Wilson breaking into the Dan’s house and holds him at gunpoint while trading barbs.  Dan had sent him a letter for the first time since leaving the Air Force years before and Caleb wanted to make peace with his old friend.  At 39 he recently retired as a Commander and now works as a civilian consultant training pilots for rescue work in Panama City, Florida.  Caleb and Dan were Air Force pilots in the Special Operations Wing, the famed para-rescue operation and high pressure and danger are nothing new.  Cal radiates the calm and control you would expect from someone who lives for a high risk job.   (Any normal person would have strangled Cassie by Chapter 8.)  Cal barely gets the gun out of Cassie’s hands when a shot is fired at them from outside.

Book Review: Real Men Last All Night anthology by Lora Leigh, Lori Foster, et. al.

• Title: Real Men Last All Night
• Author: Lora Leigh, Lori Foster, Cheyenne McCray, Heidi Betts
• Type: Romance Anthology
• Genre: Contemporary
• Sub-genre: Steamy
• My Grade:  B- (3.7*)
• Rating: PG-17
• Where Available:  Any bookstore

This multi-author anthology has two popular steamy authors leading off the line up of novellas.

Cooper’s Fall by Lora Leigh

Cooper’s Fall has a Nauti series feel to it.  Ms Leigh uses her favorite kind of heroine-hero combo, a adult virgin female who is lusting for the bad boy, ex-spec ops male with a wounded soul.  He thinks he’s all wrong, too tough, to sexually demanding and dominant Alpha male for the shy virgin.  She’s an isolated, insecure, sensual, lonely young woman who was badly injured physically and emotionally by her mob father’s enemies, and she desperately wants to have a man in her life.  The one she wants lives next door – Ethan Cooper.

Book Review: The Wolf by Jean Johnson

The Sons of Destiny series by Jean John got off to a so-so start with The Sword.  I’ve now finished Book 2, The Wolf, and Book 3, The Master is underway.  Here’s how things are moving.

• Title: The Wolf
• Author: Jean Johnson
• Type: Fantasy
• Genre: Alternate World
• Sub-genre: Magician/Shifter
• My Grade: C+ (3.4*)
• Rating: PG-13
• Where Available:  Any bookstore

The Wolf has a storyline that was pretty much as predictable as the tides, but the pacing, the improved world building and the ending gave the story an edge over The Sword.  It felt like Ms Johnson was starting to get into her own story here and began building a more interesting, complex world for her characters.   We have the fully expected story of Wolver and Alys, his childhood friend in a ‘woman in jeopardy’ sort of trope.  Alys is a ward of her evil uncle (a non-blood uncle to the 8 brothers), the mage who has been sending all of the illegal war-creatures and magical attacks at the castle.