One Good Book Deserves Another

Genre: Historical Romance
Series: Sons of Sin, Book 1
Rating: 3 Stars
Length: 384 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Forever publisher Grand Central Publishing via NetGalley. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.




Sidonie Forsythe entered the dour Castle Craven with fear gnawing on her stomach and determination stiffening her spine. She knew the reputation of the scarred lord of the manor but the debt to a sister who had been a mother to her forced her hand. With Roberta's life on the line, she resigned to give herself to the nefarious Jonas Merrick in her stead.

Jonas had carefully and with great intent spun the web that the beautiful wife of his vile cousin had all but thrown herself into. With victory assured and every marker in his possession lined up, he had every intention of spending seven nights using Roberta to degrade and humiliate the cousin who had stolen so much from him. Except it wasn't the pretty wife that entered his parlor, but the wife's sister. An innocent in every way.

Perhaps it should bother him to continue with his plan, trading one sister for the other, and in so doing, ruin Sidonie's future unequivocally. It didn't. Jonas just wasn't that sort of man. He couldn't afford to be, given his appearance and all it represented.

It was certainly, and cynically, no surprise that the fair Miss Forsythe shivered and shuddered in his presence...though she didn't seem to be overly concerned with his scars. And that was only the first in a series of unexpected aspects of the young woman's personality. Not that it would garner her any mercy.

But maybe...just maybe...a different sort of game is called for. A different focus for this different woman. One who is, Jonas warily acknowledges, far more...everything...than he'd anticipated.


When I read the blurb for this book, I was drawn to the similarities in theme to Beauty and the Beast. Young woman goes to crumbling castle to beard the scarred, wretched beast in his den. She is the only one who can see behind his beastly facade to the man beneath, and her love changes him from monster into prince. They live Happily Ever After. Fade to black.

Irresistible.

And this book would have been, too, if it hadn't been for one or two niggling details that broadened that simple concept into the plot of this book. Details like Jonas, a character that is damaged and complex and on the surface everything I love most in a hero...turning out to be a ruthless bastard who took shameless advantage of a woman's addiction to force her into his clutches so he could cuckolded her husband as punishment for his offenses against Jonas. With not the first thought for the welfare or consequences the woman would suffer after he'd discarded her at the end of that week.

And when that married woman's completely innocent and virginal sister shows up instead, he still refuses to relent. Instead he adapts his plans and holds the gambling debt of her sister over the innocent's head so that she is forced to service him in her sister's stead.

Yeah, Disney didn't exactly cover that one with singing teapots and dancing brooms.

Of course, there is attraction between the beauty and the beast, and the book is written as a slow seduction of the one as we get glimpses into the pain and damage of the other, but I found myself struggling with the basic measure of a man who would consider - even if he didn't actually do it - using a woman as shamelessly as he intended to use Roberta. That trod a little too close to the irredeemable line for me to fully embrace Jonas as the romantic hero in this tale.

And believe me, I was absolutely no fonder of the idea that Sidonie's sister would allow her to face Jonas on her own in her stead, regardless of the abusive husband. For the first several chapters of the book, the only character I could even remotely tolerate was Sidonie herself. But that little bit didn't last too terribly long either, what with the secret Sidonie held back from Jonas even knowing exactly the price he'd paid for it.

Campbell does have a descriptive, emotionally significant writing style that appealed to me, though. The nuances of the main characters' emotions, damages, flaws, and insecurities were particularly well crafted. That appeal was able to smooth over some of my initial displeasure as I read further into the book. I was even able to eventually feel a genuine bit of the magic between Sidonie and her beast as their romance progressed. I just tried to forget the grim manipulations that put the players into the positions they were in. That helped.

The sex scenes were deliciously hot and went hand-in-hand with the angsty emotional consequences of Jonas' disfigurement, but they also overwhelmed the story a little. I would have traded one or two, or been content with shorter scenes in lieu of more complex character evolution and depth of plot.

A better balance in the plot would have been nice, as well. The main characters spent so much of the book in Devon that the plot threads that directly dealt with or spun from Jonas' cousin late in the book seemed cramped and abrupt, and there was one huge twist that seemed to spring up out of absolutely nowhere, despite all the care taken against it. And as much as I did appreciate the emotional quagmire that Jonas was forced to deal with on a daily basis, understanding the trust issues that could spawn, the relationship conflict and subsequent climax still seemed starkly abrupt and a bit out of character to me.

For all that, this wasn't one of my favorite historical romances. I think Campbell is more than capable of a thoroughly entertaining read full of flawed and damaged characters and sweeping romance. These characters and their story just didn't reach that level for me. That said, Campbell's authorial voice is solid and some of the secondary and ancillary characters introduced in this book did spark my interest to a degree that I would continue with the series if they're to be featured.

Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Saturn's Daughter, Book 1
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Length: 400 Pages
Formats: Mass Market Paperback, Kindle
Disclosure: An ARC of this book was provided to me by Pocket Books publisher Simon & Schuster via Edelweiss. This rating, review, and all included thoughts and comments are my own.






The only thing that scarred, limping, and mousy Justine Clancy wants to do is pass her law school finals and get her degree. Maybe then she can quit her part-time job in the radioactive area of Baltimore known as the Zone. Not that the Zone, altered by a series of chemical spills a decade ago, doesn't have its inherent charms. I does. It's just...those charms tend to seem more like freaky mutations or flat-out oddities to the uninitiated.

For two years Tina has worked for the sexy if ego-endowed Andre Legrande, keeping the books for the enigmatic man's many business holdings. She's gotten as used to the Zone as any normal person could, though she does avoid it at night. Still, after all that time Tina thought she'd seen all the weirdness the Zone could dish out. She thought nothing could surprise her anymore. 

Then she witnesses a government car mow down a bunch of teenagers in a crosswalk without so much as tapping the break, she has the bank deposit she's carrying stolen by an invisible assailant, and she barely survives when her boyfriend Max, driving her own damn car, almost runs her down - seemingly on purpose. Sure, they had a fight and she was ticked off at him, but vehicular homicide is just overkill. Literally.

Just before Max puts a painfully permanent end on a very bad day, Tina's panic and anger lashes out and she damns him for his actions. Damns him straight to hell.

And okay, it's the Zone, but come on. She didn't expect to actually send him there.



Quaid kicks off her series debut with a fascinating, quirky world that reminds me - in spirit, at the least - of Simon Green's Nightside series. That series forever endeared me to books set in those pockets of peculiarity, be they magical or paranormal in nature...or caused by toxic spillage, in which inhabitants are a different sort of breed entirely from "normals" even though they exist practically side by side. The Zone is just such a pocket.

I wish that the storyline had allowed for more depth in the world building and even more Zone weirdness, as those were my favorite elements in the book. It was almost a disappointment when Tina's sudden ability to banish annoying bastards turned out to be an issue of heritage, not radioactivity.

Don't get me wrong, I thought Tina's woo-woo stuff was unique and completely original. I think it's a nifty idea for personal weirdness, and the potential for crazy in it was great. I do wish it had been slightly better defined and explained, though. The whole Saturn's Daughter thing remained a bit too much of a mystery throughout the book given that so much else was going on around Tina. It had the unfortunate overall effect of muddying some of the plot threads for me, especially in the middle of the book.

I wasn't totally sold on Tina as the heroine, either. As much as I enjoyed her sarcastic, in-your-face, jaded awareness in the earliest chapters, she waffled back and forth between that and a willful disbelief about Max as the storyline progressed, despite some compelling evidence. It got a little tedious hearing her claim again and again that Max was a figment of her imagination. Especially as she easily acknowledges invisible thieves and Lady Justice statues that wink at her when she walks by. I would have thought her ability to embrace the surreal would be more advanced.

What I did like was the concept of a heroine who is all about justice. The Zone and its inhabitants, especially Andre Legrande, are steeped in the sort of shades of gray that make the idea of black versus white seem positively adolescent. The ethical issues inherent in Tina's natural ability seem perfectly suited for that sort of environment.

Andre is his own enigma. There definitely wasn't enough of him in the book, he stole every single scene he was in, and the questions about his character and backstory teased my mind long after I set the book down. He's a rather odd chap, really. Not quite an antihero, but he doesn't work on the side of angels, either. Tina's ambivalence to his less-than-pristine character was a lot of fun, and I'm hoping for some relationship evolution for the two of them.

I would have liked a few more of my questions about Saturn's daughters answered in this book, and I wouldn't have quibbled over a more linear external conflict. The Bad Guy was fairly straightforward, but I was a bit unclear on why Tina was considered such a loose thread. I just didn't think there was enough of an established connection between Max and Tina to warrant the Bad Guy's intent in making Tina dead.

This one wasn't a complete win for me as a reader, but there was definitely enough solid writing and intriguing story to appeal. In general I felt the story ended on a stronger note than it began, and I liked Tina much more at the end than I had even in the middle. That, coupled with a definite an air of originality and a wicked twist or three speaks loudly for the potential of this series. A potential I don't want to miss seeing realized.

Quotables:

"Men scratch their bellies and speak gibberish and would still be swinging from trees if we lived in jungles. They probably wouldn't bathe and would still be still be picking nits, too, except the ones with small weenies learned they could make money to compete in the testosterone wars and civilization happened."

"Having a bad day?" Andre taunted. "Doesn't your best - and only - boss deserve at the very least a cheery greeting?"
"I'm having a bad life, and cheery gets you killed around here."