Monthly Archives: January 2010

Wicked Ties by Shayla Black

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Everyone looks for something different when they read erotica. (Those of us who actually read erotica – or admit to reading it- that is. *g*) Often times we have to forsake some of our wish list to get other needs (so to speak) met. Shayla Black’s novel Wicked Ties surprised me- in a good way.

Not that the plot actually matters, but the novel tells the story of Morgan O’Malley, host of a cable talk show called ‘Turn Me On’. During the course of research for a show on Dominance and submission she meets Master J aka Jack. Naturally he’s a total stud and although his reputation in the D/s scene is impeccable, what Morgan doesn’t know is that he’s arranged to meet her because of some ridiculous revenge he’s plotted against someone from his past with whom Morgan is connected.

Oh, Morgan’s got a stalker, too. And Jack just happens to be a bodyguard.

Truly- the plot is convoluted and silly and has holes you could drive a truck through. The novel succeeds despite the plot though because Ms. Black writes very good sex scenes. And really, come on, isn’t that why we read erotica?

Jack senses that despite her denials (she’s only doing research, after all), Morgan is really intensely curious about what it would be like to submit to a man. It doesn’t take long for Jack to whisk Morgan off to his isolated cabin in the swamp (for her protection, of course) and start to tutor her on the finer points of being submissive.

Your enjoyment of this book will ultimately depend on whether or not you are interested in this sort of sexual relationship and whether or not you want to read graphic sex scenes. If either of these things intrigue you- you could do far worse than this book.

I found it …um…gratifying.

Prmoise Not to Tell by Jennifer McMahon

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Jennifer McMahon’s novel Promise Not To Tell is a gem of a story which, as promised on its cover, once I started reading, I couldn’t put down.

Part ghost story, part whodunit, and part coming-of-age tale…[it] takes you through the twisted world of adolescent friendship, betrayal and murder. says author, Pam Lewis. Yeah, I know these little endorsements are meant to entice readers- but Lewis is telling the absolute truth.

Kate Cypher returns to rural Vermont to care for her mother- who is showing the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Her arrival back home coincides with the murder of a local girl; a murder almost identical to one that took place 30 years ago.

The beautiful thing about Promise Not To Tell is its gorgeous, complicated (but not convoluted) layers. Kate’s visit home forces her to recall her childhood friendship with Del, the victim of that decades old crime. Bullied and mocked by the other children, Del befriends Kate if only because Kate, too, is an outsider. (She and her mother live in a hippie commune.) Theirs is a friendship of necessity- a friendship where secrets are bartered and withheld, but I think it is also a friendship that is poignant and true. It has to be for the book to have the authentic emotional impact it has.

McMahon’s writing is perfectly pitched and the book is alternately spooky and insightful.  The characters are well-drawn, even minor-characters. More importantly, as the story unravels, you don’t feel cheated by the denouement.

I loved every minute of this book.

The Reunion by Alan Lightman

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Alan Lightman is an adjunct Professor of Humanities, Creative Writing, and Physics at MIT. Of his novel Reunion the New York Times Book Review said: “Elegant…spare, economical and charged with meaning.”

I’m going to be honest: I am a sucker for this kind of book – lost love, longing, a trip to the past. So I would have thought that Reunion would be right up my alley because it has all the ingredients necessary to punch me in the gut.

Charles is professor at a small college. He’s divorced and the father of a grown daughter. We meet him as he is about to return to his Alma Mater for his 30th reunion. It is here that Charles is catapulted back into his past to relive his first love-affair, with a ballerina named Juliana. His past doesn’t rise up to meet him in the flesh. Instead, while gazing into a model of the college campus as it once was, Charles has a sort of complicated hallucination where he relives the whole affair and struggles to reconcile the memory with the reality of it.

On some levels the book really worked for me.

Young people explode with their discovery of the world and the newness of life…What young people don’t realize is that so much is happening for the last time as well. The world is both opening and closing at once.

I understood this. I felt tremendous empathy for Charles as he came to terms with the knowledge that he couldn’t go back and recapture those first, fleeting moments of love or be the person that he was then.

And while Lightman is a gifted writer, I think it’s the scientist in him that kept me from fully engaging in the book. There were sections of the book that bored me – a lot of the first 50 pages or so- but when Charles was fully sucked into his past, reliving his love affair with the enigmatic, Juliana, I went with him gladly, even though I knew it would not end well.

The Falls by Karen Harper

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You know you’re in trouble when you come across a line like this in a book: “I have a feeling my survival training from years ago and my duty during Operation Desert Storm is going to come in real handy.’

Of course the joke’s on me. The revelation- spoken by hard-as-nails Sheriff Nick Braden doesn’t come until page 285- but I knew the book was gonna be a stinker by page 10…yet I still kept reading.

Publishers Weekly loved The Falls and said Harper has a fantastic flair for creating and sustaining suspense… Um- okay.

Claire Malvern wakes up in the middle of the night and discovers that her husband, Keith, is missing. They live in Washington State, where they are renovating an old fishing lodge they intend to open as a B and B. When Keith’s body turns up in the river, presumably after having jumped off the bridge at Bloodroot Falls, the Sheriff calls it suicide, but Claire just knows Keith would never kill himself.

Sadly, though, Claire knows less about her husband than she thinks she does. And it turns out that most of the small cast of characters in Harper’s cliched novel have something to hide. Sadly, none of it is very interesting.

Look- there are all sorts of this kind of book out there and I’ve read lots of them. What’s the most important ingredient to make them work? You have to care about the characters. They have to be believable.

Nothing to look at here, folks. Move along and save your money.

The End of Alice by A.M. Homes

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I haven’t read a book this creepy, violent, or disturbing in a long time. A.M. Homes is, quite possibly, the most fearless writer I have ever read and The End of Alice is a book that is both horrifying and beautiful. Beautifully written, that is, because there isn’t a character in this novel that is particularly sympathetic.

The novel is narrated by an unnamed incarcerated pedophile. He begins a correspondence with a nineteen year old girl- also unnamed- who writes him the details of her growing obsession with a twelve year old boy.

That’s the book in a nutshell. The old pedophile and the pedophile-to-be exchange letters (although not in the traditional sense) and reveal their dirty deeds bit by bit, culminating in a retelling of the old guy’s crime: the end of Alice.

All the characters are reprehensible: the pedophile’s mother, the young boy’s father. Even the so-called victims are less innocent than you might think they are. As each crime is revealed you think it will help you understand how it shaped the person…but really it just adds to the feeling of itchy voyeurism. And since one guy is in jail, there’s a lot of graphic male/male sex.

So- do I recommend this book? It’s not for the faint of heart, that’s for sure. Is it well-written? Certainly. Could I stop reading despite the high gross-out factor? No. Whether it says something valuable or useful about the state-of-the-world, I don’t know.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

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I wasn’t sure I was going to like Ann Patchett’s novel Bel Canto when I started reading it. I mean – it didn’t seem like a book that would either grab my interest or hold it. But a funny thing happened to me about 75 pages in…I started to care about these characters.

Bel Canto is actually based loosely on something that happened in Lima, Peru. On December 17, 1996, the terrorist organization Tupac Amaru took over the Japanese embassy there. From this nugget of truth, Patchett unspools the story. It’s Mr. Hosokawa’s birthday and the government of  an unnamed South American country are hoping he will open an electronics plant there. They have hired Roxane Coss to sing and the only reason Mr. Hosokawa has agreed to attend the party is because she will be there; he is an opera fan and she is the best soprano in the world. The party is being held at the home of the country’s Vice-President; the President had to attend to ‘matters in Israel’. In the middle of the festivities, the house is taken over by a group of terrorists.

What happens when a group of wildly different people are forced to share close quarters? The book forces the characters- a wonderful, eccentric group- to be both more and less than they are. A priest, for example, finally has the opportunity to hear confession; Mr. Hosokawa’s translator, a central character named Gen Wantanabe, gets to converse in Spanish, German, French, English, and Russian and because of it- is privy to people’s most private thoughts and Roxane Coss uses the power of her voice to tame the savage beast- so to speak.

The terrorists themselves are also central to the story and we learn much about them…and I dare say, we come to care for them every bit as much as we care for the privileged party-goers. There is a message to be had in this book and Patchett’s fine prose illustrates that without hitting the reader over the head. This was a book club selection and, truthfully, not everyone loved this book.

For me, though, this is a book about love- how it shapes us and changes us, how beauty transforms and transports and how you just might take a risk if you thought it might be your last opportunity to do so.

King of Lies by John Hart

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John Hart’s debut in the world of fiction is that most engrossing of rarities, a well-plotted mystery novel that is written in a beautifully poetic style…The King of Lies will mark the beginning of a long and stellar career. – Mark Childress, author of Crazy in Alabama

People apparently loved this book. There are three pages of positive reviews excerpted in the front of the book. That’s surely a good sign, right?

Personally, I feel sorta ho-hum about this book.

Jackson Workman Pickens, or ‘Work’ is a relatively successful lawyer in a Southern town. He’s unhappily married to Barbara.  He has a mentally ill sister, Jean. He’s generally well-liked. Then, one day, his famously successful lawyer father, Ezra, (who has been missing for eighteen months) turns up in the closet of a dilapidated mall- two bullet holes in his head. Naturally, Work is a suspect, but because he knows the system he is able to stay (mostly) one step ahead of the detective who is, convinced he is the murderer, hot on his trail.

In all fairness to Hart, I do think he is trying to do more with The King of Lies than unravel a mystery. Work is a complex guy: he’s genuinely decent and tries to do the right thing, even though he’s emotionally reticent. He’s been in love with another woman since he was 12, but he’s never been able to say the words to her…and he married someone else. He is estranged from his sister, but he’s fiercely protective of her. His relationship with his father was acrimonious and the whole Pickens family is plagued by secrets.

But for me- the book moved too slowly. I mean, it wasn’t a page turner in the sense that I couldn’t wait to know what was going to happen next. It was well-written (although he did use some of the same figurative language more than once…and that always bugs me) and Work was a good guy, but certain things niggled. Jean: barely coherent in one section, full of self-knowledge and insight by book’s end.

If you’re a fast and true mystery fan, you could certainly do worse than The King of Lies.

A Cold Dark Place by Gregg Olsen

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Oh dear.

I picked up Gregg Olsen’s book A Cold Dark Place on a whim. It wasn’t on my to-read list; I hadn’t heard anything about it. I’ve been on a bit of a mystery-suspense thriller kick and this one sounded good.

When you’re talking about this kind of book, you don’t want to give too much away. I mean, generally speaking, suspense thrillers aren’t literary gems. I read them because they’re fun. Page turners filled with menace and heart-racing thrills.

A Cold Dark Place tells the story of Detective Emily Kenyon who is hot on the trail of a killer. A tornado has just swept through the town of Cherrystone, Washington. Kenyon has gone out to the home of a family no one has heard from since the storm. Their house is leveled, but a closer inspection of the premises turns up three dead bodies: dad, mom and a young boy. They’d all been murdered. The older son, Nick, is missing. Soon after Kenyon begins her investigation, her teenage daughter, Jenna, disappears. Jenna and Nick were friends, but Kenyon can only believe the worst.

This is only the beginning of a convoluted plot that involves convicted serial killer Dylan Walker, old cases that Kenyon was involved in, an adoption agency, a hateful relationship with her ex-husband, a creepy lawyer and an ex-partner who turns up at the end to help Kenyon.

The ending is wholly unbelievable (and, okay, sometimes that’s the case in this sort of book), but worse- the characters are shrill and annoying. Olsen was a true crime writer before he turned to fiction and maybe that’s why none of the book’s details seemed authentic. (I know, it seems ridiculous- but a true crime writer doesn’t have to fabricate anything.) In A Cold Dark Place what characters had for dinner seems like a tacked on detail rather than an investment in their character- and let’s face it, if you’re not rooting for someone in this kind of book, the denouement hardly matters.

Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby by Allyson Beatrice

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If you are already a member of fandom, Allyson Beatrice’s book Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby? (WTVPPLTL) won’t actually tell you anything you don’t already know. For example, anyone who is a part of fandom (any fandom- not just the Jossverse) knows that there are hugely generous fans and, at the other end of the spectrum, asshats. Fandom folk know that the Internet can be scary and also scary fun.

Based on Beatrice’s own experiences in the Buffy/Angel/Firefly fandom, the book, with its coda ‘True Adventures in Cult Fandom’ isn’t a titillating who’s who tell-all. In fact, unless you were an original member of The Bronze Posting Board, you probably won’t know any of the people Beatrice mentions. (I wasn’t a member of The Bronze, having arrived late to the party…and I only recognized a couple names.)

WTVPPLTL is essentially a series of essays that describe Beatrice’s various  adventures in fandom- like how she was once called upon to find a new home for Joss Whedon’s cat and how she and Tim Minear are great friends and how fandom raised enough money to bring someone to the States from Israel. Stories like these have limited appeal- unless you are part of the inner circle being discussed.

The book is Jossverse specific only in the sense that those are the shows Beatrice was a fan of- I’m pretty certain that the same stories could be told in the Lost fandom…or Harry Potter. And Beatrice might alienate some of her readers with a statement made early on that she thinks that “academics obsessing over Buffy the Vampire Slayer, tying obscure cultural/socio/historical events to a tiny cult show is weird.” Still, she admits to having spent thousands of hours discussing the show with other fans. So- she is like the rest of us mortals after all.

The book is very conversational, sprinkled with expletives, and, no question, Beatrice is a clever woman who can turn a phrase. She makes a great case for explaining how fandom is family- for many people the only family they’ve got. I suppose some people will accuse Beatrice of thinking a lot of herself; I found her quite amusing- someone I might have been excited to cross paths with in her BNF days.

If I have one complaint it’s that the title is misleading in that there’s very little real chatter about the Jossverse. And as a Joss-starved fan, I would have loved hearing more about a fandom that is still, I think, pretty active. Even if the stuff I was hearing about took place back in the shows’ glory days.

The Deadly Space Between by Patricia Duncker

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Here’s a funny thing: I liked this book, but I don’t have a freakin’ clue what it’s about. Well, I sort of know that it’s about a well-regarded artist Isobel (Iso) and her 18 year old son, Toby. When Iso takes a lover, the enigmatic Roehm, Toby’s life is thrown into a tailspin. But The Deadly Space Between is not a straight forward tale by any stretch.

First of all, only 15 years separate Iso and her son and their relationship is complicated and sexually charged. The story is narrated by Toby and it’s difficult to know how reliable his observations are: Are his memories exaggerated? Is Roehm as other-worldly as he seems?

Roehm is a mysterious character, that’s for sure. Seen through Toby’s eyes he is huge, white and powerful; much like the monolithic winterscapes his mother is currently painting. Roehm’s arrival unbalances Toby’s relationship with his mother- which is clearly too insular- and even though the only information we get about Roehm is skewed through Toby’s eyes, his mysterious presence is what propels the novel through to its strangely unsettling conclusion.