The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines

From the author's website:  "Cinderella–whose real name is Danielle Whiteshore (nee Danielle de Glas)–does marry Prince Armand.  And if you can ignore the pigeon incident, their wedding is a dream come true.


But not long after the “happily ever after,” Danielle is attacked by her stepsister Charlotte, who suddenly has all sorts of magic to call upon.  And though Talia–otherwise known as Sleeping Beauty–comes to the rescue (she’s a martial arts master, and all those fairy blessings make her almost unbeatable), Charlotte gets away.
That’s when Danielle discovers a number of disturbing facts: Armand has been kidnapped and taken to the realm of the Fairies; Danielle is pregnant with his child; and the Queen has her own very secret service that consists of Talia and Snow (White, of course).  Snow is an expert at mirror magic and heavy duty flirting.


Can the three princesses track down Armand and extract both the prince and themselves from the clutches of some of fantasyland’s most nefarious villains?"

Remember when I said in my review of Jenna and Jonah's Fauxmance that I spent a significant amount of time trying to choose the rating I wanted to give to the book which I felt bordered between a five and a six?  Well, second verse same as the first.  Here's another pleasant, but slightly lackluster book.  This time it's a little easier for me to give the six rating because I know exactly where a great portion of lackluster feeling is coming from.

The book follows the story of Danielle (Cinderella) in her quest to find her missing husband, Prince Armand, who I assume is simply charming.  She does this with the help of Talia (Sleeping Beauty), a girl given many a gift by faeries, and Snow (White), an expert in mirror magic.  Danielle, not to put too fine a point on it, is nice.  She's sickly nice.  She's the kind of nice that makes your teeth rot.  She doesn't kill bad guys even if they are majorly bad and she tries to believe in everyone she meets.  She's also a great portion of the problem I have with this book.   Danielle's actions with regards to her stepsisters and to other characters in the book drove me mad.  Why does she always try to understand and forgive them?  I must be a total hater, but I like a character with some teeth like Talia. 

Additionally, while Snow and Talia had interesting stories behind their powers that made sense with regards to their faerie tale stories, Danielle seems to have no reason she can communicate with animals, nor is there a reason why her mother was able to turn herself into a tree that could gift things to Danielle.  The answer is simply, "It seems to be magic."  

I also didn't enjoy the random turns into humor this book made.  It seemed like Hines was attempting to be serious the majority of the time, but decided to include lots of humorous bits. 

So, after all that bitching, why the good score?  I adored Talia and Snow and their relationship with each other.  I enjoyed the easy feel of the book, which was perfect for early summer.  Really, have I mentioned that I adore Talia?  I did?  Let me reiterate.  She's everything I wanted Danielle to be.  Brave, sure of herself, hard, but still with flaws.  She is a heroine in all of her glory. 

I think I'm going to give the follow up book a read to see if the focus moves away from Danielle towards the group more as a whole. 

Verdict:  6.  Not my favorite book, but decent light fare that I hope will improve with a different focus in later books.

Thoughts:  I'm stuck in a rut of books that I rate five to six.  I can't wait to get past it.

Jenna and Jonah's Fauxmance by Brendan Halpin and Emily Franklin

From Amazon's website:  "Fans of romance don't need to look any further than the fauxmance brewing between teen idols Charlie Tracker and Fielding Withers-known on their hit TV show as Jenna and Jonah, next-door neighbors flush with the excitement of first love. But it's their off-screen relationship that has helped cement their fame, as passionate fans follow their every PDA. They grace the covers of magazines week after week. Their fan club has chapters all over the country. The only problem is their off-screen romance is one big publicity stunt, and Charlie and Fielding can't stand to be in the same room. Still, it's a great gig, so even when the cameras stop rolling, the show must go on, and on, and on. . . . Until the pesky paparazzi blow their cover, and Charlie and Fielding must disappear to weather the media storm. It's not until they're far off the grid of the Hollywood circuit that they realize that there's more to each of them than shiny hair and a winning smile."

Honestly, I've spent the last hour or so looking for an author's site that has a description of this book and trying to choose between a rating of a five or a six.  As you can probably see, I've settled on a six for now, but I'm still not sure.

One of the problems about books that are written from two points of view (like Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist or Jenna and Jonah's Fauxmance) is that I normally end up liking one character more, sympathizing with them more, and rooting for one character over another.  In this book, Jenna (or Charlie) is the definite winner to me.  Shallow, petty, ambitious, slightly vapid, she still comes across as an individual who's actively trying to find out what she's good at.  She's not content to sit idly watching life go by her.  She's grasping sadly at everything around her, trying to make herself a better or more successful actor.  Fielding (or Aaron, and let me just suggest to you that you don't throw a name change on a character who already has the feel of having two names), on the other hand, seemed to feel that his life plan would fall in his lap, and it annoyed me to no end.  Fielding seems to want to act only because other people around him keep telling him to do so but he takes no initiative to stop acting besides not correcting a rumor and lie being spread about him.

While I enjoyed several sections of the book on their own, I felt the moves in setting were a little strange and did not go smoothly for my reading.  I think the whole thing could have benefited greatly from a little more time on their original show as Jenna and Jonah and perhaps further in their fake relationship, but that is barely touched upon before the move is made to their isolation.  Just as quickly, it's moved again away from that and fully half the book takes place in a setting not even mentioned in any copy I found.  Was that a twist, or just poor copy?

Either way, I think more time spent in their fake relationship would have helped to establish a greater enmity between the two.  We're tossed one or two "I hate this other person" lines but always with an addendum of "but they're really hot" or "but I really liked them once upon a time" or "but I think we could have been something more" which doesn't make them seem like they dislike each other at all.  I think an exploration of their staged relationship would have worked better, because it would have allowed them to really give the reader a feel for the dislike they feel while highlighting the very interesting fact that the authors did bring to it -- the fact that two people who've been in a fake relationship and worked sixteen hour days together for years on end would know each other like no one else has ever known them.

So, since I'm complaining so much in this review, what did I like about Jenna and Jonah's Fauxmance?  As I mentioned, Charlie's attempts to find acting skills, fame, and her own identity make her a doer.  I almost always love doers in books.  People who do shit, whether good or bad, entertain.  I don't read books to meet good and kindly characters.  I read to be entertained.  I loved the brief mentions of scenes from their television show or their contract morality clauses, such as what flavors of ice cream Charlie can be seen consuming in public.  While the forced comparison Much Ado About Nothing bothered, the examination of a Shakespeare troupe's reaction to Disneyesque actors is pretty darned hilarious. 

Perhaps I'm just too old to enjoy this novel (which read as really young 'young adult') and the wrong target audience even outside the age issue.  I never cared about celebrities so much. This novel is much like Twizzlers to me.  It's candy that I like while I'm eating, but which I'll ultimately wonder why I ate when there is so much better candy out there.

Verdict:  6.  I would give Charlie's (Jenna's) sections a 7 generally,  and Fielding's (Jonah's) a 5.  Split the difference?

Thoughts:  What is up with my run of books recently that have no authors that want to pimp the books on their websites?  I'm pulling more than a few book descriptions from Amazon.  Yuck.

Mistress of the House: Great Ladies and Grand Houses by Rosemary Baird

From Amazon's product page:  "In the 18th and 19th centuries, to become Mistress of the House was the natural prospect of women born into Britain’s wealthy aristocratic families. An advantageous marriage would bring with it an important ancestral home—a visible expression of power, prestige, and good taste. Rosemary Baird introduces us to ten of these remarkable women, detailing their accomplishments in the creation and running of Britain’s great houses. We also learn about their education and training, the marriage market, and their obligations as leaders of fashion, interior design, and society. Based on diaries, letters, and family archives, Mistress of the House is a fascinating work of social history. Rosemary Baird was educated at Cambridge and Oxford; a former consultant at Sotheby’s, she is now Curator of the Goodwood Collection."

This incredible dry book starts off in a fairly interesting manner, detailing how women in years past in England helped build giant homes, decorate them, and create incredible legacies which they'd leave to the family members in their names.  The book describes how the legacy of these women would be kept fairly quiet due to their gender and history's general desire to attribute their work and effort to their husbands.  It also lists what a rich wife of that time would be expected to do, and what she could do given leeway. 

Unfortunately, it quickly moves to individual ladies of the time, and this is where the work suffers.  While some ladies have stories interesting enough to hold the attention (Catherine Lennox, Elizabeth Montagu and the Duchess of Portsmouth) while others bored me silly.  Combined with the fact that most chapters read like a laundry list of accomplishments, it tended towards the tedious in chapters for people such as Theresa Parker.  "Yes, yes, they worked on their house.  Yes, yes, they put up Indian Paper in the great hall." 

Sadly, due to the method in which this book describes the ladies (lady by lady), it also becomes greatly repetitive in the chapters of women with no great claim to fame other than their houses.  I powered through it, but it would be lists of items purchased by ladies interspersed with a sentence like "Husband managed to make her a duchess."

I am going to give it a positive verdict, but I'm writing the review the way I am because I want you to know that if you do not have a great patience or if you have little interest in manor homes of England or strong females of bygone eras, this is probably not going to be a book you enjoy.  My love of the running of manor homes and of strong female personalities is great, and I'm still only giving it a six out of ten!

Verdict: 6.  However, I would not rate it higher than a four unless you have a rather deep interest in intellectual, dry works regarding large manors in England.

Thoughts:  One third of this book was footnotes.  I kind of felt robbed!

Betsy-Tacy and Tib by Maud Hart Lovelace

From Amazon:  "Betsy and Tacy are best friends. Then Tib moves into the neighborhood and the three of them start to play together. The grown-ups think they will quarrel, but they don't. Sometimes they quarrel with Betsy's and Tacy's bossy big sisters, but they never quarrel among themselves.


They are not as good as they might be. They cook up awful messes in the kitchen, throw mud on each other and pretend to be beggars, and cut off each other's hair. But Betsy, Tacy, and Tib always manage to have a good time."


 After reading the first book,  I decided to immediately get the second book from the library.  While I'm happy that I've continued to read, I wasn't as into Betsy-Tacy and Tib.  I think with the addition of Tib, I realized something -- I didn't really enjoy Tacy as much as I adored Betsy and Tib!  Betsy's imaginative nature and Tib's pragmatic nature are extremes that play off well against each other and make them fun to read.  Tacy's defining trait of shyness isn't as enjoyable to read though I did identify with it!

But, to jump back, Betsy-Tacy and Tib takes place about three years after Betsy-Tacy and the change in age does a bit to refresh the story.  Now, the girls realize that growth is constantly coming at them, and they even see their first glimpses of mortality (which would have been more real to a child back then) in Tacy's prolonged illness.  While they react to these ideas childishly and humorously, it's still a change from the previous book in which growing up meant being as old as their sisters who were then eight.

As I said, part of the thrill of the story was off for me when I realized I was getting irate with Tacy's actions or when I found the section on the flying woman not to fit into the story, but at other times, such as when the group decided to cook everything pudding, I felt happy I had picked up the second book so quickly.

I will definitely be continuing on with this series!

Verdict:  6.  Not as charming as the first book, but I still enjoyed it. 

Thoughts:  How about that scene in which Betsy doesn't understand why Tib can't grow up to be an architect but must be a housewife?  Maud Hart Lovelace pointing out the injustice of it all back in the Forties from the viewpoint of a girl growing up in the Nineteen Hundreds! 

Betsy-Tacy Books 

1. Betsy-Tacy
2. Betsy-Tacy and Tib

Blood Engines by T. A. Pratt

From Amazon:

"Meet Marla Mason–smart, saucy, slightly wicked witch of the East Coast.…

Sorcerer Marla Mason, small-time guardian of the city of Felport, has a big problem. A rival is preparing a powerful spell that could end Marla’s life–and, even worse, wreck her city. Marla’s only chance of survival is to boost her powers with the Cornerstone, a magical artifact hidden somewhere in San Francisco. But when she arrives there, Marla finds that the quest isn’t going to be quite as cut-and-dried as she expected…and that some of the people she needs to talk to are dead. It seems that San Francisco’s top sorcerers are having troubles of their own–a mysterious assailant has the city’s magical community in a panic, and the local talent is being (gruesomely) picked off one by one.

With her partner-in-crime, Rondeau, Marla is soon racing against time through San Francisco’s alien streets, dodging poisonous frogs, murderous hummingbirds, cannibals, and a nasty vibe from the local witchery, who suspect that Marla herself may be behind the recent murders. And if Marla doesn’t figure out who is killing the city’s finest in time, she’ll be in danger of becoming a magical statistic herself.…"

Excerpt at Author's website.

Let's just get this out of the way, Marla is one bitchy but boss heroine.   The whole book is filled with a ton of witches and wizards who are scary, strange, and unique.  I've certainly never come across a witch who gathers her magic by using a train going in an endless loop.  (Loved that.)  More than most books called urban fantasy, this felt both urban and strange and weird, but in a good way.  Even magical archetypes that appear in other series come across a little better in this book (the witch who can see multiple timelines, the prophet/oracle, and the evil Chinese mage).  Now, to damn with faint praise, saying all this about how I loved aspects of this book, I simply liked this book.

Let's get the bad out of the way so I can clear my review's palette with the good stuff.  It was certainly memorable, but while certain scenes and characters are simply stand-out, other scenes or characters left me uninterested and unmotivated to continue reading the series.  I felt like the characters I was most interested in wouldn't even be in the second book, which left me with a "why bother" feeling.  Also, Marla is almost needlessly bitchy.  She is the kind of bitchy that left me unable to sympathize and I say this as a person who is needlessly bitchy all the damned time.  She seems to be bitchy almost to the point of stupidity.  While this can be interesting, it also makes her seem dumb at times which is hard to find engaging.

Felport, the city which matters the most to Marla, is not in this book at all.  We're left with San Francisco, which makes me reluctant to move back to Felport in the second book.  It seems an odd choice to start the series away from this city.

Now that this is out of the way, let's talk about what I like.  The snake god, the possible witch (extra hugs and kisses to this minor character), the bevy of San Fran leading wizards, the completely strange but interesting magic of the villain, Bradley.  If the second book had followed Bradley instead of Marla, I'd have been there in a heartbeat.  There is a lot of world-building and characterization to love. 

The reason I'm tempted to pick up more books from Tim Pratt is that I'm sure he must be a very imaginative man with a great ability to paint both beautiful and hideous worlds and people with words.  If his other books have stronger stories, I think they have the potential to be some of my favorites.


Verdict: 6.  I read it about a month ago and I still remember all the plot details and I still feel good about a lot of it, but not enough to make me want to rush to get the second book in the series.  Both of those things say something and they balance out to a six.  It's like the opposite of 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts'.  Here the sum of its parts is much higher than the whole of story of this book.

Thoughts:  I guessed early into the novel that this was written by a male as opposed to the large string of urban fantasy written by females.  The feel was just different.  In one way, I kind of liked that (less silly romance) but in another way (still lots of silly sex) it was kind of annoying.  Doesn't anyone do urban fantasy stuff without excessive romance or sex?

Also, Tim Pratt has both his own website and a website devoted to stories of Marla which includes an excerpt from Blood Engines..  Apparently the fifth book is reader funded.  Was he unable to publish it or did he decide to self-publish it?

Just The Sexiest Man Alive by Julie James

From the author's website: "Nothing fazes Taylor Donovan.  In the courtroom she never lets the opposition see her sweat.  In her personal life, she never lets any man rattle her–not even her cheating ex-fiancé.  So when she’s assigned to coach People’s “Sexiest Man Alive” for his role in his next big legal thriller, she refuses to fall for the Hollywood heartthrob’s charms.  Even if he is the Jason Andrews.

Jason Andrews is used to having women fall at his feet.  When Taylor Donovan gives him the cold shoulder, he’s thrown for a loop.  She’s unlike any other woman he’s ever met: uninterested in the limelight, seemingly immune to his advances, and shockingly capable of saying no to him.  She’s the perfect challenge.  And the more she rejects him, the more he begins to realize that she may just be his perfect match. . ."

Just the Sexiest Man Alive came so close to getting a spectacular grade from me.  I enjoyed its fast pace, it's 'witty' banter, and the main two characters (mostly).  Ugh, notice how I'm already hedging on a positive review by putting the witty in quotes and the mostly in parenthesis there?  That's not fair to this book, which is a good one.  In fact, I'm half afraid that my low score comes from the fact that I think it could have been so much better with a few changes.

Taylor is a good protagonist.  She's got a career, ambition, friends, and family.  She loves what she does.  She knows who she is.  There is much to love about Taylor, but the book doesn't focus as much on the things to love as it does on who she loves.  Taylor's life appears to fail the Bechdel Test.  Perhaps this is because I was reading a romance, but all her conversations with her closest friends revolve around guys and how she should get over her ex-fiance and how Jason is the total cutest boy ever.  Her friends giggle and shriek over Jason and other actors. 

It's tiring, but possibly a true representation of life.  If my closest friend started to date Brad Pitt or Ryan Reynolds, perhaps I'd shriek and giggle too.  On the other hand, her friends are nothing like me.  They immediately look at Jason as a possible serious relationship even though Taylor has yet to even date him at a point in the book.

Jason comes off better in the book.  He's arrogant and conceited and silly in the beginning, but it allows for him to show more growth and of a more serious kind, as well.  Plus, when things happen to Jason that humiliate him, it both makes him sympathetic while also giving this reader a bit of a thrill to see it happen.  Jason's friend, Jeremy, does better duty as a friend than Taylor's do.  He has a legitimate reason for jumping immediately to the idea that Jason might be serious about Taylor.

The first several meetings between Jason and Taylor are delightful, though I was quickly over the idea that even they seemed to believe their patter was witty. I think one or more less witty conversations might have helped me believe a little more that they knew each other in some way when they started to think so seriously of each other.  However, the story still progressed easily and nicely.  Perhaps too much so.

At this point, the author introduces the OTHER MAN and he is EVIL.  In fact, she realizes this, and throws a mocking jab at it.  I almost wondered if she had been forced to put him in there by an editor or by people who originally read her book.  The other actor is so blatantly and obviously evil that sections containing him ring untrue.  If he had been competitive with Jason, but a good guy, or a decent but dumb man, then it all might have read better, but it doesn't.  He is there only to be a rival to Jason and to suck.

Once the story gets past this section, it picks up once again, going back to Taylor's career and how it does not quite mesh with Jason's career and their feelings for each other and why they each have issues they need to work past.  While I was not happy about the resolution of the story, at least it was cohesive and fast-paced.

Verdict: 6.  So close to true greatness, but not quite there.  (Started with an 8.  Deducted a point for Scott being a tool of a character.  Literally.  And another point for Taylor's resolution to her career storyline.)


Thoughts: I think this book will date itself fairly quickly with some of its pop culture references, which is a terrible shame because I enjoyed the book!

Once Dead, Twice Shy by Kim Harrison

I could not find a blurb on the author's website, though I did find an excerpt.  I will attempt to summarize myself:  Madison Avery is a young dead teenage girl with several problems besides being dead.  While at the prom, she got killed by a reaper, and she found out that Barnabas, the angel in charge of guarding her, had failed.  However, she managed to grab her killer's magical amulet, and now she's trying to make it work and avoid getting her soul destroyed (and her unlife ended) by her killer.


Let's start with the bad and end with the good, shall we?  Harrison throws you into this story without a life vest.  She throws you in without swimmies.  You've got to fight through the first few chapters, trying to figure out what the hell is going on because you don't know the characters, the world, what's happened to the main character to get her into the situation she's in, and you probably don't care.  Perhaps she does this on purpose.

But, it's not well done. 

It's aggravating and I almost gave up reading.  Why did I continue?  The little I could understand was interesting and easy to read, so I kept going.  Around half-way through the book, I realized I was into the story.  I was into the Grace, the guardian angel who composes limericks.  I liked Madison when she wasn't vrooming wildly between goth and faux-aggressive Buffy-esque chick.  The plot, when you threw away all the overly-dramatic bits, was pretty darned good. 

By  the time I got to the end, I was happy I had stuck it out.  I liked the resolution of the action and I found the premise interesting enough that I added the sequel to my library wishlist, and I looked for the novella that probably came before! Sure, the last chapter was sort of cheesy, but the chapters that preceded it were so strong that I was willing to forgive and forget.

Verdict: 6.  I'm glad I kept reading this book, even though I struggled through the beginning chapters.  I think if I had not finished it, I would have mentally given it a 3 or 4, but the ending showed so much promise, that I ratcheted up the score.

Thoughts:  I know that Kim Harrison likes to write in anthologies, but this is ridiculous.  The beginning of this book practically required that you had pre-read Prom Nights From Hell.  And from the small excerpt I read of that short story, she greatly changed the supporting characters, such as Josh, around by the time she wrote this book.  I'm almost angered by this whole fact.

The Wicked Ways of a Duke by Laura Lee Guhrke

From the author's website:  "Once upon a time, there was a seamstress named Prudence who lived in a lodging house, worked very hard, and dreamed of a better life. Then she inherited a fortune, met a handsome duke, and fell in love. Her life was wonderful, and it seemed as if she was destined to live happily ever after.

Then she found out money can’t buy happiness, handsome dukes can also be wicked, lying scoundrels, and a broken heart hurts like hell. Will Prudence ever find true love and happiness? Will the wicked duke mend his ways? Will she take him back or kick him to the curb?"

Before I come to any review, I have to say that this book title made me roll my eyes so hard that I saw the back of my skull.  Perhaps all that Ms. Guhrke requires, however, is that it is memorable.  The worst part was that the novel is so much better than the title implies.  The annoyance is similar to when I read a Harlequin romance titled something like "Marriage of Convenience to the Greek Billionaire" and that damnable novel is decent.  I like judging books by their titles/covers!

This novel of a seamstress become heiress and the money desperate duke that decides to woo her is set in late 1890s London.  It's different from the get-go with a heroine who works for a living in a realistic job and who thinks realistically about working and inheriting money.  I did find the reason for her inheritance fairly contrived, but I will tell you the truth -- I expect contrivance in my romance novels.  It's when I don't get it that I'm impressed, rather than upset when I do get it.  Prudence starts off strong in my regards, but quickly comes low.  She lets her overly-stupid relatives walk all over her and she does things which I found incredibly dumb.  She seems to care very little for the fortune she inherits even though she's seen what life is like without money.  She's not a TSTL (too stupid to live) heroine, but she's not overly intellectual.

The hero, a duke in need of a fortune, is a standard in fiction, but is especially well done in this novel.  Here is where I feel the novel excels.  Rhys knows what he needs to do, and he goes to do it.  He finds it convenient that Prudence is attractive to him from their first meeting, but he doesn't dwell on her when he thinks she cannot give him what he needs: either a quick lay, or a fortune.  He's self-serving, funny, smarmy, and pitiable.  I liked him more than I liked Prudence, and I more quickly bought into his storyline.

The Wicked Ways of a Duke moved very quickly, progressing from meeting to engagement by half-way through the book.  Since that occurred, it was easy to predict the novel's course, but it was still a compelling read.  I disliked Prudence's relatives as plot devices, especially considering that there was no need for them with regards to the romance, but what I mostly disliked about them is how her reaction to them changed my perception of Prudence.  Similarly, I felt like Prudence's friends were never properly dealt with, and I would not have minded more time with them because I think that would have improved my perception of Prudence.

Mostly this novel is worth a read, from my end, due to Rhys.  He's entertaining, and I feel like that is something I can scarcely say about a romance novel hero.

Verdict: 6. I'm glad I got this out from the library.

Thoughts: I was shocked by the setting (really late Victorian England) and I half wondered throughout the book if society was as described by this novel. I know nearly nothing about late Victorian England, but I found the change from the Regency era or early Victorian era to be delightful. Not so great cover on the paperback version I was reading, by the way.

It is worth noting that this is one of the few romance novels I've read recently where I like the hero more than the heroine.