Archive
Book Review: A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson
Summary:
Ellen’s staunchly feminist, progressive family found themselves flabbergasted by their daughter’s preference for honing her homemaking skills. However, with time they came around, and they are pleased to see her leave for a house matron position at a boarding school in Austria. Her childhood has prepared her for dealing with the eclectic, progressive teachers, but the little school has more problems to face than unusual teaching styles and the lonesomeness of the children of wealthy world travelers. Trouble is brewing in Europe in the shape of the Nazi movement in Germany. Of course, Ellen may have found an ally in the form of Marek, the school’s groundskeeper.
Review:
I have been fascinated with WWII ever since I was a very little girl. Also, I have no issue with feminists cooking meals for people or keeping house. Feminism is about men and women being able to do what makes them happy, not just what they’re “supposed” to do. I therefore expected these two elements to come together to make for an intriguing read. Unfortunately, I was wrong.
The main problem is Ellen. I simply don’t like her. I can’t root for her. I can’t enjoy any scene she’s in. In fact, I wanted multiple times to shove her into the lake the school is on. Now, I don’t have to like a main character to enjoy a book, but I do need at least one other character in the book to dislike her, so I’m not going around thinking something is wrong with me. However, everyone in the entire book simply loves Ellen. They frequently call her “angelic,” and everyone essentially worships the ground she walks on. Every man of anywhere near a suitable age for her falls madly in love with her. I can give that a pass in paranormal romance, as there’s a lot of supernatural stuff going on, but this is supposed to be a normal girl. Not every man is going to fall in love with her. It’s just preposterous! That doesn’t happen! Ellen is, simply put, a dull, boring woman with no true backbone. If this was a Victorian novel, she’d be fainting every few pages.
Then there’s Marek, her love interest, who I also completely loathed. Everything he does, even if it’s helping others, is for purely selfish reasons. He also has a wicked temper and frequently dangles people out of windows. Why Ellen becomes so obsessed with him is beyond me.
Ibbotson also obviously scorns many ideals that I myself hold dear. Any character who is a vegetarian or against capitalism or in favor of nudity is displayed as silly, childish, or selfish. There is a section in which the children are being taught by a vegetarian director and some of them switch to being vegetarian as well, and of course Ellen finds this simply atrocious and worries about the children. Naturally, the director is later villainized. Clearly anyone who eats “nut cutlets” for dinner simply cannot be normal. I expect an author’s ideals to show up in a book, but the book’s blurb certainly gave no indication that a book taking place largely at a progressive boarding school would spend a large amount of its time mocking those same values.
In spite of all that I can’t say that this is a badly written book. Ibbotson is capable of writing well, I just don’t enjoy her content at all. After finishing it, I realized it reminded me of something. It reads like a Jane Austen novel, and I absolutely loathe those. So, if you enjoy Jane Austen and WWII era Europe settings, you’ll enjoy this book. Everyone else should steer clear.
2.5 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap
Book Review: House of Stairs by William Sleator
Summary:
Five sixteen year old orphans living in state institutions are called to their respective offices, blindfolded, and dropped off in a building that consists entirely of stairs and landings. There appears to be no way out. The toilet is precariously perched in the middle of a bridge, and they must drink from it as well. To eat they must bow to the whims of a machine with odd voices and flashing lights. It is starting to change them. Will any of them fight it, or will they all give in?
Review:
This book was enthralling from the first scene, featuring Peter awakening on a landing intensely disoriented and frightened. Showing a bunch of teenagers obviously in an experiment opens itself up to caricature and stereotype, but Sleator skillfully weaves depthves and intricacies to them.
The writing is beautiful, smoothly switching viewpoints in various chapters from character to character. Hints are dropped about the outside world, presumably future America, that indicate the teens are from a land ravaged by war and intense morality rules. For instance, their state institutions were segregated by gender. Sleator weaves these tiny details into the story in subtle ways that still manage to paint a clear framework for the type of cultural situation that would allow such an experiment to take place.
It is abundantly clear throughout the book that the teens are facing an inhumane experiment. Yet what is not clear at first is what a beautiful allegory for the dangerous direction society could take this story is. Not in the sense that a group of teens will be forcibly placed in a house of stairs, but that some more powerful person could mold our surroundings to make us do what they want us to do. To remove our most basic humanity. This is what makes for such a powerful story.
It’s also nice that friendship in lieu of romance is central to the plot. Modern day YA often focuses intensely on romance. Personally, my teen years were much more focused on friendship, and I enjoyed seeing that in this YA book. I also like how much this humanizes the animals facing animal testing, and Sleator even dedicates the book to “the rats and pigeons who have already been there.”
House of Stairs, quite simply, beautifully weaves multiple social commentaries into one. It is a fast-paced, engrossing read, and I highly recommend it to everyone.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap
Book Review: Slither by Edward Lee
Summary:
Nora and Loren are polychaetologists–worm scientists. They are asked by their college to accompany a National Geographic photographer to an island off the coast of Florida to help her photograph a rare worm. They are accompanied by a member of the military, as it is an island that is unused military property. Also coming surreptitiously to the island are two criminal brothers and their mutual girlfriend to check on their pot growing operation and a group of four college students looking to party. What they don’t know is that the island is gradually becoming infested with a parasitic worm. Only this worm isn’t microscopic. It’s huge and has multiple, gruesome ways of using its hosts. As the various groups try frantically to avoid the worms and their ova, it seems that someone in toxin-blocking suits is watching them.
Review:
I originally picked this book up and read its blurb because of the cover. I mean, look at that! Such a striking piece of art. Upon reading the description, I decided it sounded a bit like a slightly more phallic Michael Crichton-esque book. In a way, it certainly is. It has the group with scientists attempting to solve a situation that is putting civilians at risk. The similarities kind of end there, however.
This is definitely a horror book, but I wouldn’t call it a scientific horror book. There’s nothing particularly plausible about any of it. I’d absolutely classify it more as the B-type movie gross-out fest. Lee does the gross-out part well. I found myself continually surprised and disgusted by the various things the worms do to human beings. The worms are…well, they’re so gross that it took me a bit longer than usual to read this book because I couldn’t read it right before bed or while I was eating. So he’s definitely good at that!
The book blurb hints at exciting sexual tension, but the sex veers much more strongly toward sexual abuse or gross sex than fun, crazy sex. I didn’t particularly find this bothersome, although a bit sad for the characters. However, I know some readers find that triggering, so you should be aware.
I enjoy watching B films with silly effects and bad dialogue, but it’s a lot more tedious to read awful dialogue than it is to hear it, for some reason. The dialogue really, truly is atrocious. Particularly bad is when Nora talks or thinks. It’s like Lee has never been around a nerdy woman in his life. It’s not much better when he’s writing anyone’s thoughts. They all have the most inane thoughts I’ve ever read. This actually was so tedious to get through that I almost gave up on the book a few times in the beginning. I’m glad I didn’t, because the end is absolutely a surprise. Not so much in the who survives sense, but in the mystery of the worms. It was a satisfying payoff, but I wish he’d either gotten to it sooner.
I feel that overall this is a decent horror book. It’s entirely possible that the beginning just didn’t jive with me, but would with others. I recommend it to fans of gross out horror who don’t mind flimsy dialogue.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap
Book Review: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Summary:
Originally serialized in 1859 to 1860 then published in book form in 1860 this epistolary novel is considered one of the first mystery novels. Walter Hartright is an artist who gets hired to be a drawing master for two half-sisters Laura Fairlie and Marian Halcombe. He and Laura soon fall in love, but they cannot be together due to class differences and Laura’s prior promise to her now deceased father to marry Lord Percival Glyde. A mysterious woman dressed all in white warns Laura against her marriage, calling Lord Glyde evil. However, Laura is reluctant to renege on her final promise to her father and proceeds with her marriage, sending herself, Marian, and Walter into a spiral of intrigue and danger.
Review:
I love slow-moving, epistolary novels, particularly gothic ones read on a long, hot summer day. One of my finest reading memories is of enjoying Dracula while working on a summer internship at a national park on a peninsula with four beaches. So I came to this gothic, mysterious, epistolary novel with high expectations. At first they were met, but as the plot proceeded I came more and more to want to smack Collins upside the head.
Without giving away too much, suffice it to say that the slowly building tension indicates a truly serious infraction on Lord Percival Glyde’s part that turns out to be not particularly shocking at all. At least to my American mind. Suffice it to say, it revolves around title holding, something which I find baffling and laughable. Why should anyone care if Laura is Mrs. Glyde or Lady Glyde? Her life seems more boring than the servants’ anyway. I thought I would be reading a novel that was more about revealing the treachery and debauchery of the upper class. Instead I got a book about bourgeois problems, which, I’ve indicated elsewhere on this blog, I simply cannot relate to and find completely annoying. I get it that some people enjoy that, but the desire to maintain a tense, mysterious illusion around the book led me to believe it’s something it wasn’t. That is frustrating, to say the least.
Beyond the disappointing mystery there’s of course the typical problems found in early 1800s literature. The sexism comes from Marian’s own mouth, which is surprising given that she is a depicted as a strong woman. She often will lament the short-comings of “her sex.” Actually, the entire situation between Walter, Marian, and Laura is baffling. Laura is a weak, foolish girl who Walter falls and stays head over heels in love with. I cannot fathom why that would be when he spends an equal amount of time with Marian, who is a strong, thoughtful, intelligent woman. Laura is described as beautiful, whereas Marian is described as possessing a beautiful body but an unfortunately masculine face. This leads me to believe Walter is rather shallow, as I see no reason beyond Laura’s beauty for his devotion to her. I know sexism is to be expected in older novels, but I would at least hope for a hero who loves the heroine for something beyond her beauty.
That said, the novel certainly gives modern women a new appreciation for our current situation. The women in The Woman in White are constantly downtrodden by the men around them who believe it is entirely within their right to dictate to them everything about how they should behave, speak, dress, etc… It appears that the only thing the women have control over is when to leave the men to their wine after dinner. In fact the couple presented as the happiest and most well-functioning is that of Count Fosco and his wife, and they only function well due to the fact that she obeys his every command. Mrs. Fosco is described as a woman who prior to meeting the Count was loud, obnoxious, and always yammering on about women’s rights. Count Fosco, apparently, “fixed all that,” and she is now such a pleasant woman to deal with. The only woman who does not base her entire existence around a man is Marian, and that is due to her bizarre, near worshipful devotion to Laura. It makes me shudder to think if those had been my options as a woman–existing purely for the whims of a man, downtrodden and outcast, or pure devotion to a sister. Yeesh.
I did enjoy listening to the book. It felt a bit like listening to an old-time radio program, which I’m sure is due to its origin as a serial novel. Those who enjoy the slower pace of older novels and can relate to the bourgeoisie will probably enjoy it. If either of those elements turns you off, however, you should look elsewhere.
2.5 out of 5 stars
Source: Librivox recording via the Audiobooks app for the iTouch and iPhone
Book Review: Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres
Summary:
In this memoir, Julia recalls growing up in a conservative Calvinist family in Indiana with her two adopted black brothers and the parental abuse and general racism they faced. The last part of the memoir recalls her time spent in the Dominican Republic at a fundamentalist Christian reform school–Escuela Caribe–and the further abuse inflicted upon herself and David there.
Review:
I heard about this memoir due to the section on Escuela Caribe. A cousin of mine was sent there by her parents in the 2000s and when googling it, I came across all the controversy surrounding the school with this memoir frequently cited. I therefore expected this book to predominantly be about a vicious reform school. In fact, it is a stunning exploration of race and racism in the United States.
Julia was four when her parents adopted David, and they immediately bonded. Julia frequently expresses feeling as if David, who is only a few months younger than herself, is her twin brother. They are happy siblings and oblivious to the racism around them until their parents adopt another boy a year older than them, Jerome, so that David can “have one of his own kind around.” Jerome is violent, steals, slacks at school, and molests Julia. Julia eventually comes to wonder why her parents beat Jerome and David when they sin but simply send her to her room. This combined with Jerome’s continued attempts to convince David to side with him against “the whiteys” is confusing and painful to Julia. Julia and David feel as if they are truly brother and sister, why doesn’t anyone else treat them that way? Julia beautifully depicts her own struggles against imitating racist actions and words as well as her brother David’s struggles against internalizing the racism they are surrounded with.
The other element strong in the memoir is a bracing look at the violence, anger, and fear often found in fundamentalist Christian homes. Children are guided with anger and violence instead of love due to the Bible verse “spare the rod, spoil the child.” Julia’s parents believed in this, and Escuela Caribe clearly firmly believes it as well. They believe the children are horrible people and the sin must be beaten out of them, whether with belts, boxing gloves, over-exercising, humiliation, or excruciating physical labor. This is important for people to know about, and Julia paints a clear picture in an unbiased voice. Indeed, this is the least biased narrative voice I’ve ever read in a memoir, which makes it all that much more believable and painful to read.
Julia’s writing talent is strong, and she weaves a painful narrative that is difficult to put down and forces the reader to confront racism and abuse in American culture. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys memoirs or has an interest in race relations or fundamentalist Christianity.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Swaptree
Book Review: Feed by M. T. Anderson
Summary:
Titus is your typical teenager of future America. He lives in a suburb where his parents program the weather. He drives an upcar. He’s got a feed–a microchip in his brain that allows him to chat silently with people, shop, look up anything he wants to know more about, etc… He’s also got a lesion, but a lot of people have those now. He is quite ordinary. But he meets a girl on a trip to the moon who is anything but ordinary. A girl who got the feed late and dares to question it.
Review:
This book has a great concept, essentially exploring what the world would be like if twitter was implanted into our brains. This is rather extraordinary given that twitter didn’t even exist yet when Anderson wrote it. It explores losing our individuality to machines and consumerism. Ceasing to care about important information due to being bombarded by inane information at all hours of the day. I just wish Anderson had taken this concept a different direction.
I immediately connected with Violet, the girl Titus meets on the moon. She’s quirky, is homeschooled, and really is a bit of a nerd who just wants a chance to try out hanging out with the popular kids and doing what they do. Titus is a complete and total asshole to her. I suppose I could forgive him for that if he showed that he learned anything from coming into contact with a person as powerful as Violet, but he doesn’t. He ditches her when she needs him most because she’s making him uncomfortable. He wants to stay in the cocoon of his feed-driven life, and nothing she does or says can change that. He clearly goes from girl to girl, using them up like paper towels or tissues, and then on to the next one. Maybe that was Anderson’s point–that the feed has dehumanized the people who have it–but it made for a less powerful book than if Titus had learned something. Anything.
Similarly some questions just aren’t answered simply because Titus doesn’t care, so we aren’t allowed to know. In particular the lesions are set up as some sinister mystery, but then we never find out why they are occurring. Nobody even really speculates as to why they’re showing up. They’re just there. I seriously doubt there’d be zero speculation over such a phenomenon, even in a future where people are obsessed with consumerism.
Overall, the concept and writing on a sentence level are good, but the story as a whole left me feeling empty and disappointed. There’s telling a bleak story, and then there’s telling a story that’s sympathetic to a jerkwad. This is the latter. If that type of story is something you enjoy, you will enjoy this book. Everyone else should look elsewhere, perhaps to The Hunger Games if you’re looking for a YA dystopia.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: Swaptree
Book Review: Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams (Series, #5)
Summary:
Arthur Dent thought his zany days earth-less days were over. The whole Earth-being-blown-up was undone, and he found a woman to love. But when they’re traveling through the universe together, she suddenly disappears and Arthur finds himself in a parallel universe where the exact Earth he once knew doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, Ford Prefect pays a visit to the Guide offices and finds that something just isn’t quite right.
Review:
Thank goodness I didn’t let the flop of the fourth book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish deter me from finishing the series. Adams returns to his strengths in this entry–outerspace adventures of Ford and Arthur, not to mention zany robots and odd cultures on other planets that manage to reflect the oddities of our own. Plus, the storyline actually moves the original plot of the Earth being destroyed by the Vogons forward.
Some of the jokes rank right up there with The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. One that sticks out in my mind is when Ford messes with a robot’s circuitry making it endlessly joyful. It was a delightful flipping of the endlessly miserable robot, Marvin, featured earlier in the series. It was quite enjoyable to see how hilarious both extremes are. Also of note is the village religious man on a planet Arthur winds up on, who is quite clearly making the village’s religion up as he goes along, and the villagers are semi-aware of this, but shrug and let him. That said, at least half of the jokes, while they tickled my funny-bone in a pleasant way, didn’t have me actually laughing like the first couple of books did. It was a pleasant read, but not uproariously funny.
Entire essays and theses could be written (and probably have been) on the themes in the Hitchhiker series. Excuse me. Trilogy. From belonging to homelessness to the purpose of life, Adams’ work has it all, which is what makes it good humor, actually. It’s humor pointing out the most basic questions of life in a setting that removes it from our own experiences enough to make us see it in a different light.
Some readers will probably be unhappy with the ending. I enjoyed it and saw the humor in it, in spite of it being rather dark. I know that Adams expressed some discontent with it and was in the middle of writing a sequel, The Salmon of Doubt, when he died, which has now been posthumously published, as well as a sixth entry written by Adams’ widow and Eoin Colfer. I don’t cotton to posthumously published works assembled by people who are not the author, nor continuations based on what people “think the author would have wanted.” For all we know, Adams could have changed his mind yet again. I prefer to view Mostly Harmless as the end of the series, as it was the last book truly finished by Adams.
Mostly Harmless is a wonderful closing chapter to the series that contains delightful meta jokes, as well as new territory, and neatly ties up the experiences of the characters. Fans of the series won’t be disappointed with this entry, which is a delightful jump up from the fourth book, but they may be left a bit sad to see the end.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Raven Used Books
Previous Books in Series:
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, the Universe, and Everything
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, review
Book Review: From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris (Series, #8)
Summary:
Hurricane Katrina and the bombing of the vampire assembly at Rhodes have left the Louisiana supernatural community reeling and disjointed. This naturally creates the perfect atmosphere for attempted violent takeovers in both the were and vampire communities. Sookie finds herself smack in the middle, as usual, both due to her telepathic abilities and her desire to help her friends. Of course her telepathic abilities can’t tell her where her boyfriend, Quinn, has disappeared to. In the middle of all this, she also finds out some interesting family secrets.
Review:
Not only is Sookie’s character developing and changing, but the series is as well, and that’s what’s keeping it interesting this many books in. If you’ve stuck it out this long, then you’re clearly enjoying something that Harris is doing; however, I would say that the previous book and this one mark a stark change in the style of the series away from paranormal romance to just paranormal fiction. I’m actually not sure what exactly one would call this genre, but From Dead to Worse definitely reads like modern-day fiction just with supernatural characters tossed in. I really enjoy this partly because Harris’ sex scenes are cringe-inducing anyway, but also because it allows for that modern day connection but with problems that I will never have. This makes it a relaxing read.
Unlike some paranormal series, the main character of Sookie has gone through significant character developments. She went from a naive girl desperate to fit in to sadder but wiser woman who enjoys being different. In the first book, we see Sookie being cared for by her grandmother; in this one, we see Sookie caring for not only the witch, Amelia, but also an elderly woman, Octavia. It’s not just this that’s changing, however. Sookie’s experiences leave her wondering if she’s a good person or not, and frankly the reader is left trying to figure that out as well.
Some readers will be thrown by the absence of sex in this book. However, I enjoyed the various types of sexual and romantic interest tension Sookie has with the various men in her life. It is evident that she’s attempting to figure out which direction she wants to go in her life before settling on a man. Racking up this tension throughout one book is a great set-up for the next one.
My only gripes with this entry in the series are two-fold. First, I really don’t like the Jason/Hotshot storyline. Jason could be a very interesting character, as we know from the direction they’ve taken him in True Blood. He’s not used well in the books, though, and I hope Harris fixes this soon. I’m tired of cringing over the Hotshot scenes. Also, this book yet again features a northern woman who yet again is an evil bitch in Sookie’s eyes. This is obviously Harris’ own prejudice coming through as Sookie has been established as a person who is staunchly not prejudiced against anyone. What is with this hating on northern women? It says a lot about Harris that this prejudice seeps into her writing even when writing a character who is not prejudiced. I’m sick of seeing it, and it stings as a northern female fan of the series.
However, in spite of these short-comings, the series is still enjoyable. This book marks a distinct change in the writing from paranormal romance to simply paranormal. Readers who’ve stuck it out this far will either enjoy this change as I do or give up on the series due to its lack of romance. If you’re reading it for the characters and the world Harris has created, you will enjoy this entry into the series. If you’re reading it for paranormal romance, you’ll probably want to look elsewhere.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap
Previous Books in Series:
Dead Until Dark
Living Dead in Dallas
Club Dead
Dead To The World
Dead as a Doornail
Definitely Dead
All Together Dead
Book Review: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller
Summary:
In this memoir Donald Miller recalls how turning his previous memoir into a movie impacted his life. When working on the script, Donald learned what makes a good story and started applying it to his current life. He went from sitting on the couch all day watching tv to biking across the country to raise money for clean water in Africa.
Review:
This book could have been brilliant. It contains various clear information on what makes a good story that is quite useful to writers. It also is inspirational in asking us to stop watching characters live stories and live our own. Unfortuantely, Miller persists in plopping in his spiritual ideas, which tend toward the mainstream Christian variety. I don’t mind skimming over a few praise God’s. I do, however, get profoundly irritated when a writer goes from saying something meaningful like life is about what we learn and not about achieving something in particular to saying that the people with the worst lives have it the best because they’ll appreciate heaven more. Um, excuse me, what the hell?! It’s such an odd mental position to take. Can you imagine saying that to someone with AIDs or a starving child or someone who’s being abused? Then, to take the mental oddness further, he goes on to seek to help people better their lives. That’s great that he does that, but it seems that based on his theory that a rough life leads to a better after-life that he’s just stealing a good after-life from these people. My brain hurts just thinking about that mind-fuck.
I guess what made the book such a frustrating read for me is that I can see Miller being so close to a humanist view but then ruining his current life by pining for the after-life. He talks a lot about what makes a good story but I bet even he could see that a movie wouldn’t be any fun if a character spends the whole film pining for something that he isn’t sure is actually going to happen to the extent that he misses things happening right now.
That said, the book is well-written and does contain some memorable scenes and people. Actually, I wish the book had been about some of the people featured in it in lieu of Miller, such as the family that went around interviewing world leaders with their children or the man who went from a childhood in the ghetto to running a law firm to running a mentoring program. At least we get to hear a bit about them though.
On the other hand, Miller’s view of the world tends to rip you from the story and make you want to smack him upside the head. Like when he tells the story of how a man stole his ex-girlfriend’s cat and then told her on the phone he was going to hurt it if she didn’t come back to him then proceeded to squeeze the cat until it cried. Miller called this “depravingly charming” (219). Um, no, it’s awful! And Miller finds this story inspiring because the man “found Jesus” and “changed.”
It basically reads almost as if two different people wrote the memoir. One who recognizes we have one life to live and it’s better to live it doing things than sitting on the couch. The other spends his time with his head in the clouds hoping for the after-life and believing in the power of a dead man. If you can handle the cognitive dissonance in those two stances, you’ll enjoy the book as it is written well. If you find it as troubling as I do, though, you should skip it.
2.5. out of 5 stars
Source: Won from Minski of okay, peanut
Book Review: The Dangerous Book for Demon Slayers by Angie Fox (Series, #2)
Summary:
It’s only been a couple weeks since Lizzie found out she’s a demon slayer, and she’s already been to hell and back–literally. You’d think she could get a vacation to Greece with her hunk of a griffin boyfriend, Dmitri, but her fairy godfather, Uncle Phil, has got himself tangled up with a succubus. Lizzie, accompanied by the geriatric biker gang, the Red Skulls, and Dmitri run off to Las Vegas to save him. They discover an unusual amount of demonic activity in Vegas, however, which points to a possible demon invasion from hell.
Review:
This was definitely a step up from the first book in the series. The action is tighter, characters more well-rounded, and the impetuses for decisions are more believable. The demon invasion winds up being a secondary plot point to Lizzie’s attempt to figure out what exactly the slayer truth “sacrifice yourself” means. I also enjoyed the fact that Fox gave the talking terrier, Pirate, more to do besides be excited when Lizzie shows up. The fact that she’s paying attention to animal characterization makes me happy.
One of my main complaints with the previous book was the romance story-line, in particular the sex scene, and I can’t say that that’s improved here. Although by the end of the book I found Lizzie’s affection for Dmitri believable, for most of the book I was baffled by it. He just doesn’t do it for me as a romantic hero, and I’m not sure exactly why. Similarly, the sex scenes were again cringe-inducing, not sexy. I mean, he rips her leather skirt up the middle, and she finds this endearing? The fact that the man seems to lack the knowledge that you can push a skirt up makes me seriously doubt his abilities in the sack. It’s odd, because Fox’s other scenes are generally well-done. The two sex scenes are so decidedly cringe-worthy that I sort of forgot this is supposed to be a paranormal romance. It read as a paranormal fiction featuring an odd choice for a boyfriend and thank goodness he’s not talked about too much.
In general though most of the book isn’t about Dmitri or his relationship with Lizzie. It’s about Lizzie’s experience figuring out what exactly it means to be a demon slayer. Thank goodness for that, because that combined with Lizzie’s crazy family and witty dog make for a good story. I recommend it to those with a taste for the paranormal and romance lovers who aren’t fans of sex scenes in romance to start with.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap
Previous Books in Series:
The Accidental Demon Slayer, review
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Opinions of a Wolf 