Locally Sourced Romance is a new feature that puts the spotlight on fabulous bookstores supporting the romance community! To nominate or suggest a bookstore, please shoot us an email. For a crowd sourced map of bookstores that carry romance, feel free to consult and/or add to our Smart Bitches Buy Romance map! Though be forewarned, it’s undergoing a renovation.

Today, we’re featuring Ukazoo Books in Towson, MD. We discovered Ukazoo through a very awesome recommendation from author, Laura Kaye. Please meet General Manager, Edward Whitfill!

Tell us a bit about the bookstore and its awesome inception.

Ukazoo Books is a combined new & used bookstore, open for 8 years now. It was started by two brothers who ran an online only book business and decided to try a brick and mortar store to go with their online business. Ukazoo stocks about 100,000 books in 9,000 sq ft. with a large percentage of our inventory bveing used books. We stock books in 68 categories of books and have eleven employees.

Though I’m sure you have a great selection in general, we’d love to hear about your romance section. Do you carry a large breadth of titles? Heavier on one genre or another? 

We stock about 4,500 romance titles in the category. Paranormal would be another couple hundred books, but we stock that in another category. A majority of the titles are bestsellers, former bestsellers, and heavy emphasis on chick-lit. We have a feature fixture in romance section for Maryland Romance Writers.

Was it an obvious choice to carry romance or was it something that was curated over time? 

Romance as a category existed from the beginning. The focus on romance started with local writers approaching Ukazoo about book signings. We do a lot of local signings and see part of our job as helping these starting artists get an audience.  Some of these authors are trying to figure out how to write full time and these are the ones who help us in return. These writers get to know a lot of readers. Those readers read lots of books. We followed the authors, increased the section, and our sales. Sales of romance went up about 80% over two years. It is currently our 5th biggest sales category. Working with local authors who want to pursue writing as a career is a huge advantage for independent bookstores.

In terms of your stock, how do you determine what to carry? Are some authors automatically stocked? What piques your interest when it comes to what you buy to put on the shelves?

For new book inventory, some big names authors are automatically carried, as are bestsellers from the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association. We watch various award nominations for books to carry. Authors with local ties are stocked. I also take recommendations from employees for books they are looking forward to reading and will automatically hand sell.

Lastly, tell us what you’re reading now. What latest books have blown you away?

What I am reading right now…

A | BN | K | ARe | iB

What blew me away the last couple months: First time author Allen Eskens has a fantastic debut with The Life We Bury about a college kid leaving an abusive upbringing to make it on his own, but learns we are not a world of one. The Second Sister by Marie Bostwick ( A | BN | K | G | ARe | iB | Au | Scribd ) is a wonderful saga of family, hope, and dealing with our past.

You can visit Ukazoo Books at their website or Facebook, or, if you’re in the area, they are located at730 Dulaney Valley Rd, Towson, MD 21204.

Well… actually I give this one a big ol’ “If this is your thing” because this is REALLY not everyone’s thing.

BUT by popular demand, people asked for a Hannibal post, and a Hannibal post you shall have.  Who’s hungry?

Take Pushing Daises.  Turn the color saturation up, and the exposure down, and make the food about five magnitudes more classy but also made of people, and you get Hannibal.  It’s Bryan Fuller’s (show runner for Pushing Daisies and Wonderfalls, both cancelled before their time) reimagining of Thomas Harris’ Hannibal series (Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Hannibal Rising).

It’s not an adaptation, really, and more of “inspired by” (in the credits it’s “based on the characters created by Thomas Harris”).  You have the characters of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter and Jack Crawford and others mentioned almost in passing and Fuller reimagined these guys together, before Hannibal is caught and everyone knows who Hannibal the Cannibal is.

One of the real delights of the show (and I’m stealing from Cleolinda Jones here), is that the audience has been shown the bomb.  We know, through cultural osmosis, who and what Hannibal Lecter is.  He’s a killer.  He eats PEOPLE.  He’s a bad bad person!  So when he shows up on screen, delicately eating a sauteed kidney, the audience is already on edge.  There’s the bomb.  When is it going to go off?  When will the people realize they’re in a show called Hannibal?  WHEN WILL THEY REALIZE IT FUCKING RHYMES.

One of the really interesting things Fuller does is he takes threads from various books and reweaves them.  We’ve had bits a pieces that are inspired by Silence of the Lambs.  We’ve done a little bit from Red Dragon (though the bulk of the Red Dragon storyline is coming up in season 3, CANNOT WAIT).  We’ve had lines and references from Hannibal.  Even a bit from (god help us) Hannibal Rising (THAT BOOK WAS NOT GOOD.  Not even Harris thinks so).  It’s fascinating how Fuller deconstructs and reconstructs to give us something new and fascinating.

Every part of this show is so well done, but let’s start with the cast.  Mads Mikkelsen, known to many American audiences as Le Chiffre, from Casino Royale, is an amazing Danish actor and plays Hannibal.  He’s a BIG dude, and former ballet dancer, and it shows in how he moves and how he fights.  He’s also ever so elegant and refined in his tailored plaid suits and ties and spotless apron while he cooks (which, when you see Mads on panels or in the wild, he usually looks like a vaguely drunk college student).  He manages the balance between projecting “you can trust me” to the other characters while being subtly threatening to the camera- he’s the king of micro-expressions and you can see the moments where he’s thinking, “I have a recipe in my box that’s just for you.”

Hugh Dancy is Will Graham- an FBI profiler who has what is described as “pure empathy.” He can, from examining the evidence, put himself in the mind of a killer and figure out what they do and why.  (Yes, I am aware that “pure empathy” is not a thing- the show runners are too, but that’s the construct within the books and the show, so we go with it).

All of this takes a toll, though, and he’s sent to Hannibal Lecter, MD, as a patient, and that goes exactly as well as you might think.  Will also collects stray dogs, so you know he’s a good guy (and Bryan Fuller has promised us that no dogs will die in the show.  One has, quietly off screen because her actor-dog died, but he will not write into the script that someone killed a dog, much to the relief of Fannibals everywhere).  Hugh is strong and vulnerable and you just want to give him a blankie and a mug of cocoa.

When casting, Fuller took a book full of a bunch of a white dudes and made a bunch of them not white and not dudes.  Lawrence FIshburne plays Jack Crawford, the head of the Behavioral Sciences Unit at the FBI.  Alan Bloom becomes Alana Bloom, played by Wonderfalls‘ Caroline Dharvenas (who is incandescent).  Freddie Lounds, an “investigative” “journalist” is now Fredericka Lounds.  Beverly Katz, one of the FBI lab techs, is played by Hettienne Park, a Korean-American actress.  Other actors involved include Gillian Anderson (!), Aaron Abrams, Scott Thompson, Kacey Ruhl, Raul Esparza, Katherine Isabelle, and coming on board in season 3, RICHARD ARMITAGE AND RUTINA WESLEY (I honestly don’t know who I am more excited for out of those two, and you all know how pure and true my love for Mr. Armitage is.)

Really fine actors can elevate a work; really fine actors given art direction to steer the atmosphere are so lucky.  Hannibal’s office (as Cleolinda calls it, The Best Office Ever), for example has art, color, furnishings that speak of a man of refined tastes but with an edge to him.  His dining room has pots of herbs growing along one wall plus a basically pornographic print of Leda and the Swan, his kitchen is a glorious space to work with just a hint of a doctor’s surgical suite.  Will’s home is small and comfortably cluttered and is the home of a man who doesn’t feel quite safe in his skin.

And you can’t have a show about Hannibal Lecter, gourmand, without talking about the food.  I mean, yeah, the food is pretty people (even the beer) (that hasn’t been confirmed, but… the beer is people) but it’s SO PRETTY.  Janice Poon is the food stylist, and it’s her job to take the food as described in the script, work with the chef who comes up with a more concrete plan, and then bring the food to the set.  As many copies are as needed for shooting a scene, which can be a lot.  She has a blog, Feeding Hannibal, that describes her process for every episode, and rumor has it there will be a cookbook coming out in the near future.  (Seriously there was a osso buco that was made from leg of serial killer in the second season that I still drool over.)

Look, don’t get me wrong.  The show is SUPER dark.  It’s broken up by occasional cannibal puns and random facts about noisy bee ejaculate and questions like “Is your social worker in that horse?”, but the show is about a serial killer who gaslighting a guy who he wants to be his best friend while going on occasional killing sprees because he’s lonely and wants to host a dinner party.

It’s a dark show.  There’s a lot of “Well, that was a thing I saw on network TV, and the NBC Standards and Practices department has been busy.”  (For example in the same shot: wings made out of flawed flesh to turn a corpse into an angel: Okay.  Too much butt crack: Not okay.  CGI-ing blood over said butt crack: Acceptable solution.)

Because of the darkness, the fandom (termed “Fannibals” by Bryan Fuller) is determinedly light.  We put flower crowns on everyone.  There’s fanfic about Will Graham having a nice day where nothing he eats is people and everything is sunny and wonderful.  We have fun, and Fuller manages the difficult trick of engaging and subtly steering the fandom towards positivity without doing what a lot of creators do, which is treating the fandom like they’re a little bit nuts.  No one is as big a fan of the show as Fuller is, and he’s game for a lot of things.  He wore the flower crown that was given to him at San Diego Comic Con in 2013, then took it to the set and had all the principals have their pictures taken with it until they wore it out and had to make a new one.  (Lawrence Fishburne.  Flower crown.  It’s glorious.) He loves that people love his show, and it’s one of the most positive fandoms  I’ve been involved with.

Season 1 and 2 can be seen on iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon.  DVDs are also available, and season 3 premieres on June 4th on NBC.

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Redheadedgirl. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Mid-Length Contemporary category.

Here is Redheadedgirl's review:

This is a RITA nominee that the reviewer could not finish, and who knows that and hears, “I triple dog dare you”?  Me.  I hear a triple dog dare where none was given and here we are.

It’s a good thing I read this on an airplane, because that kept me from throwing things.

The set up is that Sedona is a lawyer who works at a women’s shelter, and Tatum, a 16 year old girl, shows up and claims that she wants to stay there because her brother hit her. Sedona is trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, as she has pants feelings for Tatum’s brother, Tanner, and she’s certain that somebody is abusing Tatum, but not Tanner because pants feelings, and it’s all very melodramatic and stupid.

I hated this book.  Flames on the side of my face hated.

It wasn’t just the fact that the whole set up was based on a false accusation of abuse, though that was a big part.  No matter what mental gymnastics you get into to justify a girl lying about being abused, it’s a trope that just… it shouldn’t be used.  Not in a melodrama pileup like this.  Maybe Quinn was trying to explore something here, about manipulation by intimate partners, and how far it can go, but it did not work, and was shoddily executed.  But that’s not the worst sin.

The worst sin is the total unethical behavior on the part of Sedona.  She’s a lawyer, for fuck’s sake.  She’s representing Tatum.  There are rules in place by state bars and the ABA that prevent conflicts of interest in order to protect clients (and honestly, it protects the lawyer, too).  One of the most basic?  DON’T GET INTO AN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE DUDE YOUR CLIENT HAS ACCUSED OF ABUSE.  NO, NOT EVEN WHEN YOU’RE PRETTY SURE SHE’S LYING.  Saying, “Wow, this is super unethical, I really shouldn’t do this” even as you’re doing it (him) isn’t going to absolve you of your ethical breach.  NOT BANGING THE DUDE IS THE ANSWER.

As soon as you realize your pants-feelings are getting in the way of doing your job, you either break it off with the client, or draw yourself some strict boundaries.  “Oh, I told Tatum we were friends, and she still wants me to be her lawyer,” is not an absolution, either.

Don’t fuck him, is what I’m saying.

When it comes to melodrama pile-up, this is impressive.  Tanner has custody of his sister because their mother was a prostitute meth addict, and after she tried to pimp out Tanner and Tatum’s other sister, Talia, Tanner got her to give up custody.  They have a brother, Thomas, who left home and never looked back. Talia lives in Vegas and is a stripper, and had a terrible marriage that involved being pimped that Tanner needed to buy her out of, and Tanner is BOUND AND DETERMINED that Tatum will not be like that.  Tatum will go to an Ivy League school and he controls her every movement in pursuit of that goal.

Given that she’s a 16 year old, that works about as well as you might think.

There’s a whole bunch about both Talia and Tatum being in danger because of their beauty that will drive men wild or whatever, so they need to be protected.  From themselves, mostly.  Tanner also doesn’t believe in telling Tatum the truth about their mother and what he went through to keep the siblings together and that naturally backfires spectacularly.

It’s exhausting to read about.

There was one moment in the entire book that worked- the moment Tanner talks about how, even though he has a nice income now, and a vineyard, and money set aside for Tatum’s education, he still eats boxed mac and cheese.  And that’s because as kids, they would eat mac and cheese by soaking the noodles in water overnight. Eating it now means they’ve got milk and butter, and the means to actually cook it.  That’s something people who go, “Oh, mac and cheese is less than a dollar a box, so anyone can afford it” don’t always seem to get.  It still assumes a certain amount privilege- all food does.  So exploring that, however briefly, was a nice moment.

A single nice moment doesn’t mitigate anything else, here, though.  This was a MESS.

At RT in May 2015, as always, I saw next to Jaye Wells during the book signing, which is one of the best parts of RT for me. This year we had a really interesting conversation about the idea of “strong female characters,” and what that means. Why do we use the word “strong?” What exactly are we describing – and how are the attributes of a character who we wouldn’t describe as “strong” different from one who is? Are there not-strong characters? We also talk about feminism, raising sons who like to read all the books they can get their hands on, and many other topics.

Here are the books we discuss in this podcast:

If you like the podcast, you can subscribe to our feed, or find us at iTunes. You can also find us at PodcastPickle and on Stitcher, too.

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Our music is provided by Sassy Outwater. This podcast features “Celtic Frock” by a UK duo called Deviations Project, which features producer Dave Williams and violinist Oliver Lewis – they have their own Wikipedia page. This is from their album Ivory Bow

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Today, I’m a guest on an episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour, which is among the best of the NPR podcasts. My inner 13 year old barely kept herself together, I was so excited. But I figured since perhaps some PCHH listeners are romance fans, or curious about romance, or curious about what we do around here, I’d introduce the site a bit. So: Hi!

I’m Sarah, and welcome to the Hot Pink Palace of Bitchery, a sometimes silly and sometimes critical place where we talk about and celebrate romance novels, and the very smart and savvy women who read and write them. The site just turned 10 (Yay!) so there is a LOT to look at. Along with RedHeadedGirl, Carrie, Amanda, and Elyse, we talk about romance and have some of the best conversations with some of the smartest people online every day.

Here are some links to help you, should you be curious and like to take a look around:

• We review books! Oh, yessss. Lots of romance reviews. You might like our A reviews, which are some of the best books we’ve read recently.
• You might also like our F+ reviews, too. F+ is a grade specifically for books that aren’t objectively very good, but are incredibly enjoyable nonetheless. They are both awesomesauce and WTF-tacular.
• We have a podcast – the DBSA Romance Fiction Podcast! It’s true – every Friday we post new episodes wherein we talk about romance novels, interview people who are involved in the genre, or come up with some kind of mayhem and shenanigans.
• We review TV shows and movies, which includes recaps of Outlander, reviews of movies like Far From the Madding Crowd and Mad Max: Fury Road, and guest recommendations for programs like the Korean drama Healer, which is ridiculously addictive. Beware.
• We talk about all the romance book covers because… there is a lot to talk about.
• We also have knitting patterns because why not, right?
• We have monthly features like Kickass Women in History, and daily features such as our Books on Sale posts, which help us all save our precious book buying dollars.
• We help one another find books, too, whether by recommendation or through our Help a Bitch Out feature, which is for folks who can remember the plot and some scenes, but not the author or title.
• And we have a Greatest Hits collection, should you feel like a deep dive (the water’s fine, I promise!) into the history of the site and all the things we get up to.

(Anything else I forgot, y’all? Feel free to add on in the comments!)

There’s lots to look at – so if you’re thinking, I would like All of This Magical Tomfoolery in my inbox, you can subscribe, as well. We have daily updates, weekly books on sale newsletters, and our weekly podcast, too.

We’re glad you’re here, and hope you come back to visit! Welcome!

ETA: Linda Holmes was cool enough to list all the books we discussed and recommended, so if you’re looking for that info, it’s here (thank you, Linda!).

• Judith Krantz (Princess Daisy)
• Outlander ( A | BN | K | G | ARe | iB | Au )
• Maya Banks, Scottish historicals (Clan McClean, hee)
• Lois McMaster Bujold, The Sharing Knife (fantasy)
• Johanna Lindsey, Warrior’s Woman (sci-fi romance)
• Cathy Pegau, Deep Deception & Caught In Amber (sci-fi romance)
• Anne Bishop, Black Jewels (fantasy)
• Courtney Milan (historical & contemporary)
• Tessa Dare (historical)
• Nora Roberts, Vision In White (contemporary)
• #weneeddiverseromance (@KwanaWrites)
• Alisha Rai (contemporary)
• Suleikha Snyder (contemporary)
• Sonali Dev (A Bollywood Affair ( A | BN | K | ARe | iB | Au ) and the upcoming The Bollywood Bride) (contemporary)
• Beverly Jenkins (and the Destiny trilogy) (historical)
• Rochelle Alers (contemporary)
• Kwana Jackson (again, @KwanaWrites — we got the wrong last name and said “Bradley”; we’re so sorry — this is who Sarah meant to recommend, and it was a super lot of names in a short time)(Sarah: I am seriously so embarrassed. I’m sorry, Kwana!)
• Jessica Clare, the Games series (reality TV – contemporary)
• Theresa Romain (historicals)
• Kate Noble (historicals)
• Kristan Higgins (contemporary)
• Penny Reid (contemporary)
• Julie Anne Long (historicals)
• Lisa Kleypas (historicals)
• Steampunk Iron Man
• Meljean Brook (The Iron Duke, steampunk romance)
• Lorelai James, Rough Riders (“if you like erotica and cowboys”)
• Cupcake Lovers, Beth Ciotta (contemporary)
• Play By Play series (sportsy), Jaci Burton (hot contemporary)
• Fool’s Gold series (and The Bakery Sisters), Susan Mallery (contemporary)
• Animal Magnetism series, Jill Shalvis (contemporary)
• Lori Wilde: Twilight, Texas; Cupid, Texas; Jubilee, Texas; Stardust, Texas (contemporary)
• Cupcake Club, Girls’ Night Out, Last Chance, Virgin River (all real series!)
• Tessa Dare, Castles Ever After, Romancing The Duke ( A | BN | K | G | ARe | iB | Au | Scribd ) (historical)
• Loretta Chase, The Lion’s Daughter (historical)
• Eloisa James, Desperate Duchesses series (historical)
• Jennifer Crusie, Bet Me ( A | BN | K | G | ARe | iB ) (contemporary)

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Shana Figueroa. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Short Contemporary Romance category.

Here is Shana Figueroa's review:

Despite its terrible title, A Texas Rescue Christmas isn’t a terrible book. It does too many things right to be awful, but too many things wrong to be good; it’s right in the “meh”-zone.

The book takes place in Texas. There’s a rescue. It’s Christmastime. At first I assumed someone just mashed together three descriptive words and called it a title (I’ve seen worse). It turns out this is the second book in a series focused on the life and times of a group of rescuers in Texas who call themselves Texas Rescue, because the name Rescue Rangers was already taken, I assume.

When I explained the Texas Rescue concept to my husband, he said, “So you mean they’re like Paw Patrol?”

“Yeah,” I replied, “Except in Texas, and with people instead of cute talking dogs. And more sex.”

Hubby: “So it’s Paw Patrol fan fiction?”

SWEET JESUS PLEASE LET THIS BE TRUE.

In any case, neither of the main characters is in Texas Rescue, so even in context it’s still a nonsensical title for the novel. And therein lies a spiritual summary of the book: it’s almost a compelling story, but lots of distracting logical gaps ultimately sink the book.

The story starts out well with a strong narrative that summarizes the main characters’ backstories in a few efficient pages. James “Trey” Waterson is a former high school football star and cowboy who suffered a fall from grace due to an undiagnosed brain injury, and ten years later struggles through daily life with tasks most people find easy. Rebecca Cargill is a society girl who’s been treated like her mother’s accessory her entire life while bouncing from one rich stepdad to another.

I immediately liked Trey and Rebecca. The author does an excellent job showing how Trey’s brain injury affects his everyday life and turns simple tasks like going to the grocery store into major hassles. Rebecca’s POV has an edge of sass, sadness, and self-awareness that makes her instantly likable. I was rooting for Trey and Rebecca to heal each other’s broken hearts and make the beast with two backs as soon was narratively appropriate.

The paths of these two crazy kids cross a few days before Christmas at the wedding of Trey’s brother to Rebecca’s ex-stepsister, on the Waterson family ranch in Texas. Trey goes to support his family; Rebecca goes in a last-minute bid to escape her domineering mother.

Soon after arrival, Rebecca learns the wedding’s been cancelled. Instead of taking her rental car and retreating to the nearest bar to drink her problems away, as any other human being would do, she steals an ATV and drives around the ranch in an ice storm. For hours.

And thusly I experienced my first, “…Wait, what?” moment of illogic that drew me out of the story. I wasted several moments pondering how a sheltered city girl could operate an ATV and have the physical endurance to drive for hours through an ice storm, not to mention why she’d choose to do that rather than take the warm-rental-car/drown-sorrows-in-alcohol option. And did somebody leave the keys in the ATV? Did that person get fired?

Of course, Trey rushes out to rescue her. He finds Rebecca close to hypothermic, takes her to a conveniently nearby cabin, and warms her up with his naked body in a tiny sleeping bag, as you do. Again, I paused to wonder if the old naked-body-rubdown technique is a real treatment for hypothermia or a sexy plot device (Google’s answer: sexy plot device). However, I realize they’ve GOT to get naked in the sleeping bag somehow, and the author throws in enough physio-babble to sell it, so this instance of dubiousness got a pass.

What didn’t get a pass was Trey’s realization that Rebecca is a super special snowflake for whom he might be developing feelings of love, literally a few minutes after meeting her. Of course I knew Trey and Rebecca would fall in love—catatonic stroke victims knew it, for crying out loud—but the speed with which they go from complete strangers to potential life mates was whiplash-inducing. Lust within minutes, yes; love, no. This is when the book started to lose me.

Throughout the story, the passage of distance and time is inconsistent with the characters’ experiences; the weirdness with the ATV was just the beginning. At one point in the story, like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky, Trey realizes for the first time that he has football-related brain damage. Trey is brain damaged, not stupid. If he’s capable of realizing it at all, it would have occurred to him at some earlier time within the last ten years. It’s another non-credible plot device to add drama.

And honestly, there’s not much plot to push along. After Trey saves Rebecca, the story drags as the two lovers agonize endlessly over their feelings and the fake obstacles thrown in their paths. I started the book liking the two main characters, but my affection for them waned as Trey got possessive and Rebecca remained dependent, shifting her neediness from her mother to Trey.

After lots of naked body-rubbing time in a tiny sleeping bag, which is hot, they have sex, which is… anticlimactic (pun intended! I’ll be here all night, folks). Being a big pervert, I prefer my sex on the explicit side, though I understand they can’t all be nipple-twisters. The sex in this book was downright vague, though, to the point where I had trouble telling that they were even having sex. In their first encounter, she gets on top of him, he does his thing (I think), he uses his hand in some way while he’s still inside her (I think), and then she does her thing (I think). Seems like a high degree of difficulty for two people squeezed into a sleeping bag, one of whom is a virgin. It was another “…Wait, what?” moment. Every sex scene was similarly vague and could have been replaced with a sentence that read “And then they had sex.”

Then Trey decides that, since he’s taken her virginity, she’s his now and it’s his duty to protect and provide for her. This was by far, in my opinion, the biggest foul in the book. The belief that a woman’s worth is defined by whether or not her hymen is intact raises my hackles every time, in fiction and real life. I kept waiting for the book to walk back from Trey’s sexist declaration, but it never did. In fact, both Rebecca and Trey pay a lot of lip service to her newfound independence and confidence, but in the end she still lets Trey fight her battles for her and remains dependent on him. I crossed my fingers for a Titanic-like ending, where Rebecca and Trey fight the brutal elements and grow closer through their shared struggle, until in the end he’s forced to sacrifice himself so that she may live (“Never let go, Trey! Never let go!”) and go on to have an independent, fulfilling life packed with adventure. But no. It ends exactly how you expect it to.

That said, the book’s final paragraph was truly touching, so much so that I actually said “Aww” out loud. Probably one of the best last lines of any romance novel I’ve ever read. If only the rest of the book could have been like those final words.

I go on and on about using research to add texture and layers of realism to writing, and (for me at least) that’s never more relevant than in historicals.

I do historical re-enactment with the Society for Creative Anachronism which is a medieval/renaissance group, and one of the things I am the most into in the SCA is historical cooking. Sarah asked if I would be interested in doing a regular feature on historical cooking, which I jumped on. To start off, I thought we could talk about how to research food and the different levels of accuracy you can strive for.

Later on, we’ll talk about different eras of cooking and try out some recipes and see what my process of trying to make a historical recipe come to life is. Sometimes it works! Sometimes it makes a mess!  SOMETIMES IT IS A DELICIOUS MESS.

A teacher of mine about 15 years ago described the levels of historical cooking to be like this (this is framed around medieval cooking, but the general idea works).

First, there’s Ren Fest level. Turkey legs are not a legit Tudor/Elizabethan/Renaissance street food anywhere, but people like them, so turkey legs it is.

A | BN

Third: you find historical recipes that other people have researched and adapted for modern cooking. There is no shame in this whatsoever. You learn about flavor profiles and how spices get mixed together. You also learn get an idea what some of these words mean (“seethe in broth” = boil in broth). Eventually, you’ll be able to move to-

Fourth: working from historical recipes on your own. This means figuring out proportions and what certain words might mean — and sometimes verbs, too. (Apicius, one of the main sources we have for Roman cooking, tends to give you a list of ingredients, but rarely any verbs to indicate what to DO with them. Good times!)

The final stage is being able to create “period-plausible” recipes on your own that wouldn’t be out of place in that era. These recipes use the proper ingredients, flavor profiles, and methods, even if it’s not a  specific thing we have documentation for in period. It’s a grandmaster level. I’m not there yet, not really.

A | BN | K | iB

I also have History of Food  and Food in History ( A | BN ), which are both great at giving a general idea of what food was like and why things were important at different points in history. There are also plenty of books for specific times and cultures- future posts will have more focused recommendations.

One of things the Oxford Companion to Food is great for is helping sort out what the modern equivalent might be. For example, a Roman recipe we’ll be discussing next month has a word that’s translated as “broccoli” or “cabbage” or “small greens” depending on the translator, and the Oxford goes through the history of cabbage and how it evolved during cultivation. Do we have an equivalent that can be found in a typical grocery store? Maybe not. But I can make a few reasonable guesses and try it out!

Now, all sources are not created equal. Some recipe translators aren’t cooks. Some aren’t adventurous and will say things like “I omitted the salt in my version of this because it sounded yucky.” And some sources just didn’t have the resources we have now available to them when they were working. Books that have translations and interpretations from even a few decades ago can be lacking because of the state of American cooking at the time (“there’s this new exotic spice called oregano? It’s super weird?”) and the availability of resources.

There are also groups on the internet of people playing with historical recipes. They can help you with translations, interpretations, if a source is any good or not, ingredient sourcing, and “What the hell is this supposed to taste like?” I have a group in the local SCA people where we meet more-or-less monthly to play around with things.

This will be a regular featured column the first Saturday of each month, and future columns will highlight some of the familiar foods and beverages featured in romance novels. Next month: cabbage. Or maybe broccoli? I’m still not sure. Also some dates. The yummy kind, not the “Hey, Elyse can you please text me that I need to go home right now because this is the most awkward thing ever” kind of date.

The transcript for Podcast 144. Strong Female Characters: An Interview with Jaye Wells, Part One has been posted!

This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks.

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All the trigger warnings. All of them. 

Previously: I’ve avoided writing this recap for four days.

The title card is over an altar with three items on it- a rosary, a vial of lavender oil, and what we find out is a seal.  Not like a harbor seal that is adorable and plays in the harbor, but a thing you push into sealing wax.  (Look, this is like the one moment of levity I get, work with me here.)

Morning over Wentworth prison, and drums drum and pipes pipe as the colors are raised and it seems so normal. In the cell, Jamie is naked, staring into nothing, his hand bloody and hanging.  The camera pans up, and the music turns twisty and we see that Randall is lying next to him, equally naked. Randall gets up and puts on pants (he’s a grower, not a show-er).

Jamie whispers that Randall owes him a debt.  Randall looks at him, pulls out his knife, and is about to pay that debt, when he hears weird clanking sounds.  He goes to investigate, and Jamie beings to shake. “Please.”

Randall ties his hair back, and hears hoofbeats, and goes to a door to see what the fuck is happening. Highland cattle run through the door and squash Randall underneath the door as they stampede into the bowels of the prison. Murtagh looks at Randall under the door, scowls, and moves on to find Jamie.

Thing One, Thing Two, and Murtagh do find him, pick him up, and hustle him out while the soldiers deal with this random scourge of cattle in their courtyard. The chaos is enough to keep them from being found while they get away with Jamie in a cart.  Claire waits anxiously in her boy-clothes (seriously, she looks adorable in her boy-clothes), and they pull up to let her on the cart. Jamie is alive, but only just. Claire wants to  take time to treat him right away, but they really don’t have time.

She pulls up the blanket to see what the extent of the damage is, and is sickened. Jamie smells of oil of lavender, which is used to relieve pain. While Claire is bent over Jamie to tell him that she’s there, he wakes up enough to hallucinate that it’s Randall leaning over him. Jamie grabs for Claire/Randall’s throat and growls something in Gaelic. Murtagh says he has no idea what Jamie is saying, and they set off.

They all arrive at an Abbey, where Willie introduces Claire to Father Anslem (who has the most interesting face) who has agreed to give them shelter until they can find a better solution. Claire thanks him, and the Father is like “We have everything you need, we can deal with pleasantries later.” Excellent.

Jamie is in bed, and won’t eat. Another monk, Father Paul, opines that Jamie’s soul is wounded, and will take time to heal. Claire agrees, but needs to set Jamie’s hand right away, so as not to cripple him completely. She’s already moving into no-nonsense mode as she tells Jamie that he does need to eat. She mops his brows, and he tells her not to touch him. “Talk to me. What did Randall do to you?” “Too much, and not enough.”

Disturbing flashback one of far too many: Morley is still dead in the corner, covered in rats, while Jamie asks Randall if he saw Claire leave those walls. “We are both men of our word,” says Randall, and offers Jamie a flask. After Jamie takes a few healthy gulps, Randall pulls out the nail that held Jamie’s smashed hand to the table, and then holds Jamie as he pukes. Randall then cuddles Jamie and calls him a magnificent specimen and I throw up a little. And then he kisses Jamie and manipulates Jamie into kissing back. Jamie intends to dead-weight submit, but Randall wants active surrender and to make Jamie feel pleasure from the ordeal. “I just want this to be a pleasant experience for us both.”

Christ, this is awful to recap.

Jamie tells Randall to take his pleasure and be done with it (and spits in Randall’s face) and Randall bends Jamie over the table and violently rapes him.

Back at the Abbey, Jamie drinks whiskey, and thinks that’ll do him for the setting of nine bones in his hand. Claire thinks he ought to have laudanum, as does Father Paul. “Randall made me crawl, made me beg. Before he was done he made me want very badly to be dead.” Claire says that he isn’t dead, and she won’t let him. “Do as you wish, it matters not to me.” Jamie takes a healthy slug of laudanum, and hears Randall’s voice telling him to scream.

Claire sets the bones, and the practical effects are amazing. Pulling bones through the skin, stiching, splinting, bandaging…  it’s really well done. “Jamie said to me once, “I could bear my pain, but I don’t think I could bear yours.’” After she finishes, Fahter Paul says that he’ll stay, but that Claire should go find food and rest. She makes it out the door before throwing up.

In the pre-dawn light, monks go to chapel, and Father Anselm walks into a small chapel to find Claire, sitting. She gets up to leave, and he apologizes for disturbing her prayers. She says she wasn’t praying, she was just sitting alone trying to clear her head. “Were you indeed alone?” She thinks about that for a second.

He offers to hear her confession, and she tells him that she doubts it’ll make much sense. “Perhaps not, but He’ll understand.” (Which is the important part.) “My name is Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser. Through my selfishness, I’ve brought great suffering to both my husbands.” “Go on.” She tells him that she was on holiday with her husband in the year nineteen hundred and forty five.  She watches him as he absorbs this, and he merely shifts position to continue to listen. She tells him everything, from being attacked, from marrying Jamie even though she was already married, to being accused of witchcraft, and how she thinks that everything that’s happened to Jamie is her fault.

Anselm finds this to be marvelous and extraordinary (seeing it written like this makes it looks like he’s being callous about the reality, but really he’s just amazed and grateful that he gets to know that such things are possible). “A miracle perhaps.” Claire worries that canon law wasn’t constructed with her situation in mind. Maybe not, but God isn’t worried about canon law. “Whatever your sins, have faith that they will be forgiven.” He absolves her Latin, and she clearly takes comfort in it.

Claire goes to Jamie’s room and finds that he’s refusing food, but has a fever. The hand is healing nicely, and once it’s healed up, she’ll start him on a regime of massage and exercises to get the strength back. Jamie looks at her darkly and after she sends Father Paul off to get cold water to bring the fever down, he tells her that she can’t save a man who doesn’t want saving.

Outside, the boys try to give Murtagh some whiskey. Murtagh is fretting about Jamie, and Willie tells them about his uncle who lost an arm and refused food. Murtagh stomps off, and we find him talking to Jamie in unsubtitled Gaelic. Jamie responds, and Murtagh yells at him something about Claire, and Jamie answers into another horrible flashback. (Here’s a gif set that translates the Gaelic, if you’re interested.)

Jamie is naked and puking, while Randall watches him from across the cell.  “Are we close? Have we reached your limit yet?” Claire face morphs on to Randalls and her voice says “what shall we do with you?” Jamie gasps her name, and Randall frowns. “What is her power over you?” Her face fades, and Jamie cries that there’s no more Claire. “Then are you mine?” Claire’s face appears again, and Jamie says “There’s only you.”

Randall steps back, considering, before going to his bag and getting something out of it. He blows on the brazier to get the fire going more, and puts his seal in it, and gets it red hot.  Randall brings the red hot seal over to Jamie and tells him to “prove that you’re mine.” And makes Jamie brand himself on the chest. Jamie back at the Abbey wakes up and feels the spot.

Willie rides up to announce that he’s seen two redcoat patrols, but none coming to the Abbey yet. Murtagh opines that it’s only a matter of time- they will come here, and here is no place for a fight. Besides, Jamie isn’t thriving here, and there’s no place in Scotland that’s safe. Thing One and Murtagh point out that the Mackenzie’s and the Frasers have kin in France. Willie asks if perhaps Claire’s people could help? She neatly covers up their total non-existance with them not being thrilled with her arriving with a Scottish husband in tow. Hanging with the Frasers would probably be better, “No offense.” “None taken” says Thing One, who 100% understands that Claire’s right on that score. Murtagh hies off to find a boat.

Willie comes into Jamie’s room to give him an update on the plan. Jamie is curled up, and Willie tries to encourage him to eat. “Mistress Claire loves you fiercely and she’s worried sick.  Tell me what I can do?” Jamie asks for Willie’s blade “to put me out of this black misery.” Willie refuses, and runs out of the room.

Murtagh finds Claire to tell her that he’s got them passage on a ship, it’s a bit expensive but…. “Willie said that Jamie wants to kill himself.”  Murtagh looks so sad, because he knew that was the case but he was hoping Claire could talk sense into him before he could do it. “He’s been tortured. Raped. Isn’t that reason enough?” “No” Claire says, with conviction. Murtagh wonders if there’s more going on that they know. He’s sorry, but he will not let Jamie wither away. “If it comes to the time where the lad is past the point of healing….” Claire ends the conversation by fainting into his arms.

She wakes up with Father Paul bathing her neck in cold water. She gets up and Murtagh snaps that she is not to get up so fast “you scared the piss right out of me!” and then he looks guiltily at Father Paul, and who looks back like dude, I’ve heard these words before. Claire is ready to find a plan. Father Paul says that the physical wounds are healing nicely, but Jamie’s soul is not, and he too is worried the Jamie is looking to make an end of himself. But he feels that Jamie could be led back into the light.

Murtagh says that Jamie will not be led back anywhere he doesn’t want to go, and that the only way to save Jamie is for someone to step into the darkness with him.

Claire gathers lavender, infuses it in oil, and walks into Jamie’s room in her shift. She waves the vial of oil of lavendar under his nose and he flashes back to Randall’s face as he wakes up. “LEAVE ME BE!” Jamie yells and she snaps back, “No, I’ve left you be for far too long. I’ve treated you too gently and you only respond to strength.” “Why are you doing this!” “To find out what happened in that room!” He says that she already knows what Randall did him. “The obvious, yes, but WHAT ELSE. Why won’t you look at me!” Randall’s voice and face flashover “look at me” and Jamie attacks.

They fight across the room, and he pins her, saying that he doesn’t want to hurt her. She yells that he already has, and she rips his shirt and sees the brand for the first time. “What he did to you doesn’t mean…” Jamie says no, he did this to himself. “We can remove it.” Jamie finally admits that Randall didn’t just use force- “he made love to me, Claire.”

Flashback again- Jamie is waking up on the cot, while Randall washes himself. Jamie passes out, and Randall wakes him up with the oil of lavendar. Randall massages the oil into the brand, and Jamie’s chest. “These are Claire’s hands.  Think of Claire, think of your wife.” Jamie does, because it’s easier, and Randall kisses him and seriously y’all, this rape is worse to type out than the violent rape. Randall essentially gets Jamie to put Claire in his mind and poisons the memory and existence of her while raping Jamie and forcing him to get sexual pleasure out of it.

And that breaks Jamie the way nothing else Randall did could.

“I couldn’t help myself, Claire. It felt so good to not be in pain.” Claire tries to tell him that there is nothing to forgive. Nothing about this was his fault. “I cannot be your husband any longer, Claire. And I will not be anything less. He broke me.” Claire’s like no, you’re not anyone’s but mine, and I am yours, so you can stop this line of nonsense right now. Jamie says those were just words. “I lie here thinking I will die without your touch, but when you touch me I want to vomit with shame.”

Claire refuses to accept that this will be forever, and grabs his face. “You promised me the protection of your body, James Fraser. Randall may have had your body, but I will be damned if he has your soul as well.” They’re meant to be together, and that’s the only thing that makes the past months make sense to her. “And if you take away the one last thing that makes sense to me, then I will die with you, right here, right now.” He face cracks, and he reaches from her, but can’t bring himself to touch her, not yet.

“Oh mo nighean don, how can you have me like this?” “I will have you anyway I can. Always.” She throws her arms around his neck, and he slowly takes his good hand and caresses her back.

Claire asks for laudanum, and Jamie says no, he wants to be awake when “you cut him out of me.” He puts a leather strap in his mouth, and Murtagh cuts the brand out of Jamie’s chest, while Father Paul, who’s stomach has some limits, looks a bit sick. Jamie takes the bit of branded skin and throws it into the fire, spitting on it for good measure.

One a beach, with a ship anchored out in the water, the boys say goodbye to Claire. “We’ll miss you, Mistress Claire!” Willie says they won’t find another healer like her, and holds out his hand for a shake, but Claire hugs him. Thing One and Thing Two say that’s it’s nothing personal, but keeping her and Jamie out of trouble is a full time job. Thing One asks if he may kiss her farewell, and and she goes “NO” glaring at him like he’s a dumbass. Thing one looks abashed, and Claire clarifies- “that’s far too final. You may kiss me au revioir.” Thing One then MACKS on her, because we couldn’t see that coming, and Thing Two shows him up by gallantly kissing her hand. Murtagh dismissed them: “Piss off, the lot of you.”

“If you happen to see the rightful King Across the Water, tell him Angus Mohr sends his regards!” “King James is in Italy, you goof, not France.” “I meant if they go to Italy…?” I’ll miss you two idiots.

On the ship, Claire is looking green and sad over the side of the boat, and Jamie says that he thought he’d be the one to be puking his guts up, ‘but here you are, green as rotten fish.” “Fish is the last thing I want to think about right now.” He offers to get her a bucket, and she grumbles that she’s glad to see he’s getting his sense of humor back. He says he’s trying. “We’ll be all right?” she asks. “I’ll see to it.”

They both are a bit worried about what they’ll do in France, and Jamie says that he’ll see to it that they’ll be able to return to Scotland. Somehow. She’s reminds him what she told him about the Rising, and Culloden and the end of the Highland Culture. “We’ll play our part.”  Claire remembers what Geillis said about changing things, and says that maybe they can change the furture.  Bonnie Prince Charles is in France, so…  “it’ll take some thought” Jamie says, with a flash of his old self.

Claire turns away. “There’s something else.” “Something other than changing the future?” Claire ovaries up and tells him that she’s pregnant. Jamie needs a couple seconds to process. “I thought you said you couldn’t…?” “I was wrong.” She asks, worriedly, if he’s happy.  “I never thought I’d be able to say such a thing again, but… yes.  I’m very happy!” She runs into his arms, and he smiles into her hair, but then his face slips a bit back into the guarded look- he’s not perfectly okay, not now, and maybe not ever, but there’s hope.

The ship sails off to France, with Claire and Jamie embracing on the deck, towards season 2.

Elyse:

Both Sam and Tobias deserve an Emmy for this.

I’ve dreaded this episode since the series began, and I have to say I kind of respect that they chose to show everything graphically. It was hard to watch, but it also did justice to the severity of what was happening. Outlander had the first male-rape scene I’d ever read. It was subversive in the way it reversed the gender roles between Claire and Jamie sometimes, and I’m happy the producers didn’t choose to skim over this part even if I did want to watch it.

One thing that I thought was so interesting was how they filmed the attempted rape of Claire by the solider vs. the rape of Jamie by Randall. The attempted rape scene with Claire was totally told through the female gaze. It was not sexualized. As the viewer we were inside Claire’s head as the camera jumped around and the POV as blurry and frantic.

The rape scene in the dungeon was totally different. First of all nothing was held back. We see dried blood smeared between Jamie’s thighs and we understand that this was an act of violence, not sex, and he’s been injured and traumatized. The second time Randall rapes him, he takes advantage of the blood loss, the pain, the horror of the whole ordeal to fuck up Jamie’s perception of what’s happening and make him feel complicit in his own assault. Like RHG said, it’s harder to watch than the first one which was brutal but not a mind-fuck. I kept having to turn my head to the side.

The weird thing is that I found this scene harder to watch than I have other rape scenes where women are the victims. For example, I’ve been watching Game of Thrones and that show is rape-tastic. I think there are a few reasons the Jamie scene was so much more awful to watch. The first is that Tobias and Sam killed it (the shot where a tear runs out of Jamie’s unblinking eye–OMG). The second is that it was really graphic and grisly–DUDE THE DEAD GUY IS STILL IN THE CELL! But I think the biggest reason is that I’ve become used to seeing female characters get raped on film. I’ve become desensitized to it in some respect, but I’ve never seen a male character graphically raped on film. The closest I’ve come is The Shawshank Redemption and they pulled back before we saw anything and it still really bothered me.

I’ve become desensitized because we live in a culture where the rape of female characters on tv and in film has been sexualized and commodified. The rape of Jamie was upsetting because it was shocking. I think in some respects RDM was trying to get us to say “Think about why this bothers you so much.”

RHG:

That was horrible, and I had to watch it twice for the recap, but it was well done- unflinching and empathetic and horrific and I’m relieved that this was put in the hands of a showrunner and director and actors that understood what they were doing.

I’m listening to the podcast with Ronald D. Moore and Ira Steven Behr, who co-wrote the episode, and they both talked frankly about how uncomfortable it made them, and how they felt they had a responsibility to not fuck it up.

That didn’t make it easier to watch.

I think Elyse covered most of my thoughts on the rape question. I liked that Murtagh called it out for what it was- Jamie is a rape victim. And I liked that it’s clear that Jamie is not magically 100% cured by talking it out. It made it better, and he’s made steps towards recovery, but this will have an effect on him.

I was, on first viewing, a little dismayed on the changes made to the timeline of the escape and Jamie’s recovery. I liked this sequence in the book, and I was too busy being pissy at the changes to enjoy the variations as they existed. Second viewing, I liked it at a lot more. Father Anslem was exactly like I pictured him, and I loved (LOVED) the unsubtitled discussion between Jamie and Murtagh. I loved it when creators can pull that off.

So that’s Outlander Season 1. We don’t have an air date for season 2, though rumors are indicating Spring 2016, and also that we won’t have a mid-season break. They are in the process of filming now. Emmy Nominations will be announced on July 10th, so get your rage-ahol ready. (I’ve been burned by the the Emmys before. My rage-ahol is vintage.)

We hope you’ve enjoyed our Outlander Coverage, and we’ll see you back here whenever we get Outlander back!

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Catherine Heloise. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Inspirational Romance category.

Here is Catherine Heloise's review:

The fun thing about RITA review challenges is that you get to read books that you would never have considered picking up otherwise. So when I looked down the list last week and saw a whole collection of Inspirational Romances, I thought, well, why not? I mean, I’m Christian, I love romances – I am the target market! Sold!

As this is the first Inspirational Romance I’ve read, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect going in, other than a certain amount of prayer around the place, and regular references to God, at least in the minds of the characters. I definitely wasn’t expecting a bona fide miracle – divine intervention and the Voice of God – in Chapter 2! As an introduction to the genre, this was… striking. After that, things calmed down significantly on the God-side, and while God is indeed referenced quite often in passing, and there is a brief discussion of Amish theology later in the book, God made no further appearances as a character in this novel, which was a great relief to my feelings. I’m still not entirely sure what I think of miracles as a source of plot and character development in fiction. And I have no idea what a non-religious person would make of this novel. It’s a good story, written with charm and a lovely, ironic sense of humour, but God is quite unavoidable – and I think that is rather the point.

But let’s start at the start. Huckleberry Summer is the second novel in a series centering around an Amish community in Wisconsin. Specifically, it centres around the grandchildren of Anna and Felty Helmuth, who, in Anna’s opinion, need to get married. Fortunately, she knows just the spouse for each of them.

The grandchild in this story is Aden, a conservationist and an animal lover, who has, rather scandalously, been arrested several times for doing things like chaining himself to trees to prevent them being chopped down, or breaking into a neighbour’s yard to feed neglected animals. At the start of the book, he has a near-death experience – the aforementioned miracle – in which God quite literally rescues him from drowning, and tells him that ‘one thing is needful’. This is a quote from the story of Mary and Martha in the New Testament – when hard-working Martha complains that Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus rather than helping her, Jesus uses these words to explain that Mary is doing the right thing. If I have understood correctly, this is also the story that underpins the Amish doctrine of Gelassenheit, which is about yielding oneself to the will of God, and trusting God to do what is right, rather than trying to fix the world through one’s own actions. The theology of this is explained rather well later in the book. I disagree with it.

I apologise for all this theology in a book review, but it is actually relevant, because this approach to faith is why Aden is viewed, by the Amish community and by the novel itself, as good-hearted but wrong in his actions. Interfering in the lives of others, even for a good reason, shows a lack of faith in God, and is something he needs to stop doing in order to live peacefully in the community. I still disagree. Strongly. But that is the world of this book, and I think it needs to be understood for the story to work.

Our heroine is Lily Eicher, a very, very well-behaved, obedient and somewhat timid Amish girl who the Helmuths invite to work on their farm in a blatant move to throw her together with Aden. She is, however, rather horrified at the idea of working with someone who has been in jail, and her father is even less impressed. Lily is rather adorable, and she could so easily not have been. She is sweet and kind and takes the world very seriously, and she is determined to do the right thing at all times. She is also terrified of dogs – including Aden’s rather large dog – and of small children (or at least of having to babysit them), and has a slightly obsessive relationship with hand sanitiser. Still, she realises that Christian charity is no less than her duty:

All Lily wanted to do was practice her Christian charity on him.
And catch a glimpse of those irresistible eyes.
But mostly practice charity.

Oh, Lily. You aren’t fooling anyone.

While Anna Helmuth is determined that Lily is the perfect wife for Aden, Lily’s father utterly disapproves of him, pushing Lily to marry Tyler, the bishop’s son. This is the main source of conflict in the story. One thing I liked very much about this book was that Beckstrand did not take the easy way out here. It would have been easy to make Tyler a terrible person, or even just an unattractive one, but instead, he is absolutely lovely – sweet, kind and generous, and one of the first to befriend Aden when he arrives. While he is not above using the advantages that Lily’s father’s approval gives him in his courtship of Lily, he is ultimately a good friend to both Aden and Lily, even at his own expense. He’s a genuinely good guy, and I’m now going to have to read the next book in the series, because I want to see him happy. I liked it that the friendship between him and Aden is a very honest one, and goes both ways – one of the first things Aden does when he realises that Tyler is also courting Lily is to go to him openly and talk to him about it. Tyler isn’t happy to have a rival for his love, but the friendship is able to survive it.

Beckstrand also does a fine job of creating a sense of being embedded in the Amish community. Linguistically, she uses snatches of dialect and speech patterns that feel very consistent and give the novel a strong sense of place. I must admit, I find myself quite enamoured of the word ‘fancy’, which is used to describe anything that isn’t ‘plain’ and Amish, from power drills to vegetarian food. There is a sense of cultural mores that go all the way down – it’s not Amishness painted on the surface of a normal small town community. Jennifer Beckstrand has visited Amish communities and interviewed many Amish people, as well as having Amish friends who help keep her facts straight, and this depth of knowledge shows.

The authorial voice is also very appealing – there is an affectionate irony and humour in Beckstrand’s writing, for example when Lily meets Aden’s friend, Jamal:

Lily had never shaken hands with a black man before. When it happened, it was quite uneventful.

Or when Tyler and Aden discuss Lily’s obsession with hand sanitiser:

“But she is really cute the way she carries hand sanitizer with her everywhere. Maybe I should try harder with her dat.”

Tyler slapped his gloves against his leg. His eyes danced as he looked at Aden. “She has four different flavours.”

“Of hand sanitizer?”

“Vanilla is my favourite.”

Strawberry was Aden’s favourite. But he didn’t say so.

I think hand sanitizer is being used as a surrogate for something. But it would be impolite to say so, in a book where the author is perfectly capable of writing a hand-holding scene which makes this reader’s heart beat faster. And speaking of which, when Aden kissed Lily about a quarter of the way through the book, I was so shocked I actually gasped. Fortunately for my nerves, nothing racier occurred during the course of the novel. Well, aside from some hugging (swoon!). All joking aside, I really was impressed at the sensuality and tension that Beckstrand managed to infuse into the simple act of Aden taking Lily’s hand.

Lily’s relationship with her father is drawn very well, and makes my hair stand on end, because it is a brilliant example of a relationship that looks loving and affectionate even to those inside it, but is actually quite toxic in its effects. We are told early on that she is a good, obedient girl, and other characters hint that her father is particularly strict, but Lily’s own relationship with him seems very positive, and she views the love and respect her father shows her mother as the model for what she wants in her own life. As the book continues, though, it becomes clear that this dynamic is less idyllic. Lily’s father is not emotionally abusive, exactly, nor is he cruel or unkind when her friendship with Aden leads her into strife part way through the book. Instead, he is kind and forgiving of her weakness – and this incident becomes another reason why Lily should trust her father’s judgment over her own. It’s incredibly chilling, because it is so manipulative, and has a powerful negative effect on Lily, and yet it is easy to see both why she doesn’t recognise this behaviour as abusive and why her father really does think he is doing what is best for her. Altogether, it’s a really well-drawn portrayal of a dysfunctional relationship and how that can play out in a culture where obedience is valued so strongly.

The whole relationship between Aden and Lily is sweet. In the early part of the book, Aden decides quickly that he isn’t interested in Lily, but since she is working for his grandparents, it’s important that the two of them can be friendly. I did enjoy his sense of humour and the way he draws her out of her shell – Lily is a very anxious, very careful person, and Aden is both gentle with her anxiety, and a little teasing over it. At one point, Aden swims out into a lake to rescue a lost canoe, and Lily is absolutely terrified that he will drown. He tells her to turn her back, and then gives her a running commentary as he swims:

“Lily, I am now swimming to the middle of the pond. My head is above water and that’s why you can hear me yelling…. I am now dragging the boat to shore… You will notice that my head is still above water…”

… and continues it after he gets out of the pond…

“I am now attempting to don my trousers, but it is slow going. They are soaked. Now my shirt. It’s a little easier, although it’s always difficult to stretch a shirt over my massive chest.”

Bet you weren’t expecting that in an Inspie. And in front of his grandparents, too…

In the latter half of the book, when things get difficult, I found myself having a lot of sympathy for both of them. Aden really does not deserve the treatment he gets from Lily and from the community, and yet I can completely understand how difficult it is for Lily to get out from under that weight of obedience and being a good daughter, and to discern what is the right way to behave. This is resolved in a way that strikes me as utterly realistic and in keeping with the characters of all concerned.

Overall, I really enjoyed Huckleberry Summer, despite disagreeing with some of its philosophy – I thought Aden’s desire to fix the world’s wrongs was an excellent character trait, even if he was going about it unwisely, and having him be told, effectively, to cease trying made me quite angry, and dragged this book down from a clear A+ to an A. Having said that, I will certainly be reading the sequel, because I need to know that Tyler is happy. Hopefully, this can happen without any annoying theological moments – or indeed, any miracles, because I’m still not convinced that God needs to be an active character in any novel. I’m not sure that this book will turn me into a reader of Inspies, but I really am glad I had the chance to read and review it – it was a really delightful story, and I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with Lily and Aden.

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Syaffolee. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Inspirational Romance category.

Here is Syaffolee's review:

Some caveats before I begin with the actual review: I have never read an inspirational romance before, let alone an Amish inspirational romance, so it is without any doubt that I am completely unfamiliar with this subgenre’s tropes and conventions. Also, aside from that one time when I was seven my uncle took me to this place in Ohio where some nice Amish ladies made some delicious fruit cobblers, I lack the background to vouch for the authenticity of the Amish culture or spiritual beliefs depicted in this novel. I chose to review this book because I wanted to try something completely different. And the cover which jammed two disparate things together–an Amish lady and a gigantic fluffy dog–was such a clunker that I thought for sure there might be something unusual within its pages.

As Huckleberry Summer opens, we meet the Helmuths, an elderly Amish couple bent on matchmaking all of their grandchildren. In this installment of the Huckleberry series, their sights are fixated on their grandson Aden, a vegetarian and environmental activist who has been arrested three times. It doesn’t matter that he’s been arrested for tree hugging. It’s the run-ins with the authorities that have the rest of the Amish community shaking their heads and gossiping about him, branding him a Bad Boy. The Helmuths think that they can match Aden up with the local Good Girl, Lily Eicher, who tries to follow all the rules to stay safe. The elderly couple concocts a scheme to bring the two young people together by hiring Lily to do chores around their house while Aden is visiting them.

At first, Lily is leery of Aden because of her father’s directive to avoid the supposed troublemaker and his gigantic dog Pilot due to her childhood trauma with another dog. But after seeing Aden’s good nature and his friendly interactions with others, she eventually warms to him and they start secretly courting, even though Lily is still seeing Tyler, the bishop’s son, whom her father explicitly endorses as a match for her. Despite Aden’s attempts at gaining her father’s approval, Lily’s father adamantly rejects his efforts. And after an incident where Lily tries to prove she’s more daring than what others think of her and fails, Aden is shunned and Lily meekly accepts Tyler’s proposal of marriage to keep her father happy. Of course, Aden and Lily do eventually end up together, but the way they went about it made me sorry for Tyler (although not too sorry since he was obvious sequel bait) and exasperated for the featured couple.

I liked the banter between Lily and Aden in the first half of the novel even if it seemed predictable and they were surrounded by stock characters and situations. But the second half of the novel pretty much went downhill from there, plot-wise, character-wise, and patience-wise. When things go south and Aden gets punished because Lily fails to own up to her own poor judgement, he welcomes the punishment like a martyr even though it’s obvious to the reader and the other characters that he doesn’t deserve it.

Aden’s annoying angst, however, is nothing compared to Lily’s spinelessness when something bad happens and she doesn’t want to face the consequences. The only person who even remotely chastises her for her behavior is her sister and even then, she is only given the occasional cold shoulder. To keep herself safe, she retreats to following all of her father’s orders and stringing poor Tyler along until almost literally the last minute. And when she does ask Aden to forgive her for her lapse in judgement and abysmal behavior, there is no grovel, no serious deep discussions, almost no consequences aside from getting kicked out of her father’s house. Everyone keeps telling her what a Good Girl she is and that nothing is her fault.

What was frustrating for me was Lily’s lack of believable character growth. It doesn’t matter what the impetus for that character growth is or whether I believe in the spiritual and philosophical premise of the genre. What does matter is whether or not the author has convinced me that the character grew within the context of this particular story. I don’t think Lily has changed, even if Aden thinks she has because she’s gotten the courage to kiss him in front of other people. Lily has only ever wanted to gain the approval of the main man in her life. Before, it had been her father. And at the end, she has merely switched her allegiance to Aden. There is at no point in the story where she does anything solely for herself or for an ideal.

Of course, one can’t help think that maybe this is one of those “It’s me, not you” things. Perhaps this is exactly what Amish romances are supposed to be like and I’m just not getting it. Maybe there’s a disconnect between what I thought the characters would logically do and how Amish characters, as a trope, behave. Aside from Lily’s father who acted like a two-dimensional antagonist with his unrelenting disapproval of Aden, I felt that a number of the characters were improbably nice. Is it typical for characters in an inspirational romance to act like complete paragons to set an example for the reader? I don’t know the answer to that, but what I do know is that the characters didn’t feel quite real to me. Even if the characters are Amish, they are still supposed to be human and I would have expected far more tension and uneasiness between them, even if they were all smiling at each other.

Spy

by Paul Feig

You didn’t think we were gonna review Entourage, did you?

I’ve loved Melissa McCarthy since her time on Gilmore Girls. She is a delightful commedienne with impeciable timing and a gift for physical comedy. She’s made some great choices in movies (Bridesmaids, The Heat) and some dubious choices that from the trailers, at least, looked like two hours of fat jokes and classist humor (Tammy, Identity Thief). I did have concerns about which category Spy would fall in, but the cast nudged me into plunking down my dollars.

Look, when you get McCarthy, Jude Law, Queen Allison Janney, Miranda Hart, Rose Byrne, and Jason Fucking Statham into the same movie, you give it a shot. Also it’s directed by Paul Fieg, who also directed Bridesmaids and The Heat, so… I shouldn’t have worried.

The set up is that Susan Cooper (McCarthy) is an analyst with the CIA, teamed up with Jude Law, a super suave agent who gets himself killed a little bit on the job while trying to find a missing nuke that’s in the hands of an arms dealer. Turns out, there’s a mole in the agency and has giving the arms dealer the names and faces of all the active agents in the division (there’s only five) (Including Law, who’s dead a little bit). So McCarthy, who has trained as an agent but ended up as an analyst/personal assistant to Law, goes out in the field to track down the arms dealer. Hilarity ensues.

The delicate concern about a slapstick comedy like this is that the jokes will go to low-hanging fruit like constant cracks about Melissa McCarthy’s weight. I’m happy to say that while some characters do make some such jokes, it’s not often, and it’s not treated as normal by the movie.

The great thing is that she is SUPER competent, once she gets her feet under her. She can shoot, engage in hand-to-hand combat, rapidly analyse a situation and come up with a solution, and hold her own against a raging Jason Statham.

Really, it’s the fights with Statham that make this movie so much fun. He’s a fantastic comic actor. He’s been in something with the Rock, right? I feel like that’s a thing the world needs.

Anyway, as a woman of size, and one that likes martial arts and generalized ass-kicking, it was SUPER COOL to see McCarthy kicking ass. It wasn’t a joke, it wasn’t meant to be silly, it was just, look, this woman can totally kick ass and she’s good. There were disguises and cover identities that were the dowdy kind of person you often see a fat woman portrayed as, and then a conscious decision to let McCarthy be glamorous and pretty. I’ve seen people go, “Well, the thing that makes this funny is ‘ha ha how can a fat girl be a spy isn’t that ridiculous'” but for real, while that is the set up, the movie makes her GOOD AT HER JOB.

ALSO, when she fights? Unlike in SO MANY Serious Action Movies, she does just fight women. When she fights dudes, it’s as vicious and high stakes as two men fighting. It drives me bonkers when “girls can only fight girls.” I want to see women and men fighting when the ground is as even as one can make it.

The cast is just genius. Allison Janney is the Deputy Director of the CIA, and basically this is what CJ Cregg did after leaving the White House and bumming around California for ten years (and if finally where she can swear as much as she wants. Hearing Allison Janney say “fuck” was something I didn’t know my life was missing). Miranda Hart is another analyst and one of Susan’s BFFs. Jason Statham (I just want to LICK that man) is a rage-aholic agent who goes rogue because if you’re in a spy movie, you need someone to go rogue, and if you have someone going rogue, you get Statham. Rose Byrne is the arms dealer with amazing big hair and impossibly high heels, and she’s a delight. Jude Law’s accent is dodgy. He’s there, too. Whatever.

There were two things that I was concerned about that were mostly avoided. One, that we would fall into the trope of women competing and bad mouthing each other. It helps that there are four women in the main cast in the CIA alone, plus two antagonist women. Yes, there’s some backbiting, and I kinda wish they hadn’t gone that route, but it was brief and not a through line. Thank god. There’s lots of women supporting women, both personally and professionally, without any heavy-handedness.

The other concern I had is that we’d go the route of “Oh, Susan is a strong independant women who doesn’t need a man” which is a trope that tends to come up when the woman in question is of color or fat (or both). It would be nice to see those women get some, too! A number of men hit on Susan for various reasons, and like none of them are because ‘har har har, isn’t it funny that someone would want to fuck a fat girl?’

I really liked the character of Susan, because when Janney finds out that she KICKED TOTAL ASS at the Academy, the reasons she ended up sitting a desk as an analyst are super realistic- she has self-confidence issues stemming from her parents, and Law’s character recognized her awesomeness and used it for his own needs, rather than mentoring her like he was supposed to. I have my own self-esteem issues, and this just made me so happy. Also Miranda Hart, who has made a career out of being the unlikely heroine of her own story (she bags 50 Cent Piece!) and is amazing and more Americans need to know who she is.

Okay, so there’s this bullshit narrative of women can’t be funny, and we all know that’s bullshit, and there’s this idea tha fat women can only be funny if we’re making fun of them for being fat, and THAT’S bullshit, and I think that Pual Fieg knows that too. Go see this movie, even if just for Statham and McCarthy hollering “fuck!” at each other a lot.

Between Kingsman and Spy, Spy wins, hands down.

Spy is in theatres now, and you can find tickets (US) at Fandango and Moviefone.

This week’s bestsellers are brought to you by tan lines, margaritas, and our affiliate sales data.

1. Love Down Under by Rosalind James Amazon | B&N | Kobo | GooglePlay
2. Love, Laughter, and Steamy Ever Afters by Bella Andre Amazon | B&N | Kobo | GooglePlay
3. The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer Amazon | B&N | Kobo | GooglePlay | ARe
4. Venetia by Georgette Heyer Amazon | B&N | Kobo | GooglePlay
5. Undercover by Lauren Dane Amazon | B&N | Kobo | GooglePlay | ARe
6. Hardwired by Meredith Wild Amazon | B&N | Kobo | GooglePlay | ARe
7. The Duke’s Holiday by Maggie Fenton Amazon | B&N
8. After Hours by Cara McKenna Amazon | B&N | Kobo | GooglePlay | ARe
9. Asking for It by Lilah Pace Amazon | B&N | Kobo | ARe
10. Night is Darkest by Jayne Rylon Amazon | B&N | Kobo | GooglePlay | ARe

I hope you weekend reading has been terrific!

Today’s Kindle Daily Deal features a ton of books you might like, and hot damn, there’s price matching, too!

Naked in Death

RECOMMENDED: Naked in Death by JD Robb, aka Nora Roberts, is $1.99 today only. This is book 1 in the In Death series, which is now 5.6 million books long. Kidding. It’s only 41 books long. This is a romantic suspense series set in New York in 2058. It’s a terrific series, and if you know someone you’d like to not see for awhile, you can buy the first three and they’ll disappear reading for a few months.

In a world of danger and deception, she walks the line–between seductive passion and scandalous murder…Eve Dallas is a New York police lieutenant hunting for a ruthless killer. In over ten years on the force, she’s seen it all–and knows her survival depends on her instincts.

And she’s going against every warning telling her not to get involved with Roarke, an Irish billionaire–and a suspect in Eve’s murder investigation. But passion and seduction have rules of their own, and it’s up to Eve to take a chance in the arms of a man she knows nothing about–except the addictive hunger of needing his touch.

Add to Goodreads To-Read List →

This book is on sale at:

 

 

 

Glory in Death

RECOMMENDED:  Glory in Death by JD Robb is $1.99 today only. This is book 2 of the series – all of which have 4+ star averages on GoodReads. If you’re starting the In Death series, expect serial killers, murder mysteries, and a slowly building romance between Eve and Roarke, two of the most beloved romance pairs in print.

The first victim was found lying on a sidewalk in the rain. The second was murdered in her own apartment building. Police Lieutenant Eve Dallas had no problem finding connections between the two crimes. Both victims were beautiful and highly successful women. Their glamorous lives and loves were the talk of the city. And their intimate relations with men of great power and wealth provided Eve with a long list of suspects–including her own lover, Roarke. As a woman, Eve was compelled to trust the man who shared her bed. But as a cop, it was her job to follow every lead..to explore every secret passion, no matter how dark. Or how dangerous.

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This book is on sale at:

 

 

 

Immortal in Death

RECOMMENDED: Immortal in Death by JD Robb is $1.99. You can get the first three for just under $6, give or take any tax on your purchase – that’s spiffy! This would make a lovely gift for a reader you know, as these books are very absorbing and addictive. Like I said, if there’s someone who you’d like to see a little less of at family gatherings this summer…buy them this and they’ll be reading for quite a long time.

She was one of the most sought-after women in the world. A top model who would stop at nothing to get what she wanted — even another woman’s man. And now she was dead, the victim of a brutal murder. Police lieutenant Eve Dallas put her professional life on the line to take the case when suspicion fell on her best friend, the other woman in the fatal love triangle. Beneath the facade of glamour, Eve found that the world of high fashion thrived on an all-consuming passion for youth and fame. One that led from the runway to the dark underworld of New York City where drugs could fulfill any desire — for a price . .

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Libriomancer

RECOMMENDED: Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines is $1.99 today only. Carrie reviewed this book and gave it an A-, saying, “The reason I’m devoting so much time to the rules is that they are the real draw of the book.  The characters are fine, and plot moves briskly along, but really the joy of the book is the concept.  When Isaac goes into a dangerous situation, instead of strapping on knives and guns he puts on a coat with lots of big pockets and fills them with carefully chosen books.  I could go on for pages about the different kinds of vampires and the magical pet spider and all the other crazy components of this world.  The details are funny and carefully chosen, and because the main character is especially fond of science fiction and fantasy it’s a geek’s dream come true.  Special points for the fact that Isaac is a librarian whose research skills come in very handy.”

There’s a romance in the book as well, and the way it’s set up builds in a conflict that’s pretty unique. If you know a fantasy fan who likes adventure and books, this book would be a lovely gift for them – or for you!

Isaac Vainio is a Libriomancer, a member of the secret organization founded five centuries ago by Johannes Gutenberg. Libriomancers are gifted with the ability to magically reach into books and draw forth objects. When Isaac is attacked by vampires that leaked from the pages of books into our world, he barely manages to escape. To his horror he discovers that vampires have been attacking other magic-users as well, and Gutenberg has been kidnapped.

With the help of a motorcycle-riding dryad who packs a pair of oak cudgels, Isaac finds himself hunting the unknown dark power that has been manipulating humans and vampires alike. And his search will uncover dangerous secrets about Libriomancy, Gutenberg, and the history of magic. . . .

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This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Liviania. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the YA Romance category.

Here is Liviania's review:

Boys Like You has two different covers (one for the hardback, one for the paperback), and yet neither gives an accurate impression of the story inside.  This is a novel about two people who are being crushed under the weight of their own guilt finding each other and the means to forgive themselves.  The bright and colorful cover of the paperback screams “teen summer romance,” which is technically accurate while completely missing the tone of the book.  Thus, I was pretty surprised by the story I found within the covers.

Nathan Everets is a local boy, and everyone in town knows about the wreck.  He drove drunk, and now his best friend is in a coma and unlikely to ever wake up.  He meets Monroe Blackwell when he goes to her grandmother’s B&B to do court-appointed community service.  Monroe is from New York City, but she’s staying with her grandmother because her family hopes it will help her recover.  So far, the plan isn’t working, but Gram pushes the two together because she sees how two attractive teenagers look at each other and hopes it will make Monroe want to interact with people again.  She has the perfect excuse too, since Nathan can’t drive and Monroe can take him places.

The title comes from a phrase the heroine uses to describe the hero, both in her head and out loud.  In her head, she thinks about how she doesn’t want to get involved with him because he’s complicated.  Monroe is depressed and can barely get out of bed, take a shower, and eat, much less make conversation with a guy who clearly has a past (even if he is cute).  Out loud, she turns it into an insult.

“And just so you know? This isn’t a date or anything. I don’t date boys like you.”

… “A guy like me?” I settled back in my seat, indicating that she turn left.  This would be good, I thought.  “Should I be insulted?” I continued, thinking that I kinda sorta was.

“Don’t take it personally, Romeo, but you’re not my type,” she said, a hint of a rasp in her voice, as if there was something caught in her throat.  Words, maybe?

“You have a type?”

“Don’t you?” she shot back.

I shrugged but didn’t answer.

“I’ll bet your type is tall, blond, and tanned, but then, what do I know?”

… “I do have a type, and you’re not it.”

“Ouch,” she replied sarcastically, eyes on the road ahead.

“I can’t imagine with that attitude you’d be anyone’s type.”

It’s a bad first impression, but they get over it.  Nathan sees the appeal in hanging out with someone who doesn’t know what happened, who didn’t know Trevor, who he can open up to about what’s going on but at his own pace.  Monroe needs someone who has his own issues, despite what she first thinks, because he knows when to back off.  But it isn’t all about trauma.  They have fun together.  They make each other laugh and like spending time together, from parties to coffee shops to swimming holes.  There’s lots of descriptions of Monroe and Nathan’s bodies when they first meet each other and keep noticing each other; that starts to fade as they spend time together and start paying more attention to the person than the body.

While the reader knows about Nathan’s trauma from the start, the book takes longer to reveal what is haunting Monroe.  I tend not to like plots revolving around big secrets, because the truth that cannot be spoken often turns out to be not that bad. Here, I felt like I could understand why Monroe didn’t want to talk about it.  Juliana Stone doesn’t pull any of the punches about the petty anger that helped lead to Monroe making one bad decision.  She’s written a novel of forgiveness, but one of guilt too.  She presents complicated situations with questions of complicity, but the main redemption is that Nathan and Monroe made mistakes.  It’s not that they didn’t do stupid things that resulted in terrible outcomes; it’s that they weren’t malicious.  It could’ve happened to anybody.

Now here comes the big hurdle is this type of story: do I believe Monroe and Nathan will be all right without each other?  Did they actually heal for themselves or are they using romance as a patch?  By the end, I believed they would be all right even if they do break up in the future.  (Not unlikely, since they are teenagers.)  They both find ways to speak about what happened, and to open back up to their families and to the activities they enjoyed before.

I wish the book involved Nathan’s family more.  Monroe’s Gram is great.  She’s understanding and talks frankly to her granddaughter about getting birth control or condoms when the two start getting more serious.  But Nathan’s parents are non-entities.  They’re described as always having been permissive, but wouldn’t a terrible drunken car crash be a wake-up call to pay more attention to your kid?  They aren’t supposed to be bad parents as written, but his friends show more worry for the changes in Nathan’s personality.

I also felt that Nathan’s ex-girlfriend Rachel was handled awkwardly.  Their breakup has been a long time coming, although they are still together when Nathan meets Monroe.  The two were growing apart even before the accident, and now Rachel is even deeper into getting drunk, high, and partying.  For a book that is so much about two people seeing someone and realizing that they’re in pain and need help and then making the effort to give them that help, those same two people are pretty callous about just letting Rachel self-destruct.  No one is making an offer to listen to her.

I’m also dissatisfied with one aspect of the ending.  While Boys Like You is a YA novel, it reads like an NA novel most of the time.  The broken hero and heroine with traumatic pasts who must find love are staples of NA.  I don’t think their ages or the YA designation were a detriment to the story, but Stone could’ve aged them up one or two years and it wouldn’t have seemed weird.  The angst giving way to an earned happy ending feels right either way.  What didn’t feel right was a touch of saccharine wish fulfillment.  The ending feels like the punch was pulled at the very last moment, and it weakens the whole novel.

I’m honestly not the audience for this sort of romance.  I enjoyed reading it; Stone has an easy sort of prose and the hot summer of the Louisiana setting drew me in.  It felt like the sort of summer where people get too wild and do things they regret.  I was also sold on the physical and emotional attraction between Monroe and Nathan.  (And how much do I love a book that’s so frank about how much the heroine likes how the hero’s shorts are falling off his hips? A lot.)  I can see why it got a RITA nomination, and I probably would’ve been completely won over if not for that false note in the ending.

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Erica. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the YA Romance category.

Here is Erica's review:

NB: Trigger warnings for rape, rape culture, and bullying in this review. 

When I signed up to review Some Boys, I was nervous. Unlike my usual method of picking books to review, I actually read the description for this one. My immediate reaction was, “Oh, damn. Yeah. That needs to be talked about.” But I can’t demand that shit be talked about and not step up to the plate myself, so I signed up. And I have been dreading this book ever since. Dreading. It.

Well, I finally read it. It’s a really well-written book. It’s a really important book. But it is HARD. It is a HARD book to read. I sobbed for at least half of the book. I wanted to throw up for about 20% of it, and wanted to beat the shit out of someone for another 20%. It is HARD, but it IS important. Whenever I hear anyone from now on saying that rape culture is something us hysterical misandrists made up, I’m going to beat them up with this book.

So, trigger warnings. While there are no actual scenes really depicting the rape, there’s enough discussion and bullying going on, and yeah. Trigger warnings.

Spoiler warnings too. I mean, I hope I don’t get too spoilery, but there’s a chance because I am really emotional right now, so everything’s just kind of raw and pouring out, so, yeah. Proceed with caution.

The book opens a month after The Incident. Grace has accused school stud and lacrosse team golden boy of raping her, and no one believes her. NO ONE. Her best friends have turned on her; her father’s a douche. One teacher asks her to talk at a church about the dangers of drinking, a what not to do type of thing. Other teachers blatantly allow the bullying to happen in front of them without comment, but when Grace stands up for herself, Grace is in trouble. It is the worst sorts of injustice and god, I hated it so much. Her mom is there for her, thank goodness, but her mom is hurting in her own way, and she really wants Grace to get away and let everything die down.

Our hero is Ian, who is Zac’s best friend. He has received a concussion and is sidelined from playing lacrosse and when he flips out about it, he’s ordered to clean lockers during Spring Break. With Grace.

Ian had a crush on Grace before The Incident. In fact, he was the one who rescued her from the woods and took her to the hospital, but now she’s accusing his buddy of rape and ruining his life, and blahblahblah. He feels bad for how obviously terrified she is now, but he keeps making excuses for Zac and keeps spouting all this rape culture bullshit, she was asking for it, look how she dresses and so on and so forth. Then there was a video posted that makes it appear like she was enjoying the act, and so everyone thinks she’s a slut who’s trying to get back at Zac for not wanting to be with her in a relationship.

Zac is pure evil. Well, okay, he’s not. We’re not supposed to think that. He’s supposedly a good friend to Ian. But he’s a complete and utter douche and a control freak and a man whore and god I want him dead. Sorry. Did I mention that this is a hard book to read?

And EVERYONE is on his side.

Except for Ian’s dad. God bless Ian’s dad. That’s all I’m going to really say, but I was not liking this dude, and all of sudden, I’m like, dude, someone give this man a damned medal. He is the best. THE BEST.

THIS. IS. A. HARD. BOOK.

I have to give Blount so much credit though. Man, she really captured the reality of rape culture and the problems and struggles that rape victims have to deal with. It’s horrific. HORRIFIC. But it’s real. We know it’s real because we see this shit being talked about on the news all the damn time. And it’s awful.

Grace is the feminist bad ass hero that anyone could wish for. And yet, she’s not perfect. She’s not above some slut-shaming of her own, and she makes one really colossally awkward cultural faux pas. God, that was painful. But her heart is usually in the right place, and bless her, she does not back down. As scared as she is, and she is terrified, she never lets them beat her. She stands there and keeps fighting back. It is hard, but she battles. But of course, I’m over weeping because I don’t want her to have to battle. I want to hold her and protect her from all of this bullshit. But I can’t. And that’s hard too.

It’s hard to root for Ian as a hero. Really hard. You will hate him sometimes. And he does a lot of damn waffling. But, I feel like that’s probably realistic for someone who’s suddenly realizing that he’s been a bit of a douche his whole life, that he’s hurt women too. He has to completely change his whole way of thinking, his whole world, and he doesn’t want to. He’s a douche sometimes and sometimes I hate him so much, but he is a good kid, and you do root for him to stop being an idiot.

I realize I haven’t said a lot about the romance between Grace and Ian. But it is there. It’s just so tied up in the rape and their reactions to it, that even with all the chemistry and affection in the world, they aredn’t going to make it unil Ian changes his attitude. And he does. In fact, I really liked the ending, and how Ian wanted to save Grace. He wanted to be the hero, but he realizes that she doesn’t need a hero. She’s her own hero. And despite wanting to be her hero, Ian does good things because he needs to change who he is, because who he was was making him sick and ashamed of himself. It’s really excellent.

This book, despite everything, is an A+ all the way. It’s intense and brutal and REAL and so very, very, very hard. And then it ends.

But regardless, it didn’t really ring true for Grace’s character, so on the basis of that, I’m lowering the grade to an A.

But stock up on the tissues before you give it a read.

Now, I want to share this bit from the Author’s Note because I think it’s important:

“Visit project-unbreakable.org for more information about Grace Brown and to view the compelling work she’s doing. Her photographs made me understand how victims of rape aren’t just victims of rape. They’re victims of bullying and shaming and even the justice system.”

So, check out the site, check out the book, and let’s keep talking about rape culture and challenging people to change, challenging the culture to change, and hopefully make a world where rape victims don’t have to be victims over and over again.

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by am harmon. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the YA Romance category.

Here is a.m. harmon's review:

Plus One is a YA novel, and, as such, it comes with all the problems that make many books of that genre unappealing to adults like me. It is plot driven at the expense of character development or world building. The dialogue can be awkward and unrealistic. The themes are simplistic and obvious. The reader sees the surprises coming at least five chapters before the characters do. The protagonist makes tons of mistakes with no consequences, and the conflicts are resolved just a little too easily. There is even some cringe-worthy love poetry.

I still enjoyed the hell out of it.

Elizabeth Fama’s third young adult novel is set in an alternate-reality, dystopian (Are you sick of dystopias yet? If not, you must not spend your days around teenagers) Illinois with a premise I admit I’ve never seen before: the world is divided into “Rays” who can only come out during the day and “Smudges” who can only roam at night. At first I thought this was just kind of…weird, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense as a social critique. The poor working class is literally required to stay invisible to the rich — to disappear into the night.

Our protagonist, sixteen-year-old Smudge Soliel “Sol” Le Coeur, is angry at everyone: at the government, who destined her to a life of darkness and mindless factory work, at her brother, who abandoned the family without looking back, and at the universe in general, which is taking the only person she cares about, her grandfather and guardian, “Poppu.”

So Sol decides to kidnap her newborn niece, with the thought that holding her can be the last bit of happiness Poppu experiences before he dies and without realizing that stealing an hours-old infant is a ridiculous plan even by ideas-thought-up-by-teenagers standards (FYI, if you’re one of those people who gets anxious about the proper way to hold newborns, this book is going to leave you feeling very tense.). But Sol soon stumbles into problems bigger than her own when she mistakenly picks up an important government official’s baby from her brother’s hospital basket. As she is on the run from the law, she uncovers many schemes and counter-schemes by both her corrupt government and its revolutionaries, some including the involvement of her own family.

Our love interest comes in the form of a Ray hospital intern named D’Arcy. At first, of course, they hate each other. She thinks he’s some stuck-up rich boy who represents everything missing from her own life; he thinks she’s a juvenile delinquent. But they gradually begin to understand each other and realize they share a (suuuuuuper obvious) past secret.

In addition, they are both descendants of French-speaking immigrants, which is…possible I guess. I don’t know; are there really that many Francophiles in Chicago? At first I thought the influence of French language and culture was going to play into the dystopian history somehow, but, no, it seems to mostly just be a vehicle for some out-of-place French-food porn that is completely at odds with the story’s sci-fi-lite tone. Seriously, every time Sol is panicking about the latest plot device, some side character is there to insist that she must first sit down for crusty bread! with pesto! and Brie! and champagne!

Sol and D’Arcy’s love scenes are pretty sparse and mostly crammed into the middle of the book, where the plot just kind of stops so they can go off into the wilderness and be romantic together. Fama keeps it all pretty school-library safe, with only one — tame and vaguely described– sex scene.

So with all that said, I would still give this book a “B” rating. Why? Well, the part that counts in a YA book – the plot – was overall pretty tight and engaging (that’s not to say perfect). I originally sat down with the goal of reading for one hour and ended doing four, so I can’t in all fairness judge it too harshly.

In addition, Sol is an interesting and relatable protagonist. Her anger feels very real and palpable, but both the reader and the author know when it is justified and when it is misplaced. She is a sympathetic character without being a perfect one.

Overall, Plus One is good at being what it is. Ten years ago, I would have loved this book. As it is now, I still enjoyed it more than the last dystopian YA novel I read.

Bound

(TW: This is a really sketchy movie with poor depictions of BDSM and maybe a possible assault but we’re not sure. Like, honestly, we don’t actually know for sure because this movie is so bad. So be ye warned.)

So I’m at the video rental place (yeah, that’s still a thing in Wisconsin. Shut up) with my best friend when I stumble across this little jewel.

Ladies and gentlemen, Bound is a Fifty Shades of Grey knockoff by the makers of Sharknado 2: The Second One and it stars a Baldwin Brother. Life does not get better than this.

So after we tucked her kids in and shouted “GO TO SLEEP!” about 9000 times down the hall, my friend and I settled in for a journey of epic WTFery.

The movie opens with Michelle (Charisma Carpenter) getting boned by a dude with an unfortunate wolf tattoo on his back. We immediate realized that Charisma’s boobs were going to feature heavily in this film. Wolf tattoo–boobs–BAM! Right out the gate.

So Michelle clearly doesn’t get off on wolf-dude’s missionary thrusting. Her upper class LA ennui is compounded by her teenage daughter, Dara, being a teenager and also by some shit going down at work. Michelle works for some real estate firm with her dad (Daniel Baldwin) and shenanigans are going down. We’re being sold! Pretty sure Daddy Baldwin said the firm lost $100 million in 2 years? HOLY FUCKSTICKS BATMAN! But Michelle is all “No, acquisition! I can save this company!” $100 million in TWO YEARS, MICHELLE!!! Get. Out. Now.

So then Michelle and her boobs take her daughter to dinner, and despite the fact that, using the Amy Schumer video as a possible scale, she likely bid farewell to her last fuckable day 7 years ago, some younger dude named Ryan Black (no fucking joke, Ryan Black) (Bryce Draper) makes eyes at her. At first she freaks but then she drops her daughter at home and they make out and then she freaks again.

Michelle dumps wolf-dude and hooks up with Ryan Totally-Not-Christian-Grey Black, and he introduces her to the world of BDSM.

“What makes you wet?”

“I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that before.”

“I just did.”

WE KNOW RYAN. WE WERE RIGHT HERE.

I kinda thought that it would be impossible for there to be a more offensive representation of BDSM than Fifty Shades. Turns out I was wrong.

At one point Ryan asks Michelle, “Are you down?” As in down to fuck.  And she doesn’t answer by getting up, flushing his keys down the toilet, and cabbing it home.

Also they bone in Michelle’s daddy’s office, prompting my friend to ask, “So are we just assuming that the super fancy real estate office doesn’t have security cameras?”

Also the line:

“I’m your father. Your master. Your husband. Your god. I’m your daddy.”

There was wheeze laughing.

When Ryan takes Michelle back to her place she finds he has–not fucking with you–a red room of pain. Except this one isn’t nicely upholstered, it’s smoked glass back-lit by pink/red light and I totally expected Olivia Newton John to pop up and bust into song.

“Wait!” my friend bitched. “Where is the 1200 page contract! She has to think about the contract for three days!”

Ryan doesn’t need no fucking contract. He’s your daddy.

So he chains her up in the red room of 80’s music videos and pain, and they have sex (I think? Maybe my vagina is weird but I’m not sure how well that angle works for penetration? Also it didn’t look like they were having sex so much as rubbing against each other like cats). We see A LOT of Charisma’s boobs. I’ve seen them so much I’ve named them. The left is Nellie Bly and the right is Thomasina Kincaide.

The movie hints that Michelle likes being a sub because her everyday life is full of responsibility and stress, but it doesn’t actually go into her choice in any meaningful way.

So then Michelle goes to a super important charity event and Ryan gives her a vibrating bullet to put in her panties. He’s got a remote control. You get the idea. He gets her to call herself a “messy whore.”

That actually is the best sandwich name EVER. I would order that every fucking day.

Ryan acts like a total douchecanoe in front of Michelle’s business partner and the dude who might buy the company. When Michelle tries to save the company that’s hemorrhaging money, Ryan hits the on switch on the vibrator. Imagine the employee meeting later: “So Agnes, we know you’ve been working here for 30 years but you just lost your job because my boyfriend wanted to diddle me in front of the partners. Sorry about that. Hope social security is enough for you to get the good cat food for dinner.”

So, then the next day, Baldwin-Daddy chastises Michelle for bringing Ryan to the charity thing. He tells her that Ryan is/was a car thief and drug dealer. Also at one point Baldwin-Daddy calls his female assistant, “Babe.” I choose to believe that this was an artistic choice on Baldwin’s part.

Michelle can’t keep away from Ryan, though. More sex scenes! Much like Fifty Shades, we get some light spanking and missionary sex. Sad. But then Michelle asks him, “Have you ever been a submissive? Can I spank you?”

Ryan is “not down,” to use his parlance. He tells Michelle that this is his world and she’s “not ready for it.” But Michelle is super intrigued by the idea of being the spanker and brings it up again. Ryan flips his shit and kicks her out.

So Michelle decides to shop for a corset (no! Nellie! Thomasina! Be free!) and goes to a sex club to explore her Domme side and another dominatrix warns her against Ryan, telling her that Ryan gives Doms a bad name. The dominatrix lets her help whip a dude who is wearing, I shit you not, the same sheer catsuit Britney did but in black.

More sex scenes. This time they busted out the smoke machine. At this point my husband showed up and said, “She needs a new filter on her furnace.”

But oh noes! The camera pulls back and the woman Ryan is smexing while bound is… Dara, Michelle’s 17 year old daughter! Who is underage BTW. And we have no idea how Ryan ended up in Dara and Michelle’s home in the first place. When Michelle finds them, Dara cries. She’s sorry! She can’t get out of her restraints! I think Ryan seduced Dara and then she cries because she’s ashamed her mom found them but I honestly don’t know.

Ryan says some really awful stuff and Michelle chases him out.

So Michelle totally calls the po-po right?

NOPE.

Despite the fact that some seriously sketchy statutory rape (if not outright rape–consent was never shown) just went down, Michelle decides to take justice into her own hands. She confronts Ryan and after they get into a fight, she knocks him out. Then she chains him up. She tells him she thought about calling the police but thinks he’ll just worm his way out of jail. She wants to prove to him that she’ll kill him if he goes after her or Dara again.

She hoods him, clamps his nipples, then whips him. We learn that Ryan has a serious medical condition causing him to bleed Hershey’s Strawberry Syrup (good job production department). She breaks his ankle. He promises to be good now.

By now my friend’s husband was watching. We all heard footsteps on the stairs. “GO TO BED!” we all yelled.

Apparently now Michelle is a Domme and works with a bustier under her business clothes. She manages to save the company that’s been pretty much lighting money on fire and throwing it out the windows from being bought (GREAT FUCKING JOB MICHELLE).

The moral of the story?

I don’t even fucking know. BDSM is a thing for child predators and sexually repressed women with daddy issues? You totally don’t go to the police when your daughter is the victim of a sexual predator? Aftercare isn’t a thing? Being a Domme makes you bossy in the boardroom but you still make shit financial decisions?

So yeah, this movie was actually worse than Fifty Shades. Like way worse. I think they had one set and Nellie Bly looked cold all the time. In a weird way it was so bad it was actually enjoyable so I’m F+ing it. You’re welcome.

This film is available on DVD and Amazon Instant Video.

Around here, it was summer, then we had All The Rain (sorry, California) and it’s been like chilly early spring ever since. So I’m all about the idea of a Second Chance Summer, except I hope that one sticks around for a least a full week.

This is book one of Jill Shalvis’ new series, Cedar Ridge, and it’s coming out on June 30, 2015.

Also, it’s not actually about goofy meteorology, though that would be kind of fun. This is a second chance at love story between a hero and heroine who had something of a thing 10 years ago. Now she’s back in her hometown, he still lives there, and hello, there, it’s a romance novel!

Here’s the cover copy:

Cedar Ridge, Colorado, is famous for crisp mountain air, clear blue skies, and pine-scented breezes. And it’s the last place Lily Danville wants to be. But she needs a job, and there’s an opening at the hottest resort in her hometown. What has her concerned is the other hot property in Cedar Ridge: Aidan Kincaid-firefighter, rescue worker, and heartbreaker. She never could resist that devastating smile . . .

The Kincaid brothers are as rough and rugged as the Rocky Mountains they call home. Aidan has always done things his own way, by his own rules. And never has he regretted anything more than letting Lily walk out of his life ten years ago. If anyone has ever been in need of rescuing, she has. What she needs more than anything are long hikes, slow dances, and sizzling kisses. But that can only happen if he can get her to give Cedar Ridge-and this bad boy-a second chance . . .

AND I also have an excerpt from the book – and it’s kind of long, so I’m dropping it inside the spoiler tag so you can click to read it if you like, and skip it if you don’t. There’s kissing inside, though, as a heads up.

I have 10 digital ARCs and 3 paper ARCs to give away. Would you like one? Behold! Widgets!

Standard disclaimers apply: we’re not being compensated for this giveaway. Void where prohibited. Open to international residents were permitted by applicable law. Must be over 18 and ready to read about summer during summer to win, unless you’re in the southern hemisphere, in which case it’s the opposite. There’s readers thirsty in Atlanta, but there’s beer in Texarkana. Use caution when opening books, as loss of time and chore accomplishment may occur. Widgets will close at midnight on 11 June 2015. Winners will be chosen at random on Friday 12 June 2015 and will be announced same day.

Please contact me if you have trouble with the widgets below, k? Good luck and thank you to Jill Shalvis for the ARCs!
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