#CBR10 Book 3: "Sunset in Central Park" by Sarah Morgan

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Francesca "Frankie" Cole's parents went through a fairly harrowing split when she was fourteen. Her father cheated with a much younger woman, left her mother as a broken-down wreck and walked out without ever looking back. Frankie was the one who had to try to pick up the pieces with the devastated parent she had left. After a period of mourning, her mother seemed to decide that enough was enough, cut her hair, lost a lot of weight and started borrowing her daughter's clothes, determined to sleep around just as much as her husband had. She didn't seem to be very discriminate about whether the men she chose were older, younger or married and on the small island where they lived, and everyone knew everyone else's business, Frankie's life went from bad to worse as her mother's reputation seemed to become automatically attached to her as well. Once Frankie left Puffin Island to go to college, she has never been back and she now tries to be as different from her mother as is humanly possible.

While her mother's attitude seems to be "If you've got it, flaunt it", Frankie never wears skirts or dresses (after a very unfortunate incident at prom, where someone seemed to think that since her mother liked to sleep around, Frankie did too). She prefers baggy, non-descript clothes and also wears thick-rimmed, specifically chosen unflattering glasses in public, clearly trying to hide herself away as much as possible. What few dating experiences she's had, seem to have been fairly awful. She's an introvert and deeply cynical and pretty much the opposite of her outgoing, romantic colleague and best friend Eva. One of the only men she feels comfortable around is Matt, her best friend Paige's older brother, who also happens to be her landlord. Since Paige and Frankie have been friends since they were four, Matt has been there for her most of her life, and also knows how much of a scandal Frankie's mother caused on Puffin Island.

While Matt might think he knows everything there is about Frankie, he's shocked to realise one evening that the glasses she's worn her entire adult life are not actually something she needs, but one of many defencive shields she uses to hide herself away from the world. He starts to wonder how much else he doesn't know about the fascinating woman he's been attracted to for so long. He knows that Frankie isn't romantic, and actively seems to want to avoid dating, but he's also pretty sure that his interest is not one-sided, and decides to take the plunge and move their relationship to the next level. Trying to coax Frankie out on a date is no easy feat, however.

Frankie is the second of the co-owners of Urban Genie, the events planning and concierge service company set up in Sleepless in Manhattan. She, along with her best friends Paige and Eva, grew up together on the idyllic Puffin Island outside Maine and moved to New York together after college. They ended up at the same company, and were fired at the same time. All three women live in Brooklyn, in a brownstone owned and restored by Paige's architect brother. They pay a very reasonable rent because Matt is well off, and it's clear that along with Matt's best friend (and now Paige's boyfriend) Jake, they are a close-knit group of friends, who tend to have movie nights every Friday on the beautiful roof terrace, or dinner together at Jake's adoptive mother's Italian restaurant.

Determined to make herself as different from her mother as possible, it's clear that Frankie might have gone a bit overboard. The fact that a lot of the guys she grew up with automatically assumed that she was "easy" and hence took liberties they shouldn't, is the reason she started learning karate at seventeen. She's never had a really successful or satisfying relationship with a man so far in her life, and one especially charming individual apparently told her that when it came to sex, she was a "D minus". Hence she's pretty much sworn off men entirely, claiming she's perfectly fine nursing her many, many plants (when they work together, Paige is the planner and organiser, Frankie deals with plants, horticulture and practical details, while Eva covers food, baking and all the romantic touches) and spending her nights reading rather than going on dates. Still, she does find Matt very attractive, and is really not entirely sure how to handle that, much to her two friends' amusement.

When Matt decides that enough is enough, and starts openly flirting and complimenting Frankie, she's entirely flustered and she goes into full-on panic mode when he actually asks her out. Terrified of commitment because of her parents' horrible divorce and burned by her previous awful dating experience, Frankie concludes that if she just kisses Matt, he'll see how terrible she is and give up on her - but that experiment backfires rather spectacularly. Surprising absolutely no one who's ever read a romance novel before, Frankie isn't bad at or hates intimacy and sex, she just hasn't had any good experiences, and therefore doesn't know what she's missing.

It was a nice role reversal from the other two books that here the heroine is the one who takes the longest to commit to the relationship and Frankie's depressing childhood and dating hang-ups are dealt with really well. I also appreciated that while it's quite clear that Frankie hates the way her mother jumps from guy to guy and is embarrassingly candid about her sexual experiences in front of anyone who will listen, and mortifies Frankie by hitting on her male friends (like Jake and Matt), there is no slut shaming here. Frankie can understand why her mother chooses to live her life the way she does, she just doesn't agree with it and feels embarrassed because her mother is the opposite of discreet. It's quickly established that while Eva wants all the details on every of her friends' romantic and sexual lives, Frankie and Paige would rather not have any (in Frankie's case, because they make her uncomfortable, in Paige's case, because Frankie starts dating her brother - and you really don't need those mental images). Neither Frankie nor her friends judge her mother, they just wish she didn't try to make Frankie over in her own image, and was a bit more aware of how intensely uncomfortable she makes her daughter.

A satisfying aspect of the book is also that Frankie isn't immediately "healed", just because she finally starts having a satisfying romantic and sexual relationship. There are good reasons for her reluctance to commit, her many fears and hang-ups and while Matt is a great and supportive guy, he needs to be patient while Frankie works through a lot of her issues. The scene where Frankie has spoken honestly with her mother about the divorce and how her father's abandonment and her mother's behaviour has made her feel and finally feels ready to tell Matt that she loves him is made so much more satisfying by the complicated series of events that take place when she comes to find him at their brownstone.

I have very much enjoyed all three books in the From Manhattan with Love series. From what I can see on Goodreads, Sarah Morgan has at least two other trilogies (one set on Puffin Island) out, as well as a few more books in this series (that clearly spun out from the original trilogy). I see myself spending a lot of time with her writing in the months to come.

Judging a book by its cover: Not a huge fan of pink in any situation, and I find it funny that Frankie's book is the one which gets the pink cover - since she seems to be as far from romance, pink and fluff as it's possible to get. Frankie loves the outdoors and plants, so Central Park is clearly a place she adores (which Matt knows, and it's where he takes her for their first date). On the other two covers, the heart appears to be made up of stars, here it's made up of birds - another nice touch.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 58: "White Hot" by Ilona Andrews

Page count: 416 pages
Rating: 5 stars

This is book 2 in a trilogy and if you've not read Burn for Me yet, that's where you really should begin. While you could begin the story with this one, you'll get a better introduction to the story, characters and world-building if you start with book 1.

It's been a few months since the events of the first book, and Nevada has been practising her abilities, learning more about what she can do and how she can control them. She insists makes Augustine Montgomery agree to let her question a suspected serial killer of little girls, in order to verify the location of his latest victim, and he agrees, against his better judgement. In return, Nevada agrees to see a friend of his, Cornelius Harrison, whose wife was recently murdered under mysterious and clearly magical circumstances. She knows that she and her family may not have the power or resources to help Mr. Harrison, but his grief is so palpable and she feels enough for him and his daughter to agree to take the case anyway.

They have not been investigating long when they discover that Mrs. Harrison's death was part of a bigger conspiracy, possibly connected to the events Nevada were involved in a few months ago. While she's tried her best to put Connor "Mad" Rogan out of her mind (not helped by the constant teasing and hinting from her family), they are soon reunited, as Connor is also investigating the event, having lost several of his people in the same incident. He persuades Mr. Harrison that it would be in their best interests to work together, and Nevada doesn't really have a choice but to respect her client's wishes.

The chemistry between Nevada and Connor is as strong as ever, and while to Nevada, it may have seemed as if he completely forgot about her after she rejected his over the top suggestion that she come away with him at the end of the last book, he's clearly just been biding his time, doing whatever he can to keep her and her family safe from any and all threats they might be facing. It becomes clear very quickly that a group of very powerful people are working together to create chaos and possibly destroy Houston and Nevada and Connor have once again made themselves their biggest enemies. Will they survive long enough to actually have a proper conversation about their attraction and the possible future of their relationship?

In Burn for Me we were introduced to Nevada Baylor and Connor Rogan and the alternate reality where there are any number of magic users all over globe and the more powerful, the higher the political power the families hold. Connor "Mad" Rogan was a bit too much of a careless and ruthless alpha male, so incredibly powerful that he was used to take what he wanted and act without long-term consequences. He has a lot of potential as a hero, but was clearly far too emotionally closed off and unstable to be a proper partner to the awesome Nevada, whose powers were clearly only hinted at in the first book. Here we get a lot more back-story into what made him the man he is (it's not exactly pretty) and Nevada gets a greater understanding of what she's going to have to face, if she decides that he is the right man for her.

It was obvious that Connor realised very quickly that Nevada was a Prime, even though she herself was unaware of the scope and extent of her abilities. Now she has started learning to use and control them, but she doesn't seem to realise how just how dangerous exposing her abilities to the world might be, and what long-term consequences it can have for her family or her potential relationship with Connor.

In this book, more of Nevada's awesome family get their time to shine. Her cousins, the computer genius Bern and his brother Leon, still so frustrated that he doesn't seem to have any special abilities in a family with so many gifted people (it turns out he isn't as much of a dud as he thinks, I suspect this will be a plot point in the third book); her wonderful and strong grandmother and mother, who both work so hard to help protect the family; and her younger sisters, Arabella and Catalina, who can both be infuriating teenage brats, but who won't hesitate for a second to help the family and do their fair share of protective detail if it's required. It becomes clear over the course of the book that the Baylors are a very gifted family, with Catalina and Arabella having Prime-level powers of their own. We see some of what Catalina is capable of towards the end of the story, but Arabella's powers are still mostly a mystery, but all the hints we have been given suggest shape-shifting of some kind, possibly into something large and formidable.

Cornelius Harrison, an animal mage, who made a minor appearance in the first book also becomes important here. Ilona Andrews excel at characterisation, even when it comes to teenage and child characters, and Harrison's four-year-old Mathilda is never just a plot moppet, although she is used very well to bring out the unexpectedly softer side to several other characters over the course of the story. Harrison's ability to control animals is used excellently several times, including one of my absolute favourite scene, involving cat-burgling ferrets wearing infra-red cameras and little harnesses full of useful tools.

Impatient readers also have to wait quite a long time before the central couple finally have a chance to consummate their relationship. There are a number of fairly scorching scenes in the build-up, but they always get interrupted by something inconvenient, like prying family members or near-death experiences.

While the stakes sometimes seem higher in this book than in the last, the resolution to their big problem seemed to almost go too smoothly. Having read the book twice over the course of a week, I find that even the somewhat weaker ending didn't ruin my enjoyment of the book overall, and at the moment, it's one of my very favourites of the many great paranormal fantasy books the Andrews have written so far. There seem to be two main threats facing the Baylors and Rogan in the next book, and I'm so intensely glad that I won't have to wait more than about a month to get my greedy hands on it.

Judging a book by its cover: I seriously don't even know where to begin with this cover. The really sad and awful truth is that THIS is what it looks like AFTER the marketing department actually edited it, managing to against all odds, make it worse than it was before. The original cover still had the implausibly muscular male model (who I'm going to assume is supposed to be Connor - note that it's a different dude from the cover of Burn for Me) and the Shakira-lookalike who I can only guess is supposed to be Nevada (again, completely different model than they used on the previous cover) in a very cheesy embrace, but there were not exaggerated and cartoonish-looking icicles all over the title font, nor was there the pastel nightmare that I think is supposed to show the ice cave our protagonists are trapped in at one point. The original cover was bad, this is so much worse.

To be fair, the actual scene in the ice cave would require a cover that is decidedly NSFW, hence both participant wearing at least some clothes here. It's still, without a doubt, the most eye-gougingly awful cover I think I've ever had the misfortune to see on a paranormal fantasy cover, and makes me very happy that I own the book in e-format, so I don't need to wrap my book in a bag when reading it on public transport.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.