#CBR9 Book 62: "Mr and Mr Smith" by HelenKay Dimon

Page count: 210 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

From Goodreads:
Fisher Braun knows how to keep a secret. As a covert paramilitary operative, his job - and his life - depends on it. He's at the top of his game, ready for action and always in control. No enemy has ever brought him to his knees, but one lover has: Zachary Allen, the man currently sharing his bed. The perfect package of brains and brawn, Zach is someone worth coming home to, and Fisher hates keeping him in the dark about what he does. But the lies keep Zach safe. Until the day Fisher loses everything...

Zachary Allen is no innocent civilian. Although he plays a tech geek, in reality he's deep undercover for the CIA. In a horrible twist of face, the criminal enterprise he's infiltrated has set its sights on the man whose touch drives him wild. Zach would do anything for Fisher - except blow his own cover. Now, in order to save him, Zach must betray him first. And he needs Fisher to trust him with all his heart if they want to make it out alive. 

This is the first book I've ever read by HelenKay Dimon, so I can't tell you if it's a typical book for her, or some new and exciting direction she's taking her fiction in. A quick glance at Goodreads shows me that she has written quite a lot of books that all seem to be romantic suspense, some with a m/f and others with m/m focus. In this series, Tough Love, we are introduced to a team of CIA agents, who have clearly worked together for many missions on various paramilitary missions all over the globe. They're a tight-knit and experienced unit, who clearly know each other very well, but Fisher has been hiding the fact that he's gay, and has had a boyfriend hidden away in an apartment for the las few months, from the rest of the group. He's been lying to his boyfriend, claiming to be an engineer, making up excuses every time he gets shipped off to do something insanely dangerous to keep the world safe.

Now his boyfriend appears to have been kidnapped, and Fisher is absolutely frantic. He believes his boyfriend Zach to be a nerdy computer technician and has always feared that his life of spying and covert ops will endanger Zach in some way. Finding him snatched from their home pretty much confirms this. Fisher's partner, Nathan, is rather amused at Fisher's admission that he's gay, as it seems to have been blatantly obvious to the entire team that Fisher had no interest in the ladies. He's more curious as to why Fisher's been lying both about where he's been living for the last three months, and whom he's been living with. He insists on coming with Fisher to confront the kidnappers, who turn out to be a pretty nasty bunch of individuals, and while captive with that organisation, they discover that Zach isn't so much a kidnapping victim as someone who's job it was to hit on Fisher and insinuate himself into his life so he could spy on him for the group.

Fisher is absolutely gutted, and it takes both Fisher and Nathan a long time to believe that Zach is telling the truth about being an undercover CIA agent tasked to infiltrate these high-level kidnappers. Even after Zach's identity has been verified both by the Fisher and Zach's respective supervisors, Fisher feels incredibly betrayed. He believed Zach to be an innocent civilian, and now can't trust anything they had together. Having already dealt with his fair share of betrayal and rejection when he came out to his family, Fisher has always kept himself slightly apart from others, not really daring to trust. Although he's not ready to admit it to himself, he's clearly fallen pretty hard for Zach (everyone else around him can see it) and now he doesn't know what to do with himself.

When helping Fisher and Nathan escape, Zach knows that he most likely broke his cover, but the ruthless organisation he's been infiltrating still needs to be stopped, and he has to return to them, even if it means risking his own life. While Fisher is furious with him, and claims he doesn't care what happens to Zach, he's clearly in denial and needs to be convinced that his superiors, and Zach, know what they're doing.

We are thrown straight into the action in this book, and it very rarely lets up at any point. I suppose in a book of just two hundred pages, you don't really have a lot of pages to spend on slowly building exposition, but it felt a bit jarring occasionally to have everything revealed in little flashbacks while the main story was going ahead at full tilt. I didn't really feel like I was able to get invested in Fisher and Zach's relationship before it was in danger of crumbling. Even with the tight plotting and low page count, Dimon manages to spend some time introducing sequel-bait, a German secret agent also working undercover with the kidnappers and the youngest, apparently less-criminally inclined than his siblings brother of the criminal enterprise. In many ways, their pairing seemed more interesting to me, so Ms. Dimon's tactics clearly worked, I'm very likely to track down the next book in the series as well.

All in all, I would have preferred a few more quiet scenes and a bit more exposition, where I felt like I really got to know Fisher and Zach and therefore could care more about their relationship. I also found at least one of the sex scenes in the book somewhat implausible, considering both the anger and trust issues on either side and the time constraints with regards to the guys' mission, but what do I know? It seemed like at least one of the scenes was in there so the readers got enough smexy times, without it really feeling organic to the plot.

This hasn't exactly been my favourite read of the season, but I am a fan of action movies, and they're not always very big on character development either. So since this is a big budget action movie in romance form, I guess I can't be too picky. Several of Fisher's team members provide excellent comic relief as supporting characters, and as I said, I am very intrigued by the pairing set up for the sequel, so this will clearly not be the last HelenKay Dimon book I read. If you like romantic suspense, and don't really want anything too time-consuming to read, I suspect this will do you nicely.

Judging a book by its cover: I really don't think much of this cover, where they've clearly just found some random male models and posed them casually. These men don't in any way look like convincing secret agents or former soldiers. They just look like they're fighting constipation or pondering how to turn left. While they're not both exactly doing Blue Steel, there are some heavy Zoolander vibes here.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 59: "The Pages of the Mind" by Jeffe Kennedy

Page count: 432 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

From Goodreads: Magic has broken free all over the Twelve Kingdoms. The population is beset by shapeshifters and portents, landscapes that migrate, uncanny allies who are not quite human...and enemies eager to take advantage of the chaos. 

Dafne Maillouix is no adventurer - she's a librarian. But the High Queen trusts Dafne's ability with languages, her way of winnowing useful facts from a dusty scroll, and even more important, the subtlety and guile that three decades under the thumb of a tyrant taught her.

Dafne never thought to need those skills again. But she accepts her duty. Until her journey drops her into the arms of a barbarian king. He speaks no language that she knows but that of power, yet he recognizes his captive as a valuable pawn. Dafne must submit to a wedding of alliance, becoming a prisoner - a queen in a court she does not understand. If she is to save herself and her county, she will have to learn to read the heart of a wild stranger. And there are more secrets there than even Dafne could suspect...

This year, when selecting my choices to review for the RITA Reader Challenge, I made sure to choose books I actually own. I got this in one of many e-book sales, intrigued by the notion of a fantasy romance with a librarian heroine, not exactly something you see that often. It turns out that Dafne as well as being a devoted librarian and archivist is a scholar and a linguist, who delights in learning new languages. Her actual age is never mentioned, but it's clear that she's probably in her late thirties, possibly even early forties and has kept herself under the radar and voluntarily lived a sheltered life. She lost her entire family during the rule of the previous High King, a brutal and ruthless ruler, and feels the loss of siblings greatly. Now more or less acknowledged as an adopted sister to his daughter, the new High Queen (it's clear that she usurped her father in previous books), she is unaccustomed to with any kind of affection.

While this book is the first in a series called Uncharted Realms, it's part of a world already established by Jeffe Kennedy, referencing events and characters from The Twelve Kingdoms, so this book is both a stand-alone and part of a bigger whole. The beginning of the the book felt a bit like I was missing out on something and made me wish I'd read at least the book about High Queen Ursula of the now Thirteen Kingdoms, but once Dafne leaves the court and goes off on her journey, the book was a lot more engaging.

Again due to events that took place before this book started, the realm that these characters live in is now full of unexpected magic, which has affected not only the Thirteen Kingdoms ruled over by warrior Queen Ursula, but also the neighbouring Dasnaria, where her lover is from and a small island nation who are petitioning the crown for reparation from damages. Being the only one from her close circle that the High Queen can spare, she sends Dafne to be her ambassador. She's intelligent, speaks more languages than anyone in the palace and thanks to her extensive reading, knows a great deal about a lot of the strange things happening around the kingdoms. Ursula also sends one of her elite guards, a woman named Jepp, tasked with training Dafne in self defense and a shapeshifter from one of her sisters' courts who can be useful in information gathering. The three women, while very different, bond during their journey.

When they get to the island kingdom of Nahanua, things get complicated, however. The barbarian king mentioned in the blurb (think Pacific Islander warrior, I pictured Jason Momoa in my head the whole time), King Nakoa KauPo seems very taken with her from the first, and straight after their arrival on the islands makes her take off her shoes and stockings to walk barefoot on the volcanic rock the ground seems mostly made up from, then when her feet get to sore to walk, carries her up to the mouth of an active volcano, where there is some sort of mysterious ritual that brings a dragon out of the mountain, culminating in the burly native kissing our inexperienced virgin heroine. She's previously admitted to her female companions that while she's been kissed before, she's never really felt anything out of the ordinary and she's never felt anything close to desire enough to want to have sex. The island king, on the other hand, clearly affects her very differently and it's clear that the two are linked in some way after the kiss by the volcano.

Her feet are badly wounded by walking on the volcanic rock and she's tended lovingly by the women of the court, her chief attendant clearly the King's own sister. As the Nahanuans speak a language completely unfamiliar to her, so communication is extremely difficult, Dafne begins to realise that the ritual (which she was not in any way given a choice to take part in) led to her at least being the King's fiancee, or possibly even his wife. While he sleeps elsewhere while she recovers, she's quite clearly in King Nakoa's private rooms, and he keeps showering her with kindness and affection. As the stop at the Nahanuan islands was only supposed to be a brief one to try to negotiate an understanding between the High Queen and the islanders, before Dafne continued her diplomatic journey to Dasnaria, her bodyguards try to extract her, but find that the King has no intention of letting her go.

To avoid outright conflict between her companions and the King's forces, Dafne is forced to stay behind, sending her friends back to notify the High Queen of the new developments. She discovers that she was indeed married to the King in that strange ceremony and once she learns more of the language, that he believes them to be fated mates, having felt a link to her throughout her life. It's also clear that while Dafne initially tries her very best to fight her attraction to the imposing, yet seemingly very kind man who married her against her will, dissenting forces on the islands will challenge Nakoa's claim to the throne if the marriage is not consummated and the link to the dragon (which it seems their relationship can strengthen) further improved.

If you overlook the part where he pretty much abducts her from her people and marries her without her consent, Nakoa seems to be a pretty great guy. He's clearly a mostly popular ruler, even though he has one rival determined to steal his throne. He's deeply possessive and spends a lot of time carrying Dafne around (since her feet take quite some time to heal), but is always gentle and affectionate towards her. He tries to seduce her, but every time she needs him to step back and take things more slowly, he respects her boundaries. It's also clear that the marriage ritual to link him and Dafne was necessary to free the ancient dragon from it's volcanic mountain and secure the future prosperity of his nation, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. Dafne also seems to accept that she's been forced into a marriage a bit too easily, probably because despite being described as intelligent and capable in the first half of the book, she becomes almost addled with lust for her new husband, and once they finally consummate the marriage, she certainly makes up for lost time with all the love making they engage in.

Even if she's very much in lust with Nakoa, Dafne is very reluctant to be referred to as his queen, and she feels torn in her loyalties to her High Queen. Even though it's quite clear that they share some sort of mystical bond, not just to one another, but to the dragon as well, Dafne is sure she will have to leave and return to her old home eventually. She therefore hesitates to commit fully to the relationship and this causes further tensions.

I liked the world-building of the book and will probably go back and read about Ursula and her two sisters in the previous three books by Kennedy. The next book in the series is about Jepp and the leader of the Dasnarian warriors that take Dafne to the islands, and that also seems intriguing to me. I really wish the central romance wasn't based on a forced marriage - while Nakoa is always very respectful and doesn't force Dafne into anything she's not ready sexually, he didn't give any indication of his intentions before carrying her up to the volcano, and it's revealed that he clearly conspired with the Dasnarians to get her to the islands in the first place. We are never really given an entirely satisfactory reason why an orphaned librarian and a warrior island king from quite a distance away from one another would be fated mates, either, but then I find the trope of the fated mate incredibly exasperating.

I loved that Dafne was a middle-aged virgin, a librarian and a scholar and that she uses her skills throughout the book to try to understand her new position and then to try to solve the riddle of the dragon and its supposed treasure. I liked that the hero, for all his heavy-handed, withholding information ways, was from a culture clearly based on those of the Pacific islands. I think we could have found out more about him, there is a lot more character development given to Jepp and the exotic shapeshifter Zynda, both supporting characters in the book, than to Nakoa (he's big, strong, handsome, possessive, has a lot of tattoos and is extremely good in bed, despite being a virgin like Dafne - having saved himself for her).

I didn't like that Dafne seemed to lose all her critical faculties because she was so overcome with lust. I didn't think the subplot with the challenger to the throne was dealt with all that satisfactorily. I think a bit too much of the start of the book should have been easier to get into for someone who had not read the previous books by this author. I'm still going to check out more of her work, though, and hope there's less of the fated mate and forced marriage stuff.

Judging a book a book by its cover: Dafne is described as quite plain and nearing middle age, so I think the cover model is both prettier and younger than she's supposed to be, but perhaps this scholar beauty with her hair flowing about her head as if by magic, with her billowing gown and the pages of the tome she carries fluttering in the wind, is supposed to be King Nakoa's image of her? While it doesn't entirely fit with the contents of the story, it's a striking enough cover that it made me take a closer look at the description when the book was on sale, and I ended up buying it, so I suppose the marketing department did a good job.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR8 Book 63: "Second Chance Summer" by Jill Shalvis

Page count: 368 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Lily Danville grew up in Cedar Ridge, Colorado, and loved hiking the mountain trails or climbing the rock faces in the summer, or skiing the challenging slopes in the winter. She was happy there, until tragedy struck and she lost half her family over the course of a few weeks. She's never forgiven herself and wasn't ever planning on returning. Having lost her job in a fashionable salon in San Diego and pretty much been blacklisted in the industry, she desperately needs a job, and has no choice but to return to her home town, to work for her friend Jonathan. She dreads going back for a number of reasons, but most of all because it will mean seeing Aidan Kincaid again, the guy she used to dream of, but could never have.

Aidan Kincaid is part of a large and close-knit family. He and his brothers run the Cedar Ridge Resort, which they're trying to keep afloat, despite some serious difficulties thanks to debts run up by their dead-beat dad. Aidan works as a firefighter and volunteers for the local Search and Rescue-service, when he's not co-managing the resort and trying to keep his younger siblings out of trouble. He's got a reputation as a ladies' man, not one for serious commitment, but that's because part of him has been pining for Lily, since the summer when she disappeared from the Ridge. Now she's back and he's more attracted to her than ever. But how long is she going to stay this time? Is she going to leave and break his heart once more?

The blurb of the book led me to believe that Lily and Aidan had shared much more of a passionate romance before Lily left Cedar Ridge, when the fact is that they were both teenagers, who spent quite a lot of time together, but only really had anything romantic going at one school dance. Lily, always in competition with her sister, who had admitted to fancying Aidan, as a result never really let herself get too close to him. Once the tragic events that tore her life to pieces occurred, she is incapable of forgiving herself, and she certainly can't allow herself to have feelings for Aidan, as that would feel like a betrayal to her sister.

Aidan never knew about Lily's sister's feelings and wasn't able to act on his infatuation to Lily until that dance. Shortly after, she left town, before he had time to tell her how he felt and for ten years, he's been trying to tell himself that it was probably for the best. Nonetheless, when she returns, the normally very level-headed man gets all out of sorts (to the amusement of his various relatives) and it doesn't take all that long before he's confirmed that the spark is most certainly still there between him and Lily.

This is the first book in the Cedar Ridge series and there are more than enough Kincaid siblings to provide fodder for multiple sequels. The only other Shalvis I've ever read is Rumor Has It, which I read for the RITA Reader Challenge back in 2014. As far as I can tell from the two books I've now read by her, and some general reading on the internet, Ms. Shalvis excels at cosy, comfortable contemporary romances, set in small towns, featuring generally well-rounded protagonists, without too much angst to complicate things.

In this book, Aidan has his fair share of troubles, relating to his father, but is really quite a stand-up guy. He's very much a protector, for his family and working both as a firefighter AND in search and rescue. For the past ten years, he's has a number of never-too-serious relationships, but he's always been up front about not wanting long-term commitment and once Lily returns to Cedar Ridge, it's obvious that deep down he was just hoping she'd come back and that with her, he pretty much wants nothing but commitment.

Lily struggles with guilt and grief and has a hard time being back in a place where she suffered such powerful losses. She's pretty determined that her stay is only short-term, covering at her childhood friend Jonathan's salon while one of his employees is on maternity leave. She keeps sending out her resumés, hoping for a job somewhere else, with no wish to settle back in her home town, no matter how tempting the presence of Aidan is. Her attraction to him is also all mixed up in guilt and an overwhelming sense of loyalty to her sister, which is what provides the main obstacle to the romance of the book.

I pretty much loved the setting (despite not being an outdoors person at ALL) and the various supporting characters. I liked that what complications and low-level angst there was in the relationship between Lily and Aidan was handled without too much drama, even though both of them clearly had some lessons to learn about communication and not sending mixed signals. I suspect I will be checking out more books in this series, as going back to the fictional town of Cedar Ridge and getting better acquainted with more of Aidan's siblings will provide me with many hours of relaxing summer reading.

Judging a book by its cover: There are two different covers for this book. The one I read (featured here), has a rugged man in a rescue service t-shirt and cargo pants, with a rope and what looks like assorted mountain-climbing gear strapped to his side, photo-shopped onto a background of mountains and blue sky. The other cover is a twee watercolour image, full of flowers and mutet pastel colours, more suitable for a children's book than a romance, if you ask me. It also features the hokey tag line: "Sometimes only going home can set you free". Big bowl of nope on that one. I'll take my rugged mountain man any day of the week.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR8 Book 51: "Him" by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy

Page count: 274 pages
Rating: 4.5 pages

Summary from Goodreads:

They don't play for the same team? Or do they?

Jamie Canning has never been able to figure out how he lost his closest friend. Four years ago, his tattooed, wise-cracking, rule-breaking roommate cut him off without an explanation. So what if things got a little weird on the last night of hockey camp the summer they were eighteen? It was just a little drunken foolishness. Nobody died. 

Ryan Wesley's biggest regret is coaxing his very straight friend into a bet that pushed the boundaries of their relationship. Now, with their college teams set to face off at the national championship, he'll finally get a chance to apologize. But all it takes is one look at his longtime crush, and the ache is stronger than ever.

Jamie has waited a long time for answers, but walks away with only more questions - can one night of sex ruin a friendship? If not, how about six more weeks of it? When Wesley turns up to coach alongside Jamie for one more hot summer at camp, Jamie has a few things to discover about his old friend...and a big one to learn about himself. 

Warning: contains sexual situations, skinnydipping, shenanigans in an SUV and proof that coming out to your family on social media is a dicey proposition. 

While Wes is now sort of "don't ask, don't tell" out to his hockey teammates and coaches at college, he was only really coming to terms with his sexuality when he was eighteen and crushing hard on his best friend at hockey camp. Absolutely desperate for an excuse to touch him, he made a drunken bet and subsequently freaked out after he and his best friend fooled around one very memorable time. Feeling horribly guilty, Wes cut off all contact with his friend and they haven't spoken for four years. Now their teams are likely to face off in the national championships, and Wes feels he should probably make some sort of gesture of reconciliation.

Raised in a large and loving family in California, Jamie really isn't too bothered about the drunken experimentation at hockey camp, but he's hurt and upset that Wes pretty much burned all the bridges of their friendship and never spoke to him after that one night. He's surprised to discover that Wes has resurrected their old tradition of sending each other gag gifts, and suddenly seems willing to patch up their broken friendship as well. He's even more surprised when Wes shows up at camp to coach for the summer, even though he should be getting ready for his big break in Toronto.

Having seen and spoken to Jamie again, Wes can't get him out of his mind, and wants to spend as much time with him as possible, even if he can never admit his true feelings. He's shocked to realise that Jamie wasn't horribly traumatised by their one drunken night together and even more surprised to realise that he may even be willing to repeat the experience. After Jamie does some soul-searching and concludes that he very much seems to be attracted to either gender, the two friends can barely keep off each other, hooking up every chance they get.

While Wes has been more or less openly out in college, he doesn't want to attract press attention during the first year of his new and promising hockey career. He's planning on staying strictly celibate and a relationship is the last thing he's looking for. Jamie's due in Detroit at the end of the summer, but doesn't even know if he wants a career in hockey. He only ever started playing to stand out from the other men in the family who were all into football and now that he's done with college, he's not sure his head is really in the game, if it doesn't involve coaching. There doesn't seem to be much of a future for the two of them, even though they keep growing closer as the weeks pass by.

I have yet to read anything else by Elle Kennedy, although I've heard good things about her Off-Campus series. I very much enjoyed all of the books in Sarina Bowen's The Ivy Years, though, including her M/M romance The Understatement of the Year. That book involved a lot more angst, though, with Graham's initial denial and reluctance to accept his feelings and sexual identity being both frustrating and a bit exhausting.

What I loved about this book is that there isn't really a lot of wrestling with insecurities. Jamie has grown up in California, perfectly comfortable with homosexuality and doesn't feel violated or traumatised by the drunken night he and Wes spent together at eighteen. By the time Jamie and Wes meet again, Wes has accepted that he's gay and is out to his parents (who chose to mainly ignore his confession) and most of his friends. He tells the head coach at the hockey camp and Jamie shortly after arriving there and is comfortable in himself, but has never had a steady boyfriend, as he still secretly pines for the one man he can't have, Jamie.

After an evening out, seeing Wes flirting with someone else, Jamie gets uncharacteristically jealous and initiates a passionate kiss. Wes assumes he's just drunk and confused, and tries to brush him off, not wanting him to do something he'll regret. Jamie's really rather persistent though, and quite skillfully seduces his infatuated bestie. Despite Wes' fears, Jamie seems to have no regrets come morning. Some alone time with his computer and various kinds of porn makes him conclude he's most likely bi and he's more than happy to keep hooking up with Wes for as long as they're at camp.

As is par the course for any romance, the course of true love never does run entirely smooth. Where would be the fun in that? As ecstatic as Wes is about spending quality hockey time with his best friend by day and passionately hooking up by night, he's pretty sure that once Jamie goes off to Detroit, he'll find himself some nice girl to settle down with, and there's that whole going temporarily back in the closet for himself, so as to not attract undue attention during his first year as a pro.

While the book starts out a bit slow, the story really picks up once the story moves to the hockey camp where Jamie and Wes first met many years ago and Jamie now coaches every summer. Both protagonists are funny and likable in their separate ways and the supporting cast around them felt nicely developed too. The love scenes are pretty much all scorching, from their very first kiss (in the rain, because of course it is). I haven't read a lot of M/M romance, but I have never had a problem in seeing the appeal. One hot dude is good, two hot dudes, being hot for each other - so much better.

I'm now a bit torn about getting the sequel, Us, that came out earlier this year. On the one hand, I'd get more Jamie and Wes and seeing how their life together is panning out (plus probably a lot more hot sex). On the other hand, I'm worried there's going to be a lot more complications introduced before they get their eventual HEA after all, and I'm not sure I want that. As long as I have only read this one, they're perfectly gooey and happy together. I really do need to get round to reading the Off-Campus books now, though.

Judging a book by its cover: Some very ripped abs sadly obscured by the unnecessarily large title (would it have hurt the cover designers to let me have a bit more eight-pack to ogle?). You're clearly meant to objectify the very fit model too, otherwise there is no excuse for the t-shirt he's wearing being half pulled off like that. He doesn't even have a face. See, it's totally ok to leer at this handsome athlete - he's completely anonymous. Just so you know what manner of sportsball is being played in the book, the cover designers have also kindly included a hockey stick as well. Because readers are really seeking out these books because of the sports contents, that's right.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 62: "Into the Shadows" by Carolyn Crane

Page count: 310 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Thorne McKelvie has meticulously and ruthlessly worked his way up through the ranks of criminal organisation the Hangmen, a group that doesn't shy away from human trafficking in sweat shops, drug or arms smuggling. The leader of the Hangmen is suspicious of Thorne, however, and worried that he is gunning for his spot next, taking over the whole organisation. So after a series of unexpected attacks on the gang's and their allies' warehouses, he sees an opportunity to have Thorne framed and removed as a threat. Thorne needs to prove that he's not responsible for the raids, and to do so, he needs to search the mansion of his former employer, and face the only woman he ever had feelings for.

Nadia Volkov used to be known as "the Party Princess", obliviously spending her father's money and partying with his many henchmen and bodyguards, without really caring what her father actually did for a living or where the money fuelling her extravagant lifestyle came from. Two years ago, she had an affair with Thorne, her father's most dangerous henchman, which ended when he cruelly cast her aside. When Thorne unexpectedly turns up at the house where Nadia is living with her sister, one of her father's former bodyguards, and her young son, she's terrified that Thorne will discover he's a father and that their child will be in danger once his crew mates realise that there is a toddler that can be used as leverage against him. She also hopes Thorne doesn't discover that she, along with some hired goons, are responsible for the warehouse raids he's investigating. After her father's death, she was appalled when she discovered what he'd been responsible for. Having discovered that her mother is probably alive, in one of the sweatshops now run by the gangs who divided her father's assets after his death, she's systematically raiding each one, freeing the enslaved women in order to locate and liberate her mother.

Thorne believes that Nadia just used him for sex, having overheard and misunderstood a conversation where Nadia discussed him with her sister and offered to "share". Filled with self-loathing and with no illusions about his ruthlessness and inability to feel any sort of softer feelings since his sister was brutally killed when they were teenagers and swore revenge, Thorne and Nadia's former relationship was an extended role play on "the princess and the thug". Nadia actually had feelings for Thorne though, and was uncomfortable with the dirty names he wanted her to call him. She never had second thoughts about keeping his child when discovering she was pregnant. When they reunite, the sparks fly once more, but can they have any sort of future, with Nadia responsible for the crimes Thorne is being accused of? He needs to locate and present the individuals responsible to his boss, or be killed.

Nadia also doesn't realise that Thorne worked as a henchman for her father and moved on to the Hangmen as part of a complicated revenge plot. Having been left to die in the desert, surrounded by scorpions, after his sister was murdered, Thorne swore revenge and has been working methodically to wipe out all the men responsible for his sister's death. Working so deep cover for the covert Associates that only the leaders of these secret agents know he's not the hardened criminal he poses as, he only has one man left before his revenge is complete - Jerrod, the leader of the Hangmen.

Due to his past, Thorne is scarred, literally and figuratively. What happened to him and his sister was dreadful, and the flashbacks to his past made me deeply uncomfortable. To escape his chains in the desert, he needed to push himself to the edge of human endurance and he's spent his entire adult life systematically hunting down every man who was present when his sister was murdered, whether they actually took part in the killing or not. Thanks to Dax, the leader of the Associates, Thorne was able to position himself closer to several of the people responsible. Through their alliance, Dax gets access to invaluable intel about a number of criminal organisations, while Thorne was able to get close to the last man on his hit list.

In order to rise to the top of the Hangmen, Thorne has done any number of terrible things. He's a ruthless and hard man. Nonetheless, he's tired of his revenge quests and longs to be done. His feelings for Nadia are complicated. Just when he was ready to acknowledge to himself that he loved her, he overheard her conversation with her sister (which was not at all what it seemed), making him believe she felt nothing for him, means he now thinks of her with what he terms "love-hate". He dumped her before she could dump him, not realising that the evening he coldly rejected her, she was actually about to tell him about being pregnant. Even before the events that set him on his path to vengeance, Thorne never had a good family life and struggles with any human interactions that don't involve dominance and power play.

While Nadia used to find the role playing and abusive language quite exciting, now it makes her sad and uncomfortable, and when they are reunited,and she's unable to deny that her feelings for him are as strong as ever, she tries to express to Thorne that she only ever called him names because he seemed to get off on it. It doesn't take long before the two are growing close again, despite the dangers facing both of them. Jerrod wants Thorne gone, and when he discovers that Thorne and Nadia have a shared past, he has the weapon he needs to bring his second in command down.

As with Carolyn Crane's previous two books in the series, Into the Shadows is full of action, suspense, complicated and wounded people who need each other to try to make sense of the world. There is a emotionally struggling hero seeking revenge and justice, and a capable and determined heroine. The villain is once again truly despicable, making it abundantly clear that while Thorne isn't a boy scout by any stretch of the imagination, he's in the right in taking Jerrod down. I really liked most things about this book, however, I would have liked even more present interaction between Nadia and Thorne, rather than so many flashbacks. I also found some of the internal machinations of the Hangmen a bit tiresome. It was a fun, suspenseful, sexy read, though. While techincally book 3 in a series, each book can be read as a stand-alone, which is always nice. The book is nominated for a RITA in the Romantic Suspense Category, and it is a well deserved nomination. Ms. Crane also self-publishes her very entertaining Associates novels, so consider buying a copy so she can afford to keep writing.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 74: "Rumor Has It" by Jill Shalvis

Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 304 pages

Summary from Goodreads, cause I'm lazy: 

He’ll help unleash the new woman in her...

Special Ops soldier Griffin Reid doesn’t exactly have happy memories of growing up in Sunshine, Idaho. He’s only come back to recover from a war injury, and while he refuses to admit he’s in a weakened state, he finds comfort in the last person he’d expect.

Kate Evans teaches fourth grade science in Sunshine, the place she’s always called home. Dreaming of graduate school and a happily-ever-after, she’s desperate to break out of the monotony of Sunshine. Luckily, a certain sexy man has just come back into her life.

To Griffin, Kate has always been his little sister’s best friend, but now he’s finding her to be so much more. As both attempt to forge their paths, they must decide if their passionate connection can turn into something lasting…

This is my first ever Jill Shalvis contemporary, and I signed up for the RITA Reader Challenge specifically because I’d been curious about her writing. I generally read a LOT more historicals than contemporaries, Julie James and Jennifer Crusie, as well as Lisa Kleypas’ Travis-trilogy being the only notable exceptions. Still, I like to diversify my reading, and have read so many complimentary things about Shalvis on various review sites, that this seemed like a perfect opportunity.

I did enjoy the book a lot. I figured out from checking out the blurbs of the previous books in the series that Holly and Adam, who are about to get married in this book, as well as some of the other couples who are mentioned repeatedly, find their HEAs in the earlier books. Holly is Griffin’s little sister and Adam is his best friend. He returns to Sunshine only a few days before the wedding, not really telling anyone about the reason he’s been discharged permanently from the military.

An engineer working with bomb disposal, he only barely survived a close encounter with an explosion, having managed to get the rest of his troop safe before the explosion went off. Now he’s suffering from crippling migraines, sudden bouts of nausea, light sensitivity, horrible nightmares and is generally not in a good state. Of course, being a big, tough soldier guy, he’s reluctant to admit weakness or vulnerability to anyone, and keeps his scar hidden under a baseball cap most of the time.

The first person Griffin runs into upon his return is Kate, Holly’s best friend, who’s had a crush on him pretty much forever. She’s fallen on her ass in the snow in front of him, and is naturally quite mortified. He helps her up, and notices just how attractive she is. Even though he is warned off her in the strongest possible terms by his sister – Griff has a reputation for loving and leaving women, Kate is inexperienced and vulnerable – Griffin can’t forget about her.

Kate is bending over backwards to help everyone around her. As well as being the ideal teacher for each and every fourth grader she teaches, she spends much of every day taking care of her widowed, slightly hapless father, bratty teenage drama queen sister and geeky, off-beat little brother. She feeds the homeless guy in the park and brings her ex-boyfriend coffee every morning when they drive to work together (her ex is the school principal). For three years in a row, Kate has been offered a prestigious graduate position at UCSD, with a full scholarship, but every year, she’s turned it down to take care of those around her. Now the deadline to accept is less than two weeks away, and she desperately wants to send in her acceptance e-mail, but is worried her family will fall apart without her.

She decides that she’s sick of always being the good girl, and wants some fun, crazy adventure in her life. She sets out to seduce Griffin at the wedding, and though he tries his best to heed his little sister’s warnings and be a gentleman, he can only resist Kate’s increasingly determined efforts to throw herself at him for so long. He’s also surprised to discover that Kate seems perfectly fine with them having a one-night-stand, while he wants to spend more time with her.

Kate is one of the first people in Sunshine to discover his injuries, and insists on taking care of him when she finds him having an especially bad migraine attack. Having only been back in Sunshine for a short while, Griffin has nonetheless discovered how much time Kate spends caring for others, without anyone really ever being there one hundred per cent for her.

As I said, I really liked this book, but it was by no means perfect, and there were a few things that annoyed me about it. There’s a minor subplot about someone possibly stalking Kate when she’s out running, which felt out of place in an otherwise quite light-hearted book.

There’s also the fact that Kate is so gosh-darned perfect! Really, barring the “doesn’t realize how attractive she is even after several different guys hit on her at a party” and the fact that she appears to be completely unable to actually ASK her family whether they’ll be ok if she goes away to graduate school for a year, just assuming that everything will fall apart if she’s not there mothering them. She’s so perfect, I almost expected to discover that birds ate out of her hand and small rodents and forest creatures braided her hair as if she was a Disney princess. I would have liked her to have some flaws, she felt unrealistically flawless, good-hearted and kind.

I also didn’t really care about Griffin’s conflict with his father. I understand why it was there, and that it was an important reason as to why he never felt at home in Sunshine, where pretty much everyone else obviously thrives, but I just didn’t engage me.

I enjoyed the various family relationships in the book, though; even though Kate’s younger siblings occasionally veered a bit too far into stereotypical bratty teenage girl and geeky weird kid plot moppet territory. I will absolutely be checking out more of the Animal Magnetism series, as well as Shalvis’ Lucky Harbor books, which I’ve also heard many good things about. I just hope the protagonists in her other books are more fully rounded as humans, not Mary Sues.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 66: "Skies of Gold" by Zoë Archer

Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Summary from Goodreads:

Two Lonely Hearts…

Kalindi MacNeil survived the devastating enemy airship attack that obliterated Liverpool, but even her engineering skills can’t seem to repair her broken heart. Seeking to put her life back together, Kali retreats to a desolate, deserted island – only to discover that she’s not alone. Captain Fletcher Adams, an elite man/machine hybrid, a Man O’War, crashed his battle-damaged airship into this deserted island after Liverpool, never expecting to survive the wreck. But survive he did.

One Desire…

Believing he is nothing but a living weapon, Fletcher is wary of his new-found companion – a pretty, damaged, but determined young woman. Together they are stranded on the deserted island, and it is only a matter of time until desire gets the best of both of them. Soon Kali and Fletcher find they may just be what the other needed. But danger from beyond the island puts them to the test. Will it rip them apart or bond their hearts forever?

I liked Kali a lot. She’s clearly been through a horrible trauma, making her retreat to the remote island where generations of her family once used to live. Now no one has lived there for more than thirty years, leaving only a ruined cottage for shelter. Everyone she cared for in Liverpool died in the airship attack, she herself barely survived, trapped under ruins for days. She lost her leg, but has used her remarkable engineering skills to fashion herself a prosthetic. Not wanting to be a burden to her parents, who live in India, while she’s physically recovering further, she’s taken what she was able to salvage of her many clever prototypes to settle on a tiny island in the Outer Hebrides.

She discovers quickly that she’s not as alone as she planned. On her first night there, she hears a strange hum in the distance, and when she goes to investigate, she discovers that there is a man living on the north side of the island. He is huge, and his hair and beard suggests he’s been there for some time. They slowly get to know one another, and develop a friendship while walking and exploring the island, both discovering that complete solitude was perhaps not what they wanted.

Fletcher is a Man O’War, a Steampunk sort of cyborg, who I suspect I would have known more about if I’d read any of the previous books in the Ether Chronicles. As far as I could tell, the various powerful nations of the world have airship fleets, and the most promising captains/pilots, if they have a high enough vitality rating of some sort, can be converted into Man O’Wars, who thanks to the machine parts and wiring operated into their bodies actually work as a sort of battery for their airship. The operation also makes them huge, imposing and very powerful, think Captain America in The First Avenger.

Kali discovers that Fletcher captained one of the British airships that drove the enemies out of Liverpool, but that the ship sustained so much damage that he crashed it in as remote a spot as he could (but not before making sure that as many of the crew members as possible survived. Now he’s pretty sure everyone believes him to be dead, as no one from the Navy has come looking for him or the ship. The girl he once courted reacted with disgust and fear once he returned to her after his “conversion”. He doesn’t trust that anyone else can see him as anything but close to a monster now, and is also far too aware that if it was revealed that he was alive, they’d only want him to continue powering warships. He’s sick of being a human weapon, used only for destruction.

Kali makes him realize that his actions in Liverpool were unbelievably heroic; she actually saw his ship from where she was lying trapped under most of a ruined building. Slowly, as they become closer and the trust between them grows, they reveal their back stories to one another and fight their mutual attraction, not wanting to complicate their friendship. The romance in Skies of Gold takes time to develop, which is always the way I prefer it. While their attraction to one another is pretty instantaneous, it’s certainly not surprising from Fletcher’s side. He’s been alone on the island for three months and wasn’t expecting to run into a beautiful and exotic woman. He finds it difficult to believe that Kali could return the attraction because of the rejection he’s suffered in the past.

Much of the novel is just the two of them alone on the island, and while I thought that might get weird or boring, it didn’t. Unfortunately, then “the danger from beyond the island” shows up, and is a bit preposterous. The world-building crafted, with Ether-powered machinery, clearly some sort of complicated war going on and Man O’Wars as these government-sponsored cyborgs was interesting to me, but the villain who showed up in the final third of the book, and the break neck chase to stop him from carrying out his diabolical plan got a bit too silly for me. Having now read the blurbs of the previous books in the series, I can see that there are also call-backs to previous romantic couples from earlier books, which I’m sure is nice for long time readers. I liked this enough that I’m going to be checking out more of the Ether Chronicles, hoping that the others have more convincing antagonists and final acts.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 56: "The Firebird" by Susanna Kearsley

Page count: 484 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Nicola Marter has psychometric powers. This means that when she touches an object, she can see glimpses of whoever's owned it or touched it before. Her grandfather, who escaped from Russia, has the same powers and always admonished her to keep the gift hidden, which she does, even from her boss Sebastian, an eccentric and successful antiquities dealer. Yet when a woman, Margaret Ross, comes to them with a wooden carving which she wants authenticated, claiming that it was once owned by Empress Catherine of Russia, Nicola touches the little Firebird and can tell that the woman's story is true. There just isn't any actual proof, and poor Margaret has to go away disappointed. Having cared for sick relatives most of her life, the authentication and sale of the carving could have secured this woman's finances. Nicola can't forget her, and decides that she wants to try and help her, without actually openly revealing her powers.

She'll need help proving the carving's history, though, and turns to a man she hasn't seen in two years, Rob McMorran, whose psychic gifts are much stronger than her own. He agrees to help her, and together they travel first to Dundee in Scotland, and later to Belgium, France and Russia, all to track Anna, Margaret's ancestor, and try to prove that the Firebird carving was a gift from a Russian empress. As they travel, their feelings for one another start to resurface. But can they ever have a future when they feel so differently about their psychic gifts?

Nicola is an intensely private person, keeping her psychic gifts hidden from everyone around her, always remembering the dire warnings from her grandfather. Apart from her family, only a very few people in the world know what she can do, Rob McMorran is one of them. Nicola met him while studying in Edinburgh, and his psychic powers are much more extensive than hers, he has premonitions and visions, and much more control of his gifts than she ever managed. The two shared an attraction that could have turned into something more significant, if Nicola hadn't gotten spooked and run away. Now, two years later, she realises that she can't help Margaret without Rob's aid.

Nicola is about to go to Russia to acquire a mural for her boss. What better time to investigate further into the Firebird carving Margaret Ross wanted authenticated? Nicola doesn't think her own powers are strong enough to trace through the centuries to Margaret's ancestor, so she goes to Berwick Upon Tweed to find Rob. If he were to come with her to Dundee, to see Margaret a second time, and touch the carving, he may give her enough clues as to what to search for in St. Petersburg. She wants to prove that the carving originated with the Russian Empress, so Margaret can sell it and get enough money to travel the world.

Rob is a police officer in Berwick and also works as a volunteer lifeguard. It's obvious that the entire town knows about his abilities and that they are a great aid to him in his work. One of the reasons Nicola fled from Edinburgh is because she felt that her powers made her a freak, and she has trouble accepting that Rob can so proudly and openly display his clairvoyance. When she turns up in Berwick, it becomes obvious that he was already expecting her and he's cleared his schedule so he can come with her on her journey.

Their quest to authenticate the carving takes them on a longer and more complicated trip than Nicola had anticipated. When tracking Anna, Margaret's ancestor, who Nicola saw being given the carving by the Empress in her first vision, they first go further north in Scotland to Slains castle, only to discover that she was taken from Scotland to Belgium as a young girl.

When Anna Logan is about eight, she discovers that the family that has raised her isn't actually her own, and that her parents gave her up as a baby to keep her safe. Her great uncle arrives to take her to a convent in Belgium, as in 1715, it was not safe for Jacobites in Scotland and as both Anna's real parents were prominent Jacobites, there are fears for her safety. Traveling with her great uncle is the injured Lieutenant Jamieson, who Anna takes to seeing as a sort of surrogate father. They spend a lot of time together until Jamieson's leg heals, and he promises to return before too long to take Anna from the convent to her family.

Even in the Belgian convent, Anna is not entirely safe. There are those who would use her as leverage to get to her family and relatives, all Jacobites, and through a series of dramatic events, Anna has to flee the convent and eventually ends up in St. Petersburg with a kindly naval captain, who in time becomes vice admiral to the Russian Tsar. Anna is raised in his family alongside his own daughters, but always feels a longing for her real family. To aid her foster father's further rise in society, Anna goes to live with General Lacy, as a companion to his pregnant wife. There she meets the roguish Edmund O'Connor, the general's Irish kinsman. Initially, they are constantly at each other's throats, but time and proximity causes their feelings to develop into something deeper.

Suddenly reunited with Rob, spending so much time with him chasing through Europe and Russia for Anna's history, Nicola's feelings towards him start to reawaken. They have to be in physical contact to share the visions of the past, and Rob always behaves as a perfect gentleman, almost like a brother much of the time. At other times, he confuses her by being decidedly flirtatious. During their journey, Rob keeps pushing her to use her psychic abilities more and more, challenging her perceptions that being able to do such things are bad or undesirable things. He can't understand why she hides and represses her talents; she is unnerved at how willing he is to show his skills to the world.

There are two parallel stories in The Firebird, a narrative device that may seem familiar to anyone whose read any of Kearsley's other books. This book is actually a sequel to one of Kearsley's previous novels, The Winter Sea, known as Sophia's Secret in the UK. It is also, as far as I could tell, loosely connected with her book The Shadowy Horses, where Rob McMorran first appeared. Anna Logan is actually Anna Moray, the daughter of Sophia and John from The Winter Sea. Her life is an eventful one, and throughout she seeks love, belonging and to be reunited with her true family. That's not to say that she doesn't experience a lot of love and care in both of her foster families. The Logans and later the Gordons care for her deeply, and while she doesn't have the life that her parents wished for her, it's by no means a bad one.

I read The Winter Sea a long time ago now, and must admit that I no longer remember all the details of the plot. I do remember finding Kearsley's writing completely spell-binding though, and being drawn into the story, captivated by the story lines in both the past and the present. It's exactly the same with this book. When I read Lauren Willig's The Pink Carnation series, I tend to get annoyed every time I have to leave the story of the brave spies of the past, always feeling that the jumps back to the framing story in the present is a bit like getting an ad break just as the movie you're watching is getting really good. Here, I was almost more compelled to read about Nicola and Rob in the present day, although Anna's story was also fascinating. It's a big book, which takes its time to reveal its secrets. I especially loved the sections in St. Petersburg, which I was lucky enough to visit about five years back. This book really made me want to return there.

The carving that Nicola is trying to authenticate is a Firebird, which appears in several Russian folktales. There are several different versions, but they all seem to amount to the same thing: whoever goes to chase after a Firebird, may return from their journey with something entirely different than what they originally set out to find. This is absolutely the case for both Nicola and Anna, and I very much enjoyed taking part in their romantic journeys.

This is the third Kearsley novel I have read, and I can see why she's so popular among her fans. I would also like to emphasise that while this book is a sequel, and seems connected to some of Kearsley's other books, it works fine on its own, and as it features a lot of the narrative devices I've seen in other of her novels, can be a great introduction to her writing.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR5 Book 99. "About Last Night" by Ruthie Knox

Page count: 230 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Cath Talarico is a Chicago girl trying to make a new life for herself in London She has made several big mistakes in her life, but for the past two years, she's been working her ass of, being New Cath, who stays out of trouble, never does anything wild and crazy, and works diligently on an exhibition at the V&A, hoping to earn herself an assistant curatorship, despite the fact that she has no formal qualifications. Her life is so predictable that she can tell tell exactly which of the many commuters she shares a train with every morning, will show up at what time.

After a disastrous blind date (that Cath only agreed to in the hopes of securing a particular item for the upcoming exhibition), wakes up in a strange flat, and vaguely remembers being taken home by the man she only thinks of as City - one of her fellow commuters, always impeccably dressed in a three piece suit, who clearly works in the financial district, probably as a banker. She remembers enough that she knows she wasn't taken advantage of in any way, and is touched when she discovers he's left a new toothbrush and a clean towel out for her. When she's freshened up, she discovers that City, who is indeed a banker, in reality called Nev Chamberlain (yes, after the Prime Minister), also paints, and may not be the elitist rich guy she imagined him.

Nev works in the family's bank, but is absolutely miserable doing so. His older brother presents him with an ultimatum from their autocratic mother. Nev will get a lucrative promotion in the bank, but only if he agrees to get married to some suitable young lady. His family are frankly appalled that he's moved away from their sphere of influence, and is trying to express himself through paintings. He's just as attracted to Cath as she is to him, and soon they're conducting a passionate love affair, even though Cath refuses to tell him where she lives, or what she does for a living, and staunchly refuses to let him take her on any real dates. She has four tattoos on her back, as permanent reminders of the past mistakes she has made, but guards her secrets and will only occasionally let something significant about herself slip.

It's quite clear that Nev and Cath are complete opposites, and with Cath's previous experiences, she is very wary of new commitment. She's an artist with a dark and troubled past, and more trust issues than you can count. Nev is from a rich and privileged background, and pretty much hates his life, but is too unsure of his own abilities as an artist to break out of the life his family's expectations has made for him. Can the two of them ever actually make it work?

About Last Night was one of this year's RITA finalists for contemporary romance. I'd seen it favourably reviewed in a few places, but when a friend mentioned that knitting played a central part in the plot that I became really curious about reading it. It's a quick and very enjoyable read. The sexy parts are very steamy indeed, but that wouldn't have mattered if I didn't believe the chemistry between the characters, and their developing relationship. It's obvious from how different the characters are that their backgrounds and emotional baggage are going to lead to some form of conflict, but I was especially impressed with how that conflict both played out, and was resolved. Cath is an understandably damaged and cautious heroine. Nev is a great hero. He makes mistakes, but works hard to make up for them as well. There is absolutely a fair bit of angst in this book, but unsurprisingly, what with this being a romance, it all works out well in the end, in a satisfying and fairly realistic way, considering the genre. Well recommended.