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The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever (Bevelstoke, #1)

The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever by Julia Quinn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I have a lot of mixed feeling about this one. I feel it’s about 3.5 stars, and am still not sure if I rounded the correct way.
While I don’t believe this book is one of the author’s earliest, judging by the publication date, it certainly reads like one. Both plot and writing-wise.
On one hand, it certainly had its perfect moments (like the brilliant first chapter), and on the other hand the whole main ‘drama’ of the story (the one with obsessing about people not saying the words) and the whole conclusion were utterly and toothachingly cliched and cheesy. In fact, there were uncharacteristically (at least I’d like to think so) many cliched and cheesy moments in this, compared to other books.
Then there is the fact that the main female friendship was of a rather insincere nature that shouldn’t be normalized, and the problem that the issue of the ‘friendship’ being half-sided was never recognized or addressed. As well as the fact that there was a number of side characters who were left too glaringly underdeveloped and faceless, which I also felt was uncharacteristic for the author.
And there is also the fact that POV floated all over the place.
In all, this book just reads very much like ‘one of very first books’, where there are some good ideas but execution lacks style and sophistication that develops with experience.



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My recent panic episode (triggered by newest medication messing with my heart rate and Japanese drug stores disappearing while I wasn’t looking and not selling anything that would let me measure and record it) led me to purchasing a ‘fitness’-type watch that now records my heart rate and sleep patterns, etc., constantly.
(Unfortunately it also now refuses to let me turn off GPS on my phone, which is bound to give me another episode some time soon, because I’m paranoid enough to want GPS to always be OFF on all my devices.)
There were a couple of interesting measurements, like the fact that there is a visible difference between me being at home and me not being at home (in general 20-40 bps difference between me sitting at home doing nothing and me sitting at work doing nothing at any point of time), or rapid spikes while I’m getting ready to leave in the morning…

But the thing I found most interesting is that since the program marks heart rate above certain number as “fat burning”,
according to it I’ve been “burning fat” every time I read today (I’m on a stressful action-sequence ending of a sci-fi drama),
and wouldn’t that just be the dream?

(Though, it’s all total bs, because if I was burning anything every time they say I do (more than 5h in a day), I wouldn’t be gaining weight from just thinking about food as I tend do, would I?)

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A Hunger Like No Other (Immortals After Dark, #2)

A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


I didn’t like the first one, but since this one kept showing up in practically every list and ranking I use to find new books to read, I felt almost obligated to try it.
This one felt somewhat better than the previous one, but still 1.5 legs over the line of “too rapey”. Still too full of hatred and aggression. Too crude. Too preoccupied with material things and symbols of wealth and sex, with ‘sex and violence’ being all these books are really built on. Characters hardly talk to each other, mostly at each other. Everyone hates each other, everyone wants to kill everyone else, and then when they feel a fierce need to also have sex with each other for some ‘supernatural-biological’ reason, the ‘plot’ ensues.
At least I now have ‘tried’ these series and the author enough to have no regrets about parting our ways and not looking back.



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Blue Diablo (Corine Solomon, #1)

Blue Diablo by Ann Aguirre

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


It’s a skillfully written book, strongly above average, with some interesting concepts and characters, but it also felt…diluted. Or confused. Things are happening, but it also feels like nothing is. The beginning was definitely the better part of the book, while the end felt anticlimactic. To much of the set-ups seems to be aimed at the later books to come, so this book ended with very little actually resolved, which meant there was very little satisfaction from the reading experience overall.
There’s such thing as too many question marks.
Unfortunately, the worst part of this book is the protagonist. She is cowardly, manipulative, and too preoccupied with herself and deciding which one of the attractive men she should or shouldn’t ‘let herself get involved with’. She could be worse, I wouldn’t exactly put her together with the truly annoying female protagonists of paranormal romance I’ve seen before, but she’s still difficult to like.



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Burn for Me (Hidden Legacy, #1)

Burn for Me by Ilona Andrews

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Other than the very much less-than-tasteful cover design, this could very well be the perfect mix of urban fantasy, action, and romance.
The world setting is powerful and distinct, the characters are interesting, deep, and developed. Nevada is not just another ‘I know how to kick their asses myself’ urban fantasy heroine. She has family, she has head on her shoulders, she has heart. Rogan may on surface seem like another ‘super hot male with too much money and power and damaged past’, but a) he does it well; b) there is more to things he does and why.
Some aspects of the story and future developments do seem predictable, but I think the tone and the way it’s done more than makes up for it.



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American Witch (American Witch, #1)

American Witch by Thea Harrison

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I’ve wavered between 3 and 4 stars for a while, and I might still change my mind… While I did enjoy most of the story and characters, there is a couple of points that really bothered me:
1) The Russian.
Rasputin is just such a tired and overused figure, when I saw the name I practically groaned. Then there’s the language… It made me feel like watching those tv dramas that think their audience are too stupid to care if they use Chinese actors who can’t pronounce Japanese words to act as Japanese and have a ton of American actors speak some kind of mumbo-jumbo pretending to sound Russian or any other kid of Slavic language. Okay, none of the words used were actually wrong, but… It just felt unnatural. For example, replacing word ‘darling/honey’ where it would fit in English sentences with Russian version is just not enough. Would it fit there if the sentence was in Russian? Would it be used in such way at all? Would it be natural for a male who lived in pre-revolution Russia to use these specific words and in such way? I’m not an expert, but my language instincts tell me ‘no’. It just felt unnatural. It’s a huge pet peeve for me.
2) The treatment of the main male character that is getting very old and tired.
We get an enigmatic, whole, character who is attractive in his drive and independence. The whole reader-favorite ‘dark and dangerous’ package. But then as the book unfolds he slowly gets morphed and forced to fit some kid of ‘ideal image from a woman’s perspective’, until at the very end he only says and does things like ‘a woman’ would want him to (with all the ridiculous proposals and sitting quietly in the background). This made me a little angry. For one, not all women like and want same things. For another, it just feels fake, and the concept of the male character just giving up all that he was and had, and then making him fit into the life the female character just decided to choose for herself is unfair and tiring. I don’t like it and this story flow has been used a few too many times already.



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Bear Necessities (Halle Shifters #1)

Bear Necessities by Dana Marie Bell

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Could have been a decent enough urban fantasy plot-wise, with some solid setting and interesting characters, if not for a couple of issues:
– The porny porn is too porny and kind of out of place. I don’t know, it just didn’t seem to fit and made me want to skip most of it.
– The concepts are not really thought-through. For example, nothing about Tabby and her behavior makes the fact that she spent 8 years living as a wolf in nature and not communicating with others believable.
Also, somewhere between the issues 1 and 2 lets consider the fact that the girl who was supposed to be a lone wolf from age of 15 and had one a one-night stand in the six month after she returned to society, acts like a porn star. Where did she get all the experience? Before she was 15? This made the porny content even more cringy.
– Writing is mediocre and there was a ton of punctuation problems.



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Neanderthal Seeks Human (Knitting in the City, #1)

Neanderthal Seeks Human by Penny Reid

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book wasn’t really what I expected it to be. The cover-description combination made me imagine something lighter/sillier, somewhere closer to a young adult/new adult comedy with some romance sprinkles. In fact it’s a bit more serious than that, deals with adult enough lives and concepts, though it still is neither heavy not explicit in any way.
The weakness of this book lies in the fact that it seems to crumble some of its plot details a bit too much, instead of resolving them. You discover some piece of information that should have seemed important and represented some twist in the plot, but instead it brings a ‘uh, so/and?’ feeling, because it gets mentioned but not worked out. Sometimes this is explained by the fact that the reader stays with the MC perspective, and when she gets told ‘it’s been taken care of’ and doesn’t ask for more, readers don’t get any explanations either. It felt like there were a lot of small loose plot ends left hanging everywhere.
For me personally, it also walks on that edge of being just a bit too close, because of some shared issues, when, on one hand, some matters are very easy to identify with, while on the other hand the differences stand out too much because it feels like they shouldn’t be there…
Also, the writing is pretty good, and I’ve actually had to save a few quotes that really spoke to me:

‘I, on the other hand, always hovered in the space between self-consciousness and sterile detachment; my gracefulness was akin to that of an ostrich. When my head wasn’t in the sand, people were looking at me and probably thinking what a strange bird!’

my therapist called me it an already natural propensity to observe life rather than live it.

Since I spent much of my childhood being left behind and ignored, one might think that, as an adult, moments of perceived abandonment would feel old hat. The truth is, as an adult, I’m always waiting to be left behind. I’m always ready to be discarded and, therefore, I spend significant amount of time preparing for this eventuality.

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Keegan's Lady (Keegan-Paxton #1)

Keegan’s Lady by Catherine Anderson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A romance so thick and corny it will be perfect for those who people who want to bury themselves in it like in a bathtub of honey and not think much.

I only read 2 other books by Catherine Anderson, and while it is enough to realize that her romances tend to be extra-archetypal in their structure and content (predictable story arch, strongly female perspective, unbelievably perfect males, damaged girls who carry some deep emotional trauma but are also of course very pretty and domestic (usually great cooks), etc.), this one just had a bit too much of ‘over the top’ element. Ace, while carrying the ‘dangerous bad boy in black’ image visually, is practically a psychiatrist in one moment, saint in another, and notices and thinks all the right things all the time–the picture of ‘ideal man’ from female perspective drawn thick and unapologetic. And it goes on like that: the hero is too perfect, the heroine is too much of a ‘tortured innocence’, her brother is too unbearable (every time he opens his moth you’ll want to vomit, but apparently he needs to be understood and forgiven), her father is too horrific, the romance and setting is too idealistic, the mess in the end is too dramatic… The story and world setting ‘outside’ the relationship of the two also seemed thinner than in other books.
There’s certainly a time and place for books like this, when your mind might need something entirely unrealistic, some great evil that hurt women to be banished by a ‘bad boy price charming’ who is also drawn entirely whom a female perspective and will make everything right… But I have to say there’s such thing as laying it on too thick.
I’m also kind of glad that I read ‘Summer Breeze’ before this, because I’m not sure I would’ve picked up these series if I judged them by this book…



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My specific brand of first-world problem: having about 90 TBR books in front of me and a rainy day off perfect for just curling up and reading all day, and wasting the whole morning absolutely unable to choose what I want to read and which book would fit into the mood of this day.

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Grimspace (Sirantha Jax, #1)

Grimspace by Ann Aguirre

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Action-packed, blood-thirsty, emotional. Impressive.

I was really about to give this book 5 full stars.
But then I made myself consider a couple of points:
-This book works for me in some ways I kind of wish it didn’t (it’s kind of discouraging to see yourself identify like never before with a protagonist who is grieving, broken, and clearly not conventionally sane…not that any of this is a surprise), and it sort of made me question whether I would still feel the same way about this book if I was in a healthier state of mind.
– This book actually has a very simple/traditional structure (as in highs and lows and their timing) that hides behind very good writing, but once you see it…it makes it a bit too predictable.
– The bloodthirstiness sometimes comes over the top. We start at a point of great loss, and then we go on from death to death. This book is full of sacrifices and it constantly exists on an edge of complete hopelessness and desperate hope. It’s not a very pleasant journey. Despite the way the book addresses the issue on the very last page…I have my doubts about whether the balance was actually achieved.

Regardless though, the writing is great, it has depth and style and I was caught from the very chapter. Depressing or not, this book is definitely a one for my Favorites shelf.




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