The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Dreaming of a White Wolf Christmas Terry Spear, 2017 New Release! I received a copy of this book from NetGalley for the purpose of review. I sort of hate that I'm spending any more time and energy on this godforsaken turd of a book. The heroine starts out on a camping trip, where she's bitten by what honestly sounds like a fluffy puppy. After some terrible description and confusion on my part, I guess that must have been a wolf because now she's a werewolf. She sees a mysterious wolf across a river. And that's the set-up. Two years later, she has abandoned her friends and family to live alone and write paranormal romance. The author spends endless pages introducing the male lead by recapping what sounds like at least a dozen earlier books, none of which have any bearing on the events of THIS book. The male lead is a PI who's been hired to find her because her adoptive parents died and left her money. It's mentioned a few times that the heroine is a...

Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse, Book One) Charlaine Harris, 2001 Premise: Sookie is a waitress; she mostly keeps to herself. She sort of has to, otherwise she ends up reading people’s minds and knowing things she’d rather not. She’s intrigued when the first vampire shows up openly in their small town, which quickly turns to worried when her new friend is suspected of murder. This was....fine. Nothing special. It’s cute, I guess, and the writing is competent and I was curious enough to get to the end, but in the end I just thought it was fine. My main problem with the book was Sookie. Laying aside her annoyingly cutsie-pie name, she’s irritatingly dense. Why are you surprised when something paranormal happens? YOU CAN READ MINDS! You ARE paranormal! And then, why are you surprised the next time something paranormal or scary happens? And the time after that? And the time after THAT? I know it’s a lot to take in, but she is really incapable of rolling with a situation, and...

Night Shift (Jill Kismet, Book 1) Lilith Saintcrow, 2008 Premise: Jill is a hunter, someone trained to battle the things from hell that sneak onto Earth to cause death and corruption. But she isn’t without weakness and darkness of her own, and with a force like she’s never seen causing havoc in her city, she isn’t sure whether she can still stand and fight. Hmmm. I read a historical romance by this same author and rather liked it most of the way through, hence picking this up off a dollar-book rack. Sorta wish I’d grabbed something else now. It wasn’t out-and-out terrible, I was curious about the setting and the plot, the hell creatures were interesting, and the fact that there were plenty of kinds of were-creatures and the story doesn’t bother to break you in easily about it was fun. I feel sort of uneasy about my opinions here, too. Did I dislike this book because Jill is just too rough around the edges for me? Because she’s weak? Because the unpleasant parts were too u...

Hit List Laurell K. Hamilton, 2011 Note: this is the 20th paranormal thriller-romance featuring Anita Blake. Some unavoidable spoilers follow.   Premise: Anita's out of town for a change, wearing her federal marshal hat. She, Edward and a bunch of endangered newbies are hunting a serial killer targeting weretigers. But is it all a plot by the Harlequin to expose Anita to The Mother of all Darkness? Of course it is. Because at this point it would be silly to have a book in this series that was just a mystery, that wasn't linked to the nonsensical overarching plot. (/sarcasm) That gripe stated, the plot of this one wasn't so bad, except that it was enough plot for a novella, or a long short story, not a novel. The rest was padded out with poor description and restating the same points over and over. Seriously, does anyone read these books before sending them to print? Anyone? On the upside, there was only one sex scene! I'm shocked at the restraint! If...

Well, Guilty Pleasures ( review ) comes to mind. Much of the Anita Blake series would fit this category. Yes, many of them are awful. That, clearly, is not the point. Other paranormal romance books come and go on my radar, but these ridiculous books hang around, particularly the first few. Full schedule of the Reading Meme Here .

I feel that this should be a person I've read more than one book by, so I won't say Stephenie Meyer, or Audrey Niffenegger, both of whom wrote books I didn't like. I want to think of someone I kept giving a chance to, and they kept letting me down. I might have to nominate Laurell K. Hamilton, because I've read and enjoyed many of her books, but there have been plenty of books by her that are nothing but inconsistency and failure. Her relationship with criticism is just weird, I think editors stopped editing her work, and nothing gets proofed before print. That all makes me crazy. Another possibility is David Weber. I have loved a lot of his books, but the more I read, the more disappointed I became in the way he's started to just pump out endless numbers of useless volumes. James Patterson I've only tried once, but once was more than enough. Really any of them qualify for this answer. More information and the schedule of the Reading Meme Here .

Enchanting the Lady Kathryne Kennedy, 2007 This book was fun and free! I believe it was a promotion, though, and I don't think it is free any longer. This was a Kindle book, and the formatting was unusual but not too bad. However, the layout did make it look like a large print YA, and it was romance, so that was odd. Premise: Felicity ought to be heir to a Duchy, only she has none of the magic that she should have inherited from her parents. She is prepared to retire to a life of seclusion when were-lion Terence takes a sudden fervent interest in her well-being. With all the talk of paranormal romance of late, I somehow missed the existence of its sister subgenre, fantasy romance. I would call this a fantasy regency romance. It is a sweet book. Felicity is a fun character, although I find her relationship with her maid more than a little cloying and her occasional self-pity annoying. Terence is okay, in a broody romantic hero kind of way, and everyone's magical powe...

Bullet (Anita Blake 19) Laurell K. Hamilton, 2010 This book is definitely NC-17. My review is merely PG-13, but I'm sticking it behind the cut anyway because it is slightly spoiler-ish, but mostly for the general trend of the series.

Flirt (Anita Blake 18) Laurell K. Hamilton, 2010 Premise: Anita is actually at her day job, raising the dead, when she's interrupted by abduction and mercenaries threatening her loved ones. This is why super-heroes have secret identities. Wow.  Can I just say wow?  I admit that I am impressed. After having fallen so low, to be able to write up out of the hole, without actually ret-conning the mess out of existence. That takes some remarkable skill, or incredible luck. It was fun and exciting and dark in the right places. I thoroughly enjoyed this one, and that's the first one in this series I can say that about without reservation probably since book number 11 or 12. The quote on the cover is right. It is good to see Anita raising the dead. In some of the recent books a reader could easily be forgiven for thinking she didn't have a day job. Part of what's so good about this one is the simplicity. It's a short book in which Anita has to make the ha...

Skin Trade (Anita Blake 17) Laurell K. Hamilton, 2009 Just in time for Halloween, I'm catching up on my Anita Blake. Premise: Anita is called to Las Vegas to help hunt down a vampire serial killer. While there, she has to try not to have sex with were-tigers....This series is so surreal. This one was really not bad. I continue in my opinion (from book 16) that it does feel as if Hamilton is trying to write her way out of the hole she'd dug for the series. After books and books of angst and ridiculous new powers every time you turn around, this one had a sense that things were beginning to stabilize. I had quit after Harlequin (book 15), which I felt sunk to new depths of idiocy, and while I did break down and read Blood Noir (book 16) and felt that it was somewhat better, I didn't return to the series until recently. There is still a great deal of ridiculous repetitive business about beasts and sex and such that mostly gets in the way of the story here. ...

Twilight Stephanie Meyer, 2005 Spoilers abound, but you probably expected that. About half-way through reading this book, I began to wish that I had read it when it came out.  Because if I hadn't basically known what was to come in the later books, I could have mustered both a little hope that the book would dig itself out of its hole, and more hate on where the book ends up.  As it is, my overall response is a relatively apathetic "Meh."  On the plus side it reads really fast, except for when supremely awkward turns of phrase threw me.  On the minus side, it was so lacking in substance as to be lighter than I like even for popcorn reading, maybe call it cotton candy prose. As of about half-way through, Twilight, while written in a simplistic style with very poor description, didn't completely suck.  Even with what I knew about the series, I could almost convince myself that the whole thing had a pretty smart unreliable narrator thing going on....

Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake, Book 1) Laurell K. Hamilton, 1993 I opened this book with a bit of trepidation, because even though I've read it before, I was a bit concerned how it would hold up. But you know what? I kinda love this stupid book. This series eventually winds its way into increasingly ridiculous, and what I like to call porn-tastic, situations, but this first one, while slapdash and odd, has some real charm. One big thing you have to be able to just go with to enjoy this book is the seemingly commonplace male strippers. The vampires seem to be easy to accept by comparison, according to various people I've spoken to. In re-reading it, I realized specifically why I like it. It's an unapologetic modern pulp novel. It's a first-person, flamboyantly described, sex and violence pulp novel. With paranormal stuff and a female protagonist. In my book, that spells super fun. I had gotten to see the sun rise as I drove home that morning. I hate sunris...