blaze

All He Ever Dreamed by Shannon Stacey

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

All He Ever Dreamed (Kowalski Family, #6)

Grade – C+
Hotness Level – Blaze
Kink Level – None
Genre – Contemporary
Series – Kowalski Family #6
Reviewed by Anne 

The Kowalski books are some of my all time favorites.  They are a family I love to hang out with.  This book is my least favorite of the series, though.  I’ve been thinking about why that is, and I think it was very realistic (relationships are complicated and messy) and therefore had less escapism than I like.  Let me give you the set up.

Josh is the youngest in the Kowalski family, and he got left running the family lodge when all of his siblings left town and found other careers and adventures.  He’s always wanted to get out and travel and have a chance to do something else, even if he doesn’t have a certain something in mind.

Katie is his best friend and is nearly family, as her mother helped raise the Kowalski kids.  They’ve known each other forever, and she’s loved Josh as long as she can remember.  She doesn’t let him know about this, as she’s afraid she’ll lose him as a friend. 

This story takes place during a period of time where the Kowalski family has finally realized that Josh may not want to run the lodge and needs a chance to get out of town.  At the same time, he’s finally seeing Katie as a woman, not just his best friend.  But getting out of town and being with Katie long term seem unlikely to happen together, because she’s firmly rooted in their small town with no desire to leave.  So what will happen?

I’ll tell you what will happen.  I will come to dislike Josh because getting out of town is his primary concern.  He doesn’t hide this.  Katie always knows it.  So it overshadows their whole relationship.  And it leaves me wishing she would dump him because he’s unable to conceive of a way to be with her and to travel. 

Don’t get me wrong, I was very sympathetic to Josh.  Shannon Stacey did a really good job in writing him.  I understood he wasn’t just being an asshole, that he really needed a chance to spread his wings outside their small town.  He sacrificed his own desires to keep the family business and tradition going for a long time.  He didn’t hate the business, but he hated that he never had a choice about leaving.  However, I think Ms. Stacey did such a good job writing his character that the resolution for the story left me with some doubts about how it would all work out.  I was screaming in my head (and in my reader notes) for compromise while I read, and I felt like I never got it.

The book does have plenty of Kowalski funny moments, and I never wanted to stop reading,  I think it was just a little painfully real to me.

How to Misbehave by Ruthie Knox

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

How to Misbehave (Novella)

Grade – A
Hotness Level – Blaze
Kink Level – None
Genre – Contemporary, novella
Series – Camelot #1
Reviewed by Anne

Innocent Amber is a manager at her town’s community center.  Bad boy Tony is managing construction of an addition to it.  Over the weeks Amber has nursed a crush on Tony and kept hoping to build up courage enough to even speak to him once.  Then there’s a tornado warning and just the two of them at the community center, and they need to take shelter, but the power’s out and they don’t have a flashlight, and it turns out Tony is afraid of the dark, and talking with Amber distracts him…

 And, wow, this was a good book!  It is a novella, so I don’t want to say too much, but it’s WELL worth the read and the 99c price tag.  Go buy this book now and enjoy it!

Out of This World by Jill Shalvis

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Out Of This World
Grade – C+
Hotness Level – Blaze
Kink Level – None
Genre – Contemporary/Paranormal
Reviewed by Kate
One of the things I love about my library is it’s romance section. Four shoulder-height racks that rotate. The part I like best is that they are only loosely alphabetized. Meaning all the “M”s are together, but not necessarily in order. It might seem like a strange thing to appreciate, but I love stumbling across a favorite author’s book I haven’t heard of before. That’s how I found this quirky Shalvis read.

Rachel inherits a Bed & Breakfast in Alaska from her aunt. She takes her good friend Kellan with her to explore the B&B. There she meets Marilee, the cook who can’t cook, and Axel, the guide who always gets lost.

Rachel and Kel get struck by lightning and wake up with x-ray vision (for Rachel) and super-human strength (for Kel). And that’s just the beginning of the strangeness. A secret pair of guests, the aunt’s fully stocked gun cabinet, and dimension jumping pirates round out the plot.

This is definitely a departure from the Lucky Harbor Shalvis I am used to. Written in first person from both Rachel and Kel’s point-of-view, Shalvis has created a separate world that you are only given the smallest glimpse of, enough to leave me with tons of unanswered questions.