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He’s So Fine by Jill Shalvis

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

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Grade: B
Hotness Level: Blaze
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Contemporary, small town
Series: Lucky Harbor #11
Published: 9/30/14
Reviewed by Anne
233 ebook pages

Olivia runs the “vintage shop” in Lucky Harbor.  She and her friend Becca enjoy watching the guys who run a charter boat company and enjoy surfing.  So when Olivia sees one of them fall in the icy cold water off his boat, she jumps in to save him – never mind that she’s not a strong swimmer and he didn’t really need saving.  Olivia and Cole each have their own baggage.  Cole hasn’t dated since his fiancée left him two years earlier.  Olivia left behind a rough childhood and adolescence, even changing her name before settling in Lucky Harbor.  Neither is looking for a relationship, or even a hookup, but their attraction to each other is strong – and so are their matchmaking friends.

You just can’t go wrong with Jill Shalvis.  Even when she’s writing a “pretty good” story, which is how I’d rate this one, it’s still a step above most other contemporary romance authors.  Seriously.  “Pretty Good” for Jill Shalvis ranks even with the best of other romances I read.  Shalvis’ humor is sprinkled throughout the book.  As my teens would say, I LOLed!  Several times!  I enjoyed the chemistry between Olivia and Cole, and I believed they belonged together.

On the other hand, I was severely annoyed at how stupid Olivia came across in the opening scene.  Who jumps in to rescue someone when they’re not a strong swimmer themself?  How about running on the boat and throwing out a life vest?  Or calling for help?  Thankfully, this turned out to be an out of character move for Olivia, who is otherwise very intelligent and independent.  In fact, she has a hard time accepting help from Cole.  This turns out to be a new thing for Cole, who seems to be the fix it guy for the entire town, including his family.

I have one other nit picky detail.  There’s a side story about two little girls who spent some time in foster care before their father stepped in to take care of them.  So, now we’ve got this little family with no money to spare, so the characters in this book are stepping in to lend a hand with the little girls occasionally.  The girls, who are around 6, I think, mention that they’ve never celebrated Halloween before – like foster parents don’t celebrate Halloween?  I’m sure there are foster homes where that happens, but as a former foster parent, pretty much every kid I knew celebrated Halloween, in foster care or not.  In fact, the only kids I knew of who didn’t celebrate were those whose religion was a factor against it.  Maybe the back story of these girls is more fully explained in the previous book (which I haven’t read yet) but I sure do get tired of reading foster homes as the source of all childhood suffering.

Ok, so, stepping off my soapbox… this was a very enjoyable read.  The angst factor was low and humor factor was high.  I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys contemporary romance.   I’ve read most of the Lucky Harbor series, but not every book.  Even without having read the previous story in the series, this one was enjoyable.  So, read in which ever order you’d like, but do read it – it will make you smile and LOL!

Beloved Healer by Bonnie Dee

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

*Note – I generally try to avoid spoilers when writing reviews, but this one is chock full of them.  There were some things that bothered me that couldn’t be discussed without a full synopsis.  So, read at your own risk.

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Grade: C
Hotness Level: Blaze
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Contemporary Fantasy
Published: 7/28/14
Reviewed by Anne
185 pages

I just read Beloved Healer by Bonnie Dee.  I’ve read books by her before and liked them.  They’ve always been on subjects that are just a bit off the beaten path, but I like that.

In Beloved Healer, Mason has healing powers, but they, and people’s demands on him exhaust him, so he takes a break, hiding out in a small town, working as a dishwasher at a local diner.

Ava works there, too.  She’s got and alcoholic drug addicted and probably depressed mother.  and she’s got a 12 year old brother (12 years younger than her) who she’s been raising since her mom fell off the wagon when her dad died, back when her brother was 2.  Are you still with me? Because there’s one more thing.  Ava’s brother has muscular dystrophy.  He walks with crutches and he’s doing ok, but it’s a downward slide for him.

So, Ava and Mason start to date.  Then there’s an accident at work and it comes out that Mason is a healer when he helps a co-worker.  That starts the rumor mill and people start showing up asking Mason for help.  He has a hard time saying no.  Ava hears about Mason’s healing ability, but she takes it in stride.  She decides not to ask him to help her brother, because she sees that everyone wants a piece of him and that he’s really tired.  Eventually they do talk about her brother though, and Mason explains that some things are just too big and can’t be healed.  This is especially true with things that start at the gene level, like her brother’s MD.

Mason goes on to explain that his mother died of cancer when he was in his late teens.  His two older sisters were both very angry with him that he couldn’t help his mom.  After she died he ran away from home and has been drifting ever since.  Ava encourages him to reach out to his sisters.  He does and they make peace.

Meanwhile, the people of the small town keep asking for healing and Mason is feeling trapped, like it’s time to move on.  So he explains to Ava why he has to go and they break up amicably.  Ava really wants to ask him to stay because she loves him, but it feels really selfish to her.

On the way out of town, he stops by a revival healer tent show where he used to work and gets conned into working just a few more shows.  Ava’s brother has an acute illness, and on the way to the urgent care center she decides to pull into the revival instead.  (And at this point I’m mentally screaming “What in the hell are you doing????”)  Mason is exhausted but goes ahead and heals her brother’s developing pneumonia anyway.  Then he decides, what the heck, he’ll try to heal the MD because he loves Ava so much he wants to do this for her.  He does his healing mojo until he passes out, and he thinks to himself that he may have died.

But, Ava and Mason have some sort of woo-woo connection they hadn’t realized was there, and she brings Mason back by willing energy into him.

So, that’s pretty much the story.  It’s the epilogue that I really have issue with (other than the idiot-ness of taking her brother to be healed by Mason when he’d already told her he couldn’t do it.)  So here’s the epilogue.  Mason is getting along with his sisters.  Ava’s brother is totally cured.  Ava’s mom is in rehab.  Mason no longer has healing abilities.  Apparently the deal with her brother just got rid of them.

And here’s my issue.  And it’s totally personal, and it’s because of where I’m at in life right now.  Why did everything have to be so perfect?  I wanted to see a story where the kid brother was still suffering/dying slowly, and life went on and the hero helped the heroine cope.  Despite the book being about a healer, I wanted them to have to work with the reality of NOT being able to heal everything.  I guess I’m kind of offended that they took the easy out on the healing.

And the situation with Ava’s mom was messy, but it just magically resolves itself.  Not only is she in rehab, it’s happening out of town, so they don’t even have to deal with her, other than phone calls.

And Mason losing his healing powers… throughout the story I thought he needed to learn some boundaries.  Get to the point that he could say no to people once in a while.  But no.  He just loses the powers.

And Ava needed to learn to stand up for herself and ask for what she needed.  But she never really did.  And all her issues were solved magically anyway.

So, all in all, the magical, easy way out, happy endings annoyed the heck out of me and ruined what could have been a good story.

How about you?  Have you ever read a book where the ending ruined the whole thing?

 

Talk Sweetly to Me by Courtney Milan

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

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Grade: A
Hotness Level: Blaze
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Historical, London
Series: Brothers Sinister #4.5
Published: 8/19/14
Reviewed by Anne

I saw “Courtney Milan” and “novella” and “mathmetics” and I was in!  I have a good history reading Milan and enjoying her stories.  I’m not a huge historical fan anymore, but Milan + math was enough for me.  I was right, too, this story did not disappoint.

Rose is a “computer,” a person who does math for a researcher.  She’s a genius and really enjoys her work.  She’s a bit shy and shocked to find herself attracted to her neighbor, the scandalous Stephen Shaughnessy.  He’s an advice columnist and a known rake and he’s surprised to find himself falling for her.  As a way to spend more time with her, he manipulates her into giving him math lessons.  This leads to some incredible math innuendo!

Stephen and Rose are wonderful characters.  I was pleasantly surprised that the Rose is black!  That was new for me in a historical.  Stephen is white.  He seems untroubled by their differences, but Stephen is not a worrier by nature, and he’s not experienced the discrimination that Rose is used to, both for her gender and her race.

Rose is very intelligent and comfortable with it.  Stephen is entranced by her and her abilities.  He appears to be quite shallow, and as it turns out, he has a pretty light hearted approach to life, and he doesn’t feel bad about that.  It’s who he is.  It does turn out to be an obstacle between him and Rose, though.  He’ll have to convince her that he’s serious about her.

This was a wonderful historical novella, and I highly recommend it to historical or math lovers.  I think it’s the very first historical nerd-mance I’ve read!  And the math jokes abound and are awesome!

 

“You’re not going to multiply with me?”

“No,” she said somewhat severely. “You’re going to multiply on your own.” p. 20

 

 

“All you had to do was look up a number in a table.  Was that too difficult for you?”

“A great and might table, ringed by fearsome logarithms, with their terribly, terrible…” He trailed off.  “Oh, very well.  Set me another problem, Miss Sweetly.  My resolve is firm and my angles are acute.  But beware — if I have to draw another diagram, things may become graphic.” p.32

 

I will say, despite the cover, it’s not a ballroom and opera historical.  Stephen and Rose are solidly middle class.  It’s a great story, though!

This is the last installment in the Brothers Sinister series.  I haven’t read any of the others, and I still loved this one, so jump right in!

I only read historical romance occasionally.  How about you?  Do you enjoy historicals?  If so, do you prefer ballrooms and opera?  Pioneer America?  Medieval?  What’s your favorite?