contemporary

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne
15745753
Eleanor & Park
Grade: A
Hotness Level: Ember
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Contemporary, YA
Published: 2/26/13
Reviewed by Anne
(audiobook)
 
Sometime last year I heard a lot of buzz about this book.  I jotted down the title and decided I should read it one day.  Then when I was burnt out from my 3rd re-listen to the In Death series by J.D. Robb, I thought I’d listen to Eleanor & Park instead of reading it.  I remembered that it was about high schoolers.  I downloaded my copy and started listening.  And I listened and l listened and I listened.  It was so good, but it was also heartwrenching.  
 
I’d stumbled into a trigger of mine and I had a hard time putting it down.  I kept inventing chores to do so I could continue to listen.  That night when I went to bed only half way through the story, I felt like I was abandoning Eleanor and her siblings!  It haunted me!  I managed to finish it the next day, and it’s still haunting me.  In a good way, but disturbing, too.
 
Sixteen year old Eleanor has just moved back in with her family after a year away.  They’re in a new house and a new school district, so besides her family, she knows no one.  And after a year away, even her family feels like strangers.  
 
Park first sees Eleanor on the bus.  She’s clearly going to be a target to be bullied, with her bright red bushy hair and weird clothes.  When she can’t find a seat on the bus he surprises himself by reluctantly making room for her in his, all while hoping it won’t draw the bullies’ attentions to him.  
 
The way their relationship unfolds is sweet and so true!  This is the best description of first love I’ve ever read!  Rainbow Rowell just nails it.  Along with their relationship, we also hear about Park trying to live up to his father’s expectations and dealing with his own issues as a half-Asian kid.  And we hear about Eleanor’s horrible step-father who abuses her mother and looms over the whole house like an awful shadow, infecting everything they do.  And then there’s the abject poverty Eleanor’s family lives in.  It’s just painful to read about.  But the sweetness and hope that comes when Eleanor and Park are together is so wonderful, it balances out some of the bad.
 
Eleanor and Park were great characters.  They weren’t perfect and they both made mistakes that strained their relationship.  They came across as very real and three dimensional.  They grow and change as the story progresses.  Even the bullies in the story are multi-dimensional.  
 
The story takes place in the eighties, and it’s quite a contrast to the anti-bullying climate we see in schools today.  Eleanor bullied at school and there are times that the teachers not only don’t help, but make Eleanor’s life even harder.  I’ve rarely been so rage-filled toward a character as I was toward Eleanor’s gym teacher!
 
This book made me wish I was back in high school or in a traditional book club and could analyze it to death.  I hated that in high school, but now I want to know what people think.  Did they see this big twist coming?  Why did this character act in this way.  Was this just a perception in his head, or was it a real thing?  WHY did Eleanor make that choice?  What was up with Eleanor’s mom?  How much did Park understand?
 
I loved this story, and it’s really stuck with me.  I highly recommend it, with the caveat that it’s emotionally wrenching!  Honestly,  I avoid a books like this because the kids in the story just break my heart.  i wouldn’t have read this one if I’d known about the abuse in it. I’ll for sure read Rowell again, though! 

Loving Ellie by Lindsey Brookes

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Grade: B-
Hotness Level: Spark
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Contemporary
Published: 2/10/14
Reviewed by Kate
251 ebook pages


Lucas rushes back to a home he left 3 years ago when he finds out that his younger brother has died.  The last thing he expects to find is his brother’s fiancé, Ellie, who is very pregnant.  Lucas lost his own wife and unborn child 3 years ago.  How can he help Ellie when doing so brings up so much from his past?

Okay.  I admit it.  I like pregnancy romances.  And this one worked on so many levels for me.  Lucas has been running from his past for years now, but being around Ellie is forcing him to face that head on.  Ellie grew up without any love and is unwilling to see that anybody might love her or that she may be able to love someone herself.  Two tortured souls who just might be able to complete each other.  Emotionally gripping, I could not put this one down.  I finished the book in under a day.

However, please be aware that this is a romance, not an erotic romance.  I prefer my romances to be ones that I would never, never recommend that my grandmother read.  And while this one is definitely a romance, there is no sex, on page or otherwise.  That being said, it was a beautiful story.

If you like emotional stories of two people helping each other move beyond their pasts while digging their heels in the whole way, and don’t mind a lack of sex-this one’s for you.

Straight Shooter by Heidi Belleau

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne
18808267
Grade: B+
Hotness Level: Inferno
Kink Level: Moderate Kink
Genre: Contemporary, m/m, BDSM
Series: Rear Entrance Video #3
Published: 4/7/14
Reviewed by Anne
271 ebook pages

Austin Puett is hoping to be a professional hockey player.  Right now he’s on his college team, and that takes up most of his time and concentration.  Unfortunately some personal issues are making problems for him.  First of all, he’s been rude to one of his roommates and his landlord/roommate has given him the rest of the month to make things right with the newly cross-dressing roommate he insulted.  On top of trying to figure that mess out, he’s dealing with a recurring identity crisis.  He’s an uber-macho hockey player, but he gets turned on when his teammates insult him and call him gay.  

Austin can NOT figure out what is wrong with him.  And it’s not a simple thing.  It’s not just, do I like girls or boys or both?  Austin knows there’s more on the line.  No way could a hockey team, college or pro, accept a player as sexually messed up as Austin is.  Desperate to break himself of this boner-at-inappropriate-times issue, Austin decides that binge watching m/m porn would be a great way to return himself to normal.  It’s got to work, right?

This book is more Austin’s story than anything else, but there is a nice romance, too.  Austin is so convinced there’s something fundamentally wrong with him!  His attempts to cure himself are comical and tragic.  When his job at Rear Entrance Video leads to him meeting Puck, the star of his favorite binge-watching porn series, things start to take a turn for the better.

It’s a really good story of self discovery and thinking of sexuality not as something that’s black or white or even easily defined.  Watching Austin come to accept himself was both painful and hopeful!  I really loved how his acceptance of his friends led to him accepting himself. You could also see how not acknowledging who he was and what he liked could hurt his friends, too.

The story is told entirely from Austin’s point of view, which really works, since Austin has the most growing to do.  Heidi Belleau does a great job of cluing us into where Puck is at through the things Austin sees, even if Austin doesn’t seem to understand them. The author also gets mega bonus points for writing the first Dom I’ve ever read who doesn’t have magical psychic powers of understanding and predicting and isn’t perfect.  This made a lot of sense, because Austin really didn’t know what he wanted, either.  The way they worked through things when Puck was wrong about what Austin wanted was even more important than the sex they were having.

Austin’s kink (and I won’t say exactly what it is, because he doesn’t really even know it when the story starts) is not my favorite kink to read about, so credit to the author for still making it a believably affectionate relationship!  The only other issue I had with this book was that the ending was a little too much happiness and rainbows and HEA.  It seemed to me they had a lot to work through.  In my head they’re much more HFN, and I can accept that.

Heidi Belleau has put herself on my READ IT NOW list!  Her stories aren’t just entertaining, but they make me think and stretch my empathy to situations I just didn’t understand.  I know Kate also loves her The Professor’s Rule series of novellas.  I’m moving them up on my list!