Devil's Desire by Laurie McBain

I first read this about 25 years ago. I remembered it because I read it in one afternoon. It was the first time I had done such a thing, and it always stuck with me! When I saw it was being reprinted, I decided to read it again!

I think I liked it better the first time. It was a bit predictable, the 2nd time and decades later. She told herself she loved him, but didn't trust her husband enough to tell her she wasn't having an affair. He knew she was a virgin when he married her but of course if she is meeting some mysterious man, she must be having an affair with him, so then he has to make her believe that he is leaving her in the country so he can resume his affair with the woman he loves in London....both of them so dramatic and so immature!

SO much drama at the end. A whirlwind of drama. And of course, all is forgiven and ends happily ever after. But as dramatic as the two of them are, I don't think the drama will stop at the end of the story. Still I would recommend it to someone who wants lush descriptions and a fine example of 1970's best selling historical romance.

Frozen by Morgan Q. O'Reilly

I started this book in September 2010 and it took me 6 months to finish it. I disliked the two main characters, Gunnar and Noreen, and found it full of too much sex, and boring, in the first half. I had a lot of issues with the story, especially the way Gunnar treated her. At least, near the end, Gunnar realized he had essentially raped Noreen and felt bad about it. And did other things to her against her will. He never did admit, to her, that what he did was wrong, though. There were things in the book that were glossed over (told about, not shown) that should have been detailed. And the way the situation ended, was contrived and unrealistic, with Alice and all. And honestly, they were considering visiting with Hollis? And taking the children? I don't think so! I did enjoy the book overall, but would never read it again. Not really sure I would recommend it to anyone, or not.

Anchor & Storm by Kate Poole

People say they just loved this book....Well it started out well, but it fizzled into more summarization, glossing over scenes, lack of detail....so it did not end as well as it began. 3 stars.

It is a historical erotic romance. I enjoyed the details about what happened at Culloden and afterwards.

Insatiable by Morgan Hawke

Wow! What a great book! I loved the characters, the settings, the sex! M/M/F, paranormal romance by one of my favorite authors, and I was not at all disappointed. Can hardly wait to read the next one, will buy it straight out. 5 stars!

Fortune's Fool anthology -

King of Swords by Bianca D'arc: definitely the best story in this book. I loved it and give it 5 stars.
Tempting Fate by Eva Gale: erotic historical romance, very good! 4 stars.
Flesh and Bone by Selah March: BDSM, non-consenual, very harsh. Happy ending but I didn't like it much. 2 stars.
Miranda Writes by Cassidy Kent: too vanilla for me. Didn't like it. 2 stars.

Ebook vs. print

Now that I have a Kindle (in addition to a Jetbook Lite) I find I'd usually rather read the ebook than the print. Thus it is very annoying when I find a book I want to read and its not available in ebook format. (Or is way too expensive). For example I started An Unmistakable Rogue by Annette Blair and am enjoying it very much. Decided to see if I could get it for my Kindle. It was never released in electronic format, and can't even find a scanned copy. Very irritating. Guess I'll just have to keep reading that paper back.

And then we have Insatiable by Morgan Hawke, which I am reading. Great book! But the ebook is almost as much, (more so, on one site) than the paper back. Ridiculous! So I'll just keep reading the paper back (which I didn't buy new). If it was $4 I'd have bought it already. Amazon has a lot of good Samhain titles for $4.40. Why can't other publishers allow their books to be sold for that price? I can deal with that. I can't deal with $8+ for an ebook. Not when I can get the paperback for 1 PBS credit, which is about $2.50. The author/publisher gets nothing from me that way, now do they? And they never will if they keep putting their ebooks out for that much money.

I trade (from 3 sites) and rent (from booksfree), and use the library, and the author gets nothing from me. I would gladly fork over $4.40 or less for a full length, quality ebook. I have done so with books by Lorelei James, and other Samhain titles. More than that? Not going to happen. I'll just keep looking for those illegal copies if the ebooks cost too much. Or the other legal ways in which I get books, and the publishers get nothing from me. Or the very rare occasional times which I will spend more than that, and buy the print copy.

Moonstruck by Susan Grant

This was a decent scifi romance story. I really liked the two main characters. The main bad character wasn't too hard to figure out. The ending was good. Works fine as a stand alone, though there was some reference to books that had gone before. 3 stars.

One Good Turn by Carla Kelly. A gem! Delightful dialog, loved the characters. 5 stars.

Pleasure Planet by Evangeline Anderson. 3 unrelated stories. All three were well-written and enjoyable, but I feel the title was poorly chosen. Only the last one was really set in an outer space scifi setting. 3.5 stars.

Dark Robe Society I & II by Jason Edding

How to review this....its very odd. The first story, Dark Robe Heart, which appears in the book Space Escapes (along with an unrelated story by Angela Fiddler), is a good action story. The story centers on two male clones, Jack and Edge, and the relationship they build, the world building is good, the history is interesting. Then, it just ends, very abruptly. I won't even call it a cliff hanger. There is no ending, it just stops.

The second story, the Edge of Desperation (published along with an unrelated story by James Buchanan) picks up a couple months later and begins with different characters. This story would not do well at all as a stand alone. This one tells of the relationship between Tees and Toren, in addition to the relationship between Jack and Edge. Tees is very unlikable, and I really didn't enjoy reading about he and Toren much. I wanted to read about Jack and Edge, but in this story they really didn't have much to do. They were like leaves blown about in the wind, with no control over where they were going. The story started well enough, but fizzled. The point of view changes were very jarring, and happened quite at random, without warning. As a whole, the story was confusing. The ending was blah....no real end to the central story at all. It might mean another episode is pending, but after this one, I don't know if I can bring myself to read any more.

Tears of the Dragon by Angelique Anjou

I really like this author's writing style! This is not the first book of hers I've read, nor will it be the last. Tears of the Dragon is scifi romance with a bit of erotica in it. It was awesome, well written with a great ending. Loses points due to some editorial errors. 4.5 / 5 stars. Recommend to anyone who enjoys scifi romance.

Here's one I do NOT recommend, a short story called Dare to Dream by Becky Wilde. The best thing I can say about it is that its short. It was extremely predictable and rife with atrocious errors (ie, chocked instead of choked). Don't waste your time!

Stranger in Town by Maggie Shayne, a 2-in-1 volume. The first 2 books in the All Girls Oklahoma Brand series. The first story, The Brands Who Came for Christmas, is very good contemporary romance, and the title becomes obvious after awhile, and its cute. The second story, A Brand-New Heartache, was more romantic suspense. I really liked both of these stories, the main characters were excellent, the Brand family was great. highly recommend the entire series (there are 5 in this one, and there is a related series, the Texas Brands). 4/5 stars.

Love Means...No Shame by Andrew Grey

I really liked this M/M romance. I thought it was well done, perhaps the best written of Grey's books which I have read, to date. (Some of his previous books tend to get bogged down in unimportant minutiae). I was annoyed at the end when I discovered that book 2 comes before book 1, but I didn't check on goodreads.com first, so its my fault.

Now reading Bright Eyes by Catherine Anderson, which I have had on my read-next list for a long time. I finally made a read next collection on my kindle for next-in-series books, hopefully that will help me to quickly choose a book, without wondering if its the right one to read. I must read series in order!

Also started a booksfree book, Stranger in Town by Maggie Shayne, a 2-in-1 reprint of the first 2 books in the Oklahoma All Girls Brands series. Enjoyable and fast to read.

To carry around in my purse, I am halfway through Moonstruck by Susan Grant. This time next year, I hope to have one of those smart phones with the kindle app on it, eliminating the need to carry physical books or the Kindle, both of which are somewhat large and heavy for carting around.