Category: Books

denver?

Posted on by Greig

Fake Marrieds Meme

Waking Up Married

Mira Lyn Kelly

Waking Up MarriedMegan, in Las Vegas for a wedding gets drunk to deal with teasing over her decision to try artificial insemination. She wakes up the next morning with no memory, a terrible hangover and a new husband.
This new husband is looking for committed marriage without love and is very keen to stay married.
The rest of the book follows them after she agrees to a three month trial marriage.
This is easily the worst of these “fake married” novel(la)s.
The characters are selfish assholes or just plain jerks. The storyline runs on rails made of pure cliche and the dialogue – which aims for witty repartee – is excruciating and wooden.
In fact this one is so bad I’m instituting a new lowest rank just for it…

Rating: D

astronaut?

Posted on by Greig

Fake Marrieds Meme

I Married A Billionaire

Melanie Marchande

I Married A BillionaireA graphic designer with crushing debt agrees to marry her Billionaire boss so he can stay in the country.
She’s introduced to the high life and their whirlwind fake romance turns all to real for her.
After the wedding the story takes a strange diversion into mild BDSM as her new husband seems to run hot and cold for her.
The plot ends with the predictable admission that the ‘fake marrieds’ are actually in love with each other.
This is basically blooming awful.
I’ve read many better stories using this meme in fan fiction.

Rating: C-

masked?

Posted on by Greig

Fake Marrieds Meme

Married By Mistake

Abby Gaines

Married By MistakeSometimes Casey Greene has bad ideas.
Deciding to take part in a wedding reality show as a way to force your fiance to finally marry you is a bad idea.
Not checking that the fake marriage you agree to to save face after being jilted is actually a fake marriage is a really bad idea.
Finding herself married to an embattled TV exec and unable to annull until a Judge can look at the case she agrees to a pretend to be a happy couple to save face in his boardroom battles.
On the plus side she can escape from her needy and dependent family.
This is a Harlequin romance and it never rises above the level of mediocrity both in prose and plotting though I must admit to quite liking Casey.

Rating: C

lanny?

Posted on by Greig

Fake Marrieds Meme

I’ve recently become fascinated with the Fake Married meme in fan fiction. I don’t review fanfic on this blog even though I read quite a lot (several novels worth a year) because it’s so variable in quality. Recently I thought ‘Why not hunt down some original novels using the meme?’. As a result the next few entries on the blog are reviews of ‘fake married’ stories.

Strange Bedpersons

Jennifer Crusie

strange bedpersonsHippy chick do-gooder agrees to pretend to be engaged to her ex-boyfriend so he can land the client that will get him a partnership at his law firm.
The book’s strength is in it’s witty dialogue but the plotting is incredibly predictable and the characters are so self-centred they actively become annoying at times.
I’ve read another previous Crusie novel (Faking It) and this just isn’t as good.

Rating: B-

watch?

Posted on by Greig

The Secrets of Ghosts

Sarah Painter

the secrets of ghostsI was really looking forward to this book after seeing a lot of potential in the author’s first book (reviewed here in 2013 and 2014).
Unfortunately it has the heroine suddenly act stupidly in a way that’s out of character in order to service the plot.
This is absolutely guaranteed to pull me out of a story. It’s a personal pet hate and it seriously diminished my enjoyment of the book.
It was nice to go back to Pendleford and I enjoyed Katie becoming the lead character (though I don’t get why she’s calling herself a Harper when she’s a Moore in the first book).
I would love to see the author try writing an adventure in a more overtly fantastical universe. The small town romance stuff is nice but is seriously threatening to get repetitive now.
Totally worth a read though.

Rating: B-

camptown?

Posted on by Greig

Flat-Out Celeste

Jessica Park

Flat-Out CelesteThis is a sequel to Flat-Out Love which I read last year after picking up as a Kindle Daily Deal.
Here we find the little sister of the earlier book taking lead role as she deals with the trials of the final year of high school.
The author once again delivers a generic romance with clichéd characters but it’s also tremendously readable.
I can’t honestly say that it’s a good book but I did enjoy reading it.
One for teen romance junkies only I guess.

Rating: B-

bauxite?

Posted on by Greig

The Portable Door

Tom Holt

The Portable DoorThis book is the first of a series set in an around a firm of consulting magicians. Within that series this is the first of a trilogy starring Paul Carpenter.
We follow our uninspired and unremarkable hero as he interviews for and unexpectedly gets a job at a mysterious but seemingly ordinary business. He then goes on a series of increasingly fantastical misadventures before the real nature of the firm is revealed to him. All this while he nurtures a crush on his fellow new employee Sophie.
I enjoyed the book when I first read it back in 2004. What I can tell you now that I couldn’t then is that it’s a case of diminishing returns with the rest of the books in the series. I only stuck with it as far as I did because I wanted to find out what happened to Paul.
Recommended for lovers of comical fantasy especially those who know a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan (which I don’t but apparently it enhances the experience).

Rating: B

nanette?

Posted on by Greig

The Language Of Spells

Sarah Painter

the language of spellsI first read this less than a year ago and quite enjoyed it. The author has since brought out a sequel. I read the first chapter of that book and decided that I’d best re-read this one first in order to be up to speed with the new novel.
My original review still stands – click on the link to see it.
I’m sure a review for the follow up will appear on the blog soon enough.

Rating: B

typeface?

Posted on by Greig

Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore

Robin Sloan

mr penumbra's 24 hour bookstoreClay Jannon is an unemployed graphic designer and web developer who finds a job on the evening shift at a weird little 24 hour bookstore.
Pure boredom and intellectual curiousity combine so that he accidentally unlocks a secret about the bookstore draws him into adventure.
For some reason I kept expecting this story to go in different directions than it actually did. Something about the setup made me think of grand conspiracies and fantastic revelations and instead it kept on being charming and grounded in steady reality.
It’s certainly an enjoyable read and it has worthwhile things to say about the value of communities, the importance of archives and the need for open access to knowledge.
This one is recommended for those like their mainstream fiction on the quirky side.

Rating: B+

daphne?

Posted on by Greig

The Rosie Project

Graeme Simsion

The Rosie ProjectDon is a genetics professor. He’s a creature of schedules, rules and routines.
Though never explicitly stated he’s obviously somewhere on the high functioning end of the autistic spectrum.
After a disastrous date Don decides to initiate The Wife Project. A futile attempt to apply rationality to matters of the heart. His life and the book takes a turn for the screwball comedy when he meets Rosie and starts helping her identify her biological father.
This a fairly enjoyable romantic comedy that I picked up after seeing on sale cheaply in my local Tesco.
I felt that the portrayal of the inner mental workings of Don’s mind was a bit stereotypical and didn’t really feel authentic.
A decent little romance, worth reading if you have a fondness for screwball comedy.

Rating: B