Day: June 24, 2008

Review: Tall Tales and Wedding Veils by Jane Graves.

Posted June 24, 2008 by Rowena in Reviews | 5 Comments

This book was read and reviewed by my friend at work, Nikol. She absolutely loved this book and had this to say about the book…

…read on for her review.

Hero: Tony McCaffrey
Heroine: Heather Montgomery
Grade: 5 out of 5

Accountant Heather Montgomery is a planner. So never in her wildest dreams did she think she’d run into sexy charmer Tony McCaffrey in Vegas, play lady luck, and celebrate his jackpot with a champagne-soaked night. And she certainly never expected to wake up the next morning married! How could this good girl pick a man whose fridge is empty and whose apartment is a disaster zone, yet still drives her so crazy with lust she can’t see straight?

Quickly hitched and happily ditched, Tony can’t wait to get back to his playboy ways. But when Heather’s family is thrilled that their no-nonsense daughter is finally in love, he proposes a plan: stay married for a month to repay his good luck charm, even though she sterilizes his toothbrush and forbids anything between the sheets. But Heather is more than he bargained for–a sharp-witted, passionate woman who just might turn his near miss into wedded bliss!

Heather is a CPA from Plano, Texas. She doesn’t have much of a life. She invests most of her time into her work and she’s a Plain Jane. Her best friend’s name is Alison and they kick up their shoes at McMillians, which is a neighborhood bar. She hasn’t dated anyone in 6 months and she’s stressing over her cousin Regina’s wedding because she’s stuck wearing a hideous salmon colored bridesmaid dress. She’s intimidated by Regina because Regina loves to throw how well she’s doing in life in Heather’s face and she’s getting pressured by her Mother to marry soon cause she wants to be a grandmother.

Tony McCaffrey used to be a Repo Man before he bought his dream bar, McMillians. He’s one of those sex me lookin’ guys, he loves women…especially tall blondes with big breasts. He’s a party boy, your typical frat boy who loves to eat, drink and have plenty of wild monkey sex and has looks to kill. His dream is to buy McMillians but he doesn’t have the funds to do it and so he goes to Vegas to try to win some money to buy his damn bar but comes up short until he runs into Heather. Now Heather knows who Tony is from McMillians and she thinks he’s hella hot but knows that she doesn’t stand a chance with him because she’s not hella hot like him.

On a bridal trip to Vegas with Regina and her posse of bridesmaids, Heather sees her hottie from the neighborhood bar, Tony and one thing led to another and Heather wins the $20,000 that Tony needs to buy his dream bar. Because she’s smitten and stupid, she turns over the money to Tony and they celebrate in the back of a limo with a bottle of champange. Once the sun goes up, they realized that a) they got really drunk b) they got really married and c) they got seriously married, which was totally out of character for the uptight Heather. She tells her mother what happens and comes home to work on getting an annulment only to find out that her Mother spilled the beans to the entire family and because Tony is a gentleman and Heather did win him the money to get his bar, he decides to go along with the story of them being married so Heather and her mother wouldn’t look like fools to the family, Regina included.

Heather moves in with Tony to keep up the charade and it’s pretty obvious what happens after…they fall in love. This story isn’t a new story. We’ve read plenty of stories where the hero and the heroine drunkenly get married and they pretend to be an actual couple to save face and they end up falling in love with each other on the way. I’ve read this book before and I’ve seen this movie but I still enjoyed the heck out of this particular book. I still laughed myself silly through out a huge chunk of this book and I still hecka enjoyed this story. Heather cracked me up just as much as Tony did and the things these two got into was just a delightfully funny treat! This book is fun and is the perfect summer read.

Ya’ll should definitely check this book out. You won’t be sorry, I’m still laughing over things that happened in the story. It was that good, go forth and read it and thank me later. 🙂

This book is available from Grand Central Publishing. You can buy it here or here in e-format.

5 Comments

Tagged: 5.0 Reviews, Contemporary, Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group, Jane Graves, Nikol's Reviews, Reviews

Me and My Husband

Posted June 24, 2008 by Tracy in Miscellaneous | 8 Comments

A co-worker brought this comic in today and said it was me and my husband! So effin true!!!

8 Comments

Tagged: Random stuff

Larissa Ione: The Appeal of the Series

Posted June 24, 2008 by Casee in Promotions | 16 Comments

As a reader, I prefer series over single titles, especially in paranormal books. If I like a world, and I like the characters, I want to remain with those people and in that world for as long as possible. It’s the same reason I enjoy movies with sequels – even if the sequels end up being disappointing.

As an author, I prefer writing series for the same reason. Once I’ve built a world, I want to stay in it. I want to hang out with the characters, and I want to dig deep into their lives. I like to keep minor subplots going, but there’s a limit to my patience as both a reader and an author.

There is definitely such a thing as going on too long!

There’s also a danger of taking a series on for so long that readers are intimidated and not sure where to begin – especially when the books are connected by long-running plots and subplots.

In the Sydney Croft ACRO series Stephanie Tyler and I write for Bantam Dell, we’ve kept three minor subplots running through the first three books – one romance, one “mole” subplot, and the storm machine subplot that is the reason for the titles of the first three ACRO books – Riding The Storm, Unleashing The Storm, and Seduced By The Storm.

The next three ACRO books (ACRO stands for the Agency for Covert Rare Operatives,) will be a little more stand-alone than the first three. We do introduce a subplot in the third Storm book that’ll be addressed in the fourth ACRO book, Taming The Fire, but really, we limited the big running plots to the first three books.

In my Demonica series, the books are connected by the setting (an underworld hospital,) and the heroes (three incubus brothers.) There is one subplot introduced in book 1, Pleasure Unbound, that will be addressed – and finalized – in book 2, and there will be a running subplot romance in book 2 and book 3…but since those books are being published back to back in March and April 09, the wait for the story to finish won’t drag on.

Any books after the first three will probably be stand-alones…set in the same world but not connected by subplots.

For some reason, I like the trilogy thing, and anything after that is extra.

What about you? Do you enjoy series? If so, do you prefer knowing there is an end in sight (a set number of books, for example,) or do you like knowing that your favorite series could go on and on?

And thank you, Book Binge ladies, for having me! It’s been a blast!

16 Comments

Tagged: Demonica Series, Discussion, Guest Authors, Guest Blog, Guest Blog, Larissa Ione

Review: Queen of Babble Gets Hitched by Meg Cabot.

Posted June 24, 2008 by Rowena in Reviews | 3 Comments

When last seen, the irrepressible Lizzie Nichols was canoodling with Chaz after she and Luke, Chaz’s best friend, broke up (Queen of Babble in the Big City, 2007). Now—shocker alert—Luke returns to New York and slips a three-carat diamond engagement ring on her finger. Lizzie accepts even though she’s still all googly over Chaz, who bluntly warns Lizzie that Luke’s all about Luke and couldn’t love her the way he does. Lizzie, a wedding dress restorer and budding designer specializing in wedding garb, faces a hives-inducing decision: dump rich Luke, who wants to be an investment banker in Paris, and hook up with Chaz, who wants to teach? Or should she marry Luke and ditch New York for Paris? And then there’s the matter of her burgeoning design business, helped along by Ava Geck, a Paris Hilton–like celebrity heiress. Cabot takes full advantage of the material, delivering her trademark wit, sharp banter and lively antics from the first page. Fans of the series have another one to savor.

What a fitting end to the Queen of Babble series, in my opinion. For the most part, I really enjoyed this book. There’s gonna be hella spoilers in this review so if you don’t want to know what happens then move along to another post and when you’re done reading this book, come back and we’ll discuss…I’m dying to discuss this book with someone.

In Queen of Babble in the Big City, there was this big ol’ cliffhanger that had me on the edge of my seat. I had to know what she was going to say to Luke and she definitely did what I thought she was going to do.

But oh how I wished that she would have chosen the road I wanted her to choose. Somewhere along the line, I fell out of love with Luke. I don’t know what it was about him but I felt like he was just …too perfect for Lizzie. She was this total spaz when it came to Luke, she hid things from him and she was just this woman that she thought Luke wanted and he probably did want those things and she gave it to him.

But that wasn’t who Lizzie was…Lizzie wasn’t this perfect woman who had a plan for everything and all that, Lizzie was the girl who drank Diet Coke and had white wine with ice on the side. She was a wedding gown refurbisher who wanted to one day own her own shop. She talked too much, she ate wrong things for her and she was confused and scared of what her future held for her.

She had great friends and she had a crazy family and all of that mattered to her. When they had been going out for a while and Luke still hadn’t met her family, taken the time to get to know her family, I started thinking that maybe Luke (as perfect as he was) wasn’t the right guy for Lizzie.

I kept hoping and wishing that she would find someone new.

Like Chaz.

Chaz was the bomb and in this book, I fell more in love with him then ever. The beginning of this book when Chaz was just uber sweet to Lizzie, I soaked it up. When you could tell that he did indeed love Lizzie, I soaked it up. And seeing how much Chaz loved Lizzie made me think back to the other books and solidified Chaz’ love for Lizzie…it was Chaz that told Luke that Lizzie loves Diet Coke, it was Chaz who remembered all the small insignificant details about Lizzie and it was Chaz who was Lizzie’s lobster…not Luke.

And it was Chaz that I was rooting for throughout this book.

In the end of Queen of Babble in the Big City, when Chaz helps Lizzie move into her new apartment and when he takes her to Jill Higgins wedding and he came back looking like a million bucks in his monkey suit, I wanted to jump his bones and wouldn’t have minded in the least if Lizzie jumped his bones, in fact, I was hoping she would jump his bones so that she would realize that he was the one for her.

When they ended up together in bed at the end of the book, I was like, “Finally!” but then of course, the drama just had to continue.

And then the start of this book happened and I grew more and more aggravated with Lizzie because gosh she was dumb. She said and did things that just got on my nerves and I hated how she insisted that nothing was wrong and that she was fine and blah blah blah.

But, she makes up for all of that in the end. I’m not mad at her anymore in the end. This story ended a series on a high note and for that, I’ll always love Meg Cabot because she has the ability to suck you right into whatever world she built for the main characters and she has these memorable secondary characters that you just want to befriend and have them in your life. Her characters are never one dimensional, they’re all full of life and just positively divine.

Like Tiffany, Ava and Monica? Lizzie’s model friends who love her and would do anything for her? They’re such a riot and I loved reading everything that came out of Tiffany’s mouth. That girl has a mouth that just won’t ever stop. She’s loud, she’s vivacious and she’s totally the bomb. She made this book enjoyable and Ava and Monica were great additions as well.

I enjoyed the friendship between Shari and Lizzie, and even Shari and Chaz. They were fantastic friends and they really loved each other and you knew that. There was no doubt in my mind that these guys really loved each other.

And don’t even get me started on Gran. Gran who was in love with Sully from Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman and who loved to drink beer. Gran who loved Lizzie best and who was always on the phone when Lizzie was talking about the craziest things. Gran who called Ava a skank crack whore just like everyone else.

HA!

The way that Meg Cabot brought the two main characters together and the way that it took them 3 books to get it right just had me grinning from ear to ear when I finished the book. I enjoyed this book immensely and am already awaiting the next Meg Cabot book.

The only thing I wasn’t too wild about in this book was that in the end, Lizzie didn’t get the wedding she always wanted…or the wedding I thought she always wanted. It would have been nice to see her man give her the wedding she deserved.

I am now and probably always will be, a Meg Cabot fangirl. Especially when she writes great quotes like,

“Why, yes, Lizzie. I’m maniacally depressed because the girl I’ve finally realized I’ve always been in love with, and who I was beginning to think just might love me back, turned around and got herself engaged to my best friend, who, frankly, doesn’t deserve her. Does that answer your question?”

And …