Tag: Donna MacMeans

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

Posted September 14, 2008 by Tracy in Features | 15 Comments

Hey everyone!

How was your week? How are things going for you? Good I hope!

I had a pretty normal week. Every day life doing every day things – just like I like it! 🙂

RAW starts on Friday! I’m so very excitied! I’ll be flying out to West Virginia on Thurday since it will take all stinkin day to get there but I’ll have lots of reading time. My friend Jen will be going with me and since she’s always got her nose stuck in a book as well I’ll be in great company! I’ll fly back in on Sunday.

I almost fulfilled my goal of reading at least 1 book by every RAW author. I read all but 2 authors. I bought 1 ebook this weekend and the stinker wouldn’t download for some reason (to Adobe Digital Editions – yuk). I sent an email to the book site and hopefully it will get cleared up…but who knows. The other author I attempted to read and couldn’t get past the first 40 pages. Oh well! I gave it the old college try!

One of my sister’s flew in from Kansas City, MO on Friday and a bunch of the family went and saw Wicked the musical. OMG it was so incredibly good! I had no idea it was a comedy too and that made it even better. If you ever have the chance to go – doooo eeet!

Ok – reading this week:

Promises Linger by Sarah McCarty. I have had this ebook for a while and finally got to it. I really liked it a lot. I thought Asa was just wonderful and Elizabeth for all her prior prudish ways turned out to be quite great in the end.
Dark Embrace by Brenda Joyce – see review in previous post.

Witch Way to Murder by Shirley Damsgaard (RAW author). I read this one because she’s a RAW author and I I needed to read it for the TBR Challenge and I liked it. Check the blog out on Wed. of this week for my TBR Challenge Review.

Heiress for Hire by Erin McCarthy (RAW author). I think it was Sayuri60 that recommended this book to me and I really liked it. I don’t have any problems with children in books, as I’ve discussed prior and this one just got to me. The child in this book was abused emotionally and that just killed me but the whole book was filled with love and lots of laughter. If you want a light, fast read and don’t mind kids in books I’d recommend it.

Promises Keep by Sarah McCarty was almost as good as the first in this series. I didn’t like it quite as much as Promises Linger but was still a great read.

The Trouble With Moonlight by Donna MacMeans (RAW author) was pretty good. It was a historical about a spy for the crown, James Locke, and Lusinda Havershaw who is a rare being in that she can soak up moonlight and become invisible. Yes, in case you’re wondering they did have invisible sex. Just a tad strange IMO. lol The book started off slow but it was a pretty good story. There were some inconsistencies in the book that bothered me but I’d still give it a 3 out of 5 stars.

Happy Reading!


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Review: The Trouble with Moonlight by Donna MacMeans.

Posted August 1, 2008 by Rowena in Reviews | 4 Comments


Hero: James Locke
Heroine: Lusinda Havershaw
Grade: 4 out of 5

In the midst of a moonlit safecracking mission, British spy James Locke witnesses a ruby necklace spirited away as if by conjurer’s trick. Following the jewels leads him to Lusinda Havershaw, who’s inherited the talent of turning invisible in the moonlightat least, the parts of her that are unclothed. Locke trains Lusinda in espionage, even while he finds her close proximity bewitchingly distracting. And as their mission to track Russian spies grows treacherous, they’ll find that the heart behaves even more mysteriously than Lusinda in the moonlight.

Alright, this book is very different from anything I’ve ever read before. I say different because though I’ve seen and read my fair share of books with were-wolves, were-hunters, dragon slayers and the like but I’ve never read a story about a heroine who becomes invisible in the moonlight and has a job as a recoverer of stolen property to take care of her aunt and her two younger sisters. When I say, she’s invisible, I mean…really, she’s invisible. And so when she wears clothes at night, she looks like she might be related to the Headless Horseman.

Crazy, right?

It kinda blew me away at first and made me laugh but as I delved right into the story, I forgot all about that being funny and corny. This story picked up and never really slowed down for me. It starts off with Lusinda going on a job (you know invisibly) to retrieve some jewelry for a wife who’s husband gave away without her permission. It wasn’t his jewelry to give away and she wanted it back so Lusinda went in and got it back for her. It’s while she’s on this mission that she comes across the hero of this book, James Locke who can’t believe his eyes because jewels are flying out of the room without anyone actually holding them. Straight blew his mind and he had to find out who it was to recruit them to work for the government.

And recruit them he does but what’s funny about the way he recruits Lusinda is that he traps her and finds out that the only way she can truly be invisible to do this job is if she’s…naked.

I’m seriously not making this up but goodness I had me a good laugh at that one but aside from those corny little things, this story was really good. I had no problem keeping up with the storyline and the characters were refreshing and the pacing was pretty decent.

I’m really glad that I picked this book up to read because I read this pretty quickly and was happy that I did because it was a great storyline, despite the corny stuff.

James Locke was a fantastic hero, I really enjoyed his character. He’s got some other issues that he works through throughout the book but I really dug his character. He was strong, sexy and capable. He knew he had issues but he worked through them and on them and came out better for it and I just really liked him. I liked the way that he was with Lusinda, their relationship was a very big highlight of this book, I loved the scenes with them together. The way that he trained Lusinda zipped right through and I really enjoyed reading those bits.

Lusinda on the other hand, though I enjoyed her character she did kinda get on my nerves sometimes. Like there’s a scene in the beginning of the book where James traps Lusinda and she’s just walking around naked as the day she was born, minding her own business and BAM! He catches her and she’s all offended because hello, she’s naked and there’s this guy all on top of her then she becomes all OH NO GET OFF ME ITS NOT APPROPRIATE and then the next thing you know, she’s back to walking around naked as can be without a care in the world, she did that a bunch of times in the book and it kinda got on my nerves but aside from that little flaw in her character, I enjoyed her. I enjoyed her relationship with her sisters and her relationship with her Aunt and I really, really enjoyed her relationship with James.

All in all, this book was good. It was a delightfully entertaining story and I will definitely be checking out more from Ms. MacMeans.

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


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