Tag: Viviane Brentanos

Guest Review: Written in Stone by Viviane Brentanos

Posted April 23, 2011 by Tracy in Reviews | 3 Comments

Tracy’s review of Written in Stone by Viviane Brentanos

Warning: This review contains spoilers



Dumped five days before her wedding,

Cassandra Hall decides not to waste the honeymoon. She sets off to London. What was supposed to be her dream week turns into a nightmare time of introspect, self-doubt. Then she meets James, literally falling at his feet in an attempt to save his Afghan hound from colliding head on with the traffic.

James is witty, charming, too good-looking and also–not available. Despite this, Cassie is captivated by him. What follows is a week of fun, companionship and a bonding that Cassie has never experienced.

James, sensing Cassie’s unhappiness, goes out of his way to make up for her jerk of a fiancé’s rejection. He is drawn to her vulnerability–something he finds disturbing, threatening to shatter all he thought he knew about himself. Cassie, he senses, is falling in love with him. He ought to back away but cannot. Cassie bravely makes her true feelings known and when he rejects her, he knows he has broken her heart. He is left confused, guilty because….James has a secret.

Cassie is not doing well while sitting on a park bench in London. You see she’s on her honeymoon, but she’s alone because her fiancé – who she can admit to herself she really didn’t love anyway – called off the wedding just a few days before it occurred. Due to a dog that’s trying to escape its keeper Cassie meets James and her life changes forever. Though the pair have their ups and downs they form a friendship but Cassie finds herself falling in love with James. James however is involved with Alex. They are currently on a break but James, despite trying so hard not to, finds himself having feelings for Cassie as well. He feels that Cassie is the other half of his soul but he’s confused about how he can feel so much for Cassie when he knows he loves Alex.

Cassie eventually, and not in a good way, that Alex is a man and that James is in fact, gay. She is devastated and heads home to deal with the life that had fallen apart before she’d met James. That was just icing on the cake. She tries to move on and allow herself to forget about James but it’s just impossible. What will she do without James in her life?

This was an incredibly emotional book. At first Cassie and James together were so much fun and I loved seeing them together and really bringing out the best in the other. But I knew almost immediately that Alex was a guy and that James was gay. Of course I kept wondering exactly where that would leave Cassie as I wanted her and James to be together. The story went places that I would have never imagined in a million years it would have gone and frankly I’m not quite sure how I feel about what happened. This is a romance but it’s truly heartbreaking in more than one part of the book for all parties involved.

I got the impression from the book that it was trying to say that the heart loves who it loves and really there are no boundaries to who you can love whether you’re gay or straight. I got that, really, I did. But can a gay man be happy in the end with a woman…forever? I just don’t know if I bought it. Yes, it was very sweet and tender and moving but I just couldn’t keep my skepticism under wraps while reading the end of the book.

So how do I rate the book? I have absolutely no clue! While I liked the book for the most part and I felt it was well written there were a few issues I had with it that I can’t seem to get past.

Writing and emotional aspects of the book: 4.25 out of 5

“Straight for you” theme: 3 out of 5

You can read more from Tracy at Tracy’s Place

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

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What I Read Last Week

Posted April 18, 2011 by Tracy in Features | 9 Comments

Hi there,
It’s a busy week at work for me this week but hopefully when I get home each night, after the kiddles are in bed, I’ll be able to get some good reading time in. Either that or I’m gonna fall flat on my face from exhaustion – I guess we’ll see! lol  I do get Friday off so it’s only a 4 day work week – woohoo!
It was partly a lazy weekend for me and partly a cleaning weekend. I think I should have cleaned til I dropped on Saturday and relaxed on Sunday but I did the opposite. My youngest daughter has a bed that can be raised or lowered and we’ve had it in the lowered position since she got out of her crib. Now that she’s 8 I figured it was about time to raise it. I had no idea how much work I was getting myself into taking that damned bed apart and putting it back together. Damn that was hard! lol And when I took the bed apart I discovered all the toys and books that had mysteriously made their way under the bed all these years. She has no idea how that happened. Hmmm, I wonder! 🙂 Anyway, her room looks great because I couldn’t just stop with the bed but had to go through everything and pack up and donate all of those toys she doesn’t play with any longer. I have no clue how she fit all that crap in her room because it’s really pretty small.lol
Don’t forget to sign up for my Blogiversary giveaway – you have until Friday, the 22nd at 7pm (pacific)
Also, if you like Brenda Jackson I’m giving away 3 copies of her upcoming release, Inseparable. You have until Friday the 22nd at 7pm (pacific) to enter.
My first read for the week was a historical western by Beth Williamson called The Education of Madeline. I read this one for my TBR challenge review which I was a week early in posting! Oops. But it was a really great book and I’m glad I read it. I’m currently waiting for my copy of the next in that series to arrive so that I can dig into it. I don’t read many historical westerns but this one was really great. This was about a “spinster” woman (age 32) who wanted a man to teach her about sex but there was so much more going on in the story. You can read my review here if you’d like. 4 out of 5 (This one also qualifies as a Tracy’s TBR challenge read since I’ve had it so long.)
Next was A Marriage of Inconvenience by Susanna Fraser. This was kind of a love quadrangle. Lucy gets engaged to her cousin Sebastian but when they head to Sebastian’s sisters wedding they meet James and Anna (siblings) who are the neighbors. James and Lucy hit it off as do Sebastian and Anna. What will Sebastian do about his secret engagement to Lucy when he really wants Anna? A really good story that had me wanting more. This was the story of all 4 characters but we find out more about Anna and Sebastian in another book that was written prior to this one. This go up on The Book Binge so I’ll let you know when the review posts. 4 out of 5
Next up was another book for The Book Binge – Navarro’s Promise by Lora Leigh. Book 24 in the series and I thought I’d read everything about the Breeds but Lora Leigh managed to find another way to have the mates mating…or not. It was a pretty good story but I had some issues with the editing as well as the love aspect of it that I felt was a bit lacking, imho. You can read my review here. 3.5 out of 5
Written in Stone by Viviane Brentanos was yet another book I read for The Book Binge (yes I was trying to catch up!). I liked the writing of this story and it was definitely emotional and at times heart wrenching but there was a certain aspect of the book that I just couldn’t fully believe and it really bothered me at the end of the book. A man who feels that his soul mate – this woman he comes upon by chance in a park and they spend time together as just friends – but he’s “on a break” from his partner. You see he’s gay but yet he’s fallen in love with the woman, but he still loves his partner. Can he be happy with a woman for the rest of his live or does he stay with his partner? This was definitely a book that got me thinking. I’ll let you know when my review posts so you can read more. This one had a split rating. Writing: 4.25 out of 5 and the HEA (or not) 3 out of 5
I picked up Victoria’s Got a Secret by HelenKay Dimon while at RT. I like HK’s books and liked the True Vows series that I read last year so I thought I’d give this a shot. I’m so glad I did. This is definitely my favorite of the True Vows series that I’ve read. The story was about Jennifer and Paul who met when they were in square dancing in PE when they were 15 and started going steady. They stayed together for years breaking up and getting back together. This continued until one day they split for what they thought was for good. The story tells about their lives and the issues they had but they never forgot the other. I did wonder about Jennifer’s decisions more than once but hey – you can’t change real life like you do fiction! lol The thing I think I liked most about this book was the writing. In the other books I got more of a feeling that I was just having a story re-told to me but this felt more like a romance novel and I didn’t get the squicky voyeuristic feeling I got with the other books. 4.25 out of 5
My Tracy’s TBR Challenge read for the week was Regina in the Sun by RG Alexander. This is the story of Regina who is an Unborn (a vampire who was “made”) who heads to a Sanctuary to try and get help for her “family” which is a group of Unborns. She meets her mate, Zander who is a Trueblood (born vamp), at the Sanctuary and their bond is formed almost immediately with the saving of the family taking place in the second part of the book. Because the mating takes place so quickly I found myself not particularly caring about either character and finding out if I thought their mating was a good thing or not. The sex scenes were smoking but in the end the book was just ok for me. 2 out of 5
My last read for the week was Unveiled by Courtney Milan. I talked to Miss Milan at RT and told her that I had bought the book but hadn’t read it yet and she was all that was kind and signed a book plate for me. I wish now that I had read Unveiled prior to meeting her so that I could have gushed about how much I loved the book. Ok, maybe it’s a good thing that I hadn’t read the book yet so I didn’t make a complete fool of myself. The story is about a self-made man, Ash, who is determined to make his brothers’ lives the best they can be. He is trying to take a dukedom from his distant cousin by proving bigamy and ends up falling in love with the daughter of the current duke. This is a really great book. I absolutely loved Ash and wanted to read more about him, even at the end of the book. His love, Margaret, had her moments when I wanted her to act differently but for the most part she was pretty great too and I loved them together. Just a fabulous read. 5 out of 5
My Book Binge reviews that posted this past week:
Happy Reading!

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