If you are someone who reads my blogs regularly - as in, hello to my Dad and little brother and assorted other friends - you might recall, towards the end of last year, that I received a very unconventional Christmas present: a box of 20 random, backlist Paranormal Romance novels, purchased wholesale for about $25 on eBay.
If you're someone who follows me on my Instagram account, you might recognize the beginnings of this project, as I gleefully shared excerpts from the first few chapters of the first novel in my Stories. Within only a couple of hours, I had received about eight messages from various people, discussing the material and the zaniness found within.
And within two days of publishing reviews of each of these recent reads to my Goodreads account, I'd been blessed with three additional texts from people, asking what the hell is going on.
So, basically, here's the gist: I've got the romance novels, I've got the will, and as of right now, I've got nine more months to put a bow on 17 more of these 20 reads. They may not all be good, but I'm certainly been having a good time.
Well, mostly.
Wanna know what I mean? Here are the first three books I've read from the box. I hope you enjoy reading the reviews as much as I did reading the novels... and in some cases, maybe even more.
#1. Midnight Lover (Forever Vampires #5), Rosemary Laurey (2007)
Summary: After the events of previous novels, Toby Wise, vampire, is installed as head of a company now facing FBI scrutiny after the suspicious paralyzing injury dealt to its founder, and its vanished previous CEO. However, that's not all he has on his hands: the small Oregon town in which he is now stationed by his vampiric boss seems to be under attack by some kind of invading clan. Add on a witch being persecuted by the nearby police force, and a young nurse he can't keep his teeth out of, and there's already a lot going on in this fifth installment of the Forever Vampires series. And that's even without mentioning the chupacabras.
Quote:
He wished him luck. He wished himself luck. A witch as a houseguest, a rogue vampire in the vicinity, the FBI, falling in love - life in Oregon was nothing if not interesting.
What I enjoyed:
- terrible names (Toby Wise, Laura Fox)
- the existence of both Kit Marlowe and Vlad the Impaler within the actual cast of the book's characters
- the chupacabra subplot
- the use of "Nice!" as an exclamation during a love-making scene
- the FBI systematically ripping the main character's home apart for no reason, including accidentally hauling a vampire away while inside of his coffin, who then later bursts out of the side of the FBI van he's being hauled away in completely naked
- Non-ironic internal monologues including the phrases "Wowee!" and "Yikes!"
- a French vampire who everyone hates for seemingly no reason, aside from the fact that he is French, who ends up hooking up with a 60-year-old woman by the end of the book
- that a female character, who was a main in a previous installment of the series, is a "ghoul," essentially just a human with vampire powers who lives off of raw meat, including spending a scene where she carries dialogue just absolutely housing plastic trays of raw chicken
Things I did not enjoy AT ALL, which are also the reason I cannot in good conscience recommend this book to anyone else to read:
- weirdly-placed casual homophobia
- blurry lines of consent
- racially-charged characterizations of antagonist vampires as specifically from Central America, including the fact that they utilize chupacabra familiars and use their paranormal gifts to install drug cartels in small towns as a means of gaining money and power
- out of the three Black characters, one ends up being the only sympathetic death in the book
- out of the three Black characters, one - the only woman of the three - ends up being introduced in uncomfortably sexually-focused terms, despite the fact that she is literally an FBI officer
- out of the three Black characters, the two male vampires come from inherently racist origins in ways that are spoken about with entirely too much nonchalance (ie, one came from a bad foster care system in their youth, and the other was born a slave in South Carolina, who talks about being whipped as a human, and how his relationship with a white female character would have been grounds for lynching in another time)
- the literal use of the n-word from one Black character against another, deliberately tagged in the dialogue as meant to be an insult (page 96)
- that the author was writing all of this as a British grandmother in 2007 and thought it was all cool and fine and normal
- the fact that almost none of this is mentioned in any of the Goodreads reviews on the site!!
Dream Eyes (Dark Legacy #2), Jayne Ann Krentz (2013)
Summary: Gwen Frazier never thought she'd come back to the small Oregon town of Wilby, after a research project on psychics - led by her mentor, Evelyn Ballinger - resulted in the deaths of three people... one of whom was a killer, stalking the other project participants. However, after Evelyn ends up dead under suspicious circumstances two years later, Gwen is convinced that some horrible force is at work again. Calling in a favor from a friend, she's joined by psychic investigator Judson Coppersmith, who vows to help her discover what her mentor's work was hiding... despite his aversion to her own gifts. Soon enough, they're locked in a battle with someone just as powerful as they are, but whose intentions are far less noble, one that could bring about only more misery if left unchecked.
Quote:
'How did you survive?'
'The old-fashioned way. I had a gun. I used it.'
After my first entry into reading from my big box of backlist Paranormal Romance titles, I was seriously nervous about getting through the rest. Would they all be so problematic? Should I expect nothing but a barrage of issues with consent, racism, etc, in front of me?
Thankfully, my second foray had absolutely none of that. What it did retain, however, was all of the batshit crazy material I'd been hoping for when I first opened up the box.
This novel follows a couple of psychics, facing off against a serial killer who's been bumping off psychics. The hero's name is JUDSON. There are at least nine pages of content explaining the rules and regulations of psychic powers and the limits and mechanics of those abilities, for every page of actual romantic material. There are magical crystals that can be harnessed and utilized to inflict psychic damage, and at one point, a house full of windchimes spontaneously combusts because of the amount of psychic energy being generated therein.
And it was utterly, completely delightful. There was decent representation in the inclusion of an awesome LGBT character, it was secretly funny in the kind of way that had me dog-earing pages just so I could come back to the banter later, and it was actually written with pretty good plot progression, to the point where I questioned if the author had ever written for television... or at least a Nancy Drew video game.
But if they were / are, this installment clearly saw them working without an editor, because a lot of the plot, especially character backgrounds, felt a little like flinging spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks (in only the most joyous of ways). From a serial killer sourcing his prey through online chatrooms, to a shady pharmaceutical company testing highly addictive substances on psychics, to a cult leader manipulating people with drugs, and a miner whose DNA was altered by the ultraviolet radiation in a crystal mine explosion, this book really did feel like it had it all. And that's not even mentioning the character who got sent to an evil boarding school after the death of her parents led to her ability to see ghosts reflected in mirrors.
Truly, my favorite part about the whole book, was coming to the realization that I have a new favorite trope: characters who are gifted with paranormal abilities, but who continually opt to reach for a firearm instead. That, everyone, would be Judson. But not only does this man love to use his handgun, which he keeps strapped to his ankle... Judson is also described in one intimate scene as removing his khakis, which means that this man wears khakis with a wide-enough bottom hem so that he can access his piece when he needs it. Which is always.
He likes the heroine of the novel pretty well enough, too.
How to Lose an Extraterrestrial in 10 Days (Otherworldly Men #3), Susan Grant (2007)
Summary: Evie is an overworked, underappreciated, single mom, currently dealing with an obnoxious ex, a chaotic home life, and, oh yeah, the post-traumatic stress of being stalked through her own home by a cyborg killer on the hunt for her future brother-in-law. When aforementioned cyborg Reef - now rehabilitated - is dropped on her front porch, in an effort to hide him from government forces seeking to exploit his technology, she sees an opportunity to break out from the mold of her politically minded family, and use his help in managing her fledgling chocolate strawberry business. Will Evie and Reef's past keep them apart, or lead them to a love that's out of this world?
Quote:
'But he's... an extraterrestrial.' The word squeezed past Pierce's straight, perfectly white clenched teeth like dough through a cookie press. Except if his voice were to be made into cookies, they'd be inedible, bitter and burned.
Wow, I can't believe that I finally ran into my first DNF! In actuality, this book was so difficult to read, that my avoidance of even working my way another chapter into the book sent me into a slump for two weeks. Even the heinously racist vampire book didn't manage that!
What ended up being the death knell for this book for me, wasn't just the fact that the writing was pretty bizarre, but that it also handled a lot of heavy topics that I couldn't really rely on the author to deal with appropriately. Seriously difficult subject matter that kept being thrown at the reader - torture, inoperable kill switches, government intervention, mob involvement, direct violence enacted against characters, etc. - was constantly getting entangled with somewhat breathlessly stupid characterizations and dialogue.
Most notably, our main character is one kid in a long line of a political dynasty, the only one who doesn't seem to have much of a elite streak. She's an unhappy housewife - the mother of two kids she shares with a cold and unfeeling adulturer ex-husband - who is also constantly beleaguered by requests from her oblivious, well-respected family members, who rely on her to take care of the dirty work of their lives, but also seem hell-bent on undercutting her sense of self-worth at every opportunity. Her attempt to prove them wrong? By starting a CHOCOLATE-COVERED STRAWBERRY business that caters to large events. But that's not all: she decides to really tell her family off by donating the proceeds to charity, directing what pittance she earns towards funding organizations that end child trafficking. She justifies this with the acknowledgement that had Earth been invaded (as was attempted in a previous installment), the entire human race might have been sold into slavery on other planets. And that's why chocolate-covered strawberries are so important to her!
It's as if there's absolutely no balance the serious, dark implications of subject matter, and the neon pink goofiness of the actual writing. The extremes are far to much to trade off between.
The part where I closed the book for good was actually when it became clear that the heroine's relationship with her d-bag ex-husband was going to end in trouble... like, in a "he's actually building a really effective case for renegotiating child support against you and removing your legal right to see your kids" kind of way. In a mild panic, I flipped to the second-to-last page to see if it managed to get resolved all right by the end, only to see it flippantly abandoned with only the sheerest veneer of quasi-resolution (aka, she is handed a court warrant, which she then tears up in front of him, and tells him 'Bite me.' Which I feel like wouldn't stand up in an actual court of law?)
In total, the book didn't seem to take itself seriously, so it became borderline painful for me to take it so seriously. I read Romance for an engaging distraction, not a parade of Sad and Bad Things that never end up being resolved before the HEA. Really just not my thing at all.
Important note about the author, though: this book was originally sold as a mass-market paperback by Harlequin, in 2007. Since then, the author appears to have since purchased her own material back, repackaging and selling it under a new name - Cyborg and the Single Mom - as an ebook, through publisher Singing Tree Media, via Amazon. Due to the importance of ebook purchasing and availability in contemporary Romance readership, and its lucrative nature for authors, I wanted to make sure that at the very least, I shouted out Grant's business acumen. Woo, you go, Susan! Get that shmoney! It's the sort of thing I hope to see more traditionally-published Romance authors doing in the future.
So, I'm three books in to a twenty book box, and it's already the end of March. Do I have any hope of completing my self-imposed reading deadline? Should I be DNFing books at all... or should I be DNFing MORE books? What should I read next? Let me know, in the comments below!
