la tessitrice
The Darkness of Perfection
I need to be able to give out minus stars, especially for this trash.If you've read and liked this awful piece of garbage, you are a carbuncle on the face of humanity and need to take a long, hard look at yourself.
Accidental Fate
When there's a grammar error in the publisher's blurb of the book, I don't hold much hope out for the book itself. I couldn't read any further than the extract. Whoever was editing this needs firing (as a friend says, preferably out of a canon).
Succubus Dreams (Georgina Kincaid Series #3)
This was much better than the previous book, with more of a plot and central mystery, although I still felt that was resolved very neatly. I suppose I was expecting something slightly different from this series from what it actually is: I thought it was going to be action/mystery/paranormal with a side twist of romance and erotica, whereas the romance does overshadow everything else.That's kind of a problem, really. I like the romantic lead, so I don't really want to see Georgina having sex with other people. I know she has to feed, but do we need to see it? The ending is nicely angsty but I think I can still see a happy ending being nicely breadcrumbed throughout.
Unwritten Rules
I read the first chapter and gave up. It was horribly, horribly cliched and needed serious editing to become anything approaching readable.
Succubus on Top (Georgina Kincaid Series #2)
This felt like filler. There wasn't much of a plot and what there was got resolved quickly and neatly, without a real climax, leaving the rest of the book to fizzle out. Georgina seemed less dumb but still took her time figuring things out. A short, sweet read that didn't really leave much of an impact on me.
Fifty shades of codswallop. Utter shit.Edited to add the following:Someone tweeted the link to this review today and I think it says volumes:Smart bitches reviewI'm not getting into the reviewer's opinion of the book, however much I agree with it. Instead, here are two quotes from the text which I believe are very telling:This story originated, according to the folks who recommended it to me, as Twilight fanfic, and while some readers have said they don't see the similarities, I do, and they're part of what I didn't like. The story is narrated by the heroine, Anna, and all the minutiae and self-indulgent navel gazing of Twilight is present in this book, too.The hero read so young, unrealistically young for me - almost like a 17 year old trying to live a 35 year old's lifeI'd say the second point is the direct result of the story being a fanfiction of a story where the main character was seventeen. In MotU, the character of Bella was lifted out of Twilight and put in a very different situation, but she was the same character, with none of the growth or added maturity we would have expected from her increased age.I think this just goes to show what people have been saying for a while - that no matter how much you claim the story had *nothing* to do with Twilight and was original enough to be published, there will remain enough of the source material in there for connections to be made.
Succubus Blues (Georgina Kincaid Series #1)
This was an enjoyable enough read, after a slow start. I could see who the bad guy was a mile off and the sex scenes were pretty meh, but it was entertaining enough that I didn't want to stop reading. Also, I like the main character and it's an interesting quandry that she's in (although I suspect I've already figured out how this is going to be wrapped up in the last book). Sadly, she's let down by the need in the plot for her to be a bit dumb.She's an intelligent, well read woman who's been around for centuries, and we're supposed to believe that the humans she interacts with have more knowledge of angel and biblical lore than she does? Surely she'd have learned more in all those years, and there are times when she's so slow on the uptake that she has to have things she should have put together automatically explained to her. It's not really the character though, it's clearly so that the information can be 'discovered' along the way by the reader as well as by Georgina. It just beggar belief that she'd know so little.Still, she's likeable enough, I feel sorry for her and I want to know how this will pan out.
Poughkeepsie
I read this when it was fanfiction and eventually gave up on it (before it was pulled for publication). The idea was intriguing but the execution was a mess, and that was even by fanfic standards.
Neverwhere: A Novel
Why have I never read Neil Gaiman before? I now have a pressing need to read everything he'd ever written.
Some reviews said this was a return to the Anita of old (that's why I gave it a chance) but it wasn't. Yes, there was less sex and something pretending to be a plot, but there was far too much of Anita's rambling internal monologue going on, and it was nothing we hadn't heard before.I'd also like to share a few examples of stunning writing from the book:"It was cold. Cold and hard. I was lying on something hard and cold.""The room was about the size of an average bedroom". Er, what size is an average bedroom?I ask myself, how did such gems as these (plus the numerous typos) make it past an editor? And the answer is that the author forbids the use of an editor, when really, she needs someone with the guts to tell her where she needs to put some effort into her prose.
This was actually a re-read, something I could read in short snatches at work. I'd forgotten how funny it is. Although it's a valuable read for wannabe writers, it's actually a good read for avid readers too. It's a catalogue of all the things that annoy you in books, and though it mentions that following their advice will ensure your book is never, ever published, I sadly have come across these examples in real books. On that note, it works as a nice palate cleanser after reading something that rankles you.
 - Charlaine Harris)
Dead Reckoning (Sookie Stackhouse, #11)
This wasn't bad per se, just...meh.We see far too much unnecessary detail in Sookie's mundane world and we have for far too long. I don't care what colour her nails are. I don't care that she's emptying out her attic, and that certainly shouldn't be the opening scene of the novel. It would have been better just to start with the firebombing.This is the problem and has been for a while. The books are an easy read: too easy. The plot gets lost in the middle of Sookie's irrelevant, rambling thoughts, and the book could have been a third of the size it is without losing anything of worth.Worth a read? Certainly, if you've got this far. It won't take long. I can see how Charlaine Harris is beginning to wrap threads up for the final book, but I'm willing to bet that you could have condensed the end of this series into one book instead of drawing it out, and it would have been the better for it.
I can has a Seth?Seriously. It's a thoroughly good book, well-written and with a well-imagined universe. But if nothing else, you should read it for Seth.
The Turning (Blood Ties, Book 1)
New vampire in helpless thrall to her maker? I kept waiting for the main character to grow a spine. Or a personality. Then I decided I was too bored to wait any longer and gave up.
I'm sure the premise of this is very good and the plot is utterly thrilling, going by the positive reviews out there. But I just can't stand the narration. I managed all of five chapters before deleting it from my Kindle.Firstly, there's just too much name dropping of brand names. I don't care who made your sunglasses, your baseball cap, your hoodie, what you're drinking etc etc. The narration is in the first person and it's just wrong to do that. No one names stuff in their internal monologue e.g. 'I picked up my Gucci shades, then pulled on my Gap hoodie and sipped at my Evian water' and especially not at the rate it appears in the text. Was the author being paid for product placement?Secondly, the narration is supposed to mimic a teenager's internal monologue. This means the text is littered with exclamation marks and asides, most of which are irrelevant and distract from the storytelling. And although one of the authors is apparently young herself and relied upon to make the language feel authentically young, it just doesn't. It comes across like an older person pretending to be a teenager.Finally, this serves to make the narrator seriously annoying. She comes across as ridiculously shallow, which doesn't exactly make her endearing, and I mean shallow in the sense of not-much-going-on-upstairs. If she has hidden depths, I can't be bothered waiting around to discover them.This definitely isn't a young adult book that an adult can comfortably read too. It's too 'teenage' (although that is a disservice to any teenagers). The characterisation of the narrator is itself a disservice to teenagers, so far a self-absorbed, whiny 'typical' teenage girl. No thanks, there are better heroines out there.
I haven't been reading nearly as many books as I used to and I am trying to get back into the habit. I bought this book some months ago but finally got around to reading it, and I am so glad I did it. It is beautifully written, an intriguing premise, and is a wonderful exploration of religion, the concept of sin and Heaven and Hell, without being at all preachy. You feel for the main character, Helen, who has been a ghost ('Light') for many years and the ending, when her story is truly resolved, made me sob. Which was more than a little embarrassing, since I was on the bus at the time.The book is categorised as Young Adult, but the character of Helen actually died as an adult so her thought processes are mature, and this is far above the current crop of YA supernatural books in terms of writing quality and themes. It's perhaps not as earth shaking as some other books I have read (I'm thinking along the lines of His Dark Materials), but for a relatively short read you can't go far wrong with this.
