A Summer Without Rain By Christie Gordon

Generally, when I dislike a book, I try to find something good about it. Not just something good to say, I try to find some kernel of enjoyment for myself, to hang onto through all the badness. Unfortunately, I don't think I can come up with one good thing to say about Christie Gordon's A Summer Without Rain.

First of all, from a strictly technical point of view, the book is plagued with typos, grammatical and punctuation mistakes and formatting errors. I'd be embarrassed to let my fanfic go out looking like this novel, let alone my professional novel which, presumably I am getting paid for.

Truth be told, I'm not even sure how to characterize the rest of the story. Though I also have a list of talking points I put together in the course of reading the book, there was so much wrong and so much I disliked about the story that I truthfully feel I won't even be able to capture them all or adequately communicate how awful it was.

Let's start here: very early in the book, I thought to myself, "Oh, God. This is a bad yaoi novel."

A short time later, I was looking up the author on Goodreads for an unrelated piece of information (I wanted to know if she was actually from Ireland, where the book is placed) and I saw that she had recently made a blog entry titled "Yaoi versus M/M Romance: What's the difference? Is there a difference?" In the course of her post, Gordon writes: I tend to think Yaoi takes this romantic emotion thing a bit further. Maybe the men don't really act like real men - but dang, we're surrounded by real men all the time, can't we just have some made up men that act how we'd like them to act for once?

To which I thought, and commented to my husband, "I don't want my men to act like this. EVER."

I suppose I should have put a disclaimer somewhere in the earlier paragraphs: though I have nothing against yaoi or fans thereof (I actually quite liked Under Grand Hotel, myself), I am not a fan of the yaoi paradigm. It's purely personal preference, but I don't generally like my men pretty and androgynous, I don't like the rigid bottoming politics/conventions of seme and uke, and I don't like the hysterical high-school level drama and I don't like the crying. My gods, the crying… (I told y'all about how I feel about the crying…)

Though Gordon doesn't really set up a seme/uke relationship between her protagonists, Shannon and Ciaran, in nearly every other way I can think of, she's borrowed the flowery, overly emotional, cartoonish, weepy conventions of yaoi. In fact, it was literally impossible for me to think of Shannon and Ciaran as real people and I could only picture them as exaggerated manga men…though calling them men is a bit of a stretch for me.

That's not a slight against men who have a less "manly" deportment; in the course of the book both Shannon and Ciaran fail to demonstrate even basic behaviors of adulthood, down to small things like the assertion of independence and separation from one's family.

Okay, wait. Wait. I'm getting ahead of myself. (spoilers and bile under the cut)

Conquest by S.J. Frost

Conquest, by S.J. Frost, was a book I disliked so much my husband was afraid to be around me while I was reading. I can't blame him; if I'd been on the other end, the number of sighs, growls and outright shouts of, "OH, COME THE FUCK ON!" would've been…offputting, to say the least. It's a book I disliked so much that I made a list. A list of talking points I wanted to cover in the course of this review.

But first, a couple few disclaimers:

1. One of my problems with the book is that of personal preference. I don't like insta-love books, where the protagonists see each other across a crowded room and immediately know they're meant for each other forever. It's a valid story type, a lot of people like it, I'm just not one of them. I prefer stories where the protags have to work for their relationship and their happy ever after.

2. I don't like stories where the protagonists are (for a given value) perfect, and all the story's conflict comes from the cruel, uncaring world outside. I don't think all relationship conflict in the story needs to come from internal conflict, but I want a balance of internal growth with external drama.

3. (And this one should be obvious, but I'm gonna say it anyway) This is all just how I felt about this book and is, obviously, predicated on those above two issues. So take this review how you will.

Truth be told, I feel like Conquest failed me on two fronts: technically, the writing itself wasn't very good (I'll get into more detail about that in a second) and the story itself was both uninteresting and contrived (more on that, too).

Okay. So we're going to skip over the fairy-tale set up of how the band of the title, Conquest, goes from being a nowhere bar band to being the financial rival of the top names in the business in under a year, okay? Just…handwave all that, because…whatever. Just handwave it, all right?

Soul Bonds By Lynn Lorenz

Each book I read seems to raise the bar, but I honestly think Soul Bonds is one of the worst books I have ever read. This is especially annoying because I'd read one of Lynn Lorenz's books previously and while it didn't blow me away, I'd found it perfectly readable. This, on the other hand? Not so much.

Lorenz's prose is still perfectly readable, if a little florid (there's a lot of use of 'backdoor' and 'sweet rose', if you know what I mean). But the premise, the characterization and execution are all so painfully ludicrous that I couldn't wait to get to the end and, if I wasn't reading it for a specific purpose, I would've put it down long ago. Worse, there's actually a kernel of a really brilliant idea here (imo) that Lorenz completely overlooked.

(completely and incredibly spoilery beneath the cut)

Meeting a Neighbor's Needs by Qwillia Rain

Okay, so I just finished Meeting a Neighbor's Needs, by Qwillia Rain and honestly, I just feel lied to and absolutely furious about this book. Completely enraged. What started out as a fairly lighthearted (if questionable) sexy romp between neighbors turned into horrifying, graphic rape masquerading as romance.

The entire book is largely plotless smut...which isn't, in and of itself a problem, if that's what you're in the mood for. But what the warnings describe as a BDSM relationship bears no resemblance to a safe, sane, consensual BDSM relationship and the lack of consent or even the recognition of the protagonist as a person, with the right to refuse turns my stomach.

Heavy spoilers. Talks about consent issues, and rape; may be triggery to some.