The Wages of Sin by Alex Beecroft

I've tried twice to write the review for Alex Beecroft's The Wages of Sin and each time I've gotten bogged down in trying to explain something that feels fairly ephemeral. At a very basic, big-picture level, I liked the book. The story idea was one that interested me and I did feel invested in the romance between Charles, youngest son of the Earl Clitheroe and Jasper, the priest with a mysterious past.

But, at a more fundamental level, I think the book failed. Because how you write a book is just as important as what you're writing about. Language matters. And while I understand Beecroft's to immerse the reader in her historical background by writing in the old-fashioned, bordering on florid prose of the time, I think it was ultimately a mistake.

Changes by Jim Butcher

Wow. Just…wow. WOW.

That would conclude the short, nonspoilery version of my review of Jim Butcher's Changes, because wow.

(Below the cut is less a review than a meditation on the book; very spoilery)

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)

Oleander House by Ally Blue

Given my recent history with the genre, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous, starting Ally Blue's Oleander House. It's nothing against Blue; I just don't know her work and lately I start every book with a sense of trepidation. And so, when a book is actually a good read, I find myself appreciating it more than ever before and with a great sense of relief.

(I had a similar experience regarding acting after watching three seasons of Dante's Cove, but I digress)

Oleander House is the first in Blue's Bay City Paranormal Investigations series. Newcomer Sam Raintree is starting his first job for the investigation group, a haunted house. His ability to put his best foot forward, however, is a bit derailed by his immediate attraction to his good-looking, married-with-kids boss, Bo.

What surprised me most about Oleander House (and pleasantly so) is how willing Blue was to put the simmering romance between Bo and Sam on the back burner, in favor of her plot. Though the romance is a strong thread throughout and feeds into the haunted house plot, the haunted house is definitely her A storyline and the romance more the subplot. More, the haunted house plot-line was (although telegraphed much earlier than it took the characters to figure it out) interesting, quick-paced, had internal logic and fed well into her romantic subplot. There was also a decent creep factor here. I love haunted house stories and there were subtle rumblings here that reminded me of Marble Hornets (not a book), or House of Leaves, or even The Haunting of Hill House. Though I think the 'resolution' of the haunted house plotline was a little weak at the end, it was still logical, dramatic and fit well with the story Blue had set up. The secondary characters were good and balanced, fleshed out and individual and the dialogue was excellent, natural and snappy as actual conversation.

On the other hand, I wasn't entirely sold on the romance angle. And this is why: (spoilers 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?

Downtime by Tamara Allen

You know, it's funny. I find it's harder for me to write about a book that I liked than one I didn't. I'm not sure why that would be, but I'm certainly finding it to be the truth as I sit here and try to think about how to talk about Tamara Allen's Downtime.

When my book group was doing nominations for this month's book, I perused the blurbs for all the suggestions and I'd stuck Downtime on my 'to-read' list then, based mostly on my own fondness for time-travel stories. I had a mental mix-up about what book was actually our book of the month—the group has two 'featured' books, generally, the Book of the Month and the Featured Author book and I got them crossed—and so I didn't actually acquire or start reading Downtime until a couple days ago.

Getting the book in an ebook version was actually rather tricky. None of my usual vendors carried it and I ended up having to go through Smashwords, which was my first time at that site. Nonetheless, the book was worth the little extra effort for acquisition.

Downtime is the story of Morgan Nash, an American FBI agent in London, who gets sucked back to 1888. And, as it's a romance, there's obviously a love story there.

I'm looking at those words and they sound terribly dry, but it's safe to say that Allen infuses the premise with a lot more life and color than I do by that description. (spoilers beneath the cut)

Into Temptation

I have to confess (heh) that I wanted to see the movie Into Temptation primarily for Jeremy Sisto. And, given the trailer and my history of watching "my boys" in the movies they've worked, I was truthfully expecting very little. But instead, I really enjoyed the movie, as bittersweet to the taste as it turned out to be.

Sisto plays a priest, John Buerline, who hears the confession of a prostitute, Linda (played by Kristen Chenowith), who tells him she plans to kill herself on her birthday, leading Beuerline in a long, agonizing search to find her before she can carry out her plan.

One of the things that I really liked is the lack of sensationalism. Prostitution isn't made out to be something glamorized or titillating, neither is Linda's abusive background. The priests of the piece, Buerline and his mentor, O'Brien, are merely men and, while they have their flaws, they're mostly the everyday venal sins of regular people. The movie itself feels very stripped down in that respect; rather than making everyone within it larger than life, it puts a magnifying glass to something very ordinary, showing shine beneath the tarnish.

It's rather funny that I ended my day with this movie because I was talking with some friends today about another movie that we'd all seen at different times, Six: The Mark Unleashed, which is very distinctly a Christian film. It's also an awful film and one of the places I felt it failed (which I talked about in this conversation) was in the fatuous, inaccessible way that it portrayed faith and the value thereof.

On the other hand, I felt like Into Temptation was a far superior film in that respect, even though it is not specifically a religious movie. Buerline is something of a misfit priest; he has trouble relating to his congregants, to the men and women who come to the shelter he started, to people in general. He's well-meaning, but he's soft and rather naïve and lacks the self-confidence and charisma that could overcome those first two obstacles. What he does have, however, is that deep-seated, rock-solid need to help. To save. And while the jaded, more streetwise part of me spent a lot of the movie going, "Oh, god, John, no…" I did and do have to respect his determination to do what he felt was the best thing, through both embarrassing and dangerous situations. More specifically, though we never see Buerline pray (outside of church services) and though we see very little outward sign of his faith, his persistence and his genuine emotion and empathy illuminate his character and his faith far better than any amount of spoken prayer. Buerline walks it like he talks it. And while it's a faith not always certain of its footing, it is a faith that is always striving, which seems like the more workable and more reasonable kind.

Too, I really enjoyed his relationship with O'Brien. Though their scenes were often short, the genuineness of respect and camaraderie and friendship were warmly present without a lot of exposition. O'Brien's concern and protectiveness for his friend…and his understanding that Buerline had to go his own way, regardless of any advice given was beautifully acted and beautifully presented. It's not too often, anymore that clergy are presented with such quiet even-handedness and it was really refreshing to watch.

(Spoilers beneath the cut)