Highland Knight by Hannah Howell

(For some reason it was hard to find a cover for this book)

This was my first book by Hannah Howell. I haven't seen any reviews of her books that I'm aware of, but I've seen a lot of her books at the bookstore so I picked up a few. I hope they're not all like this one.

It's not that I didn't like the story - the premise was good: Avery, a highland lady, and her cousin, Gillyanne, are kidnapped and given to Cameron, a rival clan leader, as payment for a debt. When he realizes Avery is the sister of the man who dishonored Cameron's own sister, he thinks fate has kissed him. He plans to dishonor Avery, and hold her as ransom to force Avery's brother to marry Cameron's sister, Katherine.

This was another story where you had to suspend disbelief a bit - Avery of course falls in love with Cameron, who is still planning to deflower her and return her to her family after her brother marries Katherine. I had a hard time buying that she would fall in love with a man like that. I liked two of the secondary characters, Gillyanne and Leargan, Cameron's second-in-command. Gillyanne was a bit creepy as she was only 13 but had the demeanor of a much older woman, so in my head she was a peer of Avery's and not a child. Leargan was a good foil for Cameron and I enjoyed him quite a bit. All I will say about Cameron's sister Katherine is that she was a real piece of work!

My main issue with this book was the way Ms. Howell wrote the dialogue - she used a lot of phonetic spelling and it was confusing to me; I couldn't just read clean through but had to think about what the words actually were. Phrases like "Ye cannae and ye ken it. " and "She has kenned my plans from the beginning." Cameron said tersely as he mounted. "I have ne'er lied to her." I found it a bit frustrating; I don't want to have to stop and sound it out. Also, they said "mon" for man and that bugged me because a)I kept waiting for a Jamacian to jump out of the background, and b) it was too close to mons - which, well, I'm not going there.

I will say this - this book had one of the best final paragraphs ever. It was so sweet and in my mind atypical for an ending in that it was not the hero and heroine kissing and fading into happily ever after, although you know there will be one.

I have two more of Ms. Howell's books and am going to give them a try - it's possible this particular book was just not the book for me.

Silly Little Giveaway

Well, I recently posted a mixed review of Colters' woman, and I thought the mix of comments was interesting (my review is here). I've decided to give away my gently used copy of Colters' Woman.

I have only two requirements:

1 - you must follow my blog, and

2 - I'd like you to review it. You can either do a guest post here or review it on your own blog, but I'd like to read your thoughts.

Just leave a comment telling me you'd like to read and review Colters' Woman between now and midnight on Tuesday, December 22. Contest is open to everyone.

I'm In No Mood For Love by Rachel Gibson

I picked this book up in the bookstore about a week ago, and I must have liked the looks of it because I bought it up again two days later! Yes, that's right - I bought it twice.

Clare Wingate is a young, wealthy woman who just walked in on her fiance doing the washing machine repair MAN. She doesn't get any time to think about it because she has to stand in her best friend's wedding that evening. After the wedding, she has a bit too much to drink and wakes up in a hotel room, naked, and can't remember much after the wedding. Then her childhood friend/nemesis Sebastian Vaughn walks comes out of her shower! He tells her she was wild in bed; she's mortified and makes a quick exit.

Sebastian Vaughn is a world famous journalist who's come home to try to connect with his estranged father. His mother recently died and he realizes his father is all the family he's got left. His father is Clare's mother's gardner. He doesn't know why he lied about sleeping with Clare at the hotel but thinks it was fun to tease her.

Clare and Sebastian are thrown together a few times and the attraction is strong. She tries to fight it as she is still hurting from the betrayal of her ex-fiance and Sebastian is not looking for a commitment. The end up dating but when Clare realizes her feelings may be more than casual, she gets scared and Sebastian gets angry.

I won't give anything away but the ending was good.

This was a nice story. There were no villians, no natural disasters or horrible accidents, just the interaction between the H/H moving the story along. I liked it. Ms. Gibson is a new-to-me author and I'll be looking for more of her work.

Colters' Woman by Maya Banks

I'd read what I remembered to be great reviews about this book, so when I saw it on the shelf I grabbed it! Oh. My. God. I don't even know where to begin...Let me just say up front this review is going to be all over the place. The placemnt of the apostrophe in the title should have been my first clue.

Let me start by saying I like Maya Banks' work. I really liked Be With Me and her Sweet series is awesome! Colters' Woman? Not so much. From page one, you have to drop your disbelief at the front door and pick it up on your way out. I spent almost the whole book thinking "that would never happen" or "WTF?"

The book starts with Adam Coulter, the oldest of three brothers, going out in the snow to get the mail and he sees a woman passed out in the ditch. He rushes over and picks her up to get her inside and immediately gets a hard-on. (My first thought is what kind of guy gets a hard-on for an unconscious woman? But I digress....) He gets her in the house, strips off her clothes, and puts her in the tub to warm up. Then, after she wakes up, and he's got her out of the tub and she's asleep, he sneaks in and gets into bed with her and gets her off with his hands. She thinks to herself WTF and then just as quickly she's okay with it.

Holly is on the run from her husband. She left him on their wedding day after she saw him murder someone. He's looking for her and she's running scared.

Here's the thing with the brothers: Adam is the oldest, kind of Alpha (I guess), Ethan is the middle brother, he's sweet, and Ryan is the youngest, he's an Iraq war vet with some low-grade PTSD. They've been looking for a woman to share. Yes, share. As in BROTHERS HAVING SEX WITH THE SAME WOMAN AT THE SAME TIME. Apparently their fathers had one wife and their grandfathers had one wife. I think I would have been okay with the brothers having sex with her one at a time (which they did) but they also had sex with her at the same time. They didn't care who went where - one would get off inside her and the next one would literally stick it in...mouth, vag, ass; she was like a living blow up doll. And did I mention they're BROTHERS!? I think I also forgot to mention that Holly is a virgin, and her first sexual encounter is with the three brothers.

Oh yeah, back to the plotline - The brothers talk Holly into being "theirs" and she agrees to it (pretty quickly) and they want to help her get a divorce from her husband. She tells the husband if he doesn't leave her alone she'll tell the authorities about the man she saw him kill. Holly thinks it's okay and she can be with the Coulters, but her ex-husband hires someone to kill her. That part of the storyline was pretty good.

I did like seeing Holly go from a scared little girl to a more confident woman as the story progressed. And Ryan's changes as she helps with his war memories is sweet but brief. I think I would have liked this book more if it was about three friends and not brothers. The ending was sweet but too quick.

I'm in the mood for...vampires? werewolves? lawyers? highland clan chieftains?

I'm looking at my ever-growing TBR and wondering what's wrong with me. I read quickly, and so I usually go through several books a week. I find that I have to "switch it up" or I get bored. For example, lately I've been in a Contemporary mood, but after reading a review for Joey Hills' Vampire series, I bought a copy and started reading. I couldn't get into it - I'm not in the mood for a supernatural book right now. So I read a Susan Andersen contemporary and devoured it! The thing is, I never know how long one "genre craving" is going to last so I just have to go with it.

I'm thinking about arranging my TBR piles into: Contemporary, Historical, Highlanders, Vampires, Shapeshifters, and Other. Is that too anal?

Sometimes I can't decide WHAT I'm in the mood for....I liked Lisa Kleypas' Sugar Daddy, and want to read Blue Eyed Devil but I'm still mad at Hardy. I've got the 2nd Sue Ellen Welfonder book, Bride of the Beast, but it's about a disfigured hero and I had a hard time with Elizabeth Hoyt's To Beguile a Beast, so I'm having a hard time reaching for SE Welfonder's book on my shelf (I wonder if I should skip it and go to the next? But that would mess up my "read them in order" OCD).

I also find that books I buy and then put off reading are usually the ones I end up loving! Soulless by Gail Carriger, Contemporaries in general (I fought that genre for months!), the Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead, Addicted by Charlotte Featherstone, the In Death series (I didn't want to read Nora Roberts and so far have really liked the first two books), there are soooo many that once I start reading, I wonder why the heck I put it off!

Soulless by Gail Carriger

I wasn't sure what to expect going into this book. It's gotten great reviews but I was a bit hesitant as I had decided I wasn't a fan of Steampunk. Not that I'd ever read any, but just like I know I don't like bungee jumping despite it's popularity, I was pretty sure I didn't like Steampunk.

Boy was I wrong! I did enjoy this book. In this world Ms. Carringer created (during the 1800s), supernaturals are considered to be so because they have an excess of soul. It's difficult for humans to try to cross over to become vampires or werewolves because you must have a lot of soul to survive the transfer. Alexia Tarabotti is a 25-year-old spinster who is considered, by other paranormals, to be soulless. What this means is she negates other supernatural's powers. For example, if a vampire attacks her, when she touches it it loses it's vampiric abilitis and for all intents and purposes is human while in physical contact.

As the book opens, Alexia is at a dance, in the library trying to get something to eat (her appetite is a running joke throughout the book), when she is attacked by a vampire and ends up killing it. We meet Lord Maccon, an alpha werewolf, who is in charge of the supernatural police force. He and Alexia drive each other nuts....which turns to romance. Watching these two attempt to court each other was pretty funny. Between his alpha tendencies and her victorian sensibilities (to a point, she is what would be considered a bluestocking) they bumbled along nicely, the whole time trying to solve the mystery of disappearing rogue vampires and werewolves.

I liked the secondary characters, especially Ms. Histlepenny and Professor Lyall (Lord Maccon's Beta wolf); they were quite entertaining in their own rights.

One of the funnies things that caught my attention (I have a teenage boy's sense of humor) was Alexia thinking about how wolves mark their territory and wondering if Lord Maccon marked his territory around his castle!

I give this book two thumbs up!

Twilight Giveaway!

Shannon over at Ramblings of a Wannabe Scribe is giving away a SIGNED copy of Twilight!! So, if you're looking for that perfect gift (could even be for yourself), click here! It is the mass-market paperback with the movie promo cover shown above and ends December 10.