2010 in Review: My Favorites

Here we are in the end of another December. How many of us think at the end of each year, "Boy this year went by fast! It seems like it was just January!" I know I do. So, here's a few of my favorite things that happened around me this year. Imagine what 2011 will bring.

This is Harley. In May, we foolishly went into the local Petsmart for flea stuff for our other cats and ended up in the kitten room. There, we found a little girl kitty who had her arms sticking out of her kennel, waving them around as if to say "Over here! Over here! I've been waiting for you all day!" Mind you, she was meowing as fast and as loudly as she could manage. (She still does.) So we brought her home and (eventually) named her Harley. She's a stinker (literally and figuratively) but we love her anyway.

Media gurus may be saying that 2010 is NOT the year of the ereader but I must disagree. I became the proud owner of not one but two ereaders this year and I love them both. How could I not like anything that allows me to buy books at the touch of a button and actually have them in seconds? Oh yeah.

NYCC 2010 was so fun! I got lots of free stuff, got to see lots of cool stuff, but most of all I got to meet Jen D. from Not Now...I'm Reading! We had a blast at the con for two days plus a trip to Chinatown - hmmm...dim sum :) Can't wait to hit Philly in August at Authors After Dark!

Netgalley.com is one of the coolest ideas that the book industry has come up with in YEARS. In love at once with Netgalley last summer when I saw that a fellow book blogger got an ARC of Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn, I instantly joined and as soon as I got my copy of DRtD, I rushed to my local B&N to get my very own nook. By that evening I was in love. They have an extensive catalog of authors by well-known publishers like HarperCollins, Harlequin (my fave!), and Hachette Book Group. I check a few times a week to see what's new and usually let a squeal or two if I find something good. Thank you Netgalley for making my 2010 an awesome year of reading!

I would also like to thank the PTB for letting my father catch his colon cancer before it spread. That was a hairy couple of months there and I thank God every day for his recovery. Amen!

A Book Review Roundup

Potent Pleasures by Eloisa James is written in James’s typical engaging style but her protagonists are utterly maddening to the point where this book almost became a wallbanger. I wanted to shake Charlotte vigorously and kick Alex in his private parts. Why in the world would James have these characters make such hideous choices? Worse than any plot of Three’s Company, the misunderstandings and assumptions made – mostly on Alex’s part – caused a disgusting amount of unnecessary heartache for everyone involved. By the end, I wanted to spit. The worst part? I want to read book two in this trilogy, Midnight Pleasures. Starring Charlotte’s good friend Sophie and Alex’s twin brother Patrick, I am confident that these two might not be so awful.


Nicole Peeler’s Tempest Rising, the first in her first series about a girl named Jane True, is a refreshing urban fantasy novel with lots of romance and has a likable heroine who is vulnerable yet resilient. Jane is introduced to the world of supernatural creatures, many of them right in her backyard. The town outcast with a painful past, Jane lives a quiet life of caring for her father and working in the town bookstore. A murder throws Jane straight into the investigation and a relationship with a vampire named Ryu. I liked Tempest Rising enough that I went out and bought book two, Tracking the Tempest, before I was halfway finished. I am curious to see what happens next between Jane and Ryu AND Jane and Anyan. Something tells me that the vampire won't be here to stay. Not for very long anyway.


Pride Mates by Jennifer Ashley was an ebook I got through my nook when I saw B&N had cut the price to $2.62 (it has since gone up to 5.59). I have only read one book by Ashley - a historical romance - and I wanted to see how she handled the pararom genre. No surprise here; she handled it just fine. This was a good paranormal romance about werewolves and how they're integrated into human society with some social commentary on the side. Set in a version of our world where werewolves are "out" but not really "in," Pride Mates is about a defense lawyer who is given a murder case involving a shifter and how she gets dumped into the middle of shifter politics. She also ends up mated to one. I am mightily looking forward to the next chapter in this series, Primal Bonds, that focuses on Liam's brother Sean. He carries a big sword and knows how to use it.


In the Woods by Tana French is an unusual pick for me. A murder mystery written by an Irish woman is something that generally makes my eyes cross. That's my issue not theirs; fiction like that is too dense for me and makes me give up way too easily. In the Woods sounded promising with a cold case of the unsolved disappearance by two children from a group of three where the third was found in a wood, catatonic with no memory of what happened and blood soaked into his sneakers. This third grows up and becomes an incognito detective who catches the new murder case of a teenage girl who is found pretty much where he was twenty years prior. I loved French's style but with a frustrating ending and somewhat obvious mystery, In the Woods disappoints.

Review Roundup

While I take a break from laughing at Tumbling Through Time by Gwyn Cready, I thought I'd go ahead and jot down a few things about some of the books I've read lately but haven't reviewed. I'm trying to be a good girl these days. *snort*

Archangel by Sharon Shinn was a provoking read. Definitely a different take on gods and angels and their interactions with humans. It also had one of the most stubborn women I've ever encountered in a book. Not that she didn't have some reasons to be but I thought to myself as I read Archangel that she could give a mule or jackass a run for their money! I do love those novels where the story comes full circle and so I loved the ending. I liked this book, as you can see since I have it an A-, but I'm not sure if I'll read the other two in the trilogy. Reading a blurb inside the front cover that I managed to avoid before I read Archangel, I got the idea that I'll probably not like what happens. As with Outlander, I'm thinking that continuing on with the series will make me like the first book less than I do now. We'll see.

The Poison Eaters by Holly Black is a collection of short stories. Some of them are a decent length seeing how there are twelve stories in a book that is 212 pages long. My main interest lied with anything related to her Modern Faery Tale books and I was curious if she would revisit Kaye and company. She does in "The Land of Heart's Desire," where we get to see the coffee shop that Kaye talks about opening in the end of Ironside. It focuses on Corny and Roiben surprisingly enough, and is good for a snicker or two. I also read "Going Ironside," a four-page ramble of the inner monologue of a faery who is jonesing for her next hit of what sounded like heroin. Cautionary tale perhaps? It didn't make much sense, that much I know for sure. The first story in the book, "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown," is about vampires and is rather sad. Once I read it (I started with it as it starts the book), I decided to skip through to the faery parts. 

Hero at Large by Janet Evanovich was surprising to me because it was a little more serious than her romances tend to be. A single mother's car breaks down one morning while on her way to work and the unsurprisngly handsome man that stops to help her insinuates himself into her life and her heart. However, he is not what he seems and has a lot to answer for. Can she forgive him and hopefully not break any more of his bones? It has the patented Janet Evanovich humor but wasn't as light as her other reprinted romances and not as entertaining either.

Lady of Light and Shadow by C. L. Wilson is the second chapter of her five-part series about the Tairen Soul. Faeries seem to be my thing these days and so I very much enjoyed this one. It takes a while for it to wind up and therefore drags a little for the first half of the book but it's a good continuation with a satisfying ending and so I can forgive the dragging. It ties up a few things and sets up the third chapter. Rain and Ellie finally marry and head back to Faerie for King of Sword and Sky. The last book, Crown of Crystal Flame, comes out October 26.

That's it people! I am now caught up. I will be doing the review for The Iron King by Julie Kagawa in the next few days and am now going to return to Tumbling Through Time. Thanks for reading!

State of the Month

As I am already catching up and have posted my end-of-the-month posts (anybody know if Hell has frozen over?) for February, I'm repeating this post from the end of January when I summarized my month in books. Yesterday, I bought a new laptop and am now not exactly tethered to our desktop to use the internet; I am going to install a network in our house this week when I get five minutes but for now when the connection is free, I'm hooking myself up on the couch. Much more comfy :)


Technically I have failed my challenge again since I didn't manage to read eight of the chosen books. *grumble* So this month I'm not prepicking my books but am just going to work with a quota of eight books. Eight books of my own and they have to be ones that I will give away at the end of March. I would pick a higher number than eight but I seem to be averaging between 25-30 books read each month. One third of that seems to be a good number to me (this does not mean it will absolutely equal eight). The rest will be books I own but will keep and the public library. I've got two Jennifer Echols books waiting for me there, along with book two in Jessica Andersen's series.

I read more short stories in February than I can remember reading for quite a while. I have collected quite the group of anthologies, most of them pararoms. The Eileen Wilks one was my least favorite and The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance, while having extra short stories, was more interesting than I expected. I really enjoyed "Newlydeads" since it was a Pete Caldecott and Jack Winter story. It was also printed before Street Magic so I'm thinking that if anyone read it in My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon without any prior knowledge of those particular characters, they may not have liked it as much.

Truly, Madly by Heather Webber was a free book from LibraryThing and I still need to review it. Having this laptop now will (hopefully) make reading ebooks more tolerable. I don't usually like them since I don't have a handheld reader and end up stuck at t he computer. I plan to read the Deborah Grace Staley story I have real soon too.

OK. I'll soon be doing my J. F. Lewis books reviews since I've finished Revamped. I'll try to remember to review the next book in my Lynn Viehl list and this month I will try to read fewer vampire novels than I did in Feb. Ciao.