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Dreaming of You (Gamblers #2) by Lisa Kleypas

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Dreaming of You book cover

I know it’s probably a little weird to review a book this old (originally published in 1994), but two things: 1. I own weird; 2. I’m just reviewing what I read, basically. And I’m catching up on the genre. I’m sort of embarrassed to admit that I’ve only been reading romance for about two years, having previously been one of those horrible snobs about the genre. And even then I called myself a feminist… sigh. <guilt>

So, I don’t normally read historical fiction because I find it either anachronistic or sexist (and often racist, too), which annoys me. A feminist friend of mine who reads it has told me that usually good authors compromise a bit on both to make it work reasonably well. I just hadn’t encountered this kind, I guess. At one of the sessions I went to at RT this year (one about creating strong heroines), they mentioned Derek Craven as the most appealing hero in all of romance. The entire panel sighed together over him, so I figured I’d check the book out.

And I did like it. The premise is that a successful novelist named Sara Fielding is writing a new book set partially in a gambling club and she goes to London to do research. There she stumbles across a scuffle in the street which turns out to be Derek Craven, the legendary gambling club owner, getting his faced slashed for spurning one of his many women. Sara shoots one of the assailants and she and Derek abscond to his club, where he gets patched up. Derek himself wants to keep her out, but one of his top employees, Mr. Worthy, takes a (reasonably innocent) shine to her and allows her to hang out at the club during the day to mingle with the staff for her research. All the staff—and that includes the club’s prostitutes, of course—adore her and admire her work, even if there is some humorous confusion about her most well-known protagonist, Mathilda.

Derek has no patience for Sara because he feels an unfamiliar pull toward her and he doesn’t see the need for her to be in her club all the time. So he forbids her from going there. But Sara’s a bit of a stubborn mule and finds a way to continue her research. They encounter each other again and finally Derek does effectively ban her from the club, and she goes back to her village and her near-fiancé. But she’s a changed woman and things don’t go swimmingly. Eventually she and Derek run into each other again after a meddling friend of his arranges it, and sparks fly.

There are the requisite Derek-saves-Sara scenes (two of them). But then there are also a couple scenes where Sara does the rescuing—one of Derek and one of herself. Those two are a little sloppy on her part, but I think it makes it more believable, and I bought in. I do find Derek himself a little more problematic, though. I could believe that he was a very troubled guy, based on his very rough beginnings. He was born to—and abandoned by—a prostitute and then raised by others “in the rookery.” I had to look this up—slums, basically. Anyway, Derek. He’s troubled and of course he’s a real guy, so he’s got a long line of women he’s slept with. In his case, he prefers married upper class women. You’d think this would get him in trouble with the husbands, but it’s one of the women who causes him the most difficulties. But when he meets Sara, he starts falling in love for the first time and he resists powerfully. I can buy this, and I can buy his finally yielding to it and being willing to change to a certain degree to be with her. The issue I have is one I have with most formerly-philandering alphas—I have a hard time believing he’s not going to step out on her eventually, even if he continues to love her.

But I guess that’s just my cynicism coming through. If it weren’t for that specific reservation, I’d have none with the book. I did enjoy it and I will likely try another one of Kleypas’s books.

Lost in Geeklandia by E. J. Russell

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Lost in Geeklandia cover

I really enjoyed this book. I adored the heroine, a super-smart nerdy woman who had a ways to go in the self-confidence department at the beginning.

Charlie Forrester is a Portland, Oregon-based data scientist, with a BS in computer science, a MS in psychology, and a PhD in something impressive (I’ve forgotten exactly). But since this isn’t a cover letter for a job application, I won’t worry about getting it exactly right. Suffice it to say that she’s a self-described geek who’s earned the title by digging into data and analyzing it. She created a matchmaking system that crawls men’s social media and general web presence to identify the relationship stage they’re ready for and then matches them with women who are looking for someone. It’s a computer program that came out of her PhD dissertation and she calls it Studies in Predictive Mating Behaviors Predicated on Social Media and Online Interaction, but her friends—to her chagrin—call it the Love Program.

Daniel Shawn is an investigative journalist who was burned while trying to expose a con artist impersonating a matchmaker. He ended up falling for the con himself, resulting in a career-stalling public outing. His reputation ruined, he’s returned to Portland to take a crummy job at a small tech journal—the only one that will hire him, apparently. Daniel’s scholarly achievements are in fine contrast to Charlie’s, too—he’s obviously smart enough, but he was a total failure in high school and (I think) may not have even gone to college.

Perhaps more importantly, Daniel is a childhood friend of Charlie’s who ditched her in high school, and she’s hated him since then. She even created a system called the Global Prick Positioning System to track him. Daniel is of course oblivious to the damage he caused. He doesn’t know why they lost contact, thinking it was just a thing that just happened naturally. Friends grow apart and so on. When they run into each other after he returns to Portland and meets up with his old friend Philip, who also happens to be one of the men in Charlie’s “data pool”, Charlie can’t believe it. She’s freaked out and decides to just avoid him even though he’s interested in rekindling their friendship.

In actuality, he’s interested in far more than friendship, but she doesn’t realize it. When weird circumstances make her accept a date from him, she thinks he’s just “boob stupid” because her friends make her dress at least a little provocatively, rather than in her normal hoodie and jeans. He is a little, but he also remembers always caring about her, all the way back when he was a kid. Because of Charlie’s situation, they continue to date, with her thinking it’s fake even though she’s starting to forgive him for his teenage transgressions. Daniel’s being genuine the whole time, so the black moment comes when he finds out why she went out with him in the first place. Happily, everything works out. Phew.

As I mentioned, I loved Charlie for being so different from a lot of romance heroines. It’s great when we see women who are accomplished on their own and don’t really need a man (and who don’t end up doing all the stupid compromising). Because Charlie doesn’t need a man, even though she finds that she wants Daniel, after all. And Daniel is a very likable guy, too. He’s always loved that Charlie is smart and geeky and admires her for it. You feel bad for him being a bit of a chump on his last assignment and the irony that he’s sort of fallen for something similar with Charlie makes you worry about how he’s going to react when he finds out. But this time it’s because of their background, not his own naivety.

The only thing that disappointed me a little with the book was that the secondary characters weren’t developed as much as they could have been (though there was a good range of characters peopling the story). Oh, and it was a little short—I wanted more of Charlie and Daniel.

Anyway, if you want to read a book that’s about a smart woman who really knows her stuff (and Charlie does because the author does—she works in the field), I can’t recommend this book enough.

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

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The Hating Game

I almost literally devoured this book, an impressive debut. I had trouble putting it down (which I did only twice, for sleep). Told entirely from the heroine’s perspective in first person, it’s funny because her voice is great—it’s sort of smart silly. “I’m naked and putting on clothes, separated from Joshua by only a wall. I love you, wall. What a good wall.” Although obviously I knew they’d get together at the end, I was still desperate to see it happen.

Lucy Hutton is a small, bubbly, and quirky people-pleaser. Joshua Templeman is a tall, unfriendly, and slightly broody grump. They work side-by-side in a publisher’s office after a merger, each coming from one of the merged companies, and they despise each other, which gets expressed through their many passive-aggressive games. I’m not a big fan of the enemies-to-lovers trope because I often find it hard to forgive all the things that were done and said when they were still in the enemies stage. But I think Thorne was pretty careful to make the things neither over-the-top nor unforgivable. Joshua does say some mean things, but I think he doesn’t realize how personally she takes it. Basically, he’s lashing out because he’s mad at her for being so attractive to him.

Lucy and Josh are both really well-drawn as characters. Lucy is spelled out a little better because it’s all her point of view. She’s very lonely and not sure she’s doing the right thing with her life even though she cares tremendously about her job. She works hard and nobody can doubt her dedication. When the opportunity for a new role that would be a promotion comes up and she and Josh will be competing for it, her boss thinks she should get it—and so do we. As she prepares the application and continues her games with Josh, we get to see her grow and learn what she really wants out of life. It isn’t obvious in the beginning what Josh’s deal is, but we learn as the book progresses about his history and kind of understand why he’s a grump. The chemistry between them is palpable and there’s loads of sexual tension all over the place. “He smoothes down the T-shirt. My eyes slither along behind his hand. I want to scrunch up that T-shirt into a bowl and eat it with a dessert spoon.” It’s such a relief when they finally do get together.

On to a few other aspects of the book. Their banter is great—clever and flirty at times. The games themselves are funny. The setting of the office will be familiar to a lot of readers and everyone who’s worked in one will appreciate the antics of the workplace. And the company morale event is great.

I do feel obligated to mention that as much as I loved the book, it wasn’t perfect. For one, the size differential between Lucy and Josh is a little cliche, isn’t it? The book is sort of interestingly set… nowhere. It’s impossible to know where it takes place—I kind of guessed it was in Australia because that’s where the author is based, but it didn’t feel particularly Australian. This didn’t bother me a lot but some readers who care about setting will probably be irritated. I was also a little disappointed by how Josh solved their main problem all on his own without consulting Lucy at all. Finally, I wanted in Josh’s head sometimes, so it was kind of a bummer to have only Lucy’s POV.

But these little nit-picks didn’t keep me from enjoying it immensely. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for Thorne’s next book.

Bittersweet (True North #1) by Sarina Bowen

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Bittersweet book cover

Although I first came to Sarina Bowen through her Ivy Years series, which I loved, the True North series made her my favorite romance author. She draws you into her characters’ hearts like nobody else.

Bittersweet is set in rural Vermont and features Audrey and Griff, who had a couple of college hookups that never went any further. Now they’re in their mid-twenties and have moved beyond college frivolity. Griff’s father recently died and now he’s effectively running the family farm. Fortunately, he has a great family and a couple employees who help keep the well-oiled machine going. Audrey is a college dropout who keeps screwing up, but she’s got herself together and is really, really trying this time—especially after successfully completing culinary school and even excelling there. Unsurprisingly, what she really wants is to be a chef, but it’s not the kind of job you just walk into. For the time being, she works for a Boston restaurant conglomerate, which sends her to the wilds of Vermont to get produce and other organic products.

So they’re both shocked when Audrey ends up on Griff’s farm trying to buy his apples and cider. They’re not exactly enthusiastic about the little reunion. Griff just wants Audrey to go away because he’s assumed she’s the same girl she was at eighteen. Audrey’s a little more generous with Griff, despite the fact that he’s become a grumpy bear, but she needs him to agree to sell his ciders to her. Griff mocks her job (and Audrey herself): “So his new plan is to send a hot sorority girl in a halter top and short skirt to dazzle the poor hicks who grow his food.”

Still, when things go a little haywire with her rental car, she ends up hanging around a bit and even making a moan-worthy barbecue sauce for Griff’s whole family. And despite the mild animosity between them, it isn’t long before the reminder of why exactly they’d hooked up five years earlier rears its head and they get it on in an outside shower. “Then she stopped, her chin tilting upward. Her expression was a dare. And I always took a dare.” It’s mighty hot.

After that the chemistry is off the charts. Audrey sticks around to continue her job and they manage to meet up regularly. Both Griff and Audrey are complicated and interesting characters. Audrey has a strained relationship with her difficult and unusual mother who’s constantly disappointed by Audrey’s life choices. And Griff has the weight of the world on his shoulders with his responsibilities. It’s a lot of fun to watch them grow—Audrey finally comes into her own, getting past her previous failures, and Griff remembers how to chill out and enjoy life a bit. The other characters are also wonderful, all different and incredibly well-drawn. It’s pretty obvious who will be featured in the next books in the series, because you already want their stories. Jude the recovering addict, Zach the recovering cult member, and Griff’s family are all great.

Now, not everyone might appreciate the detail that Bowen goes into with the cooking and farming, but if you like reading food porn, you’ll be getting off regularly with this book. Both meals and the organic produce feature heavily as they are Audrey and Griff’s passions (well, a couple of them). A lot of time is spent in the minutiae of farm life and cooking, much of it going right over my head (I never cook and don’t know crap about farms), but what I did grasp was actually quite interesting. You can’t fault the setting building. You also can’t help but effortlessly pick up some knowledge, if you are a city person and enjoy learning about things.

I highly recommended both the book itself and the audiobook from Downpour.