Lynsay Sands 'Single White Vampire'

I do like books with a sense of humor. And this book is funny. But (there's always a but according to my book club members. "Do you ever like the book?") the humor comes at the expense of the characters full development.

Kate is bossy in a cute little blond way, and Lucern is curmudgeony in a "why should I have to tolerate you hoi poloi" sort of way and they end up in very funny situations together (a few actually went over the top and weren't so funny). But while Lucern was changed-because-of-love in a nice, rather believable way, the humor got in the way of them actually establishing a real rapport.

As an aside, I also thought the lay out of vampirism was (too conveniently) not scary or dark at all. It was clever, and avoided all the issues of, you know, just how sexy would a man be if his body felt like cold marble. But it also lacked the power/darkness/forbidden-other lures that I fall for with the vampire thing.

Well written, cute, funny but in the end not much substance.

Vampire Contemporary Romance 2003: 3.5 of 5 black adder re-runs.

Gennita Low 'Virtually His'

I love the cover of this book. Really. I never look more than once at the cover of a romance, especially the historicals I normally read. So I'm going to break my 'only post the cover of 3.5's and above' rule.

I'm in a terrible rut of picking up a book, getting 1/3 through it than picking up something else. Thus my recent hiatus from posting. I also attempted to 'organize' my books the other day and make sure everything is appropriately posted on PBS. In the process I realized just how many books I have in my TBR pile. I think it shook my psychological foundations because I've been disoriented and disheveled ever since. Of course, if you asked my husband, I don't know that he would have noticed a change!

Virtually His; interesting concept. Covert operatives who can 'remote view,' and gain intelligence to support other operations. Helen is being trained to remote view in Virtual Reality . Her monitor is the hero in the story and of course, she doesn't know his identity (a construct I enjoyed) . I liked Helen, who wouldn't, she's spunky and the golden (girl) child in a basically man's world. The monitor is suitably intensely attracted to Helen. He's been in the game for years and is surprised by his own worry for her well-being. I bought into the attraction between them.

What I didn't like. Most of the first half of the book (really most of the book) is Helen ruminating on her place in COS, the operation, who has what secret agenda, etc. Either I'm not getting the implications of most of the exposition or the author is setting us up for a LOT of tie up revelations in later books, either way, badly set up for the reader. It felt rather half baked, like maybe the author knew what she was trying to convey but wasn't doing it very well. This is very distracting, to say the least.

Another beef, so to speak. No seriously, this is a very erotic book, but an orgasm every once in a while would have been appreciated. There's a lot of action in the end of the book, and I even went with the 'have to give you a paralyzing pill so you won't find out my identity' construct although it raised the feminist hairs on the back of my neck. But having this poor heroine half-way to orgasm through 90% of the book was cruel and unusual. Geese, give the poor girl a break.

Contemporary Covert Ops Romance 2007: 3 out of 5 checkered flags.