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Redbrunja Reading Update

redbrunja: (text | paris is for lovers)
Saturday, February 8th, 2014 12:26 pm
I would really love some recommendations from my flist for either romance novels or books with a romantic subplot that you think that I will enjoy. Because my luck with books (and specifically romances) has been decidedly mixed, lately.

In order:

I made it about ten pages into The Chocolate Thief and no. Things I am not interested in:


  • rhapsodic descriptions of Paris and the heroine longing to be accepted there

  • orgasmic descriptions of chocolate when I’m trying to lose weight

  • an arrogant alpha male who acts like a dick the first time he meets the heroine


So that’s going back to the library.

Then I read What Angels Fear, which I actually really, really enjoyed. It's a Regency murder mystery with a main character who's recently back from the war, where he was a spy. As much as I enjoyed it, though, I don't think I'll continue with the series. First, there was a lot of sexual violence in this book, and I know the next one will open with another dead girl. Secondly, while I really enjoyed the romanceand it ended on a good note for the couple, I know they break up later, so I'm going to spare myself some pain and stop now.

Also, I was excited enough about That Touch Of Magic (Lucy March) to buy it instead of waiting for the library to finish processing it and while the entertainment value was high, I was very disappointedthat the romance was between the heroine and “the love of her life” who cheated on her when he went to college and is now suddenly back in town. Because nothing says true love like getting back with the cheating ex you never got over. I was rooting for the other guy who was going to be evil. I called this in the third chapter, and then I skipped ahead to the end of the book (which I never, ever do) so I wouldn't spend the whole novel hoping I was wrong and then being disappointed. (I was totally right.)
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Arranged Marriages & Sibling Love

redbrunja: (arrow | his girl everyday that ends in y)
Wednesday, January 1st, 2014 01:33 am
This post had made me DESPERATELY craving some good arranged marriage books/fanfic.

AND SPEAKING OF TRASHY ROMANCE, I just sneakily snagged a free book today. The SOLD moment came when it said something about the heroine being into her brother (who was raised apart from her) and there's something about a cosmetics company and being forced to work together? Further bulletins as events warrant.

In other smutty news, I just banged out 1,000 words of Knave/Alice. It was a madcap race to get through the plot threads I had to snip to facilitate the banging.
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I've Got No Use For Innocence

redbrunja: (stock | stockings)
Friday, December 6th, 2013 10:57 pm
(It was hard picking which ~provocative~ icon to use for this post, let me tell you.)

The combination of a conversation I was having with fairest1 and reading the first Psy-Changling book (Slave to Sensation, which I’d heard raves about and is not living up to the hype) reminded me that a lot of fandom and the larger cultural context (especially with romance novels) seems to think it’s just so. damn. sexy. to have a virgin heroine. And I am just 100% not on board with this trope. Just… no. It’s almost 2014, can we please, please, please stop with this.

I’m not even going to go into how virginity is a bullshit patriarchal and heteronormative construction (but it totally is, and the more you learn about how and why it was constructed and the very real consequences of that, the more horrifying it is), I am going to stick with the fact that I JUST DON’T FIND VIRGINITY SEXY.

I come to fandom and romance novels for entertaining, titillating fiction, and do you know what I find sexy? People who know what the fuck to do in bed. People who have previous sexual experiences (good and bad) that inform how they interact and what they feel about their current partner.

I am so not down with the whole virgin protag that I don’t even like the male subversion where he’s the virgin and she’s more experienced (those two Steve/Darcy fics, excluded, you know the ones what I’m talking about).
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Gender-Reversed Regency Romance Wanted

redbrunja: (stock | fairy tale)
Sunday, August 4th, 2013 09:30 pm
I have been binge-reading regency romance, and besides coming across an actual ‘90% of the conflict centers around two characters not talking to each other’ plot (I had forgotten these existed except as theoretical examples of what NOT to do), I have read about a lot of wealthy, powerful men and the in-financial-straights women who love them stories. Don’t get me wrong, I totally get the appeal of ‘now you have regularly have hot sex with a guy who loves you and now all your money worries are over and you’re LOADED’ as a fantasy, but it has left me DEEPLY craving a story about a duchess who decides to take, I dunno, some hot, broke, strapping young man into her bed. He teaches her about the wonders of life she’s been missing, she teaches him the joy of love-making and in the end, marries him to take him away from his life of toil and strife.
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Nothing Says "I Have To Be An Actual Adult In Real Life" Like The Intense Desire To Read Romances.

redbrunja: (stock | learn how to kneel)
Tuesday, July 16th, 2013 12:21 am
After the disappointment that was The Real McCoy, I tried a Tessa Dare novel (A Week To Be Wicked) and was WAY more invested in the relationship that was being set up to have a novel of their own. That book was A Lady By Midnight. So I ended up pausing my read of A Week To Be Wicked To binge-read A Lady By Midnight. The kindle edition was eighty-nine cents. So, there went any chance of me getting to bed before three a.m. It's basically an entire novel about the hero internally monologuing about how he's not worthy of the heroine (he's a former convict and served semi-dishonorably in the army before getting the chance to get his act together and doing so); foreplay that involves the hero ironing the heroine's dress; and cunninglingus*. Thus far, Dare's books are just the right blend of 'legitimately decent romances' and 'so trashy and tropey it's perfect' and 'ladies have orgasms.'

*I must admit thatI was not happy that the epilogue was 'happily ever after with children' and not the wild, animalistic, love-making that the hero was fantasizing about at one point.
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My Dithering Is Rewarded!

redbrunja: (arrow | pink)
Friday, July 5th, 2013 10:58 am
The Real McCoy, which is the gonna-be-terrible ebook I was talking about, just dropped in price to .99 cents.

Awwww-yeah.
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How Much Is Too Much To Pay For A Hate-Read?

redbrunja: (stock | mischievous)
Thursday, July 4th, 2013 09:02 pm
Okay, there is this really, REALLY terrible (I can already tell it’s terrible, the heroine is CLUMSY) romance novel that is only $2.99 and I am SO TEMPTED to buy it. The plot involves a hot, nice doctor wooing a beautiful, clumsy nurse away from the hot, asshole doctor she’s “in love” with.

I tell myself that that’s a waste of three bucks. But my trashy romance senses are tingling!
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When I'm Reading Via My iTouch Kindle Application, I'm Always Reading Tolstoy

redbrunja: (stock | reading is sexy)
Wednesday, March 20th, 2013 10:07 pm
In recent adventures in reading, by far the best thing I've read was John L. Howard's Katya's World (thanks [livejournal.com profile] qualapec!) which is one of those novels where you finish reading and you can't tell if you want to immediately start a re-read or shove this book at everyone you know so you'll have more people to talk about it with.

Katya's World is deliciously perfect sci-fi. The science is believable, serves the story, the world-building is interesting and described in just the right amount of detail. Seriously, I just tore through this book and cannot wait for the next. Katya is a wonderfully pragmatic and delightful heroine, Kane was deliciously wry and hard to pin down. I adored the Chertovka, who was a great chaotic neutral/lawful evil character. Anyway, she was badass, and I really liked Katya's conflicted pov on her.

( Read more... )
I finally managed to get my way through Daughter of Smoke and Bone which was a book that I checked out from the library about three times and renewed over and over again before finishing it. On balance, I enjoy it. I'm invested enough to read the sequel and the author has a very nice sense of the poetic. It does, however, feel very long and very much like a first book in a series - like, really, did you NEED all this set-up just to get to the point wherethe main character goes on her rescue mission?


In adventures in romance novels, I read two recently that I really enjoyed, HDU by India Lee (fake dating!) and About Last Night by Ruthie Knox.

Okay, I'll be real; both of these books are total fantasy in a way that I would argue Jennifer Crusie's or Cecelia Grant's books aren't. Which is to say, I loved them because I connected with and liked a core fantasy in each of them, not because they were without flaws.

HDU is about a mod of a celeb gossip site who ends up in a fake relationship with a hot celebrity - he wants to rehab his image, she wants to get her career kick-started. Now, despite reading this on my iTouch, I could not read this book in public; I was smiling too much. My only major complaint is that there is not NEARLY enough fake!dating in this book. Not nearly enough to sell the romance.( Read more... )

I also read About Last Night by Ruthie Knox. Okay, first off, I could read "emotionally reserved girl has sex with and only slowly opens up while sexy love interest waits wanting as much as she's willing to give" narratives until the end of time. That said. The downside of this novella was that the heroine talks about herself as if she's such a bad girl - and she's really, really not. I think the author was mistaking a sad past for a villainous past. Plus, the hero's problems with his family magically disappear.
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