I read Where Serpents Sleep by C.S. Harris and found it a bit hollow, particularly the end, where the heroine, Hero (I’d find that funnier if I didn’t know it was a Shakes reference), is kind of…forgotten. Hello! She lost her virginity. A teensy bit of half of a resolution would have been nice to ease me into the next book in the series. Actually, (please mark your calendars) I didn’t think the token sex scene was at all necessary (nor was it in character for either of them) and for me, that scene was a WTF? It made me wonder if the editor made her insert the de-virginization scene. Because without more emotional preparation before or reflection after by either of the characters, it made it superfluous. It was like a question that didn’t get completely asked, much less answered.

I’m 100 pages into Tribute by Nora Roberts. It’s going back to the library tomorrow with the rest of the list.

I have no interest in any of these books and I wouldn’t have picked them up in the first place, and my hypothesis will thus officially remain a hypothesis because I’m so not interested in proving it.

I have to finish beta-reading for a friend (this is not a chore, believe me and plug: her debut novel, On These Silken Sheets, is out on September 8—go preorder right now!), I am caught up in Seabird of Sanematsu and Fight Club so I need to finish those, and I want to glom some Victoria Dahl.

And that’s just what I have on my READING plate.

I’ve thought a lot about this lately, what I pick up, what I put down. I’ll finish a book regardless; it’s just something I do. I can’t stand to leave a book unfinished, no matter how torturous. Also, I’m not one of those readers who has to be absolutely captivated by the first or third page. I’ll give an author a good 50 pages to live up to the blurb (which is what would have hooked me enough to buy it), sink that hook in my mouth, and reel me in. (Which is kind of a moot point anyway, since I’m going to finish it.)

Right now, I’m reading a series of Georgian romances (er, that would be when King George III ruled the world before he went nuts requiring the Prince Regent [aka Prinny] to step in his place, which then required every pannier-wearing woman in the Ton to adopt Empress Josephine’s habit of sheer slip dresses and oh, you gorgeous Regency empire-waisted dress, how do I love thee, let me count the ways!).

Oh. Ahem. Pardon my fashion drool.

Back to the series. I started reading book #2 inadvertently, got about 100/507 pages in (that’s on my eBookwise reader; I don’t know what that translates to for the dead-tree variety), then realized I’d mistaken it for book #1.

So let me address that one first.

It’s got problems that keep taking me out of the story. It’s not as well edited as it should be, I suppose, but that might be me being able to see the man behind the curtain and finding him neither handsome nor ugly but simply not to my taste. Too, books suffer when they’re edited with the goal of shaving word count, which is what I suspect to be the case here, but I understand that. Some days, it’s all about the budget.

On the other hand, even after I realized I was reading the wrong book, I still didn’t want to put it down to save for later so I could catch up.

Does that make it a good book? No.

It means the writer did her job to my satisfaction.

Now. On to book #1. It’s obvious the writer grew from book #1 to book #2, but I’ll tell you what. If I’d picked up this one first, I’d suffer through and not read the other ones I bought*. I’m only getting through this one to be able to pick up #2 where I left off. It’s got logical inconsistencies, continuity issues, language issues (as in, the language doesn’t fit the Georgian era), and a not-very-bright heroine. She’s not TSTL (too stupid to live), but one minute she realizes the hero’s issue and the next, she’s confuzzled. She shouldn’t be able to realize the hero’s issues one minute and then turn around and be bewildered when he acts consistently with those issues she’s already sussed out. Were it not for my slight OCD on the issue of finishing books, I’d just put it down.

Which means the writer didn’t do her job to my satisfaction.

*So I actually bought all 3 books in the series at once, plus her fourth book, which is the beginning of a new series (everybody writes series anymore; everybody reads and likes series–and I’m no different).

In the end, does it make a difference that I’m equivocal about this author if I already spent the money on every book she’s had published so far?

This book, whose tagline is “A man in love with his wife and his boyfriend,” wouldn’t normally catch my eye because m/m isn’t my kink. I bought it for an entirely different reason. So now that I bought it and read it and thoroughly enjoyed myself (oooh, have you noticed this trend about what I review?), I must speak my piece.

Here we are in Regency England (and those of us in Romancelandia are more or less completely and totally comfortable in Regency England, Heyer or no Heyer) and a sodomite wishes to marry to fulfill his duty to his family name while still continuing his unabashed lifestyle. He finds the right chick, marries her, figures out he so really doesn’t mind doing her, thinks she’s refreshing and falls in love with her blahblahblah (yeah, you know how it goes), then meets the male love of his life and we all end up happily ever after in the same bed with nary a menage a trois to be had. Of course, what would a Regency romance be without a little spying here and there?

After some reflection, I have to admit that the mixed third-person omniscient and third-person limited points of view was fun and refreshing.

Now, one more thing I found interesting: A review of the book on Amazon, wherein the reviewer—who gave it 3 stars—says:

The book is…okay. It is not stunning, nor is it horrible.

Well, okay. That’s 3-star worthy right there. A 3 is a C. A C is perfectly average. No harm, no foul. But then the reviewer goes on to say:

I stayed up all night to read the last two hundred pages, because I was engrossed with the characters’ stories. However, I don’t think I’ll be borrowing this from the library again, nor will I be purchasing it any time soon.

Color me highly amused. I stayed up all night to read the last two hundred pages because I was engrossed with the characters’ stories.

Yeah. Okay. That’s called “the mother lode.”

Good show, Ms. Herendeen.