My August reading list experiment is no more.

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.