Never Too Late

So after trying my first ever Nora Roberts book, I decided to give a Danielle Steel book a chance too. I chose Never Too Late, one of three Danielle Steel books I recently picked up from some relatives. It tells the story of Kezia, a widowed woman who decides to start fresh in New York City. But after a tragedy strikes the city, she befriends her new neighbour, a well known movie star names Sam who is also recovering from the death of his spouse. And as the two start spending more time together, they start to wonder if they might have a second chance at love.

Never Too Late also features their adult children navigating their own relationships. Kezia's youngest daughter Felicity is a supermodel who is proposed to by her much older boyfriend. When she accepts, and starts planning her wedding, it makes her older half-sister Kate jealous. Kate, and aspiring writer, has been with her boyfriend for four years. After going to meet her father in Africa (and discovering he doesn't live up to the fantasies she had of him), she decides she wants more out of life. She gets engaged to her boyfriend, but he refuses to set a date or even talk about the wedding. Meanwhile, Sam's son has been up front with his current girlfriend that he doesn't want to get married (and doesn't even want her moving in). But she has her sights set on marriage with him anyway! 

I'm not going to lie, the ending and how these relationships turn out was fairly predictable from the point the book let's you know that Sam has a son who is Kate's age. But that part of the story was still probably the most fun of the book. I honestly felt like Kate was the most interesting character with the most growth. Everyone else was fairly flat and stagnant.

Never Too Late is also not very well written. The book tells you almost everything without showing you much, and is extremely repetitive (a thought will be repeated not only a few times on the same page, but multiple times in the book). I started wondering if Steel has an editor because the book reads very much like an early draft. :(

Needless to say, Steel's books do not seem to be for me, so I will not be reading the other two I got. :(

The Witness

I've never read a Nora Roberts book before. But after asking my partner's mother what she was reading, her explaining The Witness to me, and then offering it to me after she finished, I decided to give it a shot. 

The Witness is the story of a young girl, Liz, who, during her one act of rebellion against her controlling mother, witnesses a double murder. Liz and her friend accidentally got involved with a couple of mobsters, one of whom was ratting the mob out to the police. So the mob retaliated, killing her friend at the same time. When they realized that Liz had witnessed everything and gotten away, they came after her, even when she was in a witness protection program. And so she had to run again, relying on no one but herself to stay safe.

Fast forward about a decade, and Liz, under a new name, finds herself in a small town in the Ozarks. There she attracts the attention of Brooks, the chief of police, whose curiosity is piqued by the beautiful girl who keeps to herself and goes everywhere with a concealed weapon. As much as Liz tries to keep him at arms distance, Brooks manages to worm his way into her heart. But can she risk being with him when she knows the mob is still after her (and will kill everyone she loves if they need to to get to her?)

I honestly quite enjoyed The Witness. I loved both Liz and Brooks, and how their relationship blossomed. Liz doesn't really know how to behave in social situations due to her upbringing, so she's very blunt in an endearing way (she often catches herself after she says something to make amends and try to better understand the situation). Brooks is an upstanding man who wants to do right by everyone, even if that means he doesn't exactly follow the law to the letter. While it gets him into some trouble, you know he has everyone's best interests at heart. 

I did find the end of the book was a bit abrupt though. I expected some sort of showdown with the mob, especially after there was a random part of a chapter from one of the mobster's perspectives about halfway through the book (then the book never went back to their perspective). There was also a sex scene that was a little steamier than I normally like to read (as I told my partner, I am perfectly okay with them "fading to black" so to speak). But otherwise, I found this a very enjoyable read. The plot was interesting, the characters were great, and I enjoyed how their relationship grew. I'll have to give more Nora Roberts a try one day. :)

Leopard's Hunt

I don't know what exactly possessed me to take Leopard's Hunt out from the library. I'm not really a romance fan, but the book sounded intriguing so I decided to give it a go. Unfortunately I was fairly disappointed by it from the get-go; I should have stopped reading it, but I ended up finishing it earlier today. I didn't really want to blog about it, but I wanted to make sure I had a record so I don't go taking any other Christine Feehan books out - they're definitely not for me.

Leopard's Hunt is about two leopard shifters who find each other and work through their brokenness to make a relationship. Except they are also special leopard people - they are faster and stronger and have more gifts than regular leopard people, and so need to keep themselves hidden (but go around killing people in front of others (their own people, who they originally wanted to stay hidden from too) with their gifts all the same so they're not really trying). Both of them have ties to the Russian leopard mafia: Gorya was born into it, and had to hide what he was (he worked on taking it down from the inside while training up his leopard and his powers), and Maya was a slave who got out after some horrendous stuff happened to her (this is triggering, but she was r-worded as a child as a sex slave), and so she has devoted her life to tracking down the people who did this to her. Their leopards are mates though (though he doesn't remember it, Gorya and his leopard saved Maya and hers when she was younger), so they belong together for reasons.

This book has a lot of bad stuff in it. The pair are against sex slavery and so take down a huge ring, encountering lots of depraved things (and that's on top of their horrible backstories). Plus every time I thought we were through the bad stuff, more things came up (it ended with Maya's long lost sister appearing, who gave a graphic telling of what happened to her when they were separated as children. I will not write it here). 

The book also was just repetitive. Maya and Gorya say the same things to each other through most of the book, not believing they're good enough for each other, but clearly fine. Maya's tragic backstory and complete dislike of men prior to finding Gorya didn't stop her from giving her all and skipping through their steps to get them to a physical relationship quickly. Surprisingly, there was only one main sex scene - it just went on forever (I think it spanned two really long chapters) and was kind of weird and uncomfortable (I had to Google a few words to figure out what was happening, and a few things sounded really gross the way they were described). I admit that I'm not really interested in sex scenes, so others may like this part of the book more than I did.

So all in all, I didn't like this book. I should never have read it. Once I started it, I should have stopped. Now that I did read it, I cannot in good conscious recommend it to anyone because it has lots of horrible things that happen (and uses a lot of it as backstory). I will not be reading anything else by this author.

The List Update

Today I was trying to clean up my closet a bit and decided that I wanted to read something. I've had a stack of books that were more or less along the lines of romance that I've picked up pretty cheaply from the library used book sales. So I went through that and picked one that sounded pretty interesting.

The book I chose was Full of It by Wendy French. I got about 50 pages in when I realized that I really, really don't care. And so I did something that I don't normally do: I stopped reading. Normally I power through books whether I like them or not. But this time I decided not to. When I was at work the other day, a lady came in and told me that she doesn't keep reading; if a book doesn't catch her interest in the first 50 pages or so, she puts it down. While I doubt I'll do that for every book that I can't get into, I felt totally okay with putting this one down.

So that gave me the courage to get rid of several books that I'm really not interested in. Most of them were romance, which I'm not overly thrilled to read. Yes I like Linda Howard books, but most of the stuff here sounded vaguely interesting when I bought it several years ago. And a few were books that I had started reading and just couldn't be bothered to finish (I put them down thinking I'd pick them up again one day. But no, I don't really want to).

So here's what I have decided to get rid of without reading:
Star Wars Rogue Planet by Greg Bear
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Full of It by Wendy French
4 Blondes by Candace Bushnell
The Spy Who Loved Me by Julie Kenner
Dates From Hell by Kim Harrison, Lynsay Sands, Kelley Armstrong, and Lori Handeland
A Fiend in Need by Maureen Child
Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie
Crazy For You by Jennifer Crusie (I can't remember if I read this or not)

I also decided to get rid of a few books that I have read and hung onto. I think I intended to read them again in the future someday, but looking at them now I'm not really interested in them.

It's not a lot, but this will help clean things up so the List has books that I actually intend to read on it. All of these books will either be traded in for credit at my local used book store or be donated back to the library (I think the library used book sale was looking for romance).

This brings the List officially down to 156 books (although I know there are a few books in my closet that aren't included on it. I'll have to fix that one day).

Shades of Twilight

Back when I read Linda Howard's To Die For, I said that I do not really like romance novels but I do like Linda Howard's books. And that still holds true. While I haven't touched a romance in a long time, I was immediately hooked when I started reading Shades of Twilight last night. The story was really interesting and I really liked the characters. Oh, and like Heart of Fire, Shades of Twilight is told from both the man's and the woman's perspective, which I really like.

Shades of Twilight is all about the Davenport family who lices in Arizona. Roanna and Jessie are cousins who lose their parents in a car accident and are taken in by their grandmother Lucinda. Jessie grows up like a princess, popular and beautiful, while Roanna is the clumsy, mischievious one. Roanna is in love with their other cousin, Webb, but he is the heir to the majority of the Davenport fortunes. As expected by everyone, he marries Jessie (although their marriage is far from happy).

But then one night Jessie is murdered and Webb is briefly accused. Everyone in the family except Roanna does not support him, so after the whole business is cleared up he leaves for 10 years because of their betrayal. Nearing the end of her life, Lucinda wants to make amends with Webb and asks Roanna to bring him back.

The years have been hard on Roanna. She always felt like she couldn't do anything right and that no one loved her, especially after Webb betrayed her by leaving. To protect herself she has withdrawn into herself and tries desperately not to feel anything so she will not be hurt. But the only person who can pierce through her armour is Webb, whom she still loves.

Shades of Twilight is the story of two people finding each other even after all of the betrayals and heartaches. It is also the story of the entire Davenport family and what becomes of them, especially after Webb's return brings out someone trying to finish the job that started with Jessie's murder by killing him. While it's not my usual read, I did enjoy it (having powered through over two thirds of it last night).

To Die For

I would have finished Linda Howard's To Die For last night, but I was too tired. So I finished it just a few minutes ago. I do not really like reading romance novels, but I do like Linda Howard's stuff. She is the author of Heart of Fire, which is probably my favourite romance novel to date. (I like that it is told from both the woman's and man's perspective. That made it really entertaining!)

To Die For was not told from the man's perspective, but instead was first person from the woman's, in this case Blair Mallory. The very beginning of the novel wasn't terribly appealing to me, but by the end of the first chapter I was hooked!

Nicole, a woman who was copying Blair's image, was shot, and Blair was the only witness. In comes police lieutenant Wyatt Bloodsworth, a man whom Blair had dated a bit until he mysteriously ended their relationship. Cue fireworks here.

I think the main thing that appealed to me was the dialogue between the two main characters, Blair and Wyatt. Some of the things that Blair thought during the narrative were also hilarious! The two of them argued constantly and it was highly entertaining!

I also liked that, for a romance, there wasn't way too much sex. Yes, sex did happen, but it wasn't graphic like some of the books I have read in the past.

So, to make a long story short, this book was alright. I enjoyed it for what it was.