Bound by desire...

I've been trying to write this post for a week and for some reason Blogger and my computer don't like each other. Today I managed to get the darn window to accept a cursor by saving the blank document, then going back and editing it. I love technology -- except when I don't!

I've read four books in the past week. Being at the cabin with no Internet or TV helps. All of them romances, none of them really noteworthy. Fair warning: these are easy reads. I read one a day for four days straight!

Kat Martin's The Handmaiden's Necklace is really misnamed. All throughout the book the jewelry in question is referred to as "The Bride's Necklace" -- and it isn't even the handmaiden that wears it! In fact, the necklace doesn't come to play an important role till the very end, and then it's pretty predictable. An okay story, but the plot wasn't particularly gripping, nor were the characters really memorable.

Shannon Drake's Reckless was next. Book made me want to throw it across the room more than once. Typos, plot jumps...and I swear there were missing sentences throughout the entire thing. Don't know if it was bad editing or bad writing -- or both. I'd re-read whole pages trying to figure out where a response came from. Person A would make a comment; Person B would make a response that had nothing to do with what Person A said. Drove me nuts. And it's too bad, because the storyline was actually pretty good. I had no idea, btw, that Shannon Drake is Heather Graham's pen name. I've never read Ms. Graham, but based on Reckless, I'm not inclined to now.

Next up came Donna Fletcher's The Irish Devil. I liked the storyline with this one, but found her repetitive use of several descriptive phrases to be tiresome. The hero "growled" a lot (what is he, a dog?) and was referred to far too often as "the Irish devil". Okay, I got the point. He's rough, tough, and not always a nice guy. Please stop beating me over the head with this phrase!

And finally, just finished yesterday, Josie Litton's Dream Island. This was the best of the bunch, even though it threw me for a loop when it started as a Regency and introduced a fantastical island that "everybody" knew about -- except this reader who spent the first third of the book trying to figure out what kind of book I was reading. Once I accepted it as fantasy, it moved right along. Good characters, steady plot...a day well spent!

Now it's back to the real world...and my own writing! I'll post about that tomorrow...because, yes, I do have some new stories for you!

Play safe,
Diana