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snugglekittyIn this post, I review Hello, Gorgeous! by MaryJanice Davidson, Family Skeletons by Rett McPherson, Out of Time by Lynn Abbey, and All My Patients are Under the Bed by Louis Camuti.
These are plane books, essentially. I chose them not because I thought that they would be good (although I was hopeful about that) but because I thought they would be distracting and fun.
Hello, Gorgeous! was my favorite of the bunch. It is very much reminiscent of the Queen Betsy series, although the main character has been brought back as a Bionic Woman and asked to do espionage, rather than a vampire asked to be a queen. This book was funny and sexy and sweet. It even had some pleasingly kinky moments. Three and a half stars, and I wish I had known about it earlier. Apparently Davidson has multiple series other than the famous Undead offerings. Who knew? Not me!
Family Skeletons is from a "cozy mysteries" reading list on Novelist, which is available from your home computer if you have a Minuteman library card. It features a small town genealogist which the back cover describes as "spunky." Things I liked about the character: she's in her mid-forties and happily married with kids, and she's smart and determined. (For some reason, fictional female detectives always seem to be single and attractive, at least at the beginning of the series. I find it annoying.) However, I don't feel the book delivered the promised "spunkiness." She knuckles under to almost everybody and reacts terribly when she finds out that someone in her town is "perverted." That irked me, and thus I'm only able to give the book two and a half stars. I won't read the rest of the series. Otherwise, it was good - the plot was well-done and the characters believable.
Out of Time looked so terribly promising. I really like Abby's Lynthande stories. The idea that she had written something in contemporary fantasy appealed to me greatly. Better still, it featured an academic librarian in her forties. Unfortunately, I did not like and cannot recommend the book. It took way too long for anything to actually happen in it, and it also hit my "unfairness" buttons. The main character is a model of niceness who winds up getting blamed by the powers that be for not using magical powers she never knew she had, and then gets used by those same supposedly good powers as bait in a trap for the only person who has helped her unselfishly in the magical realm. Two stars. Yuck yuck yuck.
All My Patients Are Under the Bed is the memoir of a cat vet in NYC who made housecalls. If you like cats, you'll probably like this one. It's a bit dated, especially in the chapters where he talks about celebrities he worked with (which he claims to be unimpressed by, but you get the impression that's not quite true) but it's pretty funny. Three stars for that, as well.
These are plane books, essentially. I chose them not because I thought that they would be good (although I was hopeful about that) but because I thought they would be distracting and fun.
Hello, Gorgeous! was my favorite of the bunch. It is very much reminiscent of the Queen Betsy series, although the main character has been brought back as a Bionic Woman and asked to do espionage, rather than a vampire asked to be a queen. This book was funny and sexy and sweet. It even had some pleasingly kinky moments. Three and a half stars, and I wish I had known about it earlier. Apparently Davidson has multiple series other than the famous Undead offerings. Who knew? Not me!
Family Skeletons is from a "cozy mysteries" reading list on Novelist, which is available from your home computer if you have a Minuteman library card. It features a small town genealogist which the back cover describes as "spunky." Things I liked about the character: she's in her mid-forties and happily married with kids, and she's smart and determined. (For some reason, fictional female detectives always seem to be single and attractive, at least at the beginning of the series. I find it annoying.) However, I don't feel the book delivered the promised "spunkiness." She knuckles under to almost everybody and reacts terribly when she finds out that someone in her town is "perverted." That irked me, and thus I'm only able to give the book two and a half stars. I won't read the rest of the series. Otherwise, it was good - the plot was well-done and the characters believable.
Out of Time looked so terribly promising. I really like Abby's Lynthande stories. The idea that she had written something in contemporary fantasy appealed to me greatly. Better still, it featured an academic librarian in her forties. Unfortunately, I did not like and cannot recommend the book. It took way too long for anything to actually happen in it, and it also hit my "unfairness" buttons. The main character is a model of niceness who winds up getting blamed by the powers that be for not using magical powers she never knew she had, and then gets used by those same supposedly good powers as bait in a trap for the only person who has helped her unselfishly in the magical realm. Two stars. Yuck yuck yuck.
All My Patients Are Under the Bed is the memoir of a cat vet in NYC who made housecalls. If you like cats, you'll probably like this one. It's a bit dated, especially in the chapters where he talks about celebrities he worked with (which he claims to be unimpressed by, but you get the impression that's not quite true) but it's pretty funny. Three stars for that, as well.