Review: Dating the Devil by Lia Romeo

Title: Dating the Devil

Author: Lia Romeo

Series: N/A

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Summary (from Goodreads)

Lucy O Neill is a plain-Jane New York PR assistant with a tiny apartment, a dead-end job, and a pair of annoyingly perfect roommates. Nothing exciting ever happens to her, until one night at a neighborhood pub . . .

Lewis Mephisto is tall, handsome, and hot. Very hot. He meets her gaze through the crowd, a wicked grin on his lips, an irresistible invitation in his eyes.

He’s Mr. Right Times Ten. Sophisticated, wealthy, sexy, and completely devoted to her, body and soul. So what’s her problem?

Can she handle dating the Devil?

Review

This is one of those cheesy, predictable books where the characters rarely show signs of having more than two dimensions, the plot never throws up any surprises and just occasionally you find yourself skimming a scene because it’s just so cringy.

But it’s also one of those books that makes up for all that by being just good fun.

There’s very little here that you won’t have seen a hundred times before. Even the interesting concept of the Devil and whether or not he is evil is brushed over in favour of steamy scenes in hallways and lifts and offices and just about everywhere else. Background characters have problems you can guess long before Lucy figures them out and the whole thing in general is as familiar and comfortable as driving home.

But for a light bit of fluff it achieves everything it sets out to. Charming, attractive lead male, hapless, underconfident lead female, lots of fairytale princess scenes, emotional highs and lows, and a feel-good funny ending to leave you with a smile on your face. A perfect bit of summer beach reading.

Rating: 3/5

Review: Can’t Live Without by Joanne Phillips

Title: Can’t Live Without

Author: Joanne Phillips

Series: There’s a sequel in the works called ‘The Family Trap’

Genre: Chick Lit

Summary (from Goodreads)

How does it feel to lose everything you own?

Stella Hill is proud of the home she’s created for herself and her daughter. She’s worked hard to buy the very best of everything … But when she wakes one morning to find her kitchen on fire, Stella knows her life will never be the same again.

At least she has Paul to lean on: Paul Smart, owner of Smart Homes, confirmed bachelor and unknowing recipient of a schoolgirl crush Stella never quite got over … When the charismatic John Dean turns up after sixteen years, Stella is determined not to fall for him again. Because now her heart belongs elsewhere. Or does it?

With a boss she’s half in love with, a teenage daughter about to go seriously off the rails, a spendaholic mother, and a house to rebuild, Stella’s problems are only just beginning.

Can Stella put her life – and her home – back together again? And will she ever realise just what it is she really can’t live without?

Review

I decided to start reviewing Self Pubbed books because I think Self Publishing is moving away from the ‘Vanity Press’ days to becoming a valid avenue for writers looking to get their work out there. With fierce competition for limited places in publishing house line ups, there must be thousands of good books out there that get turned away (Harry Potter, famously rejected many times before JKR made her fortune).

I must admit though, even though it’s something I’m considering myself (for my novellas, which wouldn’t find a place in a traditional publishing house, even if they were the most amazing books ever written) I still carry something of a bias myself. I don’t expect anything from Self Published books. And that can be a good and bad thing.

Can’t Live Without, then, before I start waffling completely off tangent.

A cracking opening had me instantly engaged, and Stella is a character easy to love, despite her flaws. Her first person, present tense narrative is energetic and opinionated, bordering on bitchy in a way that is very amusing. There was clear voice from the very first line, and it didn’t take long to think of Stella as an old friend, with a measure of definite fondness as she screwed up time and time again.

But then the second chapter jumps to a third person, past tense narrative, following Stella’s teenage daughter, who later writes a first person section in her diary, and then there’s Paul, Stella’s boss and love interest, who also gets a narrative perspective…

I’m not keen on books that swap styles as they swap viewpoints. You have to give your characters a unique viewpoint, yes, but it’s my personal opinion that the viewpoints should at least be consistent in terms of tense and perspective. I find it jarring transitioning between the different styles.

That said, I did love Lipsy’s diary entries. The stroppy teenager with unrealistic ideas about life was an entertaining view to have, and I preferred it enormously to the third person perspective sections that followed her. It was a nice way of revealing her character development as well, showing her change in attitude across the span of the novel.

And there was tonnes of character development. This wasn’t the soggy sort of chick lit that makes me abhor the genre. The characters were realistic, flawed, with definite growth. Some of the more background characters were a little two dimensional (Loretta the office bitch, Billy, Stella’s brother) but that’s fairly standard for any book, and the major players more than made up for it.

In fact, I doubt I’d have even particularly noticed the background characters if they’d stayed very much in the background, but my second issue with Can’t Live Without was the story.

It wasn’t the issue that a lot of books I’ve read lately have: that there is no story. In fact, it was totally the opposite. There was too much. For a relatively short book, it did try to pack in a lot of stuff – teenage rebellion, family in prison, absent fathers, the issues of consumerism, as well as the romance side of things. Any one of these things could have made a good novel, and a couple could have made a great one. I just felt in the rush to pack all these things in, none were really explored in enough detail, and character revelations and epiphanies came thick and fast and usually quite cheesy. Characters changed completely in a page length. Relationships were forged and broken in a chapter. Everything (with the exception of one revelation about Stella’s father) made sense, the character changes were logical and understandable, but nothing really had the emotional impact it could have carried.

It’s hard to say all this without sounding like I didn’t enjoy the book. I did, and I certainly don’t feel like it was a waste of the two afternoons it took to read it. And I guess this comes back to my key thing about Self Publishing. I have no expectations. Anything better than absolute tripe is a bonus, and Can’t Live Without is a long way above absolute tripe.

Also, it’s cheap.

Admittedly, I got this free when Joanne ran a promotion, but I wouldn’t have felt too bad about spending £1.91 on it. You can get Self Published books for 79p a lot of the time, so it’s not a venture that’s going to leave you out of pocket. Can’t Live Without isn’t as polished or cohesive as some of its published counterparts (but then, it’s also a damn sight better than some of its published counterparts – being traditionally published is not always a hallmark of quality) but for the price you’re paying it’s an enjoyable, light read.

And I definitely think Joanne Phillips is an author to keep an eye on.

Rating: 3/5

Joanne’s Website: http://joannegphillips.wordpress.com

Film Review: Limitless

Title: Limitless

Director: Neil Burger

Writers: Leslie Dixon (screenplay), Alan Glynn (novel)

Stars: Bradley Cooper, Anna Friel and Abbie Cornish

Rating: 15

Review: I’m the sort of film watcher who thinks merit can be measured by explosion frequency. I’m not the discerning viewer after high brow story lines, superb acting and thought provoking direction. I like fast, I like stylish, I like genre.

So to all appearances Limitless should satisfy my tastes as a film watcher fairly easily.

I wouldn’t say it didn’t, but I wouldn’t say it did either.

Limitless starts well, with a slightly dishevelled guy (Bradley Cooper) precariously balanced on a balcony ledge of a penthouse suit, while someone tries to break the door down. Before we find out if he steps off and plummets to his death we wind back some months before to where this all started – when a hopeless writer, significantly more dishevelled than he is in the future, bumps into an old school friend who offers him a drug that allows him access to 100% of his brain. Feeling he couldn’t be in a worse situation than he is right now – girlfriend left him, deadline for pages looming and nothing written, house a mess – our protagonist Eddie takes the drug and with his heightened intelligence starts to see things going his way for a change. He gets his pages written, tidies his house, bangs his landlord’s irritating wife after sweet talking her with advice about college papers.

But of course, drugs wear off, and most of the rest of the film is Eddie trying to stay ahead of those who would take his stash from him, while trying to advance himself as quickly as possible and make a quick fortune.

While the film is great to look at – the trippy sections of drug fuelled indulgence are stylishly done, there is some brilliant make up (Anna Friel’s brief appearance being a particularly good show) and the acting is reasonable – and in all fairness, I was really enjoying it until the final section, the finale that occurred once we were back with Eddie on the edge of his penthouse balcony left a lot to be desired.

It’s not that there wasn’t a resolution, or even that the resolution was particularly unbelievable. It was just… wrong. Morally wrong. (Warning: Slight spoilers ahead.)

The overall message of Limitless seemed to be: take loads of drugs, get everything you ever wanted. It was edgy, and saw Eddie doing terrible things – taking him as far down as to shoot a criminal and drink his blood for the drug in it. But at the end everything was fine – better, in fact, than it had ever been – and rock bottom, drinking human blood Eddie was on his way to being senator.

I guess I wanted a little more consequence. If the final exchange between Robert DeNiro’s character and Eddie had gone a little more DeNiro’s way, then I think it would have been better. But as it stands, Limitless just seems to suggest that you can do whatever the hell you want, and still be en route to presidency, just as long as you’re smart and pretty enough.

Overall Verdict

A flick that does its best to be fast, fun and footloose, and succeeds, but with a questionable morality that left me feeling a little jarred by the ending.

Rating: 3/5

Review: How To Survive A Robot Uprising by Daniel H. Wilson

Title: How To Survive A Robot Uprising: Tips On Defending Yourself Against The Coming Rebellion

Author: Daniel H. Wilson

Series: N/A

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Genre: Humour/Help Guide

Summary (from Goodreads)

An inspired and hilarious look at how humans can defeat the inevitable robot rebellion—as revealed by a robotics expert.

How do you spot a robot mimicking a human? How do you recognize and then deactivate a rebel servant robot? How do you escape a murderous “smart” house, or evade a swarm of marauding robotic flies? In this dryly hilarious survival guide, roboticist Daniel H. Wilson teaches worried humans the keys to quashing a robot mutiny.

From treating laser wounds to fooling face and speech recognition, besting robot logic to engaging in hand-to-pincer combat, How to Survive a Robot Uprising covers every possible doomsday scenario facing the newest endangered species: humans. And with its thorough overview of current robot prototypes—including giant walkers, insect, gecko, and snake robots—How to Survive a Robot Uprising is also a witty yet legitimate introduction to contemporary robotics. Full of cool illustrations, and referencing some of the most famous robots in pop-culture, How to Survive a Robot Uprising is a one-of-a-kind book that is sure to be a hit with all ages.

What’s Good About It

The illustrations. No, seriously. Get yourself a copy just to flick through the illustrations – they are hilarious.

But in terms of the actual writing, that was pretty funny too – there are a lot of pop culture references, and some completely random statements that illicit a snort of laughter. The advice seems pretty sound too – Wilson clearly knows his robots (as he should do with a Ph.D in them) and the descriptions of current prototype robots are fascinating – great research for any budding science fiction writer.

The ‘How to Survive the Uprising’ section was the best bit – there were some really funny ‘what to do only in a last ditch attempt’ sections based on popular films, which made me laugh. And you could really imagine some hardened survivalist actually doing some of the things suggested.

What’s Not So Good

A pedantic point, perhaps, but I didn’t like the size of the book. It’s supposed to be a pocket guide sort of deal, but the pages were quite stiff and difficult to read.

It was also a bit repetitive at times. As someone who has studied presentation of informative writing numerous times, I felt I could have given Wilson some tips on how to present his information. The old ‘Subheading-Information’ routine got a bit dry by the end. I wanted diagrams and tables and charts etc. But perhaps that’s me being a total nerd.

Rating: 3/5

Review: Halo by Alexandra Adornetto

Title: Halo

Author: Alexandra Adornetto

Series: Halo #1

Genre: YA Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Atom

Summary (from Goodreads)

Three angels- Gabriel, the warrior; Ivy, the healer; and Bethany, the youngest and most human- are sent by Heaven to bring good to a world falling under the influence of darkness. They must work hard to conceal their luminous glow, superhuman powers, and, most dangerous of all, their wings, all the while avoiding all human attachments.

Then Bethany meets Xavier Woods, and neither of them is able to resist the attraction between them. Gabriel and Ivy do everything in their power to intervene, but the bond between Xavier and Bethany seems too strong.

The angel’s mission is urgent, and dark forces are threatening. Will love ruin Bethany or save her?

What’s Good About It

Eh.

Halo is one of those books where, when someone asks you if you’re enjoying it you say ‘yes’, then when they ask why you realise you’re sort of not. It sucks you in unwillingly, consuming huge portions of time while enraging you, but too quietly for you to notice until you stop and think about it.

Let me try to explain a little more eloquently…

Halo starts well. Beth comes across as relatable, interesting, with a certainly unique view-point. She is eloquent, intelligent, but also a little naive. Her mission, from Heaven, is to go to High School.

Wait, what?

Okay, that blip aside, let’s push on. School is run of the mill. Beth befriends some flirty girls who are quite happy to include her in their circle despite her social ineptitude. Things progress rather dully until butterfly inducingly, heart meltingly gorgeous Xavier Woods comes on the scene. The friends all warn Beth he is inaccessible, that loads of girls have tried and failed to impress him. But, for no reason I can fathom, Beth and Xavier fall hopelessly in love.

Thus follows several hundred pages of prom preparation, mystical secrets being revealed, boy troubles, Xavier being almost unbearably overprotective, and no sign of a plot surfacing until the last quarter of the novel – a plot that is so much an afterthought compared to the central relationship that it comes across really strained and false.

Also, for all her endearingness in the first few chapters, by the end of the book I wanted to strangle Bella… I mean Beth.

Sorry, forgot what book I was talking about there.

I’ve used the dreaded T word to compare books before. Publishers do it all the time as well, tarnishing perfectly good books with comparisons to the tosh that is Twilight. However, with Halo there really is no truer comparison. It is Twilight. With angels.

And sorry, I also appear to have forgotten that this is meant to be the ‘good’ section.

What’s Not So Good

Adornetto sort of gets away with writing her own personal romantic fantasy drivel on account of being only eighteen, but really, if you’re going to read a book so close to Twilight, you may as well read Twilight. At least that was vaguely original.

Halo, at best, is like Twilight’s preachy cousin. It’s difficult to do angels without touching on the God thing, but really, people don’t like to be preached at, generally, and the ‘holier than thou’ attitude does wear a little thin.

And it’s a shame because it was so promising. The idea of an angel incarnate, experiencing the blessings of humanity for the first time is a great one, giving loads of room for exploration. In the opening few chapters there was a lovely passage about love being an inadequate word to describe all the different facets of the emotion – poignant and well observed. But after that it reduced to a slightly more upmarket version of toilet humour, playing on Bethany’s naivety with MILF gags and sex talk. I mean, if an angel has all of human knowledge (which she can use to do all her lessons and homework) surely there’s a section in that knowledge for the human vernacular? And if it had been done once, it would be fine, but it got a bit cringy after the fourth or fifth time.

Then the whole major issue of angels being sent to Earth to go to High School, I mean, come on! Surely there is a better way to exert divine influence than going to French class. And if I could divine a purpose for Bethany being there with Ivy and Gabriel, other than for authorial wish-fulfillment fantasy, then I would probably be a step closer to solving the greater riddles of the universe.

The ‘sex before marriage is for sluts’ message was present too. Browbeating with outdated moral messages is one of my least favourite things in YA literature. Sure, don’t encourage teenagers to go out, get wasted and sleep around, but credit them with enough intelligence to know what they want and definitely don’t try to make them feel bad about it.

And, of course, characters don’t have to be edgy to be interesting. We can root for the nice girl. But I, for one, can’t root for the character so vapid, if she had a personality it was lost somewhere in the black hole where her characterisation is.

Halo should have been the book that Adornetto lovingly showed her family and friends before locking it in the back of a cupboard somewhere while she worked on her real masterpiece, taking out occasionally when the going got tough to reminisce over fondly. Because she does have real potential. There is enough here to make me intrigued and keep me reading, and I think once she gets past her Twilight Fanfiction stage (we’ve all been there, well, I have, and would argue that it’s an important phase of writing development) she’ll turn out some really good novels.

Rating: 3/5

Review: Out For Blood by Alyxandra Harvey

Title: Out For Blood

Author: Alyxandra Harvey

Series: Drake Chronicles #3

Genre: YA Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Summary (from Goodreads)

Hunter Wild is the youngest in a long line of elite vampire hunters, a legacy that is both a blessing and a curse at the secret Helios-Ra Academy, where she excels at just about everything. Thanks to her friendship with Kieran Black, Hunter receives a special invitation to attend the coronation of Helena Drake, and for the first time, she sees the difference between vampires that must be hunted and vampires that can become friends—or even more. When students at the academy fall victim to a mysterious illness, Hunter suspects they are under attack from within. She will need someone she can trust to help her save the future of Helios-Ra . . . help that shockingly comes in the form of Quinn Drake, a drop-dead gorgeous vampire. Who said senior year would be easy?

What’s Good About It

If you’ve read my review of the previous two installments in this series, you’ll know that I think they are full of unrealised potential. It’s much the same with Out For Blood. Harvey continues with her comfortably successful formula, introducing a new female character to be a love interest for the next Drake in line. Frothy fun ensues with much ‘he was so hot’ and ‘I couldn’t explain why I was so obsessed with her’, but not a lot of character development.

The pace remains good, and the threat, though not as high as in the last book, is enough to keep pages turning. There is even a little bit of set up for the next book, which has been absent in the previous installments. The set up is, of course, of a romantic nature, but at least introducing it as a possibility now gives it a little more credibility than the other relationships in the series thus far.

What’s Not So Good

As I mentioned, the character development is pretty much non-existent. The romance relies on instant attraction, leaving the whole ‘get-together’ process bemusing at best. If you can get past the fact that there’s no reason why Hunter and Quinn fall in love with each other, or that (as evidence by the fact that I just typed in completely the wrong Drake brother’s name just then) the characters are pretty much interchangeable, then this is an amusing, light read, but nothing that will have you waiting impatiently for the next installment.

Rating: 3/5

Review: The Drake Chronicles by Alyxandra Harvey

As part of the Summer Break Reading Challenge here is a review of the first two installments of Alyxandra Harvey’s Drake Chronicles: My Love Lies Bleeding (known in places outisde of the UK as ‘Hearts at Stake – hey, we like to be different) and Blood Feud.

Title: My Love Lies Bleeding (Hearts at Stake)

Author: Alyxandra Harvey

Series: The Drake Chronicles #1

Genre: YA, Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Summary (from Goodreads)

The Drakes are rather different to your usual neighbours. They are vampires and some of the members of the family date back to the twelfth century. One of the children, Solange, is the only born female vampire known and, as such, she poses a direct threat to the vampire queen. Her best friend Lucy is human, and when Solange is kidnapped Lucy and Solange’s brother, Nicholas, set out to save her. Lucy soon discovers that she would like to be more than just friends with Nicholas. But how does one go about dating a vampire? Meanwhile, Solange finds an unlikely ally in Kieran, a vampire slayer on the hunt for his father’s killer.

What’s Good About It

There’s some really interesting Vampire Mythology, very different to many other Teen vampire romance books, and a lot of politics going on in the background. These elements raise the book above your average ‘girl meets boy and one just happens to be supernatural’ sort of fair. The boys in question are dark and mysterious, or dashing and handsome, so there’s something for every taste, and the female characters are lively and three dimensional. The pace is good, with plenty going on between the swoon moments and the premise is interesting enough to be sustained over several novels.

What’s Not So Good

I’d have liked to have seen more of the politics and mythology, and less of the romance. I love a bit of romance, and I particularly love a bit of paranormal romance, particularly when it’s the girl who’s the paranormal one (as is the case with Solange) but I don’t love it when romance is the primary plot point, at least, not in books that pretend to be otherwise. If you are going to do all out romance, do all out romance, and describe the minutae of the developing romance. If you’re going to to politics, do politics, and have the romance as a juicy extra. What you get with My Love Lies Bleeding is an awkward combination of the two. There’s not enough romance to make the book exceptional, and not enough politics to make it anything other than romance. Which is a shame because the characters are fab, and the writing is pretty good too. I hoped Alyxandra would build on her premis in….

Title: Blood Feud

Author: Alyxandra Harvey

Series: The Drake Chronicles #1

Genre: YA, Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Summary (from Goodreads)

It’s been centuries since Isabeau St. Croix barely survived the French Revolution. Now she’s made her way back to the living and she must face the ultimate test by confronting the evil British lord who left her for dead the day she turned into a vampire. That’s if she can control her affection for Logan Drake, a vampire whose bite is as sweet as the revenge she seeks.

What’s Good About It

Again, interesting premis, great characters and some fabulous scenes from the French Revolution that really bring to life the period of great excess and great deprivation. Isabeau is a sassy new female, with some really fascinating history and mythology. I love that the girls aren’t the helpless ones in this series, as often they can be in paranormal romance. Isabeau doesn’t need a knight in shining armour. It picks up where My Love Lies Bleeding left off, almost to the day, so there are some familiar faces returning, and the consequences of the climax of the previous book are explored.

What’s Not So Good

Well, I didn’t buy Isabeau and Logan for a start. Their entire romance, which happes over a few days, seems to be based on the idea that Logan feels like he’s met her somewhere before. Now I’m not against the idea of instant attraction to a person, but these two were confessing their love for eachother within about five days. Okay, some people are fast movers, and when you meet the one, you know (supposedly… it took me a bit longer than five days, but maybe I’m just slow) but where’s the story in that? Where’s the tantilising attraction that gradually becomes love. That’s the sort of romance I like to read about. And then the premis isn’t built on at all, really. Again, the book takes place over about a week and in that time too much is resolved a little too easily. Without giving away too much detail, I can’t really see where the next book could go. And I’m assuming there will be five more books, as five dashing Drake brothers remain…

Rating 3/5