Book Review: Just a Little Romance by Mary Jane Russell

Mary Jane Russell introduces Samantha Moyer, who is successful in her professional life. She is, however, much less successful in her private life. She is in her 40s and searching for the love of her life in all the wrong places. 

After a couple of disasters, Sam finally gives up online dating, sleeping around, and tries to get her act together. When she does, she finds love in the person who believes Sam is not good relationship material.

Russell slowly unfolds her story allowing her to develop the relationship between Sam and her best pal, Paul. Sam has two other best friends. Ava, an 80-something next door neighbor and 20-something Haley, living across the street. These two women and the other characters remain amorphous, however, throughout the book. The reader is told of the closeness of the bonds between these characters, but the reader may have difficulty believing it because the relationships are not well developed. There are other characters in the book, like the retired judge introduced in some detail in an early chapter only to never be mentioned again. Easier to understand is the villain Russell gives us, KD is an abusive woman who believes Sam is the cause of Haley breaking up with her.

For a book that unfolded as slowly as this one, Russell should have been able to develop her characters in depth. However, such was not the case. Perhaps if the author had decided on fewer characters, she could have given the remaining characters more personality. Russell had a very interesting premise, but the book didn’t live up to its potential.

Russell’s transitions in time was often so abrupt that it takes the reader out of the story while she tries to figure out how much time has passed between the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next. 

This wasn’t a bad read. in fact, it is worth the read simply to see how Sam deals with the various crisis in her life and how she determines to finally grow up.

Book Review: Breaker's Passion by Julie Cannon

This is Julie Cannon’s 8th novel. Here, she introduces the reader to Elizabeth Collins and Colby “Breaker” Taylor. Elizabeth is a college president from New Hampshire and lesbian romance author who is in Hawaii for 10 weeks on vacation and to finish her latest book. Colby is a surfer instructor and surf shop owner. Neither woman is looking for love, but both are in danger of falling in love when they meet.

Colby, though, has a dark secret she’s been carrying for three years that prevents her from wanting a relationship. She’s never told anyone the details of her guilty secret. She knows that once she tells anyone about her past, there can be nothing between them. Elizabeth has never understood how any woman can give herself totally to another. She thinks she was born without the absolute commitment gene.

Both women know from the outset that the passion between them can’t lead anywhere because Elizabeth will leave the island at the end of her vacation and return to academia. In the meantime, however, theirs is a torrid romance.

When Colby unwittingly shows something of her past, Elizabeth insists on knowing it all. In a moment of weakness, Colby tells her the story expecting Elizabeth to react badly. Colby only sees what she expects to see and rushes out into the night. Elizabeth searches for her, but can’t find her. With no reason to remain in Hawaii, Elizabeth returns to the States earlier than planned.

The two women both have epiphanies about her feelings for the other woman. But will either do anything about their discoveries?

The story unfolds slowly, and the reader may have trouble telling the characters apart at first. Once they meet, however, the book gets going and the two characters are easily distinguishable. Cannon writes about Hawaii beautifully, her descriptions of the landscape will make the reader want to jump on the first plane to Maui. The ending was at first confusing because Cannon failed to divulge which of the character’s voice she was writing in - are we in Colby’s head or Elizabeth’s? Does it really matter? Not one whit.

Book Review: Nothing but the Truth by Carsen Taite

In Carsen Taite’s fourth novel, she introduces readers to two powerful women: Assistant District Attorney for Dallas County, Ryan Foster, and defense attorney Brett Logan. The two attorneys couldn’t be more different. 

Ryan is uptight, driven, always in control, and always dressed impeccably.  Ryan has been tapped to succeed her boss, the District Attorney, taking his place when he retires, and lives above the fray of the courtroom in her role as administrator for the DA’s office. She prefers her sex anonymous and often.

Brett, on the other hand, is a magnet for dirt. She is often disheveled, prefers casual clothes to business attire, and is laid back - or as laid back as any attorney can be. Brett has her own law practice and takes on cases that appeal to her and lives her work life in the courtroom. Brett is celibate, but looking for love.

When the DA orders Ryan to take over the prosecution of a high-profile murder case she is told it is a slam-dunk conviction. With few qualms about taking the case away from another prosecutor to further her own political goals, she takes the case. Brett is hired to defend a young man who wants to confess to the murder allegedly committed by the man Ryan is prosecuting for the crime. When Brett tells Ryan about the young man, they both know it will throw a monkey wrench into Ryan’s case.

Each time the two women meet, they are both aware of a growing attraction. Ryan wants to deny it and Brett can’t believe it.

Taite has written an excellent courtroom drama with two interesting women leading the cast of characters. Taite, herself, is a practicing defense attorney and her courtroom scenes are clearly based on real knowledge. This should be another winner for Taite.

Book Review: Leaving L.A.

In Leaving L.A., author Kate Christie introduces Eleanor Chapin, who put her plans to become a child psychologist on hold while she cared for her terminally ill mother. When her mother dies, she moves to Los Angeles to start a new life. She moves in with her best friend from college, Sasha, and finds a job teaching at an exclusive private school. Tessa Flannagan, an A-List actor, retired while she was still at the top of the A-List. She wanted to be able to spend more time with her daughter, Layla, who is five years old and precocious.

When Tessa walks into Eleanor’s classroom, Eleanor is immediately star struck. Tessa is, Eleanor decides, much more beautiful in person than on the screen. Tessa is taken with the no-nonsense teacher whom Layla already has major crush on. Old habits die hard, though, and Tessa’s ability to trust is at a low point. She knows that relationships between film stars and non-movie-business people seldom succeed. That knowledge doesn’t stop her from hiring Eleanor to be Layla’s nanny when the school year ends.

Eleanor has made plans to pursue her earlier dream of becoming a child psychologist and accepts Tessa’s offer of summer employment because she needs the money. She will be leaving Tessa’s employment at the end of the summer to attend grad school.

What happens when Eleanor and Tessa see each other every day is at the heart of this book. Each struggles with her growing attraction for the other woman. Each knows a long-term relationship is out of the question. When the paparazzi rediscover Tessa, things become even more complicated.

Beneath it all, though, Tessa has been hiding a secret from everyone since she moved from her home town to Los Angeles. She knows that if she’s to have any kind of relationship with Eleanor, she’ll have to tell her the secret. But wanting to tell Eleanor and doing so are two very different things.

Christie has taken a tried-and-true story - major movie star meets a mere mortal - and made it seem fresh and new. Christie doesn’t need tired cliches to describe the attraction between the two women to let her readers know what’s going on. She uses exotic settings, Hawaii and the hills of Los Angeles (let’s face it, most of us will never live on the same street with the stars hence its exoticness) to move her story along. Even the minor characters like Layla, Eleanor’s friends, Sasha and Luis, and Tessa’s best friend Will are well drawn and interesting.

The author maintains the pacing throughout the book - it starts out strong and stays that way to the end. You’ll laugh out loud, you may even cry, but you won’t want to put this book down and undoubtedly will be annoyed when your everyday life insists that you set the book aside.

Leaving L.A. could very well end up as one of the ten best books of 2011.

Book Review: Dying to Live

Dying to Live is the fourth in the authors’ Elite Operatives series. Here, Kim Baldwin and Xenia Alexiou tell the tale of Zoe Anderson-Howe, the spoiled twenty-something child of a business mogul. She is kidnapped by Columbian guerrillas, known as FARC, who want to ransom her for millions of her father’s money. She is taken deep into the Columbian jungle to a camp where she meets other hostages who are awaiting release, some have been waiting for years. In her arrogance, she demands to be released, refuses to eat, and continues acting like a spoiled princess who is used to getting her way.

Elite Operative Fetch has been deeply uncover as FARC’s “medica.” Her mission is to effect the release of the hostages. Her assignment is complicated when Zoe is added to the list of hostages she needs to free. Fetch knows about Zoe’s pampered life and wants nothing to do with the likes of Zoe.

Unbeknownst to those living in the jungle, a madman has released a deadly virus upon the world. The virus kills its victim within days of coming into contact with it. Very quickly, millions of people are dead or dying. Two of the camp’s guerrillas come down with the virus after returning from a visit into the nearest town. The virus begins spreading through the camp.

Fetch has no choice but to get the hostages, including Zoe, out of the camp and on their way to freedom. However, matters become complicated when it becomes apparent that three of the hostages have been infected with the virus. Fetch has no choice but to leave them behind in the jungle to die.

As the remaining hostage and Fetch run for their lives, a mutual respect grows between them as they each begin to understand the other better. It doesn’t take long for them to realize that while Zoe should have become ill with the virus because of her proximity to the stricken hostages. However, she remains healthy. Two guerrillas from their camp find them, Fetch kills them. As they near the pickup zone, Fetch realizes that Zoe is the answer to stopping the virus’ spread even as she realizes she is infected by the virus and will die within five days.

No sooner do Fetch and Zoe consummate their love than Fetch leaves on another assignment - to find the man who set loose the pandemic.

Baldwin and Alexiou have written a barn burner of a thriller. The reader is taken in from the first page to the last. The tension is maintained throughout the book with rare exception. 

In the last chapter, the authors re-introduces characters who first appeared in earlier books in the series. Readers new to the series are warned to slow their reading or face the possibility of getting lost in trying to figure out who these “new” people are. However, by reading slower, the reader will easily see that authors explain who these people are and their relationship to one another.

Baldwin and Alexiou are defining the genre of romantic suspense within the lesbian genre with this series. You’ll find yourself rushing to purchase the first three books in the series if you haven’t already read them, or, if you have read them, wishing the authors would write the fifth in the series faster.

Book Review: Not Every River by Robbi McCoy

Randi Randall works at the Yuma, Arizona office of the Bureau of Land Management as the resident geologist. She loves Yuma, the people who live there, and the surrounding desert. She has finally gotten her life together and is happily single. Kim Gatlin, an archaeologist from a California university, has received permission the BLM to survey and catalogue the Native American petroglyphs for the first time near Yuma.

Randi is not happy with the petroglyphs being surveyed because she knows that the surveying archaeologist will want to publish her findings. The ensuing publicity about the little-known petroglyphs will endanger them as tourists flock to see them by the droves. Kim is aware of what her surveying will result in, but feels strongly that the survey needs to be taken and she has the right to publish her findings. The fact that her career will be enhanced by the survey will be icing on the cake.

From this initial point of conflict between Randi and Kim, McCoy continues her tale of the two women. As summer approaches with its 100+ degree heat, so, too, does the tension between Kim and Randi heat up. Both women are aware of a growing attraction and both have reasons for wanting to ignore it. How they get beyond the conflict and their own wariness is at the heart of this story.

McCoy seamlessly entwines the geology and anthropology of the Yuma desert into the story. She is sensitive to the significance to both sides of the conundrum: the impact of publicizing the existence of the petroglyphs on the Native American culture or keeping the petroglyphs’ presence away from the public. McCoy is also able to weave some of the history of the Native Americans who occupied the area around Yuma into the story as Kim surveys the field of petroglyphs.

As the desert becomes hotter, McCoy is able to describe it in such a way that the reader may find herself wiping non-existent sweat from her brow or craving a tall cool one. Her description of life in the small Arizona desert town allows you to both understand Randi’s attraction to the place and Kim’s wanting to return to her California home.

McCoy has created two fully realized characters in Randi and Kim. Add to the mix of characters a dog, an old man searching for lost treasure, an old woman who drives around in the desert in a burro-drawn cart, and Randi’s dimunitive best friend, and you’ve got characters to love.

Not Every River was deservedly nominated for a Lambda Literary Foundation Lammy award for best lesbian fiction for 2010. You won’t go amiss by reading this story by Robbi McCoy.

Book Review: Taking Flight by Laurel Mills

Sydney Burke is a librarian and avid birder living in the small town of Applewood. At one of her weekly birding group meetings, she meets Michelle Westbook. Michelle is married to Robert, who, it soon becomes apparent, is abusive, both emotionally and physically. As the two women spend time together, an attraction begins to grow between them.

Laurel Mills has written a book about finding the courage to take the first step toward happiness and a future after an abusive relationsip. She writes honestly about physical abuse and why a woman stays and why she leaves that relationship. She also acknowledges the fear of being an abused wife - fear of the husband and fear for her own life. She tells of the embarrassment an abused woman feels about being abused. This book is not always easy to read because of this.

Mills gives us a great deal of fascinating detail about the birds and the flowers in Applewood. It almost makes you want to join a birding group to learn more and see more.

Mills is realistic about Michelle carrying damaging mental baggage from her relationship with the abusive Robert. She doesn’t have Michelle flying into Sydney’s arms and home as soon as she leaves Robert. Michelle first finds safety at an abused women’s shelter and then an apartment of her own after she leaves the shelter, which allows Sydney and Michelle to build a relationship of their own as Michelle heals, both physically and mentally.

The reader is given the point of view of both Michelle and Sydney using alternating chapters to do so. This may cause some readers problems because not everyone has the opportunity to read to the end of a chapter. Coming back to the middle of a chapter, the reader may be disoriented as to who is telling the story since Mills uses the first person perspective in each chapter. However, if you are a reader who reads to the end of the chapter no matter what, this writer’s device will be no problem for you.

If you are an abused woman, know an abused woman, want to know more about abused women, or simply want to read a good story that happens to have an abused woman as the main character, then this is a book you’ll want to read.