Well, I’ve read quite a few books lately, here’s a quick rundown of my thoughts on the Cindy Gerard Bodyguard series:

To The Edge

Jillian Kincaid is the daughter of a very rich businessman, all her life she’s been surrounded by bodyguards, following her every move, now that she’s a grown woman, she refuses to be treated like a child, and having a hired protector follow her round all day, is all too reminiscent of her childhood.

However, when she starts receiving threatening letters, she’s forced to rethink her stance, even though she hates the thought of her privacy being infringed upon. Enter Nolan Garrett. He’s been hired by Jillian’s dad to make sure she doesn’t get killed. Nolan was expecting a spoiled bitch, but instead he is surprised, when Jillian turns out to be an independent lady, who proves to be a tough nut to crack.

I really liked both the H/H, and this book in general. It was a quick easy read, but when the perp was revealed, I must admit, I was surprised. I liked the romance between Jillian and Nolan, and there was enough of a balance between romance and suspense to keep me happy.

Oh, did anybody notice that Gerard has a habit of using the term “geezus” a la Tara Janzen? I’m just sayin’.

To The Limit

Eve Garret’s life is in danger, whilst chasing after Tiffany Claybourne, a billionaire’s daughter who she’s no longer officially supposed to be protecting, she gets herself smacked upside the head, and knocked unconscious. Whilst investigating the disappearance of her ex-charge, she runs into the guy (Tyler ‘Mac’ Maclaine) who stole her virginity when she was just eighteen and in lust. Eve finds that she still hasn’t gotten over the fact that he abandoned her minutes after deflowering her, but unfortunately, she’s gonna have to suck it up, because he’s been hired to find Tiffany, so she’s gonna need his help.

Although Eve showed a lot of potential in To The Edge, I think Gerard took the road well travelled, and instead of confirming her kick-ass status, she took the easy route, and made her into a damsel who had to be rescued by her ex-boyf. I really hate that. Why would you change a kick-ass heroine into a TSTL whiny bitch? Anyway, generally, TTL, was a lot harder to read than TTE, I didn’t particularly care for Mac, because he came across as an arrogant arse.

To The Brink

Now we’re talking!

Darcy Prescott is part of the diplomatic service assigned to Manila, in the Phillipines.
When her best friend gets killed, Darcy is afraid that she will be next, especially when she opens up the envelope that her best friend leaves in her safe keeping. Before she hides the contents of the envelope, she places a call to Ethan Garrett, the ex-husband, who she divorced five years ago. She’s forced to leave a message for him, knowing that he is the one person on earth who will come to her rescue, come hell or highwater.

Darcy manages to mail the envelope, just before, she is kidnapped by a gang of men, working for an unknown killer.

When Ethan picks up the message from Darcy, he realises that he’s still not over his ex-wife, and that he’ll probably have to kill again, to make sure that she stays alive. He takes a team with him out to the Philippines to rescue her, knowing that failure is not an option.

I loved this story. It seemed to have much more of an emotional intensity than the previous two books. Ethan was my kind of hero, dark, and brooding, without being a whiny-arsed bitch. Darcy was also fab, and I loved the fact that although they were divorced, they both knew that the other would do whatever it took to keep him/her safe. Their marriage didn’t end because they didn’t love each other, and I thank Gerard for not having Darcy and Ethan harp on at each other for the majority of the book, like so many authors who use this particular plot device tend to do.

Although it was easy to guess who the baddie was, it was still well written, and moved along at quite a nice pace.

If you do decide to read all three books, I would advise that you read them in order, because if you read TTB first, the other books will probably disappoint. (Although I do think Gerard’s frequent use of the phrase “To a man” started grating a little bit)

Good rec Anne, as usual you were right, this was certainly the best out of the bunch! I’m really looking forward to Dallas’s story, after having been introduced to his eventual heroine in TTB.

Oooh, I wonder what got up Ann Vremont’s nose then? She certainly seems to have a beef against Sarah McCarty’s fangirls. Anne has a blog post linking to a conversation that was being held on Solaine’s blog.

I found the whole conversation rather amusing, but she must have known that it was bound to piss somebody off right? Oh well, let’s hope it doesn’t get out of hand.

Not only is that Crazy Bitch off her head, her group members aren’t too sensible either. Check this guy out, he writes:

“We all people in here so I’m asking for help. People, I’m addicted to sex I got a problem and what make it worse I’m married. I been marry since I came out of high school. I love my wife but man I want to cheat so bad. I haven’t got everything out of my system, and I’m in ATL the girls here are bad. People what should I do?”

I wonder if this guy is for real? Any suggestions as to what he should do ladies? I have a few suggestions, but some of them involve anatomically impossible positions. What a cock.

We arrived early Friday evening, picked up the rental car, which happened to be one of those horrid Mercedes A class thingies. We checked into the hotel, then went and got some food from the bar.

The waiter was in a bad mood because there were some overly loud patrons in the bar, and we could tell that they were pissing him off. He wasn’t very talkative, but to be fair, he couldn’t speak English, and we couldn’t speak German.

We ate our food, got drunk, and went to bed. We were absolutely knackered.

Saturday, we woke up early, and went into the citry centre, to look around, and to do some shopping. We didn’t buy much, mostly memorabilia stuff. The World Bowl was being held that evening in Dusseldorf, so there were shitloads of NFL Europe football supporters out and about. (We had tickets to the game incidentally).

We spent most of the day getting lost, in fact, we managed to forget where we’d parked the car, and it took us about an hour’s worth of walking up and down the centre, before we finally located where we’d parked the car.

We quickly drove back to the hotel, dropped off our wares, and made our way to the LTU arena, where the game was being played.

The place was absolutely packed out, and for some reason, I hadn’t expected it to be as busy as it was. Anyway, when we finally parked up, the heavens opened, and it pissed it down with rain. We were parked about twenty minutes away from the arena, and all the time we were walking, it rained like a mother f*cker. Thank God, The Tall Guy (who was a boy scout) had remembered to bring our pair of matching waterproofs (we looked ridiculous, but at least we didn’t get as wet as some people) which we donned, prior to starting the twenty minute walk.

We had sideline seats, so we had a good view of the game. Unfortunately, we were sat behind a couple of loudmouth Amsterdam Admirals supporters, who appeared to be having some kind of farting competition. They were foul, and so were the smells coming from their arses. Dirty bastards.

The game was ok. Frankfurt Galaxy beat the Amsterdam Admirals by 22 – 7. I was glad when it was all over.

We then started on the long journey back to the car, to find that we couldn’t find where we’d parked. Sigh. It took us 45 mins of scrabbling round in the dark to finally find the blasted car, and by that time, I was thoroughly fed up.

We were going to nip out for something to eat, but honestly, once we’d got back to the hotel, we just couldn’t be arsed, so we went into the hotel bar again, and got some food. After that, we went up to our room, and snuggled into bed (after a good hot bath!) it was heaven.

On Sunday, we stayed in the room until check-out time, then we went to the harbour, where we walked along the Rhine, and ate lots of fatty foods. Bliss.

Our flight wasn’t until 9pm that evening, so we decided to waste some time, by going on an hour-and-a-half boatride. What a fucking joke. It felt like we were on there for 3 hours, talk about dull. It didn’t help that the wind speed had picked up, and was blowing us around for the entire journey. Sigh.

I was very grateful, when the boat trip came to an end.

Anyway, we collected our luggage from the hotel, and went to the airport.

I’ve never been so glad to get home from anywhere in my life.

Neither The Tall Guy nor I were overly keen on this particular German city. We’ve been to Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Dresden , and they’ve been ok, but for us personally, Dusseldorf was a wash-out.

The hotel was nice though, even though we didn’t spend much time in it. The staff there were great too. But that was about it, as far as enjoyment goes, we’ve been to much better places.

Anyway, hope you guys enjoy the pics, I’m off to watch Smallville!


Up above the clouds…

TG in God knows where…

Konigsalee - Merman and babies

Wanker Fan

Cute butts

Frankfurt Galaxy fans in town

TG with American flag

River Boat on the Rhine

In main shopping district

Ben and Jerry’s.

There’s a new-to-me reviewer on the block, go check Solaine out. She has some interesting viewpoints. Also, she’s all about the e-book baby… *g*

You know, yesterday evening, I went to the Borders superstore in Manchester. I usually go to the one in Leeds, but as it happens, I had some business in Manchester.

Anyhoo, I was looking through the romance section (thank God for Borders) and I was thinking that I’d pick out a couple of books by new-to-me authors.

I picked up a book by Jayne Anne Krentz, read the blurb, put it back. It sounded drier than a nuns c*nt.

I picked another JAK book, and put that back. I was falling asleep just reading the blurb.
Anyway, I picked up a couple more, and none of them sounded exciting, so they all went back on the shelf.

I decided that perhaps, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for a JAK book, so I moved onto Connie Brockway (I know she’s friends with Elizabeth Bevarly, but I can’t hold that against her forever). I picked up one of her books, and it sounded interesting, so I sat down, cross-legged on the floor (get over it, it’s my thing) and skim-read the first few pages. Jesus, I swear there were tears in my eyes by the time I got to page twenty. Shit that book was boring (don’t ask me what it was called, because I can’t remember).

I tried a few more Brockway books, and none of them set the world alight for me, so I moved onto the next new-to-me author, who happened to be Jude Devereaux. I skim read about five of her books, but none of them took my fancy. I then tried Judith Ivory, and Elizabeth Lowell, but sadly, with the same results.

Then I got to Emma Holly’s Strange Attractions, (she’s not a new-to-me author) and as I read the first few pages, I got a lovely tingle down my back. Yes, at last, a book worth getting excited over.

I finally figured out what was wrong with the other books. There just wasn’t any chemistry there. In this case, I think it was me, not them. They were probably fab books, but unfortunately not for me. Not that day.

In another time and place, I may love JAK, or Brockway, or Devereaux, but last night, I needed something more, I didn’t want rakish lords, lovely ladies who lunch or vestal virgins who don’t. I wanted gritty, I wanted raw, I wanted sexual, and unfortunately, neither Brockway, nor JAK (bless their cottons) was going to do it for me last night, no matter how brilliant they both are.

Do you guys ever get like that? Or am I just getting bored with straight romance?

Avidreader has an interesting post up. She has some questions for the average reader. It was fun, and made me think, so go have at it!

You know, I’m often bemused by the ignorance of some NYT authors. Laura Lee Guhrke posted this comment in response to something that was written by another poster at my AAR column:

“Second, at the risk of having every Ellora’s Cave author attacking me, I must also take issue with the idea that Ellora’s Cave is somehow taking over the market. Ellora’s Cave books do not sell at the same rate as mainstream romance.

EC has tapped into a market segment, no doubt, mainly a desire for more erotic romance, and publishers have noticed (hence lines such as Avon’s Red, Harlequin’s Blaze, etc. which are designed to meet that competition for erotica head on) but the sales of Ellora’s Cave books themselves is actually a very, very small piece of the total market share. E-books and on-demand publishing, while a growing segment, are still a miniscule one.

Ellora’s Cave as a company is probably making a profit, but if so, it’s because they have very little overhead and pay their authors next to nothing.”

I’ve highlighted the part that left me a little confused. My confusion mainly stems from the fact that I didn’t know that Ms Guhrke had ever written for EC, as she obviously seems to have some kind of inside information on this.

But then Jaid Black weighed in with her thoughts, methinks she was a tad annoyed when she wrote this:

“FACT: Ellora’s Cave is NOT a POD publisher. We haven’t put a new book into POD for a long time. We do print runs.

FACT: Laura Lee Gherkin {no she didn’t just call her that!} does not possess any insider knowledge as to what EC authors make. Salaries, like with any other publisher, run the gamut from high to low with most authors falling in between the 2 extremes and making nice livings.

FACT: Sex has never been a “trend”. You can wish it otherwise all you like, but that doesn’t make it so. Women have been sexual beings since the dawn of time. That is not a trend… that is what is typically referred to as ‘life’”.

Oh my, imagine my surprise when it emerged that Ms Guhrke’s comments were based on assumption rather than any basis in fact.

What a fucking surprise, yet another big name NYT author suffering from foot-in-mouth disease. These people should be innoculated or something. That shit’s definitely catching.

The full message board can be found here.

Apparently she had cancer. Hearing this news was a shock to the system. My heart goes out to her family.

Quinn, may you forever walk with the angels.

I got this blurb from Nicole’s blog, who in turn got it from Maya Bank’s website.

Seducing Simon
One fateful night, Toni Langston seduces her best friend, the guy she’s been in love with forever. Two problems—he doesn’t remember a thing that happened and now she’s pregnant.

Toni Langston has been in love with Simon, her best friend, for years. The night Simon breaks up with his long time girlfriend, he and Toni make love. Toni is devastated and humiliated when, in the heat of the moment, he calls her by his girlfriend’s name. The next morning, Simon remembers nothing of the previous night and Toni is only too relieved not to remind him.

Two months later, she discovers she’s pregnant. She wants Simon to love her, apart from any obligation he might feel because of the baby. So she embarks on a quest to seduce her best friend, to make him see her as more than a little sister, to make him love her as much as she loves him. It works. Maybe too well. Now when things are perfect, she faces telling him of the secret she’s kept.

This book sounds spookily like Shiloh Walker’s, Her Best Friend’s Lover.

I know that millions of books out there have the same themes, and plot devices, but these two books, sound too close for comfort.

I’m certain that Miss Bank’s book has probably been executed differently to Shiloh Walker’s, but having read SW’s book, I can’t help but think that it’s almost the exact same storyline. The events even seem to happen in the same order.

I’d like to hear from anybody who’s read both books, so that they can give me their take on the main differences.

By the way, this is not a post about plagiarism, so there’s no point in knickers getting all twisted up over it.