Beloved Enemy by Mary Schaller

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Alexandria Virginia

1863, Alexandria Virginia. Sisters Carolyn and Julia Chandler, loyal Confederates, plot to crash a masquerade ball put on by Yankee railroad tycoon George Winstead. The Chandler’s loyal servants help the young ladies sneak out from under their parent’s watchful eyes (!!) and they’re off to the ball, but Julia has other things in mind than just catching the eye of a handsome man. Her parents plan to wed her to her odious cousin Payton Norwood, and she gets it in her brain if she’s debouched, he’ll dump her (she doesn’t quite know what it really means, but she means to do it). Handsome Yankee Major Robert Montgomery catches her eye and she thinks he’ll fit the bill – especially when he starts quoting Shakespeare (the one bright light in this sorry book). Rob was wounded and lost the use of one hand at Gettysburg and his fiance dumped him for that, so he’s a bit gun-shy of women, but he can’t seem to resist Julia’s attractions, hated Confederate that she is.

What follows is pretty much what you’d expect in your standard Harlequin historical romance, they meet, lust after each other, never confess their true feelings, have Big Misunderstandings (well duh), all ending up in a terribly silly and overly contrived plot to put Robert in a southern prison so he can help his fellow Yankees escape. Of course you know that Julia’s going to have to get mixed up in the thick of things as she tries to dodge her less than ardent suitor Hayward (he’s only interested in an inheritance she’s soon to come up with).

*yawn*

The book started off well enough, albeit a bit on the light side, but by the time the action moved to Richmond and the prison things just started falling to pieces and got terribly silly indeed – as did some of the prose. I give kudos to the author for putting real events and characters in her story (at least according to her notes they were), but it wasn’t enough to save this one from landing in the recycle bin.  That said, outside of some heavy kisses there is no sexual activity so this might actually do well for a younger reader. Your call though, I don’t have a teenage daughter, so I’m not the best judge.

FTC, Paperback Swap

Paul is Undead by Alan Goldsher

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Liverpool, Mick Jagger, Roy Orbison, The Beatles

Told in a journalist style, as if the author is a reporter conducting interviews with our beloved Liverpudlians and covers their story from the early days, the glory days and the final breakup. The catch here is that these Beatles are zombies, except for Ringo who is a Ninja Lord, Mick Jagger is a zombie hunter and heaven only knows what creature is hiding behind Roy Orbison’s sunglasses (that was funny).

A clever concept, and the author manages to fit known Beatles history into his world of zombies and there are definitely some funny moments,

John said, “It’s not you zombies Mick. It’s us zombies. Us zombies. You are we and we are us and we are all together.”

 “And when a Liverpool processor’s systems is flooded with adrenaline, the genitalia is the most affected are of the body. I could go on endlessly about my scientific theory of the reaction, but, to make a long story short, when a Liverpool zombie gets overly excited, his franks and beans fall off.”

And you’ll have to read further to see how they cleaned that up. Yes, it’s funny but eventually the gags started wearing a bit thin, although Yoko Ono was a bit entertaining. I was under the wire to get this returned to the library and rushed the latter half instead of reading a bit at a time and that might be the cause of my not rating it higher. I hear the CD version is well done, and that might be a better option than book form, but then you won’t get the *cough* lovely zombie drawings I got.

Still, it was fun flashing back and there were bits of Beatles history I didn’t know, especially the infamous “Butcher Cover” that was a perfect foil for Goldsher’s zombie Beatles. I am not going to post the image, but if you must (be warned it is a bit shocking) you can see it in all its glory here. Beatles fans will definitely get a good chuckle or two, but for those who don’t know all the history I suspect a lot of the jokes will fall flat. 3.5/5 stars.

FTC, why I got it from the library.