The House of Closed Doors by Jane Steen

But I had been far more innocent than my flirtatious manner suggested, and therein lay my doom.

Nell Lillington’s got a big problem – her mother and stepfather have just discovered she’s pregnant and she’s not willing to name the father and enter into a marriage she doesn’t want. Nell’s stepfather is active in politics and the last thing he needs is a scandal, so he packs her off to a poor farm out in the country for her confinement. Nell settles in well at her new *home* and makes some interesting new friends (loved Tess!), but there’s soon a bit of a mystery to be solved when the older wing is opened and a pair of bodies is found in one of the cells. Were they locked in, or did they lock themselves in? How did they get into a section of the home that was securely locked? And just who would want to *do in* an unwed mother and her young child? Hmmmm?

The door slammed shut. I heard the spring bolt shoot into place with a hard thud. I leaped to my feet and screamed like I had never screamed in my entire life.

That’s about all I want to tell, going further would spoil the story. I liked this a lot, it was a quick easy read that kept me guessing; and there are more twists and turns after the evil baddie is revealed (my heart just about dropped when he did THAT). The 1870s Midwest setting was a refreshing change, and along with a look at life on a poor farm (it’s like its own mini-society), and the author also worked the Great Chicago Fire into the story.  I know I’m going to say this clumsily, but a huge thumbs up to the character of Tess, who suffered from Down’s Syndrome. It so refreshing to have a character with a handicap worked into the story and to watch the strong bond develop between Nell and Tess. Other big pluses were no formatting errors, nor even a typo to be found (if there were, I missed them), so thank you Ms. Steen for taking the time to polish it up, we readers really do care about things like that. The author’s notes at the end mention where the story idea came from and what was fact and what was not (always appreciated). My only real quibble is the story ended too soon. I wanted more, especially Martin (be still my beating heart). Thankfully there is a sequel in the works (whew).

Review copy provided by author, thank you.

Fifty Shades Freed by E.L. James

This review is for the third book in a series, and might be considered spoilerish – consider yourself warned.

Yes it was painful, but I managed to get through all three of these books relatively unscathed. I did need to bleach my brain out afterwards, but I believe I’ve recovered and can now return to good books. I could have used a break period between books, but the last two turned up at the library at the same time, and with such a long wait list (why?), I felt it best to dig in and get it over with and pass them along. Now to the review, which I’m finding difficult because this book is less like a *story* and more like a series of vignettes that don’t add to the plot (such as it is), or to the character development. Think of it as watching clips from Pretty Woman your favorite movies on YouTube, bits and pieces that don’t quite make up the whole.

At the start, we find Ana and Christian on their honeymoon in the south of France, with some flashbacks to the wedding and events leading up to it. Ana ticks Christian off by removing her top at a nude beach, and despite the fact that she accepts his reasons for not doing so (paparazzi, ya know), he takes her back to their private yacht, handcuffs her hand-ankle, blindfolds her and marks her chest with a bunch of hickies so she won’t be sunbathing again (that is a loving husband?). Ana shows a bit of backbone, but a few smirks and cocked heads from Christian bring her right back into the fold.

Why do I feel like I’ve entered the principal’s office? This man had me in handcuffs yesterday. I refuse to be intimidated by him, he’s my husband, damn it.

There are wasted pages of  being cool and filthy rich until the *cough* action finally returns to Seattle. Then we get some conflict between controlling Christian having issues with Ana returning to work. There’s also some crazy person who is stalking the Greys. I won’t spoil, but it’s pretty damned easy to guess who the nutter is. This of course leads to a high-speed car chase, which leads our intrepid pair to a public parking garage. Can you guess what happens?

Shit! We really are going to do this, in a public parking lot.

I actually have a better quote, but it contains multiple “F” bombs, and my recently bleached brain is trying to avoid them.

Despite Christian’s confession in book two that he’s like an alcoholic trying to get sober, dumb stupid Ana can’t resist her curiosity about the toys in the red room of pain. I will spare you the details, but I suspect you’ll learn way more about butt plugs than you ever wanted to know.

Toys! Oh, I love, love, love this anticipation. The drawer closes and my breathing spikes. How can the sound of a drawer render me a quivering mess? It makes no sense.

No, it doesn’t make any sense. Stop enabling the man.

Who cleans these toys?” I ask as I follow him over to the chest. He frowns at me, as if not understanding the question. “Me. Mrs. Jones.” “What?” He nods, amused and embarrassed, I think.

TMI

The next little *play* takes our pair to Aspen, with BFF Kate and her brother, as well as Christian’s brother and sister. They shop and drink and dance and stuff. Not sure why this little bit was included at all, except to club the reader over the head remind us how filthy rich Christian is, and how hot all the men think Ana is.

OK, back to Seattle via their private jet landing at SeaTac. Ms. James: no one lands their private jets at SeaTac, why would you when Boeing Field is so damned convenient? Even the president, who can use any airspace he damn well pleases lands at BFI. Every. Single. Time. he comes to Seattle. There’s more stuff with the big mean baddie who is stalking the Greys, kerfuffles over his former subs, Christian getting mad, Ana cowering because she’s afraid he won’t want her if she doesn’t like the kinky side of sex, kerfuffles over an accidental pregnancy (for once she shows some spirit), and lastly the silliest hostage situation ever. Seriously, you can stick a gun into the back of your pants and walk into a downtown bank? There is parking to be had in the back of the building? I told my coworkers about this development and they’re laughing their arses off.

Honestly, I still don’t get why these are selling like hotcakes and being promoted heavily by the media outlets as the greatest books ever. This is not romance, this is sex with a heavy emphasis on the “F” word. I understand Christian was abused as a child, but that still does not count for him abusing others, and while he does show a tender side towards Ana, it doesn’t make up for the abuse he dishes out (and I do mean abuse). Ana doesn’t get any points for 1) being so terrified she’ll lose Christian if she doesn’t play along and 2) being the one to encourage him to continue, and that includes spanking.

I know, I know – what goes on between two consenting adults and all, but there’s a whole lot more baggage with this pair, and the conflicting messages just don’t work to carry off such a feeble storyline. In the end, all you’re going to have is a sexed up Bella and Edward, a very predictable baddie, and probably one of the worst epilogues ever. Worse yet, there’s a peek at the back of the edition I had that begins the story all over again from Christian’s POV. Please, tell me they’re not going to publish these all over again.

Fifty Shades Darker by E.L. James

There’s not much recap needed for this book, by this time I suspect the entire English-speaking world knows about these books. Mousy Ana Steele meets über rich but oh-so-emotionally disturbed Christian Grey. In this book, Ana settles into her new job at a Seattle publishing house and life without Christian (hah – you know that won’t last long). Our pair of *lovebirds* continue to deal with Christian’s dark past, one of his former subs in his games of BDSM, and the woman who made him what he is today (Mrs. Robinson Ana calls her). Will Ana and Christian be able to break through his tortured soul and heal him? Or will they just continue for another 400 or so pages of horizontal hurdy gurdy? Does anyone really care?

Not me, I was just too curious to see what all the hoopla was about and hate to say it, but I still don’t get it. While the writing and storyline is somewhat improved in book two, the repetitiveness still reigns supreme. I am very weary of smirks, rolling eyes, flushing and blushing and inner goddesses (kill her, please). I am so shell-shocked from the constant sex that any other book is going to be tame by comparison (you don’t want to hear about the butt drawer). By my tally, they’ve not only done it in the bedroom, but in the elevator, on the pool table, on the grand piano, on the table in the foyer along a round of digital pleasuring in a crowded elevator in the Columbia Tower. Gah, less is more.

Then we come once again to the Seattle setting, a setting that isn’t always based on reality. You would think that once you’ve got the contract from the big publishing house you could afford an editor, but no…

This review is getting long enough so this Seattle native will just name a few pet peeves.

Seattle and my stomach drop away from us, and there’s so
much to see. “We’ve chased the dawn, Anastasia, now the dusk…

The time setting is early to mid June. Christian has picked her up around 5:45 PM for a 7:30 PM show in Portland. The sun sets around 9PM at this time of year, but we get this when they land in Portland,

It’s a clear, crisp evening, and the lights of Portland twinkle and wink…

Kind of hard to see lights twinkling when it is broad daylight and all.

Placing his hands snugly over mine, he continues to steer
our course out of the marina, and within a few minutes we are out on the open sea, the cold blue waters of Puget Sound. Away from the shelter of the marina’s protective wall, the wind is stronger, and the sea pitches and rolls beneath us.

This is the Puget Sound. This is not the open sea. And don’t get me started on taking an entire afternoon to sail to Bainbridge Island and back. Even with a long stop for another round of hot sex, it doesn’t take that long. The ferry would have been faster

I’ve always wanted to live on the coast. I sail up and down the Sound coveting these houses.

Read my lips. The Puget Sound is not the coast. And would someone please tell me who in the USA thinks of mac and cheese as “nursery food?” Honestly, I don’t know why the author just didn’t take her version of Twilight and stick them in London or somewhere closer to home.

I guess if you like a thin plot, mixed signals (is beating a woman with a ruler good or bad?), repetitive writing, sex at the drop of a hat with no romance, these books might suit – but I’m still scratching my head trying to understand why they’re so popular. I am going to tackle book three, and thank goodness the first of it is set in Europe. If James messes that up, I’ll never know, although there was a huge gaffe over what airport they used to board the private jet out of Seattle 😀

Housecleaning

I’ve been cleaning up some older reviews to correct formatting issues and what not. It appears they may have popped up in people’s feed readers, and for that I apologize. No spamming was intended. If anyone knows how to update a post in Word Press without it going to feed readers, your advice would be much appreciated.

Back to reading…

The Shadow Queen by Rebecca Dean

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Wallis Simpson

This review will freely discuss events that are known historical fact. In the event that there might be someone who hasn’t heard about Wallis Simpson and her history, consider this a spoiler warning.

“A novel of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor” says the cover, so you’d think this book would be about Wallis when she is the Duchess of Windsor, wouldn’t you? Well guess what, there’s a second book planned, so this one only covers Wallis during her school years, her disastrous first marriage to Win Spencer with a tiny bit at the end for marriage #2 and her first meeting with the Prince of Wales. If you know your history you’ve got a fair idea what this novel entails, and if you don’t – then I’m not going to spoil it with things you don’t want to know prior to reading it. I’ll save every one’s time and just talk about the reading experience.

*YAWN*

Unfortunately, I don’t think there is enough story potential in Wallis’ school years and first marriage to fill a 400+ page book, I’d have preferred a quick recap of these *early years* and then get to the meat of the story. Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t find endless tea and cocktail parties all that exciting, YMMV. This book had far too much foreshadowing with predictions for Wallis’ future, along with her endless fascination with the Prince of Wales. I’m not sure if the trip to China actually happened, but boy that trip sure ended fast once the author got in what she wanted – a meeting with an ancient Chinese fortuneteller just to tell us readers of What. Is. To. Come. Lastly, while I understand this is a fictional imagining of Wallis’ life, this reader felt there was far too much imagining going on with too many fictional characters. Library only, then buy it if you love it, although it appears I’m very much in the minority on this one. 2/5 stars.

Reviewed for Amazon Vine.

Deepwater by Pamela Jekel

But what you’ll have instead will be burnished and hardened and battle-proven as this land. And that, to me, is a richer love. It’s a real marriage.

Deepwater is a very chunky book (with tiny font!) set in the Cape Fear region of North Carolina. The story spans several generations, from 1711 through the end of the Civil War and Restoration period. The prologue begins with the lost settlement of Roanoke (including the author’s spin on what happened to those who went missing), and is then broken into three parts. In the first, sisters Tess and Glory Hannock aren’t willing to let something like a marriage separate them when Tess marries a dashing privateer. It isn’t true love forever, but Tess isn’t one to let that stop her and through her experiences we watch the colony grow and prosper until those little disputes with the King over taxation without representation get started…

The second section is centered around Tess’s niece Della (younger sister Glory’s daughter). Della’s been spoiled and travelled abroad, and when she comes home she hones in on wealthy plantation owner Phillip Gage and she’s determined to marry him and become mistress of Deepwater. Phillip is loyal to King George, so you can imagine things get a bit complicated when just about everyone else is on the rebel side, including his wife. The last third of the book begins in 1850 and is centered around Phillips heir, Laurel Gage. Laurel marries a Quaker and owning slaves is not the *done thing* for him, but paying for labor takes its toll on Deepwater and slowly eats away at the acreage and profits.

That’s about all you need to know. This is one of those books that is too difficult to recap without writing a book report, and I’m not of a mind to do it. I liked this a lot, especially as the story focused on the people and the land, there really wasn’t a lot of interaction with real historical characters. Better still, despite the two wars involved in the story, there are no real battle scenes, nor are they touched upon in any great detail – no endless info dumps telling the reader about every major battle in excruciating detail. How refreshing. The only downside that might be a deal breaker is that these aren’t a set of characters you’re going to get emotionally involved with; nor do any of the three women have a great *love story*. If you’re looking for romance, I suggest you keep on looking.

Last quibble, and nothing to do with the book itself, but part of the publisher’s blurb:

Seleta…The wife of a Quaker abolitionist, she saw her beloved land fall to the Yankees. Yet is wasn’t the horror of war that became her greatest challenge…it was her battle to save her young son.

Ummmm, Seleta was Laurel’s daughter and wasn’t a grown woman with children until well towards the end of the book and she was pretty much out of the picture by then.

It’s a good thing you-know-who hasn’t reviewed it. Then we’d finally know whether or not she reads the books 🙂