So. Many. Books

So, I haven't updated in ages.  Two months.  I am still on track tfo complete 60 books this year.  Here are the titles since I last blogged and a brief blurblette:

Book 15: Dark Debt by Chloe Neill:  This was a solid installment in the series.

Book 16:  The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart by Lawrence Block:  In this mystery, Bernie is attending a Bogey film festival with a mystery lady, and also trying to unravel the secrets of a lost kingdom.  I found it a little convoluted, but dammit, Bernie is so likeable.

Book 17:  A Good Debutante's Guide to Ruin by Sophie Jordan:  I rated this one pretty low on goodreads.  I just didn't care for the step-siblings getting toget her, the past abuse against the hero as a child by the mother of the heroine, or the villain at the end.  It was a free Friday selection at BN, but I don't know that I will be exploring more by this author.

Book 18:  Yesterday's Gone: Episode 1 by Sean Platt:  I am lukewarm on whether or not I will read more of this series.  There is a character that is a young child and his voice is annoying.  I really am not getting into the way this particular post apocalyptic world is built, where nearly everyone has disappeared and there are weird animals left behind that are like pod-people versions of the pets they've replaced.

Book 19:  Along Came a Duke by Elizabeth Boyle:  I did not care for this one.  The villains were cartoonish and the heroine made her situation worse with a stubborn refusal to communicate honestly with the hero.  I wanted to read this because one of the sequels was so well rated, but the first installment in this series was weak,

Book 20:  Otherwise Engaged by Amanda Quick:  No one is gladder than I am that Amanda Quick has left of paranormals and returned to the straight up, no bullshit Historical Romance.  Quick wrote the first historical that I ever read, so I owe her a great debt.  Many happy hours of reading due to her novel Scandal. Amity, the heroine, narrowly escapes the clutches of a serial killer.  It is due entirely to her strength and resolve.  She rescues herself!  The hero, Benedict, is greatly in her debt as she has saved his life and preserved a great state secret for him.  When they are linked by scandal, he steps in to return the favor she did him with a little reputation protecting.  And of course, they have to fend off one of Amity's former suitors who is No Damn Good and catch the killer.

Book 21:  The Viscount Who Lived Down the Lane by Elizabeth Boyle:  This was much better than Along Came a Duke.  I haven't decided if I will read the installments between these novels.

Book 22:  Dying In the Wool by Frances Brody: I am a big fan of historicals that take place in the first half of the 20th Century. Of particular interest to me are post WW1 English stories. During WW1, Kate Shakelton's husband was declared Missing, Presumed Dead.  Since the war, she works on behalf of others in her situation to find the fates of their missing loved ones.  In this first installment, she looks for her friend's father, who went missing at home.

Book 23:  The Game and the Governess by Kate Noble:  The nobleman actually thinks people like him for himself and that he is lucky.  He is completely ignorant of the privilege he enjoys.  So his secretary makes him a large bet that if they switch places, he won't be nearly as well loved and nor as lucky.  Oh, if only someone would do this for all the 1%'ers.  The poor heroine was a pawn in all of this, and I was a little nervous that she was going to get run all over.

Book 24:  A Medal for Murder by Frances Brody:  The second Kate Shakelton focuses on a murder after a community play production, a missing girl, and mystery left after the Boer Wars.  I didn't care for the Boer War flashbacks because the characters were such assholes, but also because I prefer a more solid point of view in my third person narrative mysteries.  The ending was a little unsatisfying to me because I felt some of the non-murderous shenanigans deserved a little more comeuppance.

Book 25:  The Duke's Disaster by Grace Burrows:  I am a sucker for ladies with a past.  The Duke is a bit of a dick to his Disaster Duchess.  He is pretty much in a tailspin for most of the book until he finally gets his head pulled out of his ass.  The lady's big scandal was really a mess and the resolution of it was equally complicated.  I did like it a great deal, though in general, I would prefer not to read any more books where the ruined heroine was not ruined by consent.

Book 26:  Douglas by Grace Burrows:  And despite my desire to no longer read about women who were raped and lost their reputations, I went right into this book!  What the everloving fuck is wrong with me?  The heroine is an unmarried mother who rusticates in the country, managing her cousin's estate.  The hero is meeting with her for assistance in appraising a property he wants to buy.  As it happens, the heroine was tricked into eloping, the father of the child doesn't know of her existance and the heroine doesn't know what the father's motives and intentions were until the very very end of the book,  There is a significant part of the plot driven along merely by secrecy, which is lame, but I did like this book.  It's the 8th in a series of TWELVE.  That is too damn many installments.

Book 12.5 and 13

Book 12.5  and 13. . how can that be?

Chloe Neill  wrote a novella for the Chicagoland Vampire series.  Goodreads now shows me as ahead of schedule on my goal of 60 books for the year.  I don't feel right about counting Lucky Break as an entire book.

Lucky Break is a pretty quick read.  Merit and Ethan are trying to have a romantic weekend away from the turmoil of all that supernatural bullshit they deal with.  However, if they wanted that REALLY, I question whether or not they would go stay in the rustic guest cottage of a shape shifter.  Naturally, there is drama before they even can get unpacked.  The shifter husband of their vampire friend has turned up dead thanks to a hard blow to the head.  Merit and Ethan get involved, along with the packleader for the midwest, who is featured in other installments of the series.  The death is part of a longterm feud in the area between rogue vamps and a loosely organized pack of shifters.  There are spoilers for the previous installment in this novella, so best to read it all in order.

Dark Debt is the following, full length installment in the series.  Ethan is just about to settle into his new role in the not very exciting world of vampire politics when his maker, Balthasar, leaves him a menacing note.  But! But!  He's supposed to be dead!  The super powerful vampire has strong powers over glamoring, and he's pissed that Ethan left him for dead centuries ago.  At the same time, Merit's human father calls in a favor so that Merit and Ethan will meet up with a powerful businessman on his behalf.  Meanwhile, a criminal organization called The Circle is menacing one of the other vampire houses in Chicago.  Turns out the previous head of the house was in deep debt to the organization and they have decided it's time to collect.    It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out that the shit is not all hitting the fan by coincidence.  This is not a close series of random events, but a more complicated conspiracy.  As usual, Neill delivers a complicated plot, a lot of ass kicking, a sprinkling of nookie, and descriptions of disgusting Chicago Style Pizza.  THAT IS NOT PIZZA.  Despite the discs of abomination, I still think it's a good, fun installment in the series.

Books 10 and 11

Book 10:  Fresh Off the Boat by Eddie Huang

If, like me, your rap name would be something along the lines of Marshmallo Chic or Wonda Bread, then you may want to get the Urban Dictionary app on your smart phone before reading Fresh Off The Boat.  Eddie Huang's parents are FOTB from Taiwan and Eddie was obsessed with rap, hiphop, and urban street culture.  He ran wild, he chased girls, did and sold drugs and got into a few fights.  He also went to law school, started an urban clothing line, and opened a restaurant.  There is no app that will help you understand the struggles of a minority who is trying to distance himself from a stereotype while also being true to his own history and identity.  I loved the stuff he was grappling with there. It really resonated with me as a woman and feminist. The reviews of the book are very mixed on good reads, probably because people are uncomfortable with chapters called "Rotten Bananas" and "Pink Nipples" (HOLY SHIT DID I LAUGH MY ASS OFF OR WHAT?)  or maybe they think it's ridiculous to spell anything like n!gg@.  Ugh. STILL OFFENSIVE, but doesn't make the book less compelling.  (See Also:  Huck Finn).

Entwined with identity is food, and as the son of a restaurant owner who later became a restaurant owner as well, Huang has put in a lot of food talk in this book.  However, it's not a cookbook, and there are no recipes.  This book is about flavors and dishes and how they call us back to who we are and where we came from.  So if you want to learn how to make anything, this is not the book for you.

This is also not a book for the fans of Tiger Mom who want to make their kids learn violin and get into Ivy League schools.  This is for people who want to SMASH THE PATRIARCHY.

I guess you can tell by the large amount of all caps, that I recommend this book.

Book 11:  Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie

This is the coziest mystery I've read in a while.  I am not a huge fan of cozies that take place in restaurants, book stores, yarn stores, or whatever.  I do however, like historical mysteries from the 20th Century and these take place a few years after the end of WWII in England, near Cambridge.  I cannot even pretend I understand specifics of UK geography.  Google it.

Sidney is the vicar in Grantchester, he is friends with one of he local police, Geordie Keating.  In this first book in the series, there are 6 loosely connected novellas with each being its own case.  Sidney asks questions, ruminates on good and evil, and eventually comes up with the culprits.  He also walks his dog, Dickens, exasperates his housekeeper, Mrs. Maguire, and is torn between a couple of complicated women.

Not all the stories in this book are part of season 1 of the Masterpiece Mystery series Grantchester.  I have not yet seen the season closer on that one.  The novellas also do not contain all the same events nor all the same endings, so it would be possible to enjoy both.

Book 8

Book 8:  Open Season by CJ Box

As a big fan of the Longmire books and the Holmes on the Range series, I was hoping to find another Cowboy Detective series.  I picked up this one, the first in the Joe Pickett series based on recommendations online.   I found the ending a bit predictable in terms of whodunnit.

I am not sure if Joe Pickett is a smart enough detective for me. Joe is a game warden in WY, who has made a couple of dumb mistakes on the job.  I myself have made my share of dumb mistakes, so I tried to give ole Joe the benefit of the doubt.  It was apparent to me in Chapter 1 that he's 2 strikes in.  Needless to say, it's not exactly a career enhancer when a guy picks Joe's lawn as his final resting place.

Joe's clearly married above himself and his wife is a bit flat and martyry for my taste.  As bland as she seemed, her mom was downright annoying.  Joe's daughter, Sheridan is the most believable female in the story.  Also, there are bimbos.  Terribly drawn bimbos.

Joe kind of blunders his way into the cross hairs here and there are casualties as a result that I found tough to swallow.  Joe's internal assertion that his family was stronger at the end seemed completely artificial to me and unbelievable.  I also thought the resolution of events for the first victim's family to be a bit of a stretch.

Book 5

Book 5:  Daring Miss Danvers by Vivienne Lorret

I read this book in a little over a day of reading.  It clocks in at 212 pages on the nook.  I have to say, I rushed a little hoping there would be either some heat between the two characters or at least some sort of conflict that would make the HAE (happily ever after, for the n00bs) a little more rewarding. Ultimately, it was just a meh for me.   I don't think I will read the others in the series.

Books 3 and 4

Book 3:  The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian by Lawrence Block.

Bernie Rhodenbarr is at it again-- breaking, entering and neglecting to get a good alibi for the murder that is pinned on him.  So many twists as Bernie steals some stamps but is framed for murdering a tenant in the same building, who had paid ole Bern to appraise his book collection.  And worse yet, Carolyn (Bernie's BFF) gets a call that her cat is being held ransom for a rare, expensive painting by Mondrian.  Naturally, Bernie manages to clear his name, but it's a close call.

Book 4:  The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams by Lawrence Block

This installment was published 11 years after Mondrian.  Bernie is still knocking about with his used bookstore and he and Carolyn are still BFFs.  In this adventure, Bernie is framed for the theft of some baseball cards, he finds a corpse in a locked room, and he has a dispute with his landlord.  It's all quite convoluted.  Ultimately, I found the end of this one less than spectacular from a justice standpoint.  I did like how the landlord storyline worked out though.

Books 1 and 2

Book 1:  Another Man's Moccasins by Craig Johnson

This is probably my favorite of the Longmire books so far, though book 2 was pretty  close.  When a young Vietnamese woman is found dead near the squatters camp of homeless, mentally ill veteran of the Vietnam war it stirs up the past for Walt.  While he works this case, he recalls his first case as an MP in Vietnam.  I will say that with this book it was apparent to me that the series does need to be read in order.  I found the ending to be a bigger surprise for me than it was for Walt.  Some mystery writers are good enough to tell a story without it being a surprise or a twist and Craig Johnson is one of those writers.


Book 2:  Sweet Disorder by Rose Lerner

I really liked In For A Penny by the same author.  This book left me a bit soured though.  The supporting characters were all unlikeable and the resolution of the story of the heroine's sister's problems was too easy and not very plausible.

Book Whatever: Sarah's Key

I have a Nook, so I can buy books with no forethought.  Normally, this is only bad for my bank account, not my mental health.  I saw Sarah's Key recommended to me because I liked a couple other books set around WWII.  The title rang a bell and I thought that maybe the mom of one of Charlie's friends recommended it.  I bought it. In the first chapter, I started to wonder if reading this was a good idea.  I couldn't bloody stop myself.  I have not fully conquered the need to finish every damn book I start.  This book is only slightly less depressing than Jude The Obscure.  They both have divorce and suicide, but this one has fewer dead children.  There are Nazi Collaborators  though, which sort of edges out Thomas Hardy.  I can't say I recommend this if you are in one of those stretches where you are doggedly trying to keep up your own spirits in a stiff upper lip sort of way. Turns out it was my mom who recommended it.  She has a lot higher tolerance for that sort of thing.

The Summer of Meh

I do not think I can cobble together a list of the books I've read since my last book related post, even if you held a gun to my head.  I suppose I could figure out what I've read on the nook, and recall a couple of library books I've read.  I will get to that later. . . .

Work on the house continues at our usual pace-- a day or two of sturm und drang and paint and arguing followed by a week of slack.  Well, if working and doing laundry and cooking and all the other administrone can be called slack.  The new windows are done, the garage door is repainted, the trim is nearly painted.  Wall painting continues and feels as if it will continue forever.

I've gotten in some knitting.  It was my intention to finish a blanket for lovely baby Jacinth and a shawl for lovely Aunt Bonnie prior to the end of the first week of August.  That will not be happening.  Well, perhaps one of them.

The shawl is being knitted in a vaguely crescent shape.  I have a 14 row repeat that consists of one row of YO K2 TOG, 3 rows of stockinette, 3 rows of stockinette where there are 11 evenly spaced KFB increases on the 2 knit rows, and then 7 more rows of stockinette.  The Paton Lace has delightful long color changes, but as the crescent has increased, the stripes were getting narrow.  Thus,  I shall manipulate in part of a second skein in order to balance it out a bit.  Once I finish this repeat I'm on, I shall do a row of K1 YO to double all the stitches and have a nice ruffly bottom until I run out of purple yarn.  I hope it softens a bit with washing as well.  I'm getting a bit of a dry spot on my tensioning finger. The yarn being 80% acrylic is going to require a steam block.    I haven't done that before and my ironing board died a quiet death.  I opened the closet one day and it was in the closet in 2 pieces.  The welded spot have given up the ghost.  I can't remember the last time I used the ironing board for anything other than blocking knitting.  I'm a slattern. 

My blanket body is finished.  I've picked up and knitted along the border and I THOUGHT I had increased to the correct number of stitches for feather and fan.  The joke is on me.  My plan was feather and fan along the straight-aways and increasing feather and fan at the corners.  Maddeningly enough, someone decided to move my stitch dictionary from the sofa to the floor.  The floor right by the litter box.  I shall be requiring a new copy of Vogue Stitchionary Volume 5.  Diablo even had the nerve to walk around yelling at me in that abrasive cat fashion.  I may chuck it in and do a simple lattice border.  

Book 16: Allison Hewitt is Trapped

When I'm not reading IT books or romance novels or mystery novels, I like zombie fiction. Yes, that English degree is not going to waste at all! My professors must be so proud to have taught me. This book is framed as being submitted for the historic record of the Zombie Plague. It's the blog of one woman (Allison) who was a hero that contributed to the ultimate survival of the human race. A very good read. The pacing was good. The characters were well done. The ending was not what I expected, but I am not a spoiler kind of reader/writer.

Allison and some of her coworkers are trapped in the bookstore where they work, surviving on beef jerky and juice until they bust out. They do some moving around and there are some casualties, as you might expect. There is also some great ass kicking and axe wielding. I sort of like how the overall zombie genre doesn't agree about what zombies are capable of and if the plague is transferrable to animals. Some surprises in how that all plays out.

Book 15: Prelude to a Scandal

Ok, so the writer is a very good writer, but the relationship was mind bendingly stupid. The hero is basically a sex addict who's screwed up his life but good. I dislike it when my historical heroes have their problems framed through the modern lens. The heroine is a big ole nerd who agrees to marry him because he's getting her dad out of jail. Offputting. Her dad's in jail for writing a book saying homosexuality is no big deal. AGAIN with the modern framing. Then! THEN! When our hero finally tells his wife with whom he has not actually had sex that he's a male slut, she makes him promise to get rid of the portrait he beats off to AND stop beating off! And he agrees. I don't believe any dude on earth is giving up polishing the pole. CRAZYPANTS.

Book 14: Socially Responsible IT

I read this for my CSTE certification upkeep. It was quite a dry read. It is also very idealistic. I read perhaps 5 or 6 IT books per year and I don't really have any outlet allowed by my employer for my thoughts on them. I do recommend the book to other IT professionals, especially those who are empowered to implement policy. I would also recommend it to job seekers. When you are in an interview and they ask if you have any questions you can really dig in with the topics in here.

Book 13: Love in the Afternoon

At last, I've finished up with the Hathaways series. I must say, I thought the hero a dreadful snob who needed to get the hell over himself. And the heroine was the type of girl who never speaks up but wonders why people take advantage. I do like Kleypas, but this was not my favorite of hers at all.

Book 12: Made By Hand

Obviously, I am a fan of making things by hand and fixing what I have, but I still put down this book thinking that Mark Frauenfelder is kind of douchey. He's pretty oblivious to what a privileged life he leads. I am so sick of fixing things (and cleaning the things and fixing the things that clean and cleaning the things that fix) that frankly at the end of the day, I don't want to make a cigarbox guitar. I want to knit or read a book. I harbor no illusion that a baby blanket is qualitatively superior because I made it. The value is based on emotions, the sentimental ties between myself and the recipient.

So Frauenfelder has kept chickens, and thus built a chicken coop from wood he saved when tearing down a shed. He has several instances in the book where he talks about all the bits and bobs he saves because he might use them some day and all I can think is "his poor wife." (I read recently, by the by, that Chickens are the New Knitting. At one time Knitting was the New Yoga. I guess time marches on.) His life is very full of stuff, it's just old junky stuff instead of new shiny stuff. I must just be too middle class to appreciate the nuances because I don't see how this makes him morally superior, which is definitely the undercurrent of the book. I do feel superior to people who can't fix a flat or drive stick or make bread or replace a button or catch a fish or grow tomatoes or patch drywall or glaze a window, but that is intellectual superiority. And intellect is an accident of genetics, not something meritoriously earned.

To my way of thinking, keeping stuff because you might need it in the nebulous someday is the underlying issue of our consumerist mentality. I don't lead a low stuff life by any stretch, but maybe from being in a smallish house with 3 other people, a dog and 2 cats I have begun to think of what it costs me to keep things. How much room does this take up? What do I pay per month for that space? How long do I work to earn money to have the stuff? Are those hours at work worth the cost of this stuff? How much upkeep will this thing take in terms the time I'm not at work? If something is not consumable, I don't want to make a commitment to it where the stuff owns me instead of me owning it. This is probably why I have more yarn and books than clothes.

I was hoping for more tutorials in the book but this is not that type of book. Mark may have learned from his mistakes along the way, but we don't really have the information to do so. I get it that he finds the learning and the improvement a vital part of his process. I am all in favor of those things, but I am also no fan of reinventing the wheel. My scrolling screen saver for a while was "If you don't have time to do it right, how will you ever find time to do it over?" So if you are looking for hard info on how to keep chickens, bees or a garden or how to build a cigar box guitar, this is not the book for you.

Books 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

Unveiled and Trial by Desire by Courtney Milan-- I liked Unveiled quite a bit. A most excellent resolution on that one. Trial by Desire I was lukewarm on because the hero was Too Stupid To Live-- he was all angsty emo-boy and frankly, I wanted to slap the hell out of him.

When Beauty Tamed the Beast-- by Eloisa James. This is a retelling of the fairy tale, put in a blender with House. Eloisa James owes us more than this. She is a good writer and I'd rather she put out one book a year than churn out something so. . .rehashed. Not up to potential. I suppose if this were the first book of hers you'd read it would be ok, but I expected more.

Notes From a Small Island-- by Bill Bryson. This book is funny but the time line is all jumbled. I was not always able to reckon about which stint in the UK Bill was writing. I would say this is better vacation reading that bedtime. It needs to be read in long stretches, rather than 30 minutes or so a night.

The Third Revelation -- by Ralph McInerny. Most exciting read of the year. This is a mystery about a former FBI agent, working with the Vatican to recover the stolen 3rd Secret of Fatima and solve some murders. Ralph was Catholic, so this is not like reading anything by Dan Brown. Also, Ralph was a scholar, so this is not like reading anything by Dan Brown. Yes, I went there. If you are not pretty familiar with Catholic Apologetics and Church history, you will want to read this with the innernets handy. I did have to look up a few things and I think I'm slightly above average among Catholics in my knowledge. Sadly, there are just 2 books in this series. I have been informed that the Father Dowling mysteries do not suck like the tv show. Very encouraging!

Books 5 and 6: My Lord and Spymaster and Forbidden Rose

I also read these two books while sick last week. I really should have had a fainting couch. I was that pathetic.

I would not say the particulars of these books are any more realistic than book 4, which I panned. However, these were very compelling. The suspense and danger were paced with near perfection. The tension in the relationships was great without the hero having to be an insulting dickhead. I so despise the 80s style alpha hero. These guys were wicked smart, as were the heroines. They were quick thinkers, rugged, good at manly stuff without being dumbass macho pigs. That's a fine balance in books and real life.

Book 4: Scandal of the Year

This book was a sidebar ad on Smart Bitches. It was one of 3 books I read last week when I was sick. Bronchitis bites it. Hero had a stick up his butt. Heroine was Victorian Emo. Eh. There were some good scenes, but the overall conflict keeping the two apart was . . . lacking something. It wasn't that I don't believe that women got divorced from rotten husbands in that day. But the husband was so ridiculously villainous, he may as well have twirled his mustache.

The Week In Review

I have to send weekly updates at work on a project basis. I'm almost in the habit. Well, I would be if not for the fact that they are due to be emailed on Thursdays and I have 8.5 hours total meetings scheduled on Thursdays.

Jason's Aunt Doyle passed away, so he's out of town. Aunt Doyle was great. We will really miss her humor.

We haven't made much traction on the house. We did get the tree down. And I hired someone to make a run to the landfill with the old drain stack pipe, the old dishwasher, the old water heater, and some other old house debris. Now we can make more debris. I think the replacement windows for the basement would be great to work on, but I'm not the project manager. I'm just the minion!

I am keeping up with the laundry still, and it's such a relief to know that there are school shirts and socks and underwear every morning. I do have a little pile of mending to do and will probably tackle that today.

Speaking of mending, I FINALLY seamed the Baby Surprise Jacket and put on some buttons. It's . . . enormous. It would fit a 3 yr old. Trouble is, I don't know any 3 yr old boys. It's a very boy sort of color scheme. I will get a pic up on flickr today. This is my favorite part of the droid-- I can upload photos without finding some stupid usb cord.

I found a list of the books I read last year and didn't review! Then I lost it again! I did read Jane Eyre, which I'd never read before. I really liked it a lot, but I honestly wonder if Mrs. Rochester wasn't gaslighted by Mister Rochester.

The prototype shawl continues along. I am not sure which way to go with the Real Yarn. I may take the Citron and put different stitch patterns in lieu of the ruched bands. I read about Crazy Lace on ravelry, but cannot find a copy of it anywhere for less than $70. No. Just. . . .No. Apparently it is a way to knit lace without charts or instructions. I am dubious. There is a rav group, but they don't have much to say that is useful-- it's all adoration for the designer. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I just need actual information.

As it is the time of year when I often have a little windfall at work, I ordered Vogue Stitchionary 2: Cables,
2-at-a-time Socks, and Sock Yarn One-Skein Wonders. I really want to also get Stephen West's delightful pattern Clockwork. Of course, since I want to make it in Knit Picks City Tweed DK which I do not have in stash, I will have to get medieval on some other stash busting projects in order to buy the yarn. Note-- I have added the knit meter gadget to the sidebar.

Book 3: Feeling Sorry For Celia

This is a young adult book in the epistolary form, where some of the letters are real and some are from pretty funny imaginary societies. Elizabeth, the heroine has a completely out of control BFF named Celia, and a great penpal in a nearby school-- Christina. I believe that this was one of the recommendations I got when I looked for similar titles to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

I really liked that in this teen book, teens actually HAVE SEX. Because let's face it, in real life, they do HAVE SEX. I also like that this book talks about consequences- emotional and otherwise.

There were a couple of unlikely twists that I didn't care for, regarding Elizabeth's dad and his new family.

Book 2: Seven Nights To Forever

I must say, I am always dubious about happy endings for couples where one of them starts as a whore. The book was ok, but I agree with the commenter on the Smart Bitches site who wondered why the hero didn't exercise his rights as a husband on the bitch he married. If anyone deserved The Mrs. Rochester Treatment, it was whatshername.