Review: After Dark and After Glow, by Jayne Castle

Okay, Oddmonster's making me look like a slacker here, and theoretically this is my reviews blog, so a couple days ago I went searching through a friend's bookshelves for something quick and easy to get through. And I found it! Or them, rather.

After Dark and After Glow are Books 1 and 2, respectively of Jayne Castle's Ghost Hunters series, romances that take place on Harmony, a colonized planet whose previous inhabitants left mysteriously and in a hurry. The current inhabitants have been trapped there by events that took place before the series begins, and some of them spend a lot of time investigating the first civilization's ghost-infested ruins.

Lydia Smith is one of those para-archeologists, who, at the beginning of After Dark has awakened from a lost weekend trapped in the ruins and at the mercy of the ghosts therein. When she's finally rescued and brought topside, she finds her professional academic archeology career in tatters and, still shaken by the experience, is forced to find employment at a second-rate ruins museum, which may or may not be involved in the illegal antiquities trade. And then she meets a powerful and mysterious man...

Okay these are just fun. They're fun and sort of mindless and for me, at least, what I qualify as perfect beach reading. The romance is believable and the setting's intriguing, and best of all, there are carnivorous rabbits on Harmony. Lydia has one as a pet. It has six feet and tries to eat her new boyfriend. Loved Fuzz. Love him!

After Glow is the second book in the series, and I'd pretty much have to give away a ton about the second book to summarize it, but suffice it to say, Lydia's back, and Fuzz gets lucky.

Light, fluffy, interesting paranormal romances.

Review: Garden Spells - Sarah Addison Allen

The tree was situated toward the back of the lot. It wasn't very tall, but it grew long and sideways. Its limbs stretched out like a dancer's arms and the apples grew at the very ends, as if holding the fruit in its palms. It was a beautiful old tree, the gray bark wrinkled and molting in places. The only grass in the garden was around the tree, stretching about ten feet beyond the reach of its branches, giving the old tree its room.

Claire didn't know why, but every once in a while the tree would actually throw apples, as if bored. When she was young, her bedroom window looked out over the garden. She would sleep with her window open in the summers, and sometimes she would wake in the morning to find one or two apples on the floor.

Claire gave the tree a stern look. Occasionally that worked, making it behave.

Synopsis: Two sisters bring their secrets to the old ancestral home and cause all kinds of magical upheaval in a small North Carolina town.



Beach reading. That's what this is, beach reading. It's sunny and light and romantic and...uplifting. This book has not one iota of dark in it, despite the fact that one sister is on the run with her daughter from an abusive, controlling boyfriend, and one's an emotional shut-in. Everyone gets what they want, and moreover, what they need, which is rarely the same thing. There's also a wonderful little old lady wandering around giving people things without knowing why, and eventually she attracts a passel of wistful gay men looking for love. Which is how life should be, I feel.

When Claire Waverly's grandmother died, Claire stepped right into her footsteps and turned the family's magical recipes into a catering business, bringing the people of Bascom fine, gourmet charmed foods. After all, cooking and hiding in the Waverly mansion, tending the magic garden and resolutely refusing to interact with the rest of the world are what Claire does best. Right up until her prodigal sister Sydney returns, bruised and shaken, with her daughter Bay in tow. And then there's the staunchly oblivious, madly in love artist who's moved in next door.

So, I've seen this book listed as culinary fiction on more than a few sites, but for me this isn't a book about food per se, but being fed, and who you let feed you. Technically, there's food everywhere in the book, and yet no one really seems to eat, unless it's narratively important. A nifty trick, but one that wears thin about the middle of the book. It's a good thing that Allen can back up the relatively light weight of the narrative with prose that positively sparkles, leaping right off the page.

Oh and ? This house is haunted in a *good* way.

Review: Sleeping with the Fishes - Mary Janice Davidson

Above-average romance involving several heroes and a mermaid named Fred, this first of a new series by Mary Janice Davidson is funny and fast-paced, and opens with one of the most memorable scenes I've run across in awhile. The heroine, Fred (the mermaid) walks in on her mother and stepfather, in flagrante on the sofa, and from there talk turns to her memorable parentage, explaining her uncanny ability to hold her breath underwater...not to mention the fact that water also makes her break out in a tail.

Okay, so you have to do a little suspension of disbelief with this one. Maybe more than with your average Harlequin romance. But this is not such a bad thing. Once you buy into the whole story and just hang on for the ride, it's quite adorable.

Fred gets a job at a local aquarium (hee), and becomes involved in the fight to save it from local developers. It's not entirely clear how she does this, except by making a gorgeous marine biologist fall in love with her, along with the High Prince of the Black Sea (merman), so they'll unite forces and figure out who's poisoning the bay.

Trust me, it's super cute! Fred gets to be strong and sassy and ignore everyone, and she doesn't commit to one dude or the other simply because it would make a pat storyline. She's not that easy to pin down, and she's only known them for a few days apiece.

Cute book! Definite beach reading. ;)