Pennermag.com

Sometimes I feel for women authors. George Eliot had a point. I think a lot of women authors would be more successful if they just ‘branded’ themselves as men.  I read a statistic this year that 90% of men don’t read books by women authors.  If the content is the same, the readership is the same.  I think this is part of the problem that leads to a number of women readers being ‘turned off’ by suspense.  They see a frilly cover and a women’s name on the bottom of the book and expect rainbows and sunshine.  Then these sensitive flowers are offended by a few murders and a bloody crime scene.  Publishers are falling down at the job of managing expectations.

Bad Girl reads like any police procedural written by the  male authors that I like.    On top of that, it was a really good book that keeps one guessing until the end.  You have your usual crazy serial killer, and minor romance/family time. But the cover of this book looks like a chick-lit cover or romance novel (and bad ones at that). Despite the fact that this book came recommended from someone who’s judgment I trust – it sat on my TBR pile for many months, because, it turns out, even I judge a book by its cover.  I even ordered the other book in this ’series,’ Loverboy – but I’m going to be honest – that cover is even worse.

The Duke of Shadows, by Meredith Duran, could have been better,  but it could have been worse. I have mixed feelings about books that attempt to tackle the horror that was European colonialism (this time the Brits in India). I appreciate that the hero has ties to his ‘native’ land, but unfortunately he falls in that ‘acceptible’ 1/4 non-white range that romances use to avoid dealing with a character of color. Like past 1/8 native American heroes who treat softly, and 1/4 Asian heroes with hair as black as a jet wing, Duran weighs in with her not to native Lord/Duke hero ready to save the day. The romance was okay, the subplot seemed to inject false intrigue into an otherwise mundane story.

Blackwater, by Jeremy Scahill is single-handedly the best book I’ve read on warmongering, capitalism, and Christian crusading (all masquerading as promoting democracy and freedom) that I’ve read in years. While the book is, on the surface, about Blackwater (now Xe), it tells a horrifying thirty to forty year tale of the America’s warmongering and how it continues to perpetuate unabated. Recently a survey asked what was the country most dangerous to the United States. Before I had a chance to study the multiple choice answers, I blurted out, the United States. This book shows you why that is the answer – and not any axis of evil perpetuated by right (or left) wing propaganda.

Get Your Sexy On by Kimberly Kaye Terry Another DNF.   How many books are there in print where the stripper heroine is being held captive by the club owner?  Too many, in my opinion.  This is my second this year.

Mmm, stripper, almost being raped at every turn – and in this book engaging in degrading (but in theory consensual) sex at on every other page  – in the 100 or so pages I did read – no thank you.  And at about the forty fifth reference to her lip as a ‘rim’ almost drove me crazy.  I wanted to run out and by the author a thesaurus, and myself another book.