The Rancher and the Rock Star, by Lizbeth Selvig - Review

My First e-Arc
It's true. As soon as I found out that the Avon Addicts would have access to electronic ARCs, I decided that was the push I needed to acquire an e-reader. As it happened, I made the purchase online about 3 days before my birthday. A day or two later, my husband and I had this conversation:

Him: So... what do you want for your birthday?
Me: You got me a Kindle! it will be here Wednesday. Thank you!
Him: Wow! I rock!

And everyone was happy.


After I figured out how to get a non-Amazon book onto the Kindle, this was the first book I read on the Kindle.


Summary: What's it About?
The title tells much of the story.  The hero Gray is indeed a rock star, while the heroine, Abby, lives a rural small-town life, struggling financially, but in most ways, living according to her principles, which I admired.  The two of them are brought together by their children, teenagers who met on-line.  Somewhat surprisingly, there isn't really a secondary romance here, as the two teens maintain more of a friends/sibling dynamic right from the start.  Gray's son Dawson runs away from his mother and hires on at Abby's ranch to help with chores.

The book opens with Gray coming after his son, and a rather lovely scene where he helps Abby with some heavy lifting, followed immediately by a thunderstorm - what a sexy beginning!  The conflict comes initially around Dawson and how one can reasonably parent a teenager while leading the life of a successful touring musician, and segues easily into resolving the differences in lifestyle between Abby and Gray.

The Good Stuff
I really liked the characters in this story, which to me is more than half the battle.  Gray and Abby, Dawson and Kim, and the assorted secondary folks were all crisp and 3-dimensional (you gotta love town with a cockatiel mascot).  There was good chemistry between Abby and Gray, in large part realized through some really excellent dialog.  I'm not sure how realistic the portrayal of the rock-star lifestyle was but it was exotic enough to be fun and mundane enough to feel pretty grounded.

The situation where Kim had a celebrity crush on Gray was unusual and fairly well-done.  I say "fairly," because knowing teens, I think Selvig might have pulled her punches on this a little bit; it resolved without getting too ugly or too convoluted.  To be honest, that's a path I was just as happy not to go down, but it would be fair to say that it was glossed over a little bit.

I also enjoyed the side plot with the drama among Gray's staff; it was interesting and served to emphasize the lifestyle differences.


The Down Side
There were times when the pacing dragged a little for me.  This is one of those things that is highly situational for me, so it might be no fault of the author.  This was also a first e-read for me, so it might've also been partly that--but overall it took me quite a bit longer than it usually would to read a book of this length.

There were also a number of similes that just seemed a little awkward and overblown, enough to be noticeable.  (If I were better at electronic bookmarking I would pull some quotes for you... but you'll have to either take my word for it or read it yourself to decide if I'm right.)  It's always surprising to me when an author's dialog flows naturally but the internal monologs and narration seems clunky -- it's so much more common for it to be the other way around.

One Last Comment
Selvig's tagline on her website header describes her work as "Contemporary Romance with a Twist of Faith" and I would call that pretty accurate.  Abby is a woman of faith, but this is portrayed with a light touch.  There are no scenes where she or Kim attend church; there are a few references to prayer, to faith, and to volunteering at the church.

In this particular book, I am pretty neutral on these touches.  Generally, I'm not a fan of religion in my romances, but it suited Abby's character and wasn't heavy-handed.  I suspect that readers who are looking for inspirational or strictly Christian romance would probably not find it religious enough.  For example, Gray and Abby don't really talk about their differences in that respect, and it seems pretty clear that Gray is not the church-going type. Then there's the premarital sex between Abby and Gray-- certainly not a problem in mainstream romance, but given Abby's character, even I thought the rationalization was a little weak:

Her well-meaning father had indeed drummed the sin of this unmarried act into her head, and Abby had passed the same morals on to Kim.  But Abby was not fifteen.  She was thirty-seven.  Married once.  Long past ignorance about safety, and tired of worrying about taboos she knew heaven didn't care about at her age.

And a little later, Gray says,

 ...there are things adults who've been married before can do that kids can't.  It's that simple.

So, I found all that a bit awkward... but for me, not enough reason to be a significant problem.

Bottom Line
Overall this is a light, entertaining, Cinderella-style romance with enough character development to carry it, and the rock star bit glams it up for some real fun.

Around the Blogosphere
Fellow Addict Grace at Books Like Breathing
Fellow Addict Amy at Unwrapping Romance
Reviews by Molly
Romancing the Books

Just a reminder, if you have reviewed this book, I am more than happy to include a link to your review.  You can leave your link in comments or email me, and I will edit it in.  I would especially like to link up with the other Addicts-- I'm looking forward to "meeting" you all electronically.

Feeding the Addiction: It Begins...

Talk about anticipation!  I had to go out of town on business last week and of course my first Avon Addict box arrived shortly after I left.  Finally, I got home this weekend and was able to break it open.

Look at it, just sitting there.  Doesn't it look innocent? It could be anything. It could be brussel sprouts.  Or some kind of guitar stuff for my husband, he orders those kind of things a lot.  Or, um... OK, I wasn't fooled.  I knew it was for me, all me. It's readerly goodness, and the first glance reveals.... 

YAY! Books, of course.  Whoah. Five copies of Sophie Nash's Between the Duke and the Deep Blue Sea? Looks like giveaway time!

Awww.  Lookit this cute stuff! That's a fireman's hat to promote new author Jennifer Bernard's hot new fireman series (review coming up!), a rubber duckie (which my daughter is calling dibs on) printed thusly:

The Art of Duke Hunting, a ducky new romance by Sophia Nash

Too fun! There's also a die with a slightly mysterious URL on it: rulesofscoundrels.com ... which leads me to Sarah MacLean's blog. Perhaps there's a gaming hell or two involved in these books?  She also sent along a pretty bookmark emblazoned: "Fetch the Smelling Salts," which cracked me up! The last of the book swag is package of bazooka bubble gum, referencing Rachel Gibson's newest. Apparently, the main character is thrown immediately into literary conflict of the direst kind: a bubblegum pink bridesmaid gown (shudders). I didn't sign up for horror novels!

Just for me, there is a cute Avon Addict button that I'll keep on my coat or something, a neat string bag, AND a very lovely cozy fleece blanket, the better for curling up to read.  I love that!

I understand there are hashtags involved in this whole Avon Addicts dealio.  Which might mean I need to start tweeting.  Or at least following some folks who do.  We shall see.

Relevant Links:

The Art of Duke Hunting, by Sophia Nash
Between the Duke and the Deep Blue Sea, by Sophia Nash
The Bachelor Firemen of San Gabriel series, by Jennifer Bernard
The Cowboy Takes a Bride, by Lori Wilde
How Miss Rutherford Got Her Groove Back, by Sophie Barnes (I do love that title!)
Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman by JB Lynn (well that sounds interesting...)
Rescue Me, by Rachel Gibson (hmm, I kind of hate that site.  Oh well.)

Avon Feature

What Makes an Addict?
Guess this is what it takes to nudge me out of a blogging slump.  I subscribe to the "From The Heart" newsletter from Avon Romance, and when they sent me this notice, I couldn't help but get a little excited at the idea of being and advance reader for them.  So I applied and thought I'd nudge things a bit by highlighting the Avon authors that I've written about.

Most recently, I read and enjoyed Lecia Cornwell's Secrets of a Proper Lady (NTS: the second one is out, what are you waiting for??).  I also had the pleasure of meeting the author at the Emerald City RWA conference bookfair.  I don't go to the conference, because I'm not a writer, but the bookfair is like a little slice of heaven for a romance reader.

Eloisa James and Julia Quinn are also on my radar, not only because they are a couple of the best historical romance writers working today, but in a more immediate way because of a couple of Book Perk events.  I went to a really neat "tea" with the two of them about a year ago in Seattle, and then recently to an Author Event in Bellevue -- Julia Quinn, Eloisa James, Christina Dodd, Lisa Kleypas, and Connie Brockway were all there, doing a fairly informal Q & A with a signing after.  It was a lot of fun.

I've written a number of posts either reviewing Quinn's books or just talking about her style in general.  She's local to me so I have met her at several events and she's just such a sweetheart in person.  My most recent review was  two years ago although I continue to read her new releases.  (I sometimes avoid reviewing the same author many times because I think I end up repeating myself.).  I covered Ms. James' dukes around the same time.  Oddly, I've never reviewed Lisa Kleypas but she has always been one of my auto-buy authors.  I love her work.

Other long-time bloggers might relate to this confession: I have a lot more posts in my head than I do actually written out  and published here on the site. I read Debra Mullins To Ruin The Duke  a couple years ago and was really impressed by the fresh and clever plotting.  But I never wrote that post. She's also local to me;  I originally found her at the Emerald City bookfair in '09, and ran into her again last fall.  Her latest, The Brides of Nevarton Chase, has been a great trilogy: I recommend.

Also in the category of great ideas that are still in the "incubation" stage, is my "Rewind" feature. I have to admit, I really, really love the "classic" romances from the 70s and 80s.  I reviewed a couple of "rewinds" last year and I actually got as far as finding a copy and re-reading Shanna by Kathleen Woodiwiss, and completely loved it... but I never wrote that post either.  But that story was every bit as good in 2011 as it was when I first read it back in the day.

My "relationship" with Anna Campbell is a direct result of the blogging world -- during the BBAW event a few years back, I ended up on a blog I'd never seen before and entering a contest for an ARC giveaway. I didn't get the ARC but I had checked out Campbell's site and the excerpt reeled me in. I've been a fan ever since.

Tracy Anne Warren is on the list, and she appeared a while back here on Alpha Heroes.  I ought to get caught up with her, because I really did enjoy the one title that I read.

AND! I am so pleased to tell you that I've been selected as an "Avon Addict!" That means some fun swag and advance reading copies for me, and some fresh blood in my reviews for you. This makes me feel like this:

Thursday Thirteen, Edition 25: Best of 2011

Oh, did you think this would be *my* best-of list?  That would be great, wouldn't it?  But that sounds like a lot of work.  Instead, here are 13 lists from my list of romance bloggers and a few new ones.  Brace yourself, your TBR list is about to get a lot bigger...

1. Mandy at Smexy Books
2. Katiebabs
3. Jen at Fiction Vixen
4. Samantha at Fiction Vixen
5. Hilcia at Impressions of a Reader
6.  Kmont at Lurve a La Mode
7.  Sharon at Best Romance Stories
8.  Brie at At Romance Around the Corner 
9. Janga at Just Janga
10. Marg at Intrepid Reader (not actually romance, but I'm a Marg fan, so I'm including it anyway) 
11. Laura and Carol at Book Chick City
12. Melanie at Barnes and Noble
13. Amazon's picks

Happy holidays to you and yours!

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Brick and Mortar and Random Musing

Black Friday at Barnes and Noble
Sigh.  I miss my local Borders. I will try to transfer my affection to the B&N, but... I just don't like it as much.  I don't actually know what Borders did wrong; what buying or inventory or pricing practices drove them out of business, or if it was as simple as being too late to the e-selling game.  I hope that doesn't happen to Barnes and Noble.

But still... it's not the same. At Borders, you could find a terminal and look up a book yourself to see if it was in the store, or which section you could find it in, or search on a title to find the author, or search on the author to find the latest title.  At B&N, you have to ask a store worker to do that.  If you can find one (I grudgingly give them a pass for being busy on Black Friday).

At Borders, my pal Andrea made sure that my favorite authors' new releases were available on release day.  She called me to tell me when they arrived.  I realize that this isn't a Borders standard, and other Borders stores were not as good at the release day thing.  But B&N didn't have the new Ilona Andrews, or if they did, I couldn't find it, and I couldn't find someone to help me find it.  Boo.

On the Bright Side
I'm That Auntie, the one that gets you classics instead of the next Disney Fairy throw-away book.  I really love the B&N classics lines, for kids and adults (although I sort of wish the kids' ones were more standardized).  B&N kids' classics are nicely bound and illustrated and priced less than a mass market paperback-- I bought A Little Princess & The Time Machine for the independent younger readers, and Alice in Wonderland and Frankenstein from the adult series for the older readers.  (But I have a curmudgeonly wish that B&N would standardize their bindings and expand the line.)

In any event, I really want that brick and mortar buying experience.  I like browsing.  I like walking around in stacks of books, picking them up, flipping pages.  I actually want the excuse of leaving my house and going someplace else (preferably some place with coffee and chocolate).  I know I could solve the release-day thing by pre-ordering at Amazon, but sometimes my decisions change on the day-of. If it's a big release day, I might put off one author in favor of another.  I have to be a little budget-conscious, so I can't pre-order every release from every author I like. I waffle, and I kind of enjoy the waffling process-- I don't want it to be too automated.

I will probably get an e-reader sometime in the next year or so.  Maybe this year at Christmas.  There are enough of my favorite authors with early e-pub dates, and some intriguing titles that are e-pub only, that I guess it's unavoidable.  But I think I will have to keep making pilgrimages to whatever brick and mortar stores I can find, for the occasional tactile fix.  Whatever happens in the publishing and e-publishing industries in the next ten or twenty years, I expect I'll swing both ways.

Secrets of a Proper Countess, by Lecia Cornwall - Review

Masquerade
So right off, the opening of this book reminded me of this:

The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game . The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one.

— Erica Jong, Fear of Flying (1973)

"Call me whatever you wish, my lady-- Lancelot, or Tristan, or Romeo. anything will do." His eyes burned into hers from behind his mask. "I am at your service, and I will be whatever and whomever you wish me to be tonight."

Isobel stared at him, spellbound. The room wavered and spun, and all she could see was him, all she could feel was the heat from his eyes, his body. She was melting with desire. Surely she was dreaming. She would wake up in her widow's weeds at Maitland House and realize she'd imagined the whole encounter.

(I'm also tempted to run a quote from a Billy Joel lyric here -- you know the one-- but I decided that would be over the top).

One of the recurring threads in the romance genre is the anonymous encounter, and in historicals, the masquerade is quite popular.  I think I have at least three books within reach right now that employ it.  The adrenaline, the headlong topple into hormonal bliss without all the messy emotional and pragmatic entanglements that inevitably surround an affair--very tempting indeed. The stuff of fantasies, and in some ways, it's a metaphor for why we read romance at all:

The feeling of falling in love is something we want to experience again, and I think readers can do that safely in a book... without giving up the love we have.  -- Julia London, as interviewed by Sarah Wendell

However, messy entanglements make for interesting reading, and like Erica Jong's character, Isobel Maitland doesn't get her zipless fuck either.  She knows that rake under the mask, and her infatuation turns into full-on passion; and while "Lancelot" doesn't know her name, he can't forget her.

Plot and Context
The suspense/mystery plot that draws them together in an ancillary way is deftly woven into each encounter.  I can't say it's the most original mystery ever to bring a widowed countess and a playboy marquess together, and when I first read the blurb and some of the introductory background I was a bit skeptical:

Lady Isobel Maitland cannot afford to be caught doing anything even remotely scandalous, or she risks losing everything she holds dear...

There were strict rules governing her behavior, carefully noted in her husband's will, and enforced by her mother-in-law.

But as I read on, Cornwall constructed a believable and slightly horrifying context. I think it's easy to forget, as a modern reader, how restrictive life could be for women in those times. There are plenty of stories that play fast and loose with these strictures, that set up their protagonists as triumphing over a value set that is not the same as the readers'. This is a story that doesn't let you forget how simple a matter it was in those days to place a woman completely at the mercy of others, who control her financially and through the fate of her son. In her mother-in-law's household, Isobel is surrounded by enemies and spies, and the least wrong step will see her married undesireably or exiled to a remote estate without her son, or possibly worse yet. She is not even permitted to manage her son's education or free time-- this all falls under the jurisdiction of her brother-in-law.

Chemistry and Characters
Isobel is no Mary Sue though, and I loved the way she went after what she wanted. The heat between the protagonists is very hot:

Yasmina. That's all he had, a made-up name. He shook his head, still dumbfounded and searched the dark pavilion for his coat and his cloak. He wasn't usually so easily distracted when he had work to do, but she had been exceptionally diverting.

He found his garments easily, but the telltale buttons took longer. A gardener or guest who found one button would hardly remark upon it.  A scattering of six buttons in such a secluded place screamed scandal.  Phineas Archer was an expert at avoiding scandal.

Unless, of course, he wished to be caught.

He found the buttons and pushed them into his pocket. He pulled his cloak over his gaping breeches and turned to go, and almost tripped over something. It skittered away to hit the wall with a soft chime. He picked it up and carried it into the light. It was the lady's shoe, delicate and encrusted with pearls and embroidery, with a curled-up toe that was hung with a little bell.

Now, see, that's not even the love scene, that's the aftermath. Isn't it wonderful? Some might find the Cinderella touch a little bit of an eyeroll, but I have to say that I loved it.

So the villains in Secrets are a bit over the top, the usual corpulent, scruple-less, crass, grasping, opposite-of-hero types, but overall Cornwall puts together a nice fabric of secondary characters with just the right amount of complexity to keep the plot interesting on a number of levels.

Bottom Line
I really enjoyed this debut; it has all the right ingredients for a satisfying regency: likeable, lively characters with emotional chemistry, heat, and just the right touch of humor; adept ebb and flow of plot and sexual tension; and an effortless command of voice and language and period that's easy to overlook when it's done right. If you've missed this title, I recommend you check it out, and I'm looking forward to The Price of Pleasure, due out in January.

Around the Blogosphere
At Dear Author - not actually a review, but a nice behind-the-scenes tidbit.
The Romance Dish Also not a review, but an entertaining day-in-the-life essay
Romance Addict
Kay's Blog
Love Romances and More
Tracy at Book Binge
Romance Reviews by Alice

(I must say, either Ms. Cornwall's publicist is exceptional or the word of mouth on this title is really a snowball -- there are pages of reviews for this on Google! so here are just a handful)

WINNER!

I used the random number feature in Excel to choose a winner who is....

(drumroll please)

!!! DONNA S !!!

Donna, please email your mailing address to: nicola327 (at) hotmail (dot) com.

Thanks for playing, everyone.