The American Heiress by Roxanne Dent

I normally don't review works available for sale from Ravenous Romance on this blog because I keep this one for non-erotic works, but The American Heiress was more of a sweet romance to me than an erotic romance, so I've chosen to review it here. I bought this title for 99 cents as part of the Ravenous Romance 1 year anniversary sale this past December, and it was one of the first ebook titles I bought in a big batch that I read in December of 2009.

This book very much reminded me of a Regency romance with the London setting, the balls, fancy gowns, uses of chaperons etc. I like picking up a Regency every once in awhile to remind me that there's more out there than murder mysteries and fantasy.

Dent does a good job of keeping her characters consistent. The only thing I didn't like about The American Heiress was that I wasn't sure if I was rooting for the protagonist to fall in love with Miles or Lord Stratford. It took me a long time to figure out which one I was supposed to be rooting for.

I can't say I was very shocked or surprised by how this novel ended, but Regency romance are usually a little more predictable than murder mysteries with the happily ever after type endings and the conventions of the sub-genre in general.

I give this one 4 stars **** and would read another Roxanne Dent title again. I enjoyed the novel.

Violets are Blue by James Patterson

Violets are Blue by James Patterson is the seventh book in the Alex Cross series. I couldn't wait to read this novel because at the end of Roses are Red, Patterson reveals the identity of the murder nicknamed The Mastermind. I couldn't believe the Mastermind's identity, and I knew I would find out for sure in Violets are Blue whether or not I had interpreted the last chapter of Roses are Red correctly.

The way in which the Mastermind is caught takes backseat during the majority of Violets are Blue while Alex Cross and a new female detective based out of California try to figure out the identity of a "real vampire" who murders several people by draining the victims' blood after biting their necks. I was a little surprised in the villain of Violets are Blue who ended up being the Sire. I thought the whole thing would turn out a lot differently than it actually did.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed this book a lot because I felt like I already knew a lot about the Mastermind before even picking the book up. He made a nasty villain, much better than the vampires that take up the majority of Violets are Blue. It was a nice change from the usual serial killers, though.

I give this book 4 stars **** The pacing is fast, just like the other James Patterson novels I've reviewed thus far. I couldn't wait to find out what happened the entire time I listened to it in the car on my commute to work.

Pop Goes the Weasel by James Patterson

Pop Goes the Weasel by James Patterson is the fifth book in Patterson's Alex Cross series. I listened to the unabridged audio book version of this novel. One thing that struck me as difficult to get used to was that there was a different narrator for this book than Cat and Mouse and Jack & Jill. Unlike both those novels, not only was narrator a different man, but there was only one person reading the story. I had gotten used to hearing two different male voices, one for Alex Cross speaking in first person and one for Geoffrey Shafer in third person.

I had to pay more attention to the details as I was driving and listening since I couldn't space off for a minute in traffic and return to what was happening in the novel as easily. The end result was that I gathered more details of Patterson's writing.

I rate Pop Goes the Weasel 4 stars ****. I needed to find out the ending to this one, especially what happened with Christine Johnson, Alex's love interest.

I didn't identify with Shafer as much as I did with Along Came a Spider, but I liked him better than the killers in Jack & Jill and Cat and Mouse. There was a good mix of mystery behind who he really was, but yet there were a few actions Shafer took that made me shake my head. Even for a deranged lunatic killer, Shafer did a few things that I wouldn't think were realistic. I was able to suspend my disbelief because Shafer viewed everything as part of a larger game rather than acting out of emotion.

The last handful of chapters were the most exciting. I was riveted at the end, and had to pick up the next book in the series, Roses are Red. The library doesn't have an audio book version of the next book, so I'll go back to reading Patterson rather than listening to him. I've been buying so many books lately that I would rather read this next one anyway.

Vision in Blue by Nicole Byrd

Vision in Blue by Nicole Byrd is a regency romance. Byrd writes a few different series but with characters who weave in and out of the series and have different relationships with each other. The novel follows the story of Miss Gemma Smith and her friend Miss Louisa Crookshank. Gemma spends most of the book trying to find her parentage.

Gemma was sent to a foundling home as a young child. After a year in the foundling home, she was taken to a school for gentlewomen and given financial support through a solicitor. When Gemma turns twenty one, she receives a letter from her mother through the solicitor telling her that she has a brother named Lord Gabriel Sinclair in London. Gemma travels to London to seek out her family. Along the way, she meets Louisa, who is engaged to Mr. Lucas Englewood. Gemma stays with Louisa in her rented home in London.

At first, I had a difficult time getting into this book because I'm not accustomed to reading historical romance. The pacing is a lot slower than the books I'm used to reading, and I was bored. I was determined to read the entire novel, though, because I got to hear Nicole Byrd speak at Music City Romance Writers. I also knew several people who had read Byrd's work and loved it.

I continued reading. Once I got halfway through, I was hooked. For a proper and ladylike book, this one through me for a loop in the second half. There was a lot of suspense later on, and I couldn't put the book down until I had finished it. I may end up reading the whole series, but I haven't made up my mind yet. Like a few of my other posts, I've plucked this book out of the middle of a series. It was very much self contained, and I didn't feel like I was missing out by not having read the books that came before it in the series, but I'm now curious about some of the other characters that are the protagonists in the other books earlier and later in the series.

I got to the end knowing who Gemma's mother was, but the novel ended with the question of who her father was. I'm curious now.

I give this book four stars ****

Kiss the Girls by James Patterson

Kiss the Girls by James Patterson is the second book in the Alex Cross series by James Patterson. I listened to the audio book version of Kiss the Girls. When it arrived in the mail, I received two cassette tapes, which took me two days to listen to while driving to and from work. From the beginning, the I was swept into the plot of this thriller because I already felt like I knew Alex Cross and because Patterson is an expert story teller.

Unfortunately, I was thoroughly disappointed with how Kiss the Girls was abridged. When ordering the audio book copy, I didn't realize I was buying an abridged copy. In my opinion, abridged versions of thrillers should be illegal because I felt cheated at the end. I'm pretty sure I know where the gaps in the story were because I felt jolted when suddenly Alex Cross and Sampson find the underground "House of Horrors."

Abridged version aside, I think I would have given the unabridged version five stars. I found myself wanting to drive around just to hear more of the audio book while in my car. Also, Time Warner Studios chose two different narrators. The voice of Alex Cross was very different from the other person reading the rest of the book. There were other sound effects adding to the drama of Alex's race to find his niece, Naomi.

Why did I choose to listen to Kiss the Girls before Along Came a Spider? Kiss the Girls arrived before Along Came a Spider did through the mail. Like Cross (see my earlier review), I felt this plot was self contained and didn't leave me confused by not having read Along Came a Spider first.

Crossing Over: One Woman's Exodus from Amish Life by Ruth Irene Garrett with Rick Farrant

Crossing Over: One Woman's Exodus from Amish Life by Ruth Irene Garrett with Rick Farrant is nonfiction. As such, I'm going to review it a little differently than I have the fiction works. Especially in the case of an autobiography, I think there have to be slightly different rules to measure a person's story. Unlike fiction, nonfiction writers don't change the details of the story just to make the plot more coherent or parallel.

With that said, I give Crossing Over four stars **** because it was a fascinating read. The style in which it is written is simple and to the point. I read the book in less than two days. At 190 pages, it wasn't a long book, but it was a good one. The inclusion of bits and pieces of the letters Garrett's parents wrote to her after she left the Old Order Amish community in Kalona, Iowa made the book even more personal than it already was.

I can't imagine the emotional turmoil Garrett had to go through in order to join outside society. To lose one's family and to have to start from scratch in learning how to live life in modern society must have been an utter shock for her. I learned a lot from this book, and I was especially pleased to read a first person account of the author's life after leaving the Amish because I feel too many times the Amish are romanticized in literature and in modern society in general. Garrett paints a picture of realism.

One of the things that made me stop and think after reading the book was that she didn't have many photographs by which to remember her childhood and family. There are so many things I take for granted in modern life that I can't fathom not having photographs of my family from years ago.

I think the thing that cemented Crossing Over at 4 stars for me is that the story itself and the way it was told was compelling. I felt like I knew the author as I was flipping through the pages. There aren't many books that come across so clearly for me.

And yes, I'm on an Amish kick right now.

Absence of Nectar by Kathy Hepinstall

Absence of Nectar by Kathy Hepinstall was a delightful book. Hepinstall weaved several stories into Absence of Nectar, all of which could have stood on their own and been interesting without the other subplots. Alice, the narrator, tells the story in a way that is both easy to understand but is also believable. Telling the story through the eyes of an eleven year old I think added to the genius of the book because Alice's perception of the events was a lot different than it would have been had her brother, Boone, been the narrator. It wasn't until the end of the book that I really started to think of the events more as Boone's story than Alice's. I think the case could be made that either of the two children could have been the main character.

I listened to Absence of Nectar on audio book, and I was glad that I did. Hepinstall's language throughout the book felt poetic in its rhythm. I definitely wouldn't classify it as a prose poem, but the rhythm of the words on the page helped me to stay interested in the plot. I listen to a lot of audio books, and very few achieve this quality.

I found myself liking all the characters in Absence of Nectar except for Simon Jester. I don't want to spoil the plot, but I will say that Hepinstall's writing makes it easy to hate some of the characters I ultimately ended up liking. There was enough room for redemption to keep them from becoming flat on the page.

Although I enjoyed Absence of Nectar, I'm not sure how I categorize it. I've seen it listed as a thriller when looking up information online. I don't agree that it's a thriller per se, but I'm not sure it's genre fiction at all. There's a little bit of everything in the book. Death, life, romance, tragedy, etc. I think contemporary fiction is probably the best label for it. There's a universal quality to the plot that makes me think readers of many different types of fiction would enjoy reading Hepinstall's work.

I give Absence of Nectar four stars. **** Without a doubt, I recommend the book.

There were a few things that bothered me about the plot that keep me from giving it five stars. First and foremost, I found myself wondering why Boone was so religious/spiritual. Alice gives details over and over again on her take on her pagan gods and her own sacrifices to them to keep her family safe from Simon Jester, but ultimately Boone is more spiritual than she is. He's always talking about God and so forth, but there's never really an explanation for why. Did he have a conversion experience? There isn't anything particularly useful by way of exposition that would suggest Alice and Boone's parents were spiritual or even took the kids to church or made them read the Bible. Yet, Boone borders at times on being a religious fanatic during certain parts of the novel. I don't know many people who were that way as kids without either the parents being pretty zealous or the kid having some huge experience causing him to talk about God all the time.

At one point, Alice and Boone are in a Catholic church and Alice describes the church in enough detail to make me think that either Hepinstall intended the kids to be Catholic or she stepped out of Alice's perspective for a few pages to add detail regarding their setting. Other parts of the story would suggest the kids weren't Catholic, though. The biggest two things were that both Alice and Boone's mother and father divorced and remarried.

Given the vast detail and length (it took over 10 hours on audio book to listen to the unabridged version) these are somewhat minor things I'm criticizing. Even with those questions lingering, I finished Absence of Nectar in 3 days.

A Rage To Kill: And Other True Cases by Ann Rule

A Rage To Kill is volume six in Ann Rule's Crime Files series. I haven't read any of the other books in the series and the lack of reading them didn't affect my understanding of this book. It's one of the joys of picking up a random non-fiction book to read and then review. A Rage to Kill is the first of Ann Rule's books I've ever read.

Before I discuss the content between the covers of this work, I want to comment on a few stylistic things I liked about Ann Rule's writing. First and foremost, her writing is concise, clear, and achieves the feat of seeming both plain spoken and yet sophisticated. She writes each true crime story in a way that left me feeling for the victim and the victim's family while yet sparking my curiosity about each of the killers.

Another nice thing about A Rage To Kill Was that I began reading it while I still lived in Iowa. I finished reading about one of the cases and then began the task of packing up all of my belongings for an interstate move to Tennessee. Four months went by before I found my mass market paperback to resume reading. I was able to pick up on a new case without any problems rather than having to reread in order to understand what I was consuming.

I have a fascination with murder cases and mystery fiction, so my interest in Ann Rule's book was high from the beginning. Another refreshing aspect of A Rage To Kill was that most of the individual killers were caught through good, old fashioned police work or mistakes made by the killers. There was a lack of the CSI effect to which modern police and attorneys refer. The public has grown to except a dramatic piece of DNA evidence that will solve a case in a matter of a few minutes or days. In reality, most cases don't have DNA evidence back and processed for several months and many times the DNA evidence simply isn't present or usable in real cases.

Rule included ten different murderers, ranging from a man who killed a bus full of people to people who killed their victims one person at a time. The story that most grabbed my attention and actually kept me awake for a few nights while I processed the information I had read earlier in the day was the spree killer, Christopher Wilder. I had never heard of spree killers before and was haunted by Wilder's actions. He not only murdered and tortured his victims, but he seemingly felt no remorse and preyed upon beautiful women in shopping malls and other public places. My false sense of security in public places was stripped from me as I read through his deeds. I live less than a two minute drive from a large shopping mall, and I couldn't help but imagine something similar occurring practically under my nose. Some of the things he did to the women he tortured will never be erased from my memory from reading Rule's book. Wilder's deeds were utterly disturbing.

I recommend this book and give it four stars, ****. The only thing holding me back from giving it a fifth star is that some of the cases were a bit outdated. The copyright is 1999 and many of the cases are a few decades old. I personally was still intrigued, but without a cold case type of story, cases that are from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, could be a turn off to some readers.

Flesh and Bone: A Body Farm Novel by Jefferson Bass

Flesh and Bone: A Body Farm Novel by Jefferson Bass was a book I stumbled upon while attending Killer Nashville 2008. Dr. Bill Bass was the keynote speaker and also half of the Jefferson Bass writing team. I was mesmerized by Dr. Bass, a renowned forensic anthropologist. He was a delightful speaker who is one of, if not the expert in the field of forensic anthropology. Not only was he informative, but he had a wonderful sense of humor. I imagine that anyone who can work with bodies all day would have to have a sense of humor just to be able to sleep at night.

It was Dr. Bass' two presentations that convinced me to purchase the three paperback Body Farm novels available while attending the conference. There was a fourth out in paperback, but I'm not in the habit of buying hardback books if I've already bought other books in the same purchase. Though I didn't stay to ask him to sign the three novels I bought, I was pleased when I opened them because he had signed the copies that Barnes and Noble had for sale prior to his talk. A signed author copy always encourages me to read, read, read!

Although the majority of the talk was regarding real life cases in which Dr. Bass had worked, he explained that he provides the science behind the novels while the other half of the writing team, Jon Jefferson, writes the prose. Because the protagonist in the novel, Dr. Bill Brockton, is a forensic anthropologist, I felt that the amount of science and explanation that the character went through as he solved the murders in this book were justified. If I hadn't heard Dr. Bass speak before reading and purchasing Flesh and Bone, I may have felt it was a little overkill.

After seeing the pictures in Dr. Bass' presentation about various things that the human body does when it decays outdoors, I could more easily picture some of the things that Dr. Brockton experiences in the novel. What stuck with me the most was that the skin on a body's hand (and fingerprints) will shed away from the flesh after a period of time like a snake shedding its skin. I would have never in my wildest dreams have imagined a dead body to do that in the course of decomposition. There was a lot of science, but I wouldn't say that I felt grossed out by the descriptions either.

There were several plot points that took me by surprise while reading Flesh and Bone. I was able to guess a few things too. I would say that Flesh and Bone was a good read, even if it is only read a little bit at a time. I took around four months to read it, usually while on my half hour lunch breaks at work. There are some books that get confusing if stretched out that long. Flesh and Bone had a plot that was easy enough to remember if read in 20 minute chunks.

Overall I give this book four stars. The only thing that held me back from rating it as five stars was that I was able to guess some of the things that happened at the end. There was still enough of a surprise factor for me to rate it highly, however.