Review: An Affair with Mr Kennedy by Jillian Stone

Book Title/Author:An Affair with Mr. Kennedy by Jillian Stone
Publisher/Year Published:January 2012 by Pocket Books
Where I got it: The library
Rating: 3/5 stars

Summary:Via Goodreads

London, 1887. Part stoic gentleman, part fearless Scotland Yard man, Zeno "Zak" Kennedy is an enigma of the first order. For years, the memory of a deadly bombing at King's Cross has haunted the brilliant Scotland Yard detective. His investigation has zeroed in on a ring of aristocratic rebels whose bloody campaign for Irish revolution is terrorizing the city. When he discovers one of the treacherous lords is acquainted with his free-spirited new tenant, Cassandra St. Cloud, his inquiry pulled him unexpectedly close to the hear of the conspiracy -- and into the arms of a most intriguing lady.

Cassie is no Victorian prude. An impressionist painter with very modern ideas about life and love, she is eager for a romantic escapade that is daring and discreet. She sets her sights on her dour but handsome landlord, but after she learns their meeting was not purely accidental, she hardly has a chance to forgive her lover before their passionate affair catapults them both into a perilous adventure.

This was definitely one of the more unique historical romances out there. I can see why RWA gave her an award. Let's break it down, shall we?

The Story:
The story is gripping. It takes you on a journey with Scotland Yard and its heroes, especially Zeno aka Zak. There is a plot afoot and Cassie seems to be unwittingly caught in the middle. Zak makes it his responsibility to protect her, and well, things happen along the way. The story bounces back between their love and the nefarious schemes of The Bloody Four. It is rather unique in that there is an actual mystery like plot with Scotland Yard, and their romance pretty much solidifies about halfway through the book.

You can tell all the research that went into this novel, too. She really makes it known that this is the turn of the century (almost) Victorian England, and it doesn't do the novel disservice. Although through the first chapter, I wrote down all of the references I didn't get or the inventions I wasn't sure existed. After losing hours to Wikipedia, she was right on them all, and I learned the history of vibrators.

The Characters:
First we shall look at the leads.

Cassie was a contradiction. Well maybe not a contradiction but built a contradiction in me. She is the daughter of a suffragist who rides bikes in breeches. All well and good and pretty awesome. Side note: I've ridden a bike in a skirt and do NOT recommend it). She is also an artist. Super likable, yeah? But then she goes and does stupid things like refusing a guard when she knows this not nice man from her past is tailing her and wants her kidnapped. "No I am good with one guard." Seriously?! I don't care how "feminist" you are, it seemed stupid to me and I just couldn't forgive her for the needless danger she kept getting into because of it.

Zak was less of a struggle to like. He was pretty consistent. I got a little tired of the hero gig that he kept playing over and over again. But I guess it comes with his job? I mean he must be super good at it.

All of these complaints make it sound like I hated Zak and Cassie, but I didn't. Not really. They were pleasant for the most part, these were just my qualms.

I did extremely love the side characters and can't wait for them to have books of their own.

The Romance:
The romance took a bit of a backseat to some of the story, but it wasn't too bad. The first half was brilliant in the romance aspect. After they hooked up the first time it was more.... leisurely. And you know that isn't really a bad thing. I would have liked to see more romance outside of the sexy times, but you know this isn't really a negative. It made the story and characters seem more like characters in the real world as opposed to Romancelandia.

The Execution:
Remember how I mentioned the bouncing between romance and mystery? Well, it does this rather smoothly for most of the novel, but the end seemed to drag. To be honest, I wish this would have ended scenes earlier. Like about 50 pages. The ending seemed a little anticlimacitc.

The Overview:
Overall, I liked it. It was refreshing to read a non-regency, a non-ton (for the most part) story about a man making his living in the world. A super interesting living with crime solving and bombs. I am really looking forward to reading more from Ms. Stone, especially more of the Scotland Yard books.

3/5

Review: Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Book Title/Author:Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
Publisher/Year Published:May 2001 by Ace (first published in January 2001)
Where I got it: The library
Rating: 3/5 stars

Challenges:The January entry for the TBR Pile Challenge

Summary:

Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much. Not because she's not pretty. She is. It's just that, well, Sookie has this sort of "disability." She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill. He's tall, dark, handsome -- and Sookie can't hear a word he's thinking. He's exactly the kind of guy she's been waiting for all her life.

But Bill has a disability of his own: he's a vampire with a bad reputation. He hangs out with a seriously creepy crowd, all suspected of -- big surprise -- murder. And when one of Sookie's co-workers is killed, she fears she's next.

I am going to start this review off by getting this out of the way. I have never seen True Blood, a TV series on I don't even know what channel that I hear is 'loosely' based on this book series. I don't even know what the characters look like, or if I did I am not sure who is suppose to be who or if I am even mixing up vampire television shows.

The point with leading off with this is that I was able to experience Dead Until Dark unscathed and not judging based on seeing a different medium.

I knew that this was set in the South and had vampires in it. Well we find out soon that vampires are not just in this world but are accepted into society (with some prejudices to overcome of course). Quite an interesting concept which isnt the normal twist that you see in vampire lore.

The story itself was pretty interesting in that it played off of this concept quite heavily. We see vampires trying to integrate themselves and others trying to stay as separate as possible. A main point of the novel is our main vampire, Bill, which by the way is an awesome vampire name, trying to live with the humans. It is actually quite interesting and something I almost wanted to see more than the romance. Because, yes that is there too.

So outside of that the plot is rather interesting. There is a mystery murderer running around. It's a pretty decent story. I extremely loved all of the references to the early 2000s. I don't know if it was a detriment, per say, but it does date the story. For instance, there were times before I checked the publication date where I thought, why isn't he just calling her on her cell. Well, silly, those were not that popular yet. Hard to believe.

The characters were alright, decently well rounded, and overall enjoyable. I did feel like Sookie was a little annoying at times and that clothing was mentioned overmuch. But Bill and Sookie and the host of secondary characters were fleshed out (ha pun) and ... well enjoyable.

I keep using that word, because that is what it was for me. Enjoyable. I didnt overly love it and I didn't overly hate it. The story was good, the characters were good, the setting was good; I am not sure if there is much more to say.

Will I read more of the series? Maybe. I am definitely not going to rule it out. Will I be making a mad dash to Netflix to watch True Blood? Eh. Probably not.

It's worth a read if you are interested in vampires and a time so close to our own, yet without cell phones :)

Summer 2010 Group Reads

20.10 - Group Reads
Read One Of The Following Group Read Selections And Make At Least One Post In The Discussion Thread.
A. Books About Books - The Book Thief
B. Sci-Fi/Fantasy - The Hunger Games
C. Mystery - The ABC Murders

The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie
Published2006 by Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers (first published 1936
Notes I listened to this on audiobook checked out from the library.
Rating: 3/5

Normally when I see the three books chosen to be the three group read options, I have three to chose from because I've never read any of them. This time was different. I just recently devoured The Hunger Games and I read The Book Thief about 6 months ago. So that left the ABC Murders. I must say, I really enjoyed And Then There Were None so I was looking forward to this as well.

The ABC Murders is a Hercule Poirot mystery. I don't know much about Christie's works, but it didn't take long to figure out that this was an established character. Normally this would bother me, the not reading things in the order they were intended, but with mysteries, I don't see how it would matter. Nothing would be given away. I can use all of my brainpower alloted for daily use and still not figure it out.

The plot is that Mr. Poirot receives some letters claiming a crime with happen in Andover and challenges Poirot to figure it out. The brush it off at first but as B and C happen, things start falling apart and coming together (as they do in mysteries). I did guess the whodunit part, but I had no idea why I was right.

I really enjoyed listening to this mystery unfold and I believe I would have enjoyed it if I had only read it as well. But the plus for the audiobook was that the actor who played all these characters was superb! It was quite easy for me to tell who was saying what before the "Mr Jones said" and it made the whole experience rather enjoyable.

This is a great mystery! I don't know of anyone who is into mysteries and never read Christie but if that happens to be you, give this one a shot. It's not your normal mystery.