Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Lionboy: The Chase by Zizou Corder
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I read the first book in this trilogy back in 2014, and loved it so much that was saving this second one for when I really, really needed a good one to read. That time finally came, so I started in on this book. A few pages in, and I couldn't believe it was part of the same trilogy.

Everything I loved from the first book was gone. Instead of a semi-steampunk-y feel, it felt like our world. Gone was the magic mixed with the real world. In the first book we had lines like His mother was in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on her last batch of Breathe Easy potions while Charlie was in the living room watching The Simpsons. but nothing at all like that in this book. Worst of all, this book was boring. Also gone was one of the things I loved most about the first book. From my last review:

The author would do something that made it clear we weren't in this world, but without adding any confusion. Now and then multiple words would be made into one. Riverboatpolice (police who patrol the river on boats), lionchamber (big room with all the lion cages in it), lionboy (the boy who assists the lion tamer). It was enough to give it an exotic twist without it taking even a moment of thought to figure out what it meant (thus not knocking you out of the story). So perfect!

In the first third of the book, that happened ONCE.

In addition to those things that were lacking, the first third of the book took place in Italy, and so much of the dialogue sometimes whole pages of dialogue were in Italian! Seriously, what the hell? There's giving flavor to a story and then there's whole pages of stuff you can't read.

The plot was soooooo slow going. I finally went to Amazon to see what other reviews had said. One wrote:

A book that ends in mid-stream, with the words "To be continued"? This book contains a cardinal sin in publishing. I have absolutely no problem with continuing action across several volumes, but like the Harry Potter series, at least make each of the volumes capable of standing alone. There is absolutely no resolution at the end of this volume. Maddening.

Nail in the coffin. I didn't finish this book, I won't be picking up the last book in the trilogy.

Currently reading: The Woman Who Loved the Moon: And Other Stories by Elizabeth A. Lynn. It's a book of short stories, so I'm reviewing them as I read them so I won't forget how I feel about each one. After the first one I wrote "I might just have to move to a state where it's legal to marry a book." :D

Omnia Online by
Christopher Booth
Rating: Hated (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



The plot seemed an interesting enough idea: Aliens were watching Earth, waiting for us to get advanced enough for them to contact without changing us too much. To hurry us along, they set up a virtual reality online game.

Will the aliens be successful? What will the humans do? I'll never know; the editing was so poor, it was too annoying to read.

I'm so sick of books like this. Multiple spelling, typing, word choice errors per page. It's just completely unacceptable to publish (even self-publish) something of this quality. The author should be ashamed of himself. Everyone who paid money for this book should demand a refund.

Dragons Blight by Damien Tiller
Rating: Hated (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Years ago, the dragon-human war ended. This story opens up with the celebration of that war ending.

Oh look, another self-published book with multiple mistakes per page. Hm, or maybe this one has a publisher? It lists this publisher but that looks kind of scammy to me.

Both books abandoned less than 5% in.

Currently reading: War Dogs by Greg Bear. It's not really my type of book at all (military scifi) and I'm not getting into the story. I'm going to give it one more evening of reading for it to hook me, otherwise I'm going to give up on it.

Current To Read book pile count: 163

Before the reviews: This weekend booksellers are selling more than 100 scifi/fantasy books for only 99 cents each. Visit this link to see a list of them all. There are so many that caught my eye, but my To Read pile is so big, I had to close the page so I won't be tempted.

Now on to the long overdue review post... One book I finished and three I didn't.

Anton and Cecil, Book 2: Cats on Track by Lisa Martin and Valerie Martin
Rating: Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



"But Thistle, this is book two! I don't remember you reviewing book one!" Yeah, me neither. Since I read in ebook format, the cover is less than an inch tall and in black and white -- hard to read text on it. I missed that this was the second book in the series, and was too far into it to stop reading and switch to the other one once I realized it. Oh well, it worked perfectly fine as a stand-alone book.

This author wrote the best 'talking animal' characters I've ever read. That being said, unfortunately the story never hooked me. In it two cats brothers, Anton and Cecil, ride across the country on a train to rescue a mouse friend. I loved how each animal type in the book (horses, dogs, buffalo) all had their own way of speaking and sounded different than other animal species.

I don't think I'm going to go back and read the first book. If I had loved this one, I would, but I have too many others waiting for me.

Field One by Simon Winstanley
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Wow. I was going to write "I read this one over a month ago, and don't remember why I stopped reading it" but it seemed like a month couldn't be right, so I checked the date of my last book review post. August 26th. I guess when you're moving, a week feels like a month... This will be the worst book review ever, because even after skimming the excerpt on Amazon, I can't remember a single reaction I had to this book. My kindle tells me I gave up at 4% in, which is faster than usual, but I just don't remember why.

Worst. Book. Review. Ever.

Immortal Guardians (Spirit Animals: Fall of the Beasts, Book 1) by Eliot Schrefer
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



This book started with an interesting idea: Set on some fantasy world, some children randomly summon spirit animals to them, and they remain their companions for their whole lives. (Like daemons, but only some kids got one instead of everyone.) The book followed some kids who not just ended up with spirit animals, but were the rare cases of getting a legendary spirit animal.

That was all well and good, until the story's villain showed up. I just have no patience anymore for black/white characters. The bad guy was EVIL EVIL McEVIL and went around stealing all the legendary spirits and turning them into tattoos on himself.

I gave up at the 15% point, which was further than I should have gone.

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



This was the oddest, most messed-up book I ever read. And the fact that it's being sold as a children's book... (Or so I assume, the publisher is listed as Random House Children's Book.)

The story opened with a young teenage girl living alone in a cabin with her father. While it didn't go into graphic detail, the father was sexually abusing her, having sex with her nightly (except when she was having her period, then he abused her about that). Hell, he just abused her all the time, no matter what she said or did.

Twice she got pregnant with her father's kid, and both times the father went off to buy herbs from the "mudwife" (what the world called midwives, for no reason that was explained in the first part of the book) so the teenage daughter would abort the baby. While the sex wasn't ever described in graphic detail, her passing both babies was all too detailed.

Though this girl was a young teenager, apparently she had never lived with anyone but the father, never knew anyone, so at first she didn't realize the connection between sex/her period/getting pregnant.

I stopped reading after the second forced miscarriage (the father punched her in the stomach instead of buying herbs to try to save money...). According to Amazon reviews, I stopped reading right before a big gang rape of the teenage daughter.

Again, this was published by Random House Children's Book. I don't think I've ever been so WTF? over a book before. I cannot imagine letting a child read this (except maybe they wouldn't understand what was going on? But still, why let them read it at all if they won't understand it? What would be the point?).

Amazon reviews say the story gets much, much better after this first dark part, but I had zero interest in continuing.

Currently reading: Waer, which I'm enjoying. It's a sort-of werewolf story with an awful cover.

Current To Read Pile book count: 152

Red Fox by Lara Fanning
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



This story had such potential. This story had such plot holes.

Set in Australia, the government finally decided to do something about global warming. They decided to ban use of all electricity. They decided to ban use of all gas-powered things. (Good thing Australian government officials don't need to be elected, right? ...wait.) Then they go beyond that -- they want all humans to go back to living as we did in caveman times. Nothing but hunters/gathers; they wanted all humans to go back to being "feral".

How would such a thing be accomplished? First they had to kill off a good third of the population. Anyone who protested that (a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of people, one in a thousand or less -- the main character one of them, of course) got turned into "Breeders" -- humans who were (assumedly) more aggressive so the government wanted their children to populate the world so they'd do better as hunters/gathers.

One of the first big problems of this story: How does that make sense for the government to do? Where is the benefit to the people with the power/money?

But anyway, since it was an interesting idea, I kept reading.

So the government has all these "aggressive" human types, and now they need babies. They put them into groups (three men with twenty women) and order them to make babies. If you have a bunch of "alpha type" men who are ordered, under the threat of death, to make babies with women, shouldn't there be (at the very least) pressure from the men to have sex with the women? If not outright rape? That never happened! (Other than one single almost-case of it, at the very end of the book.) All of these supposedly "aggressive" alpha males were nothing but nice and kind and blushing at the idea of having sex with the women... UGH.

It really was an interesting idea for a story, and some parts of it held my attention. I read the first 90% of it then started skimming because the end got even worse: Set-up for a love triangle in book two. Ugh.

I'd love to see this story in the hands of a more experienced, more skilled, and edited writer. (Self-published, this book was full of editing mistakes. One character was called three different names on a single page!) Still, that this author is 22 years old and this was her first book. She has potential. I'm not going to read any other books in this series, but I might pick up something from her again in the future.

MindWar by Andrew Klavan
Rating: Hated (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I really hate it when a book starts with self-promoting quotes, though not usually for this reason. MindWars had this one:

Through it all, [the main character] teaches lessons in Christian decency and patriotism, not by talking about those things, or thinking about them much, but by practicing them... Well done, Andrew Klavan.

Can an author dictate how a review interprets his book? Nope. But he sure as heck can decide which quotes to include with his book, so he must have approved of this one. (Self-published book, so it's the author's decision in this case.)

So the story opens with a "perfect" teenager -- captain of the football team, every girl in school lusts over him, perfect grades, everything perfect about him. Then a car accident breaks his legs and that's the end of football, thus he thinks his life is over. So he starts playing video games. In a couple weeks, long before his legs heal, we learn from a government official:

"We've actually trained people to play the game. Professional gamers. Soldiers. Army Rangers. Navy SEALs. Some of our finest, best warriors. They've never matched your score. They've never come close.

UGH. So Mr Perfect McPerfect is also perfect at playing video games. Better than professional gamers, who practice gaming for more hours in a day than most people work! But this main character, in the space of weeks, is better than them all! And it's not even like he focused on one game, he played many different ones.

I actually got to the 14% point of this book, though I should have given up much, much sooner. Reviews said it was about the government having a program where people fight wars in cyberspace, which would be an interesting story, just not in the hands of this author.

Two books about gaming. One I abandoned and one I should have abandoned. I've been on a books about gaming kick lately, after I loved that one about esports so much. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find another one as good. The completed book first:

Multiplayer by John C. Brewer
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



"Are you trying to tell me that Osama bin Laden is alive and playing video games?"

Yes, yes the book is.

For a book about gaming, this story started in a very odd way: A bunch of ISIS terrorists sitting around in a cave, trying to figure out how they can train when every time they leave the cave, US drones/forces find them and kill them. The one American convert has an idea: Use MMORPGs -- massively multiplayer online role-playing games.

Then the story moves right to a teenage boy who (get this!) plays a MMO. Can you guess where this story is headed? The kid's father was in the military, but an ISIS roadside bomb killed him, now the kid hates all Muslims. (Usually when I use the dislike/hated rating for a book, it's based on the quality of the writing. If this story had been wonderfully written and fully believable, I still would have given it a dislike. It was so very unpleasant to spend eight hours of reading time in the head of someone so rabidly racist.)

Why did I keep reading this book? I loved the MMO and how the author handled the whole gaming part of the plot. Whenever the main character played the game, the author treated it like the kid was really in the game world (as his character). It was such a natural way to handle it, I didn't even realize the author was doing it until a few chapters in. It was so realistic, a perfect reflection of how you can get lost in a game.

I'd really love to play that MMO, too (even if it wasn't really believable as a real game). The game is a duplicate of the entire planet -- if it exists on Earth, it's in the game, however it's all post-apocalyptic. But the idea of players being able to help make the world real is such a great one -- want to see your childhood home in the MMO? Submit photos and details to the dev team, and in a day or two a realistic copy of the building will exist in the game. (Like I said, not realistic at all, but still cool.)

Unfortunately I spent the whole book struggling with if the adult characters were believable or not. I kept thinking no, not at all... but so much stuff happened, maybe I couldn't be a fair judge of it. (The woman's husband was blown to bits and she was dealing with a racist son -- was it fair for her to scream at him at the drop of a hat? Maybe... But it kept feeling like one of those "all adults suck and exist only as challenges for the teenage main characters" YA books.)

The end of the book decided the whole "believable adults or not" issue for me: The FBI made the teenagers into special agents. Teenagers. In high school. No training at all.

"Therefore, as of right now, you -- the four of you -- are Special Agents of the FBI."

Even the kids were unbelievable at times. The bad guy caught the teens and was doing the usual "I'm going to talk at you a while before killing you thing... TOTALLY NOT TO GIVE PEOPLE TIME TO COME RESCUE YOU!" thing, and the main character reacted:

"If you're going to kill us, just shut up and do it!" blurted Hector. "This is the worst monologue I ever heard! Do it!"

There was one part that made me especially frowny, though this one was no fault of the author. The day after Trump told his followers to go shoot Hillary, there was this line in the book, main character thinking:

American political parties might not always get along, but at least they weren't killing each other.

As if those weren't issues enough, I saw in advance every single twist and "surprise" in the book. I'm horrible at guessing what's coming, it's so rare for me to be right about it (I don't want to guess! I like being surprised!). And that this was a YA book is no excuse for that -- many YA books do surprise me with their twists.

I skimmed the last 20% of the book. As much as I liked the story's MMO, I really wish I had given up on it sooner. Even though the main character saw the error of his racists ways in the end, it was just such an unpleasant book to spend time with.


Click Here To Start by Denis Markell
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I was expecting a book about gaming, and got a book about teenage relationships and... well gaming, but not the kind of gaming I was looking for. The main teenage character played "Escape the Room" puzzle games (where you have to just click on everything you can to find clues, then put them together to escape), and when his hoarder uncle dies and leaves him everything he owns, the kid has to play an "Escape the Room" game for real. zzz

I read 24% of this book, and for a while thought I might read to at least the halfway point, but more and more it became about the teens' relationships (friendships and crushes) and that was the nail in the coffin for me.

Current To Read pile count: 166

Captive in the Dark by CJ Roberts
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



A "dark erotica" book that was neither dark* nor erotic. Author uses her "About me" section to link to a petition to try to get HBO to make her books into a TV series...

* Okay, if Fifty Shades of Grey was the most dark thing you've ever read, then yeah, this book might seem shockingly dark. However, if you've even dabbled in reading fanfic, you've likely read stories that were a hell of a lot darker, more realistic, and much better written.

Plot wise, some Bad Guy (Caleb) wanted revenge on a guy who is even worse of a bad guy than he is, so he gets into the slave training business. (Book was set in the real, current world.) He kidnaps and trains so many women that he loses count of how many it's been, all to get the notice of the bigger bad guy. Finally Caleb is ready to make his move, he needs the perfect girl for Other Bad Guy to buy, so he'll have inside access to the guy.

The book follows him kidnapping and (supposedly) breaking an 18 year old woman. By the 56% point (where I stopped reading) the two were a good way into falling in love with each other...

I love love love books and stories about one person breaking another, which made this story even more annoying to me. Neither character was believable, and it's more like the story said "okay, she's broken and remade now" than that it happened in a believable way.

On top of that, the writing was laughably bad in some places. Caleb meeting the girl he was going to kidnap. She's crying:

He liked looking at [tears], tasting them. Truth be told, they made him hard.

Woman crying? POP! ERECTION! Imagine Caleb seeing a woman, her car broken down on the side of the rode. She's crying because she's late for work. ERECTION! Imagine him in a hospital, woman crying because of some bad news, ERECTION! 9/11, all the people crying on the street? He must have had a nonstop erection.

Then, after he kidnaps her, has her naked and tied up. She's trying to get away, fighting him:

Her knee collided with his groin, hard. What was it with women and kicking men in the nuts?

Seriously. HOW VERY UNREASONABLE, WOMEN. KICKING MEN IN THE NUTS WHEN THEY'RE ONLY KIDNAPPING AND RAPING YOU.

Then there was just general bad writing. Like "He opened the fridge door; the cool, swampy air felt good." Doesn't "swampy" imply warm as well as humid? And "He never tired of [women's] salty taste, and sweet smelling sweat. Only a woman could boast such a thing." Protip from the slaver, folks: Women don't ever smell bad. The never have BO. Woo!

I really should have given up on this book sooner, but I kept hoping it would get better.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox by by Mary E. Pearson
Rating: Okay (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Unfortunately, years ago when I bought this book, I had been spoiled about the big plot twist. Since I have the memory of a goldfish, I figured that by the time I read it, I would have forgotten the spoiler. Unfortunately not. I suspect I might have finished this book, perhaps even liked it, if I hadn't known the spoiler. Since I knew it, all the fun (all the guessing as to what was going on) was ruined.

In it a teenage girl wakes up with no memories at all, not even her name. Her family tells her she's been in a coma for a year, and her memories will come back. But things keep not adding up, and why does one member of her family speak about her in the past tense? The twist: She had actually died in the car crash, not been in a coma, and she's a clone of herself.

I didn't reach the 50% point, so it doesn't count towards my year total.

Current To Read pile count: 154

In Real Life by Lawrence Tabak
Rating: Loved (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



This book was unique in my reading experience: I loved it so much, yet I skimmed probably 25% of it. There were two plots in the story, but they both got nearly equal time, so I can't really label one a subplot. One part of the story was about a kid, a gifted math student, who was also gifted at playing an online game (Starfare in the book, based on Starcraft in real life). This teen was one of the best players in the US, and eventually one of the Korean professional teams recruits him. While this book was fiction, the author had two sons play in pro eGames, so it felt very, very realistic and accurate.

Even though I'm a gamer, going into this book I thought I might not enjoy it. These professional eSports, I just don't get them. It always seemed a little silly to me to try to make a videogame into a sport. But wow, this book showed me how serious places like Korea take it. Plus I got an interesting view of Korea from an outsider's perspective, and a look at some interesting math stuff, and other new-to-me things.

If the book had been about the gaming alone, I would say this was the best book I had read in a long, long time. Unfortunately the other plot didn't work for me. Romance. Yawn. While I fully believed start and growth of the relationship the main character had with his girlfriend, it bored me. I just do not care about a teenage boyfriend/girlfriend situation, the worries they have, having to deal with their families, all that. I can't fault the author for including that plot in the book (it's a YA book, so I'm not the target audience), it just completely and totally did not work for me.

I was worried at how the story would end, because there was only one way I could see him ending it. See, this kid loved the game he was so good at; no matter what else he was doing (school, work), he was counting the minutes until he could get home and log on. However, when the Korean professional team recruited him and he was required to play 12+ hours a day, six days a week, the fun went out of it for him (100% accurate, that happens to me even on short vacations when I do nothing but play all day). Plus there were serious issues with the team not wanting to accept him (for perfectly valid reasons -- as a blond American, he was getting a lot more publicity than even the more skilled players). So basically, the kid's dream of going off to play for a professional team was crushed by the reality of that. I was really, really worried the author would crap on gamers -- that he would end the book with something like "So Main Characters gets back together with Girlfriend and realizes that his life is better without Starfare," but luckily he didn't. The story ended with a completely open ending, not touching on the game at all. The reader can fill in for themselves if the kid ever played again or how he felt about the game going forward. I'm really thankful for that. It felt like the author was being both true to the story and respectful to gamers.

Even with the romance plot, I really enjoyed this book. It's very, very rare for me want to reread a book, but I would happily reread this one.

Interspecies: Volume 1 (The Inlari Sagas) by various authors.
Rating: Loved (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Set on Earth in the future, some war between multiple alien races basically destroyed our planet. One alien race (the Inlari) were fleeing a different very aggressive race, and came to Earth to hide. The aggressive race found them here and left the planet in ruins, killing most humans, most Inlari, and leaving most of the planet poisoned and unlivable. New Zealand and Australia were the only two livable places left, the former in control of the Inlari, the latter of the humans.

The book contained four novellas, set in that world. As scifi-ish as this setup sounds, the stories were really about relationships, mostly interspecies relationships (as fitting the book's title).

Self-published, but both well-written and quite well (if not perfectly) edited. I would have 100% believed this was a traditionally published book (except for the fugly cover).

The Memoriam by M. J. Kelley A story of the Inlari and how they handle memories and forgetting. A young boy "passes a test" (sort of) to become one of his race's most important figures. The story follows his relationship with his mentor. Twist provided by a girl who failed in that same role.

Sad and dark. I enjoyed it quite a bit, though it was my least favorite in the book.

Underground Intelligence by Elaine Chao In the alien-held New Zealand, the humans are kept as slaves. The last three novellas all deal with that. In this one, we learn of the human underground resistance in New Zealand, but more importantly is the relationship between one Inlari man and the human resistance fighter woman who came to steal tech from him. A story of how friendships and trust can start, and the effects they could have.

I really liked this one. I loved the Inlari character so much.

Transmission Interrupted by Dana Leipold Through this novella we learned of the Inlari's religion... but it was really about the relationship between a young Inlari girl and the human (slave) boy she loved. It had a nice twist to it, which was foreshadowed in the story, but I hadn't picked up on, so once it happened I had to laugh at myself for not realizing.

Though stories about religion of this type make me uncomfortable (the religion being an excuse to make one group feel superior and make it okay to hurt another group -- too realistic), I still enjoyed it a lot. The characters made the story. Unfortunately the ending wasn't believable: The girl killed herself by stabbing herself in the heart with a sword she grabbed from a soldier. Falling on your sword? Sure, that could work. But just standing there and holding it in your hands and stabbing yourself in the chest? With adults in arm's reach of you? That I don't buy.

Babylon’s Song by Woelf Dietrich Ugh, this story. Sad and dark and wonderful. In this novella we followed a very young girl. Her family murdered, she and her sister were stolen from their home in Australia by Inlari slavers. She was nine, her sister was four. The story followed through her training as they tried to break her, she and her sister sold to different people. She ended up in the hands of a very kind Inlari (such a lucky break for her, that's very uncommon, the Inlari think of humans as animals). Bad, spoiler things happen and the girl and her master are taken into custody by the Inlari police force.

I didn't completely like or buy the ending, I wish it had ended sooner (with an open ending), but still. I loved this story, it was my favorite in the book.

This book is currently $5 on Amazon, and well worth the price (so long as you're okay with dark stories). It's been a long time since I've enjoyed and been so impressed by a self-published book. I wish more of them were like this one.

Dog Country by Malcolm F. Cross
Rating: Disliked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



I feel bad giving this book a 'disliked' rating, but... I just didn't like it at all. It was technically well-written, and the 12% I read was edited perfectly (rare for a self-published book!), but the story itself had too many issues for me to keep reading.

Set on Earth in the current-ish year, geneteching was a big thing. Someone (the government?) made humans mixed with dogs to use in wars and other industries. Design one dog type, brew a set of clones, and you have forces for your army. Interesting idea! Even more interesting was that the book opened right as the war ended. What would these dogs do, when they were created and geneteched to do one thing, and that one thing was no longer needed? (The fact that the government could just kill them all off was handwaved with a couple sentences about how the geneteched animals were given their freedom and status equal to any non-geneteched person.)

The dogs were playing in "milsim" games -- military simulation, which apparently is both a pro and non-pro sport in this world. Still, interesting idea. Then the story started to get bogged down with details. One of the Amazon reviewers called this not just military scifi, but heavy military scifi, and that was right. Page after page about how the troops moved on the game field, detailed description about cleaning guns, etc. But okay, if the military end of things didn't work for me, I could focus on the dogs' relationship, because that was interesting as well.

Until the girlfriend was introduced. Turns out, since these dogs were geneteched for war, they didn't know how to handle even the most basic part of relationships. (So why the main character dog had a girlfriend was beyond me.) This girlfriend (also a geneteched animal) wanted to have sex all the time, and even though the dog didn't know anything about sex, didn't understand it, and did not like it, the girlfriend pressured him into doing it multiple times a day. What kind of girlfriend does that? Sheesh... Then this dog went full-on autistic-seeming. He didn't even know the most basic relationship stuff (like why someone would draw a heart for their loved one). It was like he was a totally different character... Plus I felt like I was dealing with Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory. Same storyline -- girlfriend pressures boyfriend who neither likes nor wants to have sex into having it.

Usually when I don't finish a book, I like to post a couple of them at once. This review got long though, so I'm going to post it on its own. Plus I think the next book I'm reading (The Magnificent 12 by Michael Grant) will be one I finish.

For Real by Alexis Hall
Rating: Loved (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)

Cover mildly NSFW, so linking. Hot cover here! Getcha hot cover here!

I have a limited amount of reading time at night, and a very good internal clock. Usually without fail, I know exactly when I have to stop reading, glance over to the clock to confirm it, and close my Kindle. This book blew that out of the water. Most nights I didn't glance at the clock until an hour later than I should have stopped reading, said "it's not a good stopping point, I'll read for just another couple minutes" and then another hour would pass. I actually got no work done today at my job because I was just so darned tired from lack of sleep.

Though a very simple story, it was handled well. A 19 year old teen meets a middle aged man in a BDSM club. They have a connection, and the story follows their relationship as it grows and builds. In most stories like this, the younger man would be the sub, but in this book he was the dom. That was a nice twist. (Some reviewers had issues with the 19 year old's age, saying he often came off as much younger, and thus the story made them uncomfortable since he was underage. I'd agree with the much younger part, I would have guessed he was 16 if the author hadn't repeatedly stated he was 19.)

Though it was right on the borderline of 'too much sex,' the story never crossed that line. Sex scenes are good and fun and hot, but more and more, I need substance to go with them. Sex scenes are like the sauce on a meal -- they make a meal better, but a dinner of nothing but sauce wouldn't be very satisfying.

While I very much enjoyed most of the story, it wasn't perfect. (I think I'm harder on stories that are close to perfect than I am on ones that are mediocre.) There was too much "Oh he won't love me because I'm too young" and "Oh he won't love me because I'm too old". Near the end, there was one of those annoying if they'd only TALK TO EACH OTHER, this whole issue would be settled! situation caused because the teen didn't charge his phone for a day (on purpose, he knew it was dead, right after their first big fight).

I'll admit I skimmed the last scene of the story, because it was more sex and the plot was settled by that point. Sex is nice, kinky sex nicer, but the story was over and it was just fluff for me.

This book very much reminded me of Manna Francis/manna's epic slash original fiction series The Administration. Sex, BDSM, cooking/food played a major role in both, and even mention of an unhappy, pacing jaguar in a zoo. (If you haven't read The Admin yet, I STRONGLY recommend it. Most of the stories are free on her site, and I deeply love the whole series.)

I didn't love For Real as much as a lot of people did, but especially the first half of it I loved a lot. If you're okay with a story about nothing but relationships, with a heaping helping of semi-graphic M/M sex scenes (kinky and not), then you should give this book a try.