2ManyBooks2LittleTime

I actually despise what most people call "chick lit" and lots of people have described the Undead series by MaryJanice Davidson as chick lit meets vampires.

I suppose that is an accurate description, but the reason I hate chick lit (in general) and the reason I find this book so hilarious is basically the same: a really shallow-seeming heroine. Here the shallowness isn't complete (Betsy has her moments and you can see that she has some deeper feelings, if you search really hard for them), but the very shallowness is part of the reason these books are so funny.

The Queen of the Vampires is obsessed with shoes? Designer names? What anyone and everyone is wearing? Too funny!

Nancy Wu, who gives voice to Betsy in this first person novel, is letter perfect. She sounds just like Betsy did in my head when I read "Undead and Unwed" for the first time.

Give this book a chance,even if you aren't a chick lit fan. You won't regret it.

SO boring and slow that I could hardly make myself listen to it long enough to form any interest at all in the characters. I managed to slog through to the end and then wished I hadn't because the end was so stupid (like something a high school student would write). Practically everyone in the whole book is miserable and has serious moral failings and it was hard to care about any of them. Don't waste your credits.

"Women of the Otherworld" is a good series, and the werewolf entries are my favorite because I really like Elena, the only current female werewolf, and Clay, her mate (at least according to HIM). This was one of my favorite books before I bought the audio version and that always makes me somewhat nervous (a bad narrator can wreck things pretty seriously), but this audiobook will now be one of my favorites as well. Good narration and no distracting bad habits by the reader.

The story itself is interesting and moves right along. I did feel that Elena could have gotten out of the fix she was in faster than she did (she spent a good chunk of the middle of the book in pretty dire straits), but even if that's true it wasn't an obvious thing (I hate it when smart charactors behave in a stupid or uncharactoristic way just to serve as a plot device for the author).

Not to spoil anything, but let me just say that I really like how Armstrong's female charactors don't sit around and wait to be "saved" by the men in the story. It's refreshing given the obnoxious amount of damsels-in-distress in the work of many of today's authors. (Have we not grown OUT of this idea? Hello, nearly 2010 here! Plus it's so old a trick as to be pretty tired and boring by now.). Sorry for the rant.

Just to sum up: Do yourself a favor and buy this very excellent book.

I really like the Drake Sisters series by Christine Feehan. This story (about eldest sister Sarah Drake) is a good first entry for the series.

It is a bit short, but I believe it (and the second entry featuring Kate Drake) were originally novellas inside anthologies. Plus "Magic in the Wind" costs less than most audiobooks, so that all evens out.

The narrator has a good voice for the narration of Sarah's story. She sounds young and somewhat sweet. That may seem a contradiction when you realize that Sarah is a security expert (supposedly versed in weapons and trained to fight), but the entire tenor of the series hangs on the idea that the Drakes are really kind young women (no matter the flashy careers or flamboyant personas shown to the world). They are the girls next door (who are actually the witches next door, but still the kind of girl your mom wants you to bring home).

It was not a syrupy-sweet reading, please do not mistake me. But it was just as I'd expect Sarah to sound.

This is a refreshing book in that the main male lead doesn't leap in to "save" the woman (even though she is much better trained and better suited to the role than he is). When this couple appears in later issues of this series they seem to be true partners. That is especially refreshing for a Feehan novel.

She has a bad tendancy to make ALL male leads so alpha as to be in serious need of a smack in the head with a heavy object. I like a good alpha hero as much as the next woman, but come ON. Some of her Dark Series "heroes" would end up dead if the heroines were like REAL women.