You know what I miss?

I miss just writing and talking about books. Thank goodness the blogging community is big enough that I can go visiting else where when I want to read and talk about books especially when I'm not doing any reviewing of my own.

I was surprised when I realized I'd read four books this week because it just doesn't feel like I'm reading very much. Go figure. So the next couple of days I'm going to do some reviews. I started out to just do lightning reviews of all four books. I like those sometimes, but I ended up having more to say about the books than I thought. So here's the first one.













IF THIS BED COULD TALK, is an anthology that Wendy brought me from Dallas. Wendy, bless her, waited in line and got it signed (to me by name) by one of the authors, Lynn LaFleur. Thanks Wendy!

The other contributers to the book are Liz Maverick and Kimberly Dean. Now, I know how contradictory this is going to sound, but I don't really buy anthologys much any more unless it's to read a favorite author or to follow a series. This is one I wanted because after reading WIRED (excerpt) I wanted to check out more of Liz Maverick's stuff.

I wish AGENT PROVOCATEUR by Liz Maverick was longer. I think her story suffered by its short length. I was intrigued and interested in the world she created, but everything just moved too fast and it felt like a lot of dessert with very little entree. I'm anxious to read secondary character Devlin's story. He's the brother of the hero Michael. Whew! Talk about messed up! I checked her website and didn't see any mention of Devlin's story coming out or already having been released. I'm sure after reading this one fans will be bugging her to write one.

UNREQUITED by Kimberly Dean was an interesting little story but may carry a squick factor for some people as the H/H are sort of related. He's the brother of the ex-husband and she is his unrequited love since their first meeting. No new ground here, but the story did it's job by making me aware of Ms. Dean's name and I'll certainly be looking over her other books when I see them.

Now for VICTIM OF DECEPTION by Lynn LaFleur. I've asked long time reviewers like Wendy if it's hard to write a less than favorable review when you've met or know the author. I was thinking about that again because I didn't like this story very much and I do feel bad about it since Ms. LaFleur was kind enough to autograph the book to me for Wendy. However, I don't want to lie or mislead anyone about my thoughts, so here goes.

First, I have to come clean and say the story has ghosts. As a general rule, I don't like ghosts or angels who spirit around the characters fixing things. We are to believe these particular ghosts have been around for over a century watching over their descendants and entertaining themselves by watching each other get off. They can only watch, not touch, because they've been cursed by the witch who murdered them.

Max and Karessa are the 'real' H/H and have a past. A past that involves Max being a big fat liar and Karessa leaving him because of it. In this story (big surprise) Max lies to Karessa (and others) to gain access to the house she inherited (with ghosts) in order to treasure hunt. Even though deceit and distrust was a reason for their break-up in the past this current deception is easily dismissed by Karessa at the story's end. Did it make sense? Not to me. Did I believe for one second that Max had some sort of epiphany and it will never, ever happen again? Nope.

One final confession, I don't know why, but names like Karessa, Larissa, Melissa, Marissa are just not for me. It's not like I have any sort of reasonable or intelligent reason for not liking these sorts of names, like someone named Marissa was mean to me in third grade. I just don't like them. So, when someone has an 'issa' name it's a big distraction and irritant when I read. I had a particular dislike this time for the name Karessa. Are we supposed to say it like 'ka-ress-a' or 'ker-is-sa'? Maybe it wasn't the name and it was the character I didn't like very much. I can't say for certain. At any rate it was like an annoying fly the whole time I was reading and made this story very close to a DNF.

What about all of you. It's been awhile since I did a bedside book check. What's everybody reading out there?