Recent reads

[annathepiper]

Nerd in Shining Armor was, as cafiorello promised, a fun read. Very, very fluffy, but at least it was a fun read. ;) I was extremely amused that Harrison Ford's flick Six Days Seven Nights was passingly referenced in this novel--because the whole atmosphere of the book was very much like that, except with more sex and fewer pirates. And the hero would probably have been better played by David Schwimmer than Harrison Ford, as he had that whole charmingly shy geek thing going on. Especially when he decided to stop going by Jackson and start going by Jack, as it sounded much more macho. Hee.

I liked that we were given a valid reason why our nerd in shining armor wore horribly mismatched clothing, and was rather charmed that both hero and heroine were trading off wearing the same pair of glasses. Our heroine's attachment to her goofy old pink suitcase, also charming. Where the plot wore thin for me was in the description of how our heroine's family hailed from "the Hollow" in Tennessee, which was apparently so backwards as to not even have electricity, and how both her mother and her brother were psychic. (On the other hand, I DID like the line her brother tosses off at the end when he, their mother, and the good guy from the software company finally reach the island where they get stranded.)

I'll most likely read The Nerd Who Loved Me soon, too.


The Jewel and the Sword was the second of the freebie romance novels out of my Writer's Weekend raffle basket, and published by the same press that put out Lady Dragon. This book, however, was a somewhat more enjoyable read even if it started off with the whole "enemy warrior tied up to the chaste maiden's bed because he's direly wounded but OH GOSH, he's cute, so the chaste maiden is passionately drawn to him as she's tending his awful wounds" thing. And you could tell that this was going to get milked for all it was worth, because that was a big selling point of the blurb on the back cover.

Once the plot got past that point, I did at least buy that the hero and heroine actually were attracted to one another. A lot of their scenes together were actually rather cute.

I also liked that there was a tiny bit of complication as to who was actually the villain, though I didn't buy how the 'obvious' villain so quickly reforms at the end. And I didn't buy the specious behavior of King Henry telling our hero "I cannot permit you to marry this girl" and not saying why. Nor did I buy him coming back at the end and saying "I've arranged for you to marry this other girl--oh, you don't want her? Okay FINE go marry the one you want anyway, even though I told you not to before". And there was, of course, the obligatory gratuitous sex scene; see previous commentary re: the apparent complete lack of nubile young women concerned about screwing their lives over for the sake of one fling of passion in the Romance Novel Universe.

Also, Ms. Jones really needs to do her readers a favor and back off on her rendering of Scottish accents just a tad. Every last little "ye" coming out of a Scottish character's mouth set my teeth on edge. And given that the heroine was in fact Scottish, this was a bit of a problem.

All this said, as mentioned, this was a better read than Lady Dragon--though that's not saying much. ;)