Tuesday Review: Crystal Cove

Crystal Cove

By Lisa Kleypas

(Friday Harbor, Book 4)

Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin

Release Date: 

February 5, 2013

Justine Hoffman is a hereditary witch with untapped powers and a limited knowledge of witchcraft. After a nomadic upbringing, Justine has found contentment as the owner of Artist’s Point, a bed and breakfast on San Juan Island, but she longs to experience a deep romantic love. So intense is her longing that she tries to cast a love spell. When that doesn’t work, she turns to the ancient Triodecad, a particularly powerful grimoire, and it reveals that a geas, a lifetime enchantment, has been placed upon her that condemns her to living her life without the love for which she yearns. Consumed with anger over the injustice, she breaks the geas without understanding the repercussions such an act will have.

Jason Black, a reclusive billionaire who made his fortune in the video gaming industry, has rented Artist’s Point for five days for himself and a small group of people who work for his company, Inari Gaming Enterprises, who are on the island for a series of meetings. Only Jason and his executive assistant know that he has a secret reason for being at the bed and breakfast. Jason is a man without a soul, a circumstance that means not only that his lifespan is likely to be abbreviated but also that death means the end of his existence since there is no part of him beyond his physical existence. His only hope of changing his situation lies in the Triodecad, which he plans to steal. But when he meets Justine, their connection is so powerful that she immediately becomes far more than a means to an end.

Justine is horrified to learn that in breaking the geas she has placed Jason under a death sentence since because the man truly loved by a hereditary witch always dies young. Justine’s desperate attempt to find a way to save the man she loves results in a broadly comic scene and in a poignant one. But can even a love as powerful as the one Justine and Jason share prove stronger than the magical force that threatens their union?

This is one of the most difficult reviews I’ve ever written. I’m a Lisa Kleypas fan; she has been an autobuy author for me for many years. And there is much in this book that I love. I love the friendship between Justine and Zoe. I love the passage Zoe read from Connie Brockway’s The Other Guy’s Bride. I love Justine and Jason, individually and together. Justine is immensely likeable—nurturing, quick-tempered, loyal, and vulnerable. Jason is a Kleypas alpha—confident, protective, commanding, but capable of great tenderness—with an Eastern touch that makes him a bit different. I prefer to see relationships that build, but I could accept the instant compelling attraction that exists between these two.  But the witchcraft element just distanced me from the story.

Kleypas has moved more deeply into paranormal territory with each of the Friday Harbor books, from none in Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor to the magical realism of Rainshadow Road to the ghosts of Dream Lake and now to witches in Crystal Cove. As a critic, I find the progression interesting, but as a romance reader, with this last book I’ve moved into a place that I don’t want to go. Also, and this reaction may be because the characters hit a sensitive spot with this particular reader, I was not amused by the redneck, backwards Arkansas witches with their Elvis altar cloth. Just sayin’. . .

This fourth book is also the most sensual of the Friday Harbor books. There is a light bondage scene that some readers will doubtless find hot. I confess my reaction was a big sigh accompanied by the exclamation “Not another one!” Bondage scenes appear to be becoming as ubiquitous as oral sex in romance fiction. But that’s a single scene and certainly not the only one that gives the book a high sizzle factor.

Kleypas’s prose is wonderful. She has been at her most lyrical throughout this series, and in Crystal Cove particularly she has her characters say some of the wisest and most moving words about love that I’ve encountered in romance fiction. After reading the passage from Brockway, Zoe says:

Sometimes real life is even better. Because love is there not just in the big romantic moments, but in all the little things. The way he touches your face, or covers you with a blanket when you’re taking a nap, or puts a Post-it note on the fridge to remind you about your dentist appointment. I think those things glue a relationship together even more than all the great sex.

And Jason’s thoughts as he and Justine part after what may be their last time together:

One of the more ignominious features of love was that you could only express it with clichés... it made you sound like a fraud at a time when you were blazing with sincerity But at the end of the conversation, he found himself saying, 'I love you,' and she said it back.

And it was enough. Those three well worn, everyday words got the job done."

So do I recommend this book? If your favorite Nora Roberts series is the Three Sisters Island trilogy, I highly recommend it. If you prefer your witches under eight and dressed for trick-or-treating on Halloween, you might want to approach this one more cautiously. I remain a devoted fan of the Friday Harbor books and of Lisa Kleypas generally. I’ll preorder Lightning Bay, which is set for release on September 13, 2013. But I do hope it won’t feature vampires or shape shifters.

Are you a fan of paranormal romances? What’s your favorite witchy romance?

I am one of Lisa’s Divas and received an ARC of Crystal Cove as a benefit of belonging to this group. (I hope I’m not drummed out of the group for posting this review.)

Christmas with Holly

I just got back from my first Christmas party of this season, a long lunch with a dozen old friends. I talked so much I now sound like a poor imitation of Lauren Becall, and I ate so much cornbread salad that I’m skipping dinner tonight. This was the beginning of the busiest time of year, that time when my reading and writing time is measured in minutes rather than hours, but in budgeting my time for December, I made sure that I blocked out Sunday night, December 9, beginning at 9:00 (EDT). The Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of Christmas with Holly, based on Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor by Lisa Kleypas, is a must-see for me, even though I rarely watch TV.

I gave the novel a handful of stars when I reviewed it here November 2011, and I’m eagerly anticipating the movie. I’ve watched the sneak peek video half a dozen times, and each time my excitement about the movie has increased. Sean Faris, who plays Mark, is new to me, but he's so good-looking with a fantastic smile. Eloise Mumford, who plays Maggie, has a real life connection to Friday Harbor. The movie promises to be sweet and fun.

Reading Christmas books and watching Christmas movies are the ways I reward myself for the cleaning, shopping, and endless gift wrapping that make up the parts of the holiday of which I’m less fond. And what could be better than a Christmas romance based on a book by one of my favorite authors? So come Sunday evening, I’ll be partying with ABC and Hallmark for a couple of hours and celebrating with a square or two of peppermint bark with dark chocolate.

You can find out more about the movie by clicking here.

And if you haven't read the book, you can find out more about it here.

What about you? Will you be watching Christmas with Holly Sunday night? What’s your favorite Christmas movie? Do you think Hallmark has plans for Rainshadow Road?

I am one of "Lisa's Divas" - a group of select fans who share info & content related to Lisa's novels and get sneak peeks & chances to win swag in return.

Tuesday Review: Rainshadow Road

Rainshadow Road

By Lisa Kleypas
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Release Date: February 28, 2012
Five Stars

The pattern of Lucy Marinn’s life was altered permanently when she was seven years old. Her younger sister Alice had meningitis. Alice survived, but her brush with death left her parents so fearful for her well being that they indulged her every wish and insured that Lucy did as well. Lucy also began a life-long fascination with glass making, and she discovered a magical connection between her emotions, the glass she loved, and a magic all her own.

Lucy does indeed grow up to be a successful glass artist. She has a studio in Friday Harbor and a boyfriend with whom she’s been living for two years. Life seems good.  Everything changes when her boyfriend breaks up with her because he has fallen in love with her sister. In a matter of minutes, Lucy loses her lover, her home, and her sense of security, all of it to a sister who has been taking what belonged to Lucy for years.

Sam Nolan is a native of the island, the middle brother in a dysfunctional family of three sons and one daughter. Readers who have read the novella that introduced the series, Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor, will recognize Sam as the vineyard owner who shares his home with brother Mark and their newly orphaned niece Holly. Giving up his privacy and the freedom of the single life is typical of Sam. He’s a good guy, terrified of commitment in a romantic relationship because of the horrendous example of his alcoholic parents, but essentially the best kind of hero—intelligent, kind, and charming with sea-colored eyes and a terrific sense of humor.

Lucy and Sam meet when she falls at his feet literally, and he administers first aid and listens to her. They meet again when he rescues her from a persistent drunk. When Lucy needs a place to stay after she’s injured when her bike is struck by a car, Sam offers house room and some nursing that leads to interesting contacts. But Sam thinks he’s incapable of a long-term relationship, and Lucy has lost faith in her own judgment.

I read romance fiction because I’m interested in relationships, but sometimes the relationships prove a disappointment. I like the heroine better than I like the hero or vice versa, or I like them both but have doubts about their HEA really lasting ever after. Lucy and Sam’s relationship was not a disappointment. I liked Sam in the first Friday Harbor book, and I quickly fell in love with him in this one. He’s not just another hot hero. He’s an interesting, complicated person. A former geek with a passion for his vineyards, an indulgent uncle who teaches his niece to tie her shoes and puts away bits of her past that will help her remember her mother, a tender lover who gives perfect, unexpected gifts—he is all of these things and more. Lucy longs to tell him, “You’re more than you think you are.” The reader shares her longing.

Lucy is just as likeable and interesting. An endearing combination of toughness and vulnerability, her passion for glass making matches Sam’s for his vines. She recognizes the flaws in her family, she allows herself to be angry or exasperated with them, but she loves them—even the sister who betrays her. The kinds of friends she has and their loyalty to her says a great deal about the kind of person she is.

Lucy and Sam deserve each other. Yes, they have great chemistry, and the novel contains some wonderful love scenes that are a mix of heat, heart, and humor. But they are more than sex partners. They talk to one another, revealing themselves through sharing their histories and their thoughts. They laugh together. They like each other. I don’t want to include spoilers, so I’ll just say there are two incidents in the novel where Kleypas had a choice about what her characters would do, one fairly early in the story and one near the end. In both cases, one choice would have destroyed the book for me. It would have become just another in a long list of books that leave me regretting the book that could have been if only . . . Both times, these characters make the choice that maintains the integrity of the people I have come to believe they are.

What else can I say? The setting is wonderful, detailed enough to give a sense of the island’s beauty and uniqueness. The secondary characters are great. Kleypas gives readers pieces of many stories so that even minor characters achieve multi-dimensions. I loved seeing Mark, Maggie, and Holly again, and I loved that their presence was natural and never threatened to distract from the central story. I find Alex, the youngest Nolan brother, fascinating. I hope the next book will be his. I loved the magic in the story. It seemed closer to magical realism to me.  As Lucy concludes, “[W]hether she called her gift a phenomenon of molecular physics, or magic, both definitions were true, and the words didn’t matter anyway.”

I give Rainshadow Road my highest recommendation and Lisa Kleypas my gratitude for writing a book that I will read again and again. And I'm counting the days until August and Crystal Cove.

What’s your favorite Lisa Kleypas book? 

Note: I am one of Lisa’s Divas, a group of “super fans” who share news of LK’s books and receive terrific stuff such as an Advance Readers’ Edition of Rainshadow Road.  I will point out that I’ve been a Lisa Kleypas fan for fifteen years, and no sway would have persuaded me to give a dishonest review.

Tuesday Review: A Handful of Christmas Stars to a Reread and a New Read

Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor
By Lisa Kleypas
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Release Date: October 26, 2010

Mark Nolan’s strongest commitment is to his coffee business, not withstanding his long-term girlfriend. That changes when his sister Victoria is killed in an automobile accident and Mark finds that she has named him as guardian of her six-year-old daughter, Holly. Her happiness becomes Mark’s primary concern: “For the first time in his life he knew what it felt like to have his heart broken… not broken in a sad or romantic sense, but broken open. He had never known this before, the desire to surround another human being with perfect happiness.” But Holly, grieving for her mother, has stopped speaking, and Mark feels helpless to end her silence.

Maggie Collins is no stranger to grief. A widow, she has opened a toy store, the Magic Mirror, in Friday Harbor as one more step in building a new life. Even a mute child loves a toy store, and so it’s hardly surprising that Mark and Holly visit the Magic Mirror. Holly is enchanted by a fairy house that Maggie has made, and the two are clearly kindred spirits in their love for the imaginary world of fairy lore and other magic. Mark’s not happy about this departure from reality, but he tolerates it since, with Maggie’s encouragement, Holly begins to speak.

Both Maggie and Mark are quickly aware of their attraction to one another, but neither is ready to act on it. Mark feels a certain loyalty to his girlfriend, Shelby, and Maggie, two years after her husband’s death from cancer, is leery of opening herself to the possibility of more loss. So the two settle for friendship. They enjoy one another; they talk to one another, sharing the best kind of conversation: “As they continued to talk, it somehow slipped into the bonelessly comfortable, unstructured conversation of longtime friends, both of them letting it go where it would.”

But the attraction doesn’t disappear, and Holly’s letter to Santa adds a layer of complication. But Maggie has to be willing to take a risk and Mark has to learn to believe in magic before a little girl’s Christmas wish can come true.

More novella than novel, Kleypas’s first Friday Harbor book has less sizzle than her usual fiction, but it has the memorable characters the mix of sigh-worthy romance and real-life issues that characterized her Travis family contemporaries. Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor is several love stories—the love of a child, the love of family (even dysfunctional ones), and the love between a man and a woman—all tied up in a Christmas bow.               

Reading it, or rereading it, is also great preparation for the next Friday Harbor book, Rainshadow Road, which will be released in February. I’m excited about reading a Lisa Kleypas book, especially after no new books from her in 2011. Rainshadow Road Sam Nolan’s story, and I’m already a little bit in love with Sam. You can read an excerpt here.

Note: I am one of "Lisa's Divas" - a group of select fans who share info and content related to Lisa's novels and get sneak peeks and swag in return.  

Once Upon a Winter’s Eve

By Tessa Dare
Publisher: Samhain

Release Date: November 15, 2011

Spindle Cove’s Christmas ball is in progress, and Violet Winterbottom, an experienced wallflower, has claimed a corner from which to watch the dancing when a stranger, wet and bloody, staggers into the room and falls unconscious at her feet.  The language he speaks is a strange one to the citizens of Spindle Cove; only Violet can understand him. She identifies his language as Breton, the language of Brittany-- “As in Brittany, France,” as Bram Rycliff (hero of A Night to Surrender) says. Bram and the other members of the militia are suspicious of the stranger.  He may be a spy or the scout for an invasion force.

Violet isn’t sure she trusts him either, nor is she sure she trusts herself. The last time she gave her trust to a man, she ended up with a broken heart and indelible memories of The Disappointment.  Should she listen to her excellent mind that tells her this man is a mystery and a stranger, and an enemy stranger at that, or dare she listen once again to her heart?

Broken heads and broken hearts, language games and a truncated letter, pistols and promises—Dare weaves them all into a story with humor and heat and heart-capturing characters. You can read an excerpt here.

I knew I’d love this book from the moment I read the tagline: “Some wallflowers bloom at night...” and I did.  I loved Violet’s intelligence, vulnerability, and courage. I loved her stranger in the night. And I loved seeing Bram and Susanna’s happiness continuing to grow. Spindle Cove has become one of my favorite fictional settings. My second visit there was a rare treat, and I look forward to returning with A Week to Be Wicked (March 27, 2012).

I want to share the love by giving away two ecopies of Once Upon a Winter’s Eve--one in honor of a terrific author and one in honor of an equally terrific editor. Winners will be chosen randomly from among those who comment. With apologies to international visitors, the contest is open only to visitors within the  U. S.

What’s your favorite Christmas novella? To what 2012 books are you most looking forward?

Reading Beside the Christmas Tree, 2010

My favorite read this Christmas season is not a Christmas book at all but a novella-length fairy tale that has one of the most unexpected opening scenes that I’ve encountered in my decades of reading romance fiction. I loved every scene of Eloisa James’s latest gift to her readers, Storming the Castle. That gem of an opening scene is detailed in my reading journal, so the next time someone asks about breaking the rules of romance . . . The ending is a perfect fantasy that reminded me of the fairy tales I read as a child and of the 12th-century lais of Marie de France. Like many of those who read A Kiss at Midnight, I finished the novel longing for an HEA for Jonas Berwick, familiarly known as Wick, the bastard brother of Gabriel, the hero prince of AKAM. It’s not giving anything away to say that in STC Wick gets his HEA with an endearing heroine and Kate and Gabriel and their colicky baby add a note of realism to the concept of happily ever after. If you want a full review, check out PJ’s at The Romance Dish. This is not a review. It’s my announcement that I’ve already received one perfect gift this season from the imagination of one of my favorite authors, and I didn’t have to brave the chilly weather and rampaging shoppers to get STC. I downloaded it from an online retailer for $1.99.

I’m less enthusiastic about a true Christmas book, as opposed to a book read and/or released during the season, from another favorite author. I have loved Lisa Kleypas’s contemporaries as much as her historicals, and I was so eager to read Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor, the first in a new series, that I didn’t even consider waiting to get it from my local library, my usual practice with hardback releases that I am unwilling to delay reading until paperback publication. And I loved much about this book. The setting is as dimensional and gorgeous as the cover suggests, the premise of the story (bachelor uncle becomes father, falls in love with heroine who bonds with his new charge) is one I enjoy, and I found the characters from the H/H to the orphaned niece to the hero’s brothers (one charmer, one brooder) to the heroine’s father (a minor note) interesting and engaging. But I ended up feeling cheated. The story and the characters deserved more than even the gifted Kleypas could give them in just over 200 pages. Mark Nolan’s life was transformed by the death of his sister and the guardianship of his niece, as was the life of Maggie Collins by the slow death of her young husband. These are characters dealing with real issues that resonate with many readers. Whether loss comes in an instant in an accident or over long months of a fearful disease, it is a messy experience with uneven progress toward recovery from grief. Kleypas shows her readers that grief makes Mark and Maggie into different people, but their journeys and the journey of Holly, the little girl who loses her mother, seemed simplistic to me. (Forgive my pedanticism, but I see “simplistic misused so often I feel I must add that calling something “simplistic” is not the same as praising its “simplicity.” The latter can be powerful; the former is oversimplifying something by ignoring complexities.) Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor is not a bad book. I don’t regret reading it, and I look forward to the stories of the other Nolan brothers. But it was less than I expected from this author, and I do wish I’d waited for the library copy.

A Christmas story that did not disappoint was Karina Bliss’s novella in the Harlequin SuperRomance anthology That Christmas Feeling. The other stories in the anthology—Brenda Novak’s “A Dundee Christmas” with an illegal immigrant as a heroine and Kathleen O’Brien’s “We Need a Little Christmas” about an old man, his estranged grandson, and the woman who works to see them reconciled—are warm, feel-good stories, but Bliss’s “Kiss Me, Santa” has the something extra that carries a story to the A level for me. This story too is a story about grief. I don’t think I’ve consciously noted before how many Christmas romances have grief as a theme. Mike Ward sounds the Scroogy note in a community chorus of holiday harmony that manifests itself in elaborate Christmas decorations. A widower who feels responsible for his wife’s death, Mike has come to New Zealand to escape solicitous family and friends, and he has no interest in holiday celebrations. His neighbor Erica Owens and her son Will are grieving the loss of their family. Her ex-husband’s infidelity led her to divorce him, and she’s trying to create a new life for herself and her son. The thing I love most about Bliss’s writing is that she leads me to believe in her characters. I understood Mike’s guilt, however irrational, and I cried with Erica when she put her son on a plane to spend Christmas with his father and went home and surrendered to the pain of the holiday without her child. Because I cared about these characters, I rejoiced to see the relationship between them develop from reluctant attraction to love. It was a moving, heartwarming story.

My favorite Christmas story this year is not a romance but a cozy mystery. Margaret Maron is my favorite mystery writer. Julia Spencer-Fleming is a very close second, but Maron has the advantage of being Southern. Colleton County, North Carolina, the setting of Maron’s Deborah Knott novels, is just closer to home for me, geographically and emotionally, than is Spencer-Fleming’s New England town. Christmas Mourning is Maron’s sixteenth mystery featuring Deborah Knott, district judge and only daughter in a complicated family of twelve siblings. I read Maron’s books as much for the family dynamics and the love story as for the mystery, and Christmas Mourning gave me exactly what I expected. The mystery reiterates the Faulknerian wisdom that in the South the past is never really past, and the larger story offers another look at the extended Knott family, at Deborah and Dwight about to celebrate their first wedding anniversary, and at Christmas in Colleton County.

I also loved Emily March’s A Callahan Carol, downloadable free on her website. It has warmth and sentiment, family ties, and an extraordinary angel—some of the ingredients I love to see in a Christmas story--and it has the added benefit of linking the old and beloved, Geralyn Dawson’s Callahans in Brazos Bend, Texas, with the new and anticipated, Emily March’s characters in Eternity Springs, Colorado.

Of course, I’ve been rereading too—Diane Farr’s Once Upon a Christmas; Jo Beverley’s Winter Fire; the stories of Debbie Macomber’s mischievous angels Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy; the first two books of Marilyn Pappano’s Bethlehem series; Mary Jo Putney’s stories in Christmas Revels; Jeanne Savery’s The Christmas Matchmaker; and more by Mary Balogh, Carla Kelly, Barbara Metzger, and Edith Layton than I can list.

What are your favorite Christmas stories of 2010? Do you reread old favorites at Christmastime?

Whatever holiday you celebrate, may it be bright with laughter, warm with love, and filled with the people and the books that matter most to you.