Brief reviews for a couple of shortish ebooks

I am currently in the middle of–let’s count them–five books, so last night I decided, hey, why not, I wanted to read something short that I could finish in a few minutes that was unrelated to anything else.

The first thing I tried was Understood by Maya Banks

Summary: When she breaks free from the bondage of her past, he’ll be waiting.
Jake Turner committed the ultimate mistake of falling in love with his best friend’s
wife. The distance he puts between them costs both him and Ellie Matthews dearly.
Jake will never forgive himself for not seeing what a bastard his friend was. Now
that Ellie is free from her nightmare, Jake waits, needing and wanting. He’ll be
there when Ellie is ready to spread her wings.

My thoughts: As someone who has in the past volunteered at a shelter for victims of domestic violence, I find myself curious to see whether books like this will deal with the issues in a thoughtful and sensitive manner. In this case, the answer is no. Our hero, Jake, is an alpha male straight out of central casting, which doesn’t exactly leave me hopeful for a long-lasting relationship between these two. And if I were a survivor of a horrible marriage, the last thing I’d appreciate is some jerk I thought was my friend saying things like, “I’m going to make you mine!” It would make me run the complete other way.

Of course, Ellie totally fails to do this, and we get to the part of the book where my suspension of disbelief packed its bags and left entirely. Which would be the part where Jake says the following:

He grinned. A cocky, self assured grin. “I’ll fit, sweetheart. You’ll take
all of me. In your mouth, in your pussy, and in your ass. And you’ll love
every minute of it.”

At that point it became abundantly clear that this was just another run of the mill contemporary erotic romance, and I was going to have to endure long, interminable sex scenes, so this book went straight to the land of “cannot finish, do not want”.

The other book I actually finished (mostly because it was incredibly short) was Wizard’s Moon by Michele Bardsley.

A wizard cursed…
Handsome and desperate wizard True Karn becomes human during the “wizard's moon”—the
only two nights of the month he can look for his mate. The rest of the time, he must
live in his monstrous, cursed form. When he rescues a pretty lady from the lascivious
attention of two guardsmen, he realizes that she could be the one he’s been searching
for.
A woman scorned…
Plain and reliable Alissa Rogers works in a house of ill repute—as an accountant.
She’s not pretty enough to be a prostitute, but it seems she’s still woman enough
to gain the attention of an infamous wizard…

My thoughts: This was fun. My suspension of disbelief was stretched for a while there, but I’d rate it a pretty solid B because neither of the characters actively pissed me off. As usual, the heroine turns out to have low self-esteem rather than be ugly, and she is a bit of a Mary Sue, but then, that describes 98 percent of heroines in romantic fiction.

The world-building here is way shaky. I couldn’t tell if this was supposed to be urban fantasy, standard fantasy, or what. Alissa (whose last name changes once at completely random BTW! Bad editor! No cookie!) seems to live in a pretty modern house, but the taxis in this world are horse-drawn.

But, really, my “bzuh?” moment comes at the end, and if you want to avoid being spoiled for this book, which I’m sure you’re just all going to race out and buy, I suggest you not read farther.

OK, is that everybody else? Good.

At the end of the story, Alissa has to save True from his curse via the old heroic fantasy stand-by of… you guessed it..,. double penetration. Because True’s curse endows him with two dicks. And of course Alissa loves this. Me, I was trying to picture this actually happening, and smothering immature giggles.