vacay catch-up

We took some vacation time, but since I'm still mostly limited to no activity (it's hard to hike on 1,200 calories a day), I got to sit in the sun and read.  I've had worse vacations.

More than a mistress and No man's mistress by Mary Balogh.  These are literally the same story.  If you enjoy book 1, you'll enjoy book 2.  It was nice to have a break from New Adult romances set in Southern California, but these fall into the general category of historical romance.  The female main characters unnecessarily complicate everything right from the start by hiding information.  The male main characters are burly and macho and don't have emotions.  The bulk of the tension comes from the characters trying to deny themselves and each other.

Erotic stories for Punjabi widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal.  I read this for work purposes, but still enjoyed it.  I'm not aware of many stories like this (immigrant communities in international locations) so it was a bit different from what I usually choose.  It was really great.  There weren't too many characters to keep separate, although several of the secondary characters did tend to sound rather similar.  There was a mystery element inside the story that I wasn't expecting from reviews, but it wasn't too heavy and made sense with the rest of the events.  If anything, I would have liked more: more time with the characters, starting earlier in the story, more space to get more from the secondary characters.

Wilde in love by Eloisa James.  I don't understand why this author doesn't get the love.  I don't buy her books every time there's a new one, because her circ stats aren't great.  But when I want an historical romance, she's top of my list: the heroines are less stupid and the heroes are more available than in other stereotypical romances.

The female main character was written to fill that bluestocking mold, but it's more a starting place than a description of her character.  She is more realistic; I wanted to hear more about her family backstory and her friendship with her... friend, with whom she had a list of rules for the recently-finished Season.  The male main character was a little bit more wooden than strictly required-- is anyone actually that single-minded?-- but again, his family and personal history are different from Generic Romance Hero.  Recommended.

Moonstuck, vol. 1: Magic to brew by Grace Ellis and Shae Beagle.  This art looked-- and is-- great, but the pacing is way off.  There were way too many times I turned a page and then searched for a page I may have accidentally missed.  It was mostly a problem during the more action-y parts, when events seemed to spiral in from nowhere.  Why is the world the way it is?  I can see the way it is, through the illustrations, but that doesn't explain the set-up.  Graphic novels that read like this seem to rely too much on the illustrations to explain things and gloss over the difficult parts.

Kill the farm boy by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne.  This made me think of Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest series (which I've been meaning to reread this summer), but a little bit sillier.  A little to silly for me to super-love it, but a fun read.

All caught up now!  (Except for tv, but I'm not going to think about that now.)