Wild at Whiskey Creek

The only reason this book is a B instead of an A is that Julie Anne Long wrote one of my top-five romances of all time, and until she writes a book that makes me feel that phenomenal again, I am unfairly docking her points. Yes, I know it's unfair, but oh god I loved that book.

This book is the second in her contemporary series, set in a charming small-town in the West. I grew up in a small town, so I have a lot of feelings about how it's often made out to be charming and wonderful; I appreciate that Julie Anne Long has made it clear that a lot of people want to leave Hellcat Canyon. In particular her heroine in this book, Glory Greenleaf, is from the kind of small-town family I recognize. Single-parent, financially disastrous, brother in jail, barely scraping by keeping a job, but that's just sort of how life is. Glory is a very talented singer and songwriter, and everyone thought she was going away to be successful, but her family has pulled her back. That feels incredibly real to me.

A lot less of the book is spent on her love interest, Eli, whose name I had literally forgotten and had to go look up. He's the local sheriff, and of course they grew up together, and of course they were madly in love, until of course he had to arrest her brother (his best friend) and send him to jail.

It's a really lovely romance, and Glory gets to live her dreams and love her family. I liked it a lot. (Could I do without the "she's pregnant" epilogue? Yeah, probably. I'm so tired of romance novels tacking on a "she's pregnant" epilogue. THERE ARE OTHER WAYS TO HAVE A HAPPY FAMILY. But whatever.)

Grade: B
#90 in 2016

Hot in Hellcat Canyon, Julie Anne Long

I think my least favorite recurring character trope in any romance novel might be the super hot ex-girlfriend, who is unbelievably beautiful and confident, and floats back into Our Hero's life just as he's happy with his new girlfriend. She inevitably is naked or nearly-naked in a scene to give Our Heroine the wrong idea. She usually declares that she and the hero are getting back together, and no matter how many times he says no, she won't hear it. The hero stands around helplessly telling her damn it, NO, he doesn't want her anymore! but the plot conspires against him and he HAS to let her stay at his house. This usually facilitates a fight with the heroine who doesn't understand why he won't kick her out. And at the end, this super hot ex is usually embarrassed or humiliated, although sometimes she just sails off into the sunset with a new man-slash-victim.

I don't know. It doesn't do it for me. It's not a person I've ever met in real life, for one thing, and I don't think it's an interesting conflict to introduce. Either the heroine ought to believe the hero when he says nothing is going on (especially since The Ex is usually so blatantly horrible), or the hero really ought to just kick her out and take his new girlfriend's feelings into account. Either way it feels like manufactured drama, and I don't find it compelling.

This is a long intro to say that while I enjoyed the characters and the set up in this book, I got to 66%, realized there was no obvious Big Problem looming, and then sighed so hard when his ex showed up. Basically: J.T. is an actor, who used to be on a big hit show, but times have been rough lately. Now he's driving through gold rush country, getting ready for the show he hopes will be his big comeback. He also has a beautiful, terrifying ex. Britt is a waitress in Hellcat Canyon, who loves to bring dying plants back to life, and has a past she is running from. When J.T. shows up he hits on her immediately and she turns him down, because her ex has made her afraid of relationships. Then she decides she can sleep with him as long as it's just that. Then they basically move in together, having great sex and enjoying her adorable small-town life, even though they both know he'll go back to Hollywood shortly.

One thing that bugged me was Britt's constantly changing problems: first she can't be with anyone, she has to hide because of her ex. Then she can do sleeping with him, but not a relationship. Then, when his ex shows up, she's furious that he's with someone else, and won't admit that she needs him, but somehow the real problem is that since she left her abusive husband she's running from relationships. That's like... four different book's worth of reasons for a relationship not to work, and I found it to be just a little bit too much. J.T. meanwhile, is handsome and charming and wonderful, and his only real problem is that he can't say "love." That's it.

Anyway, then his beautiful ex shows up, and first it seems like Britt is mad that he's sleeping with her, and then she seems mad because his ex is so beautiful, and then she's mad that the paparazzi show them looking like they might canoodle. When he says he's tired of apologizing and he's not going to do it anymore, and then leaves, I couldn't figure out what Britt was still waiting for. (She was waiting for a Big Moment, that was kind of too cutesy for me.)

Okay, I didn't mean to recap the whole book. A lot of it's fun! It's very charming! I like the small town and I liked Britt and J.T. in the first half. It just... seemed like they could basically have been happy together, and drama had to be included, and it made them both seem kind of dumb and unlikable. "He's famous and she's not" is plenty of drama for a relationship, in my opinion, and the rest of it made me tired.

Grade: C
#50 in 2015

The Legend of Lyon Redmond, Julie Anne Long

The last Pennyroyal Green book! The second book in this series, Like No Other Lover, is in my top five all-time romances; it was so incredibly satisfying and amazing that I downloaded the whole rest of the series that was available on my kindle immediately. God, I still remember the names of the main characters -- Cynthia and Miles -- and sometimes I don't remember characters' names while I'm reading the book.

The whole series is about two rival families, and how they fight and various members of each family find true love. But all the way through we know the oldest son of one family was madly in love with the beautiful daughter of the other family, and she's sort of sadly decided to never love anyone again since he vanished. He, meanwhile, has become a pirate who frees slaves on slave ships. She's finally found someone she likes enough to marry (and I liked him a lot, too, so when she inevitably leaves him at the altar I was bummed). Obviously Lyon can't let anyone else marry his One True Love, so he kidnaps her, kinda, and they go have sex, and then he sends her home to "make her own decision," or something, and blah blah "why didn't you come with me years ago?"

I think the book suffers from being the 11th in a series that has been building to this book for soooo looooong that it had to feel epic and beautiful instead of just being a good romance. Lots of flashbacks and lots of tragic pining, but at some point I just wasn't that excited about it anymore. And then the end has the weirdest flashforward to their descendants in modern day, which I get was about how everyone lived happily ever after and had the greatest lives ever, but really just made me think, "Oh no, all these characters are dead."

Grade: C (I love the series but on my rereads I'm gonna skip this one.)