So, Tiffany is one of the last unmated females and all single aliens try to impress the woman. It gets so bad that the idea of the competition is born. The winner gets the chance to escort Tiffany on her journey to the Elder's Cave (an old space ship). 
I didn't like the idea of the competition because Tiffany actually didn't want it. She had already chosen the male she liked, but because of her insecurity and events from the past she didn't have courage to say anything. So, she fooled everybody and it made me hate her. I wanted her to have some backbone and say no. I wanted her to realize that these blue aliens who took her in and fed and sheltered her were nothing like the creeps who stole her. But she just didn't get it.
The only saving grace was the hero of the story. He was amazing - the way he courted Tiffany was just sweet. And he was so patient with her. He deserved a better mate than whimpering Tiffany who couldn't open her mouth to end this foolish competition.
I also realized that with every book I like Vektal and Georgie less and less. 

1 star for amazing Garrett family.
1 star for Tim, who sounded so real and made me smile several times.
0.5 star for the buying condoms scene. This was really funny and actually the only scene I liked Sam. She had no backbone, no personality and she was stupid (sitting in that car, having a best friend like that). Even her little rebellion at the end of the book didn't change my mind. She was annoying. I really don't know what Jase saw in her. And the ending, what the hell, it isn't a fairy tale. Give me a realistic ending, not that sugar coated nonsense.

I read this for Ruthie Knox's Room at the Inn, a variation on Frank Capra's Christmas classic, It's a Wonderful Life. Ruthie Knox is one of my favorite authors, but I found this novella deeply unsatisfying. The hero's unbelievable self absorption pissed me off from the first chapter.

Carson's mother has died, and when his grieving father's health begins to deteriorate as well, Carson resentfully returns to his small hometown to take care of him...telling himself, and anyone who will listen, that he's not going to stick around once his dad is on his feet again. The reader's first impression of Carson is that he's an arrogant git who thinks his big, important, jet-setting career as an architect is more important than taking care of a grieving, ailing parent.

Things don't improve. Soon we learn that he didn't bother coming home for his mother's funeral, or indeed for the last two years of her life, though he knew she was dying. Then we learn that his college girlfriend gave his mother a fucking kidney to buy her another fifteen years to live, and took care of his parents and pretty much everyone in town, and Carson thanks her by ignoring her for long stretches of time while coming home every few years for booty calls. (Julie is perfectly lovely, but the fact that she puts up with this for 16 years makes her a total doormat.)

With a premise like that, I knew I was going to need an epic grovel to end all grovels from Carson. I mean, he needed to choke down the biggest steaming hot serving of humble pie EVER in the history of Romanceland in order to earn my forgiveness, and he didn't. His epiphany, when it comes, is uninspired, and his grand gesture isn't nearly grand enough to make up for nearly two decades of being a totally selfish bastard. Julie could have done better. I wish she knew that.

This is a beautifully written, terrible, infuriating story. I knew this was a controversial book when I picked it up, but it's also an influential book in the "romance canon," so I wanted to read it. There are a lot of blogs and articles out there hashing out the merits and moral failings of this book in a lot more detail than I have time to match here. The controversy stems from the fact that--(spoiler alert, though I think every reader should be forewarned at least this much, because here there be triggers)--the hero rapes the heroine, in a harrowing, gut churning scene that spans twenty pages.

Then the hero and heroine both undergo dramatic transformations as characters, which are compelling and emotionally satisfying if you are the kind of person who can get past the whole he-raped-her bit. I am not that kind of person.

I loved Patricia Gaffney's prose. I will read more of her--just nothing quite so rapetastic next time.

This is one of those books that everyone loves but me. Usually I'm fine with that; it happens. Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath -- these are great works that I just didn't like at all. Sometimes, though, a book comes along that is so bad, so lacking in redemptive qualities, that the fact that so many other people like it seems like an assault on all I hold good and honest in the world. This is such a book.

Kristen Ashley is kind if a big deal in Romancelandia these days. This book in particular was really hyped. Read it, people said: Kristen Ashley has such a great voice, so different, so hot. Um, no. I read it, and that's six hours of my life that I'll never get back.

I should have known better. I looked at the Goodreads reviews before I read it, and I knew that among all of the book squee, the voices of the one- and two-star minority warned that this book is rife with all the things I can't stand: rampant sexism, poor plotting, crimes against grammar. I can't say I wasn't warned.

I hate this book. I hate Shy for being a violent, misogynistic ass. I hate Tabby for always bending over. I hate that women are described as either "bitches" (skanks whose purpose is recreational sex) or "old ladies" (the kind of girl you can settle down with, so long as she knows her place: i.e.,knows to shut up and not ask questions or express opinions). I hate that the women of Chaos can't join the Club of their own right and don't get their own bikes (or even get to drive). I hate that every time Tabby calls Shy on any issue in their relationship--from the major ("I'd rather you not beat the crap out of my boss, honey") to the minor ("how come you never help with the laundry, buddy?")--Shy's response is that she should suck it up because he gives good sex, and I hate that Tabby lets him pull that shit.

I hate the run on sentences and the incomprehensible dialogue and the hail of misplaced commas (I swear, Ms. Ashley must think she gets paid by the comma) and the rambling plot. I hate the cliffhanger-wrapped-in-a-cliché ending that deprives me of any sense of closure or accomplishment after I forced myself to finish this drivel.

I hate this book so much I'm tempted to argue with all the positive reviews, especially those who say that Shy is the shit, because actually, Shy is a shit, not the shit. But we are all entitled to our own opinions. I may be in the minority, but this is mine: 1/2 star.