I am burning out on COYER. I need something other than Harlequin romance. Bring on Halloween Bingo!

Challenges:

BL/GR: 128/150; 85% completed

Pop Sugar: 2; 42/52 prompts filled

Library Love Challenge: 2; 42/36 for the year

COYER: 12; 82% of list read from June-August

1. Falling for the Enemy by Naomi Rawlings (COYER) (Pop Sugar) - 5 stars

2. Homicide in High Heels (High Heels #8) by Gemma Halliday (COYER) (Library Love) - 4 stars

3. Chaucer's Major Tales by Michael Hoy and Michael Stevens (Pop Sugar) (COYER) (Library Love) - 2.5 stars

4. Her Holiday Family by Winnie Griggs (COYER) - 4 stars

5. Mission of Hope by Allie Pleiter (COYER) - 4.5 stars

6. The Baby Barter by Patty Smith Hall (COYER) - 3 stars

7. Emma and the Outlaw by Linda Lael Miller (COYER) - 1.5 stars

8. The Bootlegger's Daughter by Lauri Robinson (COYER) - 1 star

9. Love, Special Delivery by Melinda Curtis (COYER) - 2 stars

10. Butterfly Swords by Jeannie Lin (COYER) - .5 star

11. The Dragon and the Pearl by Jeannie Lin (COYER) - 4 stars

This was a rough book to slog through. I won't be reading anything else by this author, although her books have really pretty covers. The words are really ugly on the inside.

I say this a lot, but damn I hate it when New Adult characters/tropes make their way into my historical romance books. This is a grade A example; the heroine is TSTL and if you put a tattoo and beard on the hero, he would be your contemporary romance "bad boy." Not a redeeming quality amongst these two would be lovers (and very little brain cells to boot).

Heroine (Aurora) - selfish, whiny, constantly crying/drama queen, horny, but mostly the biggest DUMBASS in all of London. And the part about her trying to play matchmaker towards the last 25% of the book? A complete failure. She is also a pretty horrible friend to the one person who is still on her side/talking to her after she makes one dumb move after another. Rebecca needed to bitch slap Aurora.

Hero (Quin) is an asshat that didn't deal with his issues stemming from childhood. Once he squared that away, he was okay. But by then I could not care about either hero or heroine. At least he wasn't an idiot like Aurora and was also a better friend to Jonas than she was to Rebecca.

There was a lot of sex scenes in this book and a not a whole lot of character development or change. #.5 stars for me getting to the end of the book without throwing my e-reader at the wall.

Well, it was better than book two but not by much. Erica Ridley does heroes really well - their back stories are thought out and make their motivations make sense to the reader. Ridley also does conflict well - no big misunderstanding or unintended pregnancies; many times, her heroes and heroines are teaming up to resolve the conflict.  However, Ridley writes the worst heroines. And that was the problem with this story - Daphne had major issues stemming from her relationship with her now-deceased father and craved attention. Her work for so many charities was a way for her to be wanted and needed by someone but really she just wanted the accolades and attention that came from working in those charities. She didn't really care about any charity, just so she could be the great savior and have people fall to her feet in gratitude. A real problem with Daphne was that she didn't have one or two pet charities - she wanted to solve a multitude of charity issues. Daphne was also very judgmental to the people that were in position to help her help the charities. Basically, Daphne is the Debbie Downer at any dinner party.

2 stars because I am glad that the hero (Bart) got his HEA, even if it is with the wet blanket that is Daphne.