I have been slowly working my way through the Pennyroyal Green series for years, and finding it extremely uneven. I've loved some of them (Perils of Pleasure, A Notorious Countess Confesses), hated some of them (Since the Surrender, Between the Devil and Ian Eversea), and been just "meh" about most of the rest. This one falls in the "Meh" category. The characters are likable enough, the dialogue is snappy, the plot moves along at a reasonable clip, but still... meh.

I picked this up on sale a month or so ago because of the series premise: a quartet of finishing school girls get caught up in the swarm of humanity fleeing the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. This first book in the series focuses on Deborah, the only daughter of one of the city's most wealthy men. During the fire, she is kidnapped and held for ransom by Tom Silver, a fisherman from Isle Royale who blames Deborah's father for the death of a loved one killed in an explosion at a mine her father owns.

Susan Wiggs is very, very good at setting a scene. The descriptions of the fire are masterful. The journey by water from Chicago, up through the locks at Sault Sainte Marie, and finally to the pine wilderness of Isle Royale is beautiful. The months of isolation during the winter on Isle Royale are simultaneously cozy and compelling, and desolate and lonely. I'm happy to have read the book just for the unique settings.

The romance fell flat for me. Deborah was too sheltered and too timid for my tastes. Tom was too much a stereotypical villain with a heart of gold. Their relationship was believable, albeit predictable (yet another kidnap victim falls in love with her captor), but it didn't connect with me emotionally.

I enjoyed the heck out of this book. I loved the smart, fast-paced, funny dialogue. I loved the British slang. I loved the London setting. I loved the sensible, intelligent, kind heroine and the cranky, misanthropic hero. I love discovering a new author I will definitely read again. I really loved that it only cost $0.99!

Lainie is an up-and-coming actress with a supporting role in a West End play, and work has become very awkward since her boyfriend-slash-onstage-love-interest got caught very publicly stepping out on her. This makes Lainie a sympathetic figure in the media, and the bosses at her theatre decide to capitalize on her newly-single, media-darling status to help polish the reputation of the actor who plays the show's villain, who has a bit of an anger management problem in real life. Richard is delightfully grumpy and gruff, which is only fun because Lainie doesn't waste time trying to please him. She does as she likes, and in time, he comes around to wanting to please her. 

Everything about this book was fun, and I loved that the setting and the language made  "Act Like It" different from everything else I've read lately. I loved the interplay between the characters' private relationship and their public personas as London theater celebrities. I loved that their work was an integral part of the plot. I loved how smart both Lainie and Richard are, and how they communicate like reasonable, responsible adults. I'll definitely be re-reading this one again soon!

I love Shannon Stacey because her stories are so familiar (because they're set where I live, in northern New England), and so low-drama. Real people working through real conflicts, in a way that is refreshingly, well, real.  

However, "A Fighting Chance" is not Stacey's best. I didn't connect with this one at all, probably because it's novella-length and just too short to feel invested in the characters. Del goes to a casino for a bachelorette weekend with her girlfriends, and meets up with The One Who Got Away... or rather, the guy who dumped her and broke her heart for no good reason. Brendan moonlights as an MMA fighter, and he's got a fight at the casino that same weekend. They see each other in the lobby, meet for coffee and cookies, and basically fall into bed together, old flame rekindled. 

The story was just too short to have any nuanced character or plot development. Del works, but who knows what she does. She's from an upper middle class background and Brendan's blue collar, and we're told that is the source of the conflict that ruined their first relationship, but the story doesn't really give us any sense of how class issues impacted their relationship in the past, so as to get a sense of whether anything much has changed now. Del and Brendan both have families and friends, but they don't really contribute anything to the storyline except the occasional mention to move the plot along. 

If you want to check out Shannon Stacey (and you should), try Exclusively Yours, instead. 

I think some authors, in their zeal to avoid the cardinal sin of telling too much and showing too little, err on the side of brevity so much that they leave the reader hanging. This fourth installment of Katie McGarry's Pushing the Limits series, which I have totally devoured this week, is an example of such a book. This story has an interesting premise: both the hero and heroine are homeless, though by very different circumstances. Haley's family has been on a slow slide from lower middle class stability since her father lost his job, and they've been bouncing around from shelters and friends and finally settle in an overcrowded two bedroom house already occupied by Haley's mean-spirited and controlling uncle and his family. Meanwhile, West goes from being the pampered scion of Louisville's wealthiest family to living in the back of his car overnight when his rebellious behavior gets him kicked out of school, which is the last straw for his father, who kicks him out. There are so many issues this book could have explored about the similarities and differences between West and Haley's positions and their attitudes toward their shared circumstance, and it's not that the book didn't touch on these things... but it only touched on them, it didn't sink its teeth in.

That's true of so many of the subplots as well. There's a lot going on in this story: issues with Haley's family and West's family, Haley's history of domestic violence with an ex-boyfriend and the trauma associated with it, West's discovery of a deeply guarded secret regarding his past, West's sister's recovery from an almost fatal car accident, Haley's efforts to find a way to pay for college, Haley's history as a champion kickboxer (a sport she's walked away from) and West's introduction to that sport, a final confrontation between West and Haley's ex, and West's and Haley's developing feelings for each other. "Take Me On" deals with all of these things, but only glancingly. The plot skips right along, but all of these issues are too weighty to be addressed as summarily as they are. The whole book whet my appetite, but didn't satisfy.