When I was asked to review this book, I excitedly said yes. After all, I am not vanilla in any way, I like kink here and there, and have an open mind. I’m a pretty firm believer that most controversial subjects can be overcome, or at the very least made non consequential, if something is written well enough. Unfortunately Comfort Food is not one of those books. FYI – there will be spoilers.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room. The main character is kidnapped, deprived, locked away, and coerced into having sex with her captor. Even tho all of these things are uncomfortable and difficult to read about, after making a few phone calls and conversing with a few people more knowledgeable than I, I was convinced that if written well, I could get past my own hang ups. If you can connect with the characters, if you can connect with their motivations, you can connect and accept their story. I mean look at the tv show Dexter… how many of us absolutely adore that man even tho he is a violent murderer? I know I do.

Unfortunately, I hated the characters. I found Emily to be disappointing. She starts off as an educated and independent woman but is quickly turned into a pathetic shell of who she is. She is smart enough to know her captors motivations but goes along with them almost from the very beginning. I don’t remember her once considering holding out to see if she would be found. As a strong, independent, intelligent woman I found myself quickly placing her in the “To Stupid to Live” category. Maybe if she had held out and fought first? Maybe if she wasn’t so educated in regards to her captives motives? Maybe if her actions at the end were not so predictable? If any of those things had been different I think her character may have been at least tolerable.

Additionally, “Master”, is a cold manipulative bastard who shows no emotion and no concern for her well being. The only thing we get from him is his desire to control and break Emily. Yet, supposedly this is all handy dandy because he is good at delivering on the orgasms and is a handsome guy. I’m sorry, but no thank you. I may love myself a cocky alpha bastard, but good looks and a talented tongue can not overcome cruelty. Further, most cocky alpha bastards act of out love, protection, or wanting to provide pleasure…. “Master” acts out of none of those things. His sole goal is to break her and make her his, to break something beautiful. I’m sorry but what? In the end when his motivations were revealed I was completely shocked and disturbed. I mistakenly thought that the end would somehow justify the means, but the author left him absolutely unworthy of redemption. Because of my complete lack of connection with these two, I found the sex scenes entirely lacking in heat or eroticism.

All that said, unlikable characters do not always mean a bad book. There are many characters we all LOVE to hate, the key to those books is good writing. Comfort Food just doesn’t have the writing chops to pull this story off and could use the eye of an experienced editor. Sentence structure was awkward and distracting at times and I often got distracted or bored by Emily’s inner monologue. To throw the reader off even more the sex scenes are written in an awkward 3rd person perspective when the rest of the book is first person. It caused a disconnect that only added to the lack of eroticism.

As a somewhat kinky girl myself, I “get” the appeal to a kidnapping and/or rape fantasy and I get the appeal of giving yourself so completely to a master. However I don’t “get” or find believable the journey Comfort Food tries to take us on.

Disclaimer: After a discussion on Goodreads the author asked me to reconsider reviewing this book, worried I could not do so impartially. I believe I have done so, but I am posting this disclaimer so you can make your own judgements.
FTC Disclaimer: Book was given to me for review by author in exchange for an honest review

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I know – it’s like I disappeared off the blogging planet. The truth is, I’ve been in a reading funk. But the first step to fixing it? I hear it is admitting it! or something. With the help of a little poking from a friend on twitter, I decided today would be the day I step back into my blogging shoes… or fuzzy slippers as they may be and just write what I have been thinking. Basically.. how did I get into this funk!??! I think I have read may 4 books over the last 2 months…. I was reading 2-3 books a week at one point.

The first thing to consider when questioning why a blogger may be in a funk…. what is going on in my life? Is something I am doing causing me to be in a funk? But really.. the answer is no. Life is pretty much the same as it always has been… the exception that I actually have had more time to read over the summer and plenty of opportunity since I find myself at the gym quite a bit. The kids may drive me batty with their bickering, but they are easy enough to send to their room and let myself cuddle up with my Kindle.

Is it just me? Maybe I need to take a break and stop reading and recollect myself? Maybe I burnt myself out reading 300+ books since I got my Kindle? I took a good hard look at this one, because its possible! Yet, I don’t think its the number one factor. Yes, I read a lot and needed a break.. I’ve taken a bit of one by reading less… by not accepting every review offered to me so I don’t feel obligated. Yet some books I’ve picked up lately, I just felt “meh” about anyway. At the same time, at least one book I picked up over the last 2 months I absolutely LOVED.

What all this rambling comes down to is this…. I think my tastes as a reader have evolved. I have read some really fantastic books over the last year. Moira Rogers, Jim Butcher, Ilona Andrews, Shiloh Walker… all authors that have absolutely blown me away in one way or another with their work. The more I read from them, and other authors of their caliber, the higher I set my standards for a book. At first, I thought maybe this is a bad thing? Maybe they are artificially inflating my expectations for their respective genres?

But really, how could expecting great reads be too much? Why should I settle for things that are “meh” or good when I know there is better waiting for me? The more I think about it, the more I feel this is where I am at. Will I eventually want to spend my time on the just “good enough” ..? I am sure I will. But for now, I want to be completely captivated and blow away when I pick up a book. I want that feeling that you get when you can not bear to set a book down, splashing cold water on your face at 3 am because you do not want to sleep til you get to the next chapter. Maybe this is too much to ask… but then I have to ask you… why would it be?

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• 2009 Reading Wrap Up

The Missing is only my second Shiloh Walker read and it served as a good reminder that I really need to pick up more of her books. In spite of my “paranormal/romance burnout” I flew through this book yesterday and could not put it down. I was cursing Shiloh Walker and updating my goodreads status at 4 am, wondering where the night had gone.

Taige, pronounced like Paige with a t (I asked!), has a unique gift. Ever since she was a little girl Taige has had visions or dreams that help her find missing kids. As a young girl she does her best to ignore her gift and the inconvenience it causes. Yet, events in her life push her toward using it to help kids any way she can, no matter the cost her own life.

Taige and Cullen were a sweet, but electric, couple. At first I wasn’t sure where things were going and I was a bit apprehensive about meeting them as teenagers. Over the first 50 pages all reservations I had disappeared and I was smitten. Shiloh Walker wrote them in such a sweet, yet realistic courtship it was impossible not to fall in love with the pair. She then went on to take my heart, rip it out of my chest and stomp on it. Shiloh Walker is evil, in the way all good tragedy writers are. She made me cry. There I admitted it. Taige and Cullen were so perfect for each other, yet their relationship takes such a heartbreaking turn. I hated it and I loved it. I couldn’t put it down once I got to that point. I would have liked to see Taige drag Cullen around by his “you know what” a bit to make him suffer, but that could just be the evil bitch in me talking.

The suspense of The Missing was haunting and readers are given enough clues to figure out bits and pieces here and there, yet I didn’t have an clear hunch about the bad guy until three quarters of the way through. I think portions of the missing children plot could have been prolonged and I would have enjoyed seeing Taige and Cullen’s relationship change during that hardship, but overall the story worked well as it was.

The only annoyance I had were the dreams Taige and Cullen shared. I knew where that subplot was going and I just couldn’t get on that train. It felt too easy and neither of them seemed like the kind to not face their feelings and be honest with each other. In the end I think the couple really needed a knock down, drag out, all things on the table, tupperware thrown at your head type of discussion and I felt shorted that because of the dreams. It didn’t annoy me enough to not love the book, but I would be a slacker blogger if I didn’t mention it.

The Missing is a haunting and emotional story you will not want to put down once you start it. Clear off your schedule for the day, bake some brownies, grab a box of tissues and curl up with some Shiloh Walker. You won’t regret it, I promise.

Other Trusted Reviews:
WickedLilPixie – 4.5
Bibliophilic Book Blog – 3
Stacy’s Place – 4.5

FTC Disclaimer: Book was given to me for review by author

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• Author Guest Post: Shiloh Walker
• Review: Succubus Shadows by Richelle Mead

So… I am introducing Turn Me On Tuesday… a day where I try to find new books and authors I haven’t heard of before but want to start reading. I am hoping I can turn you on to something new… get it? hah. If you have someone you think I would like, please contact me and let me know! I am especially interested in male UF writers or male UF points of view.

Anyway, today’s Turn Me On Tuesday book is….

Title: Sandman Slim
Author Richard Kadrey
Genre: Urban Fantasy

Publication Date: 1st Aug. 2009

Summary:
Supernatural fantasy has a new antihero

Life sucks, and then you die. Or, if you’re James Stark, you spend eleven years in Hell as a hitman before finally escaping, only to land back in the hell-on-earth that is Los Angeles.

Now Stark’s back, and ready for revenge. And absolution, and maybe even love. But when his first stop saddles him with an abusive talking head, Stark discovers that the road to absolution and revenge is much longer than you’d expect, and both Heaven and Hell have their own ideas for his future.

Resurrection sucks. Saving the world is worse.

Darkly twisted, irreverent, and completely hilarious, Sandman Slim is the breakthrough novel by an acclaimed author

Next In Series:
Kill the Dead – October 5, 2010

I just started this one this morning and already love it. Great opening paragraph/quote and it has already used the phrase “asshole of creation”. Fingers crossed it continues to rock.

Oh and as a side note… I am over at MamaKitty‘s book blog talking about why I love to read today, stop by and say something!

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#1 – Trust the webstore you bought it from

Most ebook retailers keep a bookshelf of all your purchases so that you can re-download them at any time. Amazon for example will let you re-download books to your Kindle directly from the Kindle using your Content Manager. You can also login to Amazon.com from your computer and from your digital library resend your files to your computer hard drive or to the Kindle. This is certainly an easy to do it if you buy all your books from one or two select stores that offer this.

#2 – Keep a copy of your ebooks on your hard drive

I believe that all ereader devices offer the ability to plug your device into your computer and download your books from the device to a folder on your hard drive. This essentially gives you a copy on your ereader and one on your computer. This may be enough for some people…. it isn’t for me. I don’t like to keep books I have already read or am not reading currently on my Kindle. Instead I keep all of my library on my hard drive and only put on the Kindle things I am reading or going to read in the next few weeks. It keeps clutter down… it makes me happy. If you are this type of person too, you want to combine this method with an alternative backup system like one of the ones below…

#3 – Make a second copy of your library on a portal drive or DVD

If you keep your library on your computer you can always duplicate that by copying it to an external hard drive such as this or by burning your books to a DVD. A DVD is like 4gb work of space so it will hold a lot of books. The problem with this is that you have to remember to back up when you add new books…. I am just not that on top of it. I do burn my books to DVD about twice a year but it isn’t my main backup plan.

#4 – DropBox
DropBox.com is a online storage service that will sync with your computer. You get up to 2gb with a free account and that is plenty of space for an ebook library. I have well over 600 books in my library and have only used 30% of my space. All you do is sign up for an account and then install a bit of software onto your computer. This bit of software will allow you to specify a “drop box folder” on your computer. Anytime you make changes to this folder it will update your online storage account with those changes, ie. you specify your calibre library as your dropbox folder and you edit the Metadata of one of your books… the dropbox software will see that and update the same files you changed in your backup files located on dropbox.com

Because of the automatic syncing it works extremely well with ebook libraries. I mentioned Calibre in the example above… I bet some of you are still not using this software. If not, why?? It is the easiest library software you will find and just had a major update that lets you add custom columns so you can mark books read! Go, download it. now.

Making Calibre and DropBox play nicely
Ok, now that you have Calibre, let’s talk about how to make DropBox and Calibre share a library folder. easy

• Step 1 – Sign up for a Drop Box account.
• Step 2 – Follow the DropBox instructions and install the software. The software will ask you to place a folder called “DropBox” on your computer somewhere and within this folder is where your library will be. Think carefully about where you want to store your books, you should obviously choose a spot where you have at least 2GB of space if you think you will fill your drop box. Unsure where to put it? Generally, your “My Documents” folder would work fine. You can see mine is put inside a partition on my hard drive called “Storage”. It has a green check on the folder because it has been synced recently.
  

• Step 3 – Once the software is installed and you can create a NEW folder within the “DropBox” folder that will be your ebook library. This folder is “mostly” public on Dropbox.com – if someone has your user id or you gave them the link they would be able to browse inside of it. You can call the folder whatever you like – I used “MyBooks” as an example, mine has a secret name

  Current Calibre Users – You do not need to recreate a library folder. At this point you can move your current Calibre folder from it’s former location to inside the dropbox folder. Example, if you have a “Calibre Library” folder in your “My Documents” you want to copy the entire folder and then paste the entire folder inside your “DropBox” folder. You can rename it if you want as we will have to tell Calibre where the folder has moved to anyway.
  

• Step 4 – Set your Calibre preferences. Open up Calibre(if you were a previous user it may give you an error saying your library is missing or it may just open up and all your books will be gone. DO NOT WORRY!). Once Calibre is open, hit the “PREFERENCES” tab along the top menu bar. Under the General tab you are going to specify the location of your ebooks, this is where you want to browse to find your “MyBooks” folder within the “DropBox” folder. Once it is set, click OK. You are done! Once you do that, if you had a previous library all of your books should now be visible in Calibre again tho it may take some time or it may take a restart of Calibre depending on your system.
  
  

Now whenever you update your calibre library, it will update your online library of books…. giving you 2 complete backups of your ebooks. If you get a new computer or lose your hard drive all you have to do is download dropbox again and it will create the folders and put all your books back into them.

If you want to go a step further and create a viewable web catalog of your books that you can can browse on your phone, check out Dear Author’s post on creating a cloud. I admit I have done it, but being a Kindle owner it would require me to keep both kindle format and epub in my library to read with stanza. Because of that I never read on my iphone unless through Kindle for iPhone. I keep mine set up tho because I like being able to browse the covers of all my books.

I hope that helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have or contribute any other backup ideas you have!

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Sigh. There once was a series about a vampire executioner/necromancer that kicked ass. Anita Blake was her name and she rocked my urban fantasy world. She kicked ass, took names, and didn’t care that she was wearing outdated/out-of-fashion clothing while she did it. She didn’t need stiletto heels or mid drift bearing leather vests. She wasn’t swayed into stupidity by the likes of hot men and out of the world orgasms.

Where oh where has our Anita gone to? She certainly isn’t being written by Laurel K. Hamilton anymore. Now before anyone says “oh you are just one of those who like to complain about all the sex”…. no, I’m not. I like sex in books…. in fact sometimes i LOVE it. What I don’t like is sex to the point that it has no relevance to the plot, or worse, sex instead of a plot. I’ve never been a complainer when it comes to Hamilton, other than what she did to poor Richard… I didn’t hate the ardeur or complain about the harem of men until I started losing track of who was who. I even kind of liked Blood Noir and Skin Trade… had hopes that maybe the Anita I loved was making her way back.

Unfortunately, Bullet is exactly as it is titled, a bullet into the coffin of the Anita Blake series for this reader.

Now here I could try to sum up what was going on in this book and put it into neat paragraphs… but I have put enough time into this one. Instead I am just going to give you a nice neat bulleted list (heh, pun intended) of my complaints and notes.

• The phrase “creamy goodness” should never be used more than once in a book, much less two times or more and when talking about one’s own breasts
• “too tall for straight missionary, or I was too short” was used more than once… relatively close together about entirely different men. Furthermore…. eh what? I want details in a sex scene but can they please be better than random thoughts like this?
• More than once I noted a big W-T-F is going on? There is all kinds of strange metaphysical triumvirate crap going on and most of the time it doesn’t make sense. If there are rules to the supernatural world Anita lives in now that she is ever-powerful, I can’t figure them out and I don’t like it. I don’t buy the weird magic touching mojo just works without rules or reasoning, giving Anita and gang the power to fix anything. Additionally, how many new powers does Anita have now and can someone get me a chart?
• Pages and pages and pages of description. Not just any description… but description of guys’ hair color, eyes, clothing, and shoes. It was endless… if the guys were not always wearing knee high boots we probably would have gotten description of their sock color… surely all varying colors of blue (cue *eyeroll*). Oh and it was not just Anita’s main squeezes that we were treated to unnecessary man drooling, it was every guy she lays eyes on. Bullet could have been at least 50 pages lighter if an editor would have done their job and not allowed her to bore us with Hamilton’s game of “how many different kinds of blue eyes can I shove in a book and how long can I write about them.”
• On the note of clothing… WHY does every man in the book have pants that were “painted on”? Really? I lost count of how many times Hamilton was painting pants on men.
• Boring, emotional, relationship drivel. Pages and pages of talking whether it be among the characters or within Anita’s head. Every scene was like one of those bad fights you had with your high school sweetheart where you both kept going long after everything was said and you found yourself talking in circles…. except in Bullet every one of those scenes involved 3 more more guys making them excruciatingly long. Sigh. I enjoy a good turbulent relationship but at some point in the book there must be a plot right? I mean something has to happen outside of the bedroom right?
• Rainbow of Tigers… they are confusing and totally weird. That is all.
• Poorly written sentences and paragraphs. Unnecessary details that only make my brain go into zombie mode… such as:
  

  Nathaniel had made me drink a Powerade from the cooler near the locker rooms, but he’d also insisted on stopping at the kitchen so he could make me a protein shake. They were designed to replace things a hard workout would take out of you, and the interesting thing was if you didn’t need the shake, it tasted bad, but if your body needed it, chocolate tasted like chocolate. It tasted very good today.

• Richard… sigh. My dear Richard. I want Richard to stop whining and being a pansy as much as the next girl. When forced to choose between a creepy old vamp (Jean Claude) and an uber hot alpha werewolf (Richard) I am always going to side with the warm blooded non-creepy one. Well, I got my wish in this book…. but I am sad to say it was disappointing. Not because unwhiny Richard wasn’t what I thought…. oh no.. Richard accepting the things he wants is totally SEXY. The problem is that the turnaround is completely unrealistic and poorly done. It is done without set up or any believable back story. A fellow blogger described it perfectly, it seems that Hamilton just got tired of writing him as a pain in the ass and decided to stop doing it.
• Sex scenes…. for those who complain about the frequent sex in the later books…Bullet was a nice inbetween. It wasn’t overwhelming and it wasn’t sparse…. but it was BORING. Uninspired and lacking chemistry or sizzle of any kind. I am going to blame it on all the talking during, before, and after.
• Anita getting it on with the girls. Hey, I am all about Anita getting a little help taking care of her harem… its large, she needs it. Yet when Anita actually gets some sexual mojo going with one of the girls underneath her Hamilton wimps out on committing to it. The girl is left to get off on her own by rubbing up against Anita’s stomach? Really? Either dive in or get out of the pool.
• Plot….. where the hell is it? Other than a dance recital at the beginning of the book, Bullet takes place entirely in the Circus of the Damned…. much of it in the bedroom. AND THERE ISN’T EVEN A LOT OF SEX! There is definitely sex… but not enough for most of the book to take place underground in a bedroom. We get glimpses of cool things Anita could be doing (vampires running amock everywhere!) but we never actually get the action! Even the end reads like “here are all the traditional urban fantasy things that happened when we weren’t having sex or talking about our feelings, but I didn’t feel like writing them into the story so let me just tell you how it ended.”
• No Edward. Do I need to say more?

Now, I could go on…. but really, who is still reading at this point? My words can not express how bad I think this book is. And honestly, its a pretty harsh review already. I probably harbor an unhealthy amount of anger in regards to Bullet. Hamilton used to write better than this… and where is her editor? Are you telling me that no one at her publisher read this and questioned anything? Or is it no longer about writing a good story but instead about just meeting a deadline so it hits shelves on time? If so, its shameful… readers spend hard earned money on these books and deserve better than this. When you are the author of a long running, popular series, you have a higher level of responsibility. Your fans trust you, they buy your books on faith. If you can no longer deliver a book of at least mediocre quality writing then do yourself, your fans, and your characters a favor. Stop.

With that, I say good-buy to Anita Blake. Anita, Richard, Jason…. I have loved you and you helped me escape from my crazy so-called life many many nights. I will miss you but I am afraid I no longer care what happens unless it involves Edward coming in and and going on a mass killing rampage complete with Anita/Edward showdown. I am going to try to appreciate Bullet for what it did give me – sexy alpha Richard and series closure.

Disclaimer: This book was purchased by me.

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