Romance Reading Challenge

Have you started thinking about what your reading goals are going to be next year? I have, and one of the things I have been thinking about doing is joining in some of the challenges that are going on around blog land. I decided very early on this year to resist the urge to join in because it is enough of a challenge for me to manage my library list usually, but if the challenge can fit in with my other reading goals, then I might join in!

The first one I am joining in on is the Romance Reading Challenge that is being hosted by Naida.

Now, I read a fair proportion of romance as it is, so what I wanted to do is tie it in with some of my other reading resolutions. One of these will again be to try and read some of the books that I have gone and spent my hard earned cash on but haven't yet read! In order to complete the challenge you have to read (and review!)5 books next year, so below is a list of five books that I have bought, but still haven't read yet, despite the fact that I really, really want to! Believe me when I say that there are plenty of other books that I could have chosen from for this challenge too!





The Huntress by Susan Carroll - I was so excited about this book coming out in June 2007. Still haven't read it!











The Wild Hunt by Elizabeth Chadwick - I have loved the two books that I have read by Chadwick and so want to now start working my way through her backlist. I was so excited when I won this on Ebay because it is a book that is a bit hard to come by at this point in time, although from what I understand this book, and the two that follow it, are going to be reissued soon.

My review is now up here.








Warprize by Elizabeth Vaughan - I've actually got both this book and Warsworn here to read.

Review now up here








Lessons of Desire by Madeline Hunter - The first book in this series was the first book that I finished in 2007. Despite having preordered this, still havent read it!

My review is now up here












Mine Till Midnight by Lisa Kleypas - What exactly am I waiting for?

Review is now up here









I'll have one book in reserve as well...just in case!





Lover Unbound by JR Ward - Shhh! Don't tell anyone but I had this one preordered as well and haven't read it yet.

Lover Revealed by J R Ward

Butch O'Neal is a fighter by nature. A hard living, ex-homicide cop, he's the only human ever to be allowed in the inner circle of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. And he wants to go even deeper into the vampire world to engage in the turf war with the lessers. He's got nothing to lose. His heart belongs to a female vampire, Marissa, an aristocratic beauty who's way out of his league. If he can't have her, then at least he can fight side by side with the Brothers...

When Butch sacrifices himself to save a civilian vampire from the slayers, he falls prey to the darkest force in the war. Left for dead but found by a miracle, the Brotherhood calls on Marissa to bring him back, though even her love may not be enough to save him.

Never let it said that I don't come late to the party! Weeks after everyone else has done their reviews I am finally ready to do mine! There are a couple of factors as to why I am so late. The first is that my book took a week more to get to me than it did to everyone else (or at least that is the way it felt!) and then it took me just under a week to actually pick it up. Then when I did pick it up, I did so on a night when I was really exhausted, and had gone to bed at 8.30pm. I thought that I might just read a couple of chapters...you know...just a few pages. At 1am I put the book down having read 400 pages, and then I finished it the next morning on the train!

Enough on the preliminaries! I will start by saying that I wasn't really a Butch fan before I read this book, and whilst he was fine in this book, there is no way that this book surpasses Lover Awakened for me. The highlights in this book for me were to see what is going to happen with Vishous, to see the development in John Mathew's story, and to see the continued development of Zsadist! So those were the highlights, but I did think Butch was okay. It was interesting considering the bond between Butch and V how they ended up being vital to each other in the bigger scheme of things.

For once, I do think that we saw some development in the female characters, prompted by Marisa. I was particularly glad to see this for her because otherwise her role would have been limited to shallow high society woman, and I love the idea of the women sticking together.

Butch and Marisa seemed to fall in love very hard and very fast, but their chemistry was pretty good. The fact that Butch is human and Marisa not was resolved in a pretty obvious way, although the events that happened to him earlier in the book made me wonder how the author was going to manage to resolve the issues, but she did it well in the end!

I have to say that I didn't notice the language as much this time round as I have in other books in this series, but the proliferation of label names, even in one of the love scenes, seemed to be more full on this time around.

Once again, this was a really hard to put down book, as they all have been, and the story arc that is going throughout the series was definitely developed more this time round.

So...is it too early to start counting down to Vishous' book? The excerpt and all the little titbits that have been said whilst JR Ward has been guest blogging around the place really make me want to read his story NOW!

Rating 4/5

Lover Awakened by J R Ward

In the shadows of the night in Caldwell, New York, there’s a deadly war raging between vampires and their slayers. And there exists a secret band of brothers like no other - six vampire warriors, defenders of their race. Of these, Zsadist is the most terrifying member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.

A former blood slave, the vampire Zsadist still bears the scars from a past filled with suffering and humiliation. Renowned for his unquenchable fury and sinister deeds, he is a savage feared by humans and vampires alike. Anger is his only companion, and terror is his only passion—until he rescues a beautiful aristocrat from the evil Lessening Society.

Bella is instantly entranced by the seething power Zsadist possesses. But even as their desire for one another begins to overtake them both, Zsadist’s thirst for vengeance against Bella’s tormentors drives him to the brink of madness. Now, Bella must help her lover overcome the wounds of his tortured past, and find a future with her…

I bought this book in November last year, straight after reading Lover Eternal, with the intention that I would read it sooner rather than later. Of course, we all know about intentions! Anyway, given that the release date for Lover Revealed is rapidly approaching I thought I should probably hurry up and get to it...and I am glad that I did! I think that this ended up being my favourite Brotherhood book so far.

I'm sure I have mentioned before how much I love a tortured hero, and Zsadist is right up there with the most tortured heroes I have ever read - scarred, former sex slave who has never willingly made love to anyone, who hates himself and practically everyone around him, illiterate....the list is endless!

The opening events in the book follow closely on from the final events in Lover Eternal. Bella has been kidnapped by a lesser, who is convinced that she is the love of his life. He has managed to create a prison where even vampires cannot escape. Zsadist felt a connection (that he wanted to ignore) when he first met Bella, and when she is kidnapped he is determined, to the point of self destruction, that he will be the one to find her and rescue her! Bella too felt the connection and when she is rescued all she wants it to be close to him - difficult for a man like Zsadist to deal with at the best of times, and even more difficult for him to accept, to the point that he keeps on trying to pass Bella on to a better guy, even though he knows that his bonding to her may have begun.

What about Bella? I don't think that one of JR Ward's strengths is her heroines. She writes fantastic heroes, but her heroines are less stellar. I really struggled with Mary in the last book, but Beth and Bella were both just okay in my opinion.

Without give too much away, (for the few people out there who haven't read this book!), I did love the ending as far as Zsadist was concerned. His determination to accept and improve himself was beautiful, and reflected in the quote below:

I was dead until you found me, though I breathed. I was sightless, though I could see. And then you came....and I was awakened.

There was a lot going on in this story, and after reading this I want to follow John stories, I want to read Phury's story, and Vishous' story, and I want to know what happened to poor, poor Tohrment, and...well, you get the idea. I'm hooked to this series. And that is despite the fact that there are some flaws, included the constant brand name dropping, the constant reference to shit kickers, and numerous other things. Doesn't matter to me - I can accept those things because I am so heavily invested in the main characters and the series as a whole. You might notice that Butch wasn't in my list of characters I want to read about? Well....I do want to read his story, just not as much as I want the others.

I have been pimping this series to one of the girls from work and had to take this book in for her to read a few weeks ago. As I sat on the train I flicked through this book, taking a few choice sections and reading them instead of the book that I was already reading. I ended up crying my eyes out on the train....just picking it up and reading some of the sections were so moving and emotional. A little embarrassing really!

It is my intention to order the next book and read it relatively soon after it is arrived. Of course, it could then take me a month to finish the review like it did for this one!

Rating 4.5/5

Lover Eternal by J R Ward

Or this post could also be titled "Darn it...on the Wall of Shame again!". This is the book that I read for October TBR challenge, but I finished it a little late! But I hear I wasn't the only one this month!!

Within the brotherhood, Rhage is the vampire with the strongest appetites. He's the best fighter, the quickest to act on his impulses, and the most voracious love - for inside him burns a ferocious curse cast by the Scribe Virgin. Owned by this dark side, Rhage fears the times when his inner dragon is unleashed, making him a danger to everyone around him.

Mary Luce, a survivor of many hardships, is unwittingly thrown into the vampire world and reliant on Rhages's protection. With a life-threatening curse of her own, Mary is not looking for love. She lost her faith in miracles years ago. But when Rhage's intense animal attraction turns into something more emotional, he knows that he must make Mary his alone. And while their enemies close in, Mary fights desperately to gain life eternal with the one she loves...

Title: Lover Eternal

Author: J R Ward

Year published: 2006

Why did you get this book? I read Dark Lover not too long ago, and enjoyed it, so I am working my way through the Black Dagger Brotherhood books.

Do you like the cover? I guess so.

Did you enjoy the book? Yes

Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? No the author is not new to me, and yes I will definitely be reading more. In fact I ordered it so I should get it delivered to me tomorrow...hopefully. So much for not buying books at the moment.

Are you keeping it or passing it on? Definitely keeping it!

Anything else? If nothing else I find it interesting that Ward takes circumstances that shouldn't work and puts them into a story where it just does! For example, I could never have imagined reading a book where the heroine has cancer with all the bruises etc, and yet it is still sexy. The hero has an inner beast that comes out....and that's sexy too. At one stage he even tries to go with other women to be able to keep the beast under control. Normally cheating would bother me, but in this case it didn't!

I loved the way that Bella and Zsadist's story started to be woven through the second half of this book. Can't wait to read Lover Awakened.

Rating 4/5

Dark Lover by J R Ward

JR Ward was chosen as Author of the Month over in my Historical Romance Chat Yahoo group! Nope, not historical, but that's okay, because it made a nice change, and meant that I moved another new to me author I have been wanting to read up the list!

In the shadows of the night in Caldwell, New York, there's a deadly turf war going on between vampires and their slayers. There also exists a secret band of brothers like no other - six vampire warriors, defenders of their race. Among them, none relishes killing their enemies more than Wrath, the leader of the Black Dagger Brotherhood...

The only purebred vampire left on the planet, Wrath has a score to settle with the slayers who murdered his parents centuries ago. But when one of his most trusted fighters is killed- orphaning a half-breed daughter unaware of her heritage or her fate - Wrath must usher the beautiful female into the world of the undead…

Racked by a restlessness in her body that wasn't there before, Beth Randall is helpless against the dangerously sexy man who comes to her at night with shadows in his eyes. His tales of brotherhood and blood frighten her. But his touch ignites a dawning hunger that threatens to consume them both…

Yes I know that everyone in blog world is busy reviewing Lover Awakened...what can I say...I'm behind the times!! Actually I have only started reading paranormals in the last few months, so for me this whole world that JR Ward has created is pretty fresh - no comparisons to Alcheron (whoever he is) for me!! I'm not going to go into a whole description of the plot (there is one hereif you would like to read it)

So where to start? Well...I liked it a LOT. So much so that I went into just about every bookshop I went past while I was on holidays just to see if any of them had it. They didn't! So I still haven't got hold of Lover Eternal, but I will! I liked the characters, the tensions between them, especially once the human cop Butch was added to the mix. I did kind of wonder how a blind vampire could be a kick-ass fighter, but what do I know!!! I was creeped out by the Lessers, as I was supposed to be I would guess and at times freaked out a little by some of the Brothers, but my overall impression was a good one! I don't know that I am on my way to becoming a JR Ward fangirl (from what I hear she has enough of those already) but I will continue to read her books, and hopefully enjoy them!! Heck, I will probably end up buying her books, and I am really trying not to buy any books at the moment!

I loved the way that Wrath was able to let himself show Beth how much he loved her, and also that Beth was able to be the one that protected him at some points instead of it all being a one way relationship. I do have to say that the mating ceremony seems a bit extreme though!! Maybe because like Beth (Elizabeth) I have quite a long first name! Can anyone say Ouch!

With more Black Dagger Brotherhood books already out, and more planned, it looks like I will be spending more time in Caldwell, New York in the future.

Rating 4.5/5