Until We Break by Cynthia Dane, Hildred Billings

Rating: WARTY!

"As Stefani Valetti runs her family’s picturesque Oregon winery, she longs for companionship — so she turns to an international service to find a bride." This might not have been so bad except for that godawful title which just screams no.

Lust by Hildred Billings

Rating: WARTY!

Errata: "Not is was putrid." Say what? I have no idea what the author meant by this sentence! 'nor was it putrid' maybe? "Not when Lust pushed beneath the sweaty silk of Mercy's breasts and discovered her breasts." Huh? "Lust cried out with a high, wanting peal as Mercy gave in to her latent nymphomania" Wanting or wanton? Latent nymphomania?

Having enjoyed the first novel by this author that I had ever read, I embarked upon reading several more, but not a one of those others was anywhere near up to the same standard as that one. Even that had some issues, but I was willing to let those slide because the rest of the story was a decent effort. This one however, was a sorry excuse for a story and not even a novel - it's really a short story at best designed as a loss-leader to lure readers in to a series. I typically detest series and this effort only served to reinforce that view.

This is nothing more than a sex romp and has no story to tell. Ostensibly it's about this young woman named Mercy who has come to the end of her tether and right as she's about to throw herself off a bridge, this 'goddess' Acedia shows up to save her. In reality, Acedia never was a god. It was one of the original eight deadly sins along with the more familiar seven: Envy, Gluttony, Greed, Lust, Pride, Sloth, Wrath, but it got dropped or lost somehow.

This book has it that Acedia is actually a goddess who has seven incarnations, and this series, which I am not pursuing, the first of these 'avatars' is named Lust of course, and she's unleashed upon Mercy, like all she needs to shed her suicidal thoughts is to get laid good. Barf. I think this was an entirely wrong-headed approach. The series talks like it's performing some sort of a public service in addressing issues, but it's not. You can't 'cure' a suicide by getting them laid. It doesn't work like that, and it's shameful that this author doesn't know better. I cannot commend this; on the contrary, I condemn it. It was more bad writing and I am done with this author now.

Stay Here Tonight by Hildred Billings

Rating: WARTY!

Errata: "not thinking of the bad things that's happened to her." - this employs an incorrect verb person. It should read, "not thinking of the bad things that have happened..." "director Francis Ferrari, bedecked in a floor-length gown and letting her brown curls fly free" This is maybe not an error, but usually the female from of this name is Frances. "The paparazzi was out in full force" Paparazzi is plural. The singular form is paparazzo, named after a character in a Fellini movie. The feminine form is paparazza "She's biting at the chomp to date me." Chomping at the bit....

This novel is essentially a clone of Billings's novel Hold me which I actually liked. This one is really the same story: a high profile, rich, sexually promiscuous woman who 'won't be tamed' falls for a 'commoner'. It's also one of those ludicrous "let's dishonestly pretend we're a couple" stories that inevitably, predictably, tediously, boringly becomes a real romance. Yeah. Right. Okay.

The story again had endless, dangerously risky sexual behavior without consequence. Again it had a cold fish power woman and a magical lower-level woman who falls for her. Again it mistook hot sex for a loving relationship. I grew tired of it quickly. I think I have one more Billings novel to read on my list, but whether I'll get to it after this is another matter! I certainly can't commend a 'write by numbers' novel like this one at all and the lack of attention to the detail of getting her English right was annoying.

January Embers by Hildred Billings

Rating: WARTY!

This book stopped me dead in my tracks at chapter two when I saw that it was going to be a two-person PoV novel. No thanks. It wasn't even first person - it was third person, but still the author evidently experienced this inexplicable need to split the narrative and even be repetitive. Why? I dunno. I wasn't exactly enamored of it from the first chapter, but I was willing to give it a chance until I encountered that tediously pedantic approach. It contributes nothing to the story and it means every chapter has to have a label to identify whose thoughts we're sharing. Barf. No thanks. This is one of several of this authors books I will review, only one of which i actually liked!

Hold Me by Hildred Billings

Rating: WORTHY!

Errata: "In Sapporo she would text a friend or gone to a party to score some sex." should read ‘have gone’ or 'would go’? "She bore her teeth" - No! She bared her teeth! "Jun was always one who treaded it with trepidation." - 'Trod'. "as Jun brought their vulva together" - 'Vulvas' "She chose the softest voice had" - 'she had'

This was, overall, an enjoyable read. I fell in love with the main character Junri - unrequited as it was! It was a chalk and cheese romance between two women who were not only set apart by a decade in age, but who also hail from widely different backgrounds: Junri Isoya being heir to a hotel empire - if she plays her cards right - and Saya Nemoto being an itinerant worker from a relatively backward part of Japan. They meet when Saya rebels against an abusive coworker. Junri intervenes, and the relationship continues on and off as Saya swings back through her 'home base' of Nagoya between jobs.

Junri isn't happy at being sent to manage the Nagoya hotel, but her uncle, the current chairman, tells her she is badly in need of experience before he can consider her as an elligible heir for taking over when he retires. After resolving the harrassment dispute, Junri never expects to see Saya again, and is both unnerved and excited to find her waiting in the corridor by her temporary hotel accommodation that night.

Thus begins their on-again off again relationship as Saya drifts in and out of Junri's life between working trips to different parts of the country, alternately thrilling her and driving her to distraction as Junri falls ever more deeply for the feisty, exciting, enigmatic, and intriguing young woman.

I really enjoyed this for the most part, but I ran into an issue here and there which took some of the pleasure away. I found the acciental encounters between Junri and Saya to stretch credibility too much: that in all of Tokyo, for example, they should both happen to be riding the same train at the same time and encoutner one another. Additionally, it was a bit much to swallow that one night when Junri is out having a few drinks, she just happens to be walking down the precise alley behind the exact bar that Saya exits right as Junri passes the door.

I also didn't like that Junri so readily leapt into bed with complete strangers without a moment's thought about STDs. We live in a world rife with them, and some are becoming more and more resistant to treatments. Some are deadly; some are debilitating. Naturally no one wants a rather explicit and erotic story like this to screech to a halt for a lecture on veneral disases right in the middle of the 'action', but a word of caution carefully embedded in the characters' exchanges here and there would be entirely appropriate.

Reading this, it seemed to me that someone as smart as Junri wouldn't take such risks, not when her career was at stake and she was so proper and cautious in all other aspects of her life, so this lack of concern betrayed her character quite glaringly. There's a big difference between trading partners within a small group of trusted friends, and wantonly stepping outside that group, and thereby betraying everyone in it. It would surely ring alarm bells for someone like Junri, yet it never did; never once were STDs talked about between anyone in the entire story. That, to me, is a big problem with novels of this nature. I think authors have a responsibility and it makes me sad to see so many of them shirk it.

There were some writing issues, such as when I read, for example, "she could still smell Saya’s body in the sheets" - this was two months after Saya had left. Seriously? Yuk! Those sheets wre in dire need of a serious wash! At another point, I read, "who was used to sex in public sometimes" which felt badly-worded. Something like 'used to occasional sex in public' would sound better. Later, I read, "In the countryside, with people who don’t judge others" yet Saya's whole problem had stemmed from her growing up in exactly such a place, so this made no sense to me!

These were relatively minor issues which I see often, especially in novels which are one-person operations without the might and mein of a big publishing conglomerate behind them, complete with book editors and so on. For me, the biggest let-down was the reveal of Saya's 'problem' toward the end of the novel. It would be easier to talk about this were I to publish a spoiler here, but I won't do that.

I'll just confine myself to saying that I felt let-down when this supposedly relationship-crippling issue turned out to be such a mundane and minor one when all was said and done. It felt like a betrayal of Saya's character. This was a woman who had proven herself to be impressively resilient, strong, and independent. It seemed to me like this 'problem' would have been been the least of Saya's worries, and yet it's built-up to be this towering onstacle when it really isn't anything at all, especially given Junri's position of wealth and power. In my opinion, that whole bit ought to have been changed to turn it into something truly critical, or it ought to have been ditched altogether, and Saya's objections left to what were really potential problems, such as Saya's itinerary lfiestyle versus Junri's necessarily static one. I never did consider their age difference to be an issue.

But the author had won me over plenty before this happened, so I wasn't going to let this sour me on the whole story, which for the most part, was well-written, inventive, amusing, absorbing, and heart-warming. I commend it as a worthy read. This (the novel not my review!) was published in 2013, and there's a suggestion at the end of it that there could be a book 2. Whether this materialized or not, I have no idea, but I am not a fan of series, so I doubt I will read any sequels. I do intend to read other novels by this author, however.