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I am here to report that Inchy was spot on about that Stacia Kane series. I seriously thought I was going to die if I had to wait another whole book for Terrible.

I hsve read the Vampire Academy series and really enjoyed them, though the last one left me slightly dissapointed. I guess you read Bloodlines? I have that book coming soon. Was it good? I've wondered about her Succubus series. Sounds like they are interesting. Have you read the Hunger Games or Immortal Instruments series? Both are interesting. Another new book out that is similar to Hunger Games is called Divergent. Really enjoyed it and look forward to the next book. I have a few Guild Hunters books here in my TBR pile.

I read Bloodlines, really enjoyed it, but I am an Adrian partisan and really love Sydney. It's shaping up to be Alias meets Harry Potter like VA was Buffy meets HP.

The Succubus stuff could be triggery for some. Her pact with Hell is such that she is essentially a demonic hooker, and the natural activities of a hooker do occur. But I did read all six in just over 24 hours so you know it was awesome!

Read the first two HG but didn't read Mockingbird. i tried to read Mortal Instruments but couldn't get into it, plus there was that old fandom plagiarism scandal with her.

I didn't go back through the whole thread to check but The Night Huntress series by Jeaniene Frost is very good. I love Bones. I "read" these via audiobook and the reader was really good which is not always the case.

ETA:

Oh and I got a bunch of books from a female friend and strangely enough there is a lot of M/M ones. I haven't asked her why just yet but I'm reading a really sweet and well done one now. The Inventor's Companion by Ariel Tachna. Very sweet love story of forced prostitute finds true love. The first kiss ever I scene I found very touching.

[This message edited by trying_2_recover at 12:42 AM, September 8th (Thursday)]

I just finished some epic co-dependent fucked-upness. This was AWESOME:

http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Disaster-ebook/dp/B0052VUNHC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1315469687&sr=8-1

Drop everything and read. It is the literary equivalent of black tar heroin.

Everyone realizes I never bold things, right? I always use *asterisks*. Well I *bolded* that recommendation so I *mean* it!

Also, hahaha, lord_v is reading Vampire Academy. I picked up his e-book reader and there it was, like 1/3 of the way through. I was like, you're reading Vampire Academy? Uhh, well, it was the only thing on the reader I hadn't already read (it used to be mine). Oh okay, I said. Then he began to criticize it, and I said yeah, all true, but you have to remember you're not a 13-yo girl. And he said true, and unlike me he never has been. I said, also true.

But now he's on *Frostbite*. What's his excuse for that? He has no excuse for that! "Well, Vampire Academy read really fast." That's his excuse. I said you know, I'll go convert the first of the Succubus books for you if you like that author and want to not read the VA series. He said oh, that'd be cool. And then *returned to reading Frostbite*.

This is coming on the heels of his finishing The Proposition, or as I have referred to it previously, "The One About The Mustachioed Ratcatcher."

I really, really love lord_v. It means so much to me that he trusts me enough to read things just because I like them.

[This message edited by ladyvorkosigan at 6:57 AM, September 8th (Thursday)]

By the way:

I ACTUALLY DO EXPECT SOMEBODY TO READ MY REC AND REPORT BACK.

I AM SERIOUS ABOUT THIS PEOPLE.

I HAVE LAID AN OFFERING OF 500 PAGES OF PURE GROVELING, JEALOUS, OBSESSIVE-YET-SOMEHOW-SWEET PAYOFF AT YOUR FEET.

IT IS SERIOUSLY *ENTIRELY* THE PART OF THE BOOK THAT YOU ARE WAITING FOR. THE ENTIRE THING IS THE SCENE YOU KEEP WAITING FOR. BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO WAIT FOR IT. THERE ARE 500 PAGES OF IT. 500 PAGES OF VARIATIONS OF THE SCENE YOU WERE WAITING FOR.

SOMEBODY APPRECIATE.

DO IT.

DO IT.

DO. IT.

NewAttitude, I SAID GROVELING!

[This message edited by ladyvorkosigan at 4:37 PM, September 8th (Thursday)]

Okay, GOD!

Iloathe reading YA books but I will suck it up and read the darn thing.

It's going to take me awhile to find it though so you will have to be patient.

It isn't really YA! It's just set in college. There is rampant sex, adult language, and alcohol use.

Yeah, but I'm reading kids my daughter's age doing all that and it skeeves me out.

ALL RIGHT ALREADY.

Bolded and italicized, dammit. I downloaded it just now. God.

In return, ladyv, you must tell me if you read all three Ghost books and, if so, whether you found the last one triggery or righteous. And maybe explain to me why I am in love with Terrible.

I did read all three. I didn't find it triggery, except that one line about, how is she supposed to know how to live when no one ever showed her, and she's doing the best she can, etc. So, not triggery in any SI-sense of triggery, I don't think. I mean...it was unfortunate that she was not entirely honest with Terrible, but quite frankly...and here's how I do get that it could be SI-triggery for some...what makes Chess *available* to Terrible - what makes her feel attainable to him - is the damage. The same damage that makes her available to Lex, the same damage that rendered her incapable of simply saying "no" to that one guy near the end of book two, where her inner monologue was so entirely "I wish I didn't have to do this, please let him hurry up so I can leave" with no recognition, of course, that she *can* leave...without the damage, Chess is the same as his kid's mom. Terrible is aspirational. Just pretty, not enough. Has to be smart. Has to be educated, sound educated. Has to be better. Chess, though, she's damaged, so she's safe. Maybe she's crippled enough to *stay*.

I hope that Terrible comes to recognize this, because honestly, while I was extremely *into* what was going down with them in book 3, I maintained an awareness that at least the other drug enforcer she's fucking doesn't make her crawl around in shame begging him to forgive her for some shit far beyond anything she actually *did*. Basically, she hurt Terrible's feelings. That's all she did. She hurt his feelings. She made him feel ugly. She didn't screw him over, and they had no sacred trust to betray. So then she had to *crawl* to prove she wanted him, for the massive crime of unintentionally hurting his feelings because she's so pretty, and he never thought she'd want him. Not that I think anybody in this situation is going to get healthy, but if they were, it'd require Terrible to recognize what a shit he was. He knows how degrading her childhood was. How fucking dare he pull that shit with her.

[This message edited by ladyvorkosigan at 3:53 PM, September 12th (Monday)]

Yes, and yes. And yet.

I did like that I got no sense of icky KISA or noble suffering from T. I think part of what makes him fall so hard for Chess is that, for whatever reason, it's the first time he feels *seen*. Which is pretty powerful when you're ugly, scary, and valuable only as long as you're useful.

I agree that Chess is really in no way wayward, for the simple fact that no promises or commitments were made or implied. Interestingly, though, she works the whole recovering wayward process, becoming horrified by the near occasion of lying. And T somewhere in the second half of the 3rd book starts owning his reaction. I think the extreme sense of betrayal he felt was due more to his having made a whole raft of assumptions about who Chess was, and being wrong about them, than her having lied or omitted information relevant to his interests. Certainly no commitments were betrayed.

I think the author has had some kind of brush with the whole matter, frankly.

More interesting, though, is that I find the (relatively few) sex bits disproportionately hawt. I think it's because they are super gritty. With actual grit, in some cases. I like that he doesn't murmur into her throat, he mumbles into her neck.

Onto "Beautiful Disaster." Some parts were promising, but overall it felt as though it were written over a weekend. There was the "bad boy" storyline, then suddenly, hastily the "dad" storyline gets tacked on most of the way through the book, when it would have been useful as character development and plot enrichment much earlier. And maybe I'm Out Of Touch (ha! I was never In Touch) with the younger generation, but it had that whole Dawson's Creek thing where everyone is way more with it and articulate for the way they're actually behaving.

Travis is scary obsessive, despite the author's efforts to rehabilitate the picture she was painting (I loved that he got rid of the couch, but found it Not Believable, nor did I find the way he backs off in the middle believable in the context of his other actions), but that's forgivable. So is the violence. I adore Barrons, after all.

Not forgivable is thathe's lousy in bed. Missionary position? Only? Every time?? Geez.

Did I download the wrong book? What am I missing?

Oh no. You didn't download the wrong book.

It was 500 pages of a heightened emotional scene in which there is fighting, breaking up, groveling for forgiveness, and/or making up. That is why I said it's black tar heroin. It does away with everything else, and somehow spends 500 pages on the heightened emotional scene that with other books one would be waiting for with great antici...pation. It's that scene. Over and over.

I didn't pay attention to the other aspects, though you're correct about it all. Oh, I did notice he's bad in bed. I ignored those parts too.

It's just like she turned the volume up *immediately* and then it never got turned down and I was really dizzy and high from it so kept reading and reading...I stayed up all night hittin' that.

More thoughts on Terrible later...

I think the extreme sense of betrayal he felt was due more to his having made a whole raft of assumptions about who Chess was, and being wrong about them

But he assumes all relevant information correctly. He knows how she runs her sex life. He knows how she runs her high life. I don't think he thinks she *wouldn't* hook up with Lex, really. Why wouldn't she? He knows she'll hook up with everybody else, after all. And that he is the other gang's version of Terrible is problematic in that it put Terrible in the position of failing to report that activity to his boss since he would've been ordered to kill her, no question. But I don't think that was his issue, either. I don't think he actually thought she might've been spying for Lex, either. That she was not, he believed.

I agree he's no KISA, but I'm not sure what mistaken assumptions he had about her. It seemed to me he had her number exactly. The problem is that she walked away from him to hook up with the hot, relatively privileged version of him. With the familiar "You mattered, he didn't" refrain, which is very SI indeed, and which I totally get.

Nothing rings false at all here, nothing. Yes, I agree that he felt seen. I just don't see where he was actually wrong about anything about her, anything. Unless you're saying he thought he was the one person to whom she showed everything, and the assumption he made was that there was nothing she was hiding from him when he knows she is possibly the most compartmentalized character in trashy paranormal history?

Lora Leigh

Laurell K hamilton.

Paranormal FILTH if that's what you're looking for.

The big assumption he made was that somehow things would be different with/between/about them...that her friendship with him and the fact that she didn't laugh in his face when he bared his heart to her would somehow prevent all the normal sequelae and behaviors of a closet junky with intimacy issues from coming into play.

I think the fact that she was banging Lex was a special bit of awful, but I think a large part of it was that it simply didn't occur to him that she'd lie (or at least conceal Pertinent Data). Why not, I don't know. But I think his whole anger SI-y meltdown stemmed from a massive whomping dose of cognitive dissonance. Expectations =/= events. Someone has screwed up. I think T eventually figures out it was mostly him that screwed up, not that the emotions magically drain away usefully or anything.

It will be interesting to see where she goes with this storyline in books 4 and 5 (both planned, and 4 is scheduled for, ugh, March 2012).

So, um, yeah...I had to stop myself from reading Beautiful Disaster way past my bedtime too. It was *exactly like* my relationship with Chex Party Mix. Starts out pretty tasty, then you're kind of full, but you want *one more* tasty bit, but you don't *quite* find it, so you keep rooting around (and eating), and before you know it the whole bag is gone and you're half sick.

I know, it's disheartening. I'm going to go read her old erotica, I think. I want to say she published as December Quinn.

Oh, and yes, I re-read the sex scenes a lot more than one might expect from their brevity and relative lowness on the explicit scale. Probably the one in the bathroom the most. It was when he slowed down and leaned back to watch.

See, that's exactly why it had to be a college book. Only in college can the volume get turned up like that without me rolling my eyes and tossing it aside, because, well, that's college. I also have a soft spot for narratives that I know change after the last line. Like with Say Anything. How long do you think that lasted? Not very. With this one? Let's hope she's diligent about her birth control because otherwise it'll be 3 kids and a divorce before either of them turn 23. I don't need a sequel to tell me what happens. EVERYBODY KNOWS what happens.

[This message edited by ladyvorkosigan at 3:50 PM, September 13th (Tuesday)]

Oh yes. The end of those kinds of stories is the only consolation those of us who weren't drinking like fish, being inconsiderate roommates, wallowing in crazy awesome sex and still somehow passing our classes have. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

I have to say, crazy and all, I found Travis way more likable than Abby.

That "watching" thing always gets me. Except in LKH books. Then it just made me kind of want to hurl.

Also, 6'4' 270 and rock hard with a *narrow waist*? I don't think I'd even notice that he *had* a face.

It was the leaning back at that angle, and the physical strength and control it'd take to keep it going like that while he slowed it down to watch.

Another thought I had after I finished was hey, that was the post-zombie-apocalypse done right.

[This message edited by ladyvorkosigan at 2:53 AM, September 14th (Wednesday)]

LadyV, you might want to check out a new release coming by Sylvia Day... Touch of Crimson.

Special Ops unit of Seraphim.