Ice Series by Anne Stuart

I recently found the excuse to get back into Anne Stuart's Ice Series after reading the first book a few years ago and have found that the books that have followed are a bit of a mix bag for me.

Cold as Ice (A): Genevieve Spenser is getting ready to spend the next few weeks in Costa Rica on a humanitarian expedition but her boss asks her to get a few signatures on some legal documents from their client Harry Van Dorn. Harry, though, is not your regular client, he is a bit of a psycho with a plan for seven worldwide acts of destruction that will yield him a decent profit.

Peter Jensen is an undercover operative of the 'committee' and is in place as Van Horn's personal assistant. He is waiting for just the right moment to end Harry's plans for good but when the prim lawyer comes on board the yacht his plans are shot to hell. The stuck up Genevieve cannot seem to get the hint he keeps sending her to get off the darn boat so Peter is resigned to kill her as collateral damage, but the woman just gets under his skin and even his years as a ruthless assassin cannot bring him to kill the woman that has broken through his ice laden soul.

Although the romance was rushed in this one, the heroine's personality was quirky enough to make it believable. Genny pretended to be a stuck up b*tch because it was the only way to move ahead as a lawyer but she loved coming home and letting her hair down while Jensen was constantly pretend as well, to the point that he almost lost himself completely.

I also like the action on this one, with yacht's blowing up and deserted islands and finally a race through California. I would have said this one was more an action book vs a true romance, but it worked for me.

Ice Blue (C- ): We met Taka O'Brian in Cold as Ice as the operative the can be many faces and that rescues Genny from Van Horn at great personal expense. It's Taka's turn to work on a project close to his heart when he has to recover an antique Japanese urn that a religious cult leader has deemed necessary in a plot to destroy the world.

Summer Hawthorne is a museum curator and owner of said urn. The cult leader was promised the urn by her mother and since it has an emotional connection to Summer, she has setup an elaborate hoax to avoid handing it over to the Shirosama. It is not until the Shirosama tries to kidnap her that she realizes the extent he will go in order to get his hands on the urn.

Taka is out to recover the same urn and is willing to do anything to stop the Shirosama from getting his hand on the artifact as well as the information that Summer doesn't know she has. But when the time comes to kill Summer he balks and everything goes downhill.

The difference between this operative (who I really liked in the other book) and Peter is that Genevieve made the whole I've fallen for you and now cannot kill you believable. There was NO reason why Summer should have fallen for Taka. He showed no emotion and really did nothing that could explain to me why she was hot for him and why she eventually fell for him. The reader knew Taka and could see his struggles but Summer should have had no clue. For some reason Stuart failed to show me how these two fell in love and it took away from the book.

I still enjoyed the action and being a Japanese culture junky, the chases around Japan moved this book from a D to a C-.

Because this last book was such a disappointment I think I need to stop reading this series for awhile so that I will not prejudice myself to book 4 which is the story of Madame Lambert or book 5 which is the story of Summer's sister Jilly and Taka's cousin Reno which were excellently portrayed in Ice Blue.

Format: Audiobook/eBook

The Devil's Waltz by Anne Stuart

I had never read Anne Stuart but my friend Luisa swears by her and since Luisa has never let me down I decided to bite the bullet and pick up something by Stuart. I also had the great pleasure of corresponding with this New England Author and discovered that we share a few hobbies outside the literary circle. Seems Stuart has a daughter into Anime, she enjoys j-rock (Japanese rock) and is also a quilter. All things we share in common. It's not everyday you encounter someone with all those quirks that also loves romance novels. So before opening one of her books, I was already a fan.

This book is one of her latest historicals. She doesn't write many of these and so I decided I'd go with something I was more comfortable with (historical romances). Historicals don't tend to be overwrought with a lot of subplots that might draw you away from the actual romance so they tend to be safe.

Christian Montcalm in line to inherit a viscountcy but it's a title without funds, so he is determined to marry an heiress. He has selected the daughter if shipping giant George Chipple. His daughter, Hetty, is vivacious, young and quiet beautiful. The only problem is that Mr. Chipple has asked Annelise Kempton to be her chaperone during this season, and Christian's reputation as a scoundrel and a rake has already preceded him.

Annelise Kempton is reaching 30 and has declared herself a spinster and unfortunately, she is a penniless spinster. Her father drank and gambled away the little money they had, so after his death she has been forced to become a guest at people's house (since she cannot really work for anyone, being the daughter of a baron). She is hoping that Mr. Chipple will be very grateful when his daughter marries into society and will give her enough to buy a small cottage and retire, from her visitations.

That is, until Montcalm declares he will have Hetty one way or another. Lots of undercurrents are taking place when it seems Hetty is not as determined to have him as we first think and Mr. Chipple is not as caring of a person as we first think either.

Although the actual love story between Christian and Annelise is fairly straight forward and in the same vein as most historicals, there was so many other things going on, it could easily become distracting (remember I said historicals are not typically overwrought with a lot of subplots... Hmm, need to keep those thoughts to myself in the future). This book reminded me a bit of that movie with Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh, Much Ado About Nothing. There was a villain, a secondary romance and then throw in an apple falling from a family tree thought to have been dead long ago. I easily could put this one down a few times but when I got back to it, I would read with gusto. So, this one is a bit difficult to grade.

Grade: B-