This list is a little late in coming. It’s more the sort of thing to post on New Year’s Eve or maybe New Year’s Day. But I read most of these books in the summer of 2012, kept a running list, and then just plain forgot about it until I started cleaning out my drafted (but not published) blog posts. Oops!
Well, here it is, better late than never… These are not necessarily books that were published in 2012, but books I read in 2012. The only other thing they had in common was that at some point during the reading, they made me want to throw the book across the room ind disgust. Ouch! Pain!
5. One Night Of Scandal by Teresa Medeiros: It’s never a good sign when I decide I’ve had enough of a romance just as the sex scene is beginning. It usually means, as it does in this case, that I have absolutely no faith whatsoever in the connection between the two characters, and that the chemistry has utterly failed. I like a good sex scene, but bad ones can be painful. Not to mention a put-down moment.
4. The Sweetheart’s Knitting Club by Lori WIlde: I had lots of problems with this story, but my put-down moment came when the bad-boy hero was accused of yet another crime. The heroine knows he didn’t do it because she was intimately involved with him at the time, but she doesn’t stand up for him because if the town knows she’s with him, they’ll think less of her for it. Couldn’t possibly think any less of her than I did when I put the book down!
3. A Lady and Her Magic by Tammy Falkner: In this story, the author flat-out lies — repeatedly, and in violation of every known rule of third person viewpoint and particularly third person limited omniscient point of view. The main character killed his wife. It said so in the first sentence (which initially had me hooked), and again a dozen more times. The prose wasn’t wishy-washy. It used those exact words. Later, we discover that he “may as well have killed her.” Okay…then I may as well put this down!
2. Bonded by Nicky Charles: In this not-so captivating story, the main character reads a textbook to the reader, all the while thinking how boring it is. I mean this literally. The reader is presented with long passages of the aforementioned textbook, italicized. Interspersed with the passages of textbook are the main character’s disgust at being forced to read the textbook. Ouch!
1. Eternal Eden by Nicole Williams: In this melodramatic put-down moment, the heroine throws herself into the ocean because the man she has fallen desperately in love with (and known for a week and a half) has left her. Or so she thinks. Ahhh, wuv. Twue Wuv.