Kathy Love's Ugly Stepp Sisters
Getting What You Want (Abby/Chase), Wanting What You Get (Ellie/Mason), Wanting Something More (Marty/Nathaniel)
My sister's best friend has gotten into romance novels as well, which is nice for me because she also buys obsessively and was buying big lots of books, so she has a good mix of authors, not just ones I've read. That's how I found Kathy Love's trilogy. These are older books of hers. Looking at her website, she's gone the way of vampire novels now. I liked these books but didn't love them. They were fairly well written, the characters were interesting and believable and the situations were ok. The basic premise is 3 sisters lost their parents and moved to a small town with a grandmother. They didn't fit in at school and were called the "Ugly Stepp Sisters." Kids are mean, growing up is tough and they both leave scars, which leaves a pretty good set up for a series of stories. Love tackles a big issue in each book and does it pretty well; better than I've read anywhere lately.
I read them out of order, starting with the third, but I'll review them in the correct order.
Getting What You Want (Abby/Chase): Abby was their high school valedictorian with big glasses and a huge crush on the class bad boy. (That part seems pretty lame, but I buy it. Sometimes fantasy is all you have) She leaves town ASAP and doesn't come back until years later when she comes to work on a research project at a lab there. She stays with the middle sister Ellie, who never left town and is the librarian. Former bad boy crush Chase is a well-respected carpenter who has moved into and fixed up the house across the street from the sisters' family home. He and Ellie share some sort of mysterious friendship, which turns out to be a fairly well-written case of severe dyslexia and how it can really affect one's self-image and self-esteem. Otherwise it's pretty typical romance fare. He thinks she's stuck up until he understands how horrible it must have been to be called an Ugly Stepsister. He thinks she should give the town another try because kids grow up, which is true. The transformation there is believable. Abby and Chase want to be just friends, but of course can't pull it off. The sexual tension is pretty hot, but Love isn't very explicit or crude. I like explicit and crude (sometimes), but it wouldn't work here. It's odd, but I liked it, that she describes the heroine's breasts as (paraphrased - I don't have the book in front of me) big and saggy with bullet-shaped nipples. Just like some women's breasts are. Not everyone's breasts are high and firm with raspberry nipples. There were a lot of touches in the book that made it a little better than the average romance novel. Even the Evil Queen (Summer-Ann) wasn't completely written off.
It ended well enough for me to want to read the next one, which I did.
My sister's best friend has gotten into romance novels as well, which is nice for me because she also buys obsessively and was buying big lots of books, so she has a good mix of authors, not just ones I've read. That's how I found Kathy Love's trilogy. These are older books of hers. Looking at her website, she's gone the way of vampire novels now. I liked these books but didn't love them. They were fairly well written, the characters were interesting and believable and the situations were ok. The basic premise is 3 sisters lost their parents and moved to a small town with a grandmother. They didn't fit in at school and were called the "Ugly Stepp Sisters." Kids are mean, growing up is tough and they both leave scars, which leaves a pretty good set up for a series of stories. Love tackles a big issue in each book and does it pretty well; better than I've read anywhere lately.
I read them out of order, starting with the third, but I'll review them in the correct order.
Getting What You Want (Abby/Chase): Abby was their high school valedictorian with big glasses and a huge crush on the class bad boy. (That part seems pretty lame, but I buy it. Sometimes fantasy is all you have) She leaves town ASAP and doesn't come back until years later when she comes to work on a research project at a lab there. She stays with the middle sister Ellie, who never left town and is the librarian. Former bad boy crush Chase is a well-respected carpenter who has moved into and fixed up the house across the street from the sisters' family home. He and Ellie share some sort of mysterious friendship, which turns out to be a fairly well-written case of severe dyslexia and how it can really affect one's self-image and self-esteem. Otherwise it's pretty typical romance fare. He thinks she's stuck up until he understands how horrible it must have been to be called an Ugly Stepsister. He thinks she should give the town another try because kids grow up, which is true. The transformation there is believable. Abby and Chase want to be just friends, but of course can't pull it off. The sexual tension is pretty hot, but Love isn't very explicit or crude. I like explicit and crude (sometimes), but it wouldn't work here. It's odd, but I liked it, that she describes the heroine's breasts as (paraphrased - I don't have the book in front of me) big and saggy with bullet-shaped nipples. Just like some women's breasts are. Not everyone's breasts are high and firm with raspberry nipples. There were a lot of touches in the book that made it a little better than the average romance novel. Even the Evil Queen (Summer-Ann) wasn't completely written off.
It ended well enough for me to want to read the next one, which I did.