The place: Bayfield, WisconsinThe plot: Coast Guard something-something* Tracie's partner, Trevor, was murdered six weeks ago. She has a new partner, an undercover FBI agent named Heath, who is tasked with investigating the diamond-smuggling ring Trevor was involved in ( Read more... )

So I'm working on A Nanny Under the Mistletoe here in 87-degree bumfuck Virginia on my week off. As you might have deduced from the title, it's another soppy paean to men who sleep with the help. Or, in this case, a bachelor billionaire (another one?!) who becomes the legal guardian of his best friend's five-year-old when said best friend and best ( Read more... )

It's finally over. He proposed. By saying "Will you marry us?" meaning him and his kids. Which...ew. They chastely made out in front of her family and his friends. The kid with the imaginary geese spilled pudding all over her. And this hulking, suppurating pustule of a manuscript finally came to a close with this nauseating line:

Their embrace ( Read more... )

Now she's hallucinating that Jesus is standing behind her.

Until she felt two sets of hands come to rest on her shoulders. She looked up. Aaron. Of course. She looked on her other side. No one.

That's it. She was definitely losing it. She felt pressure of hands resting on her shoulder, infusing her with strength to stay and stick this meeting out and ( Read more... )

So the little girl is not dead. She's just paralyzed. Which I guess makes Nanny Oops My Bad the Christian romance novel equivalent of Leif Garrett, but not quite as bad as Vince Neil. Ooh, maybe they should get their own Rock of Love buses! But now the kid is 17 and wants to meet Sarah and, I don't know, yell at her for being an asshole ten years ( Read more... )

I'm in the home stretch, and I'm getting lazy. Characters are referring to things that other people have never said out loud ("We're going to start praying that God sets you right in your perception. And frees you from this prison of fear and vows of sentencing yourself to never be a mother. Thinking you don't deserve children or if you have them, ( Read more... )

Because they're looking for a GUINEA PIG. Get your minds out of the gutter, filthy heathens.

So lately (like, for the last 80 pages or so), the stereotypical Hispanic housekeeper has been saying "oy" a lot. Because Yiddish and Spanish are the same thing, apparently. I just wish the author would take it a little farther. Roommate suggests "This is ( Read more... )

And everyone in this book is just that stupid. Like, they are too stupid to watch American sitcoms and get all the jokes.

So. Remember the hilarious scene in Cheaper by the Dozen where Steve Martin has all his football players over at the house because he has no child care for his litter of children, and of course the children are homicidal maniacs ( Read more... )

The Love Inspired books, in addition to their embrace of arcane gender roles and Puritanical prudery, have a certain set of rules when it comes to the Almighty. I believe we've already discussed that God doesn't talk. But it's also a good idea to avoid making Jesus sound like Karnak the Magnificent.

She nodded and crunched into a carrot stick. ( Read more... )

Getting back to the ironclad Love Inspired guidelines, we remember that male and female characters aren't allowed to be in the same house alone together without a chaperone overnight. Not the same room, or the same bed. The same HOUSE. And apparently, three-year-olds don't count as chaperones (although I bet most parents will tell you they are ( Read more... )