The Spooky Side of Romance

All right, on to number two! (if you're wondering we I am right now... and I know you are ;), sitting in Dulles airport waiting to board the flight to San Fran on the way to... yes, you know it... Australia :)) Sorry to digress, number 2 was another Lauren Willig recommendation, Gail Carriger's Soulless.  It was actually on my Books to Read list for a while but kind of low down there, but it was recommended by a number of people (on Lauren Willig's website) as a great intro. to supernatural romance.  Now I have no interest in the supernatural element of supernatural romance, but if it's the number one supernatural romance... I expect it to be up there on the list in general :)  So definitely worth giving a whirl...

I pretty much figured I would just ignore the whole werewolf/vampire thing the way I ignore most subplots in chic lit/romance that are just uninteresting to me... because of course the main point of the book is the romance, right? But that actually was not the case here... there was just all this stuff about vampires and werewolves and ghosts and "preternaturals" which are Gail Carriger's thing - people born without a soul, like our heroine... and there was this complicated world which was pretty cute - the book was very humorous in general... but the truth is, I don't have much of a tolerance for that type of thing (I make an exception for twilight... Edward is too cool :))

And besides... Lord Maccon, hero/head werewolf, is obviously awesome... but he's not *totally* awesome - not you know one of these people who just has total control all the time, kind of new to the scene and not always the smoothest operator... which bothered me a little.  But only in the beginning, because she revs up on his awesomeness and takes down his awkwardness a notch as the book progresses.... and the romance picks up as well, so that was pretty good.  And, as in many cases, I got used to the book and the werewolf/vampire stuff got less annoying... and I kind of like the scientific bend she brings to the whole thing - I always like sciency bents (man, I am a *nerd* :)) And I think the annoyance wore off pretty quickly, and the cuteness picked up.  So I ended up enjoying it quite a lot...

That being said, it's really a traditional romance, and those are never as good as the chic lit type (not going to go into why, but that's the case).... so I'm not going to laud this book to the skies, but I *am* going to read the sequel - and that's *even* though the romance is done, because there was a nice wedding at the end of this book (spoiling? hardly.... :))

So verdict: 3.5/5
Food... argle, bargle, this is getting hard... well s/t I like... but s/t w/ elements of something I *don't* like... like when I didn't used to like raisins, oatmeal raisin cookies (and I know it's cheating to use a food that I *do* like now... but what can I say, I'm pickier with books than with food :))