Tuesday, November 14, 2006

I'm In No Mood For Love - Rachel Gibson

Well Hello, Lovelies! This review is for Lucy. She's already read the book, so it should be interesting to see how different our takes are. I had meant to do this review last night, instead I spent the evening in the hospital and then church for Miss Beautiful's School Fall Program. Then, since I had a full day of taking it easy planned, a friend called me this morning with an emergency and needed me to take care of her baby girl. Glutton for punishment? Who, me? So, I've spent today babysitting and crying. Pain sucks, and I blame it all on old age. I still have a ton more books to review and several more in my TBR pile. That TBR pile keeps growing. I think for every book I read, I buy two more. And since it's Tuesday (and new books come out on Tuesday) and I have to go to Wally World to get a prescription filled, then I'm sure there will be at least one more new addition to the pile. It's NaNo still, and Dee is pluggin away at it, so go give her some luv will ya? Also, don't forget this months contest, Veterans and Rookies . You can click over to that post and leave your entry in the comments, or e-mail them to deeanddeedish@sbcglobal.net . And now, without further ado...

I'm In No Mood For Love by Rachel Gibson
BCC

Bridesmaid Gone Wild

What is Clare Wingate doing? One minute she's suffering in a pretty-in-pink gown she'll never wear again, and the next thing she knows it's morning...and she has the nastiest hangover of her life.

To make matters worse, she's wearing nothing but a spritz of Escada and lying next to Sebastian Vaughan...her girlhood crush turned sexy, globe-hopping journalist. Somewhere between the toast and the toss of the boquet she'd gotten herself into a whole lot of trouble.

Clare had the right to go wild-after all, she'd been knocked off her dyed-to-match shoes after finding her own fiance in a compromising position with the washing machine repairman Clearly her society wedding is off.

But Sebastian pushed all the wrong buttons- and some of the right ones, too. Clare is in no mood for love-not even for lust-and wants to forget about Sebastian and his six-pack abs ASAP. But he isn't in the mood to go away, and his kiss is impossible to forget.

I actually read this BCC before I bought the book. I liked the cover, but something kept causing me to pick it up and then put it back. Finally, I read the BCC and thought, why not? So, I did, all in all, like this BCC. That was before I read the book. Now it's just okay. It is a tad misleading. The last paragraph of it made me expect Sebastian of pursuing Clare for a relationship and perusing her hard, but that wasn't technically the case.

I had read Gibson's Sex, Lies, and Online Dating , and hated it. Okay, okay, hate is a rather strong word choice, I was just really, really, really unimpressed. But, since this isn't a review of that particular book, I'll cut to the chase - No Mood is book two in a some-what series, and if I would have been paying attention to the fact that this was the same author that penned SLAOD I probably would have missed out on a decent read, since I would have immediately put it back.

Just as the BCC says, Clare comes home from her friend Lucy's wedding and finds her fiance getting down and dirty with the repairman. Horrified, Lucy rushes back to the reception and drowns her sorrows with chamagne and then gin and tonics. Again. This isn't the first time Clare has known heartache and this isn't the first time she drowned that sorrow with booze. It's the second. And just like that first time, Clare wakes up the next morning not alone.

Only this time, the man Clare wakes up to, is none other than her childhood crush and tormenter, Sebastian. Sebastian's dad has worked for Clare's mother for the better part of 30 years, but the relationship between father and son has been basically non-existent. After losing his mother, Sebastian takes a trip to visit his father, and is shocked to find Clare, awkward and gangly as a child, all grown up and incredibly sexy.

I did enjoy this book. I liked that, to me, it felt way more like Sebastian's story than Clare's. I didn't feel Clare changed that much throughout the story, and while that's okay, I need to see growth in the characters, and I just didn't feel it that much with Clare. But, Sebastian was a whole other story. The man underwent some serious internal changes and they were all for the better. I bonded with Seb (no need for me to continue to use his full name, we are tight) and I cheered for him when his life seemed to click into place.

I'm still not a fan of Gibson's writing style. It feels choppy and forced in many places. But as, Kara Lennox says in this Romancing the Blog post , it's not so much great writing that gets a story sold, but a great idea. Like Lucy, I liked that Gibson incorporated AIDS and the scary possibility of the disease, into her story. This isn't touched upon in a lot of novels. Usually, the use of a condom in a Romance is for birth-control, and I have from time to time thought, I cannot believe you just FORGOT to use a condom and your first concern is OMG, am I preggers? You don't know where that thing has BEEN! It is ideas like this that make for a great story idea.

All in all, No Mood was an easy read. A hit, where it's companion SLAOLD was a miss. I'll give the next story a chance.

Take Care



6 comments:

dee said...

Ok, I have a confession to make. When I saw that you were going to review this book, I let out a collective sigh, because that meant that *I* didn't have to review it. You're just so much nicer than I am, and I'm glad that you did the job here.
Actually, I liked SLAOD much better than this one. Now, it's been a month or so since I've read this one, but I remember not liking the way it was resolved at all. I even had a discussion about this book with Shane. I don't know how many of you talk your your men about the romances you read, but I don't do it often. I jest read too many of the darn things. SO for me to mention a book to him, it has to either be amazing or really piss me off in some way. This one pissed me off. Now I'm going to have to re-read it and try to figure out why.

Chari-Dee said...

I haven't read this book for about a month either, notice no quotes? I won't re-read it either. It was worth the time spent reading once, but not again.

A couple reasons why SLAOLD left me cold.

1 - Gibson tried and failed miserably to add a bit of mystery.

2 - The way the detective talked during the sex? HELLO!!!!! Oh, she's letting me suck her nipple so I better blurt out "I'll help you."

I know I said couple, but one more - Gibson's writing is very stilted. Short sentences that do not flow well.

The reason I preferred this one to SLAOLD is because this was just fluff. Plain and simple. Clare was still TDTL at the end, but I liked Sebastian and that counts.

Now, if Blogger will let me onto my Dashboard, I'll be typing up a review for "Santa Baby"

dee said...

Yay! "Hot Toy" is gonna be next, isn't it? Oooh, I can hardly wait. When you do that review, let me know. I may just have to pop into that one and add my own comments in GREEN or something.
Do you think our readers would mind having a review that we both participated in?

Chari-Dee said...

I don't think they'd mind at all. Probably be easier than tracing our banter through the comments.

My mouse is acting screwy, so and I'm fixin to do a whole lot of baking with the kids, so it will be tonight or tomorrow before it gets posted. You know, family first. Plus, I'm reading "Billinaires Prefer Blondes" and I don't want to stop. Oh man, I have a hard life ;)

dee said...

Lucy,
I remember that scene, and remember asking myself the same question. I don't know the answer to that. Maybe one of these days, she'll come here and tell us. Or maybe not.

Thanks for the kind words to Char. I agree, I think it ups her cred when she's honest. We've had veeeerrrrry long discussions about doing reviews for books that we really don't like, and we both decided to do them. However, we do have some rules that we try to follow. While we will ALWAYS be honest, we will NEVER be cruel. Since we both write, we know how much heart goes into each and every book. Just the fact that we are reading a published book says that somebody thought it was good enough to be published (something that we are both looking forward to some day). Also, we try to stress the specific things about a book that we don't care for, instead of just trashing a book in general.

Thanks for your positive comments though. It really is nice to know that there are people out there that actually read these reviews.

dee said...

Oh yeah, I wanted to add something...

Lucy, Charity actually liked this book. It was the other RG book, Sex, Lies, and Online Dating that Char didn't like. Which, to me, is funny, because I liked that one better than this one.