In case anybody still reads my blog....

Yes, I'm still alive. And reading... but I'm pretty behind on all the latest books. I just have not felt like blogging for a long time. I do visit other blogs though. I read about KristieJ's horrendous accident and have been truly amazed at her recovery and all the changes she is making in her health for the better. What an amazing person. I also try to keep up with a few others too with google reader but I get so behind I mark everything as read.

Thanks to the few who have stopped by and left comments. I have read them but can't stir up any energy to reply. For a while there I was tempted to delete my blog and just slink away. But I changed my mind, so here I be.

I have read 133 books so far this year which beats my reading for 2009 and 2007. I don't think I can come up with a coherent book review yet, but I may give it a shot later.

On the personal front, my dear daughter recently announced that she is pregnant! Whoa... that means I'm going to be a grandmother. Yikes! Ok, if anyone calls me granny their ass is grass. But I am looking forward to it, but it doesn't seem real yet.

I am still working on my Intermediate Programmer certificate but I'm only taking one programming class this quarter (C++ language). And I'm still looking for work.

One last thing... I submitted my Top 100 romances poll to AAR. Hope everyone else did too. I'll post it tomorrow so you can look it over.

REVIEW: Smooth Talking Stranger by Lisa Kleypas

COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 352
SETTING: Contemporary
TYPE: Straight Romance
SENSUALITY: Hot
REASON FOR READING: Loved the previous two books, Sugar Daddy and Blue-Eyed Devil, and hey, it's Lisa Kleypas, what other reason do you need?

SUMMARY: 

Ella Varner has it all--a successful career as an advice columnist, a handsome boyfriend, and a circle of friends in Austin. When anyone has a problem, Ella knows the answers.

But one night she receives a call that changes everything. And as Ella's world is turned upside-down, she meets a man who is the opposite of everything she ever wanted . . . a man who will offer her the most irresistible challenge she has ever known . . .

THOUGHTS/OPINIONS:
I'm a huge fan of Lisa Kleypas and am thoroughly enjoying this series. At first I was reluctant to try these contemporaries because I have enjoyed so many of her historicals but I shouldn't have worried. Her writing seems to get better and better as the years roll by.

Kleypas' heroes are to die for and Jack Travis is no exception. I think I'm in love! Wow, seriously. Have you ever wanted to jump into the pages of a book and BE the heroine? Ella Varner is an OK heroine but I'm not too fond of heroines who are basically doormats. She lets her mother, sister, and boyfriend walk all over her but she had a difficult childhood and some people may find her behavior understandable but I was just a wee bit irritated with her. And don't get me started on the sister. But Ella does surprisingly confront Jack (who she believes is the father of the baby) which redeemed her a tad bit in my mind. I'm glad this book was written first person POV so I knew what Ella was going through and I did have a certain amount of sympathy for her. I just wanted to smack the self-centered sister upside the head.

This should have been an A read but I disliked the sister so much and was disappointed that she never got what she deserved so I settled on a slightly lower grade. This is a very worthwhile read, just for Jack Travis alone.

GRADE: B+

New Anne Stuart Trilogy

Some of you may know I'm a huge Anne Stuart fan (Cindy - I'm talking to you - where are you girl?). Anyway, I was cruising on over to Ms. Stuart's website and discovered she has a new trilogy coming out with the first book set to release August 1. Woohoo!

Yeah, I know, most of you already know this, but with school and all I have missed the newest developments in the romance book world.

Another cool thing is that a FREE e-book prequel titled The Wicked House of Rohan is available for download from eHarlequin starting July 1 (yesterday).  Another woohoo!






The books all have lovely covers with the first book titled Ruthless. Here they are:

I can hardly wait!

Spring Reading

School's out! Well, spring quarter is done anyway. I learned a whole bunch about SQL and C# object oriented programming and had a blast. I especially loved the C# programming. Now I'm looking for a job. Wish me luck.  I have a couple more classes left to earn my Application Developer certificate but I'm going to try to take them online or in the evening.

So you may be wondering if I had time to read... Of course!  I ended up reading almost exclusively from my TBR.  It's quite a mixture of genres.  All romances except one - The Art of Racing in the Rain.  If you are a dog lover, I highly recommend it.

04/05/10	Because You're Mine	Kleypas, Lisa	C	TBR
04/09/10	The Legacy	Bennett, T. J.	A
04/14/10	Brazen	Johnson, Susan	B	TBR
04/18/10	Midnight Angel	Kleypas, Lisa	C	TBR
04/20/10	To Trust a Stranger	Robards, Karen	C
04/23/10	Tempting Kate	Simmons, Deborah	B+	TBR
04/28/10	The Devil Earl	Simmons, Deborah	B-	TBR
05/06/10	Star Bright	Anderson, Catherine	B-	TBR
05/09/10	Branded by Fire	Singh, Nalini	B+	TBR
05/11/10	Miss Billings Treads the Boards	Kelly, Carla	B	TBR
05/13/10	Miss Whittier Makes a List	Kelly, Carla	A	TBR
05/18/10	Butterfly Tattoo	Knight, Deidre	B+
05/21/10	Savor the Moment	Roberts, Nora	B	TBR
05/23/10	The Art of Racing in the Rain	Stein, Garth	B+	TBR
05/26/10	Miss Grimsley's Oxford Career	Kelly, Carla	B	TBR
05/27/10	Fortune Hunter	Simmons, Deborah	DNF	TBR
05/30/10	The Last Rogue	Simmons, Deborah	C	TBR
06/03/10	The Courtesan	Justiss, Julia	B	TBR
06/04/10	Isabella	Chase, Loretta	C+	TBR
06/05/10	The English Witch	Chase, Loretta	B	TBR
06/07/10	The Rainbow Promise	Gregory, Lisa	B	TBR
06/10/10	Lord of the Night	Wiggs, Susan	B	TBR
06/15/10	A Scandalous Proposal	Justiss, Julia	C	TBR
06/16/10	My Lady's Pleasure	Justiss, Julia	C	TBR
06/16/10	Seduce Me at Sunrise	Kleypas, Lisa	B

REVIEW: The Next Best Thing by Kristan Higgins

COPYRIGHT: 2010
PAGES: 393
SETTING: Contemporary
TYPE: Straight Romance
SENSUALITY: Warm
REASON FOR READING: I enjoyed my first book by Higgins - Just One of the Guys

SUMMARY:

Lucy Lang isn't looking for fireworks.
She's looking for a nice, decent man. Someone who'll mow the lawn, flip chicken on the barbecue, teach their future children to play soccer. But most important: someone who won't inspire the slightest stirring in her heart…or anywhere else. A young widow, Lucy can't risk that kind of loss again. But sharing her life with a cat named Fat Mikey and the Black Widows at the family bakery isn't enough either. So it's goodbye to Ethan, her hot but entirely inappropriate "friend with privileges" and hello to a man she can marry.
Too bad Ethan Mirabelli isn't going anywhere. As far as he's concerned, what she needs might be right under her nose. But can he convince her that the next best thing can really be forever?

THOUGHTS/OPINIONS:
Lucy had only been married 8 months when she lost her husband in a tragic car accident. This happened over 5 years ago and she still has not gotten over it, to put it mildly. In fact, in my opinion the girl could use some serious grief counseling. But as the story begins her sister has just had a baby and that starts her thinking and she has convinced herself she is ready to move on - she wants to meet someone and start her own family. Ethan is her dead husband's brother and has been a rock of support for her for the last 5 years. And with whom she enjoys "friends with benefits". This news was a bit of a shocker to me even though I had read it in the blurb. It's had to imagine women (and men) who actually think this is a good idea.

The story is told in a first person narrative and has the usual disadvantage of never knowing what Ethan is thinking or feeling. Lucy is one messed up person who seems to spend too much time playing the video of her wedding and crying. Normally I would be totally irritated with this type of heroine but I found myself very sympathetic towards her. Lucy works in the family-owned bakery with her mother and two aunts (called the Black Widows) who were also widowed at a fairly young age. These women seem to be content in their widowhood and cannot understand why Lucy wants to marry again. Why take the risk since all the men in the family die young. This is why I was so sympathetic of Lucy - working with these three was not a healthy situation. But there was lots of humor and some touching moments in this book which really balanced out the sadness. I cried along with Lucy and laughed too. But sometimes I wanted to shake her in her treatment of Ethan who was a wonderful guy.

The characterizations of the widows and Lucy's sister were well drawn. The sister is deathly afraid her husband will die young too like her mother, sister and aunt's husbands and has become quite neurotic. Just when I was starting to lose patience with Lucy she makes an amazing discovery about Ethan and my heart just melts. I loved the ending. I couldn't make up my mind on the grade for the longest time. But it's still so memorable after a couple months that I had to rate it pretty high.

GRADE: A-

Blogger Template Design

Blogger has a new feature available to let you design your own template and it's pretty cool. You access it through Blogger in Draft. Just go to this link and to get all the details and some hints. There is even a quick little video that shows you how it works (although it goes by rather quickly). Blogger in Draft is used by Blogger to release beta features that may be buggy but lets users try out new features they are working on. Eventually they incorporate the features into the regular Blogger but all Blogger users have access to Blogger in Draft.

Anyway, I created this cute jelly bean template pretty quickly. The advantage of this template designer is that you don't have to copy all of your gadgets to a text file and then incorporate them into a new template whenever you feel like changing to a new template. Go check it out.

REVIEW: The Fire King by Marjorie M. Liu

COPYRIGHT: 2009
PAGES: 309
SETTING: Contemporary China and Mongolia
TYPE: Paranormal Romance
SENSUALITY: Warm
SERIES: Dirk & Steele (book 9)

SUMMARY:

Long ago, shape-shifters were plentiful, soaring through the sky as crows, racing across African veldts as cheetahs, raging furious as dragons atop the Himalayas. Like gods, they reigned supreme. But even gods have laws, and those laws, when broken, destroy.

Zoufalstvi. Epatoivo. Asa. Three words in three very different languages, and yet Soria understands. Like all members of Dirk & Steele, she has a gift, and hers is communication: That was why she was chosen to address the stranger. Strong as a lion, quick as a serpent, Karr is his name, and in his day he was king. But he is a son of strife, a creature of tragedy. As fire consumed all he loved, so an icy sleep has been his atonement. Now, against his will, he has awoken. Zoufalstvi. Epatoivo. Asa. In English, the word is despair. But Soria knows the words for love.

THOUGHTS/OPINIONS:
I don't read a lot of paranormals but Marjorie Liu's Dirk & Steele series is one I have been faithfully reading since the first book, Tiger Eye, and I have enjoyed almost every one. They have all been solid action-packed stories with some great characters. But my main complaint for every one of these books is that there is so much action that at times I had a hard time figuring out what the heck is going on and had to reread pages. But I have to say that I had no such problem with The Fire King. TFK is still filled with action but I found it very smooth flowing and readable. The book just sucks you into the story and you can hardly wait to turn each page.

The Dirk & Steele agency is a group of shapeshifters and people with special gifts who banded together to fight an evil organization (The Consortium) which is described in previous books in the series. But thankfully, TFK works just fine as a standalone read, so you don't have to read any of the other books in the series to understand the storyline.

Karr is a 3000 year old chimera who was just dug out of a cave somewhere in China. A chimera is a creature whose parents are both different types of shapeshifters. Chimeras had been hunted to extinction because they were greatly feared. Karr is tied up and held prisoner and no one can understand him because his language is now extinct. Soria has a gift for languages, in fact she can understand any language in the world by using some kind of psychic connection. Soria's past involves a horrific major trauma from a betrayal and she is still somewhat fragile. She has separated herself from all her friends and family but D&S needs her help with Karr to translate his extinct language and discover why he survived for 3000 years. Karr and Soria are two incredible well-formed characters and Liu makes you feel their isolation and loneliness. Soria was especially well done. I really felt her sense of betrayal, pain, and fear. Yet I marveled at how tough she was and appreciated her sharp tongue. I think she is probably one of my favorite heroines of the year.

Another plus was the unusual setting of China and Mongolia. Can't say I have ever read any book with this setting. And the characters from the tribe of nomads (including a foreign exchange student) and shapeshifters that have appeared in previous books in the series were all very well developed. The sexual tension was marvelous and this is where Karr really shines with how he falls for Soria and doesn't see her "flaws". There was only one short (but warm) sex scene which had me wishing for more. But Liu never puts many sex scenes in her books unfortunately.

All in all an enjoyable read. TFK kept my interest from first page to last and I think it's the best one in the series.

GRADE: B+

Blogging Mojo Found

I seem to have lost my blogging mojo lately. I'm on break from school so I thought I would drop by my blog and write something about what's going on in my life.

Last quarter I took a couple of programming courses and one of them was web programming so I learned HTML, CSS and Javascript. Very cool! It will come in handy if I want to make changes to my blog template. Bob has a website for his company and wants me to make some updates and changes. I'm not sure how that will work out but I can do some simple stuff. Anyway I'll have some good skills to add to my resume.

I have read 35 books this year and had 5 DNF. I have also stopped buying new books because I just am sick of looking at the old books in my TBR. There are about 60 and I'm determined to either read them or trade them. And then use go shopping for some new books I want. I thought I would have a hard time with this but I've been too busy to shop for books anyway so it's not too bad. I'm behind on all the latest books and have done little blogging.

I've been on a Susan Elizabeth Phillips binge lately. I discovered that my library has most of her books on CD so I have been checking them out from the library and listening to them in the car while I go to and from school. Most of them are read by Anna Fields who is a wonderful reader. Six of the eight I read have been re-reads. The lowest grade went to her latest, What I Did For Love, which did not impress me. I didn't like either the hero or heroine much. Here is a snapshot of the results from my reading log:

01/01/10	Dream a Little Dream	Phillips, Susan Elizabeth	B+	reread
01/07/10	Nobody's Baby But Mine	Phillips, Susan Elizabeth	A	reread
01/26/10	Honey Moon	Phillips, Susan Elizabeth	A
02/07/10	Match Me If You Can	Phillips, Susan Elizabeth	A	reread
02/15/10	It Had to Be You	Phillips, Susan Elizabeth	A	reread
02/24/10	What I Did For Love	Phillips, Susan Elizabeth	B-
03/11/10	Kiss an Angel	Phillips, Susan Elizabeth	A	reread
03/25/10	This Heart of Mine	Phillips, Susan Elizabeth	B+	reread

I miss visiting my favorite blogs so I hope to do some blog hopping before I have to start back to school on April 4. Later.

Look what I got in the mail!

North & South DVD from SwapADVD.com... Woohoo!

I put this title on my wishlist months ago and forgot about it, figuring I'd never get it and would probably just go buy it online somewhere. But I never got around to it. So it just showed up in the mail one day! I had it on auto request so you don't have to confirm it. For those of you on PaperbackSwap, you can use your PBS points for SwapADVD (and SwapACD). Way cool.

Anyway, who wants to come over and watch it with me? Oh, drat, y'all live so far away. Too bad, so sad :)

Resolutions

I don't make resolutions normally but if I do, I make them small and totally do-able. So my resolution was to step on the scale. That's it. I hate stepping on the scale but on Monday I took the plunge and what a fright I got! That number was way too large. So I immediately started on the Weight Watchers program online. Which wasn't easy considering I still have candy and cookies left over from the holidays hanging around the house. So about day 2 of the plan I get this massive sugar withdrawal headache. I have no exact goals as to how much weight I want to lose. I just need to get my eating under control. No sugar! Smaller portions. Few carbs. More vegetables and fruit. I've done well so far but I'm not stepping on the scale yet. Headache is gone and I'm on my way.

Another sort of resolution is to be a better blogger. What that will entail, I have yet to work out but it will be something not too grand. Maybe just show up here once a week. Writing reviews has gotten to be a struggle because I put a lot into them. I hesitate to do any challenges because I suck at it. I only posted 4 times for Keishon's TBR Challenge, but it could have been worse. I also want to do Nath's Re-read Challenge. I think what I may have to do is write mini-reviews rather than the epic's I tend to write. With school and all it's just too hard to do much review writing but not impossible. School started Monday and I already had 1 assignment and 1 quiz. Got perfect scores - you see how obsessive I am about school. Anyway, there's no reason I can't squeeze in a review some time.

Recap - 2009 Reading Log

KristieJ inspired me to post a recap of my 2009 reading. It turns out I read 125 books this year, the least amount since I started keeping a reading log in 2002. This sort of surprised me since I have been unemployed this year, but looks like I spent more time job searching and attending school than reading. Go figure.

Here's how it breaks down by date published:

2009: 37
2008: 25
2007: 8
2006: 5
All the rest: 75 (ranging from 1982 - 2005)



58 out of 125 were from my TBR pile. The rest were newly bought and immediately read (I don't count these toward my TBR) or were library books. I don't buy hardback so I must get them from the library.

I don't have patience with books I hate so I mark them as DNF. One surprise: I really disliked Beth Kery's Wicked Burn which lots of bloggers loved. I love erotic romance but this one did nothing for me. Not sure I'll try her again.

My favorite 2009 books were all historical romances:
The Madness of Ian MacKenzie by Jennifer Ashley
Not Quite a Husband by Sherry Thomas
To Beguile a Beast by Elizabeth Hoyt

I start back to school tomorrow for Winter Quarter and it's going to be hard to keep up with my blog and reading. I'll try to keep you posted.

iPod Touch 8GB

Yup, got one for Christmas. I asked for the much simpler iPod Nano, but Bob got me the more expensive iPod Touch. It's very pretty and shiny and I have been spending hours figuring out how to use it. You can download and read Kindle ebooks with it but I haven't tried it yet. I'm not really an ebook reader. It's not as easy to use as I thought it would be. I really wanted it to download music.

I hope everyone had a great holiday season.

Happy New Year too!

December Reads

Here's my December 2009 reads.

Quite a few of these were in my TBR a long time. The Anne Stuart was a disappointment with a horribly cruel hero and a heroine with amnesia. But it was written in 1995 so I'll forgive her. I like her new stuff way better.

Date	Book Cover	Title	Author	Grade
12/3/2009		Wicked	Susan Johnson	B
12/6/2009		To Catch a Bride	Anne Gracie	B+
12/9/2009		Winter's Edge	Anne Stuart	D-
12/10/2009		Tempt Me At Twilight	Lisa Kleypas	B
12/12/2009		Captive of Sin	Anna Campbell	B-
12/16/2009		Demon Forged	Meljean Brook	B+
12/18/2009		Promises in Death	J. D. Robb	B
12/19/2009		Beyond a Shadow	Alison Kent	C
12/22/2009		Forbidden Magic	Jo Beverley	B-
12/25/2009		Burn	Linda Howard	B
12/27/2009		Stolen Heat	Elizabeth Naughton	B-
12/29/2009		Home For Christmas	Patricia Potter	B+

TBR Challenge: REVIEW: A Gentle Rain by Deborah Smith

COPYRIGHT: 2007
PAGES: 360
SETTING/TYPE: Contemporary Romance
SENSUALITY: Subtle
REASON FOR READING: I got lucky and won this book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program. Since I'm a huge fan of DS, I was thrilled.

SUMMARY: from Deborah Smith's webite

A Connecticut heiress. A Florida cowboy.

Her secret. His heart.

And the very special family she's come home to find.

THOUGHTS/OPINIONS:

A Gentle Rain is another heartwarming engaging story that I have come to expect from Deborah Smith.

Kara Whittenbrook is the daughter of two wealthy award-winning environmentalist parents who have recently died when their plane crashes in the Amazon jungle leaving her an heiress. While sorting through her parent's papers she is shocked to discover her adoption papers. So she confronts her uncle to find out how and why her parents adopted a child. He explains that her adopted parents wanted to tell her but they died before they felt she was secure in herself enough to handle the news. He also told her that her biological parents are mentally disabled and live on a ranch in Northern Florida.

Kara decides she wants to meet them but she is unsure of her welcome so she sets out for Florida as "Karen Johnson", an artist and harp player. The ranch is run by Ben Thocco and her biological parents, Mac and Lily, work for him. Mac was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and Lily was severely shaken as a baby. They have never mentioned having a child and Ben does not know about Kara. Ben's brother, Joey, has Downs Syndrome and a very bad heart and his prognosis is not good. Ben is a wonderfully kind man who has a lot on his shoulders . He is struggling to hold onto the ranch, take care of Joey, and employ other mentally handicapped adults besides Mac and Lily as ranch hands.

Circumstances bring Kara into life on the ranch and Mac and Lily are very drawn to her. She quickly finds herself a part of life on the ranch, cooking and cleaning and getting to know her birth parents . She and Ben are very attracted to each other but Ben feels there is more to Kara than she is revealing. Kara is unsure whether she should reveal herself to her parents but she eventually falls in love with them ... and Ben too. She can't resist secretly fixing some of the financial problems Ben faces with her vast fortune.

This heartwarming story is filled with gentle humor and sweet, endearing characters. The writing alternates between Kara's and Ben's point of view and works wonderfully well. The love between Ben and Kara develops slowly and you will fall in love with them and the special characters just as I did. Deborah Smith is an amazing author and it's too bad more people don't know about her. This is a very special book and I highly recommend.

GRADE: B+

New template (again)

Okay, here we go again. I couldn't fix the old template (which I loved) after checking with the site where I got it. Seems like there were lots of other people having the same problem (background image link broken).

So I spent an hour (it gets faster the more often I do this) and voila... here it is. Well, it's still fall, isnt' it? I found a winter template with snow but that was pushing it and it was depressing me. I hate winter and I'm not that fond of snow. In a month I'll probably change over to a Christmas theme (maybe). Sorry for the continually updating template. It gets confusing to all you bloggers to see something different everytime you visit. I will be tweaking it some since I think some of my blogger links may be broken and maybe add some new ones.

Blog messed up

Something seems to have gone wrong with my blog background. If I can't fix it I'll have to go find me a new template. *sigh* Dang it!

I hate when that happens. Well, I better go over to the source and see if I can fix it. Or else I'll have to find a new template.

Just finished reading...

I'm caught up with homework for now so I thought I would pop in and post about a book I just finished and loved. If you like contemporary romances with snappy dialogue, three dimensional characters, and steamy love scenes, this is the book for you.

TITLE: Can't Stand the Heat
AUTHOR: Louisa Edwards
SENSUALITY: Hot
THOUGHTS/OPINIONS:
If you have never heard of Louisa Edwards before that's because Can't Stand the Heat is her debut book. And what a debut! I was quite impressed. I love stories where some conflict pits the hero and heroine against each other. I recently read and loved Julie James' Practice Makes Perfect which features this type of story. So when I heard the buzz about this book I had to give it a try since it also features a restaurant critic and a chef. Miranda Wake is a sharp-tongued restaurant critic who would love to write a book about restaurant culture but can't find an interested publisher. Adam Temple is a chef working hard to open his new restaurant - Market - which specializes in organic dishes with the freshest ingredients straight from local growers.

At Market's opening party Miranda gets a bit tipsy and shoots off her mouth. Adam loses his temper and issues a dare, kinda like "Oh yeah, you think this is easy - you wouldn't last a month in my kitchen." Adam's publicist thinks this is a great idea and will make lots of publicity for the restaurant and bring in the customers. Only problem is Miranda can't cook but she sells the idea to a publisher and receives a book advance. This is when the fun begins. The dialogue is crisp and snappy with lots of realistic restaurant jargon, the food descriptions are mouth watering and the pacing is fast and furious. The book is filled with wonderfully realistic characters and features a secondary M/M romance that was well done. I loved Adam much more than Miranda whose motivations sometimes puzzled me even though the story alternates between Adam and Miranda's point of view. The real strength of this book is the how the relationship grows. The sensuality between Adam and Miranda was hot and spicy and blended together with the cooking and food preparation making some very yummy scenes.

This is the first book in Edwards' "Recipe for Love" series and I can't wait to get my hands on the next book.

GRADE: B+

Not blogging

Sorry to be absent again. School is taking up most of my spare time. I'm taking three classes:

1. Programming in C#
2. Database Theory
3. Networking Basics
   

And I'm getting at or near 100% in all my assignments and tests. The Networking class is VERY technical with more than you ever want to know about cables, routes, switches, etc, etc. But the tests (multiple choice and T/F) are very easy.

I have done very little reading outside of class. I'm currently listening to a book on CD in the car. It's a suspense thriller called The Eight by Katherine Neville. I don't think it has lived up to the hype so far but it is rather fascinating.

I'll try and post when I get the chance.

Still alive

And kicking. Just thought I better post. I started fall quarter at Belleve College and I'm taking 3 classes. Two of them are online classes and one is a partially online. So as you can guess I am on the computer almost constantly but ironically enough I have little time left in the day to post on my blog. And little time left to read something besides a text book.

Reading now:


But I'm squeezing a few minutes out of each day to read this scrumptious book: Beyond the Rain by Jess Granger

Most of the reviews I have seen say it is "action-packed". Wow, what an understatement! I try to read an hour before bed but once I pick this up I don't stop reading till my eyes start to droop a couple hours later. I love both the H/H and the sci-fi setting. It's hard to find a good sci-fi romance these days but this one fills the bill nicely.