Fin­ished Eter­nal Kiss of Dark­ness by Jeaniene Frost. This is the sec­ond book in her Night Huntress World spin-off series.

This book focuses on Mencheres, a centuries-old vam­pire who’s lost his thirst for life and is being hunted by an old enemy. But when pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor Kira Gracel­ing tries to save Mencheres from some ghouls, he ends up res­cu­ing her instead — and finds some­thing to live for. Kira is just as attracted to Mencheres as he is to her, but the vam­pire world is new to her, and she has a sick sis­ter to take care of. But when Mencheres’ enemy sets his sights on Kira, Mencheres vows to do what­ever it takes to keep her safe — even if it means sac­ri­fic­ing himself …

I like Frost’s books because they’re just fun, action-packed reads, but this book isn’t one of my favorites by her for sev­eral rea­sons. One of my main prob­lems was Mencheres — I’ve just never cared that much for him as a sec­ondary char­ac­ter in the Cat and Bones books. Frost does a good job of flesh­ing him out in this one and makes him much more lik­able, but he still came off as a lit­tle dis­tant to me and not as sexy or fun as some of Frost’s other heroes, like Bones or Ian.

I really liked Kira, though. She’s smart and strong and doesn’t freak out (too much) at this new world and life that she’s thrust into. I also enjoyed Kira’s devo­tion to her sick sis­ter and how she tries to get her junkie brother to turn his life around. Her fam­ily rela­tion­ships were totally believ­able. (I’m won­der­ing if Frost will hook Tina up with another one of her heroes at some point. I think it would be inter­est­ing to read about a hero­ine like Tina, who’s been so sick for so long.)

There’s some good action in this one, espe­cially when Mencheres thinks of a clever hid­ing place for Kira and him­self, and Mencheres and Kira have some seri­ous chem­istry. But I would have liked to have seen more of the bad guy and got­ten some more infor­ma­tion about his feud with Mencheres. Also, this book is writ­ten in third per­son, and I think Frost has a snap­pier, faster paced voice when she writes in first per­son like she does in the Cat books. Of course, I prob­a­bly think this because I write first-person books myself — I just like the first-person voice.

I also really missed see­ing Ian in this book since he’s such a fun, bawdy character.

Over­all, this is still a fun, action-packed read. It just didn’t quite hit the mark for me like some of Frost’s other books have.

My grade: C.

Would I read this author again: Yes. I enjoy fun books like Frost’s and want to see what she does next with Cat, Bones, and the rest of her characters.

Up next: Beastly by Alex Flinn.

Books in my TBR pile: About 20.

So I’ve reached a mile­stone — I fin­ished read­ing my 1,000th book since I started keep­ing track. Actu­ally, I’ve prob­a­bly read more than 1,000 books, if you count all the Babysit­ters Club and Sweet Val­ley High books I read as a kid. ;-)

And the 1,000th book is … Hard­ball by Sara Paret­sky. This is a title in her long-running series about Chicago pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor V.I. Warshawski.

In this one, Vic is asked to find Lam­ont Gads­den, who went miss­ing forty years ago dur­ing a time when race riots and a snow­storm rocked Chicago. Lamont’s elderly mother and aunt want to know what hap­pened to him before they die, so Vic sets out to help them, find­ing out info about cor­rupt cops, a mur­der, and more along the way. But dig­ging up the past has a way of caus­ing trou­ble, and it soon becomes clear that some­one wants Vic off the case — for good.

I’ve been a long­time fan of the series, hav­ing started read­ing the books back in col­lege (or maybe high school). Vic is just a great char­ac­ter — strong, smart, and sassy, but with some flaws too, namely her tem­per and impul­sive­ness. I think Paret­sky has some really inter­est­ing things to say in this book about fem­i­nism, race rela­tions, and how hard it is to bury the past.

How­ever, I don’t think this is the best book in the series. The pac­ing is fairly slow, and the action doesn’t kick into gear until about halfway through the book. Also, it seems like Vic just kind of stum­bles around look­ing for clues for most of the book, and she lets her young cousin Petra manip­u­late her for way too long. Also, it was kind of hard to keep track of the bad guys and who did what way back when.

Over­all, this is a fairly enter­tain­ing read, as all of Paretsky’s books are, but it wasn’t my favorite in the series.

My grade: C.

Would I read this author again: Yes. I’ll be read­ing the Vic books as long as Paret­sky writes them. I like the char­ac­ter that much.

Up next: Eter­nal Kiss of Dark­ness by Jeaniene Frost.

Books in my TBR pile: About 20.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted some­thing just goofy and fun on the blog. Whee­z­ley showed me this Shirt­less Like McConaughey video a while back, and I thought it would some­thing fun to watch on a Fri­day. Enjoy!

After giv­ing it some thought, I think that I’m going to change the way that I grade book reviews. Ever since I started the blog, I’ve been going thumbs up/thumbs down, and I think I’m going to a let­ter sys­tem instead — A, B, C, D, and F.

Why? Well, for one rea­son, the next book I read will be num­ber 1,000, and I thought that would be the log­i­cal place to make the change. But also because most books that I read fall in the B/C range for me and using a let­ter sys­tem would let me be a lit­tle bit more spe­cific about things rather than thumbs up/thumbs down. So here’s a gen­eral guide to what the let­ters will mean:

A: Loved it and would highly, highly rec­om­mend it.

B: Really enjoyed it and would rec­om­mend it. A good, solid read that deliv­ered a sat­is­fy­ing story.

C: Enjoyed it and would rec­om­mend it with per­haps a few reser­va­tions or caveats.

D: Didn’t work for me for what­ever reason.

F: Didn’t like it and would not rec­om­mend it.

So that’s going to be the new sys­tem, with pluses and minuses in there too. We’ll see how it goes.

Fin­ished Some­thing About You by Julie James. I’ve seen a lot of good reviews online for this con­tem­po­rary romance, so I decided to check it out.

U.S. Attor­ney Cameron Lynde has the bad luck to over­hear a mur­der dur­ing her stay in a lux­ury hotel — one that involves a call girl, black­mail, and a U.S. sen­a­tor. But what’s worse is the fact that the case gets assigned to FBI Agent Jack Callas. Cameron and Jack worked together before on a case that went sour, and Jack blames Cameron for the fact that he got shipped off to Nebraska for three years. So much so that he ripped her a new one on national tele­vi­sion. But Jack can’t deny his attrac­tion to Cameron, and she feels the same way about him …

This is a really fun con­tem­po­rary romance. Cameron and Jack are both lik­able char­ac­ters, and there’s some funny dia­logue between the var­i­ous cops assigned to pro­tect Cameron. I also liked that James had Cameron explain what really hap­pened three years ago to Jack in the mid­dle of the book, instead of at wait­ing until the very end. Cameron and Jack were get­ting closer, and she decided to come clean about every­thing. I thought that was very real­is­tic. There’s also a nice bal­ance of romance and sus­pense, and you even feel kind of sorry for the bad guy in places.

Over­all, this would make a great beach read, and I’m inter­ested in read­ing more books by James. Thumbs up.

Up next: Hard­ball by Sara Paretsky.

Books in my TBR pile: About 20.