Blogoversary of Leontine's Book Realm

When I created my blog, picked the basic template and filled my profile with interesting tidbits about me I never knew it would take me about 4-5 months to actually make it my home. This is why I have picked the date of my actual first post of HOME SWEET HOME as my blogoversary date. I can still remember the victorious feeling I had that I had conquered everything HTML…which kicked my butt various times later on proving me wrong. Between that post and now many things has changed; the content and look of my blog, the friends I have found in Blogoverse, I have opened my Beefcake club and found me some hunk bartenders.

It was only 6 weeks back when I had to do me some scouring in my blogposts where it hit me; though I placed every review I had before November 20th I actually opened the gates to my realm on November 20th. That’s when I started to ponder on what to do since I’m already doing a monthly giveaway, character interviews, author interviews and hhmmmm a guest post from somebody else didn’t ring true to me for a blogoversary. So I thought, why don’t I tell you more about me as a romance reader and a person. Perhaps that could be interesting, right? Right!

Leontine ‘The Romance Reader’…and that’s when it struck me. The very first moment I read a romance novel was when I was thirteen. My parents had subscribed themselves to a map folder full of magazines and there was also a romance story included, one that included a handful of kisses and the oh so familiar “the next morning” sentence. How my hormone raging body and my romantic beating heart fell for those stories. I was thirteen years old and a world opened itself for me…and this year I turned thirty-three. Unknowingly I almost passed by on another anniversary; The one where I have been a romance reader for twenty years. So let me take you on a journey through my years;

1989; Via our Dutch school system I was a freshman in highschool, LOOK WHO’S TALKING was one of the movies I loved that year and I put up my first Patrick Swayze poster, I considered myself officially a fan. Music of Paula Abdul – Rick Astley – Milli Vanilli – Roxette etc filled my room at night and my romance world existed solely out of that one romance novel from the map and it contained a handful of kisses and the oh so familiar “the next morning” sentence.

1990; THE year I completely, head-over-heels, fell in love with the bad boy from the class, he was set back a year, he had a “fuck-you-all” attitude and could kiss like nobody’s business. I saw Ghost and cried a bucket of tears at the ending. I also got a bit of money by working on the side, got my first perm and that is when my romance world took a leap with the Candlelight Historical Romance line from AUDAX Publisher. I did some grocery shopping for my mother and saw this cover:

I instantly fell for the rock hard and muscled thighs and his abs gave me butterfly feelings in belly, even then I was a junior cover hussy ;) In those days FABIO ruled as a cover model, he never got me all that hot and bothered though. It is also the year where I read my first Bertrice Small, that was quite the experience I will never forget. I think I was flustered throughout the entire book.

1991; Bad-boy and I were still a set and he was setting my world ablaze. It’s also the year I was pissed at prime-minister Kok for a reason I can’t remember anymore and my father encouraged me to send him a letter. I did and lo and behold I got a letter back…what did it say; Thank you for your interest in this matter. Prime-minister Kok always appreciates the involvement and opinions bla bla bla, at that moment I was flabbergasted. Now I know it’s just about a standard reply as they can come.

1992; I was a book junkie and discovered a variety of authors like Jude Deveraux and Johanna Lindsey. I saw the movie SISTER ACT I actually had 2 shelves in my closet where I put all my Candlelight Historicals, even then I loved the sight. It was THE year I broke up with bad-boy (cried myself a river full of tears) the year I had a school trip to London and we resurrected our “relationship” it still didn’t work and on the trip home I flirted and danced with a guy from a football team. Little did I know because how was I supposed to have recognized the name; Manchester United?!

1993; It was the year of JURASSIC PARK (scary!!)and I read my first Elizabeth Lowell, I instantly loved her medieval vibe, unknowingly I was up for more fabulous stuff with her 2nd and 3rd books in this trilogy; FORBIDDEN and ENCHANTED. No one I knew of my age read these books so my sister was victim of my rants and raves on all things romance. So she danced in her room to the music of Take That as I talked about the books I’ve read. I graduated from High School and went to study for my nursing degree. I sunbathed topless that summer, I felt so confident and didn’t care one bit who saw me.

1994; I turned eighteen, made new friends at my new school, danced, flirted, studied. I was on top of the world and life was good. It was the year I watched THE LION KING. Ever since my sister got the video of THE LITTLE MERMAID we were hooked on the DISNEY vids and in the winter there were many Sunday afternoons where we watched them. It was the golden era of DISNEY and I have all my favorites on DVD now. I still read of course but somehow it took a bit of the backseat.

1995; I remember having an assignment for class where we had to read 5 books in each of the 8 different age categories and while fellow students had to work their ass off I already read a lot, made book reports and aced it. I had an internship as a neonatal nurse and I absolutely loved it. By that time reading was a second nature and re-read many favorites, I loved my thrillers and mysteries as well along with my first attempts in the Fantasy genre. BTW, I still was a Patrick Swayze fan and watched TOO WONG FOO, THANKS FOR EVERYTHING JULIE NEWMAR. Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, John Leguizamo were a couple of drag queens, hi-la-rious!

1996; I graduated for my study and it was the year I got my job at the children’s daycare center and through a contact ad I met hubby and fell in love again. Is was 19, almost 20 and he was 28, it was a stormy romance and by Christmas that year he proposed to me. I was over the moon and of course said yes. In that year I also read one of my all time favorites: Catherine Anderson – ANNIE’S SONG.

1997; Hubby and I got ourselves an apartment and I made the big move from my large and noisy family to a two peeps household. My parents saw the original wallpaper in my room again after a handful of years and they were shocked. To say I had to adjust was an understatement, I cooked in quantities that could feed us for the whole week. I got my membership card of our local library and each Saturday I scoured the shelves for books I might not have read. If I couldn’t find something new then the golden oldies I read a dozen times before would do too. My first shih-tzu Romy was born in December of ’97 she walked into my heart and never left.

1998; I loved my job. Hubby and I had passionate disagreements and we made up in just the same way. I discovered Stephanie Laurens with Devil’s Bride and my shih-tzu Esmé looked at me and I was sold. I had two pups to take care of. At the end of the summer my parents went to a breeder in Belgium and shih-tzu number three Jasmijn peed all over hubby, he said: “She’s mine.”

1999; I watched TV series like Profiler – the X-Files – Millennium - HERCULES: the legendary journeys - XENA: warrior princess etc. Then one day I did grocery shopping and I noticed a paperback in the super market, it turned out to be BORN IN FIRE, book one in the Concannon Sisters Trilogy. When I bought it I sealed my fate and became an utter Nora Roberts junky and read it all. From the Stanislaski Family - Donovan Legacy – MacGregor family - Three Sisters Island to her suspense novels. Two Alpha’s walked in to my life; Luka and Eros, both shih-tzu’s and I had my first litter of pups. Nothing beats seeing those little pups squirm and grow and play and I loved every second of those 9-12 weeks they were with me.

2000; OMG, the earth did not stop, crash or any apocalypse happened at the turn of the century so we all could sleep peacefully again. I discovered Reiki, Tarot cards and Rune stones…I was intrigued. I discovered Lynn Kurland at my library and Susan Carroll with THE NIGHT DRIFTER, loved the supernatural elements in them and they still sit on my shelves.

2001; How can anyone forget? I waited on the bus when a woman came to me and said in a shocked voice; “ A plane crashed in America.” I didn’t think any of it at the time, plane’s sometimes crash, it’s bad enough but not uncommon. I got home prepared dinner with hubby and told him I wanted to watch the news that I heard about a plane crash. What I saw horrified me and I was glued to the TV for the entire evening. 9-11 is a date no one will forget and the ripples of that day are still felt to this day.

2002; Due to a new law couples could get a license that made them official partners or they could get married, yet it was going to be one or the other. Hubby and I discussed it and he said he asked me to marry him so many years ago, he was old fashioned, he wanted me to carry his name. So we got married on 4-2-2002, it was a small affair with just parents and siblings and after the ceremony I bowled in my wedding dress and had dinner. The shoes were to die for and so incredibly hawt underneath my dress, it was hilarious to see. I still read in my spare hours and discovered Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witch’s trilogy. I think I was succumbed to that story for about a week, I could not get enough of this world, plot and characters.

2003; My love for the genres started shift as I read Katherine Neville’s THE EIGHT and Juliet Marillier’s Seven Waters series.

2004; I became an Aunt for the first time of a nephew. I was getting interested in internet and entered some chatrooms, change was coming.

2005; I quit my job to focus on IVF procedures, I got myself a computer and hooked myself on to the World Wide Web. I found a message board crawling with ladies like me and that is where I met Marissa and Pearl. A new world opened itself to me, I wasn’t some nerd who loved to read romance and I don’t want to count the times I said; “you too!” I felt at home and when a fellow reader talked about Sherrilyn Kenyon I hooked myself up with the www and found the Dark-hunter creed. I was sold at the spot and my love for the paranormal genre was born. I actually received the books of Karen Marie Moning sooner and when I read THE IMMORTAL HIGHLANDER I had to rave about it…little did I know I wrote a “review”. Old habits die hard and I had to infect my sister with the Dark-Hunter virus LOL

2006; I went on a complete book buying binge in a time where M-Bags were still the cheapest method of shipping large amounts of books. Basically I O.D.-ed every time such an M-Bag was delivered by the mailman. The first time is still carved in hubby’s memory. I had bought many Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark-Hunters, Karen Moning and Kinley Macgregor’s in hardcover and a few more I vaguely remember. The bell rang downstairs and Henry buzzed the mailman in – which I didn’t know at the time – he came walking in the living room with this utter puzzled frown on his face; “Leontine, this came in for you from the mailman.” I looked, I saw the M-Bag and gave this high pitched squeal of delight and practically ripped the M-Bag out of his hands. Hubby still looked at me like he saw an alien while I was grabbing scissors to cut open the M-Bag and box and petted all my precious hardcover books. I got rosy cheeks and a gleam in my eyes of pure satisfaction. When I unwrapped all the books I had a grin from ear to ear. Then hubby carefully approached me again saying; “Erm, Leontine, do you have more of those on its way here because I’m going to buy ear plugs if you do.” I don’t think he will ever “get me” with packages but by now he is a weathered book-addict hubby LOL It was also the year that I met Sherrilyn Kenyon and when ROOB was founded.

2007; The addiction got worse, I got me all the books I wanted but I was discovering much more, it was so different from when I was just reading the Dutch releases. I had an ocean of authors to pick from. Something new entered my world too, ARC reading, I didn’t have a clue what it was in the beginning but ROOB got some ARC’s and I loved it, loved reviewing a book and getting my opinion out there.

2008; In the early fall of that year I created my blog and started to dig in to all things HTML. I read as much as I could; Nalini Singh, Elizabeth Vaughan, Jennifer Donnelly, Paulina Simmons, Anna Campbell, Kathryne Kennedy and so many more. My father also build me my floor to ceiling bookcases and I can tell you #2 is already in the making. I really thought it would take time to fill it but my inner book-addict proved me wrong.

2009; I am thirty-three now, I have a TBR pile of approximately 600 dead tree books, I’ve written about 225 reviews and I have held five beefcake nights. My first erotica novel was Shayla Black’s WICKED TIES and I was oh so reluctant to read in the genre but found amazing reads I would’ve missed otherwise. My first commenter on my blog was Mieke. My first author commenting on my blog was Alyssa Day, If I knew she would be coming I would’ve rolled out the red carpet because I was going something like this; “OMG OMG, an author actually commented on my blog, this is sooooo uber kewl!” My first blog interview was at Erotic Horizon’s place and she opened my erotic horizon even further with her blog ;) My first header of my blog looked like this:

My top 10 search words – everybody has the weirdest things coming up but I’m so vanilla LOL

1. a highlander Christmas, sophie renwick, review
2. shadowfever release date
3. tairen soul
4. the notebook movie
5. geoffrey knight the riddle of the sands
6. anne rice sleeping beauty
7. cl wilson tairen soul book 5
8. karen moning shadowfever release date
9. movie the notebook
10. karen moning highlander series

My top 10 visited pages:

1. / <- whatever that entails is beyond me but it does tickly the curiosity.
2. /2009/10/in-memory-of-kathleen-winsor-my-top-16.html
3. /2009/01/smutty-society-members.html
4. /2009/08/cover-discovery-cl-wilsons-tairen-soul.html
5. /2009/01/rockin-blog-block.html
6. /2009/09/review-karen-moning-dreamfever.html
7. /2009/01/hero-heroines-hall-of-fame.html
8. /html?blogID=5474270223537658903
9. /2009/11/stephanie-laurens-untamed-bride-column.html
10. /2009/06/movie-notebook.html

Twenty years of romance, going from a kiss and “the next morning” to reading M/M romance and man having wrist thick cocks and women actually “swallow”. Times sure have changed as have I and my shelves will reflect that, from the early Bertrice Small’s and Jude Deveraux’s to the newly found authors like Joey W Hill, Lauren Dane and Ilona Andrews.

I love to celebrate my blogoversary and being a romance reader for twenty years so I’m going to pay it forward with an awesome 20-book swag giveaway for the followers of my blog (if you’re not you’re one click away from joining :) I'll pick a winner on December 5th.

1. Sherrilyn Kenyon – One Silent Knight

2. Sherrilyn Kenyon – Dream Warrior

3. Meljean Brook – Demon Night

4. Christine Feehan – Wild Rain

5. Christine Feehan – Ocean’s Of Fire

6. Chistine Feehan – Twilight Before Christmas

7. Charlaine Harris – Dead Until Dark

8. Annette Blair – My Favorite Witch

9. Gena Showalter – Heart Of The Dragon

10. Jeanne Adams – Dark And Dangerous

11. Donna Kauffman – The Legend Of MacKinnon

12. Melanie Jackson – The Selkie

13. Brenda Joyce – A Dangerous Love

14. Margaret Mallory – Knight Of Desire

15. Jennifer Ashley – Penelope And Prince Charming

16. Delilah Marvelle – Lord Of Pleasure

17. Melissa Marr – Wickedly Lovely

18. Jaid Black – Deep, Dark And Dangerous

19. Lora Leigh – Menage A Magick

20. Lili Feisty – Bound To Please

Aidan has dressed up and I'd say; Grab a champagne flute and a piece of cake and tell me, do you remember your very first romance novel you’ve ever read?

Hugs,

Nalini Singh - Blaze of Memory

~Buy a copy here~
Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Berkley (November 3, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0425231119
ISBN-13: 978-0425231111

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Main Characters: Devraj Santos and Katerina Haas a.k.a Katya
Book Origin: Personal Library

Summary:
Nalini Singh returns to the Psy/Changeling world and its “breathtaking blend of passion, adventure, and the paranormal”* as a woman without a past becomes the pawn of a man who controls her future…

Dev Santos discovers her unconscious and battered, with no memory of who she is. All she knows is that she’s dangerous. Charged with protecting his people’s most vulnerable secrets, Dev is duty-bound to eliminate all threats. It’s a task he’s never hesitated to complete…until he finds himself drawn to a woman who might yet prove the enemy’s most insidious weapon.

Stripped of her memories by a shadowy oppressor, and programmed to carry out cold-blooded murder, Katya Haas is fighting desperately for her sanity itself. Her only hope is Dev. But how can she expect to gain the trust of a man who could very well be her next target? For in this game, one must die…

There hasn’t been one book by Nalini Singh that failed to give me sheer reading pleasure. And I’m almost afraid I’m jinxing myself with this statement but Nalini Singh is one of those rare authors on my shelves who have yet to write a book that is a letdown for me. If I thought I knew what to expect within the Psy/Changeling series she dishes out a story like Blaze Of Memory to prove me wrong. The different point of view I was presented with delivered an exquisite read with all I came to treasure within this series and then some.

Blaze Of Memory delves deeper in to the Psy past with The Forgotten and how Silence came to be. I always considered myself a changeling kinda gal until Devraj and Katerina a.k.a Katya. Until their story with its undeniable potent feelings shred the cold of Silence. It picked me up, took me in to an alternate world and three hundred and seventy three pages later I was oh so reluctant to leave. I was stunned that the Psy could rattle my emotions like that. It was a masterful entwining of the romance story, a Psy history lesson and new plotlines accelerating the overall story arc.

Dev and Katya are the beating heart of this story and the set up is something I will never get enough of; the impossible romance. Everything that Katya is should repel Dev but the instincts she awakens in him are his Achilles heel. From day one their constrained emotions are a flammable essence waiting for its first chance to fully ignite. Add the lush writing style of Singh and it feels like it only emphasizes on that blatant sensuality simmering between Dev and Katya. It is a heady mix of yearning for something that goes against everything you know and have been taught, and at the same time knowing that it will be the greatest thing you ever experienced. I couldn’t get enough of the romance or of the information that came to me at a steady pace. It worked together as it gradually succumbed me to the mesmerizing pull of this story.

Dev is Psy and director of the Shine foundation. His powers and position make him distant, shouldering the responsibility of many who depend on him and often he has to make tough decisions for the good of The Forgotten. Everything about him screams rigid control until Katya comes along and bares another side of him. The vigorous side, the humorous side and the side that feels so deep you wonder how he is able to hide it.

Katya is all Psy and conditioned by Silence. Her circumstances take her to the Shine foundation and to the doorstep of Dev. She is a woman where vulnerability is fused with strength, innocence is dallying with a smart attitude and where Silence is warring with the uncovered need to touch, feel, love and tease all the senses. Her psyche is as intriguing as her personality and she fueled this story with a wide range of sensations.

Dev and Katya are not right for each other, mostly due to matter outside their control, it’s forcing them to always keep the risks in mind. The intensity of their dialogues made me feel that maddening sense of desperation, at one hand romance was blossoming and at the other hand they knew it was never going to be. Nalini Singh created one hell of an obstacle where there was no way out for Katya and Dev. I could see no way out as I read the chapters and the consequences of that obstacle fully came to be in this story. It was emotion in its purest form, drama bled from the pages and I was in shock for a few moment as I reached that nerve wrecking but beautiful conclusion.

There's something else that I realized as I closed this book and that is that though the point of view is given from the Psy, and it made some things a little bit more understandable, it didn’t affect my overall sense of right and wrong in this world. It can happen when an author gives a perspective from, what I consider to be the evil doers, boundaries fade and things can get kind of confusion. Nothing of the sort happened in Blaze Of Memory, The Forgotten achieved a special place and became a more visible part of the Psy/Changeling world. But there is more that fleshes out this world like vividly drawn secondary characters, they speak to me, both newly introduced and recurring ones. Apparently there is a new pack on the horizon named RainFire with pack leader Remington. The nani of Dev was also a hoot to meet, but more of The Forgotten like Jack and Will, Tag and Tiara flavored this story. Not to mention we’ve got a plethora of Changeling with their mates and children adding to the plotline. Sasha, Lucas, Dorian, Ashaya, Noor, Keenan, Judd, I got to meet them all and through them I received small slivers of information that is casually mentioned but intrigue me nonetheless.

I love being in this world! Each character matters to me and when the romance, the tightly plotted scheming and overall story arc, along with the information seamlessly flows together, all of my hot buttons are pushed to experience an outstanding paranormal romance. Blaze Of Memory is unadulterated reading pleasure!

Quote Katya:

Something shifted between them the previous night – she could feel it deep within: a subtle tug, a bond barely formed.
But that wasn’t the change that distressed her.
Dev walked beside her, but gone was the man who kissed her with a passion that seared her soul. Only the director, hard, focused, unreadable remained.

Did I just discover a pet peeve?

I have heard the term pet peeve drop a few times around the blogosphere but never consciously thought about it or that I could have one. Shame on me but I thought I was perfect *coughcough* Initially I thought it was just a reader’s twitch, an involuntary reaction on my side but it has happened a few times now and…*eek* it became a reaction I recognized from a few previous books. This wasn’t a good development in my opinion. Let me tell you how things came to be…

On a stormy night about two weeks or so ago I started in an ARC; Clare Willis - ONCE BITTEN for ROOB. For the second time in a short while I noticed I had issues regarding the genre labeling of a book in relation to the story content after I finished it. Now this novel is labeled a paranormal romance and as I read this story my eyebrows started to rise in my increasingly burning question; “where is the romance?” The romance was so paper-thin in my opinion that the only thing I got from it was that there was an attraction going on between the two main characters. What I got were a handful of encounters, one smutty scene, and at the end they unravel the plot together and…that’s it!

I read those final pages and my eyebrows where so far up my skull people might've wondered if I had a facelift gone wrong. I was going WTF? This is it? Really? Grabbed the flatcover that was provided by the author, thinking perhaps I got it wrong and that it was Paranormal Suspense but there on the spine it said: Paranormal Romance. This is what a publishers deems romance? Paranormal; yes. Romance; Since when does a “kind of” happily ever after constitutes as romance? Is that all it took; a sense of an HAE between two people? I was irritated because when other elements so prominently get the attention I wondered what the minimum demands are of romance.

I had a somewhat similar reaction to Ava Gray’s Skin Game, you all know I loved that book but did that one paranormal accent in Kyra’s characterization deserve the labeling Paranormal? Did I just volunteered for a can of whoop-ass here? So you know, I’m a fun submissive so make me laugh about it!! But back to my thoughts; It made me wonder if every publishing house has a different definition of labeling and why the hell it irks me so much. I think what it boils down to is that the lack of attention a certain element is receiving in a book but does get the label slapped on for whatever reason the publisher deems necessary that throws me off. It makes me ponder on if it’s just me and my requirements to fully experience a genre element in a story, is it a bit promo oriented by the publisher or is it their guidelines for publishing a certain book in a particular genre?

If it is me and my requirements I would say: Girl you’ve got yourself a case of pet peeve going on!

If it is the promo mind of the publisher I would say: From an objective side I can understand it, you want to sell your book but from a reader’s side I cry foul! Give it straight to me, that’s what I want and need from you!

If it is within the Publishers guidelines of a genre then I need to suck it up but I will sometimes be surprised, whether good or bad depends on the author then.

Whatever the reason is, all of the above or none, there are books that will provoke this irritation with me. If I buy an Erotica I want bouts of sex in every imaginable variation that sets me on fire, not a kiss, some magic finger action and then read; The next morning…

So did I just discover my very first pet peeve? I think so. Please, tell me about yours so I don’t feel like a weird alien from outer space.

PS: Still interested in reading my review of ONCE BITTEN? ~click here~