The millennium bug plays matchmaker!
When the millennium bug gives a crash course in romance, anything can happen–in these spellbinding stories by five beloved romance writers.
“Arts Magica” by Kay Hooper
When apprentice wizard Felicity Grant conducts a reckless experiment on New Year’s Eve, she’s hurled from present-day Seattle to 1899 London–and into the arms of a singular man–.
“Gabriel’s Angel” by Marilyn Pappano
For Gabe Rawlins, the new year holds little promise–until he awakens from a harrowing incident to discover by his side a beautiful, tender woman who offers hope–and much more.
“Stuck with You” by Michelle Martin
When a blackout strikes San Francisco’s most glittering party, a softhearted defense attorney gets stuck in a stalled elevator with her most implacable adversary–and finds herself in a free fall of a different kind.
“Close Quarters” by Donna Kauffman
The daughter of an ex-president finds her peaceful holiday turned upside down when she’s trapped in a surveillance truck with a former secret service agent, the same one she’d had a hopeless crush on as a teenager.
“Trouble at Midnight” by Jill Shalvis
Wanting more in life than a predictable beau, a young woman vows to seek adventure–until a near disaster makes her wonder if her bland Clark Kent is really Superman in disguise.
From the Paperback edition.
-
Sexual Content - 3/5
3/5
-
Violence - 1/5
1/5
-
Language - 2/5
2/5
-
Drugs and Alcohol - 1/5
1/5
Summary
Arts Magica by Kay Hooper – It’s been ages since I’ve read anything by Kay Hooper, but I recalled liking the one novella I read by her years ago. That being the case, I went into reading “Arts Magica” with high hopes, and it didn’t disappoint. It’s the story of an apprentice wizard who accidentally uses a time travel device combined with her own not-yet-fully-controlled powers to catapult herself back in time a century where she meets the inventor of the device.
I really liked Felicity. She’s pretty upbeat and tries to remain optimistic throughout her journey even though she hasn’t yet found the necessary internal “switch” that will allow her full control over her powers. As such, she’s in danger of the wizard's council taking away some of her powers if she can’t find it soon, but it’s a physiological issue that needs the right impetus to work itself out. I thought it was cute that Felicity has had a major crush on John via the biographies of him she’s read, so meeting him for real is very exciting for her and he definitely turns out to be everything she thought he was. I liked that she was so open with him about her wizard powers and future innovations, and I also liked that she was conscious of doing everything she could to not interrupt the space-time continuum.
John is a rather dreamy hero, who’s both attractive and brainy. I have a real soft spot for geek heroes and he’s definitely that. On top of his genius IQ, he’s also involved in various progressive social issues, including being a proponent of women’s rights. Feminist heroes are very sexy to me as well, and he certainly treated Felicity as his equal. I loved how fascinated he was with her, both as a wizard and as a person. There was a definite attraction for him right from the start. I also loved how curious he was about things that occur in the future and about how her wizard powers work. In addition to all that, he was sweet, gentle, and passionate. It was really cute to have the hero being the one to fall hard and fast.
Overall, “Arts Magica” was a really fun read. The time travel element was a little mind-bending with the heroine being aware of certain events from the past because of her knowledge from history books, but at the same time, some of those events were actually fueled by her time traveling. It twisted my mind into knots a little, but it was still geeky fun. I knocked off the half star for a couple of reasons. First is that because of the brevity of the story, I really wanted that romantic connection to happen very quickly, but it took until about the halfway point for things to really take off between John and Felicity. Once they did, I couldn’t deny feeling a strong connection between them, like they were soul mates who’d finally found their other half. The other reason is that, like with most novellas and short stories, I can’t help wishing they were a little longer. Especially when I enjoy them as much as I did this one, I really want to spend more time with the characters in their world, but I truly enjoyed it anyway. Despite my best efforts at trying to discover whether this novella was in any way connected to any of Kay Hooper’s other books, I didn’t realize it was until after I’d read it. “Arts Magica” is actually a follow-up novella to her full-length novel, The Wizard of Seattle. Richard and Serena, the hero and heroine of that novel, appear in “Arts Magica” as Felicity's mentors. I really liked what I saw of them, so I look forward to trying their book soon. Star Rating: ****1/2; Sensuality Rating: 2.5
Gabriel’s Angel by Marilyn Pappano – I loved the first three books of Marilyn Pappano’s Bethlehem series, but for some reason, it’s been taking me a while to get around to reading all of them. It’s probably because I have way too many books on my TBR pile, so something is perpetually falling by the wayside. “Gabriel’s Angel” is a short novella that falls between Father to Be and First Kiss in the series ordering. It features Noelle, the guardian angel who has been looking out for the residents of the sleepy little town of Bethlehem, as the heroine. Her hero is Gabriel, a divorcé who is on his way to Cleveland to start a new job in the new year, when he randomly stops by a bar on the way and gets shot. When he awakens, the only person who can see him is Noelle, whom he quickly discovers isn’t human at all. Noelle surmises that something unexpected happened during Gabriel’s transition from life to death, leaving him in a kind of spiritual limbo. As they wait for divine intervention to work out their problem, she must help him come to terms with his death, and as they spend time together, exploring the town, they develop feelings for one another.
“Gabriel’s Angel” is a cute, sweet romance with no explicit elements. I enjoyed it, but it’s a little simplistic in it’s scope. Of course, as an angel, Noelle is nothing but goodness, kindness, and gentleness personified. Gabriel is a nice guy, too, who’s had a run of bad luck with his wife cheating on him, leading to their divorce, and he’s also had a troubled relationship with his daughter. It’s very hard for him to face the idea of being dead, because he always thought he had much more living to do. I liked both characters, but this is about as far as their characterizations go. Their falling in love happens in a matter of only twenty-four hours, which is a little too quick to be entirely believable. It’s mostly presented as them having a “magical” connection. Gabriel finds Noelle extremely attractive but he also feels something for her he hasn’t felt for any woman since his divorce, maybe never. Noelle didn’t think it was possible for angels to want a human and feel the things she does for Gabriel. Still, despite the paranormal element, it was a little hard to come to terms with Gabriel falling in love so quickly and Noelle being certain she was ready to leave the life of an angel in just a day. However, it’s such a sweet story, I couldn’t help liking it anyway. It’s implied that Gabriel’s guardian angel, Norma, is now looking out for the residents of Bethlehem, so I’ll be interested to see if that’s truly the case in the next book. Star Rating: ****; Sensuality Rating: 1
Stuck with You by Michelle Martin – It’s strange how I can go for a long period of time without reading a particular romance theme or sub-genre, or perhaps never read it at all, and then unintentionally end up reading multiple stories with similar themes close together. Until recently, I can’t recall ever reading a romance with the stranded in an elevator theme, but “Stuck with You” became the second one I’ve read in the past month. This one wasn’t quite as good as the first one, but it was still a cute read and pretty enjoyable. Granted the hero and heroine aren’t really stuck in the elevator itself for a particularly long time before they decide to climb out through the top hatch, a decision that probably wouldn’t be very advisable in real life. But after they discover the entire city in a blackout due to the Y2K bug, I was more on board with it. Otherwise they might have been stuck in there for days.:-) They’re still stranded together on an upper floor of a high-rise hotel, but in the relative safety and comfort of a hotel suite after the hero uses skills learned from criminals in his old neighborhood to break into a room.
Griffin and Lauren are about as opposite as they come. He’s from a poor background and grew up in a rough neighborhood, while she’s the pampered daughter of two Hollywood stars. He’s a prosecuting attorney, while she’s a defense attorney. They’ve squared off in the courtroom on more than one occasion and there’s no love lost between them. She thinks he’s too stiff and stodgy, always seeing things in black and white, while he hates that she gets criminals off. When they’re suddenly thrown together on New Year’s Eve in a stalled elevator, they can’t help arguing over everything under the sun with the only exception being the need to try to escape their predicament. As they work together and start to get to know one another on a more personal level, they see hidden depths in each other that they didn’t know existed. Then sparks of a different sort begin to fly.
Overall, I liked Griffin and Lauren. They’re the classic case of two people making snap judgments about one another and never really taking the time to look for something more. It takes some extraordinary circumstances for them to see the truth, but I like that they were open to reevaluating their opinions after learning new information. They also share some common interests which helped to create a connection between them. However, despite them already knowing one another, I felt that romantically things moved too quickly to be entirely believable. They go from basically hating each other to falling into bed and saying “I love you” within twenty-four hours. They playfully chalk it up to the chemistry already being present in their long-standing conflict (the classic love/hate scenario), which may be true to some extent, but I just wasn’t feeling a connection in quite the way I wanted to. If the author had drawn more emotion out of their situation or out of Lauren’s childhood kidnapping ordeal, I might have felt differently. In fact, I could probably see it getting keeper status from me if that were the case. Without that, though, it was still an enjoyable, entertaining read that held my attention well, but not one that I felt particularly excited about by the end. “Stuck with You” was my first read by Michelle Martin, and it was good enough that I’d be open to trying something else by her in the future. Star Rating: ****; Sensuality Rating: 3.5
Close Quarters by Donna Kauffman – I’d previously read a couple of other novellas by Donna Kauffman, neither of which did much for me, so the only reason I read “Close Quarters” was for the sake of completing this anthology. As a consequence, I went into reading it with very low expectations. That’s probably a good thing, because once again, the story failed to capture my imagination. The plot is a fairly simple one in which the daughter of a former US president is spending the holidays with her father at their private estate. On New Year’s Eve, she spots an RV parked on the outskirts of their property. Thinking it’s a paparazzi, she goes out near midnight to ruin his photo op by breaking into said RV and ruining his computers, only to discover that he’s actually the former Secret Service agent who used to be on her protection detail and whom she had a major crush on throughout her teen years. When the Y2K bug hits, they end up trapped in the RV in the dark. With nothing better to do, they get to know each other on a more personal level, which leads to sex and a cute little twist at the end.
Both Veronica and Dylan were likable enough characters. Although she was something of a hellion as a teenager, always trying to slip her security detail, she seems to have matured somewhat. I say somewhat because the first thing she does when she thinks Dylan is a paparazzi is to vandalize his computer connectors with bubble gum. However, I’ll allow that in her day-to-day life, she seems to care about the less fortunate and not only spends most of her time raising money for various charitable causes but also does actual work with real people in need. Dylan left the Secret Service to help out on the family ranch after his father died, only to lose his mother not long after as well and have the bank foreclose on the ranch, so when Nicki’s father offers him a private security job, he takes it. While the characters might have been OK, I didn’t really sense any chemistry between them. They supposedly have had the hots for one another for years, and yet I just didn’t feel it. Once they’re locked in together for a few hours, they reconnect and fall into bed quickly, but it was all rather bland. Even the one love scene has very few details.
However, the real reason I didn’t care much for the story is that most of the plot points were implausible at best and outright ludicrous at worst. First of all, Veronica is an ex-president’s daughter who spends her days throwing top-notch social events and hob-nobbing with wealthy donors, so the idea of her being able to pick locks and especially her knowing how to hack a computer within mere minutes with nothing more than a hobbyist’s interest in programming is pretty out there. Then there’s the whole idea that Dylan already had the Y2K bug fix installed, but whatever Nicki did to his computers in those few minutes also made it vulnerable to the bug again, along with the fact that it caused a black-out in the van and the armor plating to descend, trapping them inside. At this point, I was rolling my eyes, because I’m married to a computer programmer and I know better. I even checked with him to be sure, and he said, “Um… no! Doesn't make sense.” Lastly there’s the fact that Dylan was supposedly hired by Nicki’s father as private security for a meeting he was having with an ex-Prime Minister of Great Britain because of a missile test site program they were working on. Besides one other guy, Dylan was supposedly it. I immediately began wondering where the Secret Service was. Even back in 1999 when this story was written, ex-presidents received Secret Service protection for ten years after leaving office (now it’s lifetime), and Nicki’s father supposedly only left office six years before. Also, two ex-world leaders building some kind of private missile test site? Really? And these two men were supposedly the only ones who had the plans, yet they have just two guys guarding them? Ugh! I just couldn’t even buy into any of this. Not to mention, I was zoning out through most of the story, because it simply wasn’t holding my attention. I’m afraid that after three less-than-stellar reads in a row, I definitely won’t be deliberately seeking out any more of Donna Kauffman’s work. Star Rating: **1/2; Sensuality Rating: 2.5
Trouble at Midnight by Jill Shalvis - “Trouble at Midnight” is a stand-alone novella from Jill Shalvis about two people who’ve been dating for over a year, but despite talking about marriage, they’ve never quite made it out of the friendship phase. Additionally the heroine’s knowledge that the hero wants to marry her is making her feel claustrophobic. She wants to have adventures, but feels that he’s too much of a boring Clark Kent to ever go along with doing more exciting things. However, when the inaugural trip of the train they’re riding on is interrupted in the middle of nowhere by the Y2K bug on New Year’s Eve, she decides to throw caution to the wind and starts walking for help. When her hero joins her, he’s able to prove that he can be a little more like Superman than she thinks.
This is a cute little story that I generally enjoyed, but I felt like it was too short to sufficiently develop the characters and their relationship in a fully believable way. Although I didn’t get a great sense of the particulars, Dora was apparently told what to do for most of her life growing up, so now she’s an independent woman who wants to call the shots, and what she wants is adventure. However, I kind of felt like her insistence upon leaving the stopped train to venture out into the wilderness just because she thought she knew the area from past hiking trips lacked maturity and was not well thought out. She also stubbornly keeps making bad decisions until Adam steps in and insists upon taking the reins. At this point, Dora balks a little, but he quickly impresses her with survival skills that she didn’t know a boring banker like him could possess. Adam has apparently been in love with Dora for the entire year they’ve been dating, but has been biding his time, not pushing her to move faster, because he understands her need for independence. That’s why he temporarily allows her to take the lead on their little adventure. Adam is definitely more of a beta hero, but I liked that he always knew where they were even though she didn’t and he wasn’t averse to taking over when things were rapidly going south. His grand gesture of granting her freedom was sweet and heartfelt.
Where I took some issue with the story, however, is that I felt like Dora’s problems were a little too deep-seated to fully overcome with just one gesture like that. Not to mention, she clearly didn’t know him as well as she thought she did. Also, they’d basically been in the friend zone for a long time and Dora seemed to have hang-ups about sex, so with all this in mind, the rapid progression of their relationship lacked that little extra spark that would have propelled it to a more deeply romantic place. Also when Dora makes her turn-around, Adam is concerned, and rightly so IMHO, that it may just be the adversity they’d shared talking, but his qualms fade with only a token protest, wrapping their romance up into a neat little bow. If you’re a reader who can avoid taking things too seriously, this is a decent little story, but I couldn’t help feeling it lacked a certain credibility to both the plot and characters. This was my first read by the rather prolific Jill Shalvis, and while she didn’t quite hit it out of the ballpark with this one, it was good enough that I’m sure I’ll give her another chance to wow me in the future. Star Rating: ***1/2; Sensuality Rating: 2.5
Review provided by The Hope Chest Reviews