Victoria Dahl

4.5 stars.

Love, love, LOVE Victoria Dahl's Fanning the Flames! This fast-paced and engaging novella is witty, flirty and oh, my goodness smokin' hot! It is the perfect introduction to her upcoming Jackson Girl's Night Out series and I thoroughly enjoyed this captivating story.

Lauren Foster and Jake Davis are wonderful characters and I love the fact that they are in their early to mid-forties and comfortable with themselves and their sexuality. Lauren is a divorced empty-nester whose libido show more is running at full throttle and she is seriously crushing on Jake. Jake also has a thing for Lauren but their long history together and the close proximity of their jobs makes both of them hesitant to act on their desires.

I absolutely adored Lauren and Jake and I could certainly relate to their trepidation about becoming involved with one another. They went to one another's weddings and although they were not close friends, their paths have crossed fairly frequently over the years. Jake is friends with Lauren's ex and Lauren feels like she can never measure up to Jake's deceased wife. However when the two meet up while Lauren's enjoying a girl's night out, their mutual desire spirals out of control and the sexy goodness between them is SCORCHING hot.

Lauren and Jake are superbly developed characters and their shared past makes their new relationship believable. Lauren is gutsy, outspoken and incredibly honest about her insecurities and doubts. Jake is all kinds of sexy wonderful, but the fact that he makes the first move to sort out their relationship after they wind up in an embarrassing (but hilarious) situation just adds to his appeal.

Fanning the Flames is an angst-free, humorous and sexy romance that I highly recommend to old and new fans of Victoria Dahl. It is a very enticing introduction to the upcoming Jackson Girl's Night Out series and I cannot wait to read Looking for Trouble which releases at the end of the month. show less

Victoria Dahl always creates heroes and heroines that are interesting and a little bit quirky, yet realistic. Looking for Trouble is no exception. This time the plot is mixed up with a seriously crazy link between the two lovers in the small town of Jackson Hole and it makes for a plot full of conflict and surprise. It’s hot, sexy, funny and a little bit oddball in a good way.

Sophie is a librarian in town. She’s always dreamed of travelling, yet has never done so because she feels a duty show more towards looking after her father and brother. She’s got scrapbooks and routes planned for the big getaway, but…nothing. Sophie also hides what she feels is a dirty secret…she likes sex and short term encounters. However, she tries to hide this as her mother skipped town many years ago, running off with a local man. Her mother is depicted by the townspeople as shameful and Sophie fears that she’s gone down the same route. Unfortunately for Sophie, the hot new man in town (Alex) just happens to be the son of the man Sophie’s mum ran off with. Talk about awkward! But Sophie and Alex can’t keep their hands off each other. Alex encourages Sophie to fly away, just as he’s been doing since he was old enough to leave Jackson Hole. Can she do it?

What I liked about Looking for Trouble is that Sophie is unapologetic – she likes sex and she likes hot men. So what? She’s not ready to tie herself down to a family and stay put. But she’s also fragile – she’s scared of the reactions of the townspeople (and Alex’s mum – although anybody would be terrified of her). It takes Alex’s friendship and love for her to realise that she’s not a dirty woman, nor does she need to repent for her mother’s alleged sins. And likewise, Alex realises through Sophie that he doesn’t need to keep on running and that slowing down is not a sign of weakness.

The drama involving Sophie’s mum and Alex’s dad continues on from Shane and Merry’s story in Too Hot to Handle. It’s not necessary to read this book to understand what’s going on – basically the pair left town many years ago and never returned. Sadly, their bodies were found by Shane and Merry (Shane is Alex’s brother) and now the time has come for the boys’ dad’s memorial service. But their mum is convinced that Sophie is a demon, intent on ruining Alex’s life. Not only does she scream blue murder when Sophie is around, but she starts doing some creepy things, like breaking in to Sophie’s house and mistaking her for her mother. This was freaky, especially in audio! Celeste Ciulla does a great scary lady!

There’s also some very, very hot scenes in this book – please be aware if you are listening to this in a car, during summer. I had an er, interesting moment while listening to this while putting my window down to enter a car park. Let’s just say that the car park attendant hasn’t offered to assist me with swiping my card since! But the narrator does a great job here again – Celeste has good range!

All in all, this is a steaming hot story combined with redemption and closure. It just goes to show again that Victoria Dahl is one of the best contemporary romance authors writing today.

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I love what gets Jane Doe’s emotions revving, her hate for the power plant and her fascination with wind turbines. I, too, feel they are an art form.

Yeah, maybe you could blame some of her sociopathy on her worthless parents, who wouldn’t give her the time of day unless they wanted something from her. Her brother was just as bad. In and out of prison, a bully to her when she was a child. No one was there when she needed someone, so she has no use for them. She can take care of show more herself.

Unfortunately, she feels she must return home. Her niece, Kayla, is missing. No one seems to care about her either, but after finding out everyone thought that Kayla was just like her, she felt she had to know. Was she a sociopath too? Could she be a mentor, teaching her how to navigate life and keep herself hidden, and maybe have someone to share her true self with?

Sociopaths are not capable of feeling love and loneliness, but Jane feels something. Something for her boyfriend, Luke. He knows she is different, doesn’t want the white picket fence, but could they have a ‘marriage’ of sorts? He accepts her for who she is and that counts for a lot. She wants to keep him. LOL I couldn’t help but laugh at that. Like he’s a puppy or something.

At least searching for Kayla, she could keep from getting bored. When she gets bored, she does things that could bring trouble down around her, and being a lawyer, she has a place where she is comfortable, sorta. Don’t cross her though. You won’t like Jane if you make her mad. She loves the hunt and she’ll play anyone who gets in her way.

As a monster myself, I’m not under any delusion about the kindness of strangers.

Just because she’s a sociopath, doesn’t mean she’s a serial killer.

Problem Child, for me, was eye opening and thought provoking. I know not all sociopaths are murderers, but with Jane, it is just as frightening. It makes me realize, even more, that we could be surrounded by them and never know it. Could it be your neighbor? Your coworker? Your friend? Your family? Your lover? You may look at everyone differently after reading Problem Child.

I voluntarily reviewed an ARC of Problem Child by Victoria Helen Stone.

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'Jane Doe' has been on my shelf for a long time. I finally picked it up because I used it as the letter J in my TBR ABC reading challenge and I'm glad that I did. 'Jane Doe' was a novel that I revelled in. It was a simple idea delivered with such wit, insight and ruthless resolve that I wanted to cheer. For the most part, it's the story of rage-fueled vengeance, meticulously planned, wrought with guile and discipline.

Jane is a modern-day Fury, Tisiphone translated into the twenty-first show more century. Jane, a successful lawyer with a high-powered job in Kuala Lumpur, has set her career aside for a few months to return, incognito, to the Mid-West city where she went to college, to avenge the death of her only friend. She knows who is to blame and she's going to make him pay.

There's a lot to like about this book. It's a thriller that gets you deeply invested in the success of the main character, keeps you guessing about what she intends to do while hoping that she's successful and then cranks up the tension page by page until it reaches a climax that is worthy of all the build-up.

It's a book that describes, sometimes with wit and always with disturbing accuracy, how abusive men undermine vulnerable women and how badly even men who are not abusive, behave when they let their erections do their thinking.

I loved this observation by Jane about the reaction of her teacher, a man married to another of her teachers after Jane had sex with him so she could blackmail him into giving her an A without the tedium of doing the homework. Afterwards, her teacher...

...had sobbed with shame and guilt. Afterwards, of course. Always afterwards. Erections and guilt can’t exist in the same plane. One makes way for the other.

What got me invested in Jane as a person rather than just an instrument of righteous vengeance, was her revelations about her background, how she came to label herself as a sociopath and how her dead friend had the gift of connecting her to the human world, helping her to experience it rather than just observe it.

I found Jane's self-diagnosis a little too absolute. Perhaps it says more about me than about Jane, but I found that most of the time the only thing abnormal about Jane's behaviour was that it was more rational and more disciplined than most people achieve. Jane is high on insight and low on empathy. She is intelligent, organised, goal-focused and guilt-free. Is she a sociopath? Maybe. What's important is that she thinks she is and it colours everything in her life.

Jane sees some of her detachment as learned behaviour, acquired as a defence against the emotional volatility of her parents. She says of them:

They love me the way a careless child loves a pet, too much attention one day, absolute neglect the next. The changes in current were too much for me to survive when I was young so my brain learned to ride above them.

'Riding above them' meant distancing herself from other people's emotions. As Jane puts it:

I observe people’s emotions but I rarely participate

Jane's emotional distance and her insight into people means that she doesn't follow social norms in her relationship with her family. She says of her parents:

I don’t hate them. I just don’t understand why people feel the need to try over and over with toxic family members. I know who my parents are. They’re not the worst but they’re still awful.

Her attitude to her brother speaks volumes. She says,

I don’t speak to him. I have nothing to say to a redneck asshole who somehow managed to create five children with four women during his brief stints of freedom from incarceration.

These things don't sound particularly sociopathic or particularly abnormal to me but they did result in Jane being called out as a 'cold-hearted bitch' by her family members so often that she wondered if she was a psychopath, doomed to become a serial killer. I can understand her relief when she took a psych class and the lights went on:

That first time I read about sociopaths, I felt filled up with a bright light that was equal parts terror and joy. Finally, finally, I understood. It was scary to know the truth, yes but not nearly as frightening as ignorance. I didn’t feel doubt I didn’t feel guilt and empathy was mostly beyond my grasp...

...Most people like me don’t grow up to be killers. We lie and manipulate and take advantage but usually, that just makes us great at business.

One of the things I liked was that, although Jane's lack of empathy allows her the space to use her insight to act on her agenda without guilt, she is not without emotions. Her whole quest for vengeance is an expression of deep, overwhelming grief at the loss of the only person she loved and who she knew loved her.

Of course, every good thriller needs a good plot and this one is a doozy. Lots of twists and surprises. A bad guy who has absolutely no redeeming qualities. not even intelligence. Better yet, he's a Deacon at his father's money-making church out in the so-white-it-hurts suburbs. Tension that builds and builds as you wonder whether Jane will lose it and give way to a violent urge that she can't escape the consequences of (and yes, I was concerned about the consequences part, not the violence part - the man deserved whatever Jane decided to do to him - how's that for a thriller getting under your skin?).

I strongly recommend 'Jane Doe' as a feel-good novel with a twist, a wish fulfilment for the 'Me Too' generation and an insight into a different way of experiencing the world. Personally, I think we need a few more Jane Does out there to counter-balance the abusive males our society seems to be so inured to. show less