Dark Update!

I forgot I finished two books by Deanna Raybourne (or I am going to post this and realize I already wrote about them, and feel like an idiot) in her Lady Julia Grey mystery series a while ago. I read Dark Road to Darjeeling on my way down to D.C. (whoops, and, yep, suddenly this feels familiar - I seem to recall writing something like "D.C.!!! Whoo!!!" It bears repeating though, so: "DC! Whoo!!!), and started Dark Enquiry (the next in the series) in the airport on the way back. Both were fine, and passed the time, and while Lady Julia is a rather annoying character, the secondary characters have a lot of personality - especially her family - and her husband, Nicholas Bisbane, may be a super cheesy character (half gentleman, half Roma, tormented by his dark past and the gift of Sight he eschews - PUH-lease), but he does come across the page as pretty smokin' hot.

However, it wasn't until I was almost finished with the second book that I realized the reason that I was confused by the characters' chronology was that I was getting them, or at least Lady Julia, mixed up with the characters from another series!

So, in the Dark series, set in the Victorian age, Lady Julia's husband is murdered, Nicholas Brisbane is the hot guy from the wrong(ish) side of the tracks who helps her solve the mystery and then they fall in love, as and before they solve more crimes. She's young, smart, has a free mind and a great fortune. He's tall, dark, handsome and dangerous.

In Tasha Alexander's series, the Victorian Lady Emily's husband, who she doesn't know that well as it turns out, dies and she is left a young widow with a keen mind, independent spirit, and independent means. And along the way, of course, she and the "dashing" Colin Hargreaves (smart, respects smart women, not an aristocrat, kind of dangerous and wholly smokin' hot) do some crime (solving).

You can understand my confusion...

But, as I say, they're fun enough books (the Darks, I mean, but both too), and they're very good for things like airport / airplane reading. I would think if I were sick or hung over, too. Familiar but okay characters. Predictable but entertaining plots. Lots of discrete references to sex, but mainly TOTAL clothing porn.

Meh

Brought The Pleasures of Men (Kate Williams) to the beach on Friday (birthday beach day!) but never got around to reading it - too busy chatting with T and zoning out in the sun with some Collie Buddz on, lol. And it's a pretty heavy book for a paperback, so I wish I hadn't been lugging it around.

Especially since when I finally started reading it on Saturday it was pretty bad. The plot (serial killer in early Victorian London) was predictable but confusing at the same time, if that makes any sense, and mostly - sweet baby Jesus, the editing was TERRIBLE. Apparently it's a Penguin branch - they should be ASHAMED of themselves. Just awful typos everywhere. I wouldn't turn in a term paper that bad, so for it to be a published book??

I had been saving it for the beach because I thought, as soon as I saw the cover (I had requested it from the library based on some review somewhere) that it was going to be an easy, trashy read, and, well, it was that...