Book Review

Title: Beyond a Wicked Kiss
Author: Jo Goodman
Publisher: Kensington/Zebra
Year: 2004
Series: Compass Club #4
Genre: Romance
Subgenre: Historical/Regency
Format: Paperback
Status: In Print

Review: Jo Goodman is one of those really enjoyable authors that I think few people know about. A friend of mine turned me onto her when she started this series, and I eagerly anticipated every installment. The drawback to this series as a whole is that, while each book can be read on its own, the later books are clearer on points if you have read them in succession or at least have the previous books on hand to refer back to. The reason I bring this up is because I reread this title this weekend and my copies of the first two books are in storage, leaving me in want of buying extra copies.

Evan Marchman has acceded to the title of Duke of Westphal. While this would normally be cause for celebration, to Evan, or West as he is known to his compatriots in the Compass Club, it is a situation to despise. The previous duke had acknowledged West was his son, his bastard son. On his deathbed, the duke divulged that he was a bigamist and that in reality West was his legitimate eldest son. In the course of sorting out the estate, West's new ward, Ria Ashby, approaches him to help her locate a student of the girls school that she is the headmistress of. In the course of his investigation, West discovers that all is not what it seems with the school's Board of Governors. They are all members of the Society of Bishops, a secret society that is the Compass Club's sworn enemy.

This book, as well as the others in the series, are long, dense books filled with rich story details. Ms. Goodman controls the pacing with a deft hand and there is never a lag. She is also explicit when describing love scenes, however it is never gratuitous. Readers may also want to be apprised that scenes of sexual subjugation are described in some detail, again it is not done to be gratuitous. This book and series are definitely recommended for those who enjoy highly sensual, detail-rich historical romances, and for those who are fans of Stephanie Laurens, Rosemary Rogers, early Susan Johnson, or Catherine Coulter's early historicals.

Belated Happy New Year!

This would have gone up yesterday, however the computer that I was working on decided to take a nosedive and crash. I have yet to hear if there are any survivors as it was/is my parents' spare computer.

If you're are coming to librarianship from another career or are considering moving to our fair industry from another field, check out the discussion on the NMRT-L listserv. Directions on how to sign up if you're not already on can be found here.

In RA news, I spent a lot of time over the holidays playing around with LibraryThing. I was lucky enough in my timing to watch two very cool, and RA applicable features, get tweaked and added to the cornucopia of goodies that is LibraryThing. Tim explains the tag-based recommendations in this post. The other goodie can be found right next to the tag-based rec's: book recommendations based on what other books are owned by a user. It's similar to Amazon's "Other people who have bought this book have recently purchased..." feature. Originally, five users (I think) had to own a book before Tim's algorithm would supply recommendations. That requirement is now ten. This, in my opinion, will offer more refined recommendations.If you haven't yet checked out LibraryThing, I urge you to sprint over now, NOW, to do so!