Liquid Silver Books, $4.50, ISBN 978-1-59578-770-5
Paranormal Romance, 2010
Yes, we’re back in werewolf country, if the cover art hasn’t given away the surprise by now. Dalton Adams arrives at the coldly beautiful woods of Cascade Mountains to work on his thesis on “animal wildlife and zoology” (aren’t they both the same thing?). He takes up lodging at Faye Dillon’s lodge, only to fall for her. But Faye has a secret…
Colleen Love’s Enchanted is the third story I’ve read from her, and I hate to say this, but I think we just aren’t meant to be. Ms Love’s latest story has the same problem as her previous efforts: she writes with all the intensity typical of that found in an assembly manual. Take this intense scene of passion, for example:
The feel of his naked warmth against and over her, before entering her, was the feel of heaven. His unhurried movements and slow kisses made her ache. Faye wanted to give Dalton what he needed, and so much more. Sliding her fingers over taut muscles trembling with fatigue, she kneaded them, feeling them tighten and relax as he moved. Her lips over hers slid, melting, demanding as his tongue probed, tasting, wrestling, and pleasuring. Groans of erotic ecstasy rolled through his chest. She wanted him to take from her. He had given her so much, silently teaching her the joy of sensual lovemaking, and now she wanted him to receive. She watched him build slowly to orgasm. His eyes closed and sweat glistened, slicking their bodies. His jaws clenched, muscles quivered, trembled. His grip on her bottom tightened as he drove deep. He growled.
Faye shattered. She gasped from the surprised of it.
Doesn’t the above excerpt rock your world with sensual passion? Let’s not even go too deeply into the meaningless sentences in that excerpt alone. I mean, she gasped from the surprise of “it”. What’s “it”? The stupefying boredom of the prose? She wanted him to “take from her” – take what? Take over the wheel because she’s falling asleep?
And then we have this:
The spasm of his cock was only an echo of her slick sheath.
What does that mean? Her sheath is so wide that sounds echo in it? How hard must that penile spasm be in order to create an echo? How can her sheath echo?
It doesn’t help that the characters speak to each other using stilted sentences designed to explain things to the reader. Faye is also quite irrational, as one moment she’d be shattering and then she’d be mad at the hero in the next blink of an eye, punching him over some perceived slight on her pride.
The problem with Enchanted is that, because of the awkward writing and the stilted dialogues, I am never able to forget even for a while that I am reading a story. I can’t immerse myself into the world and I can’t care for the characters because nothing about it feels real. Perhaps you can connect with Ms Love better, but I think that’s about it as far as I’m willing to go when it comes to stories from this author.
