Its the Little Things

For book recs I always trust the ladies over at Smart Bitches Trashy Books, and today is no different. Currently they are running a contest for free books and other awesome prizes. The point of it all is to raise awareness about contemporary romance novels and how they are a dying breed of books.

Last time they ran a contest they did it for a really awesome book: Flat-Out Sexy by Erin McCarthy. Flat-Out Sexy is/was definitely one of my favorite books of the year. A friend and I were talking about this during the weekend and we both agreed that it was the little things that made this book so great. One thing that really made both of us happy was the fact that the author was not afraid of technology. Technology is always changing and most authors really don't know much about it or don't use it themselves. If you are an author of historicals, it is understandable for you not to know anything about computers/phones/internet stuff, but if you are writing contemporaries, your characters are in this world and it makes sense for them to know these things.

My friend and I were a little sad that all it took for us to be pleased as punch was the author to have her characters texting each other like most people do. It might be an age thing, but who knows? The book would have been good without the mention of familiar things (mostly in an unfamiliar -to me- world of race car driving), but real characters in real situations made this book Wonderful.

Now there is another book the Smart Bitches are pimping and I cannot wait to get my hands on it. Talk Me Down by Victoria Dahl looks like a really fun read. It was pointed out that the "critics" didn't like this book. This is a growing trend in our world, or at least in my online circle of people and blogs that I follow. The same thing happened with Repo! The Genetic Opera. The critics hated it, but the reviews from normal people came back overwhelmingly positive. What does this tell us? The media and those who are in charge of telling us what to think are vastly out of touch with the people. I am trying to stay away from my soapbox, but it is difficult. Its very frustrating when consumers are not trusted to form their own opinions about what they want to read and see.

Anyway, the moral of the story is - Buy a book, buy a romance, buy something based on a reviewer you trust rather than some stuffy person who is out of touch with the world!