Like Clockwork (audiobook) by Bonnie Dee, narrated by Helen Stern

Like Clockwork is a steampunk romance published by Carina Press. The e-book version is about 31,000 words long, while the audiobook version was a little over 3 hours.

Again, I haven't included any read-alikes.

Review:

I was so happy when I realized that Carina Press has several audiobooks on Audible priced at less than $5. I identified a few with interesting-sounding descriptions, culled the ones with truly terrible narrators, and then selected one that I knew I didn't already own in e-book form. The book I ended up with was this one, Like Clockwork. I listened to the full sample, but I didn't bother to hunt down the e-book excerpt. Maybe I should have. Or maybe it wouldn't have made a difference.

At any rate, on the surface this seemed like a good fit for me. I like steampunk, and the narrator sounded fine. There would potentially be automatons. Nice, right?

Wrong. Right from the start, the heroine annoyed me. She was involved in the creation of the automatons (actually, from what I could tell, the only thing she invented was their realistically human exteriors, but whatever), but she was horrified at how quickly society had adopted them. She had intended for them to replace humans in dangerous jobs, that's it, but instead people started assigning them to service positions. (One more thing: why did the automatons need realistically human exteriors if they were just going to be doing dangerous industrial jobs? Victoria really didn't think this through very well.) Victoria grudgingly had one as a butler, and she even spotted one taking care of a child. The horror! What would become of children raised by stiff, soulless, emotionless machines? And what about those reports Victoria had gotten of automatons spontaneously attacking humans? Later examination revealed nothing wrong with the automatons, so what was going on?

Captive Bride (e-book) by Bonnie Dee

This is a historical romance published by Carina Press. Carina Press includes it in their Historical Romance, Interracial, and Romance categories. I'm pretty sure I bought it after reading a review of it on Dear Author.

According to Carina Press, this book is 75,600 words long, which translated into 210 pages on my Nook.

Synopsis:

This is set in San Francisco in 1870. Corruption runs rampant in the local government and, while the police might help a white woman forced into prostitution, they certainly wouldn't help a Chinese woman. When Huiann arrives in America, she expects to soon be married to Xie, a wealthy businessman she has never seen before, who her parents arranged for her to marry. Instead, Xie tells her that he plans to sell her virginity to the highest bidder and that, if she behaves herself, she may one day be able to live in luxury while she trains other girls to become prostitutes the way Madam Teng will train her.

On the way to see the man who has bought her virginity, Huiann manages to escape. The store she hides in is Alan's. Alan Sommers saw Huiann when she first arrived. He had admired her beauty then, but had assumed she was meant to be someone's bride. Alan can't speak any Chinese dialects and Huiann doesn't know English, but Alan still understands that Huiann is in trouble and needs help, so he lies when a man enters his shop and asks if he has seen her.

After a while, Huiann starts to feel safe in Alan's shop and home. Alan hires her as his housekeeper and teaches her English, and Huiann makes a little money by sewing dresses for Alan to sell in his shop. They start to fall for each other, but the odds are stacked against them. Xie is still looking for Huiann, who he considers to be his property. Also, Alan is trying to become a politician, in the hopes of bringing about positive changes to the city. If anyone found out about his relationship with Huiann, the scandal would destroy his budding political career. Even if they got married, they would still have to face others' prejudices. Will Huiann and Alan be able to overcome all the things that stand against them?

Review:

This post was an absolute bear to write. I'm not sure why, since I even had decent notes that covered pretty much everything I wanted to write. I just had a hard time putting those notes into reasonably coherent and mostly organized paragraphs. I'd have abandoned the whole thing, except I liked the book enough that I wanted to make sure there was a mention of it on my blog. Plus, the cover image is pretty.