Frustrated reading

I have just finished two books. I had started one and was near the end when I started the other one because I was going away for a long weekend. Anyway, I am frustrated with both. I did enjoy them, but there were issues.

Laura's Handmade Life, by Amanda Addison had such potential. It was about a married woman with two children who had to move from London to Norfolk because her husband's company had moved there. She had a part-time job teaching art and design in a local college, but she was not happy. She actually had no reason to be unhappy, but all she did was moan in the first part of the book, and embark on some dodgy flirting with an old boyfriend. The good bits of the book were when she joined a sewing class and learned how to sew, and made things out of old fabrics. She had loads of wonderful ideas, and I can't help wondering if that was what the author wanted to do, just write about the things she makes and the sewing class she belongs to. That would have been great. She created a marvellous character called Hannelore, who had escaped from East Germany in the most creative way, the description of which was crammed into a letter at the end of the book, and it would have been wonderful to hear more about her life. But the author focused on a non-existent affair, possibly to make it a summer romance. Actually it would have been nice if she just talked to her husband, who seemed really nice. Anyway, I did finish the book, and there was lots that I really enjoyed, and at the back of the book she has patterns to make things, and also a list of further sources of information.

So, onto the second frustrating book. I really love the Twilight saga, and I really like Carol Goodman's books, so when I saw that her new book was for fans of Twilight and True Blood, I jumped at it. I haven't read the True Blood series, so I don't know what they are about, but I like Twilight because it is romantic, and is more about feelings other than lust. So, I got a bit of a shock when I read Incubus, and maybe I should have researched what an incubus is. Anyway, the book is very erotic, and I think a bit too much. It was odd, because it felt as though it was written by two people. It was an interesting story, about a young woman accepting a job as a professor in a college specialising in folklore in a remote town. I did like all the descriptions of brownies, fairies, and witches, and the college sounded gorgeous and very interesting, but there was a lot of distraction in the form of her relationships. She did seem quite fickle. Anyway, I think that I will take care when looking at the publisher's blurb on the covers. Quite often, I have noticed that they are referring to a previous book written by the author, which might be quite different, and with this Incubus, well, the only thing to compare it to Twilight are that there are three vampires who play only a minor role in the story, so the publisher description was misleading. Also, while I would read Twilight over and over again, I think, with Incubus, once was more than enough, and it certainly won't be one I share with my young relatives.