The Travis Series: Sugar Daddy and Blue-Eyed Devil by Lisa Kleypas

book review November 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Having read Smooth Talking Stranger by Lisa Kleypas and being desperate for more good romance to read, I went and got her other two Travis family books from the library. It’s what always happens to me with a Kleypas series. She really does have the most scrumptious men in romance. Scrumptious men and sexy smolder, those are her by-words. I adore Courtney Milan and she is the best author currently publishing historicals, but have I re-read all my favourite Kleypas novels more times than I am willing to admit.

All three books in the Travis series, Sugar Daddy, Blue-Eyed Devil, Smooth Talking Stranger, are told in the first person from the heroine’s perspective. Normally, romance has an omniscient narrator so the frame of reference flips back and forth between the two main characters. The single viewpoint means that one sees the object of affection exclusively as he presents himself to the female lead. It makes each novel her story as opposed to “theirs” and this is appropriate given that each of the heroines has a rather fraught history.

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The Proposition by Judith Ivory

book review November 14, 2013 Leave a comment

Christ, I don’t know. It’s another historical romance novel. The Proposition by Judith Ivory is Pygmalion with a male Pyg. He has a moustache, so that’s a refreshing change. I read a book recently, The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie, in which the hero smoked which a. is cool and we all know it and b. seemed a wonderfully historically accurate detail, kind of like the moustache, but more attractive. Now, if the Pyg also had a beard, the writer might have been on to something. I’ve never read a romance in which the hero had a beard, or in which the heroine had one for that matter. A beard would be awesome. I love beards.

I read The Proposition because Ivory is a very successful writer and this book was highly rated on Amazon, dubious distinction though that may be. Academic Winnie is Henry Higgins and Mick is her Eliza Doolittle. He’s a charmer, that Mick. A charmer in a purely old school romance novel way: sly, funny, and bumptious. Anywho, Winnie trains him to be classy, well-spoken, and clean-shaven, and Mick helps her get her freak on. The book was fine, but didn’t engender any interest in reading more Ivory as some of the elements were a bit dated, as in “1990s”, not as in “Victorian” which they are totally meant to be, and while entertaining, it didn’t pique my interest in the writer’s back catalogue.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful or my  streamlined recommendations list.

The Travis Series: Smooth Talking Stranger by Lisa Kleypas

book review November 13, 2013 Leave a comment

“I had always gone in the other direction, toward men like Dane who made you kill your own spiders
and carry your own suitcase.That was exactly what I wanted. And yet someone like Jack Travis,
unimpeachably male, so damn sure of himself, held a secret, nearly fetishistic allure to me.“

Jesus, GOD, YES! Lisa Kleypas, you just get me. You marry suitcase guy and secretly hope he will carry heavy things for you anyway, not because you can’t, but because you are lazy. You read romance novels for fetishistic allure guy.

Ella Varner is the product of a repeatedly broken home and, far worse, of a narcissistic and manipulative mother. Through time and counseling she has built a healthy life for herself. The same cannot be said for her mother or younger sister. When Ella’s sister leaves her one-week-old baby with their mother, Ella is summoned from Austin to Houston to help sort out the mess. Ella drops everything, including her long-term, vegan, environmental activist live-in boyfriend, to go and help out. This turns into a three-month sojourn while Ella’s sister receives psychological counselling.

But enough about the maguffin and on to the main event of any Lisa Kleypas romance: Jack Travis is Ella’s first candidate for the child’s father despite his protestations that he a. “always holsters his gun” and b. did not have sex with Ella’s sister. He is quickly dismissed as a possibility, but sticks around anyway because of his interest in Ella. Jack is a self-made man and the son of a billionaire. He’s tall, dark, handsome, friendly, helpful, possessive in a secretly attractive way, smart, sexy, supportive, wry, a good listener, seductive, mature, chivalrous, manly, mellifluous-voiced, physically fit, generous, emotionally available, funny, polite, mad for Ella, and willing to take on a newborn. I’ve never said this about a romance novel hero before, but this guy is too good to be true. Jack is too perfect. He’s certainly a very comforting fantasy. Who wouldn’t want Captain Perfect to show up in your life while you are in a crisis, worship the ground you walk on, and provide the moral support you need? It would have been fine if the final timeline had worked differently, or if the do-gooder boyfriend was not painted as an unsympathetic jerk, or if I could believe for one second that someone unexpectedly and without any experience taking care of a newborn baby could have the time or inclination to fall in love with anything other than the notion of a full night’s sleep.

Smooth Talking Stranger features the trademark Lisa Kleypas smolder. Her heroine is independent, self-sufficient, and kind. One certainly can’t fault Ella for falling for Jack. The problem is that the point of a romance novel is not that there is a perfect man, it’s that two people find something more in each other or fit together in a way unique to their personalities. Succumbing to the magnificence of the ultimate man misses the point.

This was my first Lisa Kleypas contemporary romance, but not my last. Please visit my complete summary of Lisa Kleypas’s catalogue for recommendations.  Start with Dreaming of You or The Devil in Winter. Both are classics of the genre.

Addendum: Having made a point of Jack being too perfect, I have reread the book because of the “nearly fetishistic allure” factor.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

FBI/US Attorney Series: Something About You and About That Night by Julie James

book review November 12, 2013 Leave a comment

Same willing suspension, different disbelief.

I don’t read contemporary romances because they don’t provide the narrative distance my obsession calls for, but I was looking for a book to fill an evening and I had quite liked Julie James’ Love Irresistibly, plus my romance spirit guide, Malin, had spoken approvingly of Something About You.

Girl overhears murder. Boy is investigating. Boy and girl have history. Boom chicka wow wow.

Jack Pallas is a glowery, stubbly, hot FBI agent. Cameron Lynde is a successful Assistant US Attorney with a stereotypical “women love shoes” fetish. Cameron ends up in protective custody after overhearing a murder in the hotel room next to hers. The victim was a woman a senator was paying to have sex. Mercifully, as I dislike murder mystery sub-plots, the killer’s identity is revealed early and not the point of the novel. The point of the novel is that Cameron needs protectin’ and she and Jack need to get around to the kissin’ and the lovin’. There were legalities and procedures that strained credulity and/or reality, but it is a romance novel and I can’t be bothered to get my knickers in a twist about suspected jurisprudence inadequacies as long as I’m being entertained.

Something About You had leads with excellent chemistry, he was kind of delicious, as well as fun secondary characters, a nice dose of humour, and, saints be praised, a completely non-stereotypical gay best friend. The novel helped me pass a pleasant evening and I would recommend it to do the same for you.

About That Night is my third Julie James book, my second in a week. I only read it because I was trawling the romance spinners at the library and I stumbled across it. The reviews said it wasn’t as good as the other novels in the series and they were right. Each of these books features either an FBI Agent, a US Attorney, or both (see above). This time it’s the middle one.

Boy and girl clicked, but missed chance. Boy is back, but a felon. Boom chicka complications wow wow.

Kyle and Rylann (I know) met in university, but life got in the way of their incendiary spark. Eight years later, Kyle did something impulsive and stupid that landed him in prison. Rylann is the Assistant US Attorney who represents the federal government in the hearing to commute his sentence to time served. The story behind the sentencing change is covered in the book A Lot Like Love which falls between Something About You and About That Night in the series.

Julie James is a competent writer who gives good smolder. These books are all set in Chicago and I suspect residents will recognize all the local sites and eateries mentioned. Because I don’t live in Chicago, these details did not disrupt my reading experience with any intrusions of realism.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful or my  streamlined recommendations list

A Man Above Reproach by Evelyn Pryce

book review November 11, 2013 Leave a comment

This Regency novel won the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award in the Romance category, in addition to being an overall finalist. Very well done, Ms. Pryce. I can understand why she won. I will definitely be adding her to my Fingers Crossed for Potential list, so Caroline Linden best skooch over.  As this book clearly sets up a trilogy, there will be at least two more chances to see what Evelyn Pryce can do.

Josephine Grant has fallen from society and is eking out a living running the bookshop she inherited from her wastrel father and by playing piano in an upscale brothel, the Sleeping Dove, at night. Elias, the Duke of Lennox, an intimidating and often dour aristocrat, is dragged to the Sleeping Dove one night for a wallow in debauchery. The only problem is that he is not and does not want to be that kind of man. Elias sees Josie playing piano and is instantly drawn to her. He is arrogant and high-handed, but ultimately well-intentioned. Josie isn’t for sale, but she is drawn to the gorgeous, stern man who insists on speaking to her while she plays.

There are a couple of problems in the book, such as initial bumpiness in the hero’s conduct and the plot hangs on a Big Misunderstanding at one point, but they are issues that occur in lots of these kinds of novels and they can be ironed out.  The writing overall is excellent and entertaining, and you do really feel for the characters.

The book is a free loan for Prime on Kindle, but maybe go ahead and buy it to encourage a writer starting out. She has what it takes and needs the chance to write more.

The (Shameful) Tally 2013

The Mackenzie Series: The Untamed Mackenzie and The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie by Jennifer Ashley

book review November 7, 2013 Leave a comment

I’m not sure there is any historical romance author who believes in the redemptive power of love as deeply as Jennifer Ashley. It’s the only reason I can think of for her persistence in creating exquisite examples of Victorian Douchelordery and making them her romantic leads.

The Untamed Mackenzie

First up is the novella The Untamed Mackenzie. Unless you are the magnificence that is Courtney Milan, or perhaps Tessa Dare, novellas are generally just a way to tide over fans and earn some extra money between major releases. They build a love story around previous secondary or even tertiary characters and, this is the important part, allow readers to revisit old favourites.  Jennifer Ashley is not Courtney Milan, or perhaps Tessa Dare, so this is a rickety love story stopping over with each of the  Mackenzies from the first four books in the series. Lloyd is the illegitimate son of the same fu*king monster that raised those tortured heroes. Louisa is the younger sister of Mac Mackenzie’s wife, Isabella.

If pater familias Hart Mackenzie is Douchelord in Chief, Lloyd is the Bastard Douchelord and/or Douchelord Bastard. An obsessive police detective, he was one of the villains in The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie and he acquitted his role in a thorough and reprehensible manner. I hated him and had well-founded concerns for his emotional stability. Admittedly, this is true of 78.3% of Ashley’s heroes. Lloyd and Louisa have flirted in previous encounters and when she is accused of murder, they feel the need to interview each of the Mackenzie characters to solve the crime. Whatever. The other characters are more interesting than Lloyd and Isabella anyway.

The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie

I wanted to like The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie.  I wanted to like it so much. Daniel is an absolute doll, just the sweetest guy. He’s not really wicked at all, not even a little bit, although he does smoke which I thought was a fantastic period detail. Still, it’s a Jennifer Ashley novel, so Daniel’s mother was batshit insane and he has abandonment issues related to his father.

It is Ashley’s best written book to date, she generally excels at sincere romance, despite frequently getting mired in overwrought and histrionic plotting. The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie avoided this pitfall. Ashley toned down the melodrama, ratcheted up the romance, and had just enough Mackenzie brothers camp to make the whole thing fun. But. There’s always a but.

The heroine, Violet, is a rape survivor, a “tortured heroine” if you will, and coming to terms with and moving past this episode was a major plot element. Violet’s experience infringes on her ability to form trusting relationships and complicates her attraction to Daniel. Ashley handled the subject matter sensitively and one could not help but feel for Violet, but I don’t want to read a romance novel which includes rape as a plot point; I don’t want to read a romance novel with any kind of abuse, sexual or otherwise. If the abuse is physical, I can just skip over these episodes.  If it is sexual, it discomfits my entire reading experience. Violet’s recovery was central to the plot, so it doesn’t matter how well it was handled, it ruined the book for me. I am sure there is a book out there that could defy this rule, but I read romance novels for escapism. Every time the Violet’s experience is relived or described, it removed me from the disconnected reality I look to these books for.

A summary of  Jennifer Ashley’s catalogue can be found here. Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

 

A Woman Entangled by Cecilia Grant

book review November 6, 2013 Leave a comment

It’s time to talk about sex in romance novels. Not in a prurient way, but in terms of how it works for the story and how it can enhance, or diminish, the portrayal of the relationship.  The candor begins after the jump, if you want to head straight there.

A Woman Entangled by Cecilia Grant is the third novel in her Blackshear trilogy.  I have read books one, A Lady Awakened, but don’t really remember it, and two, A Gentleman Undone. The second novel ended with a scandal and book three, A Woman Entangled, addresses the aftermath that occurs when your brother marries a courtesan and your own reputation is scathed by association.

The entangled woman of the title, Kate, thinks Elizabeth Bennet was an idiot to turn down Mr. Darcy when he first proposed as Pemberley would have been more than enough to make up for an unhappy marriage. Kate is beautiful and practices being fetching in the mirror in hopes of leveraging her loveliness to make an advantageous marriage. She thinks this will redeem her family from the isolation it endures because her father had the audacity to marry against his parent’s wishes. Family friend and her father’s protegé, Nick Blackshear, has been in love with Kate for three years. He hasn’t the pedigree to please her, and his family has its own recent scandal to contend with, so he has told himself he is over Kate, even as he watches her to see the kind and thoughtful woman she hides beneath her carefully presented surface.

Kate and Nick move towards their happy ending by dealing with their own individual issues. The story is believable, their motivations logical, and I was glad they reached the happy ending. Cecilia Grant is an excellent writer in terms of both style and structure. Unlike the narrative distance run of the mill historical romances often create, a kind of demi-camp reality somewhere between the 19th century and now, Grant anchored her story in appropriate mores and conduct, until…

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Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale

book review November 5, 2013 Comments: 2

If such a thing exists, Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm is part of the historical romance canon. It’s a classic of the genre that still appeared at #6 on All About Romance’s 2010 Top 100 List 18 years after publication. I voted on their list for 2013 and included it myself. An intense and sometimes painful read, Flowers from the Storm’s status as one of the best romance novels ever written is completely understandable.

Christian, Duke of Jervaulx is a mathematician and a rake. We meet him acting on both inclinations early in the book: the latter leads to a duel, the former to working with a Quaker academic and his daughter Archimedea, called Maddy. When Christian has an “apoplexy” (stroke) shortly after presenting a mathematical paper, he disappears from their lives until Maddy and her father come to live at a rest home/psychiatric hospital run by her cousin. Christian is a patient and a troublesome one at that. When Maddy meets Christian again, he has been brought very low and is presumed mad. She realises he is “not mad, but maddened” and approaches her cousin saying she has “An Opening”, a spiritual calling, to help Christian. The apoplexy left his language processing centers damaged, but Christian finds he is able to communicate first through mathematics and later with language as Maddy works with him. He recognizes in her a chance to escape the hospital and seeks to do so by any means necessary.

Progressive for The Regency, the hospital is every dehumanizing psychiatric care nightmare rolled into chapters: abuse, restraints, ice baths, isolation. Kinsale shows us Christian’s muddled, struggling mind and I found these sections harrowing and must confess to jumping forward to a less upsetting section of the book to console myself before going back to continue reading chronologically. Mercifully, Maddy and Christian get away from the hospital, but a marriage of convenience is required to prevent him from being sent back as it will give the impression of a fuller recovery.

Romance novels can succeed on many levels, but the best ones have the same thing in common: If a writer can honestly portray the emotional lives of her characters, everything else will fall into place. Flowers from the Storm is not a light-hearted romance, it can be a tough read precisely because the characters are so well drawn and the reader feels their struggles. Christian and Maddy are two puzzle pieces that fit together only because of the situation they find themselves in. In either of their previous lives, their relationship would not have worked. Forced by circumstance, they build something together that is more than they ever would have been separately.

Thank you, Malin, for reminding me that I had not read this yet and for promising me Christian and Maddy would leave the hospital soon when I emailed her in a heart-wrenched panic.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

Love and Other Scandals and The Truth About Love by Caroline Linden

book review November 4, 2013 Leave a comment

Caroline Linden is on my woefully short Fingers Crossed for Potential list. Last year, I stumbled upon her The Truth About the Duke trilogy and would recommend those books as follows: One Night in London is really good; Blame It on Bath worked well and was [fans self]; and The Way to a Duke’s Heart had a charming male lead, but some story issues. Linden’s latest historical romance, Love and Other Scandals got off to a great start, but lost its momentum due to structural choices.

Joan, the heroine of Love and Other Scandals , is a delight. Pert and cheeky, she has a wastrel brother with a very attractive, rascally friend, Tristan. The two are introduced, they banter, I wasn’t quite sure of the reasoning behind Tristan’s actions, but things proceeded apace when there was an abrupt shift in the story about a third of the way through. Have you seen Moonstruck? Do you remember the scene when Cher arrives at Lincoln Center to meet Nicolas Cage and the soundtrack includes a wry “ba-bum” as she steps out of the taxi and the love story proper begins? The transition in Love and Other Scandals is a lot like that, but instead of building on what went before, Linden reorganized the setting and the story lost its way. It’s not that it was horribly transformed, just disjointed, so, in spite of appealing leads, I can’t recommend the book.

On another note, Caroline Linden has a delightful short story, The Truth About Love, in a collection called Once Upon a Ballroom. Not about two people finding love, it’s a vignette in the life of a plain, bookish woman who has married a notorious former rake. Damien, the erstwhile rake and current besotted husband, has been away from Miranda for several weeks and rumours have begun to circulate of an affair. Prurient friends and relatives gather around Miranda, ostensibly to commiserate, but really to revel in saying, “I told you so.”  Using Miranda’s perspective, it is a take on the happily ever after readers rarely see. Romance novels are full of overlooked spinsters discovering connubial bliss with gorgeous, fascinating men, but just how easily does a reputation die and how does a woman who has found herself the subject of unexpected male attention trust that he really is a reformed raking making the best husband? It was really enjoyable, so I did some research to see if The Truth About Love was an epilogue to one of Linden’s novels, but had no luck. If you happen to know of such a book, I’d be grateful for the title so I can review it and bump my Cannonball Read total from 61.5 to 62.

Links to my other reviews can be found on my complete reading list of books sorted by author or Author Commentary & The Tallies Shameful.

The Lady’s Tutor by Robin Schone

book review October 18, 2013 Leave a comment

Enough with reviewing sweet and lovely romances. Let’s take a look at something awful and absurd: Robin Schone’s The Lady’s Tutor, a Regency romance of the “sexual tutor” variety. If you want to read a good book featuring this trope, proceed immediately to Sarah MacLean’s One Good Earl Deserves a Lover, consciously ignore the jejeune titling, and have at it.

The Lady’s Tutor fails on many fronts, but there was one aspect of the book, one word actually that sums up everything that is wrong with this fornicaterrific novel. That one word does not encompass the story elements that include

  1. Villainy smeared with sexual deviance and a dollop of you-have-got-to-be-kidding.
  2. Prejudice that the “exotic” man knows the sensual arts by virtue of being foreign.
  3. The fact that The Lady’s Tutor includes concepts like “the sensual arts”.
  4. A hero so well overly-endowed as to be simultaneously laughable and alarming.
  5. The hero’s mother advising the heroine to relax her throat muscles to accommodate her son’s aforementioned equine resemblance
  6. The hero sharing horrific and devastating personal information during coitus.

… but it comes darn close. The one word that sums up all that is wrong with this fornicaterrific novel is “pubes”. The Lady’s Tutor, a Regency romance by Robin Schone, includes the word “pubes” not once, not twice, but three times. PUBES! THREE TIMES!

Why are you still reading? I can’t possibly add to or augment that one salient detail.

The (Shameful) Tally 2013