Dear Author » Jennie

REVIEW: A Tryst with Trouble by Alyssa Everett

Jennie — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 19:00:14 +0000

Dear Ms. Everett,

I requested this book from Netgalley because I was intrigued by the blurb, which begins, “Dogged for years by painful gossip about his father’s homosexuality, the Marquess of Beningbrough—Ben, to his friends—has protected himself by becoming the ultimate man’s man.” I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a romance hero with that particular baggage, and I was interested in how it would be dealt with in a historical context. As it turns out, that aspect of the story ended up being one of my irritations with the book. Overall, A Tryst with Trouble was very much a mixed bag for me.

The book, which is told in the first person (by both the hero and heroine) opens with the hero accompanying his cousin Teddy to the home of the cousin’s fiancee. Ben is there for “moral support” (a phrase that struck me as an anachronism); Teddy is there to question his beloved, the Lady Helen, about her rumored indiscretion with a neighbor’s footman. Ben clashes with Lady Helen’s older sister, Lady Barbara. Barbara is not at all like her much admired sister, who is blonde and dainty and just the sort of helpless type that the men of the ton go for.

The interview doesn’t go that well, owing at least in part to the fact that both Teddy and Helen are idiots. Ben returns home to his overprotective mother, but is shortly summoned back to the Jeffords household. A man lies dead in the foyer, his skull crushed, and Teddy is claiming responsibility for the crime, though he says it was an accident. The obvious forensic evidence does not support that conclusion, though, and it seems clear that Teddy is trying to protect Helen. The dead man just happens to be the footman who was Helen’s rumored lover.

Ben and Barbara thus have a convenient reason to be thrown together – both of them want to get to the bottom of what happened to the footman, and absolve their respective relatives of responsibility for the crime. This puts them in situations that they normally wouldn’t be in, given the era and their stations in life – hiding in a wardrobe together at midnight and later alone in her bedroom together for a prolonged period of time. They discover through their sleuthing that Helen was being blackmailed by someone, and that Ben’s cousin John – Teddy’s illegitimate brother – is helping her deal with the blackmailer.

As I alluded to above, Ben’s attitude towards his father’s orientation annoyed me greatly. I expected from the blurb that growing up in the shadow of his father’s scandal would have turned him into a man-whore, and while I find man-whores entirely tiresome in romance, in this case it would have made a certain dramatic sense. But Ben doesn’t seem especially manly (or whorey) to me, and the chief way that his conflicted feelings are expressed is in his internal musings, which are extremely thin-skinned and reactionary:

My father smiled. “A beauty, is she?”

It was a friendly enough question, but it brought a flash of irritation. For years now I’d known he didn’t particularly care whether a girl was a beauty or not, yet we had to go on pretending we were a family like any other.

…and…

”…you always did like those tall, whiskey-voiced girls.”

I stiffened and was about to ask what he meant to imply. That I liked mannish women? That I secretly preferred men?

There are a dozen or more examples I could cite in the book along these lines. Ben’s reactions often feel less like those of a tormented son and more of a whiny teenager: “OMG, my dad is SO embarrassing!” Ben’s father is a sympathetic and likable figure, which made Ben’s hostility towards him all the more aggravating to read.

Barbara is pretty standard as a heroine – overshadowed by her more conventionally attractive sister, she really believes that men are put off by her big boobs and red hair. (She is only lacking the requisite glasses that when taken off reveal her to be a beauty!) She’s developed a bit of a prickly exterior to deal with rejection.

What disappointed me was that there were the bones there for some interesting character growth. Ben and Barbara are both young enough that their parent-induced insecurities were understandable, if only they’d been handled with a bit more depth. Ben’s mother fusses over him excessively, always worried he’ll catch his death if he goes out without a hat. I would’ve liked to have seen this developed more so it wasn’t just a parental characteristic, but perhaps something that really had an effect on Ben. His father is much more reasonable but I do accept, given the setting, that Ben would be conflicted over his father’s sexuality, the shame it brought upon their family (he was teased at school about it relentlessly) and his own feelings about masculinity. Barbara’s father is not a villian, but he’s also not very likable (“when Papa wasn’t happy, he saw to it that no one else was happy, either”) and he contributes greatly to her feelings of insecurity, cutting her down as a matter of course. It’s all presented too superficially to have the impact it should, though.

The relationship between Ben and Barbara is similarly superficial – they spend a lot of time insisting that they don’t like each other. The resolution to the mystery is not entirely obvious (though it gets more so towards the end; I figured it out before the villian was unmasked); on the other hand it didn’t interest me much, but then mysteries often don’t.

Ultimately, A Tryst with Trouble isn’t a bad book; it just didn’t have much to distinguish it or raise it above the mediocre. My grade is a C.

Best regards,

Jennie

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REVIEW: Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers

Jennie — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 19:00:49 +0000

Dear Ms. LaFevers,

One advantage of being offered books for review is that it has made me more adventurous as a reader. Even reading a bad book has some value to me if I can get a review out of it, so it’s not as much of a risk for me to take a chance on an unknown author.

I requested a copy of Grave Mercy on a whim; the blurb intrigued me. It is not a bad book, but I can’t say it was very successful for me. While the concept is interesting indeed, the execution felt strangely flat.

The story is set in 14th century Brittany, in an alternate world that diverges somewhat from historical fact (the world also contains some magical elements). Ismae is 14 years old and about to be forced into marriage to a brute by her equally brutish father. Rumor in their small village has long held that Ismae’s father is not her real father at all, and that she was instead sired by the god of death himself, St. Mortain. This is supposedly the reason that Ismae’s (long-gone) mother tried to abort her; obviously she didn’t succeed but Ismae bears a long, ugly scar on her body as a reminder of the poison that failed to expel her from the womb.

Ismae’s wedding night goes awry and she is beaten and then locked in a cellar by her husband; she is rescued by the very same herbwitch who had tried to abort her years before, and taken to the Convent of St. Mortain. Here Ismae discovers her value, as well as some special gifts. For one, she is largely impervious to poison; what would quickly kill another might make her mildly sick for a brief time. As the story unfolds, Ismae discovers other powers that touch on her unique relationship with death.

The nuns of St. Mortain train their charges to be assassins in the service of their god. (Mortain is called a saint to make him fit – more or less – into the Christian pantheon, but he and other saints were clearly repurposed from an earlier belief system.) For Ismae, serving Mortain means working with poisons and learning other skills that will make her deadly. When she is 17, she is sent out to make her first kill; her target is a traitor working for the French against the interests of Brittany’s ruler. The job goes off fairly successfully and Ismae is relatively free of guilt, which I appreciated.

The nuns of St. Mortain have various resources at their disposal that help them determine who to target for assassination. The convent has an elderly nun who acts as a seer. The assassins themselves can perceive a “marque” on the bodies of their victims that confirms that they are marked by St. Mortain for death (usually in the form of a shadow or smudge that may appear in the spot where the killing blow is eventually struck). It becomes evident though that the nuns are politically connected as well, and at least some of the killings (specifically, those that Ismae is involved in) are linked to the struggle between France and Brittany and perhaps based on information from outside sources who might have their own agendas.

Ismae struggles with her gratitude to the convent, her desire to be obedient, and her sense, which grows stronger as the book progresses, that the nuns of St. Mortain are not as infallible in their judgments as she’s been led to believe. Her disquiet increases when she is given an important assignment: she is sent to the court of Anne, Duchess of Brittany, the ruler whose control of the realm is threatened by the French. Ismae accompanies Gavriel Duval, a young and serious noble who happens to be Anne’s illegitimate half-brother. Ismae has been warned to keep an eye on Gavriel as the convent suspects he may be acting against Anne’s interests, but the idea of having to eventually perhaps kill him becomes more difficult as the two grow closer.

There’s a lot going on in this book – there is Ismae’s coming-of-age, as a woman and an assassin, the mythology of the alternate world the author creates, with its unfamiliar saints and fables, and there’s political intrigue. A lot of political intrigue. I’m not opposed to political intrigue as a matter of course, but I think it interests me more when it involves real history. Even so, fictional historical intrigue could be made interesting to me, but this just wasn’t that intriguing. Anne (who I was suprised to realize, late in the story, is much younger than I’d thought – around 12) is beset by potential enemies at every turn. She needs to marry to secure her kingdom’s safety from the French, but none of the prospects are appealing (the most persistent one is a dirty old man old enough to be her grandfather). She can’t trust all her advisers, but she doesn’t know which are truly and actively working against her and which are merely trying to push her in one direction or another for personal gain or because they honestly believe they are acting in Brittany’s best interests.

When I read back the description of the plot so far, I keep thinking that this sounds like a great book. That it wasn’t great isn’t attributable to any one thing, but a dozen small pieces that are missing: a great heroine, a great hero, a compelling love story, an intriguing villain, sparkling writing, a conflict worth taking a rooting interest in, surprising plot turns, a fantasy world that really came alive. If even a few of those elements were there, the book would’ve worked a whole lot better for me. As it was, it’s a book with a great set-up that was mediocre in every other way.

I would’ve liked Ismae better if she had been better at being what she was trained to be. In a way, her hesitancy was understandable: when the bulk of the story takes place Ismae has a handful of kills under her belt, and she’s still just 17. But one does get so tired of heroines who end up being something less than the bad-asses they were advertised to be. Readers who are ambivalent about assassins or tough heroines may actually prefer Ismae as she is. I don’t necessarily favor kick-ass heroines over other types, but once I expect a heroine to be kick-ass I get excessively annoyed when she doesn’t deliver. Ismae wasn’t incompetent, but she was far from kick-ass. For an assassin, she’s really kind of insipid. The most remarkable thing about Ismae is that she’s good at not dying of poison, and that’s not really something she gets the credit for.

The relationship between Ismae and Gavriel is pretty tepid. They are obviously attracted to each other but have so many missed connections that their romance quickly became frustrating to read about. I wondered how old Gavriel was supposed to be because at times he’s portrayed as sort of romance-hero-supercompetent, which suggested that he was a bit older (closer to 30), but other times he seemed quite young. I didn’t actually want him to be that old because Ismae is really a pretty young and sheltered 17-year-old, for all that she kills people for a living.

I couldn’t decide if the YA designation was appropriate for this book or not. The assassin theme would probably relegate it to suitability for older teens, mostly, but I’m not sure they’d be that interested in all of the political intrigue (I mean, I wasn’t that interested in the political intrigue). There was a certain lack of sophistication and complexity in the writing that’s reminiscent of other YA books I’ve read, which I guess is not exactly a compliment, but what I’m trying to say is that it did read like a YA to me in some ways. Even when serious things happen – murders, attempted rapes, attempted murders – it didn’t really feel too intense or scary. I think the writing felt like it was for a younger teen but the plotting for an older one. There was one very discreet sex scene.

Ultimately, the problem with Grave Mercy was that in spite of the intriguing possibilities presented by the concept, the book itself was just bland. My grade is a C.

Best regards,

Jennie

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What Jennie’s Been Reading

Jennie — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:00:37 +0000

Since last I wrote, I read and reviewed Patricia Gaffney’s Crooked Hearts. Here’s what else I’ve been reading:

The Great Famine: Ireland’s Agony 1845-1852 by Ciarán Ó Murchadha: Because apparently one book about innocent people starving to death just wasn’t enough for me. Actually, it wasn’t until I started this book that I realized I had inadvertently grabbed it just after finishing the book on the Siege of Leningrad. This is a well-written book, but too dry and scholarly for me. There are some human moments and personal anecdotes, but they are a bit too few and far between. At the same time some of the details are powerful enough that as a reader I was appalled at the neglect and cruelty forced upon the victims of the famine. The logic of the powers in England is a thing to behold, as when reports that potato crops would fail for a second year in a row prompted closure of relief measures, to avoid the poor becoming too “dependent” on aid. (Not a problem once they are dead of starvation or disease!) I saw some disturbing parallels between the callous attitudes shown by the privileged class in 19th century Britain and similar attitudes found in some quarters in the United States today.

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At Your Pleasure by Meredith Duran: I have really liked every Duran book I’ve read, and this was no exception. At the same time I think maybe it was…slightly forgettable? I don’t know; somehow I just feel like it hasn’t stayed with me the way a really good book should. But sometimes that has more to do with my mood or what’s going on in my life at the time I read a book. Anyway, I should be doing a review of this; maybe I’ll resolve my feelings about it through that.

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Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout: I wasn’t sure I would be interested in this book, Pulitzer Prize or no. It looked like it might be either too women’s fiction-y for me or too literary fiction-y for me. But my sister read it and liked it, and so I gave it a try. Set in small-town Maine, it’s not so much a novel as a collection of stories. Olive Kitteridge appears either as the main character or a minor character in all of them. Olive, a retired school teacher who is large, terse and often unlikeable, anchors the stories and serves as a sort of anchor in the community as well. Over the course of the book, I came to find her strangely loveable even when she wasn’t likeable. The other characters are interesting as well, usually in a quiet way – Strout’s strength is in insightful characterization, not flashy prose or plotting. I ended up liking this quite a bit.

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Grave Mercy by R.L. LaFevers: I grabbed this one on a whim; the elements that aren’t my usual cup of tea were made up for by elements that intrigued me. This is an alternate-history/fantasy hybrid featuring a heroine who is a sort of handmaiden/assassin for the saint of death (!). I’m about two-thirds of the way through, and it’s pretty good, though there’s a slight lack of sophistication to the writing that may be due to the fact that it’s at least nominally a YA book. Also, I would like to see the heroine become a bit more kickass. I plan to review this.

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Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte: I believe this was recommended to me in the comments after my review of the clusterfuck of insanity that was Wuthering Heights. Agnes Grey could not be more different. I’m about halfway through it, and so far it’s a very quiet tale about a young woman who leaves her family to work as a governess, which turns out to be a largely thankless task, at least in the case of the two families she ends up working for. Agnes has some interesting observations about human nature, though she’s occasionally a bit superior and even martryish in her detailing of how very mean everyone is to her. But she’s the classic sensible 19th century heroine: kind, down to earth, humble and devout. So far not a lot has happened, though the much-telegraphed romance between Agnes and a country pastor seems like it’s just about to get off the ground, if the two of them would stop acting like 7th graders at their first dance and actually talk to each other. So far, so good.

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North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell: It was the miniseries of this book that got me started as an Elizabeth Gaskell fan; I went on to watch and enjoy the miniseries of her Cranford and eventually the book version of that story. I’m finally getting around the reading this one, and I’m glad I started it. North and South is a more serious and complex than Cranford, but I’m enjoying it so far, and especially like the ambiguity of the characterizations (I’ve mentioned it before but somehow I’m always surprised when pre-modern novels have characters that aren’t black-and-white).

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A Tryst with Trouble by Alyssa Everett: I have a review of this that should run closer to the release date. I’ll just say this: meh.

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Her Husband’s Harlot by Grace Callaway: I actually bought this after reading Dabney’s review. It had its moments (the sex scenes were quite hot) but overall I thought it was pretty mediocre.

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About that Night by Julie James: I’m not a big reader of contemps, and this is only the second book I’ve read from this author (the other was the related Something About You). I kind of just fell into reading this; I opened it up and then couldn’t quite put it down. That sounds like a strong recommendation, but it’s probably just a reflection of the fact that I find contemporaries the most readable of romances; it’s pretty easy for me to fall into reading one. It’s a decent enough read but I’m not sure I understand the fuss about this author. But again, not a big reader of contemporaries, and I find that what makes them readable also makes them a bit forgettable and interchangeable, at least for me.

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Wow, that was a lot of books! I should do these more often.

Until next time,

Jennie

REVIEW: Crooked Hearts by Patricia Gaffney

Jennie — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:00:26 +0000

Dear Ms. Gaffney,

Back when I was devouring your backlist, in my early days as a romance reader, I avoided Crooked Hearts at first. I had very rigid notions of what I liked and what I didn’t like, and “Western” and “humorous” were on my “do not like” list, as far as romance went. I was pretty stubborn in those days; it took me a long time to realize that I valued good writing far, far more than setting or angst level. Anyway, as it turned out, Crooked Hearts is not exactly a Western, and while it is funny, it also has its fair share of depth and emotion.

The novel’s opening line, “Sister Mary Augustine’s little silver derringer was cutting into her thigh” is semi-famous in romance circles, one of those great opening lines that gets traded among romance fans. It’s a great, evocative line, and it also foreshadows the complexity of the heroine and her contradictions. Grace Rousselot meets Reuben Jones on the stagecoach to San Francisco; she is impersonating a nun and he the heir to a wealthy ranchero, recently and tragically blinded in an accident. They are both con artists, of course, though at first neither of them knows about the other. Reuben figures out that Grace isn’t a nun quickly; he’s able to observe her, after all, when she thinks she’s not being watched and indulges in un-nunlike activities, like trying to adjust the position of the uncomfortable gun. It takes Grace a few chapters to figure out that Reuben is not what he seems, and by then both are fleeing a stagecoach robbery (they aren’t the perpetrators, but both have a healthy aversion to the law, and so figure it’s better to get out while the getting’s good).

Reuben and Grace travel to San Francisco, where Reuben allows Grace to stay with him in his ramshackle house while she figures out what to do next. She tells Reuben she needs money for her “husband” Henry’s heart operation, but of course Reuben isn’t falling for that. Grace does need money, and so does Reuben (to pay off a gang of brothers he’d previously fleeced), so they decide to pull a con – in the form of a crooked card game – together.

Reuben and Grace are enormously appealing characters, both together and as individuals. Reuben has an interesting, unusual background that he doesn’t reveal to Grace until late in the book. Both of them, in fact, play it pretty close to the vest for the better part of the story, blithely lying to the other whenever the situation seems to require it. This might be off-putting but for the fact that both of them know the score and neither is quick to fall for improbable (or even probable) stories. Grace is slightly more conventional than Reuben; at one point he notes that she’s a “combination of bunco artist and bleeding heart”, and that’s in fact a pretty apt description. I might have wished for her to be a little tougher – I’m always looking for signs that a heroine is being softened to make her more typically “feminine” – but in the end Grace’s personality felt authentic, contradictions and all. And in fact Reuben, though he may be a bit savvier than Grace, really isn’t all that tough either.

When a small Chinese statue that Grace lifted during the stagecoach robbery (part of a collection of antiquities another passenger was transporting) ends up being very important to a local Chinese businessman, Reuben and Grace think that they may be set up for the score of a lifetime. But they are wading into deeper waters than they are used to, taking on both a dangerous man and an unfamiliar subculture (San Francisco’s Chinatown).

There were a couple of things that made this mostly fun and light book a little bit uncomfortable for me as a reader.

First, I was always on the verge of having an ethical problem with Reuben and Grace’s profession. Yes, confidence artists tend to prey on peoples’ greed and vanity, and that makes their victims less sympathetic. In their crooked poker game, the main victim was pretty unpleasant, and Reuben shows some concern for the less odious players (i.e. he is glad when they fold; he doesn’t want them to lose all their money). However unrealistic this might be (I’m thinking real-life con artists have to be a wee bit more callous), as a reader I appreciated it. There’s a fine line between making the hero and heroine madcap sort-of-Robin-Hoods who steal from the unworthy and give to…themselves, and making them leeches who exploit the trust of others. While Reuben and Grace mostly stayed on the former side, I was often a bit uneasy.

The other issue that gave me some discomfort is a touchier one. The depiction of the Chinese characters in the book is…not exactly nuanced. On the one hand, I find this less of a concern in a book that isn’t hugely serious – the portrayals are not offensive, just a bit stereotypical (e.g. Grace’s inscrutable houseboy, and the Chinatown gangster who longs to be white and lusts after white women). I find it a little surprising that the book is only about a decade old, though, because it feels to me like such characters might raise some eyebrows if the book were newly published today.

I’ve emphasized that Crooked Hearts is light, but it does have some emotional heft; both Reuben and particularly Grace had troubled upbringings and have suffered losses. Reuben’s ethnic background – he’s a Jew born in the Ukraine – adds some color (and some entertaining Yiddishisms).

Crooked Hearts isn’t my favorite of the Gaffney reissues, but like anything by this author, it’s well worth reading, especially if you like your heroes and heroines unconventional. My grade is a B+.

Best regards,

Jennie

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REVIEW: Pure by Julianna Baggott

Jennie — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:00:07 +0000

Dear Ms. Baggott,

With the buzz over The Hunger Games trilogy, YA dystopian novels are hotter than ever right now – even an infrequent YA reader like myself knows that. I’ll admit to being party to the general enthusiasm. I like dystopian novels in general (at least in theory; in practice I’m careful about which ones I read, because some of them are just too grim for me). But YA seems particularly suited to dystopian themes, perhaps because depressing subjects can be a little less so when seen through the eyes of the young, who may have more resiliency and less to lose than older protagonists. I also think that even at my age I retain a certain visceral thrill at the idea of being young and suddenly unconstrained by the rules that govern society (of course, the characters in these novels often face other, more difficult challenges). In addition to really liking The Hunger Games trilogy, several years ago I read and loved How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff, which was a rather low-tech and straight-forward story with dystopian themes. So I’m always on the lookout for similar books.

Pure definitely had some similarity to The Hunger Games; less so to How I Live Now, in that the post-apocalyptic world of Pure is definitely more science-fictiony than those two books. Some of the creatures created by the apocalyptic event (called “the Detonations” in Pure) almost seem supernatural to me, though there’s no suggestion that they are not the natural result of what happened. It’s just that they seemed so fantastical to me and the science behind them is never explained, which leaves me wondering how they came to be. (The author’s note at the end suggests that she did do some research with nanotechnology experts, but since I didn’t read that until I was done with the book, it didn’t really help me.)

Anyway…Pure begins by introducing the reader to Pressia Belze, a 15-going-on-16-year-old (more on this in a moment). She lives with her grandfather in the burned-out husk of former barbershop. Some time (perhaps a decade) before, the Detonations occurred; the Detonations appear to have been some sort of bomb or bombs, as the name would suggest. Apparently similar in scale to an atomic bomb, the Detonations cause a specific and horrifying sort of damage. Many are killed, and the survivors exist in poverty and misery. Well, some of the survivors. An unspecified number had escaped before the Detonations to a planned artificial community called the Dome. Those within the Dome are safe from the Detonations and continue their lives in a rigidly controlled and sterile environment, waiting for the day that the Earth will be renewed and they can rejoin their brethren outside in the real world.

Pressia’s age is an issue because 16 year olds are compelled to report to the OSR, a sort of militia that controls what’s left of society. Children taken by the OSR are forced to either become OSR killers or used as target practice for other OSR recruits. Pressia and her grandfather must make a decision about whether to try to evade the OSR (which would mean certain death if she were caught) or not.

Meanwhile, within the Dome, a teenage boy named Partridge is beginning to awaken to some truths about his past. His father, Willux, is a high muckity-muck in Dome society, a scientist who was one of the chief architects of the Dome. Partridge’s mother supposedly died in the Detonations, and his older brother, the golden boy Sedge, committed suicide. Partridge is a disappointment to his father in part because he is resistant to “coding”, the genetic manipulation that the scientists within the Dome use to create super-soldiers.

The world of Pure feels artificial, or at least incomplete. It’s unclear what happened to the rest of the world, and it’s hard to get a sense of exactly how big the world the characters inhabit is. How big is the Dome – the size of a small city? A large city? Bigger? Smaller? I had no idea, and that bothered me. The scale of the world outside the Dome is similarly vague, and there is no mention of what happened to the rest of the world. (Come to think of it, was that ever addressed in The Hunger Games? Now that’s bothering me….)

The inauthenticity problem kept cropping up for me. One of the central conceits of Pure is that those left outside the Dome during the Detonations were altered by them in strange ways, usually involving having inanimate or animate objects fused to their bodies. In Pressia’s case, it’s a doll’s head in place of (or over? I was never clear on this) one of her hands. Her grandfather has a fan lodged in his throat. Another teen, Bradwell, has birds fused into his back, birds that somehow remain alive enough to occasionally flutter their wings, though they don’t seem to eat or poop or caw or do anything else that birds do. A third character has his younger brother fused to his back; in that case, the brother does eat, and talk, though he appears to be mentally retarded or brain-damaged.

The concept was intriguing, but it didn’t hold up to scrutiny much. I don’t know if my problem was that I’m too scientifically minded or not scientifically minded enough. I kept wondering, in the case of fusing with non-sentient objects, how the objects didn’t end up causing infections. In the case of, say, the birds on Bradwell’s back, I was even more confused. Were they somehow parasitically living off Bradwell? How would that work? Wouldn’t their life span be different from his, and if so, would their deaths effect his health? There is a suggestion at one point that the detonations were of some sort of weapon that changed the people and objects outside on a molecular level – at least that was how I understood it. But it was so beyond my understanding of the way things work that it almost seemed to be more magic than science involved. I couldn’t help but feel that the author was more moved by a cool-sounding concept – a doll head for a hand! birds that flutter their wings imbedded in one’s back! – than that she was really working from a well-thought out theory about the world she was creating. Again, maybe this is all explained by nanotechnology; I really wouldn’t know (that’s putting it mildly; my knowledge of nanotechnology begins and ends with my ability to spell the word). But I wished there was more detail – I even would’ve accepted an info dump – that put the strange mutations caused by the Detonations in some sort of context I could begin to understand.

As I mentioned, the Detonations happened about a decade before the book begins, but in some ways the time feels shorter than that. I would have expected that more of a civilization would have emerged; things on the outside are pretty chaotic, and everyone just seems to accept that. Now, it may be that there is manipulation from inside the Dome to keep things that way (I hope I’m not giving too much away by suggesting that the architects of the Dome aren’t exactly benevolent), but that’s just a guess; it’s not something that’s suggested in the text. There is a market of sorts that Pressia barters at, proving I guess that commerce is the hardest thing to kill, but no schools or organized workforce (beyond the OSR) seemed to exist. I can’t say I know how people would react after an apocalyptic event that destroyed society, but I feel like there would be some effort to approximate normalcy, even if it was a harrowing and miserable facsimile of it.

Pure definitely contains some not-so-subtle political messages – not ones I disagreed with, but they may bug some readers. Society was obviously somewhat troubled before the Detonations – there are mentions of the asylums and prisons being full, for one thing. The prevailing thought within in the Dome seems to be that a lack of “civility” and “purity” were the main problems that plagued society, but their definitions of such concepts are a little twisted. There’s a heavy dose of eugenics in the notion of being “pure”, though the term is also used by those on the outside to denote those within the Dome, who avoided being physically marred by the Detonations as apparently everyone outside was. Also, Dome society is depicted as pretty rigidly old-fashioned in regards to gender roles: the boys train to be soldiers and the girls are expected to see their highest calling as mothers.

In addition to being somewhat flummoxed by the scale of the society depicted in Pure, I was confused by the idea that those within the Dome would anxiously anticipate the day that they could rejoin the outside world – a world that supposedly would be reborn and renewed at some future point. Again, only going by my own hazy scientific understanding of the weapons used in the Detonations, and using the still-present manifestations of the damage they wrought – omnipresent ash and mutations – as a reference point, I wouldn’t think that rebirth and renewal would be happening in anyone’s lifetime, or their children’s, or their children’s children’s children’s, if you get my drift. What I’m saying is, I don’t really understand anyone within the Dome being emotionally invested in the day that Dome folk would once again walk in the sunshine, since it seemed like it could be hundreds and hundreds of years off.

That’s before you even get to the “meltlands” of destroyed neighborhoods, the periodic “death sprees”, and the dust monsters – terrifying (though again somewhat biologically improbable) creatures that rise up and devour unwary humans. Granted, those within the Dome don’t necessarily know the reality of life on the outside, though they know it’s not good (presumably, they are told just enough horror stories to discourage them from thinking of trying to get out and see for themselves). But still, it feels like this idea – that the Detonations were done to scrub the Earth of all its unsavory elements, allowing for a fresh start at some point in the future – is an interesting one that is just not that well thought out.

There’s a lot going on in Pure – a lot of the stuff that happens later in the book is probably too spoilery to even allude to. There are several significant characters besides Pressia and Partridge: Bradwell, a young man who has escaped the OSR’s notice and lives outside even the marginal society that exists outside; Lyda, a Dome girl whose involvement with Partridge ends up costing her a lot, but which also opens her eyes to the reality of life both in and outside; and El Capitan, an OSR commander who comes to have divided loyalties as the story progresses.

Pressia and Partridge, for all that they are the leads, aren’t really the characters who interested me the most in the story. For all the strangeness of the world, they feel like fairly conventional characters. So too was Bradwell. I actually found Lyda and El Capitan the most interesting. Lyda really has her world turned upside in Pure - actually, all the main characters do, with the possible exception of Bradwell. I’m not sure why I found her more interesting that Pressia – maybe because, having more, she gave up much more when she accepted that everything she knew was a lie. El Capitan is in some way’s Lyda’s opposite, though he also has been led to believe things about life in and outside the Dome that aren’t true. But rather than being kept in innocence, he’s been fashioned into something hard and cold – which makes the strong spark of humanity beneath the tough surface all the more appealing.

Something I should probably note: the story is told in first person present tense. I found this distracting at first but quickly got used to it. I do know that some readers are picky about such things, though.

Ultimately, Pure was a bit of a mish-mash for me: a lot of good ideas that felt like they were better in concept than execution, some characters that didn’t interest me very much and some that interested me a lot, and a plot that was crammed full. The last half or third (with all the spoilery developments) was fast-paced and kept me absorbed, and I’m interested enough to want to check out the next book in the series. My grade: B-.

Best regards,

Jennie

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What Jennie’s Been Reading

Jennie — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:00:25 +0000

I haven’t been finishing books that quickly lately; first the holidays interfered and then work interfered. I read and reviewed The Lost Book of Mala R. and Lily. Here’s a rundown of what else I’ve been reading:

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins: I started this on the recommendation of a friend; it’s her favorite book. I’m about halfway through, and…it’s good. I wouldn’t say I love it the way my friend does, but it has a nice atmosphere to it. Wikipedia says it’s an epistolary novel; I had always thought epistolary=letters, but I guess it can include other documents (in the case of this book, diary entries and legal statements form a good part of the story). I’m interested in the resolution and how the disparate elements come together. I had previously had some vague idea that this was a ghost story, but it’s really more of a mystery with an unusual structure and some intriguing characters (the affable yet menacing Count Fosco chief among them).

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Pure by Julianna Baggott: I’m still fairly early on in this dystopian YA novel. So far, so good, though I find the world-building a little confusing. That’s not unusual for me, though (one reason I am wary of fantasy and sci-fi books). I plan to review this one.

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Leningrad by Anna Reid: I’ve been reading this one for a while but haven’t made a huge amount of progress. I was expecting it to be more composed of personal anecdotes of those who lived throug the Siege of Leningrad, but so far, while there are some of those, there’s also a lot of big picture stuff about the war, troop movements, Hitler and Stalin, etc. This doesn’t interest me quite as much, especially when it gets very military-focused – battle stuff bores me to tears. I still have hopes, though. I am having trouble keeping all of the Russian names straight – I wish there were a glossary or something similar to help me with that.

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The Vizard Mask by Diana Norman: I have heard about this book forever – I think Jayne is a fan, perhaps? Having caught up with the late author’s medieval mystery series (written as Ariana Franklin), I broke down and ordered this from overseas. I’m about 2/3 through it and enjoying it a lot. Penitence Hurd, colonial Puritan turned London actress turned mistress to royalty is a unique and fascinating character. I have to say, I have read a lot of books featuring Charles II lately, and I swear I like him less each time I read about him. Seriously, he appears to have been a real douche canoe, both as a monarch and a man.

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Until next time,

Jennie

REVIEW: Lily by Patricia Gaffney

Jennie — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:00:55 +0000

Dear Ms. Gaffney,

When I heard the news that many of your romance titles were being released as ebooks by Open Road Integrated Media, I felt a pang of jealousy for those newer romance readers who would have the opportunity to discover your work for the first time. When the opportunity came to interview you, Jane suggested that perhaps some reviews of these older books wouldn’t be amiss. It was natural for me to review Lily, since once upon a time it was among my top five favorite romances.

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that Lily fell out of favor with me at some point; that’s not the case. Unlike most romance readers (at least so it seems), I don’t reread. Not even favorite books. I’m not sure why not – for the first five or so years that I read romances, I reread regularly. I guess at some point I just decided that there were enough good new books out there for me to read; I didn’t have time to keep rereading things I’d already read. I keep my favorite books, to be sure, and wouldn’t be parted with them. I just don’t read them. (I’m sure the fact that they are in boxes in a closet with stuff on top of them contributes to this – if I had them on shelves and easily accessible, my habits might be different.)

My point, and I do have one, is that I haven’t read Lily in part or in whole, for a long, long time. Inevitably, over the years, my tastes have changed. So I approached the book with a measure of trepidation – what if it didn’t live up to my remembrance? Not only would I be personally disappointed, would I then have to (gasp!) give Lily a bad review?!

I needn’t have worried – while I found some flaws in the story (flaws I very well may have noticed the first time and forgotten), I still found reading the book, over all, a magical experience.

The book opens with Lily Trehearne dealing with the recent death of her father and the trying attention of her guardian, the Reverend Roger Soames, who insists that Lily must marry his son Lewis. Lily has no intention of or desire to marry Lewis; she only needs Soames to put up with her for a short while until she reaches her majority and gains a small inheritance. But Soames won’t take no for an answer, and threatens to have Lily taken up as a thief (he burns several pounds in the fireplace and then calls to his son to fetch the constable) if she doesn’t comply. Lily and Soames tussle, and in an attempt to get away Lily pushes Soames, who in true melodrama fashion falls and hits his head, and lies apparently dead on the hearth as the law pounds on the door. Lily flees in terror, grabbing the first coach out of town.

A chance encounter with a housekeeper traveling back to her employer lands Lily a job as a maid in Cornwall, which she figures is remote enough to hide in for the time being. So she comes to Darkstone Manor (!!), home of Devon Darkwell (!!!!), whom she first encounters drunkenly waving a pistol in the hall. It turns out that Devon is not normally given to such Elvis-like behavior; he’s especially distraught on the anniversary of the death of his child. Devon is normally rather buttoned-up and repressed.

Lily is going under the Dickensian alias of Lily Troublefield, and (at first at least) sporting a ridiculous Irish accent as further disguise. She is quite unsuited to the position of housemaid, having been raised as a gentlewoman, albeit an impoverished one. Her beauty and her innate nobility attract Devon’s attention, though it’s hardly love at first sight. Devon is definitely a product of his time; he just doesn’t understand why a housemaid won’t spread her legs for him. It’s only when he is injured (reluctantly participating in his brother Clay’s smuggling activities, Devon is wounded by the King’s men) and Lily must nurse him that a deeper relationship develops.

Devon and Lily’s romance is deliciously old-school in all the best ways; above all it’s a roller-coaster. He pursues, she retreats; she relents, he treats her like shit (afraid to love done wrong by a woman once blah blah blah). Lily is badly injured, and it’s partly Devon’s fault. So he’s nice for a while (well, kind of), and then there’s a big mis and he’s really, really not nice. She goes away and he pursues her and is not nice some more and then she goes away again and this time he pursues her because he’s realized he was wrong. And then a bunch of other stuff happens. Lily doesn’t lack for action.

One thing that struck me about the book is that it has an unusual number of villains (I guess if your characters are going to suffer that much, you need lots of villains to facilitate). There’s the Reverend Soames, whose fervent religiosity is revealed to be less than genuine; there’s the housekeeper, Mrs. Howe, whose religiosity is more sincere but also kind of violent and loony; Mrs. Howe’s son, the dastardly valet Trayer, and finally one whose identity I won’t reveal, since it’s kind of a spoiler to events in the second half of the book. The last villain, actually, is a bit of a pitiable figure, though his actions are such that I wouldn’t call him sympathetic.

Besides the (honestly kind of delicious) over-the-topness of Lily, there were a few things I noticed that mark it as an earlier, less sophisticated effort. I mentioned Lily’s silly Irish accent; in general her early behavior has some TSTL markers that really aren’t indicative of her personality as a whole. Even the fleeing after Reverend Soames is injured struck me as kind of hasty, though I took into account the fact that he was, as a man and a minister, much more powerful than she, and that 19th century English justice may have left something to be desired when it came to the fates of poor orphan girls.

Other than that, there were quite a few abrupt POV switches that forced me to reread paragraphs to figure out whose perspective was being relayed. Generally, though, the seeds of the author’s fine prose style are strongly in evidence here.

The characterization of secondary characters is very good. There’s Clay, Devon’s happy-go-lucky younger brother – he’s a bit of a rogue (I would’ve mourned him not getting his own book, but he has a fiancee by the end of Lily anyway). There’s Lowdy, another housemaid who befriends Lily and speaks in an almost incomprehensible Cornish accent (normally I would recoil at dialogue rendered in dialect, but it’s kind of fun to try to figure out what exactly Lowdy is saying). Most of all, there is Meraud, the mysterious moor-hermit who takes Lily in after she flees Devon. Meraud is thought by locals to be a witch, but mostly she just seems no-nonsense and a little strange; her avocation is the creation of giant sculptures of mud and straw, which, given that she creates these out on the moor where absolutely no one sees them definitely qualifies them as art for art’s sake. Meraud is a vibrant, unique character, and her relationship with Lily is almost as important as Devon’s.

Cornwall itself, with its unique and specific qualities, almost qualifies as a character itself. It’s full of rocky outcroppings and smugglers and treacherous tides and pilchards; I’m reminded of another of my favorite romances, and the first book I reviewed for DA – Penelope Williamson’s Once in a Blue Moon.

I write this review aware that some readers may read the book and just not be able to handle its old-fashioned style: either the relentless sturm und drang or the dickishness of the hero will put them off (possibly both). But I know that there are readers out there who haven’t read Lily who will love it as I do. My grade: straight A.

Best regards,

Jennie

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REVIEW: The Lost Book of Mala R. by Rose MacDowell

Jennie — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 20:00:47 +0000

Dear Ms. MacDowell,

When your book was offered to us for review, I was intrigued enough by the blurb to request a copy. When I received the book and started reading it, I wasn’t sure what had initially drawn me to it. Not that it looked bad; it just seemed like the sort of literary women’s fiction that I generally avoid. I am not a big reader of women’s fiction as it is, and when I do read it, I tend to favor funny chick-lit over serious women-bonding stories (OMG am I the only one who thought The Friday Night Knitting Club was just so bad?). I wasn’t sure if The Lost Book of Mala R. would feature lots of female bonding, at first, but I could tell within a chapter or so that it was modern literature of the sort that I often have a problem with. That is, the characters, their lives and personalities were rendered in a depressing, even ugly, light.

This is what I think is considered in modern literature to be “realism”, and it’s what drives a lot of readers to romance or mysteries or spy stories. I can live with bad things happening in a story, but I hate when the writing itself seems to be infused with a sort of contempt, or at least a lack of emotional generosity towards the characters. It makes reading a grim experience.

But I’m getting off track here; it wasn’t that The Lost Book of Mala R. was entirely grotesque in its depiction of the characters, but it was unpleasant and grimy enough in the early pages to give me pause. The reality of the rest of the book was both better and worse than I had begun to expect.

The story is told in alternating chapters by four women, one in 1948 and the other three in the present day. Mala Rinehart belongs to a group of gypsies in Texas, but in the first chapter, she is cast out for the period of one year, accused of causing bad things to happen with her spells. Mala is 18 years old and only really close to her broken-down alcoholic father Beni; she has always been an outsider in the clan. She decides to travel to Bakersfield, California to see if she can find a woman named Ruth Simon. Ruth knew Mala as a child and was kind to her, and told her to come to her in Bakersfield if she ever needed a home.

Meanwhile, in modern day Southern California, in a faceless new-ish subdivision whose denizens all seem to have been hit hard by the recession, a notebook that Mala wrote cryptic notes and spells in surfaces at a garage sale. It’s scooped up, on impulse, by Linda, a recent (and reluctant) transplant from New York. Linda is married to Peter, a divorced father of two in the financial business. Peter’s transfer (it’s implied that it was a demotion) has uprooted Linda from a comfortable and hard-gained life, and she’s not happy about it. She’s even less happy when Peter’s 10-year-old daughter, Paige, comes to stay for the summer, and possibly longer. Paige isn’t getting along with her new stepsiblings back in Connecticut, but Linda certainly doesn’t want her there. Paige makes her nervous; she may be only 10, but she’s already given to incisive observations and subtle put-downs that put Linda on the defensive.

Linda ends up giving the notebook to Audrey, who is married to Mark and has a 12-year-old son. Audrey seems to adore her son, but she’s less enamored of Mark; ever since losing his job he’s gotten involved in weird money-making schemes that seem to combine a cultish self-help message with a genuine and bizarre belief that one can live forever (if only one limits their diet to super-healthy food, and precious little of that). Audrey has recently begun an affair with William, a young disabled war vet who she met through her job (she works for an agency that finds low-cost housing for returning veterans). William is pretty obviously a distraction from Audrey’s dissatisfying life, and Mala’s little book provides another one, one that quickly begins to obsess Audrey as she decides to see if she can find Mala (or find out what happened to her).

The third woman in the modern day group is Christine; when Audrey convinces Christine to try a spell from the book, her already troubled life takes a turn for the worse. Christine is pregnant, which is a good thing, but sure she’ll miscarry just as she has so many times before. She’s so sure that she and her husband Tim go forward with a meeting with a potential surrogate, one they’d found before the latest pregnancy. Christine’s pregnancy has persisted further than any of her previous ones had, but she’s unable to really be happy about it. She’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop and disaster to strike. When it does, it’s from an entirely unexpected direction. Tim becomes a suspect in the murder of a local nanny, and then, when Paige disappears, a suspect in her disappearance. Christine isn’t sure she trusts Tim, which naturally enough further strains a relationship already strained by years of fertility problems.

The chapters covering Mala’s story are generally the most absorbing; this may be partly due to my preference for historical settings over modern-day ones (especially modern-day ones rendered so grimly as this one). But Mala is also generally a much more sympathetic, relatable figure than Linda, Christine and Audrey are. She’s half their age and then some, but she’s miles less self- absorbed than any of them. I found myself a lot more interested in what would happen to her than I was in Audrey’s affair, Christine’s pregnancy or Linda’s neuroses.

Of the three, Audrey was probably the most compelling, and again I think I can track it to self-absorption or lack thereof. Sure, Audrey is flawed, but at least she’s interested in the world around her, interested enough to want to find out about Mala (a device that is never entirely realistic; it feels pretty arbitrary). Linda and Christine go along for the ride but both are pretty consistently wrapped up in their own low-grade misery. This is where the literary “realism” comes in – none of these women seem remotely happy. Like, I’m not expecting nothing but sunshine and roses, but the depression and ennui that hangs over these women is just not something I want to read that much about.

The Lost Book of Mala R. would seem to have something in common with female-based friendship stories, except that Linda, Audrey and Christine don’t seem to be that great friends. Linda has lived in the neighborhood for less than a year, and her unhappiness about being there and general lack of warmth make it hard to imagine anyone really warming up to her. It’s unclear how long Audrey and Christine have known each other, but I didn’t get the sense of real affection between them – theirs seemed to be a friendship of proximity, and a fairly superficial one at that.

I would’ve liked to have seen a little bit more depth of characterization in the depiction of Linda, Audrey and Christine. Each has a backstory that is only really hinted at; at times I find it hard to keep their backstories straight (the exception was one trauma in Linda’s past that is alluded to, finally explained and resolved). They also seem to mirror each other in that each of their husbands has suffered financial hardship in the recession – apparently none of the women really expect to be their husbands’ equals in the financial sense, though Christine and Audrey do work.

So, what does this book have going for it, after all of my picking apart? Well, strong prose, for one thing – this is a well-written book. Perhaps because of that, and because of the alternating-story form, I found myself eager to pick up the book each time. That’s a big plus for me – there are books that I’ve probably liked more in a lot of ways but didn’t feel that compelled to read on a daily basis. The characters do become more sympathetic as the story progresses, and thus I found their navel-gazing less depressing than I otherwise would have. The various crises are resolved in some interesting and unexpected ways, though the one I cared about most was the most downbeat.

If I had a rubric for grading The Lost Book of Mala R., the grades would probably be all over the place. I think they’d average out to a low B, skirting the edge of a B-. I think it’s worth reading, but probably only for readers who are intrigued by the subject matter and don’t mind a little grim literary realism in their fiction.

Best regards,

Jennie

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REVIEW: The September Queen by Gillian Bagwell

Jennie — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:00:44 +0000

Dear Ms. Bagwell,

Earlier this year, I read and enjoyed your book about Nell Gwynn, mistress to Charles II, The Darling Strumpet. When the opportunity came to read a book about another woman in Charles’ life, I figured, why not?

Jane Lane, like Nell Gwynn, was a real person. The romance between her and Charles as depicted in the book is speculative, however. There doesn’t appear to be any historical evidence of it, other than Charles’ prediliction for seducing every woman he laid eyes on. What is known is that when Charles was a 21-year-old monarch in name only, Jane and her relatives helped him to flee England after a disastrous defeat in battle. In the story, Jane travels with a cousin and Charles, the latter disguised as her groom. They become lovers along the way. Soon enough, they part, but after returning home, Jane finds that her part in Charles’ escape has become known, and now she has to flee England herself, an arduous trek miles on foot in the company of her brother.

I had several problems with The September Queen; the biggest and mostly persistently problematic was the character of Jane. Jane doesn’t have much personality, and her most marked traits irritated me, making her a fairly unsympathetic heroine in my eyes. When she’s introduced, she’s 25 years old, fretting over the lack of romance in her life. She’s pretty and of good family, so she’s had many marriage proposals (in fact, she receives another one in the first pages of the book), but darn, none of those guys excite her. I felt this was an attitude that was probably atypical of the era, and not one I have much sympathy for in a 25-year-old woman, even today. Maybe a 15-year-old, but not a 25-year-old.

Of course, once Jane meets Charles, she finds the spark she’s been missing all these years. Great. Good for her . She knows he can’t marry her – she’s not that well-connected – but she’s happy to just be a part of his life. Except, for the next decade, she’s a pretty small part of his life. They reunite in France and get busy again, but Charles has other things on his mind – chiefly a country to regain and other women (many other women) to bonk. It got to the point, about two-thirds of the way through, where I really felt that Jane needed the 17th century version of “He’s Just Not That Into You.” Jane just does not get it, though the signs are certainly there to see. Further, she sees other evidence that Charles is really quite an asshole (his treatment of his former mistress and mother of his child Lucy Walter appalls Jane), and at times it will seem like she’s through with him, only to have her mooning over him again in the next scene. This goes on for years. By the time they have their big confrontation, at the end of the book, I *almost* felt sorry for Charles; Jane seems more like a stalker than someone who had a legitimate claim on Charles’ attention and affection.

The second large problem I had with the book was the pacing. If this were a romance, and the characters not based on real people, I could imagine the first third being the basis for a good story. But because Charles and Jane are real people, and presumably the author didn’t want to go too far out on a limb in making things up, the last two-thirds are very static and, well, dull. Jane makes her way to the court of Princess Mary (Charles’ sister) in Holland and waits. And waits some more. For ten years. She sees Charles occasionally; he’s (relatively) poor and at the mercy of other European monarchs for both hospitality and potential help in retaking his throne. He sires some bastards; Jane sulks. Honestly, hardly anything really happens, at least in the story, in those ten years.

Again, because this is real history and not fiction, even the denouement of this decade-long holding pattern is anti-climatic. Cromwell dies (spoiler alert!), and the English sort of seem to decide that, sure, why not, Charles can return and rule them. I may have missed this part in history class because while I was aware that Cromwell died a natural death before Charles was returned to power, I didn’t realize that the Roundheads just sort of shrugged their shoulders and gave up (okay, I may be oversimplifying this a bit, but that’s how it appears in the book, anyway). Not only is this dramatically unsatisfying, but it contributes to the image I’m getting of Charles II as, well, a bit of a loser. I mean, I used to know him as kind of the fun king (“the Merry Monarch”) who restored the theaters to London and had a lot of mistresses. I’ve read three books featuring him this year, and so far I don’t have any greater insight into his personality (did he have one?). In this book he seems to forever be enmeshed in ineffectual plots to overthrow the powers in England that end up coming to nothing. It’s not like I’m so bloodthirsty that I think the only honorable or respectable way for Charles II to win his throne back would be on the field of battle, or that I want some historically-inaccurate Rambo-type action. But at the same time, monarchs are supposed to be masterful, and Charles doesn’t really come off that way at any point during The September Queen. If anything, he tends to portray himself as a victim of fate and outside forces as a defense against Jane’s whining about their not being together. This makes him seem like a typical sleazy lothario who doesn’t take responsibility for his actions or their consequences.

A minor problem I had with the story once the action moved to the continent was that a number of characters are introduced and frequently referenced – real-life royal relatives of Charles II – and darned if I could keep them straight. There was one Queen Elizabeth and one Queen Mary and a Princess Mary and a few others I never did manage to retain who they were or why I should care about them. A family tree at the front of the book might’ve helped.

The writing in The September Queen is competent, but competent writing can’t overcome large deficiencies in plotting and characterization. The book is readable, but that’s about it. My grade is a C.

Best regards,

Jennie

Jennie’s Best of 2011 List

Jennie — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:00:14 +0000

2011 does not stand out as one of my more memorable reading years; many books fell in the okay/mediocre range, with a whole lot of B range books and a handful of C range books. Only one D, and no Fs! – which I guess is a good thing, though I feel oddly nostalgic about the notion of reading a Really Bad Book. Following are the best 2011-published romances (or romance-y books) I read this year.

Mr. Bishop and the Actress, Janet Mullany, A (my review)
When Beauty Tamed the Beast, Eloisa James, A-, (my review)
A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal, Meredith Duran, A-, (my review)
Silk is for Seduction, Loretta Chase, A-, (Jane’s review)
What I Did for a Duke, Julie Ann Long, A-, (Janet’s review)
Slice of Cherry, Dia Reeves, B+, (Janine’s review)
Cat’s Tale: A Fairy Tale Retold, Bettie Sharpe, B+, (mine and Lazaraspaste’s reviews)
The Last Time I Saw Paris, Lynn Sheene, B+, (my review)
The Second Duchess, Elizabeth Loupas, B+, (my review)
The Lantern, Deborah Lawrenson, B+, (my review)

What Jennie’s Been Reading, Part the Third

Jennie — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:00:29 +0000

By Jennie

Another in my sporadic updates on what I’ve been reading…

Still reading Bleak House. Still. But: I finished The Brothers Karamazov and it was awesome! Okay, awesome is a bit strong, but finally, a big, important Russian novel that I felt connected to. It makes me want to read The Idiot soon. But not too soon. Also read:

Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe: Not sure why I picked this up, except that I’d heard it was better than the average star autobiography. I didn’t really think it was (better, that is). It was okay, but it read the way I imagine Lowe to be in real life: glib and a bit shallow. He sure was pretty when he was younger, though. I still remember all the girls at my middle school going to the first showing of The Outsiders when it premiered, and swooning over Soda Pop.

Black Hawk by Joanna Bourne: I was disappointed in this one. In Christine’s review, she touches on the equality of Adrian and Justine, but it was what I perceived as the lack of equality that continually frustrated me. It was one of those romances where the hero has to best the heroine constantly, just a little bit. That is something that bugs me enough in the normal course of things, but when the heroine *is* supposed to be the hero’s equal (in this case, in spying), and yet the reader is shown in a million little ways that he is more competent than she, it damn near maddens me. It reminds me of Anne Stuart’s Ice Storm, and then it’s “flames, flames on the side of my face!” time for me. Seriously, that book makes me want to punch a kitten, and I love kittens.

Bess of Hardwick by Mary S. Lovell: Man, if The Tudors didn’t prove it, I am reminded once again that life in Tudor England was dangerous. Not just for the poor and downtrodden, subject to all sorts of fatal diseases, but to the upper classes, who were also at the mercy of those diseases (though perhaps a bit better protected from them), and as well in danger of getting their heads lopped off. What I find strange is all the scheming people did back then, knowing what the consequences might be. I mean, I get the idea of ambition, in theory (in practice I find that ambition gets in the way of napping), but if decapitation is one of the possible outcomes, I’ll just stay at home in my drafty castle and mind my own business, thank you very much (note: some people did try this and STILL got their heads cut off; it wasn’t a foolproof system). So, Bess of Hardwick is especially noteworthy for being ambitious, successful, and so far, in no danger of being snuffed (unlike numerous poor souls around her). Of course, I’m not quite halfway through this biography yet, so who knows what might happen? So far, so good.

Finger Lickin’ Fifteen by Janet Evanovich: I managed to avoid the Stephanie Plum series entirely for the first decade and a half of its existence. I followed the Ranger-Morelli wars at a distance, but the series didn’t really interest me (I’m not a big mystery reader). Then I got sucked into reading the first book a couple of years ago for a book club thing. I was surprised to find that I actually rather liked it. It wasn’t my usual sort of book, to be sure. But it was very readable. Very easy and quick, and it didn’t require much brain power. I am sure that sounds like damning with faint praise, but darn it, sometimes that’s what I really want in a book. When I finished the first book, I wanted to read the second. And then then next, and the next, and the next. So now I’m on book 15. The weird thing is that whenever I start one of the Plum books it takes me a few chapters to really get into it. At first I kind of roll my eyes at the recitation of familiar Stephanie facts and the stereotypical behavior of the secondary characters. I find myself annoyed at Stephanie’s inevitable bumbling as some pathetic skip manages to outwit and escape her. But after a while I remember what I like about the world Evanovich has created – how familiar and comfortable it is, how I really do like most of the characters quite a bit. The humor is too broad and unrealistic for me to say that I find it very funny (I tend to like broad humor more on screen than on the page), and the mysteries are not usually hugely involving (though again, I’m just not much of a mystery fan in general), but somehow these books work for me. For the record, I am Team Ranger, though I like Morelli fine.

The September Queen by Gillian Bagwell: Earlier this year I read and reviewed Darling Strumpet so when the opportunity came along to read about another one of Charles II’s mistresses, I thought: sure, why not? Of course, if I read a book about ever woman he ever screwed, I will be reading about them for the rest of my life. Jane Lane (I think her parents might have given a bit more thought to her Christian name, but that’s just me) was actually an early conquest of Charles (at least according to this story); they met when he was on the run from Cromwell’s forces, before the Restoration. Anyway, I will be reviewing this, but so far, I’m finding Jane a little annoyingly googly-eyed over hot Charles. At 25, she’s actually several years his senior, and practically ancient for a woman of that era, so I have little patience for her swooning. But there’s a lot of book left, and I’m curious to see where the story will go from here.

Until next time,

Jennie

REVIEW: Saving June by Hannah Harrington

Jennie — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:00:01 +0000

Dear Ms. Harrington,

I’ve been wanting to read more YA; the genre seems to have changed so much since I was a, well, young adult. There are so many fresh and exciting YA books being written these days, and that’s exciting to me, especially when I’ve just finished my umpteenth uninspired English historical. Even though some of my favorite YA novels of the past several years have been set in alternate realities (The Hunger Games and sequels, the Megan Whalen Turner series, Dia Reeves’ A Slice of Cherry), I tend to pass over such books when looking for something to read. I usually only read paranormal/fantasy books on the recommendation of other readers; maybe it’s just that such books absolutely glut the romance market and have for seemingly ages, but the minute I read the phrase “shape-shifter” or something like that in a book blurb, my eyes start to roll (yes, I know someday they’ll get stuck that way) and I begin sighing a put-upon sigh. Can’t I just read a normal book, about normal people?

That sentiment is what brought me to your YA novel, Saving June - the blurb contained no fairies, vampires or magical goats. Rather, Saving June was about a teenager trying to cope with her older sister’s suicide. This sounded like a relatable, if grim subject. Harper Scott is sixteen years old; her sister June was just a year older, and about to graduate from high school, when Harper found her in the family garage, dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. In the aftermath, Harper is numb, her mother is coming apart at the seams, and her father (estranged from her mother and in the process of divorcing her) has withdrawn from the scene entirely.

It’s at the gathering after June’s funeral that Harper conceives of the idea of taking her sister’s ashes to California. California was a fixation for June, a destination as different from her small, dreary Michigan town as possible. June wanted to go to college in California, and Harper decides that California is where what is left of June belongs. She comes up with a plan with her best friend Laney to liberate the ashes and go on a road trip. The only problem (well, the only one they can think of; I thought of several, myself) is the lack of a reliable vehicle – Harper doesn’t drive, and Laney’s car is not up to a cross-country trip. That’s where Jake Tolan comes in.

Harper doesn’t even know Jake when she encounters him at June’s wake; later she vaguely remembers him from high school, but she was unaware that he knew June at all, never mind that he was close enough to her to be making her CD compilations and giving her CDs of some of his favorite artists – Tom Waits, The Kinks (artists that our young protagonist seems entirely unfamiliar with; man, I am old). It turns out that Jake made the CD compilation that was playing on the car’s CD player when June died.

Harper is pulled out of her ennui by her road-trip plan and by her curiosity about Jake and what seems to be his mysterious connection to June. Jake denies a romantic relationship with June (who had broken up with her cheating boyfriend shortly before her suicide), though he’s not exactly straightforward about the nature of their association.

Harper, Jake and Laney eventually head out on their road trip with June’s ashes in tow. I had some issues with this; even though neither of Harper’s parents was especially sympathetic, stealing all that they had left of their dead daughter seemed to me to be a heartless act. Strangely, this is not addressed until the end of the book, when Harper indicates that she hadn’t really thought of what taking the ashes would do to her parents. Which was oddly realistic in context; Harper’s a teenager after all, with a teenager’s occasional great lapses in awareness and tendency towards self-obsession.

This was actually a larger theme with Harper, one I had to work out my feelings about. She was a bit of a difficult character for me to warm up to, and I struggled with whether I thought her depiction was realistic. It was the old problem of the first person narrator; I can be a bit thick as a reader and can find it difficult to separate the first person voice of the narrator from the author’s intent. Harper’s worldview is very binary: June was perfect and she, Harper, is the screw-up. Laney is beautiful and outgoing, while Harper is plain and awkward. The black-and-white contrasts felt trite to me, but I had to remind myself that this was the world the way Harper viewed it, not necessarily objective reality as created by the author. I’ve known enough teenage girls to know that they aren’t always big on nuance, particularly if lack of same gives them an opportunity to sulk. Still, Harper’s relentless focus on how awkward and socially inept she is and how perfect everyone else appears to her to be became aggravating.

The road trip aspect of the story, I think, lightened the heaviness of the suicide theme for me. The trio have interesting little encounters along the way, some of which deepen their relationships or give a bit more insight into who June was as a person. In a sense, even though her suicide is the reason behind the trip, the trip itself allows Harper, and thus the reader, to sort of put off dealing with it.

When they finally arrive at their destination, in San Francisco, Harper is forced to confront both letting go of June and the secret Jake’s been keeping from her. The secret felt a bit anti-climatic to me; its purpose seemed to be to cause conflict between Harper and Jake, more than anything else.

I felt ambivalent about the resolution of the mystery of June’s suicide – there is no real resolution, and while the reader in me wanted something dramatic and emotionally cathartic, ultimately, again, the truth was more realistic. There’s no resolution because there was no single mystery: there was just a girl who kept a lot of things inside, and was in more pain than anyone around her realized. That’s not the reality of all teen suicides, but I’d guess it’s not a rarity in such cases, either.

There were events in Saving June that objectively felt trite: most notably, the resolution to a late-in-the-book crisis for Laney. In general, I guess the whole road trip dynamic was kind of trite, though it’s still very effective. Music plays a big part in Saving June; music is hugely important to Jake and it’s largely how he communicates with the people he cares about. During the road trip, the three bond and argue over their musical tastes in turn. As a lover of music (including some of the music mentioned in the book; Jake has eclectic tastes), I appreciated this aspect of the story a lot.

I don’t know that the hopeful ending is quite the right note; the suicide of one’s only sibling seems so devastating to me that it’s hard to imagine any sort of closure of the sort depicted in the book could be achieved in a few scant months. This is a case where an epilogue several years out might’ve worked better for me. Still, Saving June is a solid effort, and a welcome respite from fairies and werewolves. My grade: a high B.

Best regards,

Jennie

REVIEW: Madame Bovary’s Daughter by Linda Urbach

Jennie — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 19:00:49 +0000

Dear Ms. Urbach,I picked up this book with a bit of hesitancy – I’ve not read Madame Bovary, and my only knowledge of the story comes from my viewing of a BBC miniseries from 2000, starring Frances O’Connor as Emma Bovary. I ended up hating it – most of all hating Emma, who was the most selfish, shallow, self-destructive and irrational “heroine” I’d every encountered.I think I was influenced by my impression of Madame Bovary as being a novel with feminist underpinnings (I may have been confusing it with Hedda Gabler, which probably doesn’t really make sense, but then, the vagaries of my mind often don’t). Afterwards, reading up on Madame Bovary, my impression is that while the novel is certainly open to feminist interpretation, Flaubert’s intention was very different; the book was intended as a work of realism. Knowing that might’ve made the miniseries slightly less maddening (probably not, though; Emma really sucked).

Anyway, my feelings on Madame Bovary might have prejudiced me against this sequel, but I was drawn to it anyway. I’m sure I’ve said before that these days I’m drawn more to historical fiction than historical romance; I still love the latter when it’s well done, but so much of it feels familiar to me at this point. At least even mediocre historical fiction doesn’t usually read like something I’ve read twenty times before.Madame Bovary’s Daughter opens at the funeral of Charles Bovary, who dies a short year after his wife has poisoned herself (in her last supremely selfish act – I did mention I didn’t like her, yes?). Berthe Bovary is 12 years old, and facing an uncertain future. She’d like to stay with a family friend, Madame Homais, but is swiftly informed that she is instead expected to go live on the farm of her severe grandmother, the elder Madame Bovary. On the way to the farm, Berthe tries to convince herself that perhaps her grandmother, who she does not know well but whom she has never had reason to feel warmly towards, will welcome her with open arms. Upon her arrival, Berthe is disabused of this fantasy; her grandmother is as grim and severe as ever, and seems to want Berthe chiefly as an unpaid servant. Nonetheless, Berthe settles into country life, finding some beauty and peace in the hard work and country living. She also finds budding romance with the handsome (but ultimately faithless) field hand, Rene.Berthe’s fortunes appear to change when famed artist Jean-Francois Millet, of the Barbizon school (no, not that Barbizon school) comes to the area, hoping to paint scenes of rural labor. He lights on Berthe as a model and muse, and pays the 13-year-old behind her grandmother’s back to pose nude for him (for while, I was concerned that this would turn ugly, but Millet’s interest remains purely professional). Soon enough, though, Berthe’s fortunes change again (as they do a lot in the novel); she is forced to make her own way at barely 13, and ends up in a factory that makes cotton cloth. The factory and the boarding house where Berthe stays (the money taken directly out of her wages) are both fairly horrible; the former dangerous and degrading, the latter mean and depressing. But Berthe manages to rise above and even find some pleasure in working with fabric. Dresses and fashion are an interest of hers, a legacy from her mother, whose love of beautiful things was so ruinous.

Berthe manages to avoid her mother’s worst self-destructive tendencies, though at times she has a similar tendency to flights of fancy (an optimism that goes beyond unrealistic into the realm of the slightly deranged). For instance, when Berthe is given a “promotion” and sent to Paris to be a maid in the household of the factory owner (a move that seems entirely intended to put her at the mercy of the man), she imagines that she’ll become a valued member of the family:

But as always, despite her doubts and fears her imagination and fantasies took over: Monsieur Rappelais had taken one look at her and realized she was the daughter he had always longed for. Berthe knew he had sons but had no idea if he had any daughters. Still, she was not one to let facts interfere with her daydreams. She felt certain he was merely using the guise of needing a maid to get her to Paris. Once there he would tell her the truth: He wanted to formally adopt her.

I realize that Berthe is still supposed to be pretty young at this point (three years seemed to pass without my realizing it; she is 13 when she goes to the factory and then 16 when she goes to Paris. I thought it had been a couple of months or a year at most). Even if she’s supposed to have a natural optimism or naivete, even if we’re meant to understand that Berthe doesn’t really believe her fantasies, they begin to grate. If you take them seriously, she appears somewhere between thick-as-a-board and delusional. But the other possibility is that they are used simply to highlight the pitifulness of reality, when Berthe’s dreams come crashing down around her. I don’t mind a little emotional manipulation, particularly in the service of angst, but it needs to be a bit more subtle than this. Berthe can’t always be digging through the manure, looking for the pony.

Anyway, circumstances at the house in Paris are both better and worse than Berthe could have expected. She does suffer abuse and degradation, but it’s of a subtler kind than I expected (at least until the end of her stay). She also gets to meet the famed dressmaker Charles Worth, a friend and business associate of her employer. It’s through Worth that Berthe is able to work her way towards the success that she’s dreamed of, but it’s hard won victory.

Madame Bovary’s Daughter was a difficult book to get a handle on. I found that it defied categorization. It’s not high literature, like the novel that inspired it. It’s not a romance (if it were, it would be a very frustrating one, with a TSTL heroine and a real asshole for a hero). The book club guide at the end pointed towards it being women’s fiction, and indeed it has a lot of the markers I associate with women’s fiction, chiefly the focus on an imperfect heroine trying to achieve her goals in a world that often times seemed to be against her. At times it reminded me of one of those romance/women’s fiction hybrids from the 80s – the sort of books Barbara Taylor Bradford wrote. But I expect books like that to have a more sweeping scope; this book focuses solely on Berthe and ends when she is barely 20. It felt like the pacing of the novel was off at times, especially in the rushed-feeling ending.

Inconsistent pacing and characterization were my chief issues with the book. A lot of time is spent on Berthe’s various situations as she grows up: her grandmother’s farm, the factory, the wealthy household in Paris. Berthe doesn’t seem to learn or grow much during all of these changes. Mostly she gets knocked down, and gets up again. Her obtuseness is especially frustrating when she gets involved with Armand, a painter she meets while working as a maid.

Berthe is immediately infatuated with Armand; he seems indifferent to her. After a few flirting encounters, Armand takes off for Italy. Berthe doesn’t see him for a few years, but pines for him the whole time. I never understood the attraction; was Berthe repeating her mother’s mistakes, falling in love with love? If so, it’s never acknowledged. Berthe’s boundless and mysterious passion for Armand is treated as if it makes sense, when it really doesn’t. Especially when, as I alluded to above, he is a grade-A asshole.

Despite Berthe’s reminisces about events that occurred in Madame Bovary, and the presence in this book of a fairly major character from the first one, I felt that the connection between the two books was tenuous. What I can only imagine had some depth in what is, after all, a classic masterwork is rendered trite in this sequel. Berthe’s attitude towards Emma is inconsistent and confusing; none of her memories of her mother seem fond - far from it. But she doesn’t evince any hostility towards her in her thoughts. Overtly, her thoughts seem to render her mother a victim more than anything. Yet late in the novel she thinks to herself that she has forgiven her mother and let go of her anger towards her, which was strange because she never seemed angry in the first place. (Though she had plenty of reason to be.)

There were bits that were problematic from both a characterization POV and in terms of logic. Late in the book, Berthe wants to buy a house. She’s afraid to get a mortgage, because of her memories of her parents losing everything. She makes an agreement with the bank: she will make a substantial payment and then have a year to pay off the entire house and take possession of it. It seemed sort of like putting a house on layaway, which I’ve never heard of before, but whatever – maybe they did it differently in 19^th century France. Anyway, Berthe ends up worrying throughout the year about both having the money to pay off the house (if she doesn’t pay it off, she forfeits all she’s put down) and about how Armand will react, since she hasn’t told him anything about it. Towards the deadline, she has the money, but her concerns about Armand deepen to the point that she thinks she may just have to give up her dream (and her deposit). I was pretty entirely perplexed and annoyed by this; even if she didn’t move into the house (because of stupid Armand) wouldn’t it have made more sense to pay the house off and rent it out? Or even let it sit vacant; she can always sell it later. Anything would be better than just letting go of thousands of francs. Again, this bugged me as a logistical issue – would Berthe really be so stupid? – and because it reinforced that Berthe’s acceptance of Armand’s selfishness was all kinds of fucked-up.

Occasionally the writing in Madame Bovary’s Daughter felt self-conscious or awkward, as in this line, when Berthe is delayed in going out with Armand by work:

“On this particular night she was experiencing something few Victorian women ever had to face: the struggle between her job and her family.”

This line reads really awkward as a thought of Berthe’s, and even from an omniscent narrator (who doesn’t appear in the book otherwise, that I can recall; the prose is 3rd person from Berthe’s POV) it would be stilted and throw me out of the story.

Armand and Berthe’s relationship lurches on; he becomes more and more unlikable, and he wasn’t that likable to start with. At times, the immaturity of both characters shows; when he complains about her working too hard, and says she loves her work more than she loves him, she jabs at him by asking why he thinks she loves him at all. In the space of a few lines, they go through making verbal digs at each other, to play fighting (he spanks her…sigh) to making love. This reinforced for me that they were both too young and immature to be playing house.

Despite my problems with the book, after a slow start, it was a fairly absorbing read. Up until the end, in which Berthe’s long-awaited epiphanies occur in the space of about five minutes and all we get is a sappy epilogue, the book was probably a B-/C+. The ending dropped it down to a C for me. I would recommend it if you’re interested enough in the subject matter to put up with the flaws and a frustrating heroine.

Best regards,

Jennie

What Jennie’s Been Reading (Since September 9th)

Jennie — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 15:00:34 +0000

By Jennie
So, when last I wrote, I was reading four books at the same time; three long dense books and one other, shorter book. I’m still reading the same three long books, but figured it was time for an progress update, as well as some brief mentions of what else I’ve read.

Bleak Houseby Charles Dickens: I’ve moved a little closer to the end of this extremely long book, though I still probably have a quarter to go. At least the threads of the various plotlines are coming together a bit now, which makes the story easier to follow. Still, I probably won’t be dipping into Dickens again anytime soon after I finish this.

London’s Sinful Secret: The Bawdy History and Very Public Passions of London’s Georgian Age by Dan Cruickshank: Okay, I complained about this book at length the last time, but shortly after I wrote that, I read the best anecdote ever in it, one that makes all 500+ unscintillating pages worthwhile. It concerns a certain Colonel Charteris , a Georgian-era figure of such infamy that when he died in 1732, a “furious mob tried to tear open his coffin to fill it with dead cats (emphasis mine) and mutilate his corpse.” I simply loved the mental image conjured by this rather ghoulish story. For some reason it called to mind one of my favorite minor characters from The Simpsons. Seriously, it made the book for me.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: I’m really digging this book. Sometimes with big, difficult books I almost feel like I have to question myself as to whether I’m really enjoying the book, or just feel like I have to say that I am, sort of like a parent praising their 4th-grader’s art class project. But I really do like The Brothers Karamazov. Yes, it can be a slog at times, and my attention wanes; I rarely read more than 20 pages at a time. But there is an essential humanity to the characters and the story that I find both relatable and fascinating. The Elder Zossima is depicted in such a way that he could easily be an unbelievable character – too good to be true, or kind of the 19th century Russian version of a hippy-dippy new-ager. Dickens couldn’t write such a character without making him a figure of fun, I don’t think (and that’s not a knock on him, because I do like Dickens’ skewering of characters; the comparison just occurred to me because I’m reading the authors at the same time). I got to musing about Dostoyevsky and decided that perhaps one of his chief characteristics as a writer was an almost painful sincerity. This didn’t work as well for me in Crime and Punishment, because the characters, especially Raskolnikov, didn’t resonate with me and I found it hard to understand or sympathize with them. Anyway, I am coming up on being halfway through TBK, meaning I only have about 600 pages to go!

The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton by Miranda Neville: I will go on record as not getting the fuss about this one. It was okay, but the nuances that other readers saw in the book just didn’t register with me; it ended up reading like a middling English historical. I will give the author another try, though, since so many other readers seem to think she’s something special.

Saving June by Hannah Harrington: Review to come. This is a YA I saw on NetGalley and requested because I’m trying to read more YAs, and the subject looked interesting. It definitely felt like a YA at times in terms of the sophistication of thought expressed by the narrator, a 16-year-old girl whose older sister has just committed suicide. But the characters were appealing and the road trip they take was involving even when the plot got a little trite.

A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant: Like seemingly almost everyone else who has read this January release, I was blown away by this book. The setting – 19th century Sussex – is familiar and the plot is nothing terribly special (well, I liked the plot, but I don’t really care about plots, anyway). But the writing and characterization are excellent – really, one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, and a very exciting debut.

Madam Bovary’s Daughter by Linda Urbach: I just started this historical fiction – literally, I’ve only read 10 pages, but so far, so good. I vacillated a bit on reading it; I do like historical fiction, and the blurb sounded interesting, but I can’t help but remember that my one experience with Madame Bovary (not the book, but a television adaption) was not a pleasant one. Man, Emma Bovary was one heinous, selfish cow. I think I was supposed to get some sort of larger message from the story, something appropriately feminist about the horrors of a stifled life. But mostly I just wanted to smack the bitch. Hopefully, her daughter is more bearable.
Since I’m almost done with the Cruikshank book, I’ll be starting a new non-fiction book shortly. I have a zillion non-fiction books tbr (way more non-fiction than fiction at the moment; my pile always seems to tilt strongly in one direction or the other – I rarely have equal amounts of fiction and non-fiction tbr, for some reason), but I’ve narrowed it down to a few possibilities. Any advice/thoughts would be appreciated!:

Leningrad by Anna Reid – I’ve been really interested in the Siege of Leningrad since reading The Bronze Horseman.

Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff – I don’t have a huge interest in the subject, but everyone seemed to think this was a good book, so I picked it up at some point.

A Freewheelin’ Time by Suze Rotolo – I’m interested in Greenwich Village in the 60s, if not specifically Bob Dylan. My parents met in New York in that era, and supposedly the author’s sister was my dad’s girlfriend before he met my mom.

The Greater Journey by David McCullough – I just love David McCullough, and I’m interested in the subject (Americans in Paris in the 19th century).

Bess of Hardwick by Mary S. Lovell – I love this author, who wrote one of my favorite non-fiction books, a fascinating biography of the Mitford sisters, and I recently read her biography of Jane Digby. I don’t know much about Bess of Hardwick, but if Lovell is writing about her, I’m guessing she’s interesting.

Until next time,

Jennie

REVIEW: A Bride Unveiled by Jillian Hunter

Jennie — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 17:00:19 +0000

Dear Ms. Hunter,

I picked up this book after Jane mentioned it in passing in an email with…some sort of positive connotation. I hadn’t read your work before, but whatever it was Jane said, it was enough for me to want to check this book out. Unfortunately, the fact that I can’t remember why the book was recommended (maybe a non-aristocratic hero?) ended up being a problem that extended to the book itself. I read A Bride Unveiled probably three weeks ago. That’s not that long ago, but I had to look up the blurb on Amazon to remind myself of which book it was, because in thinking about it, I drew a total blank. I’m pretty sure I was drawing a total blank on it three days after finishing it, never mind three weeks.

Violet Knowlton meets Kit Fenton in the small village of Monk’s Huntley when she is 13 and he is not much older. She is the respectable ward of her respectable uncle and aunt, a baron and baronness; Kit is a ward of the nearby poorhouse, one who sneaks out during the day to get away and practice imaginary swordplay. Violet has a vivid imagination and two rather milquetoast play companions, Eldbert and Ambrose. She also has a lax governess, who is only a few years older than Violet and is more interested in pursuing her own romance with a local lad. All of these circumstances conspire to bring Violet and Kit together for a summer of fairly innocent gallivanting and childish adventure. The only notable negative consequence occurs when Violet catches the measles from Kit, an episode that reveals her involvement with the unsuitable boy to her overprotective aunt. Their idyll is about to come to an end, anyway, as Kit has been hired out by the workhouse to an ex-military man who lives in the village, an alcoholic in mourning for his lost son. Kit is apprehensive about what to expect from his new master and both he and Violet are sad about parting. They vow to meet again along with their friends Eldbert and Ambrose 10 years in the future.

Fast forward a decade – Violet is at a London soiree in the company of her recently widowed aunt and her social-climbing fiance, Sir Godfrey Maitland. Violet is not particularly fond of Godfrey, but she feels an obligation to her aunt to marry and be settled. The party is to include a fencing demonstration from London’s premier fencing master, whom Godfrey is a student of. Of course, the fencing master is none other than Christopher Fenton, also known as Kit.

In their first encounter the two do not quite recognize each other, a device I was worried would play out for far too long. Happily, that was not the case, and they do privately acknowledge their recognition of each other and share a tension-filled dance after the fencing demonstration.

A Bride Unveiled is (sort of) a love at first sight book – Kit and Violet do not have romantic feelings for each other as adolescents, though they are quite close. But as soon as they see each other again in London, both fall hard. I’m not a huge fan of love at first sight, as it seems to require more emphasis on external conflict (I prefer internal). Also, as a concept, it’s just not something I really believe in; it seems much more honest to acknowledge it as lust at first sight.

Violet is greatly attracted to Kit, and her annoying fiance suffers in comparison. But she’s also equally concerned – almost obsessed – with the fear that her previous connection to Kit will be discovered by the ton. Kit is just as worried; he doesn’t want to damage Violet’s reputation by admitting a past acquaintance with her. I wasn’t sure I believed that this would be the big honking deal they were making it out to be. I mean, Kit was the toast of the town. Yes, his origins were murky and could be assumed to be unrefined, but it’s not like he and Violet had eloped previously – they had been rather innocent friends who had not even been alone together (the other boys were always there) ten years previously. Maybe it would’ve made a bit more sense if Violet had been very high-born, perhaps the daughter of a duke. But she was the niece of a baronness by marriage, and there was no indication that her antecedents were particularly distinguished beyond that.

This was just one of the details that felt a little off to me. I was surprised by the location of a poorhouse in the rural setting of Monk’s Huntley. I may be entirely in the wrong, but I thought poorhouses were a London phenomenon. I also thought the way the fencing craze was depicted was a little exaggerated, with Kit gaining acclaim both as a teacher (to some fairly tony aristocrats – one whom he becomes friendly with is a duke) and an arranger of and participant in fencing demonstrations and entertainments. This also may have been accurate, for all I know. None of it rang true for me, though, which is a big sign that an author has lost me – lost my interest, my suspension of disbelief. The more conscious I am that it’s a story I’m reading, with an author behind it who may or may not be making up details and manipulating events, the less I like it.

I’m aware that this is the sort of thinking authors hate – the “it may or may not have been accurate but it didn’t feel accurate” argument. But again, my point is that it’s more a symptom of a larger problem than a problem in and of itself. I’ve enjoyed books where I knew the events were quite unlikely, because those books had other things going for them. If I can be distracted into wondering if there were really poorhouses in close proximity to small rural villages, it’s because I’m not involved in the story.

Kit was okay – I would’ve liked a little more insight into his background, but he was an adequate hero. Violet was okay. The writing was okay. I’m sensing a theme here. There is a villain whose identity is shrouded in a cunning little bit of misdirection - I thought I was being clever in guessing who I thought it to be, until it became clear that I was supposed to think that. I liked that, but the ultimate identity and motivation of the villain then ends up being random and unconnected to anything that’s come before. I didn’t like that at all. Ultimately, though, I found that not a lot about A Bride Unveiled moved me either way. My grade is a C.

Best regards,

Jennie

REVIEW: The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson

Jennie — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:00:06 +0000

Dear Ms. Lawrenson,

I happened to read a review of this, your debut novel, in People a month or so ago. I was intrigued by the description of the novel as an homage to Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. Imagine my surprise when, the very next day, while sifting through my big drawer o’ books Jane has sent me, I found a copy of The Lantern. Isn’t it nice when life works out like that?

I settled down to read and immediately ran into a problem – the prose. The first chapter begins:

The rocks glow red above the sea, embers of the day’s heat below our balcony at the Hotel Marie.

Down here, on the southern rim of the country, out of the mistral’s slipstream, the evening drops like viscous liquid: slow and heavy and silent. When we first arrived, the stifling sultriness made sleep impossible; night closed in like the lid of a tomb.

Now, some might call the above lyrical, evocative, lush. I call it overwritten. After ten pages without let-up, I was concerned that I would be able to get through the book (I am a delicate fainting flower of sensitivity when it come to prose).

Then something happened – something that probably only happens to me about 20% of the time with prose that is, shall we say, challenging: I got into it. I’m not sure, when this happens, how much of it is the prose itself (do I think I don’t like it but on some level I actually do?) and how much is it that the story has drawn me in and forced me to call a truce with the prose. I would guess that with The Lantern it’s a combination of the two: the story definitely did draw me in, even if it took a little while, and the prose, while subjectively too rich and detailed, fit the mood of the tale really well. Plus, overwritten is not the same thing as badly written in my mind, at least not in and of itself. It’s something I find that I can adjust to and immerse myself in to the degree that a negative can become a positive.

So, the story: there are actually two stories being told in The Lantern, in more or less alternating chapters. The modern-day story is told in the first person by a female narrator who remains unnamed throughout the book (our first nod to Rebecca). At the time of the viscous evenings at the Hotel Marie in the south of France, some unidentified calamity has already occurred, exiling our narrator and her lover, Dom, from their recently purchased property in Provence, Les Genévriers. The narrator (Dom calls her Eve, a rather heavy-handed pet name, I thought; I will refer to her that way because I’m already sick of typing “narrator”) then goes back and describes in broad strokes her first meeting with Dom in a maze on the shores of Lake Geneva, and how they came together. She describes herself as an American, but seems to be a bit of a mutt, the daughter of an American father and a French/English mother, raised in France, England and the U.S., but now based in London and working as a translator. Dom is English as well; independently wealthy as a result of a business he started after college and cashed out on, he now composes music. Dom and Eve drift together, seemingly at the mercy of a strong but oddly lugubrious attraction. After a relatively short period, at Dom’s instigation, they give up their London lives and move into the ramshackle Les Genévriers to begin their life together in isolated bliss.

But every Eden has its snake, and there are several candidates at Les Genévriers. There’s Dom’s strong negative reaction to any mention of his former wife, Rachel. There’s Sabine, a local who knows Dom (though he claims not to have met her) and who knew Rachel; she manipulates Eve for her own mysterious reasons. There are the ominous news reports of local girls gone missing. And there is Les Genévriers itself, damaged and perhaps corrupted, even haunted. Soon Eve and Dom find their idyll less than idyllic, though both are maddeningly reluctant to acknowledge it.

The second story is of an earlier occupier of Les Genévriers, Bénédicte Lincel, who grew up there and lived her entire adult life in the house. When she begins to tell her story, she is an old woman, living alone and beset by what she believes are ghosts. The first ghost she sees is of her brother Pierre, a Bad Seed-type character who tormented her throughout her youth. Later, Pierre’s ghost is joined by that of Bénédicte’s older sister Marthe, a blind perfumer who abruptly and mysteriously cut off all contact with Bénédicte years before. Bénédicte goes on to relate the story of her youth with Marthe, Pierre and their parents, earning a somewhat hardscrabble subsistence from Les Genévriers.

A word on the Rebecca comparison: I’ve never read the book. I’ve seen the Joan Fontaine/Laurence Olivier movie, in whole or in part, probably half a dozen times. It’s a compelling story, but not necessarily an emotionally involving one. Fontaine’s unnamed narrator is so annoyingly mousy I often want to smack her during the course of the film, and Olivier’s Max is too forbiddingly brooding and mysterious for most of the movie to hold much appeal. The most interesting character, besides the fanatical and menacing Mrs. Danvers, is the never seen Rebecca, who seems to obsess each of the characters in a different way.

Rachel isn’t quite as fascinating in The Lantern, but she does compel in a way that Eve and Dom don’t. Part of the problem is simply the strictures of gothic literature; it’s far from my favorite subgenre. Gothic romance (though I would not call The Lantern a romance, the romantic relationship between Dom and Eve is central to its gothicness) requires the heroine to be passive and in denial and to kind of…dither in an annoying way. Which Eve does in spades. It requires Dom to be opaque, and the real nature of the romantic connection to be hard to understand. From my (admittedly limited) experience with gothics, a lot of the appeal is in the payoff. In that sense, The Lantern disappoints somewhat. The buildup really suggested to me that the two stories would tie together in some grand way, but without saying too much, the resolutions of Bénédicte’s story and Eve and Dom’s story remain on separate tracks, only tangentially tied together, and neither entirely satisfied me. Dom’s secret is disappointingly derivative; not quite a literal call-back to Rebecca, but close enough. Bénédicte’s ghostly visions do have a sort of interesting resolution, but she is required to be breathtakingly stupid (or deliberately blind; more on that in a moment) for quite a while about certain obvious realities. The resolution of the subplot about the missing girls was particularly disappointing and anti-climatic.

Blindness is an interesting running theme in The Lantern. There is Marthe’s literal blindness, and the Lincel family’s apparent figurative blindness to the extent of Pierre’s sadism and evil. Eve herself indulges in quite a bit of emotional blindness in regards to Dom, Rachel and the potential reality she fears. So many characters in denial doesn’t necessarily make for the most satisfying reading – even when Eve begins to dig to find the truth about Rachel she does so secretly, keeping her actions from Dom. In some ways their relationship is realistic in its behaviors if not the somewhat melodramatic particulars, but again, that doesn’t make it dramatically interesting or satisfying. Though to be fair, and precise, it wasn’t so much that I found Eve’s creeping around the truth and Dom’s withdrawal boring so much as I found it irritating. Neither emerged as a very sympathetic figure.

The Lantern, like many gothics, contains mild supernatural elements, most of which end up having fairly prosaic explanations. As a reader, that’s actually my preference, but others may be disappointed, I suppose.

I just realized that it’s happened again: I’ve managed to write over 1,000 words and make it sound like I really didn’t like a book that I actually did enjoy. The flaws are just more interesting to discuss than the pleasures with certain books, for some reason. But The Lantern definitely has its rewards: as I mentioned early on, I really did get into the book after probably the first 20 or 30 pages, and pretty much devoured it from that point. The alternating storylines added to the suspense. I wouldn’t say that felt too emotionally involved with the story (and that’s always at least one of my goals when reading fiction), but it did stay with me afterward. These days, that’s an accomplishment (I need to write a review of the book I read after The Lantern, and at the moment I can’t remember a single thing about it).

Even if I found some of the resolutions disappointing, I can’t help but give a good grade to a book that entertained me this much. Also, I was serious about the prose – it bothered me at first but once I got immersed in the world of the book it actually really worked quite well for me, and also added to the creepy, dread-y atmosphere I associate with gothic novels. My grade for The Lantern is a B+.

Best regards,

Jennie

What Jennie’s Been Reading

Jennie — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:00:45 +0000

By Jennie

I’m not sure how often I’ll be contributing to this feature; I’m a slow reader who reads several books at once, and right now three of the four books I’m reading are LONG and dense. So unless folks want to read a chapter by chapter update, it might not be of much interest. Anyway…

Bleak House by Charles Dickens: I feel that I have been reading this since shortly after Dickens finished serializing it in 1853. In actuality, it’s only been since February, but that’s long enough. I downloaded this onto my iPhone because I thought I remembered reading that it was one of Dickens’ most humorous books. I tend to like Dickens’ sense of humor, particularly his absurd characters. Bleak House does contain a couple of those: Mr. Skimpole, for one, who manages to get away with (figurative) murder by calmly and openly declaring how irresponsible he is. Mr. Skimpole is funny, but he’s also infuriating at times; I’ve gotten to the point where I kind of want one of the other characters to slug him. Also amusing and irritating in turns is Mrs. Jellyby, who ignores her large and chaotic family in favor of writing endless letters having to do with an obscure African tribe she views as an essential charitable concern. Overall, though, Bleak House isn’t exactly a laugh riot. Mostly I’m finding it confusing and impenetrable, and I’m not sure what’s going on much of the time. There are a lot of characters, and lots of things happen which may or may not have anything to do with the central storyline, having to do with an endless court case, Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, which has dragged on for years and dragged many a person down with it. Bleak House isn’t bad, and I have the feeling I’ll be glad I read it when I finish it (I know I’ll be glad I finished it!). But I feel like I’m not quite “getting” it. Also, I’m only 60% into it, according to Stanza. Sigh.

Project Gutenberg

London’s Sinful Secret: The Bawdy History and Very Public Passions of London’s Georgian Age by Dan Cruickshank: I like to be reading at least one non-fiction book at all times, and when I picked this one up I thought it would be both entertaining and informative. Unfortunately, it tends more towards the latter, and at times reads like it was written by an actuary. A very dull actuary. The book’s focus is actually prostitution in the Georgian age (a bit more narrow than I realized when I bought it), and the author devotes pages to analyses of data to determine, say, how many prostitutes were working in London during a particular period of the era. This does not interest me greatly – I was expecting more focus on anecdotes and profiles of notable people from the age. There is some of that, though even these parts are not told in a particularly compelling way, and the lack of solid evidence leads to a lot of speculation by the author. For instance, in discussing the woman thought to be the model for Fielding’s Moll Flanders, he follows several leads; she may have been a prostitute who was transported to America or she may have been a different prostitute who died at a young age. It’s just not that interesting, ultimately. An examination of men put on trial for homosexual activities is a bit more compelling, as well as very sad. But no sooner does that chapter end than the author goes back to estimating how many houses of prostitution existed, and how the local economy was affected by a building boom driven by the need for these houses. That sounds more interesting than it is, I swear. I still have hundreds of pages to go. I already sighed, didn’t I?

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: You know what you need when you’re already reading two long and difficult books? Did you say “a 19th century Russian novel?” Then, you’re right! Well, actually, you’re wrong – who thinks it’s a good idea to start a 1,000 page Russian classic in the midst of that other reading? I did, apparently. A few years ago, my sister and I began the mutual goal of reading a Russian novel each summer. The tradition has gone along in fits and starts, and we’ve only actually gotten two read: Crime and Punishment and Anna Karenina. Much like these other two books, so far The Brothers Karamazov is challenging and occasionally thought-provoking, rather than strictly enjoyable to read. With a novel like this, there are so many things – the translation, the fact that it was written in a different era and a different culture, the metaphorical characterization and allusions – that add distance between the book and me as a reader. As a reader who really values connecting with the characters in a story, this distance can be frustrating. Sometimes I think the chief pleasure of such books is the brief moments of connection, of recognition, across all that divides me from the narrative. Sort of like suddenly understanding an entire sentence spoken in a foreign language. Anyway, I will persevere with The Brothers Karamazov, because it is Good For Me.

Project Gutenberg

The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson: Review to come. For now I’ll say that it was kind of a mixed bag for me, very compelling in parts and disappointing in others. It’s billed as sort of a take-off on Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca.

A Bride Unveiled by Jillian Hunter: Review to come, maybe, unless someone else wants to review it and save me the trouble. It had an intriguing set-up, but managed to be somehow (much) less than the sum of its parts. I’m not even sure what to grade it, because it’s not *that* bad, but I found myself annoyed and disappointed with it for reasons I can’t quite articulate.

That’s it for now! I’ve just started The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton by Miranda Neville. So far, I’m not quite getting what the fuss is about. But there’s lots of book still to read.

Until next time,

Jennie

REVIEW: The King’s Courtesan by Judith James

Jennie — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 19:00:51 +0000

Dear Ms. James,

I vaguely recall hearing about your two previous books, Broken Wing and Libertine’s Kiss, and being a bit intrigued. They sounded like a bit of something different, with unusual settings and good reader buzz. When the opportunity came recently to read The King’s Courtesan, I jumped at the chance.

Hope Matthews and Robert Nichols both have traumatic pasts; Hope was raised in a brothel by her madam mother, who sold her to the highest bidder when she was just fourteen. Ten years later, Hope has risen in the world; she’s one of Charles II’s many mistresses. In spite of her somewhat tawdry profession, Hope has managed to retain her sweetness and innocence.

Robert’s story is even more tragic; he was only twelve when, with his parents away, Cavaliers invaded his family home and killed his beloved sister. Tormented by her memory and his own guilt at not saving her, Robert fights for the Puritans, soldiering while hunting down his sister’s killers. Once the war ends and Charles II is restored to the throne, Robert returns to his country manor, but the memories still haunt him; one of his targets has evaded him all these years. His life only becomes more empty and painful when he receives a royal decree ordering him to surrender his lands. Rebels against Charles II enjoyed a general amnesty, but it just so happens that Charles owes a powerful man a favor, and what the man wants is Robert’s estate.

All is not lost, though; when an old friend of Robert’s (the heroine of a previous book, Libertine’s Kiss) finds out about his lands being confiscated, she complains to the king (another friend and former admirer of hers, apparently). Charles decides to kill two birds with one stone: he has been trying to find a husband for Hope in order to make her more respectable. Charles is to be married to the Portuguese Infanta, and Hope, knowing her presence at Court will not be welcomed as easily by the new queen as that of Charles’ official mistress, the aristocratic Lady Castlemaine, has asked for his permission to retire to the country. She has money saved and only wants to live a quiet and respectable life. She cares for Charles, even loves him a little, but she knows he cannot really love her and would prefer to have her freedom. Charles balks at this, and schemes to wed Hope to a man who is respectable enough to restore her honor (at least the pretense of it) within the Court. Robert Nichols needs something from him, and so Charles summons him to London; he figures he’ll get Hope married off to Robert, sent off to the country for a while, and sometime after his marriage she can return to Court and to Charles’ bed.

I liked the set-up here relatively well; Robert and Hope are somewhat evenly matched in that both are at the mercy of their powerful king, and don’t actually have a lot of say in the matter of their own marriage. Robert at least is given the respect of being told about it ahead of time (Charles also graces him with a new title and some extra lands in addition to returning Robert’s original lands to him, to sweeten the pot). Hope, on the other hand, ends up tricked into marriage and bundled off with Robert to his country estate practically in the blink of an eye. She is furious with Charles, and furious with Robert as well, thinking him nothing more than a base fortune-hunter (this after feeling an overwhelming attraction upon first meeting him). For Robert’s part, he is attracted to Hope as well, but angry about the marriage and feeling like a cuckold already.

So, the story here is pretty straightforward. Robert and Hope are tied together, at least for the time being, and full of misunderstandings about each other. This leads to a dynamic that I’m less fond of: the bickering hero and heroine. Robert and Hope have a basic pattern that they cycle through on the way to and after arriving at his estate: make goo-goo eyes, get along briefly, get into a dumb fight, sulk. Lather, rinse, repeat. I was tired of it after the first go-round.

I think one of the reasons I was interested in this book was the feeling that I got that it was a bit “old-style.” And it is. But I forgot that this is a double-edged sword – those old-style romances have aspects I really like and miss (different settings!), but they also have aspects that I don’t care for (rather overly traditional and conservative gender characterizations).

Ultimately, it’s on characterization that the book really started to falter for me. Robert is a stock character – brooding, tortured soldier who feels that no one can love him because of the blood on his hands. Hope is, to be a bit flip about it, a hooker with a heart of gold. She’s had a hard life, sure, but it hasn’t kept her from being extraordinarily pure of heart and fairly pure of body. It turns out (quelle surprise!) that Hope is less experienced than advertised…considerably less experienced than one would expect of a girl raised in a brothel, sold at 14, and mistress to a king. Since the “experienced heroine” hook was part of the attraction of the book for me, I found Hope’s innocence and sweetness rather irritating. That is already not my favorite type of heroine (though it can work in some books), and I already resent the age-old romance dynamic of angelic=heroine and cynical and worldly=hero. Throw in the lack of truth in advertising, and I’m a pretty annoyed reader.

Not that Hope is entirely a softy – she deals fairly well with the at-first hostile staff of her new home, and she has a reputation of being somewhat saucy (one of the things that attracted Charles to her in the first place). Perhaps it’s in Robert’s eyes that Hope seems the most childlike and angelic:

His thoughts were filled with a sad-eyed elf with violet eyes.

She patted it absently as she watched out the window, looking for all the world like a lost little waif.

She looked as fragile as a child and he felt like a great bloody oaf.

A couple of things: descriptions of heroines that compare them to children, when observed from the POV of the hero, should be sparing to nonexistent in romance. It’s really kind of yuck. Also, maybe it’s just me, but at this point, when I hear “elf”, I think “Dobby” from the Harry Potter books, and I’m not sure that’s what the author is going for. It didn’t help that the “elf” nickname eventually sticks as Robert’s chief endearment for Hope.

In any case, the contrasting of the big, brutish hero and the tiny, childlike heroine got old pretty quickly. As did the many descriptions of her raven hair and violet eyes. (Now I’m remembering another negative of older-style romances! Constant mentions of the heroine’s physical attributes! Though my favorite will always be the Jennifer Wilde book that was told in the first person by the heroine and still managed to work in mentions of her auburn tresses every couple of pages.)

The prose in The King’s Courtesan is mostly competent, if a bit uninspired, but I had to laugh at the following pronouncement by one of the hero’s friends:

For my money, he’s been married to that cold dark bitch called war.

No. Just no. Someone – editor, crit partner - someone should have put the kibosh on that laughably melodramatic line.

Reading this over, I wonder if I seem unduly harsh. The King’s Courtesan is not a *bad* book; but it’s not a very good one, either. My grade: C.

Best regards,

Jennie

REVIEW: In a Treacherous Court by Michelle Diener

Jennie — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 19:00:12 +0000

Dear Ms. Diener,

Having recently read and enjoyed a historical novel set in the 16th century and dealing with intrigue and assassins, I was intrigued when In a Treacherous Court fell into my hands. Realizing it was a debut sharpened my interest, since I’m always on the lookout for new authors, especially those whose work is something a bit different from straight historical genre romance.

The principal characters of In a Treacherous Court are Dutch artist Susanna Horenbout and English courtier John Parker. The “treacherous court” of the title is that of Henry VIII. John meets Susanna’s boat as it arrives from the Netherlands; she has accepted a position as a personal illuminator to the English king (it was unusual at the time for a female to hold such a position, and Susanna has to continually deal with prejudice against her for her abilities and her sex).

Parker’s first meeting with Susanna is anything but smooth, as Susanna has just had a man die in her arms. On the ship’s departure from the Netherlands, an English merchant by the name of Harvey raced on board at the last minute, pursued by several men. He got away, but was wounded, stabbed in the lung. Over the course of the journey, Susanna nurses him until he eventually dies. Before dying, Harvey entrusts Susanna with a secret for the king’s ears only. On hearing this, Parker tries to get Susanna to reveal the secret t o him; he’s the king’s man, after all. But Susanna is stubborn and willful; she promised Harvey she would only tell the king himself, and so that’s what she’s going to do.

Parker and Susanna set off for London, but are repeatedly attacked, both on the way and once they’ve arrived (even after Susanna manages to give the king Harvey’s message). The number of attacks really is overkill; Parker mentions at one point that they have been accosted five separate times (I think in the course of a little over 24 hours), and I was glad he gave a number so I didn’t have to count them up myself. It was a little ridiculous. Still, it serves to let Parker know that whatever enemies Susanna has inadvertently acquired, they are extremely desperate and determined to silence her. It also makes Parker realize how protective he feels towards this woman he’s known for so brief a time.

There were things I liked about In a Treacherous Court - competent writing, sympathetic characters and a good eye for period details, to name a few. The things I didn’t like were fewer but a bit more problematic. The plot – having to do with machinations of the Duke of Norfolk and the pretensions of Richard de la Pole to the throne of England – was both confusing and a bit boring to me. I just didn’t really care that much what these characters were doing or why they were doing it. While I normally say that good writing and characterization trumps a mediocre plot, in this case the writing and characterization lacked the spark to really carry the story and overcome the ho-hum plot.

I did like that Susanna was a strong heroine; during her many moments of peril, she fights hard for herself rather than just waiting for Parker to save her. Their relationship worked fairly well for me too; each recognizes the attraction pretty quickly and there is not a lot of drama or mental lusting involved in their getting together. The only downside to this is that there is then not much tension in the romantic relationship, and since I didn’t have much of a stake in the suspense plot, I did miss having something really compelling to latch onto. To be fair, the book never lagged or bored me, but on the other hand it never really engaged me entirely.

The depiction of Susanna’s devotion to her craft was well-drawn but could’ve been fleshed out a little more (no pun intended); the same could be said of Parker’s troubled backstory. I wouldn’t even have minded a bit more about court life, and I have to say that the court of Henry VIII doesn’t interest me that much, maybe just because I’ve read so much about it already. Basically, I think the book needed a little bit more of something to round out the suspense plot, which really spent the majority of the book front-and-center.

The author’s note at the end informs the reader that John and Susanna were real people, who really did hold the positions noted in the book and and who eventually married. Knowing that they were real makes me wonder if a more interesting story could’ve been crafted from their courtship and marriage.

Ultimately, In a Treacherous Court felt short and a bit unfinished to me – I think it had to do with it taking place over a short period of time, and so much of that time being taken up with action. Readers who really like suspense and action and/or stories set in the court of Henry VIII, and who appreciate quiet, subtle romances may respond more positively than I did. As it was, my grade is a B-.

Best regards,

Jennie

REVIEW: Tell Me More by Janet Mullany

Jennie — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 19:11:04 +0000

Dear Ms. Mullany,

I have enjoyed your witty historical romances quite a bit, and liked your historical erotic romance (written as Jane Lockwood) as well, though I had a few issues with it. So I was more than happy to hear that you had a new book out, even if contemporaries aren’t really my first choice in romance reading. (Tell Me More, written under Harlequin’s Spice Imprint, is I guess technically an erotic contemporary, rather than a straight contemporary, just to be clear.)

Jo Hutchinson is a radio host at a classical music station in a small Colorado college town that is never identified as Boulder but which I suspect is supposed to be Boulder or at least modeled on Boulder. It’s a very liberal, socially and environmentally conscious place, home to old hippies and outdoor enthusiasts of all kinds. Jo herself loves bike riding and cross-country skiing. The story begins with Jo’s confrontation (told in the first person; all of the scenes from Jo’s POV are first-person) with her ex-boyfriend Hugh, who has come to her home to collect his skis. Hugh and Jo have recently split up after Hugh cheated on her with a woman named Flowyr (Jo seems at least as offended by the name as by the cheating). After some bickering, though, Hugh attempts to seduce Jo, admitting that his Flowyr fling is over and that he made a mistake. Jo is not about to take Hugh back, but she doesn’t mind indulging in a little afternoon delight; after all, who knows how long it’ll be before she gets some again? (As it turns out, she needn’t have worried, but more on that in a moment.) Unfortunately, Jo and Hugh are caught in flagrante delicto (lock your doors, people! geez!) by Patrick, who has come to look at an apartment Jo is renting out.

Jo really is done with Hugh, but her love life becomes rather complicated rather quickly. At the station, she indulges in conversation, flirtation, and finally phone sex with a mysterious listener she refers to as Mr. D. Eventually, Mr. D suggests meeting face to face, but Jo doesn’t want to. She quickly and impulsively seduces a young intern at the station. Jo is pursued by Willis, a wealthy developer who is really not her type, and whom she doesn’t seem to like very much, but whom she has sex with anyway. He draws her into ever-kinkier activities, first with a couple he is friends with, Jake and Cathy, and then with a group called the Rockies Investment Association, which, belying its name is actually some sort of weird sex club.

It was really at Jo’s involvement with the club that I started to feel disengaged from the characters and the action. Jo spends much of her time with the club in the Great Room, which is generally reserved for newbies who haven’t “moved up” yet. In the Great Room, there is a lot of teasing and playing around, but the rules are “no penetration, no orgasms”, a rule that the denizens seem to delight in trying to trick each other into breaking. Breaking the rules, of course, involves “punishment.” The whole point of the Great Room was really lost on me, from an appeal standpoint, but I guess that’s just a case of tastes varying. More problematic was that I didn’t get the sense that Jo was all that interested in any of it – Willis, the group, the shenanigans in the Great Room – she seemed to be just going with the flow, in a way that made her slightly unlikable to me.

Which leads to one of the main problems I had with the story: I never got a good sense as to why Jo keeps pursuing these avenues. That’s not usuallly an issue for me in erotic fiction (where the action tends to dictate motivation, rather than the opposite). For some reason, though, it didn’t feel quite natural or organic here. Jo has her farewell bonk with Hugh, she seduces the intern, she sleeps with Willis, and messes around with his friends, and finally joins the club. I didn’t get the sense that Jo had always been this adventurous, sexually, but I also didn’t get much of an idea of what was motivating Jo to push her boundaries so far. A lot of it seems to have to do with Mr. D – she does things with the idea that she’ll be able to tell him about them later. But I didn’t really understand what drew her to Mr. D or compelled her to indulge in these activities just so she’d have something sexy and scandalous to share with him.

Eventually I felt like the story was kind of moving on two tracks: Jo’s involvement with Mr. D and the club, and her deepening relationship with Patrick (who does end up renting the apartment, in spite of his awkward first meeting with Jo). She has to choose which path she wants to follow, a choice that seemed obvious to me. I never understood the appeal of the club or what drew Jo to Mr. D in the first place. Late in the book Jo makes some mistakes that were realistic (meaning, not something you’d find in the average romance), but eroded my sympathy for her even further. It didn’t help that there was the odd choice to have the action take place off stage (I can’t really say more without spoiling, I’m afraid), so we never really got a sense of what Jo was thinking or what motivated her, except for self-destructive stupidity.

Patrick is an interesting character – from Ireland originally, he’s a lawyer by training but doesn’t practice, preferring to do unspecified computer work instead. He moves into the apartment Jo rents out in the midst of a breakup with his wife Elise. At first, Patrick seems pretty distraught over the breakup, but he gets over it fairly quickly, falling into bed with a co-worker and friend of Jo’s and then starting to lust after Jo herself. (The relationship with Jo’s friend, Liz, is short-lived and to be fair she doesn’t appear to have any problem with Jo and Patrick getting together.) Patrick is wary, though, of Jo’s secrets; he has a bit of a rescuer complex and doesn’t want to find himself cleaning up someone else’s messes again.

Patrick is not perfect; again, by romance novel standards, he’s a bit unfocused and neurotic, and he has a fair amount of baggage, including an alcoholic father and his unresolved feelings for his wife (who doesn’t play much of a part in the story but does come off as a bit of romance novel central casting in her one actual appearance in the novel: cold, beautiful, doesn’t like sex, etc. – the better to presumably contrast her with Jo, who is naturally, warmly pretty and, it’s been established, quite horny). But he cares for Jo, and perhaps because we get his POV (third person as opposed to Jo’s first person, but he’s the only other character given a POV in the book), he’s more easily understood than the extremely enigmatic Mr. D., who remains a cipher to the end.

It might be oversimplifying the case to say that the parts between Jo and Patrick feel like straightforward (albeit spicy) contemporary romance, while all the other business feels basically like erotica. But that is kind of the case. It goes back, I think, to my lack of understanding of what draws Jo to Mr. D, to the club, and to exploring a more adventurous sex life in general. The connection between Jo and Patrick is made clear both by the characters’ thoughts and actions and the way they interact. As the book goes on, the contrast between these storylines gets more stark, and the Mr. D/sex club storyline feels more unpleasant, both because of the threat it represents to the good thing Jo has going with Patrick, and because there is something faintly menacing about the club in general.

There’s a slightly…sleazy quality to the sex in Tell Me More and to the story itself. I believe this was intentional – I almost want to say the whole thing has a kind of ’70s porn vibe, but in honesty I’ve never actually seen ’70s porn, so it probably has more to do with my conception of it than necessarily the reality. It feels slightly less glamorized than other erotic romances I’ve read. I had mixed feelings about this – on an intellectual level, I appreciated the grittiness and realism (well, realism in the context of a world where everyone fucks like bunnies), but on an aesthetic level, I actually prefer a little glamor.

One thing I found odd, given that this was not a romance, was the speed with which the characters declared their love for each other. I didn’t expect that and it didn’t quite feel right. Patrick falls in love with Jo really quickly, and she returns his feelings almost as quickly. Even more strangely, Mr. D tells Jo near the end that he loves her, and that just didn’t make any sense to me, given that they don’t really know each other at all and all they’ve shared are some phone conversations and kinky, manipulative sex games. Mr. D was frustrating in general – at times I felt sure there was going to be some big revelation that he was a character the reader already knew, just because so much is invested in him in the story. Yet he remains totally cryptic to the end, as does Jo’s attraction to him.

What did work for me in Tell Me More was the prose, which as usual in a Janet Mullany book, is sparkling and witty (though some of the sexual descriptions weren’t really to my taste, but that’s such an individual thing I don’t really see it as a negative). Patrick, and Jo, to a lesser extent, are interesting and sympathetic characters. If I couldn’t quite get on board with some of the choices Jo made, I don’t regret reading Tell Me More, and I look forward to your next book. My grade is a B-.

Best regards,

Jennie