Apr 23 2006
REVIEW: Beloved Stranger by Patricia Potter
Dear. Ms Potter,
I applaud anyone these days willing to write a historical romance novel that’s NOT a Regency. So, here’s lots of applause for you. And more applause for writing a good novel with characters I cared about while you’re at it. It’s not every day that I find a book set in the early sixteenth century along the English/Scottish border.
I liked the way you showed the battle of Flodden Field (realistic but not too gory) and how you made the Reiver heroine willing to go out and plunder the battlefield instead of turning all TSTL (as Mary Balogh had the Disney Whores do in her unfortunate Slightly Sinful) and not get anything for her efforts. You did a good job showing the heroine’s hard day to day life without turning her into a pity party.
My downgrade comes from the hero. He’s got amnesia and though he’s a great Beta guy, a whole lot of time is spent with him agonizing over his lost memory and being
haunted by fleeting bits of recollection. The villain is also very two
dimensional though thankfully you don’t spend much time with him onstage. I guess men of that era would be a bit thuggish but a subtler touch would have been appreciated.
The heroine’s daughter gets a little, teensy bit cloying at times but I’ll cheerfully admit that children in romance novels generally set my teeth on edge. Still, this is believable, well researched, filled with good characters and Not A Regency!
~Jayne
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Apr 23, 2006 @ 07:43:22
I have this one waiting to be read. I bought it because I loved her earlier historicals but didn’t care much for her RS. It’s great to see she’s going backwards in time again (although not to Regency)
Apr 23, 2006 @ 08:03:35
This is a sequel to Beloved Imposter which I haven’t read yet. However, I think it stood up well on its own. I also love an unusual Civil War book she wrote that is set in the west called “The Soldier and the Rebel.”
Apr 24, 2006 @ 07:41:17
A Reiver heroine, eh? Hm … OK, I will give this one a try. Wait. How are her speech? Dialect? [It's my number one pet hate.]
Apr 24, 2006 @ 08:10:48
Maili, it’s not bad. Well, not as bad as the Howell book I mentioned. God, that one was full of it. Potter throws in a few “ayes” and “ye’s” and makes a token at 15th C speech but it’s not a “dinnae, cannae, willnae” nightmare.