Apr 19 2006
REVIEW: The River Devil by Diane Whiteside
Dear Ms. Whiteside:
I was intrigued by another review of your book which promised a heroine who was in control of her own sexuality and who didn’t require saving as she fled for her life from a forced marriage with the villain. Plus it’s a Western, something which is becoming a rarity these days in the world of romance novels. But still I hesitated. I must have picked your book up and carried it around Waldenbooks then put it back on the shelf two times before I finally gave into temptation and the cover and bought it. It does have a really nice cover. Too bad the book didn’t work as well for me.
Yes, the heroine is not a virgin and yes the sex is hot, hot. hot but after a while, it just seemed like the same scene over and over. The hero’s hung like a horse, he and the heroine enjoy some teasing foreplay then it’s crash, bang, boom – orgasm city. Seems like almost every chapter ended the same way. By halfway through the book, it was just ho-hum. Plus I just couldn’t stop giggling during the scene that mentioned the hero’s tits.
And while I applaud you for giving your hero and heroine some flaws, the villains were so one dimensional and cartoony evil that I quickly began to skip any scene with them. Then there was the excessive skanky villain sex. Really excessive.
And just when the story was finally moving forward again, you’d throw in some flashback scene that ground it to a complete stop. The heroine had flashbacks, the hero had flashbacks, the villains, male and female, had flashbacks, the hero’s father had some as well. And while I appreciate all the research on post Civil War paddleboats working up and down the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, finally even that got to be too much. I skimmed my way to the end and closed The River Devil with a huge sigh of relief. Thank God that’s over.
~Jayne
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Apr 19, 2006 @ 23:04:55
Have you seen the cover for Southern Devil? She is gotten some really good cover luck.
I have this but haven’t read it yet. I liked the first one and The Switch. I will get to this at some point, and Hunter’s Prey? or whatever it is called which I will prolly not like because it is erotica with no HEA! But who knows…
Apr 20, 2006 @ 02:58:23
I agree that these covers are really nice. I wonder if she knows where the bodies are buried to have gotten such nice covers? ;)
Fair warning:I noticed a lot of posters at amazon saying they had loved Irish Devil but disliked River Devil. The h/h from Irish show up a fair amount in River so if you liked them, you’re in luck.
Apr 20, 2006 @ 06:25:31
When Jayne told me she was reading a historical, I asked her which one. She kind of gave me a “duh” look as it is listed in the Now Reading section but the cover doesn’t look like a historical. It looks like a contemporary set in the west or in Texas.
Apr 20, 2006 @ 10:25:16
I remember the first time I saw the cover, I was surprised that it was a historical, too. And not only is it tasteful (now there’s almost an oxymoron for a romance cover) but it actually kinda looks like the hero is described and the model is doing what the hero is described as doing. Whiteside must really have some kind of pull at her publishers.